Grey

There…it was there…just for a second…but…it’s gone now, but I did see it…even if only for an instant, I saw it…

Red.

A red flower.

It’s gone now, but just a moment ago it was bright red, a gerbera, with long crimson petals forming a large round fan, it’s centre a dark reddish brown, but then it disappeared, the grey came back.

For the entire nineteen years of my life I have never been able to see in colour, when I was little and went to nursery the teachers couldn’t teach me colour the way they taught the other children because I could only see grey, I was, still am and will always be, completely colour-blind.

For a long time though, I’ve been visited by doctors, my parents having called them to our big western styled house to ask questions, scribble down random notes and try to get me come to the hospital for tests, but the thing is, and I know you’ll think I’m crazy for this but, I don’t ever want them to fix my eyes, because then, the little colours won’t be special anymore…

In truth, every now and then, I do see in colour, but not completely, only for a second, only a very small amount, but I see it, and when I get to see a colour I treasure it, that colour becomes special, and if the doctors were to fix my eyes then there would be no little colours marking out things that are special.

The most colour I’ve ever seen is when I was walking in the late afternoon in the park across the road from our house, in spring two or three years ago, when the cherry-blossoms were falling, they were at their peak, five centimetres per second, and even though they were usually a ale grey to me I still thought they were pretty, but then they became pink, a soft ale pink like baby’s cheeks, and that was when I met the woman who was to become my eldest brother’s wife.

She did not see me, neither did my brother, they were helping a little boy who had tripped a spilled the contents of his schoolbag on the path. The cherry-blossoms became pink for me, because the woman my brother had just met was special.

If the doctors fixed my eyes I wouldn’t see special things anymore. I haven’t seen colour for a while now, only a few short times since the cherry-blossoms in the park…or I hadn’t, until the flower. A bright red flower…

I’m sitting in my room in the house me and my five brothers grew up in, I’m the second youngest in the family, my eldest brother is nine years my senior. All of us have always had our own rooms because the house is so big and we’ve always had the freedom to do almost anything we wanted with them, seeing as they’re so easy to redecorate. I grew up watching my brothers paint and repaint their rooms over the years in reds, blues, greens, purples and oranges, depending on what was their current favourite and what it related to or represented.

Until one day when I was six or perhaps seven I asked my parents if I could repaint my room too. They and my older brothers glanced nervously at each other while my two-year-old younger brother gurgled at me from his chair. But they relaxed when I told them I only wished to paint my room white.

My father bought me white paint, and a white carpet, after I promised him I would not get it dirty, and my mother bought me new, white bedclothes for my futon. My eldest brother and I spent an entire day painting the walls ceiling, skirting boards and windowsill in white. My room up until then had been a soft peach colour, the way my parents had made it before I was brought home from the hospital before they had realised, when I was only a year or so old, that I was completely colour-blind.

Now the only things in my room that are not white re my desk, wardrobe and my chair, by my window where I sit and read, like today…

Except today I couldn’t quite concentrate on my book and fell to staring out of my window, which was when I saw the flower, across the road in the park…

Even now the colour has faded I can’t help but watch it…watch it moving…only now do I realise that the flower is in the hands of a small girl, as she runs in circles on the grass with four other children, all little boys. The flower is clutched by its stem in her hands as she struggles a little to run and keep a firm but gentle hold on the flower at the same time.

I squint through the glass at her and the flower, the very edges of the petals are still red, then I shift my gaze the girl, she can be no more than six years old, shoulder length black hair, of course, a long fringe that she keeps flicking out of her eyes, a coat that reaches down to her knees, jeans and sneakers. I squint some more, is it my imagination or is the red spreading again?

Before I can blink I am up out of my chair, pulling a sweater over my head as I run down the stairs to the front hall, I am tugging on my sneakers when my mothers voice floats from somewhere on the ground floor of the house.

“Natsuki?” I pause before tying my laces and standing before the door.

“Yes?” I answer my mother.

“Where are you going?” I reach almost impatiently for the doorknob.

“Just for a walk, I won’t be too long,”

I’m out on the front path and have broken into a brisk walk before she can say anything more. The street is silent; the road we live on almost never sees any cars, making it easy to cross, heading directly for the park gates.

Once through I glance around me in all directions, there are three choices of paths, one directly in front of me, swerving away towards the trees, the one on my left winds along beside a long line of sakura, the one at my right circles the grass verge and wend it’s way towards the lake.

