Hey everyone,

This is chapter one! I hope you will enjoy it, because it really calmed me to write this down.

I hate January fourth, and yet I can't stop commemorating it. Old habit, I guess.

I may not be able to update as frequently as before, because school starts tomorrow, and Secondary three at my school is serious business.

So yup! I would appreciate criticism, because it is my first time writing in this style, not to mention first person.

Bye!

A paintbrush swirled the black pupils into my eyes, a ring of gold left within the orbs. My lips were painted a full pink, a touch of shine on the edges.

He hesitated before reaching for the black paintbrush again, guiding the fibres downwards to color my hair black, intermittent streaks of green, looking accidental, yet still deliberate. I smiled a painted smile as I thought about this. He was the only one who could make useless lumps of clay look this beautiful.

I was varnished, and left on a shelf to dry, looking over his entirely too-small workshop. But this humble place was where the magic happened.

"There, you're done," He picked me up and ran a finger down a painted seam of my shirt, "I'll name you… Ryoma."

Ryoma. It was my new name. Ryoma. How sweet it sounded, especially when he said it. Ryoma. He printed the name in clear, neat calligraphy under one shoe, next to his signature.

I spent the next few days in a glass cupboard, next to the other dolls, staring out into a bright and noisy place. I think it was in front of his workshop. Little kids came and went, some had their mothers with them, others just came in to look. Goggle at the beautiful pieces of art.

"Are you sure you want that one?"

A brown haired boy was holding onto the hand of a tall man.

The shelf was unlocked, and his callused, long fingers wrapped themselves around my body and placed me on a counter. Was he taking me back to the workshop? A large box was sitting next to me, and pair of strong arms lifted me up and placed me carefully into the container.

No.

Styrofoam blocks were suffocating me. More were added to the top.

No.

He was sending me away. He was sending me away. He was sending me away.

No. I didn't want this. I had to get out. I tried to beat at the cardboard. He must have made a mistake. He would never send me away. He named me! Ryoma! He said it HIMSELF!

The last thing I saw before he closed the cardboard flaps above my head, was his grey hair, framing sad blue eyes, and a wrinkled face.

"Your son certainly has good taste, sir."

"Thank you."

I must have cried myself to sleep, for when I awoke, I was on a shelf, next to some trophies, gold and shiny. This shelf was in a room. Sunny, and extremely messy. White shirts strewn on the bed, with a mauve tie knotted around the doorknob.

In the corner, a young boy was bending over his table. Just like He used to, when moulding a new face. I wonder if he still remembered me, after sending me away, after working on me for two months. I was his finest piece of work, he used to say. I wonder if he still thought so. Probably not.

"Yuuta, dinner!"

So the boy's name was Yuuta, then. He jumped up and ran out of the room. I could feel the loud vibrations of his feet as he ran. The door was left wide open.

Where was I? I felt the same, I was in the same standing position, I was still wearing the same shirt. My face still felt the same, the lopsided smirk He had specially painted on for me. But why did everything feel so… different? Like something had changed… something big… And yet I knew it couldn't be that big, because, on the outside, I still looked the same.

"Syuusuke, you too!"

"Yes, I'm coming." The reply was soft, girlish, even.

A boy, Syuusuke, walked past Yuuta's open door, socks not making a sound against the wooden panels. The grace of a dancer. He was like His fingers delicately shaping clay; slow, liquid movements. He looked into Yuuta's room and shook his head. Yes it was indeed very mess—

The moment passed so quickly it was hard to tell if it actually happened. For a fraction of a second, his eyes passed over the shelf on which I was sitting, and he smiled before disappearing behind the plaster wall.

I may not have gotten it completely right, for it happened so fast, but I was positive, that I saw something. A flash of bright blue.

Was it his eyes? Was it His eyes?

Or maybe it was just my imagination.

I could only catch snippets of their conversation from my position on the shelf. The open door did much to help me making out the words.

"Yuuta, do you like your birthday present?"

"Yeah! Thanks dad!"

"Was it the doll?"

"Yes!"

"Yuuta, don't you think you're a bit too old to play with dolls?"

"I'm not playing! It's just pretty."

