KNB: Stay Forever with Me (Kise Ryouta)

27 - Protanopia

TWENTY-SEVEN – Protanopia

Sayoko chokes a breath out. Kise gave her with a worried look, with a bit of confusion laced with it. Those purple-colored orbs that she had for eyes takes his breath every single time he would look at them. Who knew that she’s hiding something with it?

"It's because I am not normal. I don't see like the rest of you…"

Kise removes his hand from her shoulder, and the raven-haired girl immediately sits down in front of him, wiping her tears. The blond sits down with her, noticing that she covered her face to hide her shame. She had a hard time swallowing her saliva. She continued breathing in and out deeply, but the entrance and exit of air was disrupted with a few pauses and chokes.

“I have protanopia, a type of colorblindness,” she started to relay. She thought that this was the type of information that she knew, and that information changed her life completely. What was more difficult was the fact that she is to keep it as a secret, and will never have to speak of it again. Apparently, she was wrong – as she is telling this certain airhead the entire story.

“I don’t have the cone which enables me to see red and it affects the other colors affiliated or near to that color. To put it simply, I see red as black, violet as blue, and green as more dominantly yellowish than the normal one. I had one checkup about it during my childhood, after my private tutors noticed that I read colors incorrectly.

“They told me that this case is less likely to happen, as colorblindness is a recessive genetic trait. What’s more absurd is that it’s a male-linked characteristic trait, meaning that males have higher chances of getting it than females. The chances of a female having colorblindness is less than 1 percent.”

She chuckled darkly, immediately wiping a tear running down her cheek. “Given everything, I just had to be so lucky to get such a condition. My parents started shunning me the moment they heard about it. They didn’t want anyone to know, and forced me to act as if I don’t have it. I only had one checkup on it, and they gave me glasses, but that was it. I didn’t have any further treatment. I went to school like a normal child with a normal vision, forcing myself to identify colors and hope that I called it right. They would punish me heavily if I mess up because of it.”

She takes one deep breath before moving on, forcing to stop the tears flowing down her face. "Less than one percent – it’s such a slim chance, but here I am having that condition. I had to be so unfortunate for me to have that."

Kise was silent the entire time. He listened to her very carefully and he took full attention to the little things that she was doing, like how she would clutch her purse a few times whenever she would dive in the story deeper. He processed everything in his head – he knows that this condition gave a fatal blow to her morale, and it’s been pulling her down ever since. God only knows how many times she might have cried over it.

But there is only one thing that’s been boggling his mind all along.

“I-I didn’t know. I’m sorry…” Kise consoled. He wanted to rub her back, but she looked so untouchable he went against the idea. “This thing has been bugging you for a while now, hasn’t it? And you never told anyone about it.”

Kise lifts his hand and places it on her cheek, drying off the tear out of her eye with his thumb. “Sayokocchi trusts me so much; I feel honored,” he started to say. “But, you know, you should have told people sooner; we won’t judge. I don’t think anyone can. I mean, as a person who’s bad with drawing and coloring, I don’t even understand why I have to match them.”

Her face turned sour, which alarmed the blond. He retracts his hand from her and started thinking on his feet, finding for a way to smoothly recover his error. He can’t. “I’m sorry for saying that; I’m such a jerk. I didn’t realize how you felt about it…”