Chapter 2

When I open my eyes, there’s still some unknown brightness around, so I close them again.

“Choi Yeon Woo.”

When my name is called, I open my eyes. There’s someone standing with their back against the window. The moment I see his face, the white glow of the curtain becomes stronger. The fluff of the pillow my head is on causes some irritation to brush next to my eyes. The kid who called my name is wearing the school uniform that caused that strong reaction in the school restaurant earlier, so I close my eyes again. Not only my eyes, my head hurts too. Inside my eyes it feels as if something is rustling, and my head feels as if it’s full of water.

“Teacher, is this colore moving?” (colóre: coloring in Italian).

I hear the voice that called my name earlier. I can’t even open my eyes slowly. My eyes are less dry, but my head still hurts as if a water balloon is bursting inside.

“I’m not sure, since It’s also my first time seeing it in reality.”

I hear the hoarse voice of an adult man. What I know about what you asked about colore moving is… when a mono and a probe meet and the color recognition happens, the pupils dilatate momentarily and the muscles around the eyes tense. It’s called ‘colore moving’ because the eyes move as if they’re coloring the world, but it’s actually a kind of convulsion that occurs because the brain recognizes color and gives feedback to the cone cells.

It’s terrible.

I don’t want to meet something like a probe. I don’t want to become a slave to a probe, more importantly, I don’t want to be afraid of needing color.

Moreover, if my head hurts like this and I can’t even open my eyes since they’re blinded every time I do because of color, I don’t need it. It’s nothing but a hindrance.

“Min Jae said it’s colore moving and not a seizure.”

“That kid knows how to see many things that can’t be seen. I have to go out for a bit because of the textbook, so you stay and look after him.”

“Yes.”

“If kids come, tell them to take the medicine from this cabinet here, if they look like they’re about to die or their eyes pop out, call the number that’s on the desk.”

“Yes.”

After that conversation between the two, I can hear the sound of the door opening and I here’s only one person pretending to be popular* left. *literal translation, I’m not quite sure of what he means by this. Maybe that he was waiting for Yeon Woo’s attention…

“Choi Yeon Woo, I’m wearing my mask. You can open your eyes.”

It’s implicit this is probably Go Yoo Han. At the restaurant too, the moment Go Yoo Han took his mask out, my world turned upside down. I slowly open my eyes, and the glow from the things that gradually come into my vision hurt. I close my eyes again and bury my head in the pillow.

“Should I get you a medicine for head pain?”

“Mm.”

After I answer, I can hear the sound of the opening and closing of a drawer, and of the water purifier pouring water. After he does all that, he puts something on the desk with a knock.

“You have to take the medicine. Get up.”

“It hurts if I open my eyes.”

“Because you can see colors now, right?”

It’d be nice if this is not about seeing colors. If my head just hurts to the extreme for no reason. And also my eyes.

“I’ll cover you. You have to take the medicine.”

He covers me with something that can cover my whole head. Then he holds my shoulder and pulls me up to sitting with my eyes still closed. I sit on the bed and when I feel a towel next to my head, I open my eyes. I can only see a white towel and my school uniform pants. The pants still emit rustling light, but the intensity is low and bearable. The long-sleeved white shirt is brighter than the white I usually see, but since I know white, I’m not scared.

“All covered?”

I can hear the voice over the towel. I’m not familiar with it since today was the first time I heard it, but it’s Go Yoo Han.

“No.”

As I say that, in case that it falls, I grab the towel over my head with my right hand and grab my pants with my left hand, then realize, they’re different than what they usually are, I slightly rub them and then let them go.

“That’s watermelon color.”

“Watermelon color? That watermelon we eat in summer?”

I ask back and then regret it. I don’t want to know things like colors.

“Mm, that’s the color of the peel. It’s really bad. Our school uniform is in the top three worst uniforms of this area.”

To me, watermelon was a fruit with light gray and dolphin gray stripes on its shell. It was fresh and filled with a strong cement color watery center. If this is the color of watermelon peel, is it the one from the thin light gray lines, or the thick dolphin gray ones?

I realize after fiddling several times with the pants that Go Yoo Han told me are watermelon color… my hand… it has colors. I always thought it was light gray. In my eyes, the difference between what people call white, yellow or black skin color is big. I wonder why it was called ‘white’ if it had color.

“My hand’s color… what color is it?”

“Uhm… Your skin tone is leaning towards white.”

“It’s not white.”

“Mm, it’s not white. Flesh color?”

“Flesh color…”

“Is it possibly called flesh color because it’s the color of human flesh? What’s the exact color?”

“Even I don’t know that.”

“Ah…”

But then, the pants’ color starts to change more and more. No, not change. The colors start to go away. After all, if a mono doesn’t have the stimulus of a probe, they can’t recognize colors.

While prolonged exposure to a probe can lead to longer color recognition, the opposite also happens. Unlike the actual watermelon color, the intensity of the color has gone away. I raise my head while fiddling with my pants. Earlier, I saw a color similar to the color of my hand on the walls and the curtain of the nurse’s office. And also, there’s Go Yoo Han who is sitting in front of me.

Go Yoo Han’s eyes look directly into mine while wearing his mask. I am still amazed by the big eyes with no double-eyelids, but this time I turn my head because I feel pressured. As I turn my head, the pillow which seems to have fluffy hair gives off a soft energy.

“That’s pink.” Go Yoo Han speaks to me who had turned away.

I turn my attention towards the pillow because I wonder if the color is right, and in the meantime, I can see the color from my hand and the wall of the nurse’s office disappear. They go back to the familiar light gray and snow white colors I know. The pillow too, goes back to dolphin gray as it slowly looses its energy. It’s my first decoloring. Opposed to color rush, when the accumulated stimulus from the probe goes away, you lose color and return to the Mono world. I sweep the apparently pink fluff of the pillow once.

As I go back to my original gray scale world, I can breathe normally again. Up until now, if I didn’t intentionally make myself breathe in and breathe out, I think my lungs would have collapsed as if they had shrunk down.

When I take off the white towel covering my head, Go Yoo Han reaches towards the side of my head and fixes the hair that’s sticking out in a mess. I want to know what he thinks he’s doing. I knock his hand away and try to hit his arm off, but because of the size difference, and the strength difference, his arm doesn’t move.

“No, you don’t seem to have energy.”

“Don’t thoughtlessly touch a stranger.”

“We’re not strangers now. A mono and his probe. I’m your probe, right?”

I can see his teasing expression above the mask. I shake my head. Go Yoo Han continues his teasing.

“No?”

He asks back. I’m not a fool. I don’t want to meet my probe and ruin my life.

“I’m sorry but..,”

“You don’t look sorry, though?”

I look up at those words, Go Yoo Han looks down at me leisurely. First, I think it is because the stool Go Yoo Han is sitting in is higher than the bed, but when I see his long legs under the stool, I don’t want to think about it anymore because it makes me jealous inside. *Sexy Yoo Han is sexy and Yeon Woo describes him so.

“Then, I’m not sorry but, I never wanted to meet my probe, I don’t think about doing it, and going forwards I won’t do it either.”

“Because I am your probe?”

Honestly, I’m getting a bit tired of that word. I wonder if I would have thought this much if my probe wasn’t a high school boy who’s bigger than me and doesn’t even know what the hell he’s doing. However, I haven’t changed my mind. I can’t even handle my life while looking for mom, even though aunt told me not to look for her, there’s no room for anything else.

“I don’t care who it is, my life motto is peace*.” *He wants to live in peace.

“Look at me for a bit.”

Even if Go Yoo Han is wearing his mask, I don’t want to experience color rush like earlier, that’s why I’m looking a bit to the side. I slowly move my eyes to look at Go Yoo Han.

“You look at me as if I’m going to eat you.”

“What?”

“I won’t eat you. Yet.”

Then he clasps his hands and thrums his fingers*. It seems he’s excited and back to teasing. Even his eyes are crinkled. It seems this part of my life is meeting its greatest misfortune. *I love him.

I try to get off the bed, but Go Yoo Han grabs my shoulders and makes me sit back down. I felt it earlier when I tried to push his arm away, but there’s definitely a difference in strength. I fainted earlier because of the color rush, so my movements are off. I feel like I might get sick.

“You still need to rest.”

“Let go.”

“Ah, you’re grumpy because you’re hungry. I get it, I get it. Wait, I’ll get you something to eat.”

“I’m sorry you suddenly got mixed up with Mono.”

“So, this is what you look like when you’re sorry.”

There’s nothing good about getting involved with Mono. Go Yoo Han too, if he lives in this world, he knows that. Not only in Korea, but in other countries too, the crimes caused by monos’ obsession with probes get reported in the news. In the past a popular TV program said in their panel that mononervechromacy is scarier than schizophrenia. It caused quite a controversy. It’s not good to get involved with mono up to that level.

I can’t look at Go Yoo Han for long. As I lower my gaze, he strokes my hair as he pleases.

This time I push his arm away with both hands, only one hand won’t do.

“I told you before, I don’t want to know my probe. I don’t want to live an inconvenient life.”

“Then why did you ask about colors earlier?”

I can’t find an excuse for that. Go Yoo Han suddenly gets up and walks out through the curtain. I hear the sounds of rummaging through something, then he comes back with a 3M flag* attached to a transparent plastic. There are five flags put in front of me. *Colored post-it flags.

… The intention is too obvious.

I also know each flag has a different color. Even if there is only a slight degree of difference* to my eyes. *He sees them in different tones of gray.

“In order it’s blue, green, red, orange and yellow.”

“You don’t have to tell me. Because of decoloring I can’t see them now.”

“What’s decoloring?”

I don’t know whether to answer or not. I don’t want to explain every little thing.

“You can’t see the colors?”

While he says this, I deliberately keep my gaze stuck on the flags. He grabs my chin and turns my face towards his, I don’t resist because I don’t want to break my neck. He’s just looking me with his eyes a little lowered, but I get the same urge to headbutt his nose as I did in the restaurant.

“Should I show you my face? Then you’d see the colors.”

Then with the left hand that wasn’t holding my chin, he tapped his face with his index finger. He said he’s a trainee, and where does he go acting all cutesy like that with such a body frame? I can almost feel my empty stomach churning.

“I don’t need it. You too, it’d be better if you don’t get involved with a mono.”

“Why?”

“Because…”

I remember the suicide attempt I saw on the news in the morning. It’s not good for monos to get involved with probes either.

“Monos kidnap probes and murder the people around them. There was even a case where a probe was killed and cannibalized.”

“Ah.”

I made up my mind and even told him about that incident, but his answer is unexpected. Is a ‘Yeah, I heard what you said’ sort of answer.

