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The appearance of color, though gradual, can be overwhelming. While modern tools such as the color wheel exist to help ease the transition, it’s not unusual for the mind’s response to such dramatic change to present as anxiety, confusion, agitation, even fear. Far rarer are psychological breaks and episodes of delusion, though such side effects are exceedingly rare and shouldn’t be used as a baseline for understanding color. Nor should biological imperatives. Contrary to what many doctors and scientists have believed in the past, multiple studies, as well as historical texts, prove that color has no biological imperative at all, but one unique to humankind.
But the magic of color can best be seen when one lucky enough to see it experiences an even stranger phenomenon than its appearance: a sudden, intense connection. An innate desire or instinct to seek out the person responsible for the change in their world.
Our soul is in the very essence of color, in how we perceive the world. Once we’ve gained it, we can’t bear to lose it. Perhaps this is why color-affected couples have described being able to find each other again, sometimes across great distances, despite not knowing the other’s name. Something as simple as a shared look in the market, or the brush of a passing stranger’s shoulder, can propel a person into an entirely different world.
This is known as the ‘soulmate connection’.
From Color and You: Encounters with a Natural Phenomenon, A Guide by Dr. Midoriya Hisashi
The train to Musutafu was late, but that wasn’t the strange part.
That was the handkerchief in Ochako’s hand. She clutched it tight, her palm damp with sweat, but she didn’t dare lift it from her coat pocket. Not here. Not now. Not yet.
She glanced around the platform, at the strangers staring listlessly into the rain, and wondered what would happen if she did. If anyone would be able to understand. If anyone would know. If they would be able to see. An electric thrill pulsed through her at the thought.
She kept her hand in her pocket.
“Ten minutes late.” The man beside her snapped his pocket watch shut, grimacing as another sheet of rain sprayed onto the platform. “Highly irregular,” he said, but to Iida Tenya, most things were highly irregular.
The crowd shuffled, huddling under the station’s slanted metal roof in their black and gray coats and black and gray hats, a flock of crows balancing on a telephone wire. Ochako shuffled with them, craning her neck, as if that alone could make the train appear.
She didn’t reply. Tenya sniffed, as if her watching the tracks was answer enough. “And on an evening like this? None of us would be here a moment longer than we had to if we could help it.”
The station was dreary this time of evening. Monochrome shadows stretched across the platform, cutting through the mists of rain, cigarette smoke, and cooking oil drifting from the city, Musutafu looming in the distance like a skyline painting. The businessmen hunched in their trench coats might have passed for smears of charcoal on canvas if they hadn’t kept turning toward the posters plastered to the station walls.
A HAPPY PERSON CAN STILL BE GRAY. SEE A REPRESENTATIVE TODAY ABOUT GRAY & CO. LIVING: WHERE COLOR IS NOT THE END-ALL BE-ALL.
Iida squinted through rain-spattered spectacles. “Do you ever think about it, Uraraka? Colors?”
Ochako’s stomach fluttered at the word colors.
“Doesn’t everyone?”
Iida made a noise in the back of his throat, peering down at her expectantly. He was the sort of man her mother called dignified. Tall, classically handsome, hair always perfectly combed, impeccable manners, and punctual. Always punctual.
Unlike the train.
Ochako smothered another wave of disappointment when again it didn’t appear. She smiled, hoping Iida wouldn’t notice.
“I used to imagine it all the time. The one person who’d turn the sky blue for me. Whatever that looks like.” She glanced up at the clouds swirling above them. Not blue. Gray, like everything else. A twist of nerves gripped her insides as tightly as the handkerchief in her palm.
Maybe she’d been wrong.
The nerves in her belly bubbled into nausea. She tried not to imagine that: if she’d been wrong.
“But that was then,” she said quickly. Iida’s cool expression cracked with a smile.
“Statistically, it’s unlikely.” He reached for the brim of his hat when the wind gusted, his throat bobbing when he said, “I can see the appeal in Gray & Co. neighborhoods. Can’t you?”
Ochako froze, hoping he might go quiet, but the prickle of Iida’s gaze lingered on the back of her neck.
