Colours [MASHIKYU]

2 - Grey

"Are you upset by what happened at breakfast?" Diana asks once we're back in my room. I sit on my white bed. She sits on a white chair across from me.

"Yoshinori collapses all the time," I answer.

"I know. But does it upset you?" Her tone is so gentle, sometimes it's unsettling.

I pause for a moment. "I don't like it."

"Does it scare you?"

I make a cross with my hands. Diana told me a long time ago to do this whenever I've had enough talking about a topic. She always stops when I do it.

"Okay. Ready for your checkups now?"

"Yes." She always asks if I'm ready, but I rarely say no. It's not like I have things to do.

So I go to my checkups. I watch Dr Curwood's hairy fingers lightly push a stethoscope into my chest, draw non-white blood from my arm, wave a bright light in my eyes. I provide one-word answers to his questions, he shakes my hand. We leave.

I used to think everyone had to do these daily checkups. I only talked about them two years ago, to Yoshinori. I was complaining. My old doctor had left and I'd just started seeing Dr Curwood. I didn't like it. Yoshinori furrowed his eyebrows together.

"You have checkups every day?" he asked. "Blood tests and everything?"

I deflated. "I thought you did too."

"No... I just have to take my medication every day. Checkups every now and then, but not heaps. I guess they really don't know what's going on with you, huh? You're one of a kind."

When he said that, you're one of a kind, he smiled like it was a compliment. But it felt awful. I don't want to be one of a kind, I want to be like everyone else.

I replay this old conversation in my head over and over on the way back to my room. It keeps playing over and over when Diana leaves, saying she'll give me some alone time. Over and over and over. I don't know what's going on with me either.

How did I get here? Why am I here? Why is it all white? It's suffocating me. I can't breathe. It's too white.

The ringing comes. The one thing I hate more than the white is the ringing. In my ears, it comes every now and then and I can't stand it. I can't hear anything. It makes my head hurt. I curl up in a ball with both my hands over my ears and scream silently.

The ringing must stop, because some time later I hear a knock on my door. My eyes and nose are wet. I reach for a white tissue, expecting Diana to walk in. She gets worried when I cry.

But she doesn't come in.

There's another knock.

It takes me a second to realise the person knocking is waiting for me to open the door. I walk over. I turn the knob with a trembling hand and open it.

I see him, and I can breathe.

He's a fair bit taller than me, around Yoshinori's height. Young, but no younger than me. Maybe older. Round face and wide smile, clear eyes framed by long eyelashes.

The suffocation I was feeling moments earlier disappears. I've heard someone be described as breathtaking before, but this person is the opposite. He gives me my breath back. I don't know how.

He wears a beret, hoodie and jeans— clothes I've never worn but recognise somehow. And none of them are white.

Everyone here wears white. Me, my friends, the staff... everyone. I stare at his clothes in awe. How did he get in here?