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Wednesday Addams had never been able to see color.
Doctors had examined her many times, only to tell Morticia and Gomez, with visible confusion, that there was nothing wrong with her eyes. Her vision was sharper than most children’s. She could make out the fine thread of a spiderweb in the dark and distinguish, with perfect accuracy, the different depths of bloodstains on different fabrics. Yet no matter how many color cards the doctors showed her, no matter how many kinds of light they used, Wednesday’s world remained black, white, and an endless range of gray.
Morticia had once held her in the garden when she was very young, pointing at the roses after rain and softly asking what she saw.
Five-year-old Wednesday looked for a long time, then answered calmly, “Dark gray.”
Morticia did not ask again.
The Addams family had always been good at accepting strangeness. They did not panic because a child could not see color, nor did they rush to force her into some box labeled normal. Gomez even declared, with great seriousness, that perhaps this meant Wednesday had been born with a superior appreciation for death, shadow, and the particular shade of a tombstone after rain.
Wednesday accepted this explanation.
She did not think of herself as pitiful. At least, for a very long time, she never thought of herself that way. The world was already noisy, foolish, and full of unnecessary decoration. If it offered her a little less chaos, she considered it a rare act of restraint.
She knew sunlight brought warmth to the skin. She knew petals, leaf veins, and rain on glass each had their own shapes. She also knew that when people spoke of “warmth,” “brightness,” or “vividness,” their faces often took on an expression bordering on idiotic. But those nouns and adjectives remained, for her, on the surface of language. She could understand their definitions in a dictionary, yet she could not understand why someone would stop walking because of a sunset, or look moved because a flower had bloomed.
To her, the world was like a quiet black-and-white film.
She sat in the audience, watching coldly as everyone else busied themselves over things she could not see.
Until she met Enid Sinclair.
It was the first day of term at Nevermore.
When Wednesday dragged her luggage to the dorm room door, she expected nothing more than another expanse of irritating gray. She had already listed several possible types of roommates in her mind, ranging from “noisy” to “ignorant” to “requires intimidation to establish boundaries.” None of them gave her anything to look forward to.
Then the door opened, and she stopped where she stood.
The room had been split in half.
Her side was clean, cold, and nearly empty of unnecessary objects. The other side looked as if someone had taken all the parts of the world that had been hidden from her and poured them into one place.
And there, at the center of that chaos, Wednesday saw real color for the first time.
Enid Sinclair stood in the middle of the room, golden hair falling over her shoulders, nails painted in different shades, her sweater soft and bright, as if sunset, candy, and a series of words Wednesday had never truly understood had all been stitched into the same piece of fabric. The colors stood out against the gray-white world with almost offensive clarity, so clear that Wednesday felt a faint sting behind her eyes.
Enid, entirely unaware, smiled at her.
“Hi! You must be my new roommate, right?”
Wednesday’s first reaction was not delight.
It was the urge to flee.
She hated things that could not be classified. She hated losing control. She hated that someone could simply stand there and force her to reconsider whether her understanding of the world had ever been complete.
She looked at Enid’s smile. She looked at the colors that seemed to exist only on Enid and understood, with sudden clarity, that she had not been born unable to see color. The world had always contained color. It had simply refused to show itself to her.
And Enid seemed to be the only exception.
After that, Wednesday began resisting Enid.
It was the most reasonable method of handling the situation she could think of.
She was not used to Enid’s existence. She was not used to those painfully vivid sweaters, hair clips, bedsheets, and bottles of nail polish. She was not used to the way her gaze kept following Enid without permission. When Enid was in the room, all the colors seemed to come alive with her. When Enid left, the room fell back into gray and white, as if the colors from moments before had been some malicious hallucination in Wednesday’s vision.
At first, Wednesday only observed.
She memorized the color of Enid’s sweater each day. She memorized the shades of nail polish Enid changed into. She memorized the way the string lights on Enid’s side of the room fell across her face when she lay on her bed scrolling through her phone. She never asked for the names of those colors, but in the privacy of her own mind, she began building a classification system that belonged only to Enid.
Gold was Enid’s hair.
Pink was the color of whatever Enid held to her chest when she said, “This is so cute.”
Blue was the sweater Enid wore on a day when she was in a low mood.
Purple was the nail polish Enid thought Wednesday had not noticed, even though she had been looking at it for far too long.
