Prologue
The First Color
There was a time when silence didn’t feel heavy.
When it was just… quiet.
Comfortable.
Like sitting beside someone without needing to speak.
He doesn’t remember when that changed.
Only that it did.
Slowly.
Without asking.
The first thing he remembers clearly is color.
Not faces.
Not voices.
Just—
blue.
Soft. Endless. Stretching too far for something that should have had edges.
He had stood in front of a blank canvas for a long time that day.
Brush in hand.
Waiting.
For something.
Anything.
“Yichen.”
The voice had come from behind him.
Gentle. Careful.
He didn’t turn.
“…what are you doing?”
A pause.
He looked at the canvas.
Then at the brush.
Then back again.
“I don’t know,” he answered honestly.
That was the first lie he ever told.
Because he did know.
He just didn’t have the words for it yet.
So instead—
he dipped the brush into blue.
And painted.
Not neatly. Not carefully.
Just… enough to make the empty space feel less loud.
“…it’s messy,” the voice behind him had said.
Yichen smiled faintly.
“I know.”
“Then why not fix it?”
A small pause.
His hand stilled.
“…because it feels right like this.”
Silence again.
Different this time.
“Does it make you feel better?”
He thought about it.
Looked at the canvas.
At the uneven strokes.
At the color that didn’t settle into anything clear.
“…no,” he said softly.
A beat.
“Then why paint it?”
Yichen didn’t answer immediately.
He stepped back.
Tilted his head.
Studied it like it might speak back.
“…because I felt it,” he said.
That was the first time he understood—
feelings didn’t always leave.
They stayed.
In colors.
In spaces.
In things you couldn’t explain.
Years later—
people would stand in front of his paintings and ask what they meant.
He would smile.
And tell them stories that sounded like answers.
But the truth?
The truth was always simpler.
He never painted to be understood.
He painted—
so the silence wouldn’t swallow him whole.
And somewhere, far from that first canvas—
there would be someone who didn’t understand any of it.
Who looked at color and felt nothing.
Who stood in silence and heard only emptiness.
Until one day—
they would stand in the same space.
Between them—
something unspoken.
Unseen.
Waiting.
And that—
would be where it all begins.
✧ The Space Between Us
