Chapter 4:
Marii Yukari’s Eyes
MARII YUKARI’S IRISES are a pretty purple.
You can’t tell from far away. But when she looks at you up close with those clear, pale-purple eyes, you feel like you’re being sucked into her distinct pupils, and the next moment you’re aware of yourself and there you are, straightening your spine.
So, if you ask someone close to her which of her attributes comes to mind first, they’ll probably mention her eyes before her fluffy hair. They’ll say something to the extent of “Marii Yukari has purple eyes.”
She doesn’t like bright light. Sometimes she wears colored glasses or a visor. Those look good on her, but at those times, I also miss seeing her eyes.
I once asked a little-kid kind of question: “Could it be that those eyes are why other people look like robots to you?”
She smiled and told me no. It’s true purple eyes are rare, but some people had them without seeing things the way she did.
That makes sense. The real question is not how things look, but how they feel to you.
She sounded almost miffed this one time when she said to me, “Sometimes I wonder… Why didn’t the god who made me include me in the way I see others? If the human form looks like a robot to me, then you’d think my body would look like a robot too, so why is it just me who doesn’t? Is the way I’m shaped unnatural?”
“No, not at all. You look totally normal to me,” I replied.
“Okay. Thanks. Then I guess what’s weird is not what I see, but what I feel.”
She has no fear of the things that her purple eyes show her—she fears what they don’t show her. She lives in isolation, the only one set apart from everyone else.
To Marii Yukari, she’s the abnormal one.
I caught myself asking her this: “Yukari, do you like your eyes?” I immediately regretted saying that out loud, thinking it was a stupid question, but it was too late to reel my words back in. So, making the best of it, I feigned composure and added, “I like your eyes. The color is so nice, like a violet flower. It suits you really well.”
“Oh! Thanks… Yes, I like my eyes too.”
I haven’t known her long enough to know whether she really meant that. All I can do is hope. I hope she loves her eyes. I bet her parents were entranced by them when she was born, and that’s why they named her Yukari, which means connection. One fancy way to write the name is with the Chinese character for purple, after a poem about a plant bringing back memories. I truly hope Yukari doesn’t hate them—her pretty purple eyes, I mean.
Not that I’ve told her, but that’s partly why I call her by her given name instead of using her family name, Marii. “Yukari.” I do still feel a little shy whenever I address her so casually.
But I like her purple eyes.