To Those Chosen by Monochrome

Please be aware that the following contains psychologically intense and potentially distressing material.

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A dim world, wrapped in sorrow no matter whether I looked right or left, forward or back.

A dim world into which I alone had wandered.

A world where I could not even read emotions such as joy, anger, sadness, or pleasure—where I could not even deceive myself into calling it “beautiful.”

It was in that terribly stagnant world that I died.

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I would like to tell you a little about my past.

About something that happened when I was still in kindergarten.

An incident of “death.”

It was a day when thick gray clouds concealed a gray sky.

I had only turned five a few weeks earlier. As usual, I came home that day in the car my father was driving.

Dad opened the child-locked rear door for me, and after somehow managing to unfasten my seat belt on my own, I hopped out of the car.

The instant my feet touched the concrete, I dashed toward the front door.

With my small, soft hands, I pushed it open and shouted from the bottom of my lungs,

“I’m hoooome!”

High heels, sandals, and dress shoes had been arranged neatly in a row, but I carelessly kicked off the dirt-stained sneakers I had been wearing.

I tossed my gray hat into a corner of the hallway and, without slowing down, ran straight for the living room where Mom was.

“Mooom!” I yelled as I burst inside.

The first thing I saw was the back of my mother, seated deep in a living-room chair with a coffee cup in one hand.

She slowly turned the chair halfway around. Looking at me with a smile, she said,

“Welcome home, Sara.”

I looked up at her face and answered again with the biggest smile I could make.

“I’m home!”

A moment later, I heard the click of the front door opening.

Hard footsteps—clack, clack, tap, tap—echoed from the floor. When they stopped, Dad finally entered the living room.

Mom looked up at him, still smiling.

“Welcome home, dear.”

Wanting to imitate her, I spun around and shouted even louder than she had,

“Welcome hoooome!!”

“...Yeah. I’m home...”

But the voice Dad gave me in return was so sunken that there was no trace of energy in it.

Confused, I peered up at his face from below.

For some reason, he looked terribly gloomy.

At that age, I had no idea why.

Only a few minutes earlier, Dad and I had been happily talking in the car.

The gentle expression I had seen in the rearview mirror.

The bright voice I had heard then.

They were different.

Everything was different.

And yet, looking back on it now, perhaps that too had been a kind of—

a kindness, in Dad’s own way.

Mom placed the coffee cup in her hand on a wooden coaster.

“Oh? What’s wrong? You look so down. Did something bad happen today?”

Dad, however, would not meet her eyes. In a low voice, he said,

“Well... it’s about this child...”

“This child.”

He meant me.

Perhaps sensing that something was wrong from his unusual demeanor, Mom remained calm and spoke in a warm voice, as if trying to sweep away every trace of anxiety.

“It’s okay. It’s all right. Take your time. Okay?”

I watched the two of them talking above my head as I approached Mom, who was still sitting in the chair with a gentle expression.

“Hey, Mom,” I called.

She lowered herself until our eyes met.

“Hmm? What is it?”

And before Dad could gather the courage to say what he needed to say, I blurted it out.

“You know, today we all drew pictures!”

“Oh! Did you?” Mom said, her expression still kind.

“Yeah! But everyone said my picture was weird.”

I reached into the bag hanging from my shoulder, pulled out a crayon drawing, and handed it to her.

The instant she saw what I had drawn, every trace of gentleness vanished from her face.

“...What is this?”

She looked away from the picture and into my eyes, blinking irregularly.

“And you know what else? Teacher said she was gonna call you later, Mom. I wonder why?”

Tilting my head, I said it too.

Straightforwardly.

Staring beyond my mother’s eyes, into something even deeper.

Then, from behind me, Dad suddenly spoke.

“...I’m sorry.”

“I’m sorry, Mari...”

This time, Mom opened her mouth.

“...Why?”

“Why are you apologizing...?”

“I’m sorry... I’m sorry... I’m sorry... I’m sorry...”

“I’m sorry... I’m sorry...”

His voice trembling, Dad apologized to Mom again and again and again and again.

For a while, “nothingness” ruled that wide room.

Then, as if shattering the flow of time that had come to a halt, Mom suddenly stood.

“M-Mom...?”

She looked into my eyes once more, her lips quivering as she slowly began to speak.

“Sara... um... your teacher, and everyone else, they...”

She bit her lower lip hard, her face twisted with pain, then turned completely away from me.

“They’re... worried...”

“No... that’s not quite right...”

“Maybe it’s... a trial you have to face in order to grow...”

“Yes...”

“Maybe... maybe it’s a trial...”

Mom pleaded into empty space, as though someone invisible to me were standing right there.

Watching her from behind, I felt fear.

Or perhaps something even more terrifying than fear.

