He didn’t know the world was lacking until it offered him something more.

The world had always been monochrome-normal, washed, and predictable. The sky was light gray. Faces bore shadows, never warmth. Even fire looked like smoke pretending to be flame. No one ever talked about it like it was weird. It was all they had ever known. It was just life.

Then one day, as he walked through the park, he saw it. It was a scarf. A simple piece of fabric hanging from a stranger’s neck. But it blazed.

He stopped walking.

It wasn’t light or dark. It wasn’t shadow. It wasn’t anything he had words for. The scarf flickered with emotion, bold and wild. The scarf was red.

His heart jolted. His breath caught. Red was heat. Red was bold emotions, like love and anger wrapped into one. It was the memory of sunsets he had never seen. It made everything else feel pale. Dead.

He followed the scarf. Not the person. He didn’t care who the stranger was, he only needed the color.

But as quickly as the red appeared, it dulled. The red slowly disappeared, slipping back into gray. He stood frozen as he watched the life get sucked from the scarf.

The world suddenly felt smaller. The world he once knew felt lifeless. Because once you see something that bright in a world full of gray, you realize just how colorless everything else really is.

And the man knew, nothing would ever feel normal again.