Was I supposed to be 'played' with? What are they going to do to me? I had seen some broken dolls in His workshop. Was this Yuuta going to do that to me? One doll I saw in the workshop had his arm broken off, and the scratches and scrapes on his face and clothes already exposed the pale ceramic beneath it. Was that what was going to happen to me? Did he send me over just to… just to…

How could he? How could he do this to me? He promised… promised… nothing. He never said anything about keeping me, but… I thought…

"Ryoma!"

Yuuta had returned to the room. I screamed as I saw him reach out towards me. No! I wasn't going to be broken. I didn't want to be broken! I writhed away, but it didn't seem to faze him. Yuuta placed me on his desk and stared, hard, straight at me. It was uncomfortable. I wanted to leave. I wanted the cool, dry air of the basement workshop. This was too bright. This was too humid.

He picked up a pencil and I cringed. Was he going to draw on my face? My body? I had heard of that before. Some of the broken dolls He salvaged had markings and ink covering their paint. This wasn't fair. I didn't want to look. If he was going to scribble and maul me, I wouldn't see it. Two months of work! Ruined! Would he be mad?

"Hmmm…" Yuuta bit on the back of his pencil and reached out to me. This was the end. The end of Ryoma. The end of me.

Surprisingly, the blow I expected never came, though I did feel slight pressure on my lower back. I was shifted. Looking up at Yuuta, I saw him purse his lips in satisfaction, and press the pencil to paper. Silence, except for the quick scratches of Yuuta's pencil.

To be honest, I got kind of bored standing in the same position after realizing that he wasn't going to break me. I did wonder what he was doing on the paper, and an occasional glance was thrown that way whenever he wasn't staring at me.

After god knows how long, he held up the paper, and propped it up next to me, eyes flitting between to me, and the white sheet. Then suddenly, his smile morphed into a frown and he snatched up the paper, crumpling it and tossing it at the closed door. Tearing at his hair, probably in frustration, Yuuta stormed out of the room, slamming the door behind him.

I had no idea why he did that. What was on the sheet that aggravated him so?

"Yuuta?" The bob haired boy popped his head into Yuuta's room, "Are you there?"

Obviously not, for the room was empty. The boy… Syuusuke, wasn't it? looked prepared to leave, until he saw the crumpled sheet on the floor, just at his feet. Bending over, he picked it up, eyes widening before stretching into upside down 'U's to match a smile. A smile that chilled me to the bone. I remember Him painting one of those on Gin, then painting over it a few weeks later. He… Syuusuke looked up and scanned the room, before his eyes landed on me.

Yes, I was right. Bright blue, unlike Yuuta's soft brown.

He chuckled, and the feeling of dread that had just left me came back again, hitting me like a sack of rocks in the gut. Yuuta's vacated seat was occupied again, and Syuusuke sat down, leaning back and observed me, his intense gaze never leaving its mark on the area in the middle of my forehead. He looked from me, then to the paper, before giving another unsettling grin and picking up Yuuta's abandoned pencil, scribbling something on the corner of the paper.

"This is very pretty, no?"

It took some time for me to realize that he was actually speaking to me, and by the time I did so, with some astonishment, he had already left, the paper supported by a table lamp. I stared, and a replica of my face stared back.

You have improved, my darling Yuuta

When Yuuta saw those six words, various emotions played on his face. First surprise, than embarrassment, then anger, then pride, then happiness.

"Damn you, brother…"

He said that with a funny little smile that betrayed the words he said. Sarcasm? It didn't seem much like it. I saw him smoothen out the creases on the paper with a ruler, and slip the paper into a folder.

The next time he reached out to pick me up, I didn't struggle.

I spent the next two years being carried from the shelf, to the desk, to the bed-side table, back to the shelf, into the cupboard, and onto the desk again. I enjoyed most of my life, though sometimes I felt like Yuuta had forgotten about me, especially when he leaves me in a drawer, sometimes for months on end. But I don't mind. I know he'll always take me out sometime or other. Sometimes he draws me, sometimes he just stares and stares. And sometimes he just takes me out to change my location, maybe place me on higher ground…

And Syuusuke is with him sometimes. I am… addicted… to his eyes. They remind me of home. That curious blue tint isn't really common, though I'm not really one to talk, seeing as I've never seen much.