“Don’t you know how serious the situation is?”

“Mm. I don’t know. I just really like your colore moving.”

“……”

I pull down the hand that is holding my chin. I succeed this time, but he wasn’t holding it that hard.

“That’s why, let’s make an agreement! I will show you the colors and you will let me see your colore moving. What do you think?”

I immediately respond:

“I don’t need it.”

“I’ll teach you so well you won’t regret it.”

Before going back to the classroom, I go by the cafeteria to buy some bread, and Go Yoo Han follows me along. The kids are not as weary as before when Kang Min Jae was here, but Go Yoo Han also seems like a focus of vigilance*. *As in, you’re now part of the badass crew, Choi Yeon Woo.

I put the melon bread in my mouth and Go Yoo Han points at it and says:

“Melon bread is melon color.”

It’s useless. I am not curious. I return to the classroom while chewing on a hard bread with a prominent pattern.

“Our school bottoms and jacket are all watermelon color, with a white shirt underneath. It’s all watermelon color so the kids joke that you won’t be able to see us if we hide in the grass.”

I’m not interested. It’s my first day of transfer, but I should ask my aunt to transfer me again. I’m sure she will also agree that a reset is better than the current situation.

“I will teach you the colors so well you won’t regret it.”

“I don’t need it.”

When I open the back door of the class, the kids can only see me and not Go Yoo Han, but they still flinch. Despite the sudden quietness, Jung Joo Haeng is working hard at solving the problem book. He belatedly notices the strange atmosphere and turns to look at me. Kang Min Jae is staring blankly at the back of such hardworking Jung Joo Haeng’s head.

I go to my seat, and Jung Joo Haeng whispers in a low tone so that the other kids can’t hear. He whispers so low I can’t hear him at first.

“I can’t hear what you say.”

“Aish.”

So, then he lays down on his desk and I follow him down too. He comes close to my forehead and whispers:

“You’re a Mono?”

“Mm.”

“We told the kids you fainted because you saw a ghost.”

“What?”

Why would a ghost come out here? The other kids in the class look up at my reaction and then quickly return to what they were doing. However, their ears seem to be opening this way.

Jung Joo Haeng raises his head and taps his fingers at me, gesturing for me to get back down on the desk.

“We thought it was better to tell them that than to have them find out you’re a mono.”

They are both messed up. I wonder where a ghost comes from in all this when I see Kang Min Jae in the seat behind Jung Joo Haeng’s. Could it be… the grandpa is a ghost?

“Is it possible that Kang Min Jae’s grandpa is…”

I was about to ask if it is a ghost, but I turn it around just in case it seems rude.

“Has he passed away?”

“Mm.”

The strange kid the homeroom teacher was talking about is Kang Min Jae after all. So, there’s a reason kids are careful of Kang Min Jae rather than the unpredictable Go Yoo Han.

What’s worse than a human earthquake is a kid who sees ghosts. I’m speechless.

“When he said those kids would die last year, and it happened, everyone was frightened. But he’s a nice kid.”

What are you saying in front of the person itself! Go Yoo Han enters into the conversation like that. Kang Min Jae doesn’t seem to care; he’s looking towards something on the door. No. There’s no one at the door. I get goosebumps because I keep staring at him.

“Go Yoo Han, the bastard, can’t distinguish between what he can or cannot say.”

“Aahh, why? Yeon Woo has to know if he’s going to be around us!”

“You can also not say anything.”

“No, I have to say it!”

Jung Joo Haeng is trying to cover Go Yoo Han’s mouth. Well, technically it’s covered by the mask, but anyways he’s trying to stop him from talking. I asked because I thought it would be better to have a detailed reason to ask aunt for the transfer. Jung Joo Haeng slaps his forehead and straightens up. Go Yoo Han slowly starts telling the story of Kang Min Jae who keeps looking at the empty door. Is he alright?

“Ah, last year some guys were trying to pick a fight with him, and Min Jae said to the one on the side, ‘You, don’t get on that motorcycle.’ To the ones behind he said, ‘You, don’t get on the back of the motorcycle. You, don’t look at the tree.’ Like that. They got even more pissed off, but that weekend, two of them were riding a motorcycle when a truck hit them at the intersection, one of the guys went under the truck, the other was nowhere to be seen. The police and the other guys were looking everywhere for the missing guy, then one of the guys started foaming at the mouth and screaming his head off, he saw the guy that was riding on the back of the motorcycle stuck high in a tree, his tongue hanging all the way down…”

While he’s talking, Go Yoo Han tries to take his mask off, so I press it down hard with my palms. He stops talking, takes my palms off his face and looks at them closely.

“The palms of your hands are also pretty.”

As he says this, I quickly pull my hands out of his.

“I’m not pretty.”

All people are shaped basically the same, and yet he talks like this. Luckily the English teacher arrives and conversation stops.

Quickly. I want to go home.

During the next recess, I put my cordless earphones on and lay down on my desk, to mean that I don’t want to talk. I don’t turn the music on very loud, I don’t feel like listening to music. I feel Go Yoo Han tap my back.

“Excuse me Mr. Mono, are you not going to speak with your Probe?”

When he says this, Jung Joo Haeng turns around angrily.

“Go Yoo Han, you’re screwing over others’ work!” he shoots back.

I think Jung Joo Haeng really is normal, and that makes me feel a little better. But I feel Go Yoo Han tapping my back again.

“Aren’t you curious about what color a black spot* is?” *Joo Haeng’s actual phrasing earlier was ‘you’re putting a black spot over other peoples’ work”

He speaks again. I ignore him.

“A black spot is black, you idiot!”

Thankfully Jung Joo Haeng answers for me again. Otherwise, I’d get mad at Go Yoo Han for being an idiot who thinks I can’t even see black. I can feel him shaking his legs behind me. I wish I could really go to sleep, as it is, all my nerves are on edge thanks to Go Yoo Han. There’s only one more class before I can go home, but this recess is strangely long.

“Joo Haeng-ah, by any chance, did a bomb drop on our school yesterday?”

“What nonsense are you saying?”

“No, it’s just, the kids’ faces are in a strange condition.”

“… ho.”

Go Yoo Han’s nonsense has Jung Joo Haeng clicking his tongue in a dumbfounded manner.

“What exactly are you trying to say?”

“Why are you all so ugly?”

“… … Are you trying to pick a fight with me now?”

I can feel Jung Joo Haeng, who’s sitting next to me, turn around.

“I thought I was the only handsome one, but after seeing Yeon Woo who is so pretty… you kids, why do you look so bad?”

“You really want to get hit, don’t you?”

“For real. You can’t be this ugly even if a bomb fell.”

“You seem to have gotten used to Choi Yeon Woo’s face in just one day. Normally, this is what high school boys look like.”

“Not at all? If I’m this good looking.”

“Ooh ho, shit. Why do I even get mixed up with what you say?”

Jung Joo Haeng’s reaction is funny, so I laugh a little. I don’t know if it’s obvious, but Go Yoo Han taps my back again.

“Tock, tock.”

He even makes that noise with his mouth.

“Yeon Woo-ya. That’s why, let me see your face for a bit, huh? I’d also like it if I can see your colore moving.”

“Go Yoo Han, have you become stupid?”

“Joo Haeng-ah, you’re too smart.”

“Mm. Joo Haeng is smart.”

Kang Min Jae suddenly adds. I get annoyed after hearing all the nonsense from these three musketeers, so I get up from my chair.

Go Yoo Han gets right up too.

“Don’t come.”

Go Yoo Han tilts his head as I push his shoulders for him to sit down. I get mad because even though I use a lot of strength, he barely moves.

“I’m going to the bathroom.”

“Yeon Woo-ya.”

He calls me by my first name as he grabs my cheeks, so I get moody.

“Not your face, but you want to show me that*?” *shameless

“If you follow me, I’ll kill you.”

I don’t know what he’s saying, but the corners of his mouth seem to be raised and his eyes are crinkling. As I leave the classroom, I feel him clinging to my back. I really want to kill him, and not in the way an obsessed mono wants to kill a probe, but in a normal way a person wants to kill another person.

“Shame on you.”

-

After class is over, Go Yoo Han seems to want to pierce the back of my head. I want to poke the eyes above the mask as I can feel their stare following me. I’ve met people who pick on me as soon as they meet me. But this is the first time I want to kill someone. And he’s even my probe.

Once the final ordinance is done, I get up. Go Yoo Han also gets up and follows along. I can’t tell if he changed his strategy this time. As soon as I pass the school gate, I head straight for the door of the apartment complex, I want to get in right away, but this time he grasps my arm from behind.

I flutter like a paper doll. As my body falters, my face heats up. It’s not that my body is weak, it’s just that the other side is too healthy. And It annoys me that I have to look up to look at his face. I’m average height.

“Is this your home?”

“Mm, so let go.”

“Aahh, so there’s no chance for a romantic walk on the way back from school.”

Romantic what? I don’t even want to go to school with you. *sassymeter at 80%

“I have to take the bus.”

Either take the bus or the train, I have no interest in how you go home. My mind is on how to convince my aunt to transfer schools, it’s still annoying that I’ll probably have to go to someplace nearby.

“Choi Yeon Woo.”

Go Yoo Han lowers his head to meet my eyes. I’m super annoyed. I have to look up and he has to bend down.

“I’ll show you the colors. You only have to show me your face. It’s not a losing deal, is it?”

“I tell you I don’t need it.”

“No, if you see the colors there are a lot of things you’ll know.”

“I don’t need it.”

As I say this, I pull my arm loose. I turn my back on him, but from behind I can hear Go Yoo Han’s voice saying.

“See you tomorrow.”

When I look back on my way in, I see Go Yoo Han walking away too. He slowly takes off the black mask he’s been wearing all day. When he turns around*, there’s no color rush. *Ok, a doubt cleared, when he’s looking at his back, there’s no color rush. I still wonder if maybe pictures or videos of the probe’s face can cause color rush too???

-

Once I get home, I immediately call aunt. She doesn’t pick up. I leave her a message and then I log into the café for the families of missing people. There are no new updates. Aunt will get mad if she finds out… I take out the missing person flyer that is hidden inside a worksheet folder at the bottom of the desk. The flyer has two pictures, one is of mom smiling and the other is her ID picture. At the bottom it says “Yoo Yi Ri”, mom’s name, along with her age when she disappeared. The contact information has aunt’s name “Yoo Yi Rang”, and the phone number of the cellphone she can’t throw away. Aunt has been banned from putting up flyers since the year before last. After what happened at my last school, I was just pretending to not look for mom. When I see the picture of my mom smiling, I remember Go Yoo Han’s words ‘You will know a lot more.’

