I didn't even know what color a rainbow was.

Strangely, those words had been lodged inside me for a very long time. A rainbow, seven colors. Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet. I knew the words. I had read them in books, heard people explain them, and seen those names countless times on colored pencil boxes during my childhood. But knowing and seeing were two entirely different things.

I didn't know what red was. I didn't know how deep blue could be. The saying that the world turns light green when spring arrives, that the summer sky is blue enough to make your eyes ache, that autumn leaves turn red as if on fire—to me, these were all just someone else's memories. People spoke of them as if they were obvious.

Spring is this color, summer is that color, and winter is a cold, white color.

I laughed as I listened to them. I nodded appropriately, as if I understood. They said you would know once you met your fated partner. They said the world regains its color once you meet the person you are destined for.

When I first heard that story, I laughed. There was a time when I dismissed it as a fairy tale. It might be a lifelong miracle for some, but for me, it was just one of the many stories my friends babbled about while drinking.

And that remained true until today.

After parting ways with my friends, I turned into an alleyway. I was a bit tipsy, and the night air was colder than I expected. It was a familiar path. A road I had walked countless times, a road where nothing was special.

As a person passed by the corner of the alley, I reflexively looked up. And my world collapsed. No, perhaps it was the opposite. This world revealed itself for the first time.

The black and white building walls suddenly seemed to come alive. Through the darkness of the night, inexplicable colors rushed in all at once. There were streetlights. The colors of the clothes people wore caught my eye; there was the sky, the leaves on the trees, and passing cars.

Everything had color. So this was color. Only then did I understand the sentences I had read in books. What it meant to be red, what it meant to be blue, what it meant to be dazzling. Why the word 'beautiful' was used alongside color. In a single moment, I came to know too much.

You were already passing the corner of the alley. Moving naturally, like someone who knew nothing. To you, this moment is likely just an ordinary night. An ordinary alley, an ordinary commute home, and just another stranger passing by. But not for me. The world I lived in just changed entirely, spreading out like watercolors.

Now I know why people laughed when they talked about spring, and why they lost their words for a long time while watching the sunset. The world wasn't monochrome from the beginning. I just hadn't been able to see it. And the moment I met you, the world I never knew came pouring down upon me.