Author's Note: As my other two fics are starting to end, here, I am starting a new one. The plot is a tad cheesy, and it will most likely be a lot shorter than my standard 15-20 chapters. I don't know how it will come out, I don't know if it will be bad or good, so give me your feedback on these first few chapters.

Disclaimer: I do not own Shaman King. Neither do any other fanfiction writers on this site.


My name is Tao Ren.

My parents, Ran and En, gave me this name in hopes that I would grow to be as strong and beautiful as the lotus flower. Like a real Tao.

And I did.

Like my mother, I had hair darker than a raven's feathers, shining to a shade almost purple in the moonlight. My skin was pale, pale enough to rival snow. I had high, sharp cheekbones, and a pair of golden, cat-like eyes. I was thin with girlish hips. People told me all the time that my figure was quite feminine, but it never bothered me, because I knew that every girl in China would kill to have one like mine.

Although most of my appearance came from my mother, I have been told that I had the personality of my father. I was stubborn, arrogant, and cold-hearted.

I also had an older sister. She was named Tao Jun. She was a strange one among the Tao. Hair greener than the grass, eyes bluer than the sky. I could never understand why she looked like this, but she was my best friend.

I wanted to be like her.

Smart, strong, and talented.

All of China loved her. She was kind and worked hard. An idol to Chinese girls, a role model to Chinese women.

As for me, China did not see me like they saw her. They couldn't look past my appearance. All they knew me as was a pretty Tao boy. A sex symbol. Nothing more than that.

No one ever loved me like they loved her. Not even my own parents.

As my father expected of me, I trained insanely hard every day, from daybreak to midnight. I mastered martial arts and weaponry. I could make an oversoul before I oculd even walk, let alone before most shamans my age would even begin their training.

Like I hoped, I became strong. I cut down and destroyed everything in my way, including people.

But it did not bring me hapiness. It did not merit the affection of my mother and father.

I still could not understand why. I was unaware that all my training had allowed me no time to be with my family. They barely knew me. Other than the fact that I was their only son, and to be heir to the Tao, they rarely acknowledged me.

And I most certainly did not have time for friends.

I was terribly lonely. Sometimes, Jun would keep me company while I trained, but it never lasted long. I wanted to talk with Bason like Jun could talk with Pai-Long. I wanted to talk like we were friends, I wanted to be kind to him. He was the only one who ever seemed concerned for my pride and excellence. But my father told me becoming "friends" with your companion ghost would result in weakness. They were nothing more than tools to be used as the owner pleased.

And that was how I even entirely lost what the meaning of "friendship" was. My mind didn't have room for what my father disapproved of. I could no longer understand the concepts of friends and friendship, I didn't know why people needed them because I certainly no longer did.

Jun stopped keeping me company. I rarely saw her around. Unlike me, she had friends. People who cared about her, even if the majority of them were reanimated corpses.

My mother didn't seem to know anymore that I existed.

My father was cruel to me.

Nothing I did seemed to be good enough for him. And he punished me for my shortcomings.

He beat me, he tortured me, he made me undergo pain that a child like I was should never had felt. He carved the Tao family's symbol of hate into my back, as if to remind me that I would forever hate everyone, and he and everyone else in the world would forever hate me.

Oddly enough, I began looking forward to the times that my father would punish me. It wasn't as if I enjoyed the pain, because I certainly did not - sometimes, it was enough to cripple me for days at a time, disallowing me to train during those days, which my father saw as more oppurtunities to punish me.

The thing was, even though he was causing me pain, even though he was punishing me in unimaginable ways, I felt somewhat comforted that at least my father was paying attention to me. If he had the time to take out of his schedule to punish me, to focus on me for a few moments, it made me feel a little better.

But, no. I could not exactly call this fatherly love. I was his son, but I knew he didn't care much for me.

So I kept training.

And I got stronger. So much stronger. I surpassed my sister, but my power still could not compare to my father's, so I kept training even more.

As I grew, true to my name, I only became stronger, and more beautiful. My father said it was a shameful for me, a boy, to have such beauty, but it was the only thing I could be proud of myself for, so I chose to ignore him.

I am Tao Ren. A boy who will never love, and never be loved.