For as long as I can remember, I've always felt... Empty. Incomplete. Like part of me is missing, like I was the exterior of a hollow shell. This feeling has dominated my entire life.

Even in my earliest memories... All I could vividly remember where hospitals. Doctors. Examinations.

I was broken, the doctors were trying to fix me but no pill could cure me. My parents tried explaining what was wrong with me, what made me stand out from other children.

I didn't understand.

I heard doctors saying they couldn't fix me... They said I would never be a normal person, or live a normal life.

As I grew older, I began to understand what was wrong with me, I had learnt to come to terms with it. I saw children become: happy, sad, angry but I never felt those things, I was only empty .

I slowly understood that, I had everything a normal child had, except emotions. Who knew, lacking key feelings you must have in order to be human, could make you stand out so much in a crowd.

I had never seen a more desperate man, my father, who wanted more than anything to cure me off this unheard off illness. He pleaded with the doctors, every single day after work, bringing me with him after school just for them to find something to help me.

We went to different hospitals, different regions in Japan and even the discussion off going abroad arose as well. This obsession consumed his mind, it was all he could think about, he paid his wife no attention and only focused on fixing this broken child.

He never wanted a normal son more.

My world has always been cold...Dark...And silent, it was a blank canvas yet to be filled with colours, that my grey world lacked. I was not alone in this feeling.

My mother was nothing like him, she wasn't worried in the slightest. She said she was just like me when she was a child, but once she met my father her world was filled with warm bright colours, everything had changed for her.

Life and light was brought into her bleak and blank world, he made her whole...He made her complete. She told me, one day, I'd meet someone special, just like she did. To make me feel complete, someone who would cure me, fix me and save me.

My father did not want to listen to my mother's words, he wanted a normal child more than anything else in the world. They had arguments over it all the time and home felt like a warzone with me at the center. My father's eyes were dull and full of sorrow, he felt like he was breaking apart piece by piece, believing he failed his son.

He tried everything to make me happy, toys, taking me to parks, giving me fountains worth of presents, anything.

Nothing worked.

I only felt pity

I felt pity for this sad man.

He didn't confide in his wife, he turned to alcohol and smoking to drown out his depressing life away. It made his mind a blank slate and he didn't have to think about anything till the morning. I often watched him slumped on the couch, with beer scattered across the living room, either empty or yet to be chugged down.

My mother didn't want me to see my father in such a state, she would always smile down at me without saying a word and bring me up to my room. Telling me stories about my family, how their names are like double edged swords, names that come from knives yet sound pretty as well. Or stories of how, his great-grandma and great-grandpa were the first to move to Buraza Town.

On the occasions when he did see his father while drinking, the room would have a thick scent off alcohol and a pinch of smoke as he would smoke near the window since he didn't want his son inhaling it. He recalls, specifically, when he approached his father after school and his father simply cried.

Cried at the sight off an incomplete child he could never fix.

He sobbed, tears falling onto my head as my father pulled me into a hug, whispering all of his regrets to me and how I'm the only person keeping him going in the prison off a house. I'm the only person he wants to protect from- He never finished his sentence, most of the time he'd fall asleep with me in his arms or change the topic and tell me about his life at school.

I would learn a lot about my father when he drank, it was the only time he'd actually open up about himself. I never once thought that my father had a life before being my father, I was young at the time and it just made sense to me, that he was always my father.

Sometimes, he would tell me about the days he was some stubborn, foolish and an oblivious teenager blinded by the game of love, now he's trapped here and everyone he once cared for is gone.

I never understood who he was referring, when he said everyone he once cared for is gone.

But, I understood that he is a broken, tired and lost man.

I was the reason he was slowly killing himself.

I did not want him to worry...and so I began acting like the child I knew he always wanted.

I placed a mask over my face, hiding how I truly felt.

I pretended to be normal, my father was happy and we became a normal family...

He stopped drinking, almost immediately, getting a bin bag out to throw all of his alcohol away, even the ones he hid away from my mother and his pack of cigarettes.

He cried tears of joy, hugging me so tightly, I had never seen the way my father's eyes light up like that before.

