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When Atsushi first sees a rainbow, it’s nestled in the blue sky after a summer rain. Its iridescent colors enrapture him, and he longs for it so intensely his chest seizes up.
He seeks out colors at the orphanage, some dab of brightness within the oppressive white walls.
There are the stained glass windows, his favorites. He stares at the colored lights dancing across his hands, as butterflies dance in his chest.
He figures out how to summon colors on command. By squeezing his eyes shut, bursts of rainbow shimmer behind his eyelids. When he's napping in the cold basement cell and a single ray of sunlight falls over his eyes, the warm red behind his eyelids is a comfort.
Atsushi also learns to see rainbows within pain.
There are the bruises left on his arms, legs, and torso. Bright red blotches on his skin from rough hands squeezing his thin limbs or bony fists striking at his stomach, back, and sides. Shades of blue-purple-black, blooming until they consume his skin. Healing brings yellow and green, then finally brown before they fade.
There’s the dark blood-red that pools under his foot, pierced with a rusty nail and tethered to the frigid floor. And when a fire poker is taken to his side, his skin is stained a breadth of hues. Bleach white (like bones under a desert sun), blacks and browns, and scattered yellow splotches. The pain is exquisite, the worst he’s experienced, but he’s enraptured by all the colors his skin can showcase.
Atsushi hates pain, but welcomes it as long as the rainbow returns.