1. Blue
the fifty shades of blue -
Kai has been Hilalry's friend for ten years, her reluctant chauffeur throughout the four years of Arts School, and her neighbor for three; so he thinks he knows her well enough to realize when something's bothering her.
And Hillary paints when something is bothering her.
He leans against the door leading into Hillary's living room with his arms crossed and watches the scene in front of him. He had come to pick her up on their walk to the Dojo, as was their weekend routine; and had expected her to be having coffee, or raging around the room talking to some clients on the phone about how 'Cyan would bring out the decore if with a slightly lighter shade of green than lime' – whatever.
Whatever.
He had not, however, expected her to be in her pajamas at seven fucking P.M, staring at an empty canvas with a paint brush that looked as if it has been colored and washed and colored and then washed again and again and again –
– But not a single dot on the canvas.
Kai knows Hillary paints when something is bothering her; but this seems different. Not only is she throwing off her beloved work-life balance out the window by painting on a Sunday evening – she is also failing at it.
As he walks into her line of sight, and she only glazes a look at him before staring back at the canvas with knitted eyebrows, and he thinks, This is a crisis.
And suddenly, he finds himself worried for her instead. He glances through the open kitchen door and – just as he'd suspected – sees no stoves open, or dishes spread, or a mug under the coffee machine.
"You haven't eaten." He comments in a monotone. It's only when she shrugs offhandedly and he starts to move towards the kitchen to fetch her something, that she finally speaks.
"Don't – I think I'm coming down with something."
He raises his eyebrow at her in disbelief. Minus the lazy, slept-in clothes, a loosely tied bun, the dark bags under her eyes – all the tell tale signs of a sleepless night – she looked perfectly healthy.
The only thing wrong with this woman is that she refuses to see a shrink.
And because Kai knows Hillary, he also knows that look in her eyes – it's the same one she sported the morning after an allnighter when she would show up at his door, begging him to drive her to an exam because she was too dizzy from not eating out of stress, and that had made her nauseous, which in turn had kept her from sleeping all night –
And Kai sighs and walks over to the coffee table to pick an apple just as Hillary stomps in the background. He senses what's coming, and it's something along the lines of 'Kai, I really, really really regret taking two extra courses, why didn't you fucking stop me?!' or 'Kai, it took fifteen extra minutes to finish this design and I'm gonna fucking die.' or 'Kai, I had a dream that I was pregnant and then I woke up and saw that I'm two fucking days late for my period and I want to cry, I don't want a child right now it's not on my fucking schedule for another 5 years.' or –
"Kai, I realized something the other day, and I haven't been able to concentrate ever since."
He hears her put her paintbrush on the stand with a loud slam! Before he can tell her, Save it for the walk, we're running late, she starts one of her rants where she tells him what he already knows –
"I'm so anxious. I stayed up two nights just thinking about it! And you know I get nauseous when I'm sleep-deprived, so now I can't eat...I can't eat because I can't sleep, and I can't sleep because I can't stop thinking about – Fuck you!"
He turns to find her pointing accusingly at his amused expression, "I hate you. I hate this."
"Catch." Is all he says, before throwing the apple at her – she manages to grab it mid-air. Still in the midst of her minor temper-slash-anxiety tantrum, she throws him an irritated look. He rolls his eyes.
"Eat. They're easier to keep down." Is all he says, "Now, enough theatrics. Ray's making Chinese. Go get dressed."
"Don't boss me around." She snaps at him, biting into the apple, holding his gaze with a mock-angry one of her own; but even from across the room Kai knows she's more panicky than she is angry – there's a joking undertone in her next words.
"I'm feeling very sensitive."
Kai has seen her panic about way too many things over the years, and she gets it out of her system by ranting to someone – usually him because they're always in each other's space – and eventually talks her own self into a solution. Kai just witnesses without interfering – which is why he finds himself looking around the room for a coat or scarf instead, fully intent on dragging her out of the house now; it doesn't seem like she will change out of her pajamas and he figures she can talk herself into a solution on the way to the Dojo.
But when she very cautiously says, "You might even say that I'm feeling...blue." he finds his eyes flickering from the coat hanger in the corner of the room and back to her.