Wednesday did not want to admit that she had begun to depend on these colors.
She wanted even less to admit that when Enid was gone from the dorm for too long, the feeling of being thrown back into a gray world made her restless. At first, the restlessness was small. Later, it became fingers stopping over the typewriter, eyes drawn to Enid’s empty bed late at night, and an expectation she should not have had—and refused to acknowledge—whenever footsteps sounded in the hall.
She disliked this.
She disliked needing anyone. She especially disliked that the person was Enid Sinclair, who was too warm, too bright, and most seriously of all, not afraid to come close.
So she began pushing Enid away with sharp words.
When Enid asked if she wanted to go to the cafeteria together, Wednesday said she would rather attend a competent autopsy demonstration. When Enid excitedly organized case notes for her, Wednesday only pointed out the errors in classification. When Enid left a cup of tea for her late at night, Wednesday told her the next day that the ratio of tea leaves was imprecise.
Every time, Enid’s smile would freeze at the corners of her mouth for a moment.
Very briefly.
Briefly enough that other people might not notice.
Wednesday noticed.
She saw Enid draw back her hand. She saw her say, softly, “Okay, I get it.” She saw the curve of Enid’s shoulders drop after she turned away. Wednesday knew those words hurt, but she still did not stop.
Because the closer Enid came, the more frightened Wednesday became.
She was afraid that one day she would no longer be able to endure a world without Enid. She was afraid those colors would stop being merely new, and become something she required in order to go on living. Most of all, she was afraid that if Enid saw that, she would realize Wednesday Addams was nowhere near as immovable as she pretended to be.
The first domino fell on the night after the full moon.
When Enid returned to the dorm, she did not speak the way she usually did.
She had just finished a phone call in the hallway. Through the wall, her voice had been muffled, but Wednesday could still hear it rise once in anger, then drop the next second into a low, dull, defeated reply. When Enid came back into the dorm and shut the door, her eyes were still a little red. Her hair was messy, as if she had run her hands through it several times. She hung up her jacket with slower movements than usual, then sat quietly by the window and folded herself into her knees, as if trying to tuck herself into that small patch of shadow at the edge of the window frame.
Wednesday sat at her desk, her fingers still on the typewriter.
That silence made her uncomfortable.
Enid was usually too loud, always filling the entire room with colors and sound. Now that Enid had gone quiet, Wednesday felt instead as if the room were missing something. She should have asked what had happened. Or at least sat beside her and waited until Enid wanted to speak.
She could not.
The more she saw Enid brought low, the more she felt herself being pushed into some unfamiliar position, unsure whether to come closer or retreat. So she opened her mouth and used the method she knew best, and the one she used worst.
“You look pathetic like that.”
She regretted it the moment the words left her mouth.
Enid slowly lifted her head and looked at her. Those eyes, always bright as sunlight, dimmed in front of her for the first time.
“Do you think you’re the only one who can be hurt?”
Her voice was very soft.
So soft it barely sounded like her.
“Wednesday, I’m not without feelings. I hurt, too.”
Wednesday did not answer.
She watched Enid stand. She watched her take her jacket. She watched her walk toward the door. She wanted to call her back, but in that moment, she did not know what reason she could give.
Enid stopped by the door, her back to Wednesday.
“I’m tired,” she said.
Then she left the dorm.
After the door closed, the color in the room disappeared with her.
That night, Wednesday sat by the window where Enid had been until dawn.
She looked at Enid’s bed, at the photographs on the wall, at the sweaters and pillows and colored pens she knew had once had colors, now all returned to gray and white. She picked up one of the colored pens, fingers resting against the barrel, but no matter how hard she tried, she could not remember what it had truly looked like when it had been bright before her eyes.
A room without Enid was almost unfamiliar in its silence.
Wednesday had once thought she liked quiet and the unadorned black and white of things. But after Enid left, she learned that silence was not safety. It was the hollow left behind after all the patience, gentleness, and understanding she had deliberately ignored had walked out with her.
For the next week, Enid did not return to the dorm.
Yoko came to collect clothes for her and said very little, only folding Enid’s sweaters and pajamas into a bag. Wednesday sat at her desk, a blank page sitting in the typewriter.
“When is she coming back?” Wednesday asked.
Yoko zipped the bag shut.
“I don’t know.”
