Green

I waited.

Emuru was doing something she called her ‘morning routine’—which consisted of picking out her clothes, cleaning up her hair, and various other terms and phrases I wasn’t familiar with.

I looked over at myself in the mirror, staring at my large sweater and unkempt hair.

Maybe I should start a morning routine, I thought.

I didn’t know when exactly I started caring about my appearance so much.

Was it when I saw color? When I first saw the blobs? Before I saw myself in the mirror? Or after it? I had never been self conscious enough to care, but somewhere down the line after meeting Emuru, I began to worry about how I looked, and being able to see myself for the first time only seemed to amplify that desire.

I reached over to my hair and began brushing through it with my fingers, trying to straighten out all the frizz through the thick bulk of it.

This isn’t working, I thought, I don’t know what I’m trying to accomplish anyway. Will straightening it out even make it look better? Should I tie it up like Emuru does? Why do I have such long and messy hair anyway?

After a few more attempts at straightening it out and moving it around the place without anything noticeably getting better, I decided to stop. It was pointless anyway.

Instead, I turned my attention to my clothes. It was the same as yesterday’s… I think. I had a large hoodie on and wore a pair of jeans with tennis shoes on my feet. At first, the attire seemed fine, but I was a little put off by it for some reason.

Was it dirty? I couldn’t tell. It probably was. Otherwise, I don’t know why I would be so put off by it. Was it because it lacked style? Was wearing a hoodie bland and boring? Was it unpleasant or lame to look at? I couldn’t form a proper opinion on it, and I still didn’t exactly know why it seemed to matter to me so much. Who was I trying to dress up for anyway?

Moments later, I hear a click coming from behind me as a small black wall forms on the white wall and Emuru appears through it. Upon seeing her, my breath hitches a little.

“So? How do I look?” she asks with a smile.

Instead of her usual messy ponytail I saw her in, her hair was stylized and pushed back into a wavy half-ponytail, and her clothes today were different too—she wore a light jacket over a long breezy dress and was carrying a small bag on her left arm.

“You look… pretty,” I said, feeling a new emotion well up inside me.

This time, it was a mix of sadness and happiness. Seeing how pretty she looked made me happy for her, but at the same time, I felt sad that I didn’t look as pretty as she did. Instinctively, I looked towards the mirror, to see what color this new emotion I was feeling represented.

I was green.

Green… I thought, I suppose that’s what happens when you mix blue and yellow, but what does it mean? What exactly was this feeling called?

“Is there something wrong?” Emuru suddenly asks, noticing my expression.

I looked down on the ground.

“It’s just… I don’t know,” I said, “seeing you look so pretty makes me so happy, but at the same time I feel so sad when I look back at myself, and I’m not sure what exactly I’m feeling, or why I’m feeling this way.”

“Hmm…” she murmurs, “I think what you’re feeling is something like ‘jealousy’ or ‘longing’.”

“Jealousy? Longing?”

“Yep! It means when you really really want something that you can’t have. It’s what you’re feeling right now, right?”

“I… guess so.”

She smiles.

“It’s okay to feel this way, Nanashi. You probably left all your other clothes behind in your previous home so it’s only natural that you’re feeling like this, but don’t worry—when we go shopping today we can buy some new clothes for you to try out.”

My other clothes? I wondered, do I have clothes other than the ones I’m currently wearing?

If I did, I certainly wasn’t aware of them, but regardless, getting new clothes did sound interesting to me.

“That would be great,” I said, feeling a lot better as I looked back to the mirror to see my color shift towards yellow.

“Awesome!” she said, reaching out her hands, “let’s get going now, we don’t want to miss the breakfast special at the cafe; they don’t offer it anymore once the lunch rush starts!”

As she grabs me and pulls me out of her home, I begin to wonder what she was talking about. I didn’t know what breakfast nor a lunch rush was, but Emuru seemed both really excited and urgent about it so I decided to go along with her sudden hasty attitude.

It wasn’t the only question on my mind though. Now that I had time to think, I began to wonder about the things I hadn’t had a chance to ask her yet. For example, back when I first met her, how was she smiling even though she was blue? It was even weirder now that I knew that green existed. If she was still smiling but also blue at the same time, it meant that she wasn’t feeling happy at all—if she was, it would’ve mixed with the blue and become green.

“Emuru, can I ask you a question?” I suddenly said as we continued walking through the blank world.

“Go for it.”

“Is it possible to smile even though you’re not happy at all?”

She seems to pause for a bit, but continues walking without saying anything for a long moment.

“Why do you ask?” she said.

“Because back when I first met you, I saw that you were blue, but when you smiled at me you were still blue.”

“Blue? What do you mean by that?”

“Your color was blue, which means that you were sad,” I explained, “I recently figured out that blobs and people like you and me are colored depending on how they feel. Angry people are red, sad people are blue, and happy people are yellow. Sometimes when they mix together, they create another color, like purple, which you taught me meant sorrow or frustration, and green, which you just taught me meant jealousy or longing.”

“Eh~ so that’s how it is huh…” she quietly murmurs as she comes to a stop, “no wonder why you said I looked completely yellow yesterday… What a strange ability to have—even though you can’t see many things, there’s still some things that only you’re able to see after all…”

“What do you mean?” I ask.

“Nanashi… most people don’t see colors the way you do. To me at least, everyone is more than just one color, and it doesn’t change depending what emotion they’re feeling. What you have is something that’s very special… As for your question earlier… what do you think? What color do you see me as right now?”

I give her a long look as I examine her color and her facial expression.

“You are a little bit blue…” I murmured, “but you’re smiling… and now you’re green.”

She snorted.

“Is it really that obvious?” she says, “that right now I’m a little jealous of that ability? I suppose that this wouldn’t be a good example for your question at the moment then, so I’ll just give you a straightforward answer instead—yes, sometimes people can smile when they’re sad, and not feel any happiness at all from it.”

I give her a curious look.

“But why?”

She thinks for a moment as she looks away towards something I can’t see.

“Because sometimes people don’t want others to know that they’re sad. You might not understand it now, but appearing happy is always better than looking like you’re sad… although I guess that that kind of trick doesn’t really work well on you given how you see things, but there’s a reason why people don’t like showing that they’re sad.”

Not wanting others to know that you’re sad… for some reason I remember understanding that concept a long time ago. Maybe some time ago I lived in the other world, but it feels so distant now.

“Then what about you?” I asked, “was there a reason why you wanted to hide that you were sad?”

She gives a small huff, and breaks into a weird smile I didn’t understand, “it’s already embarrassing enough that I was crying in public, that’s all.”

“Embarrassing?” I asked.

She purses her lips, as if not wanting to answer that question.

“You know what? It’s probably better if you didn’t know how to detect that,” she finally said, before muttering under her breath, “for my sake at least… there’s some things I wouldn’t want you finding out so easily.”

Despite still being curious about it, my curiosity was quickly averted into something else, when she continued on with her next question.

“But. Moving. On. From. That.” she sharply said, recomposing her attitude, “I did promise to show you things like the trees and buildings and streets and stuff, so are you ready?”