Touched

Chapter 02:

"The Making"

I didn't plan on actually making dolls of Yusuke, Kuwabara, Kurama, and Hiei, of course. Even someone as socially inept as me didn't think that was normal, that doing something so, so stalkerish wouldn't be looked at as creepy, or awkward, or strange if I got caught, especially by the boys who inspired the dolls in the first place. It's just that every time I sat down at my desk over the course of the next week and a half, I found myself with gloves wrapped around pieces of ball-joint dolls, fingers fitting together bodies that matched the proportions of Yusuke, or Kuwabara, or Kurama, or Hiei without my conscious thoughts doing anything to guide them.

When my conscious thoughts actually did decide to guide my hands into making the boys into dolls, a decision that I came to only when I realized that resistance was futile—oh, it wasn't as easy as fitting joints together, painting faces, and dressing them. I wanted more than a mere facsimile of a doll. I wanted heart, I wanted essence, I wanted soul, I wanted everything a doll modeled after a certain person has trouble being.

Portraits are the curse of the dollmaker; they are a goal so close you can taste them, but they are a goal that remains maddeningly out of reach.

Still, I tried, and I'd like to think I succeeded. I got on my favorite forums and asked around after the best ways to make a doll with a life-like rendering of a specific human's face, and after many naysayings (it won't work; just paint the face as best you can) suggestions that I didn't know if I could bring to life (mold their heads out of glass and fire them, then paint them) and suggestions that, frankly, were the work of trolls (cut off the person's head and shrink it, was one of the more colorful ones), someone provided me a link to a website I had never heard of.

The business had, apparently, been open for only a few months, but after carefully reading through the processes used to make the horrendously-expensive, unpainted doll heads and seeing the seven glowing product reviews (one of which was from Matel Toys, of all the reputable sources in the world), I determined that I was willing to risk using them on my Yusuke-Kuwabara-Kurama-Hiei project.

Their process, for the record, was a simple, effective, and involved one. To create the sculpture, one needed to provide photographs of the person you wished to emulate from a series of angles: straight-on, in profile, from above, from below, three-quarter left, and three-quarter right. You also needed to provide detail shots of all their features, several shots of the subject wearing different expressions, and if it was possible, they wanted measurements in centimeters of the face, jaw, and skull for facial proportions. You were to also provide the subject's height and weight so they could size the head appropriately.

Once all of the required information was submitted, it was fed into a database and rendered into a digital 3D model of the final product. From there a machine could form and cast the doll's head. If your information was cohesive and if your pictures were clear and your measurements accurate, the final product would bear a remarkable resemblance to the subject in question. They had trouble capturing things like wrinkles and colors, which is why the heads were delivered unpainted so you could do the face-ups yourself, but the bone structure and face shape was just about perfect.

I did not, of course, have photographs of my subjects. I emailed the manufacturer and asked if clear, precise sketches would be enough to make my doll's head, and I attached a few images of Hiei to showcase my skill as a sketch artist.

Not that I'm really that much of a sketch artist, mind you. It's just that the faces of Hiei, Kurama, Yusuke, and Kuwabara were so ingrained on my brain that it would have been more surprising if I couldn't draw them accurately.

At any rate, after reading my email (in which I provided a list of some of the people who had bought my dolls, because I figured that the company wouldn't get back to a person who was a nobody, even though my name is fairly well-known among dollmaking circles) and seeing my arsenal of sketch work, the woman in charge of sales OK-ed my work for rendering. Ecstatic, I sent in all of the required sketches of the boys, plus a few others I felt might help the process. I was able to provide their measurements fairly well, because after years of making my own clothes I've become a good judge of minute distances, and she told me to allow three weeks for delivery.

Now, I know what you're thinking: Why didn't you send in one of the boy's sketches, wait to see how it came out, then send the others in? Because the process could fail utterly, and if that's the case then you wasted your money!

The answer, you see, is a simple beast: I was just too excited to wait.

I did not sit idly around while their heads came in, of course. I actually let my hands do what they'd been wanting to do all along, allowing them to fit ball-joints together until I had four perfect, naked bodies lying on my desk, each one mirroring the form of one of the four boys living in my head. The smallest, slightest body was Hiei; the largest one, the one with the ridiculously broad shoulders and narrow hips, was Kuwabara, and the two between were lean and slight and belonged to Kurama and Yusuke.

After the principle four, I made a fifth doll without really meaning to, and it took a day of deep thought to realize that the mysterious fifth's body mimicked the wider, stronger, and more sinister proportions of the silver-haired, golden-eyed man who stood behind Kurama.

Yoko Kurama, not just Kurama, I thought while I stared at it lying half-formed in my hands, and I jumped a little. The words had flowed into my head without my bidding, and then: And the red, that's… Shuichi-Kurama. The two are one and the same, but separate.

