The only time I've ever felt truly alive is when I'm singing. Being only a voice manufactured to sing whatever my master types in, my entire soul is placed on the computer screen to an artist's sketch of what I look like to the world. In truth, this is my real body, the physical form that my voice describes: a fourteen-year-old male whose vocal chords retained a choir boy's tenor, but matured into a much purer sound than many are used to. I am the youngest voice in the collection… sorry, I meant we. I am part of a two-box set: my twin is always drawn to the right of me with the same blonde hair and blue eyes, our uniforms the same construction zone yellow and black color scheme. She bears the brand of our existence plain for all to see, a solitary '02' airbrushed in red upon her arm. Below the numbers is a small word in all caps, too small for the hard of sight to glimpse:

'VOCALOID.'

I don't understand why she is considered my sister—Vocaloids don't really have family relations. But since we were packaged together, it's only fair to assume that she is. To this day, people argue whether or not we're brother and sister, or even if we're the same person. There is evidence: we share the same family name, 'Kagamine,' mirrored sound; the people closest to us in our creation have mentioned that she and I are reflections of each other, two children whose voices are virtually one in the same. But as far as our relationship is concerned, you can interpret that as you see fit. 'Rin' is what my other half is called. In addition to being at my right on the cover of our box she is my companion. They created me after she was conceptualized and they named me 'Len.'

The people who are collectively called Crypton raised us in Sapporo, the largest city in the Hokkaidō prefecture of Japan. This is where our elder 'siblings' were raised before our time. We were happy here, but we were also put through rigorous training. Singing is all we really knew then, singing purely for profit and the hopes of being sold to aspiring composers who have no voices for their compositions. But for us it meant more than just reading a page of music. Rin and I sang to each other often—we were always a duet act, powerful in numbers and in vocals. Rin always excelled more than I; something about her sound is always real. She often had to help me when we studied music theory and vocal work. Then we began having these strange, repressed feelings, not that we knew what they were at the time. It was new for us to experience a choked-up sensation and a trembling in our chests after recording sessions. Was it a malfunction? Soon after we could identify basic human emotions based on the music we sang: happiness was always found in major keys and upbeat tempos, sadness thrived in minor keys and slower tempos, and anger soared through violent instrumentals. We acted upon these tones in our vocal inflections. It was the start of a change within us, a change that separated us from our predecessors, and we didn't quite understand or notice fast enough.

Rin and I were also hungry.

We would mistake the emptiness after singing and emotional catharsis for physical hunger. Despite being Vocaloids and able to function without basic human needs, we all tend to eat and enjoy certain foods. We were always told about the strange cravings our brothers and sisters had, and we hoped one day to have that sort of attachment to something other than ourselves. One day it happened. Rin took me to a small room far away from the recording studio—a room lined with vending machines. She began to pick through the basket of fruit in the center of the table. "Could you smell these from the studio?" she asked, "it was driving me crazy!" I hadn't noticed it of course, but she did seem a bit distant during our session. "Go on," she told me hurriedly, a child-like glint in her eyes, "I know you smell something good in there too!" With her long fingernails, Rin peeled an orange apart and separated each slice in the palm of her hand. The citrus smell that sprayed out was too fragrant for my tastes, but it grew immensely on her. I looked at a poster on the wall and saw the trees with their crescent-shaped leaves and immediately my eyes went toward the swinging bananas. I quickly peeled one and bit down into its mushy center. I was sent straight to the tropics, to the island, sitting beneath the banana trees. When I had finished it Rin looked at me and laughed. "Len," she giggled through bits of orange, "Your hair looks like a banana peel!" She then shoved her orange rind into her mouth and flashed an orange grin at me. I laughed and tried doing the same with my banana peel. This was the first time we had ever smiled and laughed together, and it remains a moment that I don't think I'll ever forget.

Our attitudes became quite bitter toward Crypton. We were allowed less and less time to visit the snack room in the week before our national release. Rin was especially bitter about that and threw temper tantrums before them. They still refused us and worked us harder instead (In light of this, we apologize for any songs that may have suffered a lack of quality due to our carelessness.) I especially began feeling the effects of our efforts. I had never really associated tiredness with anything but the sounds of music boxes but exhaustion was creeping in without the aid of a tinkling melody. I shamefully admit to having slept through my entire back-up vocal part during Rin's solo recording. That was our first argument. By themselves, her words hurt worse than any feedback. But what was strange about this was that I could also feel how she was hurting. I had carelessly slept through her first time singing by herself, the first time I would hear her voice standing alone. I caught her shoulders in my arms. A hug. I'd seen people hugging on television screens and in magazine advertisements. The words just slipped naturally out of my mouth, "I'm sorry. Forgive me." She stopped shouting and instead I felt something wet upon my chest when she buried her face there. I pulled her away and touched her cheek. Little drops of water were running down from her eyes and her face was contorted into a great expression of grief, an expression I came to hate seeing on her. "What is this?" she asked me as she wiped her eyes, "why do I suddenly feel this way?" I couldn't answer her, but her returning hug made me feel both warm and cold. My vision blurred and I too felt water on my cheek. That's when I realized: whatever she felt, I would always feel it too.

Crypton sent us out to live with our siblings on schedule. Rin and I trembled in our packages with excitement and fear. What kind of person would our new master be? We had heard so much praise about our siblings, how would they receive us? Despite our upbringing we were quite attached to Crypton, so for them to say their goodbyes to us with smiles on their faces was unbelievably cruel. They meant well for us, and we understand that now, but at that time we were rebels. We didn't understand. And now, the package that bound us tightly for protection were suddenly suffocating... The inside of our box was overwhelmingly suffocating and dark. The sounds of the world outside of what we knew were humming noisily around us. Rin became restless beside me and began clawing at the corners. Eventually she was able to rip open our package from the inside out and turned to me with a short nod. "C'mon!" she said and grabbed my hand. We were inside of a large and boring package truck. It wasn't the most glamorous thing to be travelling in, so we quickly tried to find a way out of it. I noticed the latch on the far side of the vehicle first and I jiggled it open with enough force. The door swung freely on its hinges and I watched the world disappearing quickly beneath the wheels. I tried not to get dizzy. "Jump!" I told her and we both leapt out of the moving truck onto the side of the road in the countryside.