Doll
Ryou loved Amane with all his heart.
He still did, even now that she was dead and gone, and had been for some time. Five years since that day.
Ryou stood at her grave with his arms folded across his body, hugging himself as though it could make up for not having somebody else to hug.
He used to call her his doll, he thought ruefully. She used to love it when he called her that.
His porcelain doll, with her blue-white hair and flushed cheeks, with her perfection. Ryou had known Amane, and he had known Amane as his innocent little girl. He had tried to keep her away from things that could corrupt her mind. She really had not been a perfect child, but she had been a good one all the same. A good girl who could have grown into a woman if her life had not been cruelly snatched away before it began.
Along with his mother. He had loved his mother too. But his mother was not as loved as his sister by him. She was loved, though, and hailed as the perfect mother. But that, Ryou knew, was because he had known his mother far too short a time.
So he grieved for both lives that had been stolen. Both graves that had been sprinkled with roses and lilies. Both lives lost.
He cried. He very rarely cried. But when he did he cried hard.
Little whimpering sounds erupted from his throat, and his knees nearly buckled. He trembled, and seemed to partially keel over, bending over while his face screwed up into some sort of unimaginable grief.
He had tried to make a doll of Amane, of his little sister. But he couldn't get her right, couldn't get her color. Couldn't get her eyes to be alive. Because she was gone, and there was no turning back.
No turning back from the tragedy in his life, no turning back from the loneliness.
But he knew what his mother would say.
Hang on to the little things in life, love. Hang on to the good things and turn your back on all the sorrowful yesterdays.
He laughed. He had never known why his mother said that when he was little. But it was almost like a premonition. A knowing that soon enough, he wouldn't be telling Amane bed time stories anymore, or curling up with his mother in front of the TV. That his little doll would break and he wouldn't be able to fix her.
That his heart would break.
And it would sew itself together again.
But it would leave a scar.
Because no matter how fine the tailor, nobody can bring back lost innocence.
Nobody could take away grief.
Nobody would be able to stitch together a life ripped apart by tragedy.
Because things didn't work out that way.
The End