My stomach twisted. Palms felt damp inside my gloves.

But how do I know that?

For those who are interested, Yoko Kurama didn't require a special head. He had the same wide, calculating eyes as a spare gothic doll of mine possessed, and I dismantled that head and fitted it—no, him, now—with silver hair the day before the other heads came in.

The bodies, finished weeks before the heads arrived, couldn't have been better, and I made their clothes before I ever saw the heads, too.

I made their clothes by hand, pants and shirts and all, and I made small versions of their jackets out of the jackets themselves, tearing cloth from the lining so I wouldn't damage the original items too much—after all, if the real boys came looking for their coats, I didn't want to have torn them all to pieces.

Kurama's coat was the only exception, as I still took the time to tailor it down to my size.

Anyway, I dressed them in the outfits I had seen in my dreams: jeans on Yusuke, with a white t-shirt beneath his windbreaker, and tennis shoes. I slipped a pair of miniature reflective sunglasses into his coat pocket; they suited him. Kuwabara wore jeans and a t-shirt as well, but his letterman made him look more put-together than Yusuke and his sneakers were newer, too. Shuichi-Kurama wore a crisp white dress shirt and black slacks, with shined shoes and a tie to hold back his riotous hair. Yoko wore a simple white tunic.

Hiei was the only one whose clothes posed a small amount of difficulty. His cloak resisted being cut until I went out and bought a pair of industrial shears, the kind guaranteed to cut through anything, and even those looked remarkably dull after I tore through a strip of the cloak's fabric and poked simple arm-holes on either end. I made Hiei's under clothes—black pants and a ratty shirt with no sleeves—out of different fabric to save myself the trouble of ruining more shears.

An email saying that my package was on its way made my entire day a study in tension, anticipation, and sweet, sweet longing. I watched for the mailman from my window, and when I saw him walking down the street I quietly padded down the stairs, slipped out the front door, and signed for the box with my name on it. Mother intercepted me as I tried carrying the package inside, wondering why I had gone out and popped back in at random, but I managed to distract her with news of a good test score long enough to put the cardboard box behind my back. She was on her day's lunch break, luckily enough, and was just on her way out, so she didn't have time to be suspicious and told me she'd be home by ten, "so order some pizza for dinner, OK?"

I told her that I would, and since I didn't have cram school that day I was able to run up to my room, shut the door, and lock myself and my pounding heart inside. I made sure to watch Mother walk down the street and vanish around the corner before I sat down at my doll desk, hands trembling as I took an exacto knife from a drawer and slowly slit the tape holding the box closed. Packing peanuts fell to the desk and floor like snow as I plunged my hands inside, and from the white mass I pulled a small wooden box. A metal clasp on the front clinked when I thumbed it open, and when I saw the head lying on the plush red velvet interior, I couldn't help but gasp and stare.

An undeniably Yusuke pair of eyes looked up at me, a smile ghosting at the corners of his white mouth. His jaw was perfect, ears just the right size, eyes wide and shaped just so and small nose exactly how I remembered it. I held the head up and turned it over and over in my hands, marveling at how much like Yusuke it looked. They'd somehow managed to capture his barely-contained energy in the lines and flow of his unseen bones, and even though the head lacked hair there was no way to mistake him for any of the others.

I put him back, a smile breaking across my lips as I found another box and opened it. There, face patient and serene, was Kurama with his wide eyes, high cheekbones, and pointed chin. Next came Hiei; somehow they had managed to capture his grumpy scowl, watching eyes, and suspicious brow, much to my delight, and Kuwabara looked as much like Kuwabara as the real man did. The tough-guy expression couldn't hide the smile and cheer beneath, and I found myself grinning at his hidden optimism in spite of myself.

"You're perfect," I whispered, and then my voice gained strength. "You are all perfect."

I put the heads in their boxes, breathing deep through my nose and out through my mouth, and then I scraped all of the fallen packing peanuts back into the cardboard box.

"I'll make you the best clothes and hair and face-ups ever," I promised the heads, who lay in their protective boxes and out of sight. "You deserve the best, and that's what I'll give you."

I found the note just before I tossed the cardboard box in the garbage.

"Though sketches don't normally work well in our process," the hand-penned letters said, "yours seemed to lend the finished products lives of their own. These truly are exceptional products, even by our standards. Though this is irregular of us to ask, would you mind if we kept your name on file as a business and customer reference? We would love to work with you again, just as we would love to see the projects our merchandise will complete."

The note was signed with the company's founder's name, plus a phone number and extension.

I swallowed, nervous at the suggestion of sending in pictures of the finished dolls. What if Hiei, or Kurama, or Yusuke, or Kuwabara got hold of the images somehow, and found me out? Wouldn't publicizing my creations be a risk of exposure? Wouldn't it be—

I pushed the thoughts aside as I put the note into a drawer at my doll desk, and then I took another quick look at the heads.