A lot more.

Still, there’s no problem with watching pictures or videos. After all, there’s no problem with recognizing people’s faces. But… I look at the flyer for a long time and put it back in its place. Aunt told me. When mom comes back, she’ll hate it if she finds out I wasn’t living properly because I was looking for her. That’s true. But still, guilt and regret press heavily on my shoulders. I wish I could at least blame her for leaving me behind. As long as you’re alive somewhere… The Mono suicide attempt I saw this morning comes back into my head. I thought about the possibility… I saw how devastated she was when she lost dad.

I take a long breath, but the tail of my thoughts is lost somewhere deep inside my body. I look at the automatically crawled photos that were uploaded to social media and categorized through facial recognition. My aunt thinks that taking away my computer solved it all, but it’s not like that. Working in the cloud is so convenient these days. The usage fee is a bit too much, so I can’t even upgrade the performance since I’m paying from my allowance. I get today’s worth of footage and automatically turn on the slide show. Among all those faces, I can’t find my mom’s face.

I’m sleeping, but I hear a rustling sound so I come out of the room. Auntie is eating something in the living room, ignoring the chair and the table. No, she’s not eating, there’s a soju bottle and one glass is filled with a transparent liquid. It’s the smell of soju.

“Yeon Woo, you woke up?”

“Are you drinking on an empty stomach again?”

“I’m drinking soju as a side-dish.”

“Move over.”

I open the fridge and take out some kimchi. I cut it as small as possible and fry it with a bit of oil, the smell of the spices reaches the living room and I can hear aunt calling out “Ooh, Yeon Woo is doing filial piety*!” *respect and service towards one’s parents and family elders. Yes, I googled it.

What filial piety if you are only in your thirties. I also take some tofu out and cut it into pieces, then add the stir-fried kimchi on top. If she only drinks soju and doesn’t eat anything, she’ll be whining in pain the next morning.

“If you’re going to be late, then contact me.”

“Ah ha, our Yeon Woo takes cares of his aunt and even made her kimchi tofu. Auntie likes mayonnaise macaroni better, though-ing"

“Who’s been saying she’s gained weight lately?”

“What was that?”

“Nothing.”

There’s no use in using long words with drunk people. Aunt is drinking the soju from the glass and eating the kimchi tofu, but she can’t hold her chopsticks properly. The third time she drops her food she says ‘aish’ and brings a spoon. Between the chopsticks and the spoon, she manages to get some food even inside her glass.

“Yeon Woo-ya, the soju bottle is green?”

“I know.”

You told me before when you drank. When my dad died, aunt became the only person able to tell me the color of things. When she drinks, she uselessly points out things: That’s this, this is that. So, I know. But even if I do, I don’t know how to tell the difference between yellow and green.

“When you drink it, you get green all the way through! Hahahaha!”

“…don’t drink to that point.”

“This kimchi is red!”

“Mm, and tofu is white.”

“Ho oh, it seems our Yeon Woo is a genius!”

No matter how old I am, she treats me like a kindergarten student. I think it’s better to let her complain and put her to bed quickly. I will ask her a lot of things.

“So, what day is today?”

“I worried a lot about whether to tell you or not… mm, I worried a lot but you’re going through other people’s so-me again!

“So-me?”

“So-Me, Social Media!”

I’m surprised she can pronounce social media like that*. Anyways, how does she know I’ve been doing social media picture crawling? *Social media is SNS in Korean, the pun and the way she pronounces it it’s hilarious, but impossible to translate. Basically, you pronounce it es en es, but she says something line susun.

“I receive your card’s extract!”

“Ah!”

This is the limit. I guess I was caught using the cloud. I’m surprised she even figured out what I did with it. Although, she has all kinds of experts in her team at work, so maybe it’s not that surprising.

“You even bought a social media crawling program!”

“It’s not a program. I bought an API and set it up. It just pulls what’s out there.”

“Isn’t our Yeon Woo a genius?”

It’s not the cloud, but the open-source donation I used before. I only paid for a month, but it got me caught.

“Since you’re a genius, stop looking for my sister. Stop looking… Today I went to the police…”

“What? Why did you go?”

Aunt stops talking at once. And her big eyes swell with tears, she doesn’t cry but her nose is so runny she sniffles.

“Yeon Woo, I’m sorry.”

“Aunt, talk to me. Why did you go to the police?”

“Yeon Woo, I’m sorry.”

“Calm down and tell me!”

Aunt’s head is bent down, I take hold of her shoulder and I see my hand shaking. I blink my eyes to clear the tears from my vision. In the end, I can feel anxious tears running down my cheeks.

“Yeon Woo, I’m sorry, uhh.”

Then she covers her mouth and hurries to the bathroom. There’s a whirling sound coming from the closed door. I don’t know what aunt was trying to say, but she doesn’t return in a long time so I guess she threw up all she ate and fell asleep sitting on the bathroom floor. I close the toilet and help my aunt get into bed. I go back to my room and lie down, but I can’t sleep.

***

When I get up in the morning, aunt is still feeling sick. Aunt’s pattern password is a Z, so I check her messages to see she sent one to the group chat before drinking saying ‘I’ll use my vacation day tomorrow.’ I’m relieved to see that as I was worrying that she would skip work without notice.

I’m just nervous about what she was trying to say the night before. I wonder if something has come to an end and why she went to the police station alone. I think about whether I should go to school, but since I didn’t even get the chance to bring up the transfer, if I skip, I’ll have an absence marked.

When I arrive in class, there’s only Jung Joo Haeng and Kang Min Jae in there.

Jung Joo Haeng says “Hi” and turns back to his workbook.

Kang Min Jae says “Yeon Woo-ya, hello.” In his soft tone and doesn’t say much after that.

Neither do I. Go Yoo Han’s empty seat bothers me. The homeroom teacher arrives for ordinance and calls for class rep to start.

As Jung Joo Haeng gets up and does the attention, salute, I wonder if it’s okay for 21st century people to do such a pre-modern military greeting. I don’t know why the teacher does this, as he’s going to let us free anyway.

The homeroom teacher eyes Go Yoo Han’s empty seat.

“Is that bastard finally going to debut?”

He asks this to Jung Joo Haeng, who answers the question saying:

“He had to buy something, so he’s late.”

I’m surprised by such a bold answer, the homeroom teacher seems embarrassed and keeps counting the kids with his fingers.

“What’s he buying?”

When I ask, Jung Joo Haeng shrugs his shoulders to say he doesn’t know. Then, instead of a work book, he takes out a literary classic, ‘King Lear’, and starts reading it. His eyes move fast over the pages.

“What’s with King Lear?”

“I’m doing a school plan of summarizing 100 literary masterpieces.”

Maybe it’s a school plan for his university entrance exam. I heard a lot about King Lear, but I’m not really sure what it is about. At first glance, it seems it’s a script.

“It’s a play. From what I’ve read so far it’s one of the four tragedies written by Shakespeare.”

Then Jung Joo Haeng reads through the commentary fast and breathes out a “huh”.

“Even though it was a legacy, there was no inheritance.”

“… Is that the review of a masterpiece?”

“If you write a review that’s already known, the admissions department doesn’t like it. It’s preferable to add the student’s fresh feelings.”

Then he takes out a note. In the note there are the names of some familiar works. Above King Lear, there’s The Portrait of Dorian Grey, and Jung Joo Haeng’s review of it. [There’s a good-looking guy I’m friends with since elementary school. He knows how handsome his face is, so he lives comfortably. He thinks everything is okay with his face. How long his face does well remain to be seen. This friend is not Grey, but he also doesn’t have a mirror.]

I don’t know if the admissions department really likes this kind of review, or if they even read all 100 reviews of the works they put together. But Jung Joo Haeng is indeed trying very hard.

In the middle of first period, Go Yoo Han enters sneakily through the class’ back door, but when the teacher says “This bastard really trusts his face,” he gets everyone’s attention. I’m not part of that. If I see his face and get color rush and faint, I’ll be in trouble. Maybe it’s because I’m nervous, but I feel every single move of Go Yoo Han who is sitting behind me.

In the recess, I’m thinking of making a run for it, but I feel a tap on my back, not with finger, but with something weighty.

“Yeon Woo-ya, I’m here.”

“Your mask?”

“I’m wearing it.”

When I look back at those words, I see a long rectangular paper box in his hands. Probably what he used to tap my back.

“Ahh, the art shop closes early. I had to go this morning.”

“Why the art shop?”

I didn’t want to ask, but Jung Joo Haeng did ask. This time the book changed to Macbeth. Compared to King Lear, this one was even shorter. Is that maybe the reason for his book choices?

“To buy this. When you think about it, if you’re hiring a tutor, you want a demonstration. I told you I’d be the one to teach you colors, yet I didn’t do a demonstration, right?”

On top of the charcoal gray box, the letters ‘155a’ are written. When I open the paper box a

smell of gum and something similar to paint comes right out. Inside there is a rubber band with a bunch of papers attached on one side.

“Ta-da!”

Go Yoo Han takes out the bunch on papers and opens it like a fan. There is a thick piece of paper with a lot of brightness and the words 155a KS standard color. C&Dcolors, on the cover.

“The so-called color chart.”

Go Yoo Han takes my shoulder, pulls it towards him and puts the papers he called color chart on my hand.

It’s a bundle of paper, but it’s heavier than I thought and it has an unpleasant smell. Go Yoo Han also takes a thin white paper booklet out of the box. The white paper booklet is much thinner than the one he gave me; he turns over a page and starts reading:

“The KS standard color C&D 155 is a professional color scheme based on the newly revised in KS A 0011, updated in December of 2010. It communicates and conveys color in a more precise manner…” (KS A 0011 refers to the color name of objects’ color. The national standard set for naming the colors of objects and surfaces.) *So, a rulebook on color names, great. And here I learned the primary colors in Korean ㅜ_ㅜ, after this book I’ll apply the KSA to EVERYTHING irl, you just wait. You’ll find a picture of the color chart, all colors mentioned in the novel, and also the KSA color scheme in the Guide.

“Why are you giving this to me?”

Right now, I can’t see the colors and he wants to test it*? If that’s the case a regular color blindness test would do. If we look up “Ishihara Test” on the internet right now it would be enough** (Ishihara Test: A set of illustrations to see if you can distinguish color by mixing round dots of various colors and sizes). *Yeon Woo thinks Yoo Han wants to test him for color blindness. **The author explains above what the Ishihara Test is, but I will link it in the Guide so that you can take the test if you want to. I also just spent 20 minutes doing several color tests. Ishihara tests all color blindness types.

Go Yoo Han answers my question with a smile.

