Seeing Red

            I walked all afternoon.  I couldn’t bear the idea of going inside, now that I could see everything around me with new eyes.  It was the middle of May and everything was coming to life: the trees were blossoming with white and pink petals, the flowers were blooming in a rainbow of hues, the gardens were covered with green sprouts.  Rivers of blue water rushed down the waterways and I dug around the beach, looking for white and peach shells.  Then I collected some brown and red rocks, holding them up in the sunlight, watching as flecks of light reflected off them. 

            And I remembered Eunhyuks words.  The colors you see when you touch your soulmate the first time are dim compared to what you will see when the two of you finally kiss.  This wasn’t color in all of its brilliance, I realized.  There was more, although I couldn’t image how seeing could get better than it already was.

            I walked along the park paths until it was dark out.  I won’t even begin to describe my reaction to seeing the sun set the first time.  My only consolation was that I was alone because I wept like a baby.  I’d never seen something so beautiful in my life: the purple and pink clouds in the orange sky, with the blazing golden sun sinking behind the trees.  I took my cellphone out and tried to take a picture.  That was the first time I realized that sometimes a picture just can’t capture what you are actually seeing.  The light was too bright too be pictured properly and it drowned out the colors around it.  But it’s fine.  It is engraved in my memory and I’ll never forget it.

            When it was pitch black out, I finally forced myself to go home, if only to look at my room for the first time.  My parents could see color and told me that my room was decorated blue.  As it turned out, I liked it.  In the days to come, since it was the weekend and I had nothing better to do, I tried on all my clothes and realized that my favorite color was navy blue. 

            My mother figured out that I’d met my soulmate within a day or two because of this.  She saw me obsessively looking at everything and looking at myself in the mirror and it dawned on her. 

            “Who is she?” she asked me in private, standing in the doorway of my room. 

            “Who?” I asked, turning towards my open door.

            “Your soulmate,” she quietly said, pointing to my pile of clothes sitting on the bed.  “You’re suddenly color coordinating your clothes.”

            I smiled to myself as I fixed my sweater in the mirror.  “You’ll be disappointed to find out it’s a he,” I explained.  “Although I’m still rather shocked about it myself…and he’s probably never going to go out with me, since I shoved him.  That’s how I found out.”

            My mother’s brows rose.

            “Which part are you more shocked about?”

            “My rude son’s behavior!”

            I nodded.  “Yeah…I was upset because he was chosen to be the lead actor in the play instead of me.  Wasn’t my best moment.”

            My mother crossed her arm over her chest.  “What are you going to do?”

            I shook my head.  “I don’t know.”

            “You could apologize.”

            I grimaced.  “I hate doing that.”

            My mother walked into my room, stopped beside me, and then smacked me in the back of the head.  Hard.  “I don’t care if you hate doing it.  Even if he wasn’t your soulmate, that’s not the kind man I raised you to be.”

            “Right.  Sorry,” I said, rubbing the back of my head. 

            “You’re saying that to the wrong person.”

            “I don’t even think that he’ll talk to me.”

            “Did you get a part in the play?”

            I nodded.

            “Well, eventually you’ll have to work together.  I assume you can’t put on a play together without speaking at some point.  Besides, he will be bound to be as curious as you are about the fact that you’re soulmates—eventually—you might as well start a conversation with him.  Do you have any classes with him?”

            “Math.”

            “Good, your best subject.  Sit next to him tomorrow and try to talk to him.”

            I thought my mother was nuts, but I couldn’t quit thinking about Ryeowook.  I was curious about why he was supposedly my soulmate when clearly I would have assumed he’d make a better arch