A M B I V A L E N C E

• M I N Y O O N G I •

S P E A R M I N T
스피어민트

Mai never really had a favorite color.

Okay. . . that's a lie.

Maybe during her childhood she would ebb to and fro through various hues and call it an obsession. Maybe even her sixteen year old self found it common to find prepubescent joy within the suede folds on her favorite pair of maroon moccasins, or by only listening to music through her turquoise headphones because she swore the color effected the sound. Maybe that was actually the truth. But now. . .?

Fast forward seven years, six relocations, five dead-end jobs, four romantic rejections, three fake friends, two graduations and one earth-shattering heart break later, and now Mai no longer believed in color. Color was just a distraction, a form of manipulation, a way for tretcherous snakes to paint themselves red or blue or pink and to assimilate into social clicks in order to pick apart depressed, lonely girls from the inside out.

Now, Mai eliminated all of the color from her life, all of her plastic friends, all of her plans for the future, and the one boy who ruined her trust by sleeping with another.

Now, Mai preferred black.

She liked how it made her feel on the inside; it was empowering almost. It could allow her to feel strong (black is a strong color, right?), like she could actually fight her own battles for once, but it also allowed her to hide, to blend in with the society where she did not belong. People never paid attention to those who wore all black, they would avert their eyes, pretend to be busy or preoccupied, and she preferred life that way now. She preferred being ignored. She preferred black.

Maybe that was why she now found herself staring at the closest vending machine in the LAX Airport with tears brimming her eyes, biting her lip as she scanned over the various options all saturated in vibrant, eye catching colors. They sickened her, bringing back memories that she would sooner like to forget. Especially that gaudy orange Cheetos bag.

Her ex used to eat Cheetos when they would go to the cinema. He'd sneak an extra large bag in and coat his fingers with their awful color, crunching obnoxiously and sucking his teeth to rid them of the remains.

Ugh, fuck Cheetos.

She found herself losing her appetite.

As a silent, angry tear finally rolled down her cheek, she averted her eyes to the top row where the gum was located. Mai didn't really consider gum to be a 'snack' per se, didn't think it belonged in the vending machine at all, but she found herself scanning over the choices anyway, coming to the conclusion that she would purchase the least offensive colored one possible: Spearmint.

She thought the color was okay, average, simple, not as mysterious or aloof as black but not as desperate looking as the rest.

She then decided that average was probably what she needed, and slowly her fingers typed A 5 into the keypad to select her fate. The aforementioned gum pack fell from its perch into the retrieval slot, and as she straightened her back from reaching for it, an impatient grumble sounded from behind her.

"Are you going to stand here all day?"

Startled, Mai jumped slightly at the foreign tongue, not aware that someone had been behind her all along. Her first instinct was to decipher his accent—the voice clearly belonged to a man, but the dialect she couldn't quite place. Surely it wasn't Japanese, Mai would have recognized it immediately. She was a first generation Japanese-American (her mother moved to California and married a surfer—her father), but she visited her grandparents back in Tokyo often. In fact, that was her entire reason for being here in the first place; she needed the distance from her quite recent nightmare-come-true.