“I was preoccupied on how to teach you the colors, but there’s a standard in our country, the KS A 0011.”

“So?”

“That is a standard for colors, wait!”

Then he grabs the white paper booklet again.

“Red, Orange, Yellow, Yellowish-Green, Green, Turquoise, Blue, Indigo, Purple, Plum. There’s a total of 10 basic colors. I’ve designated these as the basic colors, so you have to study from the basics.”

Then the teasing look* under the mask comes again and he taps the color chart on my hand. *If we translate literally, he actually calls Yoo Han ‘the clown under the mask’ when he teases him. But it’s not quiiiite right.

“Do you feel like learning?”

“No.”

“How can your face be this pretty even when you say no in such a dumbfounded manner?”

“I’m not pretty!”

I take the color chart and put it on Go Yoo Han’s desk, then I look back to the front. I shove my cordless earphones in my ear and play some music. I feel Go Yoo Han tap my back again but I ignore him. Second period starts after one song is over.

Go Yoo Han’s persistence continues in recess hour.

“This is red”

The color paper he spreads looks the same as the other color papers to me. The third and fourth ones in the cover look particularly similar.

“This one and this one are Yellow and Yellow-Green”

“Ah.”

No way. I answered. For color blind people yellow and yellow-green are the hardest colors to tell apart, so it made an impression.

“So then, you’re curious? You’re curious, right?

“I’m not curious.”

“Can’t you look at me for a bit? I’m even wearing such a stuffy mask like this.”

Go Yoo Han asks, as if he knows I’m purposefully avoiding looking at his face.

“I’m transferring schools soon, so just hang in there a bit more.”

“You’re going to transfer? Min Jae-ya, is Yeon Woo really going to transfer?”

Why isn’t Jung Joo Haeng here at times like this. At least, things were quiet after second period, when Go Yoo Han was even a little loud, Jung Joo Haeng would say “Ah, shit, shut up” and Go Yoo Han would keep quiet. But since the homeroom teacher called Jung Joo Haeng in third period, there’s no one to shut Go Yoo Han up.

“You can’t transfer.”

Kang Min Jae says in a very cold voice. Watching it like that it looks as if he will block my transfer. Due to his droopy eyes, he has an overall mild look, but as he speaks, his eyes sparkle. Is that the grandpa’s face?

“And what’s more, I can’t see you at graduation.”

“Kang Min Jae?”

When I call his name, his eyes that were so alive, become gentle again. But it’s because Jung Joo Haeng returns to his seat rather than because I called his name. Kang Min Jae looks at Jung Joo Haeng with the same expression as yesterday, actually, with the same expression he had until just before.

“That’s grandpa’s doing, don’t ask me about it.”

“Mm. Those are grandpa’s words, you won’t transfer. So now that it’s like that, study colors with me, yeah?”

Go Yoo Han winks at me as he says this, so I pretend to poke his eyes with my fingers. He avoids my hand and stretches out his arm to grab it. Rather than a smiling expression, his eyes have a kind of distorted look that seems sneaky.

“Seems like my Yeon Woo is not good at this.”

“Don’t call me your Yeon Woo.”

“That’s weak. I am really good at this sort of thing!”

Then Go Yoo Han makes a V sign with his hand, puts it next to his eyes and winks again. Who wants to see such a big guy doing aegyo?

“Oh uh, shit. I’m gonna go through it.”

Jung Joo Haeng immediately rejects Go Yoo Han’s aegyo, which proves my first impression right. But when he sees the disgust on my face, he leans back contentedly. A humming sound coming out of the mask.

“Even that disgusted face is so pretty.”

“I said I’m not pretty.”

“No, you are. That’s why, show me your face, and I’ll show you the colors. It’s such a good deal, yeah?”

“Don’t need it.”

“My heart is a lake, and Yeon Woo is the rain.”

Wah, that really gives me goosebumps. Whether he changed his strategy or is just trying to make people vomit, I don’t care for that nonsense. Seriously, it nearly makes me curse. I don’t have the hobby of cursing at someone I’ve known for only two days.

“If the poetry teacher knew, she’d beat you with a paddle.”

“Joo Haeng-ah. Don’t I have a good sense of poetry?”

“What a joke. I can do better acrostic poems than you.”

Jung Joo Haeng rebells against Go Yoo Han’s unconcerned self-confidence. Then Jung Joo Haeng said to the motionless Kang Min Jae:

“Call out Choi Yeon Woo.” *I can’t translate the acrostic poem while still have it be an acrostic poem and not sound like Yoda, so I’ll put up the original one in the Guide if anyone wants to take a look at it, but it says the same, the only thing that changed is the position of the words.

And he’s going to play around with another person’s name. Damn it, I’ve had a hard time in my life with people who confuse Yeon Woo with Hyeon Woo, but I’ve never been bullied like this.

“Choi.”

In the meantime, Kang Min Jae starts calling out the syllables as he was asked to do. Hey, asides from the ghost weren’t you the sane one?

“To win Choi Yeon Woo’s favor.”

“Yeon.”

“You made the metaphor of Yeon Woo and the rain.”

Jung Joo Haeng raises his hand very high, turns it upside down and brings it down in one sweep. With his lips stretched as wide as he can, he tells Go Yoo Han:

“Uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuhhhh.”

He boos at him. I really like it. I would have booed at Go Yoo Han too, only without using my name. Go Yoo Han holds his face in his hands, in the flower cup pose. His eyes have the same look you put when you’re telling a scary story, only without the elbows on the desk.

“My Yeon Woo, wasn’t my poem better?”

“Kang Min Jae, you settle it. Which is the best?”

Kang Min Jae makes an “Mm” sound and blinks a few times before answering.

“The best is tender beef.”

“… …”

He really said that. Of all things, why are the weird kids around me? Really, in this case, I don’t want to transfer schools, I want to escape.

***

The lunch menu is spicy stir-fried pork. I sit next to Go Yoo Han without looking that way once.

“I’ll take my mask off to eat. I’m not a person from Arabia, I don’t know how to eat with it on.”

“If you wear a burkha, there is an opening to the side. In a place like this, you would use that to eat.”

(Burkha: it is a mesh used to cover the body up to the eyes, due to the status of Islamic women.) *explanations in brackets are the ones made by the novel’s author.

“Oh, Jung Joo Haeng, you’re very smart.”

“Later, if it doesn’t work the first time for med school, I’ll try becoming a religious person.”

At the moment, I wonder is there’s such a type, then I belatedly realize the joke is on me. Looking at his serious expression, it seems he’s really considering converting to go to medical school.

Because of the nerves caused by Go Yoo Han sitting on my left, my food isn’t going over properly.

As I’m trying to figure it out, Go Yoo Han speaks.

“I already finished eating, so eat slowly.”

I turn my head and he’s already wearing his mask again. After that I eat more comfortably, with my back bent a little.

I didn’t know because I fainted yesterday due to the Color Rush, but Jung Joo Haeng takes his time and eats very slowly. I don’t know when Go Yoo Han ate everything, but he ate all the side dishes and all the ingredients of the soup, except for the liquid. On the other hand, Kang Min Jae keeps drinking only the soup. Jung Joo Haeng is chewing carefully, like a child. And I’m focusing on eating the side dishes that I like most.

“My Yeon Woo looks pretty even while eating.”

“I’m not pretty!”

“You make yeom nyeom nyeom nyeom like a bunny.”

I lose my appetite as I quarrel again with Go Yoo Han. I don’t seem to be the only one as Jung Joo Haeng picks up a spoon and tries to hit him with it. When Go Yoo Han winks at me I try to cover his eyes with the hand still holding my spoon, so I spray rice everywhere.

Since Jung Joo Haeng finishes eating, we are leaving the restaurant, but Go Yoo Han stops me.

Seeing his eyes crinkling again, I think he’ll say some nonsense again.

“Why do you make a face when you see me?”

“What?”

Then I won’t make a face. But until just now you’ve been having fun bullying me, making impressive sounds, winking at me and even acting cute.

“Yeon Woo-yah, when we finish brushing our teeth let’s go to the nurse’s office.”

“Why?”

“Ah, my Yeon Woo, should I brush your teeth for you? With strawberry flavored tooth paste?”

“Go Yoo Han, I’m the same age as you, stop treating me like a child.”

“But I’ve only seen my Yeon Woo for two days, then isn’t it like a newborn baby?”

“Oh uh, shit.”

Jung Joo Haeng sees this and curses. I shake my head; I also don’t know what this is about.

“Oh, and Joo Haeng?”

Go Yoo Han’s crinkling eyes disappear, loosen and become thin. Jung Joo Haeng frowns and looks at Go Yoo Han. Beyond the thick lenses, I can see his already small eyes getting smaller.

“Small dogs don’t matter if they’re over a year.”

“This bastard is chronologically telling his friend that he’s a son of a bitch?”

Jung Joo Haeng responds dumbfoundedly. Then he and Kang Min Jae go outside to digest. I go back to the classroom to brush my teeth, and Go Yoo Han follows me.

“Ah, I want to brush my teeth with my Yeon Woo, but if I take my mask off you will faint so I can’t.”

“Aish, do you want to spread rumors all over the school?”

“No way, then I’ll get scolded by Joo Haeng. Joo Haeng tried so hard to hide that my Yeon Woo is a mono.”

“Then stay away from me.”

When I put toothpaste on my toothbrush, I squeeze too hard and too much comes out. Ha. Nothing is going well. When I go to the bathroom and start brushing my teeth, Go Yoo Han watches me through the mirror.

“My Yeon Woo is pretty even while brushing his teeth.”

I want to say that I’m not pretty, but since I’m brushing my teeth I can’t answer right away. Go Yoo Han pretends to poke my cheek in the mirror. I get irritated, so I brush my teeth faster.

“Who do you trust to be this pretty?”

“… … not you”

I spit out the foam and answer. I look at Go Yoo Han over the mirror, but it’s clear my reactions are decreasing.

“Who are you trying to watch looking this pretty? Is it me?”

I can understand why Jung Joo Haeng cursed at Go Yoo Han. I want to curse too. I rinse my mouth quickly, but he doesn’t follow this time. I get peace of mind for a moment. When I get to my desk, I see the color chart on top of Go Yoo Han’s desk. I think I shouldn’t be interested, but I can’t take my eyes off of it.

Since Go Yoo Han doesn’t come back right away, my hand goes directly to the color chart. Monos also have various expressions for brightness. In my case, I use ten names for gray that my mom taught me.

White, Snow White, Light Gray, Silver Gray, Moon Gray, Cement Gray, Dolphin Gray, Shark Gray, Charcoal Gray, Black.