His tears sunk into the crevice of his wide smile, he even willingly hugged my mother, spinning her around in his arms and giving her kiss on the lips. On the same day we all went to take a family photo, in commemoration of this joyous occasion. We wore flower crowns with bright smiles on our faces, and still to this day that photo remains on our wall.

But deep down...I'm sure he knew in his heart that I was only pretending and the doctors were right, I would never be normal. I could see the pain in his eyes, when he looked down at my smiling face... Maybe, we were both wearing masks.

At school, the children often mistreated me because I was strange and odd to them. They pulled my hair, pushed me whenever no one was looking and when they got the chance they would toss my books into the water fountain.

It was simply inconvenient.

I soon realized if I wanted to be treated properly I would have to act like the others, observing people while I was bullied taught me that.

Though, I was already at a severe disadvantage, as I ever had emotions to begin with; it was hard to understand them. I had to learn that smiling was associated with happiness, sadness crying, disgust a wrinkled nose and so on. I had to spend time in library after school, going through picture books, which showed human emotions or reading about it. Often, books and TV shows were never enough so he began observing people's behavior.

Then, I moved on to practicing it in a mirror, smiling, frowning, fake crying and reading in books or watching a TV show, my mother forced my father to watch with her. I used the TV shows I watched with my parents to see the appropriate situations for the correct emotion.

I started acting normal and as suspected the bullying stopped and quite frankly it confused them. Now, me, the boy they called a lifeless empty doll was a normal functioning boy and to everyone I was normal. I fitted into society and the cliches at school so of course making friends was next on my agenda.

That's where finding hobbies got into the mix, discovering what people liked, what they disliked and what's trending, along with what was out of style. I asked my father to buy me a backpack that was trending, he happily obliged saying he liked to wear the latest fashion as well, when he was younger. I had a crowd of grade 2 students flocking around me, the next day, when I arrived to school with a backpack everyone wanted at the time. Despite, the crowd of insufferable students around me, two students in particular where tolerable enough to be my friend.

Midori Gurinu and Kuu dere.

All three off us have been friends since kindergarten, all the way to the present day at Akademi.

Eventually, I was pretending to be normal every waking hour of the day, I had fake hobbies, acted like I cared when tragedy struck but it was all fake and no one knew. To them, I was an ideal friend setting an example for everyone else.

If I revealed my true nature to anyone I'd become a target again and I'd stand out again.

As I grew older, the yearn and desperation to feel something grew as I did over the years. The emptiness I felt inside was a constant reminder that I would never be like everyone else, I might have everything in my body that makes me human but having no emotions or a true personality makes me nothing in comparison to them.

I would, sit on my bed, staring out off the window and watching people pass by, I could tell exactly how they were feeling, either from their eyes, posture, facial expression and gestures. It was all practice to read people like an open book. Though, my mind wandered to the fact that one day I might be able to feel arrange off emotions.

Sorrow.

Joy.

Anything, at all.

I felt like I was getting close, that it was at my fingertips and I was just doing something wrong.

I tried doing anything ,which would make a normal person feel shame or guilt or even regret...

I took a different path home, I decided to walk through that field near my house. Japan, has a stray cat 'problem' I've always passed atleast two every single time I walked home and that's how an idea sparked in my mind. I see a kitten, swatting at the blades off grass, meowing and seeming to be enjoying itself in the field off grass.

I approach it slowly, with a stick in hand and I kneel down to it's level, carelessly but in a playful manner swishing my stick back and forth as the kitten meowed in response to my attempt at a game. The kitten began biting the stick and jump up to reach it, that's when I picked it up. It was so small and soft in my hands, I could easily crush it if I desired to.

I lifted it up high into the sky and it let out a small meow as it looked, left to right at the area due to the newly required height it was at.

I wanted to feel something.

I needed to.

No matter the cost.

The kitten wiggled in my hands as I raised my arms over my head.

Thud.

The kitten was nestled in the grass below, blood stained the grass beneath it and the once very vocal cat had fallen silent. I used the same stick I originally used to dig a small grave and gently placed the deceased cat into it, I placed the dirt over it and ripped a small daisy out the earth placing it onto the soil.

