Black and grey sketch-style tattoo of two koi fish curled into a circle on the side of a person's ribs.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Two koi fish in a circle on the ribs

Japanese · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo shows two koi fish with their bodies curved into a circle, a yin-yang-like arrangement, with fins and tails flowing outward. The linework is fine and sketchy, with grey shading that gives the scales and fins depth. The design is in black and grey and fills the side of the torso, with a checked shirt visible at the edge of the frame.

Japanese Ribs Koi Fish Yin yang Circle

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

So the boy went down to the sea wall with bread in his pocket, and found the two carp already circling the weed-hung steps, one hauling its black body round after the other as if neither could bear to be the first to stop. You will want their names. The grandmothers called them Ebb and Flow, though the fishermen on Skerry had their own words for them, none of them kind.

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Every evening that summer the boy fed them crusts, and every evening they turned their tails toward each other and curved into a ring, fins fanned out like the sails of a boat going nowhere. The old men said a koi that makes a circle has found what it was looking for. The boy said that was nonsense, a fish is a fish, and he was not wrong, though he was not right either.

The storm came in October and the harbour boiled over the wall. When the water dropped, only one fish lay on the slipway, gills working slowly, its grey flank scraped raw against the stones. The boy carried it back to the tide pool inside his shirt, the checked one his mother had made him wear against the wind, and set it down beside the other. For a long while nothing moved. Then the pair of them turned slowly, nose to tail, and drew the circle closed around the boy's wet hands.

Skerry folk still say you cannot take a fish from its circle without it coming back to find you. I never believed that. I only know the boy stopped feeding them after that, because they never once needed him again.