0. Dyed in Your Colors
Skrrt—.
Monochrome.
Like a screen flooded with static, a mechanical hum rolled through the auditorium.
『On behalf of Pioneer Academy, we extend our warmest welcome to all of our incoming students.』
When had it started — the day the color drained out of her world?
When she lost her father? Or when her mother changed, after she lost him?
『Before we begin the formal orientation, we invite the Academy's top entrant, Miss Han Jiye, to share a few words of greeting.』
No one ever gave her an answer. They simply piled on the very same expectations, over and over.
‘You have to do well, Jiye, so no one looks down on you. A family without that man is hell.’
‘Yes, Mother.’
Like shackles. Like a curse. A chain that cinched around her throat and dragged her forward.
It was that cold chain that pulled her up onto the stage. From this low position, where everyone gazed up at her, she gazed back down at all of them.
A face manufactured for the occasion. A smile practiced in front of a mirror until it looked real. The corners of her mouth twisted into a strange shape by a heart that had learned to lie to itself.
This was the moment her life was turning counterfeit, bit by bit — and the only thing she had left to hold onto was her father's voice, growing fainter in her memory with every passing day.
‘The reason I can hold on even when it's hard? Our daughter and my wife, obviously! What else!’
‘Our Jiye — one day, when she finds someone she loves, her whole world's gonna change. Wait a sec… what if she falls head over heels and just shows up with him, saying she wants to marry him?!’
Please.
She could only pray that the miracle her father had once spoken of would come true someday.
『Finally, our sincere thanks to every incoming student who took the time to be here with us today.』
For now, she could only bow her head as if to smother what remained of her heart. Then the chain tugged her back down off the stage once more.
Behind the drawn curtain, she searched for a staff member to retrieve the phone she'd handed over before going up.
…
No one was there. Had they stepped away for a moment, or gone to the restroom? She couldn't tell.
She'd just let out a sigh and picked up her coat when—
"Excuse me… are you the owner of this phone, by any chance? When I came out of the auditorium restroom, one of the staff members suddenly handed it to me and hurried off…"
Drip.
A single drop of color splashed down onto the monochrome canvas.
"Um… hello? You're the top entrant, right? The one from just now?"
Drawn to that color, she was slowly being dyed from the inside out. The hope she'd believed could only ever be a dream, the miracle she'd believed could only exist in stories — it had happened. Here. In reality.
Pretty, carefully sculpted words. Pleasant, flattering words stuffed full of empty kindness.
More than any of those—
what tumbled out of her was nothing but clumsy, unfiltered truth.