His name was Julian. He was a street artist. His canvas was the worn-out walls in the forgotten alleys of the Old Artist District, a place where creativity once flourished before being replaced by the neon glow of downtown. For him, color was everything. Color was emotion, life, and story. Red was the passion of anger, blue was the depths of sorrow, and yellow was the fleeting burst of happiness.
That night, Julian was working on his latest piece on a large brick wall. A mural depicting the heartbeat of Stellara City, full of bright, contrasting colors. He felt a powerful flow of inspiration, his brush dancing across the wall's surface, spattering acrylic paint under the dim glow of a streetlight.
Suddenly, he felt it. A strange, cold sensation, creeping in slowly like a fog.
First, he lost his focus. The powerful flow of inspiration from before now became a hesitant trickle. He looked at his work, and for some reason, the colors that had seemed so alive now looked… shallow. Red no longer felt angry; it was merely pigment. Blue no longer felt sad; it was just a stain.
"Strange…" he murmured, shaking his head to try and dispel the feeling.
He tried to dip his brush into a can of bright yellow paint. But when he lifted it, the paint dripping from the brush looked pale, its color as if being siphoned away by something unseen. He turned to his other paint cans. They all looked dull, losing their saturation, as if covered by an invisible layer of gray dust.
A cold panic began to creep over him. He looked around. The streetlight that had been casting a warm orange glow now looked a pale white. The colorful graffiti on the wall across the alley began to fade, its colors washing out like watercolor in the rain. Even the night sky, which should have been pitch black, now looked like an endless gradation of gray.
His world was losing its color.
And along with the color, his emotions were drained away. The panic he had felt turned into apathy. His anxiety became a hollow calm. He no longer felt scared, nor confused. He just… existed.
Then, at the dim end of the alley, he saw a figure.
A little girl, perhaps around twelve years old, was standing there. Her very long, light-blue hair was tied into two low ponytails, draping down like pale curtains. She wore a simple white dress with a black collar, adorned with a tilted beret on her head. In her small hands, she held a large brush that looked too heavy for her, dripping a thick, gray liquid onto the asphalt.
She was barefoot. Her pale feet moved without a sound on the increasingly faded street. She wasn't looking at Julian. Her large, gray-blue eyes stared blankly ahead, as if seeing another world that only she could see.
She lifted her large brush, not with hostile intent, but with the weary motion of an artist. She swung the brush gently through the air.
In that instant, the last remnants of color in Julian's world vanished. His once-vibrant mural became a blurred charcoal sketch. The alley he stood in became a flat, lifeless monochrome scene.
Julian no longer felt anything. He didn't feel the cold of the night, didn't feel the fatigue in his body, didn't feel a thing. He just stood still like a statue, his brush hanging limply at his side. His world was now silent. His world was now calm. His world was now… perfect.
And in the middle of his new, silent canvas, the little painter continued to walk, leaving a trail of the colorless world behind her.