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red: (adj.) of a color at one extreme end of the visible spectrum, as of blood, fire, and rubies.
He hadn’t yet come to terms with the color red, but he soon would. Red was the color of pain, and of the scarf of the one person he called his friend. Had called his friend. She was… He refused to follow that particular train of thought. It’s been two years, he thought to himself. I should just let it go, and move on. But he knew in his mind and heart that he wouldn’t, and he hated that about himself. He was a weak-willed person who knew he wasn’t able to forget the memory of the girl with the scarf of the bright hue, the same as the color of the setting August sun, the brightest red he knew he would ever see. It was under that same sun that he had roughly shoved the girl away, called her an “annoyance”, walked alone. If only he hadn’t done such a thing then maybe she wouldn’t have…
(His mind was filled with endless ‘if only’s: If only I had turned back. If only I had paid more attention. If only I had stopped to see how she was actually feeling, seeing past her smile that was plastered on for everyone else, if only, if only, if only...)
The girl loved to make paper cranes. She made them out of his tests, always perfect scores, smiling and laughing (sadly? He didn’t know) at her less-than-great test scores. Whenever the two received papers back, she would always make a paper crane. She would often leave them on his desk. He would never tell her (nor would he have the chance to), but he kept them all. There were hundreds lining the top shelf of his closet collecting dust. He rarely looked at them, for fear of falling apart (a joke, in his opinion; a quiet voice in his head told him he already had). On particularly bad days, he would laugh at the cruel trick that life had played on him; of all the origami she could have made with his tests, she chose to make paper cranes.
(There is symbolism attached to the origami paper crane; it is said to represent long life. Folding 1000 of them, according to legend, allows the folder to grant one wish, or they are given eternal good luck, part of which includes extended lifespan.)
He tried to block out the world after she disappeared. It wasn’t the same to him if he couldn’t see the out of place red scarf he’d grown so accustomed to. Life seemed somewhat bland, and he refused to go outside. He was apathetic before he met the girl, and after her disappearance, nothing appealed to his interests except for things he could find or do online. The most activity he did was to occasionally leave his room and wander around the house aimlessly, and even that tired him. His life consisted of his computer and music, and that was what his world revolved around. Without the former he was nothing and he would die, or that was what he told himself to pass the days by. He had told himself the same thing for two years.
(The red jacket that the girl had chosen for him hung on his wall. It was the brightest thing in his room other than his computer, and sometimes he would look at it, but he would never put it on.)
His IQ of 168 was useless to him now; all he needed was his near-photographic memory, said to be a “side effect” of his above genius intelligence quotient. Each time he remembered her, it felt like a stab to his heart, but he refused to forget her in fear that he would forget her throughout the mundane activities of his everyday life. There was no easier way to do this, in his opinion, than to constantly find little bits of the color he hated: the color red.
(He hadn’t yet come to terms with the color red, but he soon would.)
(The girl watched him from the far away place she was; a never ending loop of the way it felt to fly from the top of a school building, the way it felt to be Icarus as he fell. She shook her head, and wished with all her heart that the boy she knew would someday be able to move on. Her eyes glowing a brighter red than the blood in her veins, her scarf blew in the wind, blazing trails of red against the setting scarlet sky.)