Chirp, chirp, chirp. A morning that felt refreshing just from the birdsong.At an hour when she would normally still be deep asleep, her closed eyes snapped open, revealing golden irises."Whew…."By nature, Angela was an owl who found mornings painfully hard. But in the past few days, she had come to wait for morning to arrive.Creak, squeak. With a small flutter of excitement and expectation on her face, Angela stepped down the old wooden stairs."Not today either…."But halfway down, she saw a house exactly as it had been before bed, and disappointment made her hand drop from the banister with a thud.The day Eddy gained life and spoke to her, like in a fairy tale, felt like a dream."…Maybe it really was just a dream?"As days passed, Angela reached the point where she couldn’t trust her own memory. Small wonder: on the day Eddy spoke to her, she’d gone several days without proper sleep while making his torso.She had discarded over a dozen bodies; frayed by repeated failure, she’d been taking one- or two-hour catnaps to get by, scarcely in her right mind.Clomp, clomp.All the way down the stairs, standing before the workbench, Angela murmured softly as she looked at the nearly completed Eddy."Even if it was a dream, it’s okay. Thanks to it, I could finish you like this."No matter how many revisions she made, the work had never satisfied her—but after meeting the human Eddy, it advanced. Dream or not, seeing him up close let her find the problems at once. What had been blocked now moved toward completion so smoothly it felt absurd."Right, it’s nonsense. How could a doll become a real person?"Lowering herself, Angela met Eddy’s eyes and stroked his small cheek with her forefinger. The human Eddy had been very soft and warm, but the doll’s cheek—under just the tip of her finger—gave back nothing."I guess I really was exhausted—to dream something like that."It was too vivid to dismiss as just a dream, and that only made her cling to it."Eddy, I’m so frustrated. Was it really you that I met then?"She asked the doll sitting quietly on the bench. It, of course, gave no answer—only kept the painted expression she had given it."You said my wish is what made you like that. I kept wishing you’d come back since then, but why won’t you…."Like a child hoping for wings to sprout so they could fly, Angela had nursed the absurd dream that this doll would gain life and move.She knew full well how unpleasant and creepy such thoughts would look to others. Even so, her growing feelings for Edgar and her loneliness in being alone wouldn