This is the first time I find out, people who see colors also need a standard for colors. It was still difficult to differentiate the third and the fourth paper on the cover. On the back, the words ‘3/Y’ and ‘4/Y’ were printed at a certain interval. I think that’s the distinction between the two.

“I’ll show you.”

Suddenly, the voice of Go Yoo Han comes from behind me. I must have been too concentrated looking at the paper, that’s why I didn’t feel him coming.

Go Yoo Han stretches his arms around me and points at the phrases written in the back.

“3 is for the third type in this color scheme, Y is Yellow, GY is Green Yellow.”

I know it’s hard to tell the difference between yellow and green. Yellow and yellowish-green. The names of two colors I can’t tell apart.

“No. Not curious.”

I throw the words against my heart*. When I try to put down the color chart, I feel his chin pressing against my shoulder. And then he reaches out and puts his hands over my hands, which are holding the chart. Overlapping his hands with mine, he passes the pages one by one. Just as before, he explains the English abbreviations written on the back. Quietly in my ear. *meaning he actually is curious.

“R is red. YR is Yellow Red, orange. G is green. BG is Blue Green, turquoise. B is blue. PB is Purple Blue, indigo. P is purple. RP is Red Purple, plum.”

My hands trapped beneath Go Yoo Han’s start to sweat more and more. I feel his body temperature behind my back, so I try to escape. I press the color chart in his hands and move forward, the moment I turn to look back, light seems to start pouring from behind Go Yoo Han.

The spot is different this time, but the Color Rush is similar to the one in the restaurant. The lockers behind the classroom are emitting a cold energy. It’s similar to the moon gray color I know, but they have a colder metal-like feeling. On the back wall of the classroom, attached with nonwoven fabric, there’s a pouring light that seems to stroke my eyes. In that unfocussed state, I see that the corners of Go Yoo Han’s mouth seem to go up.

The compass inside my head is spinning, light is pouring into my eyes and I feel as if my head is filling with water again. In the midst of this chaos, I feel Go Yoo Han grabbing my arm. It’s the second Color Rush.

Go Yoo Han, that son of a bitch.

-

The place where I open my eyes is the same as last time. The white of the curtain is as bright as a fluorescent lamp. I also see the pillow that I learned was color pink. On the other side, there’s Go Yoo Han wearing watermelon color pants and a white long-sleeved shirt. He has the black mask on and is holding the color chart in one hand, the color of the cover is similar to watermelon color. However, the other one is on the side of the color palette, the papers are piled up and each one is a different color. Is that what people call colorful?

“Our Yeon Woo is up.”

“A cowardly face-attack.”

“No, I was going to wear the mask, but Yeon Woo, you turned around too fast.”

I feel like he’s smiling under the mask. I remember I saw the corners of his mouth going up before I fainted. Go Yoo Han is lying down close to me, he puts the color palette in front of me, and slowly turns the page from the cover. Not the one from the back we were looking at before, but from the front.

“This is red.”

I’m embarrassed because the color is too dark. The red I knew was that apples are red. I wonder if this is the color of apples. Also, the color of the line on the restaurant’s wall during the previous color rush seemed to be this color. It’s similar. I feel like it’s going to poke my eyes, and it’s a color that makes people nervous.

Go Yoo Han turns over the red and puts it behind the cover, and then he shows me the next page.

“Orange.”

It looks like a cheerful color. So, I start to hate that carrots are orange. Cheerful carrots.

“Why are you laughing?”

“Did I laugh?”

There’s laughter in his voice, but when I point it out, it goes away. I still have a headache because of the color rush, so I can’t sit up. But I can’t take my eyes off of the color palette Go Yoo Han is showing me.

Still, orange looks cheerful and playful. For that reason, I can’t imagine carrots being orange. Are boiled carrots also orange?

“Yellow.”

The color I can’t tell apart. However, it’s so bright that I can’t understand why I can’t distinguish it from other colors. If orange is cheerful, this one seems crazy. It’s a color that seems to pop and burst inside the eyes. I can see what it means that Gogh’s sunflowers in yellow represent madness. I also heard that all warning signs are in yellow.

“Yellowish-green.” *this is like matcha tea color.

I want to see a bit more of yellow, but we move on to the next color. When I see this green that feels so different from the yellow before, I understand completely. I can’t tell them apart when I see them in the mono world. If yellow is the color of a lunatic, this color is the color of a serene wise man. It’s bright but it also gives comfort. I like this yellowish-green more than the red, orange and yellow I’ve seen so far. My eyes hurt less.

“Green.”

If you darken yellowish-green, this is the color that will come out. I think I know the reason why auntie told me yesterday that the soju bottle was green. If you’re drinking something of that color, it would seem you’re drinking poison. But since it’s so strong, it has a strong bitter taste and a sense of mint that pierces the nose.

“Turquoise.”

The difference between green and this color is only that it’s deeper. If the difference between Yellowish-Green and Green is of 10, then the one between these two is only 2. The one thing that differentiates them is that this color gives you more feeling than green, also, because it’s deeper, it seems more stable. In addition, it strangely adds a cool sense of rationality to the alertness of green.

“Blue.”

“This is blue?”

“Mm.”

I don’t understand. I thought it would be a more dramatic color, but it just gives off the same rational feeling turquoise gave me earlier. It feels a little cold, so I can see why you use blue to signal cold water in the water purifier.

“Isn’t this similar to blue? I also think they are vey alike. This is indigo.”

He showed blue and indigo one after the other on purpose. Out of frustration I reach out for the turquoise, green and yellowish-green cards. When I see all five colors, yellowish-green, green, turquoise, blue and indigo together, I can tell the difference between them. But they still seem similar to me.

“Your pretty face seems upset.”

“I’m not pretty!”

Go Yoo Han presses lightly on my forehead with one hand, so I stop frowning. If I look carefully and compare the differences between the colors, I can tell them apart. But I think that if I just look at them, it may be confusing.

Somewhat, in my eyes, indigo is close to the blue in the card that it’s still out. It’s a cold color, and it makes your eyes cold.

“According to our country’s sentiment, blue and all those similar to it, are looked for in the heat.”

“It looks similar.”

“It’ll be easier to tell them apart, once you see them often.”

Then Go Yoo Han turns over the color chart and goes on to the next color.

“Purple.”

I don’t know if the word matches the color, but it seems like an expensive color. I feel like I may cringe if I see someone dressed in this color. On the other hand, it gives off a feel of anxiety. It’s not like the bright and the strong colors I saw before, neither like the blue ones, but the word purple has a breaking quality in the mouth, even if it is a color that doesn’t hurt the eyes.

“Plum.”

“In English?”

“Red Purple.”

It’s a color with the destructive impulses of purple*. When purple seems like it would destroy everything behind the scenes, this seems like the color that would be left after that destruction. It has some of the feeling of the red that I saw first. *let’s sit down and have a chat about purple, oh? It’s a nice color, it means nice things since 2016, okay? Why do you want to make me cry, huh?

Go Yoo Han opens up the ten colors he showed me and puts them like a fan. I’m curious about the colors behind that color chart. It’d be hard to tell the lie that I’m not interested in colors now. However, it’s overwhelming to see the ten colors in front of my eyes like this. I want to see a different color; I want to keep looking at the colors in front of me. I honestly feel both ways.

However, I gradually feel the colors start to fade out. The firsts to go are purple and plum. Purple and plum both change into something close to charcoal gray. And then, green and turquoise that I wasn’t sure I could distinguish, disappear, yellowish-green fades out slowly. Next is blue and indigo, only the colors of madness and impatience I saw first are left. I want to see a bit more.

“Go Yoo Han, take off your mask!”

“Take it off?”

“Mm.”

I don’t care if I faint again after just waking up from the color rush. I grab the color chart Go Yoo Han showed me. I’ll be able to see it again after I wake up from fainting.

“If you say to take it off, I’ll take it off.”

He says it lightly and closes the color chart. Yellow and Orange eventually disappear, only the eye-poking Red is left, and even that is shielded by the cover. Because of that, I look up at Go Yoo Han, his index finger is at the top of the mask. Then his eyes crinkle and he takes the color chart I was holding. He moves his hand away from the mask.

“Later.”

“Show me now!”

Decoloring makes me impatient, but Go Yoo Han gets up and hides the color chart behind his body. It takes some effort to get out of the bed because I have a headache. I want to see the colors that are disappearing in front of my eyes again. All that I didn’t need to know all this time.

“The trial test ends here. How was it? Want to keep doing it?”

I realize my mistake with those words.

I always kept saying I would never obsess with a probe, that I would never crate such a situation. But since Go Yoo Han is so unruly, I forgot about it.

He’s the probe. I’m the mono. Now I may become obsessed with looking at Go Yoo Han’s face, and looking at the colors. Later, I may become obsessed with Go Yoo Han.

My headache is still resounding, but after decoloring, it eventually subsides. I close my eyes tightly. My eyes are filled with the never dark Moon Gray and Silver Gray.

“We should go back to class. And also, never show me that color chart again.”

“Why?”

“It’s called a color scheme, right? You showed me those colors on purpose. That’s why I couldn’t keep myself together.”

“The primary colors are strong, but it’s not necessarily like that.”

“Since the colors of everyday life can’t be that strong, I don’t need to learn.”

I look at Go Yoo Han who is wearing a mask. His usually smiling eyes are now only blinking sharply. Yellow. I want to see yellow again. But I hold it in. I know it’s stupid, and I’m a fool for doing it. I close my eyes again. There is no way I can see yellow again.

“My Yeon Woo’s angry face is also pretty.”

“I’m not pretty!”

Because of that, I was not aware of it, but I can feel the movement of the curtain behind me. Because I uselessly screamed like that. I get out of bed and pass by, purposefully not looking at Go Yoo Han. I leave the nurse’s office and hurry back to the classroom. I can’t miss any more classes because of those colors.

Go Yoo Han doesn’t follow me to the classroom as he usually does.

“And Go Yoo Han?”

Asks Jung Joo Haeng.

“I don’t know.”

I answer and start to catch up with class. Jung Joo Haeng can’t find Go Yoo Han after that. Even when he sends him a message. Even after the end-of-day ordinance, Go Yoo Han is not back. When the homeroom teacher sees Go Yoo Han’s empty seat he asks:

“He finally went to make his debut?”

“He was here earlier, but he disappeared.”

Answers Jung Joo Haeng. The teacher makes a “tsk” sound, and I don’t know how he handles the attendance after that. Even on the short way back from school, I keep uselessly looking back. But I don’t see Go Yoo Han. In other words, I can’t ask Jung Joo Haeng or Kang Min Jae about Go Yoo Han, because I’m afraid it will be turned over to seem I actually want to know.