"What are you – "
And only then does Kai follow her gaze to where she's physically placed her current and ongoing crises – at the paint bottles lined against one another on the table stretched against the wall next to her.
At least fifty paint bottles.
All of them a shade of blue.
It is enough to make him walk closer to where she stands and stare incredulously. Lighter shades, medium shades, darker shades, some an indiscrimination between blue and purple while others between blue and white; and every shade in between.
His confused eyes flicker from Hillary to the bottles. He thinks he'd have to wait at least ten more years to see her finally losing it –
So, Kai says the only thing that comes to his mind. "Hils, what the fuck is this."
Because he knows Hillary's obsession with colors, textures, prints and patterns – she was a professional interior designer after all – and because he's hung out with her throughout their shared community college classes and study nights the annoying way with which she memorizes everything out loud , he knows one thing: she probably had to make half of those shades herself because it's not even fucking possible to buy all the shades of any color in the market.
So Kai finds all of... this utterly fucking ridiculous. All of this effort – and for what?
Hilary attempts to explain her trepidation, "Okay, so I have all of the shades of blue, but I don't know what to make from them. It's too much, Kai."
"No shit." He retorts. He wants to hear what she is thinking, knowing fully well how ridiculous it would be.
"I mean," She continues without reacting to him, "There are so many shades. I didn't realize there'd be so many when I got down to making them."
She looks away just enough to hide her face in her bangs, something Kai knows she does when she is nervous, and continues, "And what do they even mean? Like, I know that the lighter shades are, you know, calmness, and peace and understanding."
She speaks the last few words in the tone of one of the yoga teachers on her mindfulness meditation apps, and it's enough to make him roll his eyes again.
"And I know that the darker shades of blue are for power and strength and confidence. I know this means expertise and that means coldness and depression and depth and – "
"Hillary. Shut up."
He barely resists the urge to grab his head in frustration after that rant; he presses the bridge of his nose instead.
"Jesus, you think too much. It's just a stupid color."
But it isn't just a stupid color, and Kai knows it. Hillary sees the entire world – her work, her relationships, her own fucking thoughts – in abstracts of colors, patterns, images. She thinks Mariam is 'spicy' enough for Max, that Kai's playlist is 'like tidal waves with Bipolar Disorder', and that babysitting Lin feels like 'volcanoes are exploding inside of my heart but in a good way'.
So whatever this is... It is not a stupid color even though it is a stupid color.
"Kai. Shut up." She mimics him, joking, her voice starting off indignant, and then softening, "It's not a stupid color. This is so much more. There are so many feelings. And everything is somehow...contradictory." She looks at him straight in the eye when she says, "I wanted to see them all. I wanted to see everything."
It's moments like this that really frustrate Kai; because he is grounded and direct and he can't fucking read her cluttered mind all the time.
So he lets out a frustrated sigh, "Hillary, stop being annoying for two seconds and tell me what the fuck is this really about."
He watches as she moves her hands from her face, nervously wraps her arms around herself, and stares down at the many shades.
To his utter surprise, he sees Hillary Tatibana blush.
"It's your favorite color, isn't it?" She mutters after a few moments of silence, finally meeting his eye for the second time that evening. "Blue. Which shade?"
He lets out an awkward, "Dark blue."
She nods. "Blue is very overwhelming and complex and contradictory. it's not just the color." She let out a deep sigh before continuing, "It's you."
Wait, what –
Kai freezes.
And it's in the middle of Hillary Tatibana's berserk-paintings-on-the-every wall type of a room, with her in her pajamas and naked feet and disproportionately tied hair, and him standing over all the right-wrong shades of blue, he hears the words he never would've imagined Hillary say.
"I think I'm in love with you."
Originally posted; 23. 5 2013
Edited: 21.8.2020
Author's note:
Wrote this mid board exams in 2013, and in 2020 mid quarantine, i wrote the next 5 or 6 chapters before going back on this one, and fixing it according to the tone of the latter ones.
Toy at color psychology. Named it while studying for physics exams - titled it Chromatic Aberration - changed now to 'Painter'. The original idea was something along the lines of psych-poetry-prose, and snippets of a love story at different stages. Sticking to exactly that concept with tweaks here and there.
