Purple

I looked around the place, confused at the strange experience I just had.

Where am I…? I’m back to the other world aren’t I? But where in the other world am I?

Sitting up, I noticed someone familiar laying down on something across the white, outlined, room I was in. Her color was gray, her emotions undecipherable, and she had long messy hair and a face that made me feel happy when I stared at it.

Emuru.

Suddenly, the events of last night all start flooding back to me—the mirror, my appearance, the angry blob that put up an eviction notice on my house, being unable to return to my home, meeting Emuru again at night, and seeing what she called the ‘stars’.

As it all comes back to me, I begin to piece together what I just experienced.

A dream? I thought, but that shouldn’t be possible… should it?

I hadn’t had a dream in a long time—after all, dreams were built based on what you experienced throughout the day, but if you lived in an empty white world, it was hard to build something out of nothing. However, after meeting Emuru and seeing things like the bus, the blobs, the stars, and the apartment complex, perhaps it was enough to create a dream—albeit one I didn’t like.

I looked back at Emuru, my chest still pounding and aching from the dream I just had. I didn’t want her to see me like this. I didn’t even like to see myself like this. Everything felt bad. I felt sad and angry at the same time, and worst of all, something was my fault but I didn’t know it.

I climbed out of the thing I was sitting on. Emuru had called it a couch, and said it was something I could sleep on. It didn’t feel as comfortable as my bed though, but it wasn’t that bad either.

I began walking across the small room that Emuru lived in, until I reached a mirror that she placed on her table—at least that’s what it was according to her. I didn’t know that mirrors could come in more forms than a small round object you could hold. Apparently, it could also come in a larger, rectangular form that you could place on a table.

As I stared at my reflection, I noticed that I was another color I hadn’t seen before.

I was purple.

What does that mean? I wondered, was what I was currently feeling related to purple? What was I feeling exactly anyway?

A mix of sadness and anger—a mix of red and blue. Together, it created something that was related to the color purple, but I didn’t know what it was called.

“...Ngh…” I heard someone mumble from behind me as I turned to see Emuru rolling over on her bed, “Nanashi…? Are you up already…?”

She continued rolling around a few times, tossing and turning beneath her white blanket, before fully turning her head towards me, and popping open one of her eyes in a somewhat lazy manner.

“Are you okay?” she quietly asked, her voice still tired, “you look a little… sad… Is it because of what happened yesterday? If you’re worried about finding somewhere to stay, don't worry about it—you can stay here until you’re ready to leave.”

I shook my head.

“I am… not sad,” I replied, “I think. Not exactly anyway, and it’s not because I can’t go back home. I also feel… angry… or at least that’s what I think it’s called.”

She stares at me in a silence that seemed to carry both deep thought and a morning laziness.

“Sad and angry huh…” she mumbled before sitting up and rubbing her eyes, “was it because of a bad dream?”

I nodded.

“A mix of anger and sadness… sorrow is what I like to call that—or maybe something like frustration instead,” she said.

“It has multiple names?”

She tilted her head.

“Of course. Emotions are very complex, and often can’t be described as one thing or another.”

So purple means sorrow or frustration? I wondered, then can blue and red mean something else too?

She was right. Emotions were very weird.

She then stands up from her bed and stretches her arms out as he lets out a big yawn.

“In any case, you don’t want to be feeling like this forever do you?” she asked.

I shook my head and saw that her gray color was shifting towards yellow.

“Then if it’s okay with you, I’m going to give you something called a hug.”

“A hug?”

“Yup!” she says waddling over to me, “a big fat hug.”

She suddenly wraps her arms around me and pulls me closer, and upon squeezing me tightly, I felt all the sadness and anger inside me begin to melt away, replaced by a nice, fuzzy, happiness instead.

She was right. Hugs did feel nice. I wondered how many more things she was going to be right about.

After a few, long seconds, she finally pulls away and asks, “there. How does that feel?”

“A lot better,” I said.

“Better enough to go out today?”

I give her a weird look.

“Of course. What else is there to do?”

She laughs.

“I don’t just mean ‘go out’, as in just going outside, but ‘go out’ as in like doing something fun while we’re at it.”

Something fun? I thought, I want to do something fun. But what’s out there that’s fun? I’ve explored outside for who knows how long, and all I’ve seen is an empty white canvas.

“Do you know something fun we can do out there?” I ask.

“Sure! Have you ever been shopping before? Been to a cafe? Taken a walk in the park?”

Shopping? A cafe? The park? What were those things? And where can I find them?

I shook my head as she tilted hers with a curious expression.

“Then what do you do every day?”

“I just go outside and explore the world.”

“...Anywhere in particular?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean is there any spot you like going to every day?”

“No, I usually don’t go to the same place twice.”

“Hmm, right, you did tell me that… Most people usually have a routine they follow. I thought that maybe you’d at least have one place you go to every day.”

“A routine? I just follow wherever the movement rules take me.”

“...movement rules?”

This time, I was the one giving her a curious expression.

“Yeah, you don’t know about movement rules? They’re rules that you have to follow in specific locations. Sometimes I have to make a turn, and other times they tell me to stand still for a few seconds before moving again. There’s a lot of places where I can move wherever I want, but sometimes when I get to a place, there’s some rules of movement I have to follow.”

Emuru gives me a blank stare before she looks towards the ground in deep thought.

“Movement rules…” she quietly murmurs, “so that’s how she navigates the world…”

She looks back at me.

“Come to think of it, you said that when you look around you, all you see is a ‘blank white canvas’ right? You don’t see any buildings, any cars, any roads? Trees? Sidewalks?”

I shook my head. I didn’t know what any of those things she just listed were. Were they all out there? Would I be able to see them today?

I grabbed her hands.

“I-if it’s okay with you,” I stuttered, suddenly feeling a strange new emotion that caused me to do so for the first time, “would you please teach me how to see them? Just like how you did with the stars? And the people? And the bus?”

Her face was a little surprised at first, perhaps out of not expecting my sudden movement, but then she gives me a big smile.

“Of course.”