"Perfect," I couldn't help but murmur. "These will be perfect. I'll deal with the consequences later."

The art of giving a doll rosy cheeks, colored lips, warm skin, and depth around the eyes, nose, and mouth is called a "face up." There are companies dedicated to giving dolls face-ups with paints and airbrushes, ones that do excellent jobs and make dolls look like real people instead of mindless mannequins, but I prefer to do the face ups myself. Giving dolls expression links me to them on a personal level, allowing me to see the soul of the doll and the true heart lying behind its face.

I believe handmade dolls, no matter how simple, all possess a soul, of sorts, imbued by the attention and love of their creator.

At any rate, I pulled out my paints, my brushes, and the heads after taking a series of deep, cleansing breaths. I needed to be centered and focused during a face-up, because botching the job was not an option.

I started with Kuwabara and his normal, comforting features, because I figured he would prove the easiest to make. I painted in his dark pupils and irises with a brush no thicker than a needle, lashing his eyes with minute strokes of pale brown before doing the same to his eyebrows. I added skin tone to his face, blending it in on his cheeks, nose, forehead, and chin before coming in was a darker shade and shading beneath his hollow cheeks, in the crevice around his nose, and in the corners of his mouth. His thin, easily-happy lips I shaded just a little bit, and before I knew it his face was perfect, was Kuwabara, was him. I gave him hair after that, adhesive holding the mini-wig in place so I could style it with gel the real thing doubtless used himself.

He was, in short, authentic.

I went for Kurama next; I'm not sure why. I had to use an airbrush for his flawlessly perfect skin, and once I gave him flesh tone and sufficient color in the cheeks I painted his mouth, then his eyebrows, then his lashes (they were black instead of red, to my delight, but he didn't appear too feminine despite their thickness). The green of his irises took considerable planning, and in the end I chose to use a basic green color with a glaze of iridescent film over it, to show their depth and ability to flash, to see into the unseen, and to miss nothing. His hair was as simple as attaching a long red wig, then layering it with minute scissors.

To my surprise, he was easier to make than Kuwabara. Perhaps the ordinariness I had counted on was that much more difficult to grasp.

Hiei came next, with his tanned skin (airbrushed, then blended by hand to show his toil-roughened past) and his scowling mouth, and his small nose, and his high cheeks, and his pointed chin. His hair was more difficult than I had anticipated; I ruined more than one tiny, midnight-blue wig trying to mimic his spikes, spikes which struck me as an impossibility of physics.

"You must have the coarsest hair in the entire world, Hiei!" I caught myself muttering more than once, but in the end I managed, with a creative use of spirit gum and glue, to get his hair to stand up straight. I ended up shading some of his hair with black dye to get the desired gradient effect, and I painted the white streaks in with a small brush and paint ("Where does he get his hair done?" I wondered, looking at it. Surely it could not be natural!)

Then again, the third eye in the center of his forehead couldn't be natural, either, right?

I hadn't included it in the sketches (too many questions from the company, I thought), so I had to paint it on myself. I used purple and silver paints, mixed, and I did not lash it because it was not, I felt, appropriate. But I did lash the red eyes, and I did paint them despite their unnatural color, and Hiei, for some inexplicable reason, was finished in all of an hour. Maybe it was because he was like some weird cartoon character, so strange, so outside of the realm of possibility that he was easy to not mess up, to not confuse with the myriad of brown eyes, black haired men I'd ever made dolls of…

Maybe that's why, then, Yusuke was the most difficult doll of all.

I don't know how I managed to get the sparkle in his eyes, but I do know that I had to practice on a paper towel at least a dozen times before trying to put the face on the real thing. Even then I had to frantically wipe the paint clean and start over at least twice, and his mouth—I overpainted it more than once; he looked like a kissy-faced girl! I succeeded in making Yusuke into Yusuke in the end, though, and after letting the paint on his face dry I styled his hair and attached it, and when it was through I had Yusuke staring up at me with a grin and a face that said "Hey, don't worry about the mess-ups, you're awesome!"

I didn't know, as I stared at the heads, if I quite believed him, but he was right about one thing—the dolls were the most beautiful, original, and well-crafted creations I had ever made.

They were my masterworks.

And as I slowly—one by one and with all the love and pride in my artist's heart—fitted the heads onto their bare necks with minute and final 'click's, I knew that I had stumbled onto something good.

The paint on my dolls' faces had barely dried when Mother came home. I had forgotten to order the pizza, as busy as I was with bringing my dreams to life, and I was in the middle of staring at the dolls (they were lying on their backs in a row on my desk; I hadn't touched any of them after putting the heads on, too exhausted and giddy to do more than bask in their presence) when her voice echoed up the stairs with the words: "Where the hell's dinner, Hina?"

