Japanese style red and orange koi fish tattoo with black swirling waves and white highlights, shown from two angles on a limb.

Red koi fish with black waves

Japanese · Other · Colour · Photo

A large koi fish swims upward with its head turned toward the viewer, shown in two side-by-side views of the same limb. Bold black outlines, layered red and orange scales, and white highlights give the fish a raised, shaded look, set against black swirling clouds and white wave shapes. The colour ink dominates the composition, with black used for the background and shading.

Japanese Other Koi Fish Wave Swirl Scale

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Come closer, the lamps are low and the old tale wants a listening room. There was a red carp in the canal behind the Lantern Ballroom, a fish so bold the lock-keeper's boy swore it swam against the current just to show off. Every Saturday the dance hall shook above the water, brass bands and stamping feet, and the carp would rise under the reflected chandeliers as if it had been invited.

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Then came the winter the floorboards gave way and the hall shut its doors. Madame Ysolde, who taught the tango on the top floor, sat by the water each evening with her shoes in her lap. She said the carp was the only partner left who still knew the steps. Black clouds of storm rolled over the canal, and the white waves rose up like hands reaching for a dancer who had stopped moving.

One night she stepped down to the water's edge and, in the dark, lifted her skirt above her knees and kicked off into the reeds. The carp came up beside her, scales flaring orange in the lamplight, and turned its great head to look at her. She laughed for the first time since the closing, and the wind took the sound up over the roof.

The hall reopened in spring with a new sprung floor. And if you ask the lock-keeper's boy, grown old now like me, he will tell you the carp still rises on Saturdays, and that the trick is simply to keep your feet moving when the water turns against you.