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Saki knew from a young age that she had met her soulmate.
She was nine when she first noticed that the roof was a brownish-red instead of gray. She was nine when she realized that Korone was a brown cat and not a black cat like she had thought all this time. She was nine when she realized that her sister was coloring her picture in with colors that clashed instead of shades of black that looked good together.
She was nine when she realized that she might have passed her soulmate at the festival, and that they were maybe from out of town, and that she might never see them again.
Her parents looked for a while, asking around the town if anyone's kid had started seeing colors at or around the festival date, but no one gave an affirmative.
Kenta told her that she was lucky. That seeing color at all was amazing, even if she never saw the reason she could ever again. Saki didn’t think he understood.
Minori had taken to asking her what color was what and if they looked good together on paper. Saki wasn’t any good with art or colors, but she tried her best.
She looked up what colors looked good with each other, but only a few sites had anything. She found that the reason was that meeting your soulmate was a rare phenomenon and you couldn't see colors until you did, so most people didn’t see a reason to post anything about colors on the internet.
While she was looking, she did find one blog of a person drawing really nice pictures that looked good in black and white and in color. She ended up following the blog, partly because it was really pretty and filled her with a sense of comfort whenever she looked at it and partly because they sometimes posted drawing tips, including which colors looked good together.
That meant they had met their soulmate. Saki wondered if they were with them or if they were like her, having never seen their soulmate past the day they crossed paths.
When she was eleven, the blog stopped for a while. Saki wondered if something had happened, or if they were just taking a break. She opted to just look through the older art instead of lamenting that there weren't any new drawings.
Saki figured out a solution to Minori’s color problem shortly after the blog stopped uploading. Probably because she was bored. She put each of the different colors of marker or crayon or pencil in their own little compartment and labeled it. She wrote Minori a list of what colors looked good together and which didn’t. (She used the blog for reference, obviously. She could never remember all that on her own.)
She got into sports when her mom gave her a glove. They played outside, and Saki forgot about all her problems when they did. She got onto her elementary school’s softball team, though she wasn’t that great and often sat on the bench.
Then middle school started. Saki became the pitcher of the softball team and excelled. She still checked the blog from time to time, but it had been silent since she was eleven.
Second year approached quickly, and Saki was heading out to the Sky Tree after her practice. She felt a tug on her heart as she approached. She shrugged it off and continued walking towards the tree.
When she got there, she saw another girl. There was another tug on Saki’s heart, almost as if it was trying to convince her to go talk to the girl. Saki just stood there awkwardly, not entirely sure what to do.
Then the girl turned around and looked incredibly shocked that Saki was standing behind her.
Saki was about to say something, but then two orbs of light fell from the sky, screaming “They met!”
Saki was confused.
The other girl looked at the little creatures in the tiny crater they made when they fell, and Saki swore she heard the words “blue” and “cream.” Saki was shocked out of her stupor when a green leaf man showed up and tried to take the little creatures away. He was looking for something, but he was hurting them to get it.
Saki didn’t like that. At all.
It seemed the other girl didn’t either because when the leaf man threw the little beings into the ground, she was running right with Saki to catch them.
They both promised to protect the little creatures, and they told them to hold hands. For some reason, they did so without questioning.
Saki wasn’t sure what had happened next, but what she did know was that she was now in some pink outfit and calling herself “Cure Bloom” and the other girl was in white and calling herself “Cure Egret.”
Saki was sure she heard the other girl say “pink”, “gold”, “white”, and “blue” this time, though.
And then the leaf man summoned a monster, and they somehow managed to subdue and defeat it.
(Saki swore she heard the other girl muttering more colors as the attack formed and the little green spirits flew away.)
Saki felt another tug on her heart, though she wasn’t sure why. They changed back to normal, and Saki noticed the girl had a sketchpad with her.
“You draw?” Saki asked. For some reason, that one fact seemed important.
“I, uh, yeah,” the other girl said.
“C-can I see?” Saki asked. And then she realized that that might be weird so she backtracked. “O-only if it’s okay! I-I know we just met but-“
But the girl interrupted her by holding out her sketchbook for Saki to look at. Saki took it tenderly and started flipping through it.
It was beautiful. A lot of it was black-and-white sketches, but there were also colored images that made Saki realize that keeping sketches in black-and-white was a choice.
“These are really good,” Saki said. She couldn’t think of any other words to describe it, honestly. Wonderful? Beautiful? She didn’t think words could express how great these were.
“Thank you,” the other girl smiled, and Saki melted.
She could overhear the little creatures giggling to themselves, and she thought she heard “Mine’s smitten,” which probably meant it came from the blue one, but she didn’t mind.
There was something about this meeting that was important, Saki was sure.