Blue II

“Hahaha! You should’ve seen your face when you took a sip of coffee for the first time!” Emuru laughs as we exit the cafe and into the streets.

My mouth was still burning from how hot the coffee was, and combined with the taste that left a bad feeling in my mouth that Emuru defined as ‘bitter’, it was overall a bad experience. Maybe that’s why it was colored brown—green from being jealous that it wasn’t sweet like a melon bun, and red because it made the people that drank it angry.

Still, I had another problem at hand besides the bad aftertaste the coffee left in my mouth.

“Please be a little quieter,” I said, “I’m still not used to hearing so many people talk around me.”

Emuru pats me on the shoulder and says, “sorry, sorry. How about we stop by the park before we go to the mall to help you get used to the sound of people talking? It’s a lot more peaceful there, and I can promise you that the mall is not any quieter than the cafe we just came out of.”

“The park? What do we do there?”

“Mostly just walk around and stuff. The real charm of it comes from the nice view we get while we do. Wanna go?”

I nodded. A park sounded like a nice place to relax at, even if all we did was walk around. I was already used to doing that everyday before meeting Emuru anyway, and the only difference this time around was that I was able to see more things other than just black and white.

We made our way over to the park, crossing over a few darker pathways that Emuru called ‘streets’ until we reached a large open area with a bunch of trees. It felt weird seeing for the first time—I couldn’t comprehend why they would place such a large area dedicated for trees smack dab in the middle of all the tall buildings around us, but I did appreciate that it existed.

“Come to think of it, I haven’t shown you what grass is yet right?” Emuru asks.

“No, what is it?”

“Well, you see the sidewalks we’re walking on right? Notice how the trees are placed a bit away from them, and how there’s a lot of empty space between the two.”

I looked down at the vast expanse of white stretching from the gray pathways she called the ‘sidewalk’ that we stood on to the surrounding trees.

“Is there supposed to be something there?”

“Yep. Grass is what fills up the space between the two. It’s tiny and looks deceptively sharp and pointy, but it’s actually completely safe to step on. Think of them as tiny soft little green knives sticking out of the ground.”

I bent down to observe the white space, closing my eyes to imagine a large expanse of sharp green things sticking out of the ground instead. Upon opening them, I was met with so much green everywhere that I nearly fell back in shock.

“Woah…” I breathed out, sticking out my head to test the sharpness of the grass, only to find out that Emuru was right as I watched it softly fold beneath my palms.

Seeing as I have noticed them, Emuru smiles and says, “c’mon let’s keep walking, there’s a lot more stuff in the park that I want to show you.”

I stood up and continued following her along the sidewalks, occasionally stopping every so often so that she could point out and teach me how to see different things. Throughout our walk, I learned how to see rocks, bushes, flowers, drinking fountains, and lastly, the benches. By the time we stopped by one to take a break, I was both tired from all the walking and overwhelmed by all the things I learned to see and the sudden influx of color that had filled my blank world.

Despite this, I was happy. Happy that I was starting to see things I could only just imagine a few days ago. As I looked over to Emuru who was sitting next to me, staring off into nowhere, I couldn’t help but let out a smile.

Meeting her was the best thing that’s ever happened to me. The world was a lot more colorful and filled with a lot more things now, even if how quickly they appeared overwhelmed me sometimes.

Suddenly, she turns towards me, catching my smile.

“Is there something wrong?” she asked, smiling back.

“No, I was just thinking about how much I appreciate you showing me these things,” I replied, “but at the same time, I can’t help but wonder why you would take time out of your day to help me so much.”

She looks off into the distance again.

“It’s just that you were the only one who bothered to check in on me when I was crying, that’s all,” she quietly said.

For some reason, I could tell that it wasn’t the full answer—that she was hiding a part of the actual reason away, but I decided not to press on about it. Instead, I wanted to know more about what happened to her that day.

“About your friend…” I said, “you said that you had a falling out with them. Can I ask why?”

For a long moment, she says nothing, just sitting there silently, looking up at the sky.

“It’s a beautiful day today isn’t it?” she asks.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that the sky is blue, the sun is shining, and the temperature is just right.”

I give her a confused look.

Perhaps she doesn’t want to talk about it, I thought, but even weirder just now, she said that the sky was blue.

I looked up, staring at the endless white nothingness that filled the sky above us.

“Isn’t the sky white?”

She gives me a confused look.

“Not today it isn’t”

“What do you mean?”

“Wait, were you actually serious when you said that you saw the sky as completely white?”

“Yeah???”

“Huh… and I thought you said that because it was particularly cloudy that morning, so the sky was in fact white that day… but that’s not how it usually is. Typically, the sky is blue, but it often changes colors depending on the time of day.”

Changing colors depending on the time of day… at least one thing I know remains consistent. Does that mean that in the morning the sky is actually blue, and at night the sky is black? But why is the sky blue? Was it sad? If so, why was it sad?

“But why?” I asked.

“Why what?”

“Why is the sky blue? Is it sad?”

“Uhh… I don’t know. Science and stuff I guess. Something something light rays, something something, sunlight scattering through the atmosphere or whatnot. It’s complicated stuff really. The thing is, Nanashi, things aren’t always colored a certain way because they have a certain emotion attached to it—sometimes it’s just how it is.”

I knew that, but still, I needed a reason to believe that the sky is sad, otherwise I can’t see it as blue. After all, trying to convince myself that something is another color entirely when I’ve seen it as one color for as long as I could remember, is a lot harder than just telling myself that something I’ve never seen before was always a certain color like the green grass and the gray rocks.

I looked back up the sky again, trying to give it a reason why it would be sad.

Maybe it’s sad because I never realized it as the color it actually was.

For some reason that thought alone made me sad as if I’ve experienced being on the receiving end of it before. I couldn’t recall the exact moment properly—just like how I couldn’t recall a lot of things—but the sense of empathy alone was enough to make the sky change color for me.

The white emptiness of the sky slowly begins to be replaced by a bright shade of blue, and the change in color ironically ends up making me feel better.

“There, much better now isn’t it?” Emuru asks, noticing my eyes sparkle.

I nodded.

My world is becoming a lot more colorful, I noted again.

“Now then,” Emuru says, standing up from the bench, “are you ready to pick out some new clothes?”