Some unknowable force clamped my mouth shut.

Unable to speak before that overwhelming power, I watched Mom turn around and look into my eyes again.

Without saying anything, she bent forward and held both hands out to me.

Without thinking, I held mine out in return.

Our fingertips brushed.

Then Mom gently wrapped her hands around mine.

Her left hand, cold as ice.

Her right hand, blazing like fire────.

“...Why?”

“Why did they give me a... trial?”

Still holding her hands, I looked up at her face and asked.

Mom brought her lips close to my right ear.

“It’s because... Sara, you’re going to grow into someone strong and admirable. So...”

Then she pulled my tiny body against hers with all her strength.

I can still remember it vividly: for a child as small as I was, her embrace was so tight that I thought I might stop breathing against her chest.

After a few seconds, the strength in her arms slowly loosened.

I took one step back and looked at her face.

“Please...”

Her voice was so thin it sounded as though it might be crushed at any moment.

A single tear slid down her cheek.

Mom wiped it away with the hem of her clothes, then stroked my head over and over and over, as though trying to conceal the grief that had fallen upon her.

And yet I could feel nothing in that hand that deserved to be called “warmth.”

All I could feel instead was the dry ringing of the telephone, sounding endlessly through the room.

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The next day, I unexpectedly stayed home from kindergarten and went with Mom to an ophthalmologist.

For hours, I underwent all kinds of tests.

To a child as young as I was, that endless stretch of examination felt like eternity.

When everything was finally over and we were passing the time in the lobby, a nurse called us and led us into the doctor’s room.

There, the doctor told me:

“Sara, you cannot see color.”

“I’m afraid you will never be able to see color in the future, either.”

Sitting on a round stool, I simply stared.

I had no idea what the person in front of me was talking about.

Back then, I believed that the world I saw with these eyes was simply what the colors of the world looked like.

But I was wrong.

That day, for the first time, I learned that I alone was living in a colorless world.

Later examinations also revealed that I had been born with it—

a congenital condition that prevented me from seeing color.

So even if someone told me,

“This is red, that one is blue, and this one is green,”

I would not understand.

To my eyes, everything appeared only black, gray, or white.

Before that day, I had not even understood that a concept called “color” existed in this world.

At the end, the doctor told Mom:

“It’s fortunate that we discovered it early.”

──────No.

That was wrong.

The opposite.

It was exactly the opposite.

We had discovered it too early.

And so, while I was still only a child, I understood.

“I’ll never escape this sad world for the rest of my life.”

“I’ll never be able to see color.”

For a five-year-old, that truth was far too enormous—a weight no child could possibly carry alone.

From that day forward, I thought about myself every single day.

And I collided with an impossibly high wall called “reality.”

By then, I had lost everything.

Everything.

I had lost sight of everything that life contained.

“How am I supposed to live from now on...?”

“Would it be easier if I just gave up...?”

I had reached an extreme place that someone living an ordinary life might never even come close to.

Driven to the edge of despair, I took a single deep breath, as if reaching for something—anything—to hold on to.

Then a pitch-black emotion began rising, slowly and steadily, from somewhere deep inside me, as though it were eating its way out through my body.

And that was how I fell into the pit of despair by my own hand and died.

“Maybe... none of it matters anymore.”

During the period when I lost sight of the very existence called “myself,” all I could think about was denying my own existence.

But now, after growing older and learning how important it is to accept things, I can say this clearly:

that way of thinking was a demonic delusion created by my own mind.

And it was terribly wrong.

Now, I want to tell you.

Everything about me.

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I want you to know that “the truth can possess enough power to drive a person to death with frightening ease.”

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“────ke...”

A world at the very bottom, overflowing with unbearable sadness and loneliness.

“Wa── Sa──”

You, alone in the depths, continuing to cry out.

“Wake up, Sara.”

What are you chasing?

What are you still searching for?

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“Wha...?”

Guided by someone’s voice, I slowly opened my eyes.

I was lying on my back in a dimly lit space.

I raised my upper body and got to my feet.

Turning in a full circle, I looked around.

But wherever I looked—left, right, ahead, behind—there was nothing but dim emptiness stretching away.

Anxiety seized me.

I wanted to leave this place immediately.

────And yet.

Why?

Why was this dim place giving me a sense of comfort that should never have existed alongside my fear?

“──re you, ────okay──?”

Suddenly, a hoarse voice came from behind me.

No.

Impossible.

There was no way.

When I checked my surroundings a moment ago, I was certain no one had been there.

So who, then, was standing behind me now?

That would make it almost like a real────.

In that instant, terror stuck itself to my body like tar, making every hair stand on end.

“W-Who...”

“...Who’s there!?”

Trying to lessen my fear even slightly, I forced myself to shout as I spun around.