I can just transfer to another school. So, this probe issue will later end up being a laughing matter. I think about this and call auntie as soon as I get home. I usually leave a text message if she doesn’t answer, but I keep trying this time. The tenth time, aunt answers. As soon as she picks up, I start talking.

“I’ll transfer schools.”

I don’t know how she will react if I tell her I met my probe. Whether she’ll like it, or if she’ll hate it.

“The school here is very weird. Send me the transfer, please.”

[“Oh, Yi Rang is not on her seat right now. You’re Yi Rang’s nephew, right?”]

The voice of a man I don’t know comes from the other side of the phone. My heart, which was beating with excitement, slows down a little bit.

[“I picked up because it was ringing so much. What’s the big deal? Are you transferring? Why, did you get hit?”]

“No. Not at all. I’ll call later.”

[“Right.”]

And then the phone call ends. My head is all messed up. The colors that Go Yoo Han showed me come back again. I try to recall them, but I only remember seeing the colors and not the colors themselves. On the other hand, what my aunt was trying to say yesterday was too faint. Originally, I would have thought about what my aunt was trying to say all day long, but I was fascinated by the colors Go Yoo Han showed me. This is crazy. Some probes run away when they find out they are probes, but Goo Yoo Han stubbornly stays next to me. Plus, he shows me things like the color chart and teaches me the name of each color one by one. Does he like things like that? Who’s teaching, who’s acting like a teacher? Again, my head is filled with Go Yoo Han and the ten colors. *Go Yoo Han appreciation post. Lol.

Red, Orange, Yellow, Yellowish-Green, Green, Turquoise, Blue, Indigo, Purple, Plum.

Ten colors in total. The ones set by Go Yoo Han as the basic standard. Like the colors in the world I see.

White, Snow White, Light Gray, Silver Gray, Moon Gray, Cement Gray, Dolphin Gray, Shark Gray, Black.

I’m sure that from the point of black and white, he already knows these colors.

I can’t stay still so I get up from my seat. I’m thinking of taking a look at the SNS pictures I got from crawling, but my PC won’t turn on. Even if it’s an MBR virus, the power button would turn on. (MBR: Master Boot Record, area containing boot-related information such as the OS at the beginning of the hard disk). Looking at the back of the PC, I understand what happened. My aunt took out the power cord. There is no black cord connecting from the PC to the power outlet. That was the method I used for searching people even during vacation.

She didn’t just ignorantly cut the power cord; she removed the cord and took it with her to her company. I can’t do anything until aunt comes back.

I’m annoyed so I stand up again and notice a piece of paper sticking out from beneath the keyboard. It’s a double-folded A4, when I unfold it, I see a list of two words written in a line, separated by a slash. The first word is composed of alphabet and numbers, and the second one is in English, Korean or a mix of the two.

At first glance the first word looks like an ID, the second one like a nickname. I think I may have stumbled upon something she found and tried to cover up. I look all the way through it and find it at once.

{eerilove / yiriring}

It had other strange IDs and nicknames, but this one was my mom’s ID and nickname. Yoo Yi Ri. My mom wrote her unique name without hiding it, on the other hand aunt doesn’t like her name, Yoo Yi Rang. I look at the other nicknames, they have some words that seem particularly visible like mono, chromat, blind, colorless.

Why are those words in the nicknames and IDs? And then I see these two nicknames and understand:

{ehehehr / [manager] dododok}

{njkim77 / monowife}

The list seems to have people from a site related to mono. Does this have anything to do with what aunt was trying to say yesterday? I use my phone to look up some of the most unique nicknames. I find some of them running blogs or on social media, others don’t appear much of anywhere. What they all have in common is a mono community called “Gray Scale”. Recent activity has been very slow. Even if I sign in, I can’t read properly because my membership is low-level, and I can only see the title*. *I feel you, Yeon Woo, three months it took me to level up in the BTS fancafe, and then, a year later Weverse came:’)

Guessing from the forum title, the café became full of spam since the manager disappeared and the members who were left, fled. I’ve been crawling for several years now, and seeing café posts is easy. Security isn’t. Hacking into the portal site is punishable by law. There is a very legitimate way of seeing the posts, though*. For most café writings, search is set to default. Therefore, if the setting isn’t changed on purpose, you can enter through a search and access it. *THREE YEARS TOO LATE, YEON WOO.

Even if I’m not allowed to see it directly because of the low rating in the café, I copy the title and search for it, and it comes up. So, I look into some of the posts. Mainly, the activities of the key members of the café stopped at some point. In particular, the manager ‘dododok’, disappeared. There were other operators, but overall, the café seems to be inactive. I look over a few more posts on the site becoming a ghost café. And then I look for some of the more unique nicknames from the paper I found in the café search. A few articles were posted. I get a bit annoyed because the title says ‘Notice’, but since it’s marked as an announcement, I can look through it without going through the portal search. The announcement does not have the IDs, but only the nicknames are listed. It’s not different from the list on the A4 paper. The post is full of comments saying they were looking forward to it, I go up again and check the date. It was written six years ago. Mom disappeared 3 years ago.

It was a list of attendees and hopefuls for a get-together.

Aunt doesn’t come back until late at night. There is quite a limit to rummaging through a phone. In particular, when using the GET method, some information might become visible by modifying it a little, but on mobile, a pop-up appears, and you have to report it. It makes it hard to work on a packet. *I’m guessing he’s working on his mobile data, so. Hard. Yeon Woo genius, me stupid. It’s all I can say.

(Get method: is used to request data from a specified resource.) *I honestly… One of Yeon Woo’s hacker tricks.

(Packet: data forwarding units for network communication.) *data package, basically.

I go through the café on my cellphone and eventually give up. The crawling program doesn’t have a mobile interface so I can’t even look through today’s pictures. I think about going to a PC room, but all the necessary configurations are too cumbersome to do again.

When my aunt doesn’t contact me for a long time, I look for the right power cord amongst other things in the house. I’m thinking about just going out to buy one when the door suddenly opens.

“Yeon Woo, give me dinner!”

My aunt says this as she runs to her room. I want to ask about the A4 I found under the keyboard, but she passes by too fast. Does she think her nephew is some kind of maid? As soon as she sees me, she asks for food!

Well, humans are food-making animals, anyhow*. Next time, I’ll just apply for a dinner at school, Jung Joo Haeng and Kang Min Jae seem to do so. *Plato who? I only know Choi Yeon Woo.

I make soybean paste soup with enoki mushrooms and take out some seaweed and kimchi. Since I’m so bored, I was thinking of baking some spam, but I see my aunt dragging her suitcase out. Perhaps because the big suitcase is empty, she throws it on the floor with one hand. Aunt, this is an apartment. Don’t do that if you don’t want the noise between the floors to kill you. I try to bring up the rules of living in an apartment, but my aunt sits down to eat without any side dishes and she’s eating in such a hurry, I miss the timing to speak.

Suddenly she raises her head and says:

“My life insurance recipient is you.”

She suddenly makes such a confession. It’s the same repertoire as always. Whenever she has to travel somewhere far for a long time, she talks like this. She buries her head back into her bowl.

“Where are you going to die?”

At those words, my aunt, who was drinking the soup, puts down the bowl and looks at me carefully. And she swallows the rice without chewing it properly. I wonder if I should hurry up and eat too.

“I’ll be on the island for a month to cover the story.”

“One month?”

It’s usually for two weeks at the most, but she constantly complains she’s called the maknae. So maybe now that she’s more experienced she gets longer trips?

“I’ll be back alive.”

I start eating the rice with the soybean paste soup, I don’t touch the seaweed, I only eat the kimchi.

“Eat seaweed too.”

“…”

“I’m going to eat a lot of seafood if I go.”

“Is seaweed considered seafood?”

“Of course it is! Our Yeon Woo, you have to eat well! There are a lot of living expenses and pocket money in your account too.”

“Ah, auntie, wait a sec.”

I have the A4 with the IDs and nicknames, what auntie tried to say yesterday and Go Yoo Han in my head. My head is a mess, but I can’t tell my aunt who is preparing to go after eating so hurriedly.

“Which insurance company is this you say?”

In the end, I can’t bring up either of the three topics, so I make a joke. Aunt eats all the soup and the rice and gets up from her seat.

“It’s in the second drawer of my desk! Well, our company has group insurance, so make sure to get on that!”

“Don’t talk as if you’re going to die.”

“Choi Yeon Woo.”

I look at my aunt because she calls my name for no reason. There are all kinds of thoughts in my head, but aunt seems to be thinking only of work. I envy such a simple way of living.

“The power cord is also in my desk drawer. But I’d rather you just play games! Don’t go through other people’s private lives for nothing!”

“Ah, I get it.”

“And Yeon Woo-ya…”

My aunt stands on the entrance with her suitcase and looks at me. If you have something to say, say it quickly. She was acting as if she had no time until just now. She looks at my face carefully then slaps my chest with the back of her hand.

“I’ll be back for your birthday!”

Then she leaves loudly with her empty suitcase. What she said earlier is what she always says no matter where she goes. Who gets a life insurance in their 30s. It’s useless. But my aunt did. She got the insurance a year after mom disappeared. My aunt filled mom’s absence rationally. I’m not ready to do so yet.

The power cord is in my aunt’s drawer, fortunately, I don’t have to go out to buy one. I plug the cord in and turn the computer on. All the photos gathered today are swept to the size of thumbnails, I don’t have time to watch the videos.

I go into the café and look at the posts I can see. Most of them open with external search queries. I crawl all the URLs and automatically post questions from external users. I go through dozens of tabs, bookmarking everything except unnecessary posts or spam. I focus on the get-together post from six years ago. There was an additional post from the get-together, but no picture. Looking through the comments, it seems a picture was uploaded and then deleted. If I had a high-level membership, I wouldn’t have to go through all this work! I think about mom’s ID and type it out. What would she use as a password? I take out her cellphone but there’s no way to find out her password because she didn’t use i-PIN authentication at all. *Frustrated Yeon Woo is frustrated. Frustration is contagious, it seems. CAN SOMEONE GIVE HIM SOME DAMN INFORMATION FOR CRYING OUT LOUD. HAH!

What I find is that not everyone who expressed their interest in the meeting were present. There were people who attended without notice, and people who missed the meeting even though they had confirmed their presence. There’s no way to confirm if mom was there. The people who were there without a doubt were the café managers dododok and monowife, monowife left a long after-post about the get-together. Unfortunately, there’s no specific mention of mom in it.

