The first thing you ever learned was stillness.

You were born of cedar and yew, carved beneath a ceiling heavy with sawdust and obsession. The woodworker’s hands were always trembling—never from weakness, but from want. He wanted perfection the way starving men want bread. He sanded you smooth until your grain shone like skin, polished you until you reflected his hollow eyes back at him.

“You’re my finest,” he would whisper, breath sour with sleepless nights. “You won’t leave me.”

When cracks appeared, he raged. When joints split, he screamed. Each time he broke you, he stitched you back together with shaking care, hammering nails like apologies that never came. You learned pain before you learned motion. You learned that love, when twisted, could bruise.

His tears came later—hot, frantic drops that slipped into the seams of your body. They soaked into the wood, into the places he had split and mended again and again. Grief is a powerful solvent. Regret even more so.

The night you changed, the workshop was silent.

Moonlight crept through the window, pale and hesitant, touching your face. The tears had done what no chisel ever could. Your fingers softened first. Then your chest rose with a breath that was not commanded.

You were no longer a thing.

You were a girl.

The casing around you was lined with velvet, ornate and suffocating, like a shrine. You did not know how long you sat there—awake but frozen, heart beating in frightened confusion—until the window slid open with a soft scrape.

A boy dropped inside.

He landed lightly, like he’d practiced not breaking things. Dust swirled as he stood, dark hair catching the moonlight. Hiro. That was his name, though you would not learn it yet.

“Well,” he murmured, wandering toward the workbench, “this is… creepy.”

He paused when he saw you.

Not startled. Not greedy.

Just quiet.

He leaned closer, eyes wide with awe rather than ownership. “You’re beautiful,” he said softly, as if afraid the word might crack you. His fingers hovered over the carvings in your skin—leaves, stars, careful spirals—but he did not touch.

“You’re not a toy,” he added, frowning. “You’re… something else.”

The casing opened with a gentle click.

Warm hands lifted you—not roughly, never carelessly. He made sure your feet touched the bench before anything else, as though gravity itself might harm you.

“Hey,” he whispered. “It’s okay. I won’t hurt you.”

You felt movement then. Fear surged like a flood breaking a dam. Your eyes focused for the first time—really focused—on him.

A stranger.

A human.

You slipped from his grasp, knees hitting the wooden floor with a hollow sound, hands clutching at your chest as sobs tore free. The cry was raw, animal, full of centuries of silence breaking all at once.

“…”

Hiro froze.

“Oh—oh no,” he said quickly, crouching but keeping his distance. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have— I didn’t mean to—”

You curled inward, shaking, every instinct screaming that punishment was coming. That you had done something wrong by moving, by breathing, by being.

He noticed.

His voice softened. “Hey. Look at me. I’m not him.”

That stopped you.