But no one was behind me.

“Huh...?”

The blood drained from my face. My body went rigid.

“I-Is someone there...? Is somebody there...?”

Desperately, I called toward the direction from which I thought the voice had come.

Then—

“──re, ──re────”

This time, the hoarse voice came not from behind me, but from somewhere far away.

Whoever it belonged to seemed to be trying to tell me something, but the voice was so faint that I could not make out the words.

“Um... where are you...?”

My body trembling, I asked.

“──ere.”

The reply came louder than before.

“Please... just once more. Say it once more...”

I strained my ears so I would not miss it again.

“Here.”

This time, the answer was clear.

“Behind you.”

The voice continued.

“Behind you.”

“Right behind you.”

“────What?”

Before terror could empty my mind, I had already turned around.

And what I saw made my blood run cold.

“A-ah... ah...! Ah...”

Something stood behind me.

It was covered in a pitch-black, viscous liquid like heavy oil, and it only barely retained the shape of a human being.

Fear reached me a beat too late.

I began trembling from the core of my body.

My throat froze.

Both legs became as motionless as stone statues.

I moved the only part of me that still seemed capable of obeying me—my eyes—and shifted my gaze from the whole of the “something” down to its ankles.

Its ankles were bound by countless chains stretching from the ground, like a prisoner to whom freedom would never again be permitted.

────Don’t.

Don’t look at its ankles any longer.

I ordered myself to stop.

But my eyes kept being drawn back to that one point.

Alongside the revulsion, another thought appeared in a corner of my mind.

A mirror.

This is like looking into a mirror.

Suddenly, the “something” stretched both hands toward me.

“Sara... come here... take my... my hand...”

“...What?”

“............”

“...Okay.”

How did it know my name?

Why could I feel a strange, undeniable peace inside all that fear?

No matter how much I thought about it, I could not understand.

Before my thoughts could twist themselves into a hopeless knot, one of my feet had already stepped onto the black earth.

But there was one thing—

one thing I could say with certainty.

I had to save this “something” imprisoned here.

For some reason, that was what I felt.

I stopped directly in front of it.

Seen from up close, its appearance was grotesque.

And yet, in complete contradiction to that ugliness, it seemed so fragile that a touch might shatter it into pieces, so delicate that a single breath might blow it away.

Like something made of glass──.

“Sara... your hand...”

As it asked, I extended both hands and touched its own.

Just as it looked, its hands were slick and viscous.

And terribly cold.

“Soft... and warm...”

It was almost like──.

“I can really feel that you’re alive...”

──a dead body.

As though I were touching the hand of a corpse──.

“...Sara. Look behind you.”

The “something” gently released my hands and pointed behind me with one finger.

I turned in the direction it indicated.

A single pure-white door stood there, all alone.

“Why is there a door...? It wasn’t there before...”

Still staring at it, I whispered.

“Where does this door lead...?”

I looked back and asked the “something.”

After a brief silence, it answered.

“You’ll know if you open it.”

“...Try.”

I took a deep breath and regained my composure.

To see what lay beyond, I decided to do as it said and open the door.

Standing before it, I pulled the doorknob toward me.

But—

“Wha...?”

“What’s wrong?”

“The door won’t open...”

No matter how hard I pulled, it would not budge.

“Maybe it’s locked...”

At that, the “something” let out a faint, somehow sorrowful laugh.

“Ha...”

“Yes... locked...”

“Maybe you’re right...”

“Maybe... it still isn’t time.”

Muttering the words as though spitting them onto the ground, the “something” placed both hands on the black earth.

Watching it collapse so close to me, I wondered if there was anything I could do for it.

But I had no power.

All I could do was stand a short distance away and watch it sink into despair.

I did not even possess ordinary strength.

Which meant I was less than human────.

“──It’s okay.”

“There’s still another chance.”

The “something” spoke without lifting its face.

“Because I know. Sara’s──i──────z────.”

“You──se──, so──n──────.”

Noise tore through its words.

The crucial parts vanished before I could understand them.

“Me...?”

“What about me...!?”

The instant I tried to ask, the dim space began to shake violently.

Crack. Crack.

With enormous sounds, fissures spread across the entire dark world.

Pure-white light poured through them and illuminated everything around us.

“...Time.”

The “something” said it quietly.

“W-What’s going to happen to you...?”

When I asked, it shook its head firmly.

“Don’t worry about me.”

“You don’t have to.”

“I’ll always be waiting here.”

“So... off you go, Sara.”

The moment it spoke those final words, the dim world collapsed without leaving a trace.

I was thrown into a pure-white world, falling endlessly.

A gentle sensation wrapped around me.

Warm.

Somehow nostalgic.

A new me.

A new awakening────.