It’s Red
Author: Ukari (translated with author’s permission, please visit their website to see the original Japanese works!)
To say here is far, and to call yonder nearby. Stories on the edge of the every day, strange tales you may or may not be moved by. Strange, curious, fantastic stories told by me, you, him and her. There are many stories but they’re all concluded within a single page, each story around 200 to 1200 characters in length, a short story collection you can easily read. Please enjoy them. Updated every Saturday at 6pm.
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When I got home from school, there was a strange old man dancing in front of my house.
“Hey, it’s red! It’s finally red! It’s red!”
He was happily looking up at the roof.
I followed his gaze and looked up as well. It was true, the roof was red.
But come to think of it, what colour was our roof originally anyway?
I didn’t want to go into the house with the old man watching, so I went to a nearby convenience store instead and passed some time reading a few magazines before going home.
When I got back, the old man was gone, as I had hoped. But the roof was still red.
When my mother got home, I asked her about it.
“Mum, was colour was our roof?”
“I don’t really remember. It might have been something other than red.”
Something about all this felt really bad, like chewing on aluminium foil. And that was the last we spoke of it.
Our roof is still red, even now.
And at some point, I realised that all of the roofs in town were also red.