Flashes of Colour

Chapter 1

Chenle spends a lot of time standing in front of a mirror.

His mother is sharp, all edges, ferocious, dangerous. She is a terrifying black, a night sky with no stars, an abyss. She is endless and she is fearless. For him, she would destroy the world. He can see it; see the waves that follow her, that terrifying darkness. The way it settles, heavy against her shoulders when he is threatened. The way it shimmers, stutters, just at the corners, when she watches him sadly from the doorway and calls his name, soft and careful. Chenle trips over his words and stumbles through life, scared and confused, not knowing what to do next.

His best friend, Sicheng, reminds him of fireworks. Excitement, even when you know exactly what is to come. That booming that you feel throughout your chest. Bright bursts explode behind him with every bouncing step. Subtle pinks, startling greens, and obnoxious oranges. Sparks fill the air when he laughs.

The boy, who reserves the dance studio in the basement of the dorm rooms in university every Thursday and never leaves when his time is up, is a fire. He is pale yellow and perfect blue. The light bends with him, conforms to his graceful body, coils like smoke around his thighs. Flickers to the beat of the music that nobody else can hear, people refer to him as Ten, but he was named Chittaphon Leechaiypornkul. His fathers are something of an ugly grey, a blend of every nasty colour. They are slush at the edge of the road on a bleak winter day. It trails in wisps, hard to see. Absent. They cling to him as closely as the scent of tobacco and stench of alcohol, vague, but always there.

Chenle's world is a flash of colours, shades without names.

Sicheng's mother giggles like a little girl and saves the spiders that crawl into the kitchen through cracks in the doors and when his father left, he cried for three days and begged him to come home. Taeyong's father has a charming smile, a voice like silk, asks for everything and makes you think it was your idea when you gave it to him, makes you feel good for it. Taeyong's older brother died when they were ten and he was a mesmerising celebration while he sat silently in front of a newly filled grave.

Most people are not one thing, but everyone is something. Everyone is something, right at their very core, something undeniable. Something they cannot hide with pretty words and heavy tears. Something they can hide from everyone but Chenle.

Chenle spends a lot of time standing in front of a mirror, searching.

He passes strangers on the street and unwillingly knows everything about them, everything that matters. They wander, drenched in tired, dulled tones and shadows in vicious reds and alight with stuttering silvers. Light curves over shoulders and hovers in stuttering shades and dances underfoot.

Chenle spends a lot of time standing in front of a mirror, looking for his.

Most people are not one thing, everyone is something, but Chenle is nothing.

Gassing stands statue-still and his clothes hang loosely on his thin frame his hair sticks out a little on the left side of his head where his pillow has ruffled it during the night and his fingers curl into half-fists and there is nothing. His soul does not spin webs between his fingers or soil purple down his back. He has not even a gentle, nearly visible light twirling absently at the outline of his body.

Chenle spends a lot of time standing in front of a mirror. He is empty.

Chenle is empty. Haechan is filled to his brim.

Haechan is a blinding light. It bathes him, radiating from his very center. The colour is thickest at the spots where it touches his chocolate skin, fading as it moves outwards. He speaks in harsh tones of all his jagged edges but Chenle only sees the round, hazy rim, soft, tender. It drips like honey, seeps into everything. He turns the world around him into gold. A full-sun.

Chenle spends a lot of time standing in front of a mirror. Not in self-obsession, but self-loathing.

He cannot see it, but behind him, flower petals fall to the ground in lazy spirals. Stems sprout in the empty spaces his feet leave when he walks. Sun shines above his head like a halo.

He cannot see it, but he is a spring afternoon, bright, warm, refreshing, new.

Chenle spends a lot of time standing in front of a mirror.