colours // yoonmin

two

c o l o u r s ;
Just like every other house in my quaint suburb, mine is two stories tall with a small attic and a garage. My room is located on the second storey, the first door to the right when you climb the stairs. It's a small room but it's enough for everything I needed: my bed, desk, bookshelf and laptop.

At the end of my room, there is a rectangular window that is just big enough for a human to climb out. And through that window, I could see the disgustingly grey left cheek of the Min family's house clearly.

The gap between their house and mine is a bit too close for my liking. My window leads out to a small roof that extended until it almost touched the other house. I spend a lot of time on that roof, whether it was to think, to escape my parents or just to see the blue neighbourhood. Plus, I had a nice view of the sunrise and sunset there.

After the former owner, Ms Lee, passed away, I was afraid of that window since it was perfectly aligned with a window at her house and I was scared that I might see a ghost or something. The fear was long gone, but now, I am afraid yet again. But not because I', scared that I will see a ghost, but because it is grey.

Every colour represented an emotion or a personality. Red's a bit tricky: it could mean passion, or it could mean anger. I wasn't really sure as I've only seen it twice.

Orange is the colour of energy and curiosity. Yellow is the colour of happiness. I've only seen those two colours a few times but when I do see them, they are usually together. Orange with yellow spots or yellow with a splash of orange.

Green is calm. Sometimes, it's rare but it does happen, the neighbourhood would lean to a more greenish-blue than the usual blue-blue. It was weird to see plants and leaves on the trees near their real colour. It felt as if the world was right for a few moments and I wasn't some freaky weirdo that saw in a way others didn't.

Blue is the colour of sadness. Neverending.

I've heard of other colours like pink and purple, but I've never seen them before so I don't really know what they symbolise.

But grey. Grey doesn't symbolise any emotion or personality, it symbolised the lack thereof. It was empty, a void. But the reason I am afraid of grey was because when I was younger, I would pass by this house every day when walking to school. Just like the Min's house, it was grey. It belonged to a grumpy old man who barely talked to anyone.

He was the first grey person I saw so of course I was fascinated by the new mysterious colour. Grey footsteps blossomed in his wake, fading back to blue in an hour or day.

Whenever I didn't want to go home or just wanted to waste time, I would follow it. I would follow the path the man had left behind and see where he went that day and what he saw. It was captivating to walk in someone's footsteps, literally.

I didn't see him a lot, his existence in my life usually in the form of grey footsteps and handprints that he left in the world, but I did get to see him in person a few times. Face wrecked with wrinkles and scrunched into a grumpy frown. His appearance never changed, except for his clothes, but whenever I saw him, it was always accompanied with a solemn song that dug into my heart as if I've heard it lifetimes before. Familiar, like a tune sung by my parents even before I started to walk. It etched itself onto my mind and I found myself softly singing it subconsciously, popping up in my head at random moments.

One day, his footsteps stopped. His house slowly faded back to blue and his footprints never came back. My young mind assumed he decided to stay home and rest. He was pretty old so it seemed reasonable in my mind.

Weeks went by until one day, a woman complained about a weird smell coming from his house and a few people went to check it out. The man was found dead in his room. I was spared the details.

That's why grey scares me. The man had been dead for weeks and no one noticed and that only happened to grey people because if someone died, word would spread quickly, but it took weeks for people to even realise he wasn't here anymore.

I didn't want that to happen. I didn't want to disappear.

~~~

updating twice a week now yey~

Mon and Fri *wink*