Existential
"I'm back again, today." Naminé announced as she shut the door behind her.
Unecessary.
The click echoed through the dead-silent room. With little surprise, she noticed that her toy sat on the chair in the corner, where Naminé had left her the day before. It was the only semblance of color in the otherwise white-washed room. Naminé's toy had long since ceased to respond to her; she just sat, twisting her simple black dress into knots with her hands and staring blankly at the wall.
Her pretty hands were still, today.
Naminé crouched on the floor beside her toy, nervous curiousity not quite making its way to her voice, "Still alive?"
When a response didn't come, the nobody leaned up to brush the bright red hair out of the other girl's face and inspected her eyes. They held all the emotion of a doll, but there was still the luster of a soul - of a heart, Naminé thought bitterly - shining from them. She let her arms fall to the toy's lap, where she took up the redhead's old hobby, twisting and tying the dress where it ended at the girl's knees. "You were more fun when you talked," Naminé commented, marveling at the toy's clothing. How could she not? Her simple garb had never been anything but white. "Even if all you did was beg to see him."
Her toy said nothing, and Naminé wondered if it ever would again. She rose to her knees and began to play, instead, with the pretty doll hair, sifting the fiery strands through her fingers and combing them back into place behind the toy's ears.
"He's dead, you know. The boy you wanted to see." She whispered to the doll as her fingers wove through blood-red silk.
Brush, brush. Flash. Flash, flash. How very, very pretty.
Her toy stared at her face blindly, and its eyes showed no reaction to the news. Naminé's hands stopped abruptly in the middle of her task and tightened in a way that must have been painful.
"How could you? Why don't you cry!? He was your friend! He loved you!" Naminé screeched, her shoulders beginning to shake. Falling forward, she buried her face in the doll's hair. All her hard work had been undone, and it was a mess again. Her grip loosened. "Cry! Cry..."
If the toy had been startled by the girl's sudden outburst, it didn't show. She merely continued to stare vacantly ahead with large, blue doll eyes. The blonde nobody was silent for a long while. "...You aren't a fun toy at all."
The doll didn't seem hurt by her statement. Naminé smiled up at the toy's petite face.
Familiar.
"Let's play a game."
Repetitive.
The definition of insanity.
Let's play, let's play, play, play a game.
Excited, she stood and fetched a pair of her pink-covered sketchbooks from the ivory table in the center of her room, and carried them back to the corner. She placed one in the lap of her toy. Naminé kept pencils in the spiral bindings of her precious books, sharpened to a point, and she pulled hers out now. "We can draw each other, like we used to." She explained. "Remember? It was fun!"
Game, game, game of chess. You're just a false white queen, with a lined-paper smile drawn on.
The doll watched her. The blonde's reflection danced in marble irises as she sat on the floor. Her pencil skated across the smooth paper in a way that was almost natural (not human). It was several minutes before she finished with a flourish and a pleased smile, and glanced over at her plaything. Her toy's pencil remained nestled beside the edges of paper, guarded by silver coils. Naminé released her own utensil and watched its downward path somberly. It clattered noisily on the bleached tiles of the floor.
Crash. Crash. Snap.
When she spoke, it was to her own bare calves, crossed over each other in front of her on the freezing floor. Not that eye contact wouldn't have been wasted on the toy, anyway. "You used to play with me. You're my toy! Your job is to play with me!"
Her words had no effect on her would-be playmate. Angrily, Naminé snatched her fallen pencil and set to work on the recently drawn picture of her doll. She scratched twin lines down the chin, made them drip across the slender throat, trailing fluidly from an expressionless mouth. Naminé shaded it darkly, massacring the paper in the process, and then turned, waiting for her living puppet play out her part. The doll lurched forward, bright red blossoming forth from her mouth to spill over the curve of her lip and stain her pale skin. Flowing like the lines of a pencil, it followed the trail Naminé had blazed down the elegant planes of the redhead's neck, a sickening real-life replay of a little girl's fairy-tale drawing.
Lead sharper than steel.
No noise came from the toy, but those deep eyes reflected the pain that she was causing. Still, there were no tears to be seen. Nothing tangible. No proof of pain, or of existence.
Finally, after the doll had fallen from her chair, and spilt a large red mess all over the floor, Naminé took pity and erased the lines of blood from her paper. It vanished the next instant, leaving the other girl boneless on the clean, white tiles. Naminé grabbed her by the wrist and dragged her back into her seat, and the toy settled wordlessly back into her place.
"That's fine." She told her toy, because she loved her toy. "It never happened, anyway, and so you aren't hurt. Not on the outside."
Unfocused eyes gazed at her from underneath a curtain of scarlet. Naminé pressed her lips together. "Don't look at me like that. If I erased it, it doesn't exist. And now..." Delicate eyebrows lowered. "I think that you should play with me before I erase you."
She paused, but still no answer. Did her little toy really want to dissapear that badly? "I don't know what it's like, to have a heart. To cry, and to mean it. Why don't you cry for me?"
Nothingness. Emptyness. Her doll was nothing more than what she was, after all.
"Stupid!" Naminé yelled, kicking the sketchbook she had left on the floor into the corner. It hit the wall and fell shut. "You idiot! Do you really think any of this is real? That he would let this happen to you? You have someone who loves you! Kairi exists! But you don't. This... this never happened, and it never will. I drew you into life because I was bored, and you don't exist any more than I do! How does it feel to know that nothing you do will make you important? How does it feel to be nothing!? Worthless, worthless girl!"
Drip. Drop. Splash.
Naminé froze. Kairi's - not Kairi's - tear slid down a china doll cheek. A single one. No, no. No! She didn't want pity! She wanted pain! She wanted Kairi to suffer for everything she had that Naminé was denied, not to cry because she felt sorry for her pathetic other!
"No!" The nobody screamed, backing away, "No! No! Stop it!"
Drop. Drip. Splash. No more pieces on the board.
"I don't need you. You're inconsequential. You don't exist." Naminé told the puppet - the memory that wasn't a memory at all. "I do. I'll leave proof that I once was, but no one will ever know about you."
Kairi - not Kairi - stared at her. Stared and cried, because the little bitch was feeling sorry for her. "I'm..." Naminé choked, slammed her fist against the table until it stung and then... She took a deep breath, steadied herself, and sat. She gripped the edge of the table, tight, and bit her lip until it tasted bad. "I'm erasing you. Tomorrow."
The nobody's sobs echoed throughout the white, empty room.
Let's play, let's play, play, play pretend.
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