A/N: hello, friends! Thanks for the wonderful reviews! :D Here's chapter 4!

Don't try to fix me, cause I'm not broken.

-"Hello" by Evanescence

I go home after the incident at the host club room; not that I had a better place to go. If there was a better place, I would go there, but there is none: I've got no friends, and I'm Invisible Girl in my own home. I unlock the front door adn walk inside. My dad's home; he's in the living room reading the newspaper, except it didn't really look like he was reading it. His eyes seemed to be reading the same line over and over again.

"Hey, Dad." I say, setting down my schoolbag on the table. My dad snaps his head up, as if he just noticed I was there.

"Hello, Emiko." he said. "Good day today?" he asked, not sounding in the least bit interested in how my day was at all. I bite my tongue hard inside my mouth, trying not to scream.

"Peachy." I say, turning around and running up to my room. I was pissed; why do we talk to each other like we're a bunch of strangers? I thought parents were supposed to care, but they didn't give a crap about me. They lost their only child in August and they had to do something to keep their minds off of it. I guess that sounds pretty bitter. And I guess if you'd been there, you'd understand it better.

When my mom and dad got married, they started a family right away. But after a miscarriage and two more following, they weren't even sure if they would have a kid the old fashioned way. Every doctor they went to said that mom wouldn't be able to carry a kid fully to term. They've told me this story so many times I know it by heart; it's like they want me to appreciate my great good fortune in being conceived, but I wasn't-and I'm still not-appreciating it at all.

A little while after that, my mom finally got pregnant with Natsuko. She carried her for all nine months and then Natsuko was born, perfectly healthy and everything. The doctor said: "Well, sometimes nature fools us, but he'll be the only one you'll ever have. Thank heaven for him and be content. Eight years later she got pregnant with me. Not only was I carried to term also, but according to my mom, they practically had to yank me out of her. You ever hear of a family so screwed up?

In the case of my parents, one perfect child, one gift from Heaven had been enough. I was one heck of a shock, and I guess when you already have something you really want, you don't really need another.

This business about being ignored: I could never really put my finger on it until I had to read this book in English class a few years ago and then do a report on it. The book was about this guy who's totally invisible because he's black. Nobody notices him at all unless he screws up. People look right through him. When he talks, no one answers. He's like a black ghost. Once I got into it, I finished that book in less than two hours. The author was talking about me.

In a family situation like mine, you're supposed to either hate the older sibling or totally idolize her-at least, that's what they say. Bullcrap, right? But as far as I can tell, I didn't feel either way about my sister. I loved her; I truly did, and I never hated her. We rarely argued and never had a fight, whether physical or verbal.

Natsuko took me to places; not because she had to, and not because she resented me for being her younger sibling. It was of her own free will, and those were the happiest times I can remember. Her friends would raise their eyebrows at me, as if to say: who the crap is this chick and why is she with us? but as soon as Natsuko told them I was her kid sister, they didn't mind at all. At eight years old, hanging out with a bunch of 18 year olds, I felt so cool.

She saw me when I was invisible. She heard me when I spoke. She loved me.

So, when she died...I couldn't believe it. I wouldn't believe it; I refused to believe it. She would have been turning twenty-five later that week; I had already picked out a card and a gift at the store. I didn't even cry; I was in so much shock. When the inevitable finally set in, I bawled like a baby. I bawled even more at the funeral. I just couldn't believe that the person who saw me when no one else did, who used to freak me out with rubber spiders, who put rubbing alcohol on my knees when I scraped them and said: "now stop crying, you wuss!" was dead.

It took me a long time afterwards to realize that most of the tears I cried were for my mom and dad, not for myself. Fat lot of good it did for them, or me. They just fell to pieces, and I never really know if they'll ever be whole again. Natusko's room was across the hall from mine, and none of us dared go in there. I went in there once, just to grab something she borrowed from me, and when I opened the door the smell of her perfume nearly bowled me over. I sat on the floor for the longest time with tears in my eyes until I finally got enough guts to go in there.

Mostly it was her closet that freaked me out. If mom asked me to get Natsuko's photo album from her room, I would imagine the closet door opening slowly, and Natusko coming out in her dead form, blood all over one side of her head, her arms coming up and her bloody hands reaching for me. And she would be saying:

It should have been you, Em. It should have been you.