The one phrase that pops out is “It was so nice to meet you all, unnies*!” *Unnie is the term a woman uses to refer to her older sister, it can also be used by women to refer to female friends who are older than them. I left the phonological term here, because it’s clear she’s using the term in the second case.

One good thing is that this monowife person used to promote the joint purchase of learning supplies for mono children, so there’s a contact information in her post. In addition, the study supplies were the mono-adapted Ishihara inspection tables. A regular Ishihara test is a picture of various round dots with different colors, where a number can be seen when a particular color is connected. Mono can’t see the numbers, but they can distinguish the difference in brightness. On the other hand, there is also a test made by mixing colors, but with different brightness. Monos can read the numbers from that test, and regular color-seeing people can’t. So, basically, it is a toy that created a situation opposite to the one of the color blindness test paper and sold to teach mono children and ordinary children to recognize each other’s differences, and that seeing colors and not seeing them are not obstacles, but differences in ability.

When I first saw it, I was not impressed. But mom had a blast with it. I think she bought it for me as an excuse to play with it herself.

I try to look for the items the person called monowife pushed for joint purchase at home. When I get out the box of old toys, there’s only paper inside, so I can’t check if it was the same thing. However, I think I can still use this as an excuse to contact them. If they still have the same contact information.

If there is one thing I learned about people while searching for mom is that sympathy is short living, but inconvenience lasts for a long time. The favor asked by the families of missing people really is a favor. It is naïve to think that other people can understand my sadness and my pain. For that TV show, many people meet my aunt for the first time, only pseudo-believers think it worth it to pay a life for a life.

Before, I couldn’t understand why people refused to recognize my appeal for help for my mother’s disappearance in such a cold manner, or without hiding their apprehension. But soon I understood. It’s because I’m a stranger to those people.

Sympathy stays for a very short time, but discomfort hangs behind your back and won’t fall off.

*he means people soon find the requests of info or help troublesome, or bothersome. They don’t want to help, because it disrupts their peacefulness. Indeed, sympathy lasts for a short time, but annoyance dances around quite a lot.

At that moment, I save the contact info in my phone, but I can’t contact them. My surroundings have been so hectic lately, is not easy to face emptiness again. The sudden appearance of my probe, my aunt who won’t tell me things, the changed environment. If you have hope, you will only end up disappointed. More than a few times, I’ve held onto hope about my mom, only to lose it again. Maybe they won’t answer the phone, maybe the number has changed. I’m the one asking for a favor anyways, and it’s already too late at night. I slowly put down my cellphone and go into bed.

Tomorrow after school, I’ll make that phone call.

When Aunt comes back, I’ll transfer schools.

Tomorrow when I see Go Yoo Han… I don’t know what I’ll do.

-

Resilience. There’s that word. Being resilient is literally like recovering from a very desperate situation. I don’t think I’m good at resilience. By comparison, aunt is no joke. She can see a horrible accident and eat right after. Sometimes I wonder if she lives to eat. Well, we can’t starve ourselves anyways.

When I arrive at school, Go Yoo Han is sleeping with his head on his arms. I think I’ll wake Go Yoo Han up after saying hello to Jung Joo Haeng and Kang Min Jae. Jung Joo Haeng looks between me and Go Yoo Han for no reason.

“Oh hu.”

He sighs then pats me on the shoulder.

“I’ve been friends with him since elementary school, so I apologize in his stead.”

“Why?”

“Because he’s a thoughtless bastard.”

“Why am I thoughtless?”

I thought Go Yoo Han was deep asleep, but he intervenes in the conversation. Jung Joo Haeng asks:

“What’s inside your head?”

“Choi Yeon Woo 90%, school meals 10%.”

“Oh hu.”

Jung Joo Haeng shakes his head. I get nervous listening to Go Yoo Han’s voice. I turn my head slowly and see him wearing his mask. I wonder if I really hurt his feelings yesterday that’s why he didn’t return to the classroom. He doesn’t seem to be smiling.

“My Yeon Woo, are you disappointed because school meals take up 10%?”

And after auntie, Go Yoo Han’s level of resilience seems very good. When our eyes meet his eyes crinkle slowly and his cheekbones go up.

“How come you’re so pretty today too?”

“I’m not pretty.”

I guess he’s okay since he’s telling me I’m pretty even today. Still, I can’t see the color chart that bothered me yesterday. Instead, I see a printout of something. Go Yoo Han takes the printout and puts it in front of me. There’s a square box painted in it, on the side there is a ticket repeatedly written on. Under the box, there are words like “Cherry Blossom Color”, “Carnation Pink” and “Rubi Color (Crimson)”.

“I didn’t know my Yeon Woo liked problem solving better than theory.”

“I’m not pretty.”

“Then it’s okay if I call you ‘My Yeon Woo’?”

“I don’t like that either.”

“Pretty and cute.”

“I’m not pretty and I’m not cute.”

After yesterday’s color chart, I wonder what this is. But he doesn’t seem to be very affected about what happened yesterday since he keeps looking at me and smiling at me. He’s a wonder. *We all agree with that statement.

“There is a color that is commonly used as a tolerance. It’s also defined in the standard. There are 131 in total.” *Guide.

Then he flips the paper over.

“I need some time to study first, so I’ll study it and then teach you.”

“Go Yoo Han, you’re studying?”

Jung Joo Haeng looks at Go Yoo Han suspiciously. Go Yoo Han answers with his eyes on the printout.

“Yesterday when I asked to have this printed according to the color standard, the man on the counter asked how many. I had several printed, but since I’s heavy I only brought mine. I can give you one if you need it.”

“No need. It doesn’t seem to be worth adding to the school plan.”

When Jung Joo Haeng refuses, Kang Min Jae, who was sitting still, shakes his head quietly. It’s good that Go Yoo Han continues talking while looking at the printout since then, but I don’t know why he’s so invested in teaching me the colors. I’m going to keep myself in check and quietly transfer in a month. More so, I am simulating the phone call to monowife and the possible responses over and over in my head.

The homeroom teacher comes in for ordinance and when he sees Go Yoo Han he asks:

“Go Yoo Han, did you give up on debuting?”

“Teacher, I’m studying.”

“Are you now?”

He tries to mock Go Yoo Han, but it goes over smoothly. The Go Yoo Han I saw for the past few days was always sleeping in class, so every time a teacher comes into the classroom and sees him awake now, they make some comment and look at him suspiciously.

Today’s lunch menu is dried radish soup and fried dumplings. There are also steamed eggs, but I don’t reach for any. Go Yoo Han sits next to me and takes his mask off before looking over at my face carefully. Then in a soft murmur I don’t know if he intends for me to listen, but I do, he says:

“I want to see your colore moving.”

Isn’t that like telling me to faint just to see my colore moving? I ignore him and continue eating. After eating, Go Yoo Han doesn’t stick around, so I follow Jung Joo Haeng and Kang Min Jae. Jung Joo Haeng goes to study at a desk inside the school’s library, it’s much quieter than in the classroom. Kang Min Jae casually takes a book from a shelf and reads it next to Jung Joo Haeng. And here I thought these two went to run around somewhere after eating.

“If you exercise right after eating you will get sick.”

I hadn’t seen Go Yoo Han come over, I guess he went back to the classroom to get the printout with the official color standard printed on it. He sits down next to me. I also want to go grab a book, but I suddenly see the box with the color chart I saw yesterday in front on me. I want to say that I told him I don’t want to see it again, but the library is so quiet, I can’t bring up the harsh words. I push the box to the side and lean down. I think about sleeping, but I can hear the sound of Go Yoo Han turning the pages of the printout over, the sound particularly loud because it’s thick.

Eventually I move my head slightly towards Go Yoo Han and look his way.

The printout has a logo that says: /Public Design Color Standard Guide/.

As if sensing my gaze, he looks towards me. I quickly pretend to be asleep, but I feel him moving.

“I told you before that your skin was only skin color, Yeon Woo.”

And then I hear the sound of the paper turning over and the sound of his fingers running over the smoothly printed paper.

“Now that I see it, it’s more of a pearl color.”

He whispers in my ear and laughs slightly. On the other side, the sound of someone deliberately clearing their throat is heard, and Go Yoo Han moves away. Strangely, I feel my ears become sort of feverish. And I wonder what pearl color is like. That’s the issue. Go Yoo Han is slowly piquing my interest. He pushes away all other thoughts from my head and fills it with interest about colors.

Like the name “probe” seems to suggest, he invades my head.

Historically, when mononervechromacy was first discovered, it was thought to be temporary hysteria symptoms. However, it turned out to be very different from color-blindness where vision is only abstract. Traditionally, color-blind people were severely affected by the light, and they suffered from cases of *glare and *anxiety, and their eyesight was very poor. But, in mononervechromacy, there is no abnormality in vision, nor sensitivity to the light. (*Glare: over-sensitivity to light. *Anxiety: the symptom of the eyeballs moving at will).

Theoretically, color-blindness results from the incorrect functioning of the cone cells, so the reaction towards light and dark stimulus is stronger. Because of that, if you can’t see color, you are sensitive to light. Yet, mononervechromacy is different. You just can’t see the colors.

Those with full color blindness were referred to as Monochromat or Achromat. Mononervechromacy as Mono-nerve-chromat. At first, the term ‘Mono’ was used for both monochromats and mononervechromats, but eventually it became a term solely used for mononervechromats. The reason of that was the discovery of ‘Probes’.

Scholars recognized mononervechromacy as a brain issue, rather than an eyesight issue. It was concluded that the sensations from the eyes were not recognized in the brain. As a result, it was hypothesized that it would be possible to recognize colors if certain parts of the brain were stimulated. The theory was stablished, but it could not be proved. Because the area that they thought should be stimulated was wrong, it’s not the area of the brain that activates when recognizing colors, but the one that is used when recognizing human faces.

The discovery of this started with the obsession of monos with probes.

TRIGGER WARNING. MURDER.

A man killed a woman. Then he preserved her body with chemicals and kept it at his house, and looked at it all day. In this bizarre incident, the killer claimed one thing, ‘If I have her, I can see heaven’.

At the time, it was thought that a lunatic was responsible, but after testing, it was proved that Monos could see colors when the part of the brain used to recognize faces was stimulated with *electrical probes. Of course, the color rush resulted in fainting. (*electrical probe: long bars used for electrical stimulation). *I will post a picture in the guide.

The stimulus that would allow a mono to see color was then on called a probe. And the name is used to refer to the person whose face gives mono a sense of color. A probe.

Perhaps because of that, even if Go Yoo Han doesn’t take off his mask, my head seems to be asleep. There is something important I have to do today at home, but the colors that Go Yoo Han showed me, which are hard to imagine again, and the pearl color he just talked about, fill my head. This is serious.

