She Hated Rainbow

Cathy browsed through housing brochures. She planned to move out of her uncle's house as soon as possible. Unfortunately, no matter how hard she searched, not a single rented house could fit her budget.

Moreover, after calculating the additional costs, such as electricity, etc., she had to rethink her way out of her uncle's wings.

If only her uncle were willing to spend time with them, it might be easier to accept the man's aid.

Their sense of debt would be slightly less if there were family relations between them.

However, the man never came home and always went out of town. Cathy herself has begun not to remember what her uncle looked like.

The last time they met face to face was when she was eleven years old. The rest they only chat on the phone and never did a voice or video call.

If the siblings had met Uncle Ben outside, they certainly wouldn't have known each other.

Even in this house, not a single photo was attached, neither a photo of her father nor her father's family. This house seems empty, uninhabited.

Cathy did not make drastic changes to the house and only adorned her and her sisters' rooms with their photos. She also put a picture of her parents in her sister's room.

Unfortunately, she only has one picture, which was the wedding day of her parents. That too, she only could get a hand of it after she kept bugging her so-called uncle.

It seems that Uncle Ben was not so fond of his family that he refused to place any photos in his own house.

Well, that's none of her business. Cathy will not interfere with her uncle's private life. It's a different story when it comes to her three younger sisters.

Even though her siblings did not remember their parents, Cathy wanted them to know what their parents looked like. That's why she begged her uncle to give her a picture of her parents for days.

After taking a warm shower, Cathy laid her back on her bed, staring at the ceiling of her room. She thought about her father's condition in the mental hospital.

Once a month, she would go to the hospital to visit her father. As usual, her father did not recognize her and threw her out.

She wanted to take her younger siblings to meet her father; at the same time, she didn't want her younger siblings to feel bitter about their father's current condition.

She wondered if her father would stay like that or...

Somehow Cathy didn't feel excited to wait for him to recover.

She did not feel happy or sad about her father's condition. Like her uncle, her father was like a stranger to her, especially for her younger siblings. They never saw a father figure beside them.

As for herself... she had felt the support, protection, and guidance of her father. It's just that she could not remember good memories with her father. The only thing that she remembered most even appeared in her dreams was when she received a hard slap on the cheek.

From that moment on, she couldn't feel her father's love. She was confused, sad, disappointed yet could not hate the man.

Well, since then, she has already considered her father gone just like her mother. The figure of an older man who was hospitalized for his disorder mental illness was like a stranger to her.

However, she knew that deep inside her heart, she hoped her father gets well. Even though she couldn't return when she lived happily with her doting father and lively mother, even though her father would never come back because of his illness, at least Cathy wanted her younger siblings to feel what it was like to have a father.

She closed her eyes, and a sweet but buried memory flashed through her mind.

"Dad, look! What is that?"

"It's a rainbow, dear."

"A rainbow? Why does it have so many colors?"

"Try to count how many colors are there?"

Five-year-old Cathy was just learning numbers at school, trying to remember the numbers she had memorized.

"One..two..three..five..six..seven .." she paused for a while, "Ten! It has ten colors!" exclaimed Cathy confidently.

A peal of crispy laughter sounded in Cathy's ears as her father laughed at her confidence. As long as she could remember, it was the first time she had seen her father laugh.

"Cathy, after number three, is four, not five. And after seven it is eight. Now, let's try again."

"One, two, three, four, seven, eight, ten!" exclaimed Cathy, surely she was right this time.

"Hmm... still wrong. Try again." said her father in a gentle and loving tone.

"One, two, three, four, seven .."

"Five .." whispered his father to correct the little girl.

"Five," repeated Cathy, "Six, seven?"

"That's right. Daddy's girl is brilliant." praised her father made her smile widened happily.

"Rainbow... I love rainbow the most."

"Why?"

Cathy just answered him with her sweet, adorable smile.

Now she remembered the past, Cathy wondered why did she like the rainbow at that time? She couldn't remember the answer at all.

What was certain was that every time she saw a rainbow in the sky, her mood was instantly gloomy. But when Cathy wanted to see a rainbow and felt sure she would not be grumpy when she saw it, the rainbow never appeared.

In the end, her dislike for rainbows grew even greater, and never expected to see a rainbow again.

Just before she fell fast asleep, Cathy heard someone knocked on her room's door.

Cathy opened the door to her room; felt confused when she saw her three younger siblings appear in front of her carrying their bolsters.

What day is it today? Oh, Saturday.

Every Saturday, the four of them will sleep together in Cathy's room. They would chat late into the night or play cards until the next morning.

Because it was a routine habit, they could not help but sleep together on Saturdays even sometimes they did not realize that today is Saturday.