She didn't mean it in a cruel way—she had had a long day at work, it was late, almost midnight, and she was tired, etcetera—but I flinched regardless.

"Sorry, I fell asleep!" I called back, hastily rising to my feet as I grabbed my room's extension of the house phone out of its cradle. "I'll order it now!"

"Sleeping?" I heard her call. "Sleeping? You were sleeping? Why weren't you studying?" To my horror, feet started pounding up the stairs. "I pay good money for you to go to that cram school after you choked up, choked fucking up, on those entrance exams and I—"

I didn't listen to the rest of her tirade. My maternal—nay, my creator's instincts were screaming at me to hide the dolls, hide them so the beast who doesn't understand won't take them away from you, ACT NOW, HINA!

And I listened to that voice. My gloved hand dropped the phone and scooped up the dolls, more roughly than I would have liked but I'd cry over it later, and my other hand yanked open a drawer and set the dolls upright in a cluster between a box full of spare torsos and a stack of old manga books. I wheeled around and shut the drawer with my foot once the boys were safe, spinning to face the door the instant before Mother opened it with a shaking hand and flashing eyes.

"Did you hear what I said?" she said, voice lowered into a barely-contained whisper.

"Yes ma'am," I managed, faltering in the wake of her narrowed black eyes and tumbled hair. My heart beat in my lips and chest, blood pumping into every nook and cranny of my body as adrenaline sent my pulse into overdrive—

She tossed something at me, something I barely managed to catch, and it turned out to be a wallet.

"Go get food, Hina, and make it quick," she growled, and she turned away. "I have a headache."

As soon as she was gone, I checked on the dolls. They were fine, standing upright between the box and the books like they were discussing something important, and once I saw that none of them had been damaged I shut the drawer again.

Then I left.

Mother isn't happy when she's hungry.

NOTES:

(*deep breaths*) I am sure some of you noticed the change I made in this story's summary, and the fact that this has been labeled a "YusukexOC" story. This is true. This is likely going to alienate some of you, but that's a risk I'm willing to take.

Explanation: I feel like I need to challenge myself.

I've written many HieixOC fics. I'm comfy with writing Hiei. And Kurama, well, I think I'm comfy with him, too. Even Kuwabara has an OC fic based on him, as does Koenma (to a degree).

All I'm missing is the heart and soul of YYH: Yusuke, the one character I feel like I have trouble writing above all others.

Thus, the challenge has been born.

But here's my pledge: I will NOT ignore Keiko. I will NOT take the easy way out. I will NOT write her out of the manga. I will NOT breach established canon.

This story takes place four years after the series ends, with Yusuke and Kuwabara at age 22 and Kurama at age 23. Keiko and Yusuke ARE TOGETHER at this point. Hina will not become some sort of man-stealing "other woman." Her relationship with Yusuke will not be a magical thing, but rather one born from hardship, unrequited feelings, and pain.

A lot of pain.

I don't think I have ever had to write a story quite like what I have in mind for this one.

So please, bear with me. Trust me. Have faith. This fic is a challenge, a bigger challenge than any other fic I've written, and I hope I can make it work.

Hina is my first OC with a parent who isn't nice, or understanding, or at least pitiable. But you have to understand that her mother is a single woman raising a daughter who, as it appears in the mother's eyes, isn't going anywhere. The mother is afraid of this because, in Hina, she sees a reflection of herself. So please don't judge Hina's mother too harshly. She's just lonely, scared, and unable to keep herself in check. I'll touch more on why she's such a bitch later, though, because there are VERY CLEAR reasons. They have to do with Hina's scars. You'll seeeee…

Also: I have no idea if such a method for making doll heads exists, but I thought it out fairly well and think it sounds plausible. One of my friends, I learned when I vented to her about this story, has some experience making dolls, and she' the one who told me that it's really hard to make a doll look like a specific person. Anyone know if that's right? I'd like to make this as authentic as possible!

THANK YOU SO MUCH, REVIEWERS! You are all awesome to give this fledgling story such kindness, and I thank you from the bottom of my heart for being so nice to me even though I don't deserve it. DevilAngelWolf27, Reclun, Kaijin-san, LadyoftheGags, XxXTwilightSinXxX, Out-Of-Control-Authoress, Miyakomono, Zetsubel, AkaMizu-chan, itsallaboutbob, HeeHeeHee01, DoilyRox, SillyGoddessDisco, Mihakuu, Pirazz, loser94, etowa-ru, MissNayru, DragonDancer93, Dreamehz, Foxgirl Ray, Panda-chan31, chocolateluvr13, Montblanco, Willowleaf2560, Lizzie-Lizzard, Raging Lulu, Reality Bores Me, and kaitou angel!