Nothing really quietened the voices. Not until her.
10 years old
The room around him was clean. Simple. Each item, carefully placed. He didn’t quite understand why; he simply knew it had to be like that. Something would pinch him, an ant biting the skin, not quite painful enough for him to cry out, but just enough to notice. It would pinch him again and again until it suddenly stopped.
Calm.
The chair on which he sat was exactly two steps from the bed. His bed, exactly three steps from the door. The blue pencil on his desk lay parallel to the red one. The yellow one sat between them.
Wrong.
His fingers trembled over the pencils.
Yet, the pinching would always stop at one time. Even if everything was a mess. Even if he couldn’t get it right. Even if it didn’t work! Even if nothing worked! Even if—
A soft knock came from the window.
Sullyoon stood on the other side of the glass, balanced carefully on the adjoining balcony ledge. A yellow raincoat swallowed her small body. Wet strands of dark hair stuck to her cheeks. In one hand, she held strawberry milk. In the other, a thin picture book.
He opened the window.
“You’re going to fall.”
“I haven’t fallen yet.”
“That doesn’t mean you won’t.”
“You sound like my mother.”
She clambered through and immediately moved the chair.
One step from the bed. His stomach tightened.
“Sullyoon.”
“What?”
“The chair.”
She looked behind herself.
“Oh.”
She returned it to its place. Not perfectly. A few centimetres to the left.
Something pinched him again.
Before he could fix it, she pushed the picture book into his hands. Its cover showed a painted sky filled with long strips of colour.
“My teacher gave me this. It’s French.”
“You don’t speak French.”
“Neither does she.”
He examined the title.
‘L’arc-en-ciel.’
“What does it mean?” Sullyoon asked.
He shrugged.
Outside, the rain began to slow down. Raindrops crawled down the glass, colliding into one another before disappearing from the edge. Sunlight slipped between the apartment buildings. The grey clouds began to open. Colours spread across the sky, their special order, always the same.
Red. Orange. Yellow. Green. Blue. Indigo. Violet.
Sullyoon pressed her face against the glass.
“It looks like the book cover.”
He held it beside the window.
L’arc-en-ciel. Rainbow.
She looked towards the chair, still sitting slightly out of place.
“Does that bother you?”
“Yes.”
“What about the rainbow?”
He studied it. The curve was uneven. One side appeared brighter than the other. It didn’t fit between the buildings.
“No.”
“Why?”
He didn’t know.
Sullyoon took a loud sip from her strawberry milk.
“Maybe some things are allowed to be messy.”
“They’re in the same order.”
She considered this.
“Maybe some things are allowed to be both.”
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