I see Syuusuke quite a bit, probably not as much as Yuuta, but a lot, all the same. He rarely opened his eyes, though, always smiling at me in that knowing way, talking to me when no one was around.

How he expected me to answer was anybody's guess. I don't think he's mentally sound. But he looked like a doll. He would have liked his face. It was pretty, proportionate, and aesthetic. Yes. It was the exact face that He loved to create.

I wonder why he didn't make my face like that. Maybe it was an accident. Maybe that's why he sent me away. Well, if it was, I'm fine with it. Yuuta's really nice, and so is Syuusuke. Yoshiko sometimes comes in to clean Yuuta's room. She looks like Syuusuke, just with brown eyes, like Yuuta. I wonder where Syuusuke gets his color from. I've never seen their dad.

In my third year in the Fuji household, disaster struck.

It was shaking. Everything was. Really, really… truly… petrifying. Yuuta had been ushered out by Yoshiko. I saw Syuusuke run past his room with a kind of panic I had never seen before, hair flying behind him. I shouted out to him. To save me. I was frightened. I was so afraid. The room was shaking. The swiveling chair Yuuta used to always sit on was overturned. The shelf I was sitting on started to wobble, rattling its contents. Sheer terror gripped at my chest. Some books were already loosening themselves from the book separators, and dropping onto the floor. Against all better judgment, I stole glance at the ground.

I immediately regretted it. It was a long, long, long drop. No barriers, no safety net. Just one and a half metres of steep vertical plunging.

This is really the end… I really thought that it was the end for me. Three years. Some dolls don't even last that long.

More shaking, then a book dislodged behind me and knocked me off my stand.

The two second drop felt like hours. I turned, the room was upside down. Free fall. For a while, my body felt free, no gravity. The irony, for it was this very force that brought me crushing against the ground.

A few, sickening crunches, then pure agony. Pain of unimaginable intensity tore my mind and body to shreds.

Oblivion.

"Oh god, oh god, no."

"Yuuta…"

"No! Look at him! He's… he's just…" Tears poured down Yuuta's cheeks as he stared at the broken form of his doll.

"I'm sorry, Yuuta."

Yuuta continued sobbing, the words 'father' and 'birthday' barely discernable between unintelligible moans.

"Yuuta…"

"Brother, please leave. I just… just some time."

"Call me when you need me." Syuusuke stood up, watching as sobs racked Yuuta's shoulders, his crouched form making him look all the more vulnerable. He sighed, shutting the door behind him with a small click.

If there was anything he could do…

When I woke up, my body was numb. I couldn't feel pain. But I couldn't feel anything else either. Just numbness, in essence, nothing. I couldn't truthfully say I didn't like it, though. It was infinitely better than the extreme pain I felt before I blacked out.

I looked up. Syuusuke was bending over me, eyebrows scrunched in concentration. I thought about how much more attractive he looked when he was absorbed in something. And again, I wondered, if I looked like him, would He have kept me. Syuusuke should be a doll, he really should.

Then Syuusuke picked something up, and I very nearly fainted again. It was my arm. My arm. My… I looked over at my dismembered limb. My arm was no longer in its place. It wasn't even on my body. My entire lower section had been sliced off as well. I saw my foot lying a few inches from my face.

I could have thrown up if I had anything to regurgitate. Syuusuke brought up a nasty smelling liquid to my arm, smearing liberal amounts of the putrid goo onto the severed limb.

"Sorry, Ryoma."

I gave a yelp when he pressed my arm back into the socket. Suddenly, like needles piercing my skin, I felt prickling on the arm Syuusuke had just reattached.

"I guess I should have warned you. This might hurt even more."

I felt a small pressure on my waist, then the same prickling sensation was attacking my legs.

"Almost done now, please bear with it."

I was begging him to stop. It was hurting me.

A sudden pang of pain on my left foot caused me to jerk instinctively away.

"The worst of it is over now. I hope I didn't hurt you too much."

