Orange

I couldn’t believe my eyes.

Everything I was currently seeing—was it always there? Seeing the manner in which they appeared made me realize that Emuru’s theory was probably right. The more I looked and the more I saw, the more I began to notice that these things that existed in my so-called ‘previous world’, also existed in this world as if it had always been there.

Maybe I did decide to forget about everything and force myself to unsee these things, I thought, but why? Why would I do that to myself? Was it perhaps because I was bullied? Was it because of that red blob in my dreams? Emuru says that something might’ve happened that was worse than bullying, so what did the red blob do to me?

The thought alone was scary to think about.

No, I shouldn’t be thinking like this, I told myself, not right now at least. Right now I should be happy. Happy that I’m starting to see the things I couldn’t—happy that I’m starting to see color again, and happy that the blob I was standing next to right now wasn’t the red one.

“Is there something wrong?” Emuru asks, noticing the uneasy expression on my face, “just a moment ago you seemed happy, but now you look a little troubled.”

I looked at her, and for the first time, I decided not to tell the truth.

“No, I’m just a little overstimulated by all the colors and things appearing in front of me, that's all,” I lied.

Lying—something I hadn’t done until now, mostly because there was no one there to lie to. I was never against the idea… I think, but doing it did make me feel bad. Still, it was better than letting her know I was sad.

Wait a minute, I realized, is this what she meant earlier by it always being better to appear happy than sad?

I understood it now. Appearing sad inconvenienced the ones you cared about, so it was better to appear happy if you could.

Despite the deep uncertainty I felt, I decided to give her a smile. It was okay—after all, she said that she couldn’t see colors like I could, so there was no way she could know I was lying.

As she looks at my smile, she lets out a small huff and smiles back.

“If you say so,” she said, “now let’s hurry to the cafe, we’ve lingered around long enough.”

For some reason, I felt like she didn’t believe me.

As we continued walking, I began to realize that Emuru hadn’t just been walking around randomly—the entire time she had been following the pathways that I couldn’t see before.

In front of and beneath me was a long gray pathway split semi-evenly into small little squares or rectangles, and to the right of it was a bigger pathway—one that was a darker shade of gray and split down the middle by dotted white lines.

We mostly stuck with following the thinner gray pathways, and only occasionally stopped in front of the darker pathways as if waiting for something, before crossing them. I didn’t understand what we were waiting for, but Emuru seemed to know so I trusted her. After all, ever since I was able to start seeing these pathways and buildings, my ability to detect movement rules on the go had seemingly disappeared.

Occasionally, we would spot blobs walking by us, sometimes in a group and sometimes alone, but they all stopped when Emuru stopped, which only gave me more of a reason to believe that I should too.

There’s more things out there that I can’t see yet it seems, I thought, I want to ask Emuru to help me see them too, but right now, I need to get used to the ones I just learned today.

Seeing the buildings was still a bit overwhelming for me. No matter which corner we turned and how many we saw, the buildings managed to keep varying in design and color. Some of them had signs sticking out of it, but I wasn’t able to read what any of it said, and sometimes, I felt like there was a color I couldn’t see.

There were these weird gray spots that would sometimes appear on signs and labels that I knew shouldn’t be there. After all, gray was a bland and boring color, so it wouldn’t make sense to put it on a sign meant to catch people’s attention. Instead, I figured that what it actually was, was the only color I hadn’t seen yet; orange.

If only I saw it as an emotion first, I thought, then maybe I can visualize it in real life. I know it’s a combination of red and yellow, but what does it feel like to be angry and happy? Was being angry and happy at the same time even possible? Those two emotions seem to contradict each other much more than happiness and sadness do.

After a few more minutes of walking, we finally stopped by a building that was smaller than the ones around it.

“Ta-da!” Emuru said, something I began noticing was a pattern when she introduced things to me, “this is the Yamabuki Cafe, my favorite cafe I go to most mornings. It’s a bit further away from my apartment, but it’s always worth the trip to me.”

I look at the building, noticing its yellow and black accents.

“I forgot to ask earlier but what do we do at cafes?” I ask.

Emuru gives me a weird look as if the answer was obvious.

“Well… we eat.”

“Eat?”

“...Don’t tell me you don’t know what eating is.”

“I’m afraid I don’t…”

She narrows her eyes at me.

“See, I understand that you probably don’t do a lot of things, but eating? That’s kind of essential to living isn’t it? And you don’t look skinny enough to be starving, so you must at least eat something every day.”

“...I’m afraid I don’t recall doing this ‘eating’ thing.” I said, “The only thing I do every day is wake up, explore the world, go back home, and go to sleep.”

She thinks for a moment.

“Just a little theory…” she said, her eyes still narrowed at me suspiciously, “do you recall what you did this morning?”

“Hm? This morning…? I woke up from the bad dream, learned what purple and green was, and then waited for you to get ready so we could leave.”

“Aha! But that’s not all that you did,” she said, her eyes filled with an emotion that turned her into a new shade of color that I hadn’t seen before—orange, the final piece.

“You also used the restroom, brushed your teeth, and put on your shoes,” she said, “do you remember doing any of that?”

Come to think of it, I didn’t. I didn't even know what ‘brushing my teeth’ nor what a ‘restroom’ was, but I did notice that my shoes had magically appeared on my feet at some point.

I shook my head in response.

“Which can only mean one thing,” Emuru said, “doing these things are so mundane and repetitive for you that you don’t realize you’re doing them. You’ve completely blocked the action out of your head while unconsciously doing them, kind of like how your ‘movement rules’ help you travel around the place without being able to see things like buildings, trees, and roads.”

Did I??? I thought, I guess it does make sense, otherwise I wouldn’t know how I got my shoes on. I also remember not wearing my hoodie when I went to sleep and after I woke up, but moments later I was wearing it when I looked at myself in the mirror. And if this ‘eating’ thing was so essential to life like she made it out to be, not doing it at all also didn’t make any sense.

The more I thought about it, the more time inconsistencies and weird jumps in moments of time I began to realize happened throughout the days I wandered alone. I had never questioned them, since before I met Emuru, time was a weird thing to me that was only dictated by the state of the sky and my level of sleepiness, but with the new explanation she gave, it started to make more sense.

“It’s kind of sad though,” she continued, “I couldn’t even imagine the act of eating becoming so mundane and boring. Just what kind of bland, tasteless, food have you been eating up until this point?”

I gave her a blank stare, not knowing how to respond to that.

She lets out a small huff.

“Well actually, you wouldn’t know wouldn’t you?” she says, “but that ends today! Today you’re going to eat some tasty food, and you’re going to remember it!”

And with that, she begins to drag me into the cafe before I even get the chance to ask about why she was orange.