World of Color | Skephalo

II

Like most mornings, the traffic in and out of the shop was slow. The occasional customer would walk in and browse the countless grey game cases for a few minutes and either leave with nothing or grab something completely random and purchase it. Sometimes, Zak thought people felt bad for the shop and only came in to try and increase business.

Time passed as the shadows in the store shifted with the sun. With every passing minute, Zak became increasingly bored. He played with some papers on the counter, pretending to be interested in whatever was written on them.

He had another coworker at this time of the day, but he was in the back room taking inventory of new shipments that came in. Zak hated looking at all the grey boxes and mixing them up, so he always made Vincent do it because he already found his soulmate and could see color.

Vincent was a French international student studying at the college nearby, so this was his part-time job. His soulmate lived back in France, and couldn't move with him when he came for school. Zak didn't talk to Vincent very much, but they got along when they did. Sometimes, Vincent tried to explain different colors to him, but the shades of grey just jumbled in his head and he would mix them up when Vincent would quiz him.

Today was no different. Vincent came out of the back room with a box full of different games. He set the box down on the counter and looked up at Zak, who just raised an eyebrow it boredom.

"Okay, Zak. I want you to pull out whichever box you think is red." Vincent's thick accent could be heard clearly throughout the store, since no one was there besides them.

"Why? I always get it wrong," Zak sighed, twirling a pen between his fingers. "What's the point when all I see is grey?"

"You gotta keep trying, man. If you never find your soulmate, you'll have to figure out the colors!" Vincent always made the argument that his encounter with his soulmate was an accident, and that he bumped into them -literally- on the street one day. Vincent had knocked him over while he was preoccupied on his phone, and when he looked up he noticed the world was no longer grey. The rest was history.

In this case, he was implying that Zak may never find his soulmate, and that many people never do. The thought often scared Zak because he wanted nothing more than to see his world in the bright colors Vincent always described. It was a yearning in his heart that was always there.

"Fine, I'll play along," Zak huffed before he gazed into the large box, overflowing with grey cases. He paused for a moment before he pulled out a mid-tones grey case with a few characters on the front. It was called Red Dead Redemption II.

"Here, this one has the name red in it, so I assume it's red." He handed the box to Vincent, who looked upset.

"You can't just pick it off the name!" He exclaimed, throwing the case back into the box.

"I didn't! I picked it and then I read the name. I didn't pick it because of the name. I couldn't even see the title when it was in the box, dude."

They argued for a little while, but soon Vincent needed to get back to taking inventory and a few customers had come in, so Zak needed to make sure he was ready at the register. Many customers would come in and ask him questions about which games were good for certain ages, to which he never really had a response because the only game he played was Minecraft and people of all ages played that. Most of the time, he would recommend something he saw other people buy, or if it was for a younger child, he'd recommend something he knew was geared towards children. Other than age ratings, he didn't know much about any of the games in the store.

A while later, Vincent's shift was ending and it was starting to get to the slower time of day where Zak could sit back and scroll through his phone or watch videos. Not many people stopped in between 3:30pm and 9, which was when they closed. Still, there was one person who stopped in almost every day and Zak knew he couldn't close early because of it.