The Girl With a Red Flower

Chapter 1: The Blueless World

> "Sometimes, I wonder if I was born into a silent dream. A dream without blue. A dream without red. Only shades of waiting."

I am Aritro, and I have never been able to see the color of the sky.

They say Rajshahi is one of the most beautiful cities in Bangladesh—crimson sunsets over the Padma River, green mango orchards stretching beyond the eye, the golden shimmer of early morning fog. People say these things with stars in their eyes.

But to me, it’s all black and white.

Not figuratively. Literally. I was born achromatopsic—completely color blind. The physicians told me I would never see color, not even the hint of it. Only light, dark, and all stand-alone shades in between. My life is a movie strip that no one else is watching.

And maybe that's why I stopped trying to explain myself.

I am not at Rajshahi Government Model School. I walk through congested corridors like a specter: silent, invisible, irrelevant. I don't mind. Muteness is kinder than inquisitiveness. The only time I am really alive is the rooftop—after school, after night, after everyone has gone home.

There is a rusty gate that leads up there, chained but not locked. No one uses it anymore. The paint is peeling like worn-out dreams, and the iron stairs creak like old melodies. I prefer it. They remind me I am not alone.

This evening, the wind smells of impending rain. The sky—gray as always—is low over the metropolis. Neon signs flash in the distance. Far beneath me, the azan of the mosque drifts serenely over the rooftops. Even in its absence of color, I know that it is beautiful.

I sit against the water tank and take out my sketchbook. My hands move automatically now—smudged shading, charcoal lines, forms of things I see but can't describe. Today, I draw the Padma River as it winds like a sleeping snake in the twilight. My drawings are never completed, never meant to be. They're fragments of a world I still try to understand.

Then I hear it—footsteps.

I remain still.

No one else arrives here. Not even the seniors. I hug my sketchbook to my arm, ready to disappear.

The girl materializes unseen like a stray note in a gentle tune. She's wearing the same thing—navy blue skirt, white kameez—but to me it's only a collection of shadows. Her black hair is unbound. Her eyes, even in black and white, seem to shine.

She spots me and freezes.

".Oh," she grumbles, clearly taken aback. "Didn't think anyone else would be here."

Neither did I.

A silence, the sort that draws out like creased rubber bands.

She doesn't move closer to me. She looks up at the sky, breathes, then stands and walks over to the other end of the rooftop and sits with her back to me.

I wait. But she doesn't say anything more.

So neither do I.

Minutes pass. The city murmurs dimly below. Wind blows, dislodging a few leaves, that dance, that dance, against the roof. I glance at her once more.

She is singing.

Slow and unfamiliar, off-key but, oh so beautiful. Like something out of a time, long, long, before color was invented.

I ought to say something. I should ask her name. I ought to stand up and walk. But I open my sketchbook yet again.

And this time without really knowing, I draw her.

Not her face. Just her silhouette against the fuzzy horizon. Her hair in tangles from the wind. Her stillness.

When I look at the page, I can sense something. The gray is warmer. The pencil lines are softer. As if they know something I don't.

The girl stands up.

She passes me, eyes grazing mine for a moment.

"You're not the only one who sees the world in black and white," she says.