“I can.” He was watching her from under the brim of his hat, his voice pitching lower. “You can trust everyone to be in the same situation as you. To want to keep it that way. Most of us will never see color, and those that do, well.” He finally looked away, shifting uncomfortably.
“Iida,” Ochako started, unsure of what she was going to say. Her mouth had gone dry; she wished he’d stop talking. She knew what people were thinking when they brought up Gray & Co.
“People aren’t quite the same after they see it, are they?” Iida continued, his mouth twisting. “I have a cousin who saw it after he married. Quite the scandal. My father had to step in to make sure he remembered where he was needed. Frankly, I don’t see why anyone would want things to change. There’s comfort in routine. My parents can’t see color, and they’re perfectly happy together. I think a lot of people can be. Happy, I mean.” He paused, and again Ochako felt him watching.
Most people was the sort of statistic her office manager would have called a done deal. A certainty. She tried to imagine it, being most people. A gray neighborhood. A clean, gray house. A handsome gray husband. Two little gray children.
No blue.
She resisted the urge to yank the handkerchief from her pocket. To remind herself it was real. Statistically, it’s unlikely, she thought. But she’d seen it.
A numbing rush of fear gripped her.
Hadn’t she?
Iida fiddled with his glasses. He was still talking, as if he hadn’t noticed she’d stopped paying attention. He did that in the office, too, droning on even when her mind had wandered. “I can get off with you, walk you home tonight, if you’d like,” he was saying. There was something soft in Iida’s voice. Hopeful.
Ochako startled, tearing her gaze from the tracks to look up at him. Rain dripped onto her face, streaking down her cheek like tears. Iida leaned closer, his hand twitching, as if he’d been considering wiping one away before thinking better of it. A gray flush swept up his cheekbones. Deepened. Ochako looked away, her stomach buzzing with nerves.
This was the part where she was supposed to feel something. Iida was a catch. A polite, kind, conventionally handsome one with money who she could laugh and carry a conversation with. One her mother and grandmother had been needling her to invite to dinner ever since she’d started her secretarial position at UA. The office shared a building with Ingenium, Iida’s father’s company. They’d met in the shared cafeteria, then again at the end of their shifts. It became routine to sit together at lunch. To walk to the station together after work. Normally she enjoyed Iida’s company and the easiness of their friendship, but Mama and Obaachan hadn’t stopped daydreaming since they’d heard. Now Ochako could see it everytime Iida lingered a little too long. Smiled a little too soft.
Them, together. Her, watching the hours tick by from inside the walls of a posh neighborhood, alone and gray.
Her heart sank, as if it might tumble out of her chest and onto the concrete with a wet plop.
Ochako rubbed her thumb over the scalloped edge of the handkerchief in her pocket, sweeping one last desperate look down the tracks. Behind her, Iida cast a shadow. She struggled to contain a spark of irritation. Why had he mentioned color? Why couldn’t they have waited together like they usually did? Why did he have to change it?
A baby began to cry. The crowd swayed, pressing closer, until it felt like they, too, were waiting for her to answer.
Say yes, Mother would say. Could anyone be more perfect?
Ochako thought about the handkerchief again; the secret in her pocket. She wished she could look at it. Ensure it was still there, still real, but she couldn’t. Not here, with Iida watching. Ochako’s smile wobbled, her heart thumping against her breastbone so forcefully she wondered if she might faint.
Iida cleared his throat. “Uraraka?”
Ochako squeezed the handkerchief for courage. opening her mouth to speak.
A whistle shrieked.
Up ahead, the pale lights of the train began to glow, and Ochako puffed out a relieved breath, smiling broadly.
“Thanks, but I’m meeting someone tonight.” It wasn’t a lie. There was someone on the train. Ochako only needed to see her again. Maybe even hear her name. She allowed herself to think it, wish it into being, her heart racing.
Himiko.
Iida wiped the rain from his glasses, his mouth parting as if to say something, but then the train growled to a stop, and the crowd was moving, pushing against him like a current.
He realized too late he was alone. “Uraraka?” he called, the top of his hat drifting further and further away. She waved when he threw her one last bewildered look, the crowd pushing him onto the waiting train.