I could have openly snorted if I wasn't feeling so damn pathetic. Syuusuke left me lying on the table and exited the room. I was alone.

Was he going to throw me away? Because I was broken?

Then he was back, holding a brush. An overwhelming sense of nostalgia came over me and I remembered His fingers tenderly shaping the clay of my body, brushing lightly at my face and clothes. Then it was Syuusuke's smooth fingers, painting over the scars caused by the fall.

The pain had fainted into something more of a dull ache, and the ticklish brush was welcome against my sore flesh.

"Oh! Brother! You… you… Fixed…"

"Yes, I fixed him, do you want to say hello?"

"I'm just…"

"Well? Take him, he's yours."

Syuusuke had touched up on my paintwork, covering the cracks of the porcelain with another coat of paint and varnish.

Syuusuke held me out towards Yuuta, and I noticed how far away my feet were from the ground, held, dangling, only supported by Syuuske's hands. If he dropped me…

"I am really grateful, brother, but I don't think I want to keep Ryoma any longer."

I was a tad insulted, despite being broken, I had been fixed as good as new, perhaps even better.

"I thought…" It seemed Syuusuke was also a little hurt.

"It's not that I don't appreciate it, brother, it's just that… dad… Ryoma reminded me of Dad, and I always thought that that if he was gone, Dad would disappear from my mind as well. But, I thought about it… and…"

Syuusuke broke into a smile, and nodded in understanding, "Then I'll keep Ryoma, you're fine with that?"

"Yeah, I suppose I do have enough drawings of him by now."

"So it would seem, care to show me any?"

"No way."

"Just two weeks ago, a 6.3 magnitude earthquake struck disaster on Narita, Chiba, followed by a 5.9 aftershock just last week. We have our correspondent over right now to report on the situation in Narita. So tell us, Kobayashi-san, how are the residents dealing with this calamity?"

"Well, Sugimura-san, as you can see from the video feed, the villagers are coping well. Those who have been displaced have been housed in shelters. However, those buildings further away from the epicentre, here and here, have not been affected as much, though there are still many casualties from falling debris and such. The government has been sending aid and relief efforts have been extremely successf—"

Syuusuke turned off the television. I watched him curiously as he ripped off a piece of packing tape, sealing the last of the cardboard boxes. I knew the Fuji family had always planned on leaving Chiba for Tokyo that year, but the earthquake seemed to have shaken Yoshiko considerably, no pun intended, and she brought forward their departure date two months.

I feel her there. I hate earthquakes. Though I suppose it could have been worse. It's just lucky that the Fuji's are living in the countryside and not the city. Good for them, I guess. And for me too. At least my parts were still intact after the fall.

Every time I remembered my body being broken into that many pieces, I would think about what would have happened to me if one of my limbs had flew out of the window or something.

Perhaps Syuusuke would have made an extra one for me.

Living with Syuusuke has been a most peculiar experience. For one, I was placed on the windowsill, with the bed under me. I would have liked this arrangement if not for the numerous spiky cacti that shared the windowsill with me. They scare the socks off my feet. But Syuusuke seemed to like them.

And I found out that I wasn't the only thing Syuusuke talked to. He talked to the cacti as well. I suppose he put me with them so he could talk to us all at once, which is perhaps more efficient that saying something to me, then having to say it all over again to the cacti.

Other than that, his room was absolutely immaculate. It was a bit of a culture shock of sorts, especially after having been in Yuuta's room for the past three years of my life. Which only spanned… well, just a little over three years.

Well, I can only hope it can stretch longer. I wonder if Tokyo is a nice place. Syuusuke brought a friend home the other day, and he said that Tokyo was horrible. I don't think it's as bad as he makes it out to be. I mean, there can only be this many red-light districts in the world.

Ah well, only one way to find out. They're leaving next week. I have to say I'm really excited.

Oh Ryoma, if only you knew what was in store for you...

Just joking, hope you enjoyed it!

I'll update as soon as I can. But school just started, so maybe i can be a little more lax. But once the schoolwork really kicks in...

Um, still as soon as I can.

Writing is not a chore for me, it is refreshing, so I probably will do it as much as possible.

Ciao!