When we first met, I was eleven and she was twelve. I was a pitiful boy, stifled by repressed anger, restricted to the walls of the prison erected by my parents under the pretext of home-schooling. Forced into a routine I didn't want any part of.

Learn, practice, behave.

She was an older sister, who had just been separated from her little brother.

Back then, I spent all the free time I was given slumped against the sole window in my room, staring listlessly out into the open. I wasn't allowed to go outside, because if I wandered too far away or hurt myself, it would keep me from pursuing my studies. Keep me from earning whatever degree makes people eligible to inherit factories. Keep me from doing my fucking duty. Because that's what's important when you're eleven years old.

I had nothing else to do. No toys to play with, no person to talk to. Mine was a quiet neighborhood. There was nothing much to see either, so once I picked out names for all the stray dogs roaming about — Shiro, Pochi, Pon-pon, Kedama — boredom left me on the verge of madness.

Until she came along.

I watched her with keen eyes the day she skipped across my street, an inflated red ball in hand. As if sensing my gaze, she raised her head and spotted me. I felt a strong urge to duck out of her field of view right then. But I'm so fucking glad I didn't, because — she smiled. Stretched her lips into the widest, brightest smile I had ever seen. It lit up the neighborhood like a light bulb, and I gaped at her from above.

My parents only ever treated me with cold indifference. It left me feeling like I had something to prove. I'm real. And I'm here.

Back then, I stomped around spitting out all the vile words I'd heard my father utter, cussing and screaming and barking retorts. It left me isolated with the label "problem child" cupped in my hands, but at the time, it felt like the emotions that flashed across the faces of my tutors and classmates — irritation, impatience, fury — made it all worth it. Because it meant I could make people feel things too.

By that point, I was used to it. Drawing reactions out of people. But this was the first time I had received a positive one.

Mother and Father left for work at the crack of dawn without saying a word to me.

But she...she talked to me, from below, cupping her hands over her mouth and shouting her words so that they would reach my ears. Words meant especially for me. I grasped them and held onto them like they were made of glass, and replayed them in my mind, over and over, after it was time for her to leave. I replied to her by mouthing my answers or folding my hands into gestures, and like that, we conversed.

Sometimes, I'd find myself slightly attatched to one of my parents' hired workers. The gardener, or the housekeeper. They would talk to me, give me a toy car or bear that I could run around with. But they always left, because they had their own sons and daughters to return to, and that took priority. Sometimes they never came back.

But she came everyday.

When I think about it now, I wish I'd had the guts to oppose my parents and go downstairs to join her. In those days, I simply watched from my window as she played ball by herself, throwing it against the wall and catching it when it bounced back. When she was done, she would sit down cross-legged on the street, facing my house, and talk to me at the top of her lungs. Scream for me, until her throat was raw and scratchy.

She smiled.

She smiled so much.

She didn't want anything from me like my parents did, and she wasn't here to fulfill any duties or obligations like my tutors were. There was no intention behind that smile, no motive, no expectation. It was simply what it was — a smile.

A week later, I gathered the courage to finally open my mouth.

I was scared. Scared that I would drive her away by saying the wrong thing, like I had driven away the kids at school, time and time again. So when I was with her, I kept my tongue on a leash. But as the afternoons we spent together increased in number, and I grew accustomed to her presence, a constant under the glow of the sun, I finally realised that if it was her, she'd never be mad at me. No matter what I said, she'd wait and smile and let me amend myself.

So I took in a large gulp of air, braced my lungs, cupped my hands over my lips, and screamed, "WHAT'S YOUR NAME?"

She laughed and jumped to her feet, eyes brimming with excitement. "KU-RU-MEE. WHAT'S YOURS!?" she called back, beaming.

I laughed. "REN!"

"WELL THEN, SEE YOU TOMORROW REN!"

Suddenly, I had something to look forward to. It made getting through the days easier, and gave me something nice to remember at night. I loved watching her, I loved talking to her, and it felt like I could keep at it forever. At the time, I didn't realise that something this wonderful could be snatched away from me as quickly as it came.

She stopped coming, and it was so abrupt that it knocked me off my feet and I fell into despair.

