Gray

Blobs. Countless blobs all around me.

They shuffled about randomly, some of them following movement rules and some of them breaking them a little, but not too much.

I couldn’t believe that I hadn't seen them before. The way they had appeared in front of me made it seem like they had always been there but they were just invisible, kind of like the bus from yesterday. It made me wonder how many more things in this world were there but just invisible to me. Maybe I just had to keep looking harder.

I first started by observing the blob-like creatures more closely. Outside of their white color and black outline, none of the creatures shared any other aspects or traits as each other. From their appearance, to their size, and even the manner in which they move and which sets of movement rules they were forced to follow were all different from each other.

The longer I observed them, the more patterns I began to find however. I noticed that some of the blobs generally stayed close to each other in groups, rarely ever straying too far from each other if they did. Some groups were made up of two, while others were as big as ten. Groups of two mostly had blobs that were about the same size as each other, while groups of three or more sometimes had a blob that was noticeably smaller than the rest.

Then there were the blobs that generally stayed alone. They seemed to walk around more mindlessly compared to the blobs that decided to group with each other. It was as if they were independent and had a mind of their own, and they somewhat reminded me of myself—which had spurred a few questions in my mind.

What did I look like to them?

Was I also just a blob-like creature?

What did I look like anyway?

Emuru implied that something called a mirror would allow me to see what I looked like, but I still didn’t know what it was.

“Let’s meet here again tomorrow okay? I’ll show you to a mirror then.” I recalled her saying.

If I wasn’t already excited about getting to see one, the recent observations of the blob-like creatures certainly made sure I was.

Now that I thought about it, it was the first time in my life that I started caring about how I looked, or was worried about exactly what I was. The question had never come to mind because there was never anyone there to make it appear.

What clothes am I wearing? Am I even wearing any at all? If I am, when did I put them on? Where did I get them from? What about my hair? Is it overgrown? Did I style it? Does it smell? Do I smell in general?

My mind was overwhelmed by all these new emotions and fixations that had suddenly appeared just by the presence of other creatures alone. Suddenly, being not bored wasn’t all I cared about anymore. I had desires now, and things I wanted to know and do other than just exploring the vast empty canvas in search of something new and interesting.

I looked back at the blobs again, and I noticed that their colors had suddenly started to change. Their pale white bodies were becoming darker and darker, only stopping once they reached a brand new color—a middle line between black and white.

Gray.

Gray? I wondered, what does that color mean?

If white represented somethingness and black represented both nothingness and the outline of somethingness, then what did gray, the middle line between the two colors represent? What was the middle line between somethingness and nothingness? The unknown?

Yes, I thought, perhaps gray represents the unknown.

Both somethingness and nothingness were two sides of the same coin in that both required that my vision knew whether something or nothing was there. But what if it didn’t? What if for some reason I was unable to tell whether the thing that is there is something or nothing? Perhaps that’s what gray is, but that didn’t explain why they turned gray, which leads me to another question.

What does it mean if a creature turns gray? Beyond that, what does it mean for a creature to be a certain color in the first place? And even before that—what type of color was I dyed in?

I had always assumed that I was white with a black outline, just like everything else in this world, but after seeing the shade of blue in Emuru and now the shade of gray on the blobs, I wasn’t so sure about that anymore.

There were too many questions on my mind, so I decided to retrace it back to the instance where the first question should’ve been asked, but wasn’t.

Why is Emuru blue? I wondered, and why does her hue keep changing color depending on what I say or do?

I recalled all the way back to the first interaction I had with her. When I first noticed her, she was just a blob like everyone else here, but unlike them, she was a dark shade of blue.

What else is different from her and them? I asked as I recalled what she was doing, oh right, it was hard to tell at first, but after looking at her for a while, I noticed she was crying… and the more she cried, the darker she became, but when I talk to her and when she laughs, she becomes a lighter color, but if I say something that puts her off, she becomes darker again…

I began to thread together the pieces one by one, as I began to realize that the colors shifted and changed based on how she was feeling.

So then… do the colors of creatures represent their emotions? I wondered, then what does blue mean? Sadness?

It had to be sadness; it made more sense that way. If crying made her more blue, and good things made her less blue, then blueness had to represent how sad she was feeling.

Sadness. Along with the other emotions, I hadn’t seen it in so long, it was hard to tell what it looked like on other people. So then if I didn’t know what sadness looked like, then how could I tell she was sad? How could I tell that a smile meant happiness? Was it perhaps because these two were the emotions I was the most familiar with?.

Out of all the emotions, I had really only felt a total of three in my time in this world; sadness, happiness, and neutrality. I knew from the theoretical ‘world I used to live in’, that other emotions existed, but my time in this world didn’t give me any reason to express anything more than those three.

I looked back towards the groups of gray blob-like creatures wandering around the place. If blue creatures meant that they were sad creatures, then what did gray creatures mean? If gray things meant the unknown, then did gray creatures mean that they were experiencing an emotion that I couldn’t identify by sight alone?

It would make sense that way… I thought, after all, despite being one of the few emotions I was able to feel, I was only barely able to identify sadness after staring at a girl crying for who knows how long.

I looked towards a blob who was currently following the movement rule that told it to sit down.

Maybe if I start staring at them and acknowledging them like I did with Emuru, I’ll be able to deduce what emotions they’re currently feeling.

As I continued staring and staring at the blob, I suddenly began to notice its form shift and change and become more detailed and humanoid, just like Emuru had. One by one, different body parts became visible, starting from its face to its arms and then its legs. When I finally took a good look at its face, I noticed a frown on it, and as I did so, their gray body suddenly started to become blue.

Woah… I thought, before turning to look at another blob.

As their features became more apparent to me, I stared at its face, but was unable to make out their expression. They had a frown on them, but for some reason their eyes looked different.

What do their eyes mean? I wondered, but seeing as how their color didn’t turn blue, I supposed it meant they weren’t feeling sad. Then what emotion are they feeling? Perhaps it really is dependent on whether or not I know the emotion before their color is able to change; if I don’t then they remain gray, meaning my previous thought that gray means an emotion I don’t know is probably true.

I turned towards another blob, waiting for their features to become more apparent, before noticing a smile form on their face.

A smile? I thought, it means they’re happy right?

As soon as that thought appears in my mind, I notice their body transform into another color that I hadn’t seen yet until now; yellow.

So yellow means happiness, I realized, and smiling is a good indicator of that… but come to think of it, Emuru smiled too, but she still remained blue—a lighter shade of blue, but still blue. Was it possible to smile even though you were sad?

I looked at the white canvas through the sea of gray, blue, and yellow blobs and half-blobs.

Emotions are weird.