The five children are running around madly on the grass near the trees. After a momentary hesitation, wondering whether or not I should go to them I make my way up the centre path towards where they are running in circles, but stop about ten feet away and lean against a tree to watch them play, and in moments I have identified their game as one I always used to play with the children I went to school with when I was their age. What was it called? Something like Infection.

One person was infected and the only way for them to cure themselves was to pass the infection to another person, and the only way to do that was to touch them with both hands at the same time. The objective for everyone else was to avoid becoming infected. I can easily spot the one of them who is ‘infected’, one of the taller boys, wearing a jumper and jeans with trainers, a scarf whipping about his neck. He giggles madly as he runs in haphazard figure eights, both arms outstretched in front of him, his alms facing forwards with his fingers splayed into wide fans as he lunges at the other four children in turn.

The girl, the only girl, appears, despite being encumbered with her flower, to be avoiding ‘infection’ rather well. I smile and fold my arms against the depleting heat as I watch them play.

After a short while I stand up away from my tree, having made the decision to leave them to play and go back home. Their shrieks of laughter and playful fear fade with each step as I make my way along the path that runs alongside the sakura.

This is where I met my brother’s wife two years ago. There are no blossoms at this time of year, only the large, flat, point-ended leaves drooping from their branches.

I shove my hands in my pockets away from the cold and quicken my pace as something collides with me from behind. I spin, startled, to see the small girl standing before me, one hand on her nose, the other still clutching her flower, slowly she turns her face up to me and lets her hand fall from her nose.

“Oh! I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to-”

“That’s okay! Are you alright?” she nods emphatically.

“I’m fine, did I hurt you?” the collision has awoken a dull thud in my spine but I ignore this and smile down at her.

“No, you didn’t,” her eyes are wide as she stares up into my face. For a moment I can only stare back, from her face to her flower and back again, slowly. I open my mouth to say something, I don’t know what but something, when the sound of young male voices reaches our ears and I look away from her, back down the path to where the four boys are running towards us. She spins around as they call to her.

“Hey, Makka!” Makka? Deep red?

“Makka! What are you doing?”

As they catch up they form a sort of semi circle around her.

“Makka, it’s nearly time to go back to grandma’s house,” one of them, leaning past the tallest, reaches for her hands.

“Makka, why do you still have this thing, it’s not like you can see it anyway,” he swipes at her hand, the one holding her flower, causing her fingers to open and drop the stem she has been clutching all afternoon. She gasps as the flower falls, but before it reaches the ground I stoop and deftly catch the stem between my fingers, before holding it out for Makka to take again, which she does, her eyes wide and fixed on mine again.

Straightening up I notice the rest of them staring wide-eyed at the flower, the tallest glances at me. I give a small smile.

“Who are you?” Makka half turns her back to me her face flushing red.

“Shino! Be more polite!” but I smile down at her reassuringly.

“That’s okay, so your name is Makka? Pleased to meet you, Makka-san, who are your friends,” another boy, wearing layered t-shirts, jeans and sneakers with a fringe flopping into his eyes just like Makka’s folds his arms as he regards me.

“We’re her brothers, not her friends,” Makka’s blush deepens.

“Kazuki! Don’t be rude,” she hisses. My smile only widens, the lack of manners common in young boys somehow amuses me, as does their sister’s attempts to make up for their rudeness.

“My name is Natsuki, pleased to meet you,” Makka and I both look expectantly at them but they say nothing, choosing instead to shoot me the most piercing suspicious looks they can, however only resulting in making me want to laugh. Makka points to the tallest, the one she called Shino.

“This is Shino, he’s the oldest, that’s Kazuki, Wataru and Yuuki is the youngest,” she mumbles their names, pointing to them in turn. Aside from the tall boy in the jumper and the boy with Makka’s fringe there is a boy about Kazuki’s height but with longer hair, past his ears and a jumper with sleeves too long for his arms and a much smaller boy with haphazardly cut hair and a long sleeved t-shirt bearing the kanji for winter.

“Pleased to meet you,” they repeat the words back to me in an uninterested mumble. Shino then turns back to Makka and pokes her shoulder.

“We have to go back now, hurry up,” and the four of them dodge around me and run for the gates. Makka stares up at me again.

“Th-thank you, for saving my flower,” she mumbles.

“Not a problem, I have brothers too, five of them,” she blinks at me in vague surprise for a moment. I crouch in front of her and gently lay my hands over hers on the flower.

“Take care of it, okay?” for the first time a small, shy smile graces her features, making her face glow. She nods and stares into my eyes. I lower them to the petals, they’re bright crimson again.

“Pretty, isn’t it?” I murmur, almost to myself, her smile falters a little as she shifts her gaze to the flower.

“Is it?” her voice is suddenly dull. I frown at her and slowly straighten up.

“What do you mean? Of course it-” then I stop and think back for a moment. Her brother, Kazuki, he said…

Why do you still have this thing? It’s not like you can see it anyway.

Could that mean, that she is…just like me…

I stare down at her.

“You…” my voice trails off as she turns her face back up to mine.

“You’re colour-blind, aren’t you?” for a split second she looks surprised then she nods.

“The flower is just grey to me, Kazuki was right really, I should have just gotten rid of it, I don’t know what colour it is anyway,” I think my heart is speeding up, I’ve never met anyone so colour-blind as I am.

“It…it’s red,” I whisper. She glances back down at the flower in her hands.

“It is? That’s funny,” I smile at her.

“Though, just because something is grey, that doesn’t mean it can’t be very pretty anyway, I bet that’s why you picked the flower in the first place, right?” she nods slowly, not looking away from the flower, turning over my words in her mind.

“I understand, you know, I know what it’s like, not to see in colour, I’m colour-blind too,” her head snaps up, and she stares wide-eyed at me, piercing my own eyes with her gaze.

“Really? Are you really? But then…how do you know what colour…” her voice trails off and I bite my lip, ah, yes, well…

“Well, well sometimes, Makka-chan, I can see in colour, but just a little bit, and not for long, but I do, and today I can see your flower,” Her eyed are still widening, any minute now they will widen so much that they will pop out of her head and roll down her cheeks.

“No way…you…you see…just like I do!” I do a double take.

“Come again?” her face and voice are excited now.

“I can see in colour sometimes too! Your eyes! I can see your eyes!” I’m shocked; I hadn’t expected her to say anything like that. She has the same rare gift that I do, and she can see my eyes…

I hadn’t ever thought before to ask anyone what my eyes looked like, I assumed that they were the same as the rest of my family, I’m always told that just about everyone in Japan has brown eyes, so I never thought about it, but now that the subject is brought forward…

“My eyes,” I murmur, and Makka nods again. I get it now, her shocked expression when I turned around before, when she wouldn’t stop staring at me, she was looking at my eyes.

“What do they look like?” her head tips on one side as she regards them.

“I’m surprised, I thought everyone in Japan had brown eyes, but yours aren’t brown, they’re blue, they’re pretty,” I smile warmly at her.

“Like your flower,” she smiles back at me as Shino yells to her from somewhere behind me. I spin in the direction of his voice to see the four of them standing at the gate.

“Makka, let’s go! We have to leave now!”

“Okay!” she runs forward and around me and looks back.

“I have to go now, bye!” she starts to turn away again to run to her brothers and a slight panic grabs my chest.

“Wait! Makka-chan!” she stops and turns back to me and suddenly I can’t think what I should say.

“Uh, do you…live near here? In Kyoto?” she shakes her head.

“We’re here visiting our grandmother, we’re going home tomorrow,” I nod slowly. I don’t want to pester her but…

“Where do you live then?”

“Not in Kansai, Kanto,” that’s very far.

“Tokyo?”

“Yokohama,” I simply stare helplessly at her. Then I step towards her and kneel, laying my hands over hers again.

“Take care of your flower, it was nice to meet you,” she smiles, almost sadly and nods.

“I will and it was nice to meet you too,” I stand up again and step back.

“Sayounara, Makka-chan,”

“Sayounara, Natsuki-san,”

And then she is running away to her brothers and they all disappear through the gates, and I expect I will never see them again. I simply stand, hugging myself against the cold, beneath the trees, sad and happy all at once.

For such a thing to happen to me…

How long do I stand there, willing the cold not to seep into my arms and staring toward the gate, how long until I finally move, walk down the path, across the road, up to my front door, call a greeting to the rest of the house as I push off my sneakers and make my way towards the kitchen where will all sit to eat tonight?

How long? I have no idea, it doesn’t really matter.

I wonder what colour time is…

17/07/07

20/07/07