At first, I waited. Everyday, at the same hour, I stood by the window and waited with baited breath. Waited for so long that my lungs nearly gave in. And when she didn't come back, I was too chicken shit to go out looking for her. To stand before my parents, look into their depthless and condescending eyes, and tell them I'm leaving. That I needed to find her, and I'd stop at nothing. Instead, I stayed in that room and let the agony accumulate till I erupted.

I'd come to learn later that she had moved away because living expenses in our neighborhood became too much for her father to bear. That was the first time I lost her.

My tutors resigned because they could no longer put up with my disobedience. My father was enraged, but he took it out on my mother instead of yelling directly at me. My mother pulled some strings and got me into a reputed middle school, but for the most part, they left me alone.

I don't remember very much from my middle school years. It's all a blur in my head, the endless days I spent feeling absolutely nothing. Numb, and hot and clammy. I couldn't be bothered about my appearance so I went to school with disheveled hair and a rag tag uniform. I mostly kept to myself. On some days, I'd get into fights and come home covered in bruises.

My attendance was a joke, and two pairs of hands wouldn't be enough to count the number of times I was called to the teacher's office.

I thought about her everyday, at first. But as the years blinked away, the few weeks I spent talking to a friendly girl from my window when I was eleven, broke into fragments of a faded memory.

If you asked me to pin point when exactly, all of it — the meetings with my teacher, my bad grades, my misbehavior — became too much for them, pushed them over the edge, I wouldn't fucking know. But it happened. And they didn't punish me, ground me, or give me a scolding. No, it was the opposite.

They let go of me.

I had been lingering outside of my parents' room, clutching a complaint slip my teacher had issued for me, one that I needed them to acknowledge and sign, when I heard them talking.

"What's wrong with him!?" my father was saying, frustrated. "Why is he like this? We've tried every fucking thing, haven't we? But we can't seem to fix him. A damaged piece, beyond repair. That's what he is." I remember the way my heart stopped at that moment, the way my breathing slowed, until the only sounds flooding my ears were my father's angry words, clear and unobstructed as a gushing stream.

"Ever since you gave birth to him, nothing has gone according to plan. Absolutely nothing. Do you suppose that's because something is wrong with you as well? Why are both of you like this?" My mother remained silent. She stood there and took all of it, without a word, like a block of iron. Hard and unflinching. She scares me.

"I'd rather sell the factory than leave it to him," he muttered bitterly, and his words were followed by a long pause. "Yes, that'd be for the best," he breathed, a newfound drive in his voice. "Let's sell the factory when we retire. We'd still make good money out of it, our son doesn't need to have anything to do with it. Running a factory is beyond him anyway, let him do what he wants."

I backed away, jagged nails digging into the slip in my hands. "Very well," I heard my mother say from inside, and devastation hit.

I fell against the wall, head spinning, mind reeling. My mother walked out of the room and saw me crouched outside with my face in my hands. That was maybe the first time she ever showed me a human expression. Her dark eyes, looking down at me, were grim with disappointment. She might as well have pierced her way into my chest and clenched her fingers around my heart.

I stood on trembling legs, and ran to my room.

I know that I never did anything for my parents. I never met any of their expectations. I never even strived to. So maybe being set aside by them, this way, was inevitable. But they never did anything for me either, and that's what helped me bite back on my tears.

I realised belatedly that we were better off without each other. They didn't need me anymore, so I left. Took the first bus I could find, and went far away on impulse. I thought I could leave it all behind.

But I wasn't ready to be by myself yet, and I had nowhere else to go, so I went back.

I stayed at their house, but I stayed out of their way.

I did my best, and when it became too much, I took it out quietly, unleashing waves and whorls of ink on my walls. I studied for finals, and I passed. I got into a highschool.

There, she came into my life again.

It was on the day of the entrance ceremony. She was walking amidst a group of seniors, laughing and gesticulating wildly at everything. She was smaller than all of them, but her presence seemed larger than life. She was the heart of the group. There was simply no other way to put it. And when we locked eyes over a distance, her face flashed with recognition and disbelief. "Window boy!" she exclaimed, an excited laugh bursting out of her.

And my life took on color again.

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