Wednesday’s fingers stilled on the desktop.
“What did she say?”
Yoko looked at her.
“She said she needed quiet.”
The door closed again.
Wednesday looked at the blank page and thought of every lamp Enid had left on for her, every cup of tea, every time Enid had looked like she might cry from worry after Wednesday was injured and still cleaned the wound with careful hands. She thought of how many times she had pushed away those gestures of care, and how she had treated Enid’s warmth as something that could never be depleted.
She had thought Enid was the only color in her world.
But only after Enid left did she understand that Enid was not merely the person who let her see color.
Enid was also a person who could be hurt, could grow tired, and could leave. That realization unsettled Wednesday more than the return of gray.
It took Wednesday an entire week to decide what she could do.
She was not good at apologies.
Ordinary apologies were often too cheap, as though a few sentences could stitch a wound shut. Wednesday did not believe in anything that simple. She knew she had done wrong, and she knew Enid did not need a perfectly worded letter of contrition.
Wednesday had to offer something real, something that would show Enid she did not simply want to call her back and allow everything to remain as it had been.
But Wednesday had very little to give.
She did not understand rainbows. She did not understand the meaning of bouquets. She did not understand the glittering little decorations Enid liked, or how normal people arranged an apology so that it felt soft and considerate.
Every complete color she had ever seen in her life had come from Enid.
So in the end, she chose to express herself in the only way she understood.
Enid did not want to go when she was called to the old music room.
She stood outside, her hand resting on the doorknob, and part of her still wanted to turn around. She was still angry, and she was still sad. She knew Wednesday was awkward. She knew Wednesday did not know how to lower her guard and apologize. But that did not mean those words had not caused damage.
She took a deep breath and opened the door.
The lights were off.
Only rings of silver-white candles had been placed on the floor, making the old classroom quiet. Deep gray dried flowers rested beside the white piano. Black records leaned against the wall. Several old chairs were covered with white cloth. There were no vivid colors in the room, no decorative brightness, and it hardly looked like the setting for an apology. It looked more like a black-and-white silent film Wednesday had built in her own way.
And the walls were covered in black-and-white sketches.
Every single one of them was Enid.
There was Enid smiling, Enid asleep, Enid angry. There was Enid lying on her bed and scrolling through her phone. There was Enid standing in front of the mirror, trying to fix her hair only to make it messier, until she finally laughed at herself. And there was Enid from that night, sitting by the window, knees drawn up, saying nothing.
There was no color in any of the drawings, but the detail in each one made Enid hold her breath.
Enid stood in the doorway, her chest slowly aching.
She had once thought Wednesday only found her loud, too emotionally obvious, a disruption to the quiet world Wednesday had before. But the Enid in these drawings was not only laughter and brightness. Wednesday had drawn her tired. Drawn her angry. Drawn her when she wanted to speak and could not. Moments Enid had thought no one noticed had, in fact, been seen by Wednesday and quietly recorded.
Wednesday stood beside the piano. She seemed quieter than usual, her fingers hanging at the sides of her skirt, her expression carrying a rare uncertainty.
Enid stepped into the room, her voice a little hoarse.
“You drew me.”
Wednesday nodded.
“Yes.”
“A lot of times.”
“Not enough.”
Enid looked at her in silence, waiting for her to explain.
Wednesday’s gaze fell to the sketches on the wall. After a moment, she spoke.
“This is the world I can see.”
Wednesday slowly looked at her. Her fingers tightened at her sides several times.
“I do not know how to explain what color means to me, because before I met you, I had never truly had it. To me, the world was always quiet, monotonous, and predictable. I was used to that. I even believed I liked it.”
She paused.
“Until you appeared.”
Enid’s fingers slowly curled in.
Wednesday’s voice remained low, but the usual cold armor around it had thinned.
“You made me see, for the first time, how different the world had always been. Your hair, your clothes, those bottles of nail polish that violate all principles of aesthetic restraint, and everything on your side of the room that would cause visual fatigue in any normal person. They were too loud. Too bright. Too difficult to ignore.”
Wednesday looked at her.
“I was afraid I had begun to need them. More afraid that I had begun to need you.”
Enid drew in a small breath. Then the whole room fell back into silence, with nothing but the sound of candles burning.