Then the doors were closing, and Ochako was alone, the handkerchief still pressed into her palm. A perfectly good man, Mother would have mourned, but that didn’t matter. She was alone now. A giddiness bubbled up inside her, and Ochako had to bite her lip to keep from giggling. She was wet and shivering in the rain, but the train was here and she was alone.
The conductor blew his whistle, passengers spilling out onto the platform. Ochako’s pulse leaped when a sea of gray and white faces rushed past her. None looked at her. A stranger shoved into her, knocking her sideways. The seconds trickled into minutes. The train lurched, left. The crowd grew thinner and thinner, the sky slowly growing darker.
The street lamps glowed to life, a hazy white light that made the station seem cavernous, empty. Ochako’s vision blurred. Her heart was falling again, as if someone had reached into her ribcage to pluck it like a plum.
The train had come and she was still alone.
A low growl of thunder pierced the platform, the rain easing into a light mist clinging to the tracks, but it had stopped trickling over the brim of her hat. Ochako tipped her chin back, surprised to find the black shell of an umbrella hovering over her head. With it came a trace of perfume. Lilies. Musk.
A sweet, velvet voice purred in her ear.
“You look cold.”
Ochako’s heart skipped in her chest. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a flash of blue.
“I was afraid I wouldn’t see you again. That you were a dream.”
It felt like one, Ochako thought. She didn’t say it, and for one terrifying moment, she feared Himiko might vanish if she blinked. The mist, the lamplight cradling them on the platform, the sweetness of Himiko’s perfume, felt like a spell. The glimmer of a spider’s web just before it broke.
Ochako clenched her jaw, not trusting herself to speak.
What do you say to the stranger who is your soulmate?
Ochako didn’t know. She’d imagined this moment for days. Dreamed it. Acted it out in her kitchen. Kept it on a page in her diary. Now it was here, and she realized nothing she’d daydreamed or read about Color Affection had prepared her for this.
For the thrill that pulsed through her whenever Himiko’s eyes met hers. Or the way her heart couldn’t steady itself, the rapid thump thump thump leaving her giddy and light-headed. Her hands shook.
What if she opened her mouth and the woman she’d been waiting on pins and needles to see again looked at her and realized this had all been a mistake? Or worse, the wrong person?
An ache ripped through her chest. She wasn’t sure if she could handle that. Himiko leaving. The spell breaking.
Ochako opened her mouth, bracing herself, but the words didn’t come. The silence between them stretched.
Himiko didn’t question her, only sank onto a bench and closed her eyes, tilting her face toward the mist until Ochako shakily took a seat beside her. They sat huddled together in their pool of lamplight, the mist pleasantly cool against Ochako’s face until her heartbeat slowly began to settle. It didn’t keep her from thinking about how she should have worn her nicer gloves, her tweed coat, her straw hat, not the green and orange striped wool dress she’d bought for half-price and the aging green beret she’d loved too much over the years. Ochako clasped her hands in her lap, her heart beating hard again.
She was suddenly afraid of what she might do. She imagined her arm brushing against Himiko’s sleeve, close enough to feel the heat from her skin. Or maybe she’d twitch, and her fingers might touch the edge of Himiko’s white, cotton gloves. She might look up and stare too long at Himiko’s full, red lips, the same shape and color as the lipstick stain hiding on the handkerchief in her pocket. Almost as lovely as Himiko’s perfectly coiffed, silvery hair, longer and more fashionable than Ochako’s own chin-length bob, accented with a pillbox hat as powdery blue as her dress.
Ochako glanced at it out of the corner of her eye. Blue could be the last color she ever saw, and she wouldn’t mind.
Ochako pulled the handkerchief from her pocket, forcing herself to speak. It needed to be here. Now.
“I wondered if you were a dream, too.”
Himiko opened her eyes. She reached for the handkerchief with a small, soft noise and smiled. It flickered across her face, brighter than the streetlamps, the sort of smile that reached her eyes, one where Ochako could count each of her white teeth. See the small, sharpened points of her canines. An unusual quirk, but unique, pretty. Ochako stared, feeling like a little girl again. The one who memorized the faces of actresses on movie posters so she could remember them when she couldn’t sleep.
But Himiko’s smile was more beautiful than any actress’s.
Himiko quickly covered her mouth with a gloved hand. “I thought I’d lost that.”