-

It’s peaceful in the afternoon. Quite peaceful.

Until the moment Go Yoo Han takes his nose out of the printout with a “Waah”, stands up, squats next to me and puts his head on my desk to look at me.

It was peaceful until he does that and mumbles under his mask:

“I want to see your colore moving.”

He’s impossible. He puts his chin on the desk, and with his head slanted he lays his cheek on top of it. I wonder what he’s going to do since his eyes are sparkling again.

“You also look pretty when I look at you like this.”

“I’m not pretty.”

He sure likes to scratch* people. *bother people, or, rub people the wrong way.

He also follows me on the way back from school. It’s an apartment complex right next door, but he walks me all the way to the entrance, looks at me through the glass with a smile clear on his face and says a violent goodbye.

“See you tomorrow. Dream of me.”

I know now why Jung Joo Haeng apologized for him. He’s a bad guy who even tries to make others dream of him.

As soon as I get home, I send aunt a home message. In the midst of that I see she’s been using our chat as a sort of notepad. I don’t know what they’re covering, but there are a lot of pictures of places that look like fish farms.

I empty my mind and slowly press the phone number of monowife. The phone rings five times until the call connects.

[“Hello?]

It’s the voice of a middle-aged woman. She’s not even in front of me, but I automatically sit up and fix my posture.

“Hello, this is Choi Yeon Woo, 2nd year high school student of XX school. Is the phone call okay?” *He’s speaking very formally here; in the last part he basically asks if he is not inconveniencing her with his call.

I say that in the same way aunt does when she makes a phone call for job. She says “Hello, this is Yoo Yi Rang, producer of OOO’s Hunt for the Truth. Is the phone call okay?”.

[“High school?”]

“Yes. Just in case, my mother’s name is Yoo Yi Ri.”

[“Ah.”]

I stop talking at that moment because she seems to know something. There is a lot of noise coming over the phone. I can hear the Subway Information Broadcast. There is a rustling sound and the noise decreases a little.

[“Yoo Yi Ri unnie”]

She calls her name like this over the phone, and then the noise comes back.

[“I’m sorry but, I can’t tell you more than what I already told Yoo Yi Rang PD when she called. I’m sorry.”]

She says this and ends the call. If my aunt called her, then she already knew what there was to know. Just as I am writing a long text message, my aunt calls me.

“Mm.”

[“You, you, Choi Yeon Woo!”]

Aunt’s voice bursts loudly over the phone, I take the phone away from my ear.

[“How did you call Kim Hyeon Joo?!”]

The phone call I made to monowife, was to a middle-aged woman called Kim Hyeon Joo. And they have the sort of relationship in which as soon as the phone call was over, aunt called me.

[“I told you to stop looking for my sister! I told you to stop!”]

If there are things a person can’t do, there are also things they can’t stop doing. You need energy to start new things, but you also need energy to stop things. This is something you know just by learning physics, but aunt… keeps telling me to stop.

“Aunt, you don’t tell me anything.”

[“When everything is clearer, I will tell you everything! When it’s all organized!”]

“When will it be clear?”

[“You. If I wasn’t in an island, I would take everything away. Do you also want me to cut your cellphone line?”]

“So, you’re gonna cut me off? If you can’t contact me you will be the one feeling lost.”

[“……”]

My answer leaves my aunt at a loss for words. Earlier during the phone call with monowife I could hear the noise of the city as background, now on the phone call with aunt, I can’t hear anything at all. Instead, she breathes deeply and then I hear the sound of her spitting out.

[“How come you are so much like your mom?”]

“Of course I am similar to my mom.”

[“Threatening the people you love with affection.”]

She cuts the words one by one to emphasize them.

[“Just. The. Same.”]

Then she ends the call.

As soon as the call ends, I feel a wave of regret. Aunt and I get anxious and worried when we can’t contact each other, we’re always afraid something like the day mom disappeared will happen again. And I brought it up. That was also a day when nothing happened. In the end, I decide to temporarily suspend sending a long text to monowife to ask for help.

Instead, I write aunt a long apology message.

[Auntie, I’m sorry. I tried to negotiate with you by talking about not contacting each other. It’s because I’m young and immature. I’m sorry. I know you worry a lot when you can’t reach me. But I got angry and brought up something I shouldn’t have.

There was a paper with IDs and nicknames under the keyboard. I found the Grey Scale café. I just wanted to know if mom attended a get-together six years ago… When mom disappeared, aunt, you contacted people from her elementary school, middle school, high school and college. I was young and after the phone calls, I cut up the list.

I also wanted to be of help, that became my greed. I’m sorry.]

Then I send the message. Aunt reads it but chews on it. *she doesn’t answer for a while.

[If we’re okay ㅇ, If I’m in trouble ㄴ]

Since there’s no reply, I send her that to get at least a short answer. She reacts very emotionally to it.

[Auntie: ㅗ]

***

I’m in a bad mood even while going to school in the morning. Aunt didn’t contact me anymore, and there’s nothing else I can investigate from the Grey Scale café. There are no signs of mom in any picture I crawled from social media. It’s a spring day, but it’s still cold, so you’re left feeling like a cotton swab in water.

As soon as I open the classroom door our eyes meet.

It’s Go Yoo Han. It can’t be like this unless it’s Go Yoo Han.

There’s a rough, soil-like light coming from the desk. And the kids’ uniforms have a sandpaper-like energy. There is no way that all sorts of light can rush into my eyes from here and there any other way.

He always wears his mask well, but on a day like this, he knocks a person out as soon as they open the door.

-

Humans are animals who adapt. I am also one of them. Now that it’s my third color rush, my head hurts less. Before, it felt as if my head was full of water and that my eyes would pop. Now, it’s as if there’s only half a splash of water in my head.

When I open my eyes, I am familiar with the bed. The nurse’s office. I am getting used to the pink of the nurse’s pillow. I can also see Go Yoo Han wearing his uniform and his mask in front of me.

“Carnation pink.”

Go Yoo Han points to the pillow I’m grasping and says that.

“Is more of a carnation pink than a simple pink.”

“…is that the name of the color?”

Go Yoo Han blinks at my question. Then I start seeing his eyes as something other than the dolphin gray I usually see. The color is similar to the light coming from the desks earlier. The difference now is that his eyes are shining with tears.

“I couldn’t eat breakfast today and just when I was eating something, you came in, Yeon Woo.”

“Are you saying it’s my fault?”

I answer like that since I’m already in a bad mood. I know it myself, it’s ugly. All of this because aunt blocked mom’s traces right in front of my eyes. And because I’m like a child. I know it can’t be helped. I’m like a child. But I shouldn’t vent my anger out on Go Yoo Han who didn’t do anything wrong.

“Ah, is my Yeon Woo complaining because he didn’t get to eat a bit?”

“…no.”

I don’t know where he gets the idea my sulky reaction was because he didn’t give me any food. I take my hands off the pillow he told me is carnation pink. My head hurts less, but it’s not good to have a color rush like this in the morning. Also, the color I was getting used to as pink, is actually carnation pink. Go Yoo Han looks at me as if it is fun to watch me tear down the pillow.

“You’re also pretty when you’re whining because you’re hungry.”

“I’m not pretty. And I’m not whining.”

“Ah, also, our uniform really is watermelon color. In the color list, there’s the word watermelon color.”

“You mean the pants?”

“Mm. The summer pants are more of a darker evergreen color.”

I don’t know because I haven’t seen the color of my summer pants.

“Are the two very different?”

“It’s almost the same. I have to compare them or touch them to know whether they are winter uniform or summer uniform.”

“What color is evergreen?”

“Kang Min Jae was wearing his summer pants today, should I borrow them?”

I don’t know how you’re supposed to borrow the pants someone else is using. Go Yoo Han seems to be having fun when I talk to him. What’s unfortunate is that his eyes are crinkling and I can’t see them well. When I reach my hand toward his eyes, he shuts them tightly.

“Surprised?”

“That’s because it’s the first time you’ve ever tried to touch me.”

Touch?

No, it was to hit… No, it was to make you open your eyes bigger. I don’t know why I reached out. The previous time too, after the color rush, I became obsessed with the color chart and couldn’t get my act together. I don’t know why I am obsessing over the color of Go Yoo Han’s eyes. Then, the light on things starts to slowly weaken. It’s decoloring. My heart starts to feel impatient.

I pull back my hand. Go Yoo Han opens his frowning eyes.

“Your eye color.”

“Sparkly.”

Go Yoo Han blinks exaggeratedly as he says this. Are all trainees crazy? Or is it Go Yoo Han who’s crazy? How could you do and say something like that?

“What color is that?”

“Are you curious? You’re curious, right? Are you going to be curious? My Yeon Woo is finally paying me attention.”

“No.”

“You’re not curious?”

“I’m curious.”

I’m not curious about Go Yoo Han, it’s just that that eye color is not dolphin gray. It’s so much brighter than dolphin gray. Actually, it’s closer to the brightness of moon gray… It feels similar to the color of the desks earlier. The problem is, this color wasn’t on the color chart Go Yoo Han showed me before. It’s not plum, nor turquoise and neither red. Just what color is that?

“My Yeon Woo is finally interested in me.”

“Tell me quickly.”

Eventually, my hand goes out first. Fortunately, it doesn’t go towards his collar, but towards his chest. *if you say so :3

Go Yoo Han’s eyes grow in surprise and then go back to their regular size. I can see his cheekbones rising slightly. He grabs the mask with one hand and bows his head towards mine. When all I can see is Go Yoo Han’s face, he slowly takes the mask off. Especially since his extremely black hair falls like a wall, I can’t see anything besides Go Yoo Han’s eyes.

The world that was slowly losing its light due to decoloring, starts shining again. Like Go Yoo Han’s eyes. I want to see more, but I start getting the sense of water bubbling inside my head and my eyes burning, so I have to close my eyes. The voice of Goo Yoo Han who isn’t wearing a mask, slowly comes into my head, as if it’s flowing down my ear.

“Caramel color.”

Ah, so that’s why. The reason why Go Yoo Han’s eyes stick to me whenever they see me.

Caramel.

*Oh my God. Give me a second to scream, please.

A cube-shaped candy that comes in a transparent bag. Until now I’ve always eaten it without issues, but now that I know that’s the color of Go Yoo Han’s eyes, I think it will be harder for me to eat it. Still, when I think of caramel, the water that was bubbling inside my head becomes like a soft cotton blanket, and the heat that was burning my eyes turns into the pleasurable sensation of sunlight that makes you want to take a nap.

This is the most pleasant color rush I’ve had so far.

*YES. I AM CRYING NOW. OMG.