“So I treated you in the worst possible way,” Wednesday said. “I thought that if I pushed you away, I could return to my original world. After you left, the world did return to what it had been. Gray. Quiet. Nothing suddenly entering my field of vision.”
Her voice softened.
“That should have reassured me.” Wednesday did not look away from Enid. “But I could not endure it.”
Enid’s eyes began to redden, her brows drawing together as if she were trying not to cry.
Wednesday’s fingers moved faintly, but she did not reach out.
“You are the only color in my life,” she said. “But you are not something that belongs to me. You are not a tool I use to see the world, nor someone I can hurt and still expect to come back.”
She stopped, as if forcing herself to make the most unfamiliar words clear.
“I regret hurting you, Enid.”
Enid lowered her head, and tears fell.
Wednesday’s voice tightened.
“I underestimated the damage those words would cause. I saw that you were hurt, and still chose to respond with something sharper. The result was that you were forced to leave.”
She looked at the wall full of sketches, then back at Enid.
“I do not know how to give you color. This is everything I can give you.”
Enid looked at her. Looked at this girl who had turned an entire classroom into a black-and-white confession. She was still angry; that had not disappeared because of the drawings or the apology. The accumulated hurts were still there, and so was the exhaustion of having been the one chasing Wednesday from the beginning. But Wednesday stood there, neither running away nor making excuses for herself.
Enid slowly walked to stand in front of Wednesday.
“You really are awkward,” she said.
Wednesday answered quietly, “There is sufficient evidence to support that conclusion.”
Enid sniffed and finally let out a small laugh, though it was still wet with tears.
“I’m still angry.”
“I know.”
“I might be angry for a while about the things you did to me.”
“I know.”
“You can’t hurt me first just because you’re afraid I’ll leave.”
Wednesday looked at her.
“I will remember.”
Enid glanced at her and laughed. “Not in your notebook kind of remember.”
Wednesday was quiet for a moment.
“Then I will prove it through action.”
The sentence settled between them, and Enid’s tears fell again despite herself.
She took one step forward, then another, carefully checking for any sign that Wednesday wanted to run. Wednesday only stood there, watching Enid approach, restrained and a little panicked, but she did not step back.
Then Enid reached out and hugged Wednesday.
Gently.
Wednesday’s body went stiff at first, as if she were still not certain she was allowed to receive the embrace. Only when Enid’s hands slowly tightened behind her back did Wednesday raise her arms and carefully hug her in return.
Her movements were far more awkward than when she picked up a scalpel, yet the force she used was far more restrained than when she wielded a fencing foil, as if she feared the slightest pressure would hurt the person who had finally come close to her again.
Enid buried her face against Wednesday’s shoulder, tears pressing into the black fabric of Wednesday’s uniform jacket.
“I don’t want to lose you,” she whispered.
Wednesday closed her eyes, feeling an emotion she had never permitted herself to face rise up to meet her.
“The feeling is mutual,” she said.
It was not a confession. It contained no romantic element whatsoever. But it was the most honest response she could give.
Enid lifted her head, her eyes red.
“You know, normal people don’t apologize by making an entire classroom look like the other person’s funeral.”
Enid looked at her own sketches and, through tears, could not help teasing her.
Wednesday looked back at her. “I do not understand normal methods of apology.”
“I know. I know you too well.”
“I also have no other colors to give you.”
Enid looked at the walls full of drawings and the black-and-white objects in the room, then back at her.
“This is enough for me.”
Wednesday’s eyes could not help falling to Enid’s flushed cheeks and pink lips, tracing the colors on Enid’s face with her gaze.
At that moment, Enid slowly lowered her head and kissed her.
The touch of lips was soft.
Wednesday did not react right away. She only felt Enid’s hand still gripping her sleeve, felt the heat coming from Enid’s body, felt some long-taut place in her chest slowly loosen and release its hold.
The next second, the world unfolded before her eyes.
She saw that the candlelight carried a warm orange-gold. The white piano was no longer only a gray-white outline. The dried flowers held layers of faded purple and brownish red. Outside the window, the night had a deep blue. Words she had once known only from books and other people’s mouths suddenly had a place in the world.
She drew back slightly from the kiss and looked at Enid.
Gold.
Warm, dazzling gold.