Nothing worked. No matter what I did, no matter how extreme, I could not feel anything. I went home, leaving the field behind, feeling just as empty as I was before I walked through it.

My mother's advice never changed, it was always the same.

One day, you will meet someone special.

Soon, someone will make you feel complete.

These words haunted my mind, I thought about them all the time.

I've spent my life waiting for that day, dreaming of the moment I'd meet this person, the person who would complete me and make me human. It was the only thing for me to look forward to.

It was my only goal and reason to live.

This feeling of a hollow and emptiness as persisted through every hour of the day. You can satisfy hunger with food, thirst with water, coldness with warmth and darkness with light. There is nothing that can alleviate this feeling of an emptiness, something that's missing and is supposed to be there.

My dreams taunted me, a cherry tree stood on a grassy hill at the centre off a field, a silhouette stood patiently waiting for me to approach them. I looked down to my hand as I walked, seeing a letter with a red heart in the centre and my body felt warm when I looked up again to see the silhouetted figure wearing a dress you'd deem worthy off a princess.

The figure took my hands, and I felt warmth ripple throughout my body, I began to lean in closer to them and they leaned in as well. I closed my eyes just as their lips where going to connect and then I eyes fluttered open. It was always a dream yet I soaked in the feeling off being in my saviour's prescense each night.

Akademi, the school my parents went to and the school I was now walking into. All these new people and faces that I needed to remember, despite this new environment my friends remained the same. Midori and Kuu dere, attended the school as well but I paid them no mind as I was focused on remembering the path to my classroom.

And then...One day, a hand laid out in front of my face for me to take. My hand outstretched and our hands met, my eyes travelled up her arm and our eyes met.

I found her.

Colour bled into my world and it felt like a dream, I could feel warmth pouring into my soul and my heart pumped rapidly, my dream was becoming a reality! Something changed inside me of me, that day, I didn't even notice the other person who had bumped into my shoulder. They glanced at me, as if they wanted to help but noticed the girl already helping me up.

No matter, my world had never been brighter it was filled with colour and light and my eyes had been opened for the first time. She was at the center off my world, she was the person that would save me from a purposeless life!

I felt warm.

Complete.

Alive.

My hands reluctantly pulled away from hers and my arm hovered, still affected by the warmth that was pulled away from it. She was my escape, from the cold, grey and empty world I had been imprisoned in my whole life. She was the key that would unlock the chains I had been bound to the moment I was born.

She is the one I've been waiting for.

My eyes had a glimmer in them, a spark had lit, she was the center of my world! The sun I'd happily orbit around and the sun I'd die without!

I began to pay attention to the little things, the things not even she noticed she did, like missing whenever she threw something at the bin, whether it was a soda can or an apple core. She's missed 27 times, I have noted it down and when the cost is clear I pick the apple up and lick her teeth marks!

I dug my tongue into the very crevasses left behind by her teeth, licking the saliva left from her warm mouth and brushing off the dirt from the floor. This apple is a prize trophy!

When she brushes her silky smooth hair, and places her hair brush in the girls' locker room, nobody notices when I took the hair off the brush. I caressed the hair lovingly, the thought that it was in her scalp warms me up inside.

Or the photo(s) I took when she was walking to class, reading a book, talking to that orange headed brat...

Senpai...

I must protect her.

I must make her mine.

She's the person I want to spend the rest of my life with, but...Someone is trying to take her away from me. My world returned to the same dull, colour I had always been familiar with. It was all because of her orange headed friend...

That dull grey turned red, I could see the way he looked at her, he wants her but not in the same way I want her. I need her.

He could never appreciate her the way I do.

He doesn't deserve her.

She is everything.

She belongs to me.

I have to stop him.

Even if it means hurting him.

Even if it means killing him.

There is nothing I won't do for her, I won't let anyone come between us. I don't care what I have to do. I don't care who I have to kill. I don't care whose blood I have to spill. Osano Najimi, should have never had the chance to be in her prescense.

I won't let anyone take her away from me.

Nothing else matters.

No one else matters.

She. Will. Be. Mine.

She doesn't have a choice.

W