The prompt list for these (if anyone in this beyond-dead fandom is interested) is on my tumblr, which has the same penname as I do on here. Sue me. I'm a simple soul. Enjoy and whatnot. *throws a stereotypical Soulmate Color AU onto the pile and scurries away with a hiss*

June 11th, 2018

Shion's world had been grey and colorless since the day she was born. She had been okay with that, it wasn't like her options mattered on anything anyways.

But the day she met Satoshi…she ceased to stop caring.

It wasn't even immediately obvious, just the slow, subtle darkening at the corners of her vision, like the feeling of a bruise or the shading on the inside of a violet flower. Bleeding into her vision, marvelous shades of red and wine and a sharp fuchsia stain, the colors of some of the signs in the streets, and the saki in bottles, and Satoshi's beautiful, beautiful eyes. Next came the colors of the sky, the grass, the blue of Rika Furude's hair, and the day she finally saw the bright yellow of Satoshi-kun's hair, she thought her heart might burst with happiness.

But Satoshi…didn't. He saw every color but hers. Green-white colorblind, and he would "Muu…" and ruffle her hair, say to "Mion" that he thought it was because she was so close to the purity of angelic white. That he didn't care, that he loved her anyways.

But the worthless spare seemed to break everything she touched.

Mion's heart beat excitedly for the day she would see in color, and she constantly made a game of trying to see which indistinguishable shades of grey would solidify into which vibrant hue.

She'd nearly panicked when Shion met Satoshi, because great, how big of a frickin' giveaway could that be!? Starting to see colors only weeks, months, years after meeting one's soulmate? Get real!

Good thing Satoshi (forgive her, Shion) was such a ditz, and good thing he never talked about it to anyone, not that anyone in Hinamizawa would actually listen to a Hojo. Shion's cover would've been blown wide open from that first week, and Mion shuddered to think what Batcha would've done, to both of them. Mion was a willing accomplice, after all.

And then…he moved in.

Keiichi Maebara. From that very first day the soft cityboy had walked into their classroom, their unholy domain, dripping wet from the "welcome" trap Satoko had set, Mion's heart turned over in her chest. Those periwinkle eyes, meeting hers…she'd never known color could truly be so beautiful.

It was fast, after that. Mion had walked outside less than a week later and seen the sky, so big, so blue, with puffy white horsetail clouds chasing one another across that vast empty bowl, and she had stood and stared upwards for so long, filling herself with that bright, sunny view, that she was late to her and Rena and Keiichi's meeting place at the end of the road, by the mill.

She made it, though, and as they turned to walk to school, Keiichi's eyes sparkled when they met hers, and he told her about how very green the grass had been when he ran out the door.

Rika despised color.

She knew that Satoko still waited in hope for the day that her world would bloom, knew that Rena painted and drew and scribbled with unmarked colors, to hang the artwork up in her trash-heap fort and await the day when she could truly see her pieces for what they were. She knew Irie, who said he didn't mind (was that why he like maid dresses, though, so much? Because they were already black-and-white?), and she knew dozens upon dozens of villagers who never had and probably never would find their destined soulmates.

Rika would change places with them in a heartbeat.

Her world had always been in color, since the day she was born. It wasn't that she was soulmates with Hanyuu (thank Oyashiro-sama, perhaps ironically, for that), because Hanyuu had already met her soulmate centuries before, and he had died. Hanyuu herself said that Rika had been able to distinguish colors long before the goddess had made bold to introduce herself, coloring easily and correctly with crayons while the other children scribbled white suns and purple grass, orange roses and green water.

Rika had looked in the library for answers, but the Hinamizawa library was small and antiquated, more fiction than fact.

Hanyuu had told her that her ability to see color was because she didn't have a soulmate. That she had been born complete already, and didn't have an other half to find.

So Rika hated color. Every vibrant shade and hue that she saw as she opened her infantile eyes again and again, rewound back to her birth, she hated. She despised red and pink and orange and yellow, and she loathed green and blue and purple and black, and she absolutely detested grey and white and iridescence and every other color that could be named.

Because they were reminders that Rika was alone. She would always be alone, and had always been alone, and she had no soulmate to count on.

Because her world was already in color.

10.54 PM, USA Central Time