Enid’s hair fell softly over her shoulders, carrying a warmth of color beyond anything Wednesday had imagined. Her blue eyes held a little gold and green, made clearer by tears. Her cheeks were flushed, and her mouth was redder from the kiss than it had been before. Wednesday looked at her and almost forgot to breathe.
Enid noticed the change in her and asked softly, “What is it?”
Wednesday looked at her for a long time, as if for the first time she were truly seeing the world Enid had always lived in.
At last, she said quietly, “So this is what you have always seen.”
Enid’s expression slowly softened.
She took Wednesday’s hand and guided her fingertips to the sleeve of her sweater.
“This is pink,” Enid said.
Wednesday looked at that soft, bright color.
“Pink,” she repeated.
“And this is gold.” Enid gently guided Wednesday’s fingers to touch the ends of her hair.
Wednesday’s gaze followed their hands.
“Gold.”
Enid pointed toward the deep gray dried flowers on the wall.
“That’s probably somewhere between purple and brown. Um, it’s a little hard to explain.”
Wednesday watched her, listening as Enid taught her to identify the world with such seriousness. Her heart felt like a crow trapped in a cage, beating against the cage door again and again.
Enid was still Enid.
She could be hurt, could cry, could be angry, and even when she had not fully forgiven Wednesday, she could still gently place the names of colors into her hand.
Wednesday lightly closed her fingers around the hand Enid had used to guide her.
“I will learn.”
Enid looked at her.
“Colors?”
“And you.”
Enid’s eyes reddened again.
“You can’t just learn what colors I like.”
“I know.”
“You also have to learn how to tell when I’m really upset, when I’m not just being dramatic, and when I need you not to hurt me with those sharp words anymore.”
Wednesday nodded.
“I have recorded it.”
Enid watched her in silence, as if making sure Wednesday was not saying these things merely for the sake of the apology.
After a while, she slowly came closer and hugged Wednesday again.
This time, Wednesday’s hands rested naturally on Enid’s back, without hesitation.
In the old music room, the candles burned quietly. The walls full of black-and-white sketches remained where they were, like the entire world Wednesday had once been able to see. And at the center of those drawings, Enid stood in her arms, bringing color back into Wednesday’s world little by little.
It did not mean all the harm had been healed.
Nor did it mean Wednesday would never repeat old mistakes in the future.
But Enid had not left, and Wednesday had not run away behind her usual excuses.
They stood together in that quiet classroom, leaning into each other, and began learning something that was still unfamiliar to them both.
How to move toward each other, slowly, even after hurt had passed between them.
Later, Enid took one sketch down from the wall.
It was the one of her lying on her bed and scrolling through her phone, her hair messy, the corner of her mouth lifted in a small smile. She was probably watching a foolish cat video.
“Can I keep this one?” she asked.
Wednesday said, “You may take anything you want.”
Enid held the drawing against her chest. After thinking for a moment, she shook her head.
“Not all of them. I want you to keep some.”
Wednesday looked at her. “Why?”
Enid reached out and lightly touched her chest.
“To remind you that not every color will stay beside you as a matter of course.”
Wednesday lowered her eyes.
“I will remember.”
When they left the old music room, the corridor lights glowed quietly. Wednesday saw that the wooden floor held a warm brown, that the walls were not simply gray but carried an aged white and yellow. The night outside the window was deep, the blue pressed against the glass, while golden moonlight shone through and fell over Enid’s hair, making that gold appear even softer.
Nevermore had become unfamiliar in her eyes, and for the first time it stirred in her an almost clumsy curiosity about everything around her.
Enid walked beside her, one fist’s width away, not too close, as if waiting for Wednesday to take all of it in.
Wednesday looked down at the distance between them.
Then she stretched out her hand and let the back of it lightly brush against Enid’s.
She did not take Enid’s hand directly.
She only left it there.
Enid turned to look at her.
Wednesday did not hurry her. She did not explain. She only waited, leaving the choice to Enid.
After a moment, Enid took her hand.
Wednesday looked at their joined hands, at the colors on Enid’s nails that she could finally identify, and a quiet, belated understanding rose within her.
She had once thought Enid was the only color in her world.
Now she knew the sentence was still true, only its meaning was different from what she had once believed.
Enid was not someone she used to escape gray.
Enid was someone who made her want to look carefully, cherish carefully, and be willing to learn from the beginning.
And Wednesday Addams walked through a world full of colors, and for the first time, she did not want to close her eyes.