It was the girl who had carried Colette on her back in the flower garden. The doll continued to turn into a human. It was almost like an Imperial Heirloom.
Hat, realizing the same thing, cried, “This thing! Could it be what is known as an imitation Heirloom?”
Eliza had mentioned the existence of imitations. If it really were one, their surroundings would not be left unscathed. It wouldn’t be so strange if it had the power to drag them to the other side.
“Ann?” With the sound of an innocent voice, the window at the doll’s back opened.
The worst possible timing. Just as Octavia tried to kick off from the ground, the blast raged around her. This was the doll’s doing.
Unable to move, Octavia cried, “No, that isn’t Ann! She’s a fake, Colette!”
“You have a wish, don’t you?” The grinning doll extended its toward Colette, whose eyes were wide open. “Wish. Wish, wish, wish, wish! I’ll grant it, I will!”
In that, too, it was trying to resemble an Heirloom. Clicking her tongue, Octavia cried out again, “Don’t do it! Stop, Colette! If you do that, you’ll become the user!”
“Now, tell me your wish!”
With the blast raging around her, the fake Ann’s eyes were wide open. She was about to open her mouth. She seemed intent on drawing the words out of Colette, by suggestion or any means necessary.
It was at that moment that another voice spoke up. “Colette, you mustn’t.” Another, identical girl in rags appeared from overhead and knocked the doll down to the ground. She then looked up at the girl standing at the window.
But it was already too late. In front of Octavia and the girl, Colette spoke her wish:
“I want to be your friend.”
“Tee hee hee hee!” Together with the doll’s shrill laughter, another world billowed out from behind Colette.
Colette had no friends. This was because her mother was “a very important person.” Though a woman, her mother was greatly admired in the town for having built such a fortune, and so both adults and children were kind to Colette. Yet no one would invite her to play—they were afraid, thinking, If I play with the girl from that grand house over there and she gets hurt, what will I do? and, If I should offend her, I’ll be in a lot of trouble. In the first place, the town had few children, so dolls had always been Colette’s friends.
Her mother had always said things would be different when she became an adult, so she shouldn’t feel lonely. All the same, Colette had never stopped wishing.
I want a friend.
“From today, your name will be Ann, okay? Isn’t it a lovely name?”
And so this was Colette’s world: giving names to dolls, playing with them in the flower garden, and making wishes she could tell to no one else.
“I wish you could become my real friend. We’d make flower crowns together and play.”
It shouldn’t have been possible for saying this to change anything, but the doll she had just received for her birthday was different. It began to glow.
She had heard fairy tales about terrifying instruments in the world that could make the wishes of humans come true. But the doll, who had transformed into a girl, spoke thusly:
“Well, then, shall we make flower crowns?”
Colette was shocked. However, excitement soon overcame the shock. She couldn’t think for one moment that the girl—who now silently awaited her reply—was one of the terrifying instruments she had heard about in fairy tales.
“Are you human?” she asked, hesitant. “Or a doll?
“I am a doll. What is it that you desire?”
This wasn’t, seemingly, one of those entities that vanished after granting one’s wish. After thinking for a short while, Colette smiled, confident that she would not be tricked.
“If you’ll be Colette’s friend, then one day I’ll tell you my wish.”
“Friend,” repeated the doll. “Confirming definition. Friends are two beings of equal status, who make allowances for one another as they communicate. Is this definition acceptable?”
“You’ve made it so hard that I can’t tell. Friends play together. They make flower crowns together!”
“Understood.”
So it was. The two began working together to make some messy things that could hardly be called flower crowns.
“Are you happy for your name to be Ann?” When Colette checked this with Ann, who was silent, focused on making flower crowns. The answer she received was unexpected.
“I do not know, as I do not know who my master is now.”
“Isn’t it Colette?”
“No, it is not you. You are my friend.”
Colette was a little shocked to be told so definitively that she was not the doll’s owner. Still, it would have been strange to call someone both a friend and a master, and so Colette accepted this right away. She asked, “Do you want to see your master?”
“Yes, but presently, I am lacking proper maintenance, and may not be able to distinguish...”
Then, just when Colette thought she had her answer, she heard a pop, and Ann had turned back into a doll.
Colette was startled, frozen to the spot. Then, before her eyes, still wearing an unfinished flower crown, Ann murmured, “I do not seem to be functioning quite right. There is a possibility that I might have malfunctioned.”
“D-Does that mean you’re in trouble? Will you break?”
“One day. After all, dolls do not talk.”
Ann’s simple answer left Colette speechless.
“Is it impossible, after all, for a doll to be a friend?” asked Ann, still in the form of a doll. But no matter what anyone else said, she was Colette’s friend. So that they might eat together, Colette took her back to the mansion. Having placed Ann in her own room, she went to sneak some sweets out of the kitchen, but when she returned to her room, she heard the sound of someone leaving in a hurry.
What’s going on? Colette thought as she tried to peer in through the doorway. Then, all of a sudden, she was dragged inside the room, and something tightened around her neck. Her eyes wide, Colette saw a doll that looked just like Ann. She still remembered the fear she had felt when her eyes met the doll’s, glowing in the pitch-black room, its small, bloodless hands wrapped around her throat. She couldn’t even call for help.
Then, she saw another doll kick that doll away—it was Ann.
The doll that had attacked Colette tumbled to the ground after it had been kicked away. Now, though, it bit down on Ann’s arm, glaring at her with its glowing eyes. Colette, who could no longer even bring herself to scream, saw the other doll tear Ann’s arm off; it fell to the floor before her eyes.