The Tattooist - Yuliia Kuzmenko

Riven works in silence,

his head bowed low under the sharp buzz of the tattoo gun. The studio smells of antiseptic and incense. His long fingers precisely move over a woman's wrist as she clenches her jaw, barely breathing.

The design is simple: a flock of birds in flight.

When it’s finished, she blinks. There’s a tear on her cheek - not from pain. She exhales like something heavy just left her body. He says nothing. He never does. She thanks him, leaves quietly, and doesn’t look back.

As the door clicks shut, Riven cleans his station and leans back in his chair. His eyes drift toward a photo, half-hidden under a stack of sketchbooks: two boys, arms slung around each other, grinning wildly at the camera. One of them is Riven. The other now exists just in his memory.

…

They're sitting on a rooftop, two teenage boys, shirts off, laughing in the summer heat. Kai, the older brother, has a needle and ink he shouldn’t have.

“Come on, Riv. Let me try it. You trust me, right?”

Riven winces as the first crude line burns into his shoulder, but he doesn’t move.

Kai’s hands are steady. His voice, softer now:

“You don’t need to carry it all. We put it in the ink. That’s what tattoos are for.”

Later that night, they sneak back into their cramped apartment. Their mum is passed out again. Riven stares at the bandage on his arm, wondering why the pain made him feel lighter.

…

Riven doesn’t ask what people want or why they want it. But somehow, he always knows.

A scar hidden in a floral sleeve. A name turned into a constellation.

He listens not with ears, but with skin. With silence.

His clients leave lighter, as if their pain has been bled into the ink.

And they have no idea why.

…

Years later. A different rooftop. Kai’s eyes are tired.

He’s gotten in deep with the wrong people, owes money, talks fast, like he can outrun it.

“I’m getting out,” he says. “One more job. Then we’re clean. I swear.”

Riven is angry. “You promised you were done.”

Kai gives him a crooked smile. “Tattoo me one last time, little brother. Something real.”

Riven inks a phoenix on his brother’s chest that night. It’s unfinished.

The next day, Kai is gone.

After Kai's death, Riven spiralled. For days, he didn’t eat. Didn’t speak.

Then, one night, he opened Kai’s old sketchbook and found something written beneath a drawing of wings

“Ink is memory. If you hold it, you carry the weight. If you give it, someone else can heal.”

That night, Riven picks up a needle again.

…

Riven closes up the shop as the sky lightens.

He pulls off his gloves, looks at the unfinished phoenix on his chest - the one tattoo he never touched since that day.

But now, he picks up the needle.

And in the mirror’s reflection, the phoenix begins to rise again.