“You have a lovely smile,” Ochako said in a rush. “Please don’t hide it.”
It was the wrong thing to say, and Ochako’s stomach sank in horror when Himiko jerked away from her, bristling. “You think I don’t know what my teeth look like? I already have my mother to remind me why I’m so hard to marry off.” She snatched the handkerchief, gathering her purse to leave.
“Thank you for returning it. You needn’t have bothered.”
Ochako’s mouth hung open, her thoughts struggling to catch up. “Wait.” Her hand shot out before she could think better of it, wrapping around Himiko’s wrist.
“I came here to return it, yes, but I wanted to talk to you more. Please. I meant what I said. It wasn’t my intention to hurt you. ”
Himiko’s eyes narrowed. They were still a shade of silver, like her hair. Ochako wondered if she would ever get to see what color they were.
She waited for Himiko to wrench her hand free.
She didn’t.
Slowly, Himiko sank back down onto the bench. The wind blew, a peal of thunder rumbling over the city. Ochako counted the seconds when Himiko didn’t pull away.
“Why don’t you keep it?” Himiko said finally, her voice quiet, careful. She tucked the handkerchief back against Ochako’s palm. “But let me fix it first. The color’s fading.”
Ochako watched, transfixed as Himiko lifted her wrist, pressing her mouth against the handkerchief. Her breath was warm, as soft as the press of her lips. Gently, she curled Ochako’s fingers over the silk.
“So you don’t forget me,” she said, her thumb sweeping over the vein in Ochako’s wrist.
Ochako gripped the edge of the bench with her free hand. She felt too hot, as if she might float away, her heartbeat roaring in her ears. She studied the fresh, red smear of Himiko’s lipstick. It seemed to glow in the lamplight, impossibly bright against the white silk. She wondered how much longer she’d have to wait to see Himiko again. To see what other colors would break free next. Ochako swallowed, calming her racing heart before whispering,
“How could I?”
Later, when she crept back into her apartment, the handkerchief tucked safe beneath her pillow, Ochako thought about her grandfather.
“A bullet to the chest,” he’d said. “That’s what seeing your grandmother felt like. One minute I was helping my father with the store, and the next, there she was, in yellow. She was a shock to the senses.” His eyes had glazed over with a misty, faraway look, one Ochako thought she understood now.
“It was easier back then. Before the posters and the bigwigs trying to keep everything gray. They say color makes ya crazy, you know. I say anyone who’s scared of their own heart ought not to have a say over those that do. You remember that.”
Ochako had told him she would and forgotten.
Until Himiko.
She’d been alone that day, lost in her head. She had reports to type. A portion of her check to budget. A phone call to her mother to make, where she’d have to disappoint her yet again when Mama asked if she’d invited Iida to dinner.
Something soared over her head then, caught in the wind. Ochako reached for it.
A scalloped handkerchief fluttered in her palm, a gray smear of lipstick smudged in the corner near a monogram. Ochako squinted to read it.
T.H.
“HIMIKO,” a voice shouted, and Ochako jolted to step out of a woman’s way, expecting to see a child running from her. Instead, she caught sight of a youngwoman standing on the edge of the platform nearby. Her gray cheeks were flushed, her dress modest but fashionable, the pleated skirt billowing around her legs like an actress lost on the set of a movie. Ochako could imagine her in one. In a painting. On a screen.
Ochako lowered her lashes, her cheeks burning. She shouldn’t stare, but she was close enough to see the tear tracks shining on the woman’s cheeks. Ochako snuck another glance as the woman dug through her purse with a frown before clutching a hand to her pillbox hat, casting her eyes around the station.
Their eyes met suddenly. Ochako froze. The woman’s eyes widened, her pale cheeks somehow growing paler. Something tugged in Ochako’s chest, sharp and tight, like she might snap, or fall, or—
Someone shoved past her. The older woman who’d been shouting. She snatched the young woman’s arm with a scowl.
“Himiko, stop wandering,” she snapped, and the woman, Himiko, turned away.
Ochako waited for her to look back.
The whistle blew. The crowd boarded the train, taking Himiko with it. Ochako stood frozen on the platform long after the train had gone. She felt strange, as if she’d lost something, or someone, and wondered if she should be afraid. She blinked away the sudden heat building behind her eyes, surprised at the tears beading on her lashes, the sinking sadness tearing through her chest. She remembered the handkerchief then, clutched tightly in her palm. She sniffed, looking down at it.
Behind her, someone called her name, but she couldn’t hear them over the roar of her own heart.
The lipstick smudged in the corner looked odd.
Red, the color wheel she discreetly purchased from the pharmacy told her later. The lipstick on the handkerchief was red.
That night, Ochako dreamed of her grandmother stepping out onto that narrow, crowded street so many years ago, breaking through the sea of gray and black and white like a star.
Two days later, Himiko was waiting on the street corner outside Ochako’s apartment. Musutafu swirled around her in black and white and gray, unable to see the red of her coat, the brightness of the roses she cradled in her arms.
Ochako swung her door open wide.
“Want to come in?”
Their eyes met. A slow smile stretched across Himiko’s face, and Ochako’s breath caught when she slipped inside, the scent of her and her roses filling the hallway.
Her grandfather had been right. Himiko was a shock to the senses.
A bullet.
“Do you want to know what color your eyes are?” Himiko asked one night. She pulled the curtains tight with a smile as velvety as the dark blanketing the living room. She pushed Ochako down against the loveseat. In the month since they’d met, they had their nights together down to a science. They knew exactly how to fill the hours before the clock ran out. Where to touch. What to say. When to say nothing at all. Ochako shivered, her fingers plucking at the edges of Himiko’s blouse. She’d counted the hours, the seconds, for this. Barely escaped Iida’s questions at the end of the day. She let her hands glide up Himiko’s arms, over her shoulders. Through her hair.
“What?” she whispered.
Their noses brushed, and Ochako marveled at the way they fit togeher. The softness of Himiko’s skin. Her mouth. “Brown,” Himiko said. “Like syrup.”
Ochako kissed her. Unbuttoned her blouse. Beneath the window, the city lights dappling Himiko in silver, the apartment could have been the only place in the world.
Mama grew suspicious.
“What aren’t you telling me?” She puttered around Ochako’s kitchen, her face drawn tight. “You’ve been quiet lately, but you seem happy. Is it Iida? You don’t have to keep it secret from me! It’s okay to move quickly with a man like that, working in the same building will only get you so far and he won’t be single for long. Especially with a family who doesn’t concern themselves with color.”
Ochako arranged Himiko’s red roses on her table. The vase was sky blue, like Himiko’s dress had been that first night they’d met. For a little extra color, the note read. Himiko hadn’t signed it. Ochako traced a petal with her finger. It was as soft as Himiko’s cheek.
“Shouldn’t they? What if I saw color with someone else one day? What if Iida did?”
Mama froze, her surprise ebbing into confusion. “You haven’t.” She said it like a fact. Ochako shrugged and smiled, admiring the pattern on Mama’s green dress. The color reminded her of the young man she’d met the day before, the one who’d moved into the apartment above hers. His eyes had been green, too, and Ochako had nearly laughed to see his rumpled comb over had been just as green as his eyes. He’d been different than the other renters. Had looked a little too long at Himiko’s roses when Ochako invited him inside for coffee. At the red-eyed young man who’d followed him in, a childhood friend splitting the rent with him he’d explained, his own attention skipping over Ochako’s face before settling on the blue wallpaper. The pink kettle in the kitchen. The painting Himiko had bought for the living room, the one she swore was a spider lily if you looked closely enough at the splashes of red and orange and yellow.
Both of them had looked at it, at each other, as if they could see it, too: colors.
She ached to tell Himiko about it.
Ochako realized too late that Mama had stopped fussing in the kitchen. “Who gave you Color and You?” She pulled the book free from its shelf, gripping it as if it might bite.
Ochako didn’t answer, her heart in her throat when Mama shoved it back into place.
“You better not let your father see this. I’ll get you a better reference. Gray & Co just released the most darling little reference set—and you still haven’t said anything.”
Ochako blinked, startled. “About what?”
“Another man.”
Ochako tucked Himiko’s note back under the vase. “No,” she admitted. “You’re right. I haven’t.”
The next time they saw each other, Himiko’s eyes were shadowed, her mouth drawn tight. “Mother’s arranged another omiai. She keeps pushing. I don’t think she’ll stop until I’m married and gone.” She wrapped her arms around Ochako’s waist, tangling their legs together. Ochako held her tight. Ran her fingers through Himiko’s hair, winding it around her fingers like spun silver.
“Mine keeps pushing, too.” She pulled the bed covers over them, as if the outside world might change by morning if they only slept. Dreamed it away.
“We could get on the train,” Himiko whispered against the hollow of her throat. “Board it together and never look back.”
Ochako focused on the steady beat of Himiko’s heart against her skin. The slide of their tangled legs. The warmth of Himiko’s skin. She thought about the flyer Mama had left in her kitchen the day before.
GRAY & CO: RELIABILITY OVER COLOR.
Ochako’s throat tightened. She turned in Himiko’s arms. Kissed her throat. Her mouth.
“When?”
Himiko smiled.
On Monday, a leather travel bag was delivered to Ochako’s front door. She opened it with shaking hands, Himiko’s perfume lingering in her hallway like the kiss she couldn’t give,
Friday, the letter inside read, a train ticket falling from its envelope. The last train out of Musutafu.
Ochako pressed it to her chest.
The days bled into one another. Ochako avoided Mama’s questions. Tried not to think about the look on her boss’s face after she’d handed in her resignation letter. Waited.
At night, she dreamed of Himiko in red against a gray-black sea.
On Thursday, the phone rang.
“Friday,” Mama said before Ochako could say hello. “You’re having dinner with your father and I. Iida will be there.”
“Mama—”
“Come straight after work. Don’t be late.” Mama hung up. Ochako stared at the wall until she remembered to connect the receiver.
On Friday, it rained. Ochako sat on the edge of her seat as the clock ticked, her muscles bunched tight.
Her final shift ended. Someone called after her as she hurried out the door and onto the street. She didn’t look back to see who, brushing the rain from her eyes when it suddenly stopped. She looked up, startled to find an umbrella hovering over her head.
Iida sidled up beside her, matching her stride. “Let me walk you.”
Her stomach sank.
“Thank you, but you really don’t have to.” She wondered if Iida had noticed her clipped words. How she hadn’t smiled or met his eye.
He nodded.
“It’s no trouble. I want to.”
She could see the pink in his cheeks. His camel brown coat, the red in his dark irises. A taxi ambled down the street, and Ochako imagined flagging it down, ordering the driver not to stop until they reached the train station. Himiko, waiting for her. Ochako quickened her pace, holding up her leather bag with a strained smile.
“Sorry, Iida, I really have somewhere to be.”
Iida hurried to keep in step beside her. “If you’re unsure about tonight, I assure you—”
Ochako spun on her heel, her temper flaring. “I don’t,” she snapped, “want you to reassure me.” Iida flinched in surprise, his face slick with rain.
“Uraraka, I promise, I don’t care if we can see color.”
Ochako laughed incredulously. “And what if I do? Doesn’t what I want count for something?”
Iida stared at her, his mouth parted. The umbrella wavered. Around them, the rain fell harder, a steady plap, plap, plap. Iida’s shoulders slumped, his eyes flickering to the road.
“Yes,” he said. “It does.”
Ochako brushed the rain from her eyes. “I’m meeting someone,” she said again, praying he understood.
Iida nodded slowly. “Then I’ll walk you there, if you’ll let me, and if you need an excuse for your mother, I can do that, too.”
Ochako laughed, blinking back tears.
Himiko was waiting on the edge of the platform, just as she had all those months ago.
Ochako didn’t need to call out. Himiko had already found her in the crowd, her smile bright. Ochako’s knees nearly buckled.
Himiko’s hair was gold, like her eyes, her cheeks pink with laughter, her dress as blue as the sky. Himiko held out a hand.
“You made it.”
Ochako looked back. Iida waved, disappearing into the crowd. Behind him, the sky was brushed with the pink and lavender glow of oncoming twilight, the setting sun casting oranges and yellows and reds as brilliant as the painting of Himiko’s spider lily in the living room. A kaleidoscope of color. Ochako blinked back tears.
The train whistle blew. She slipped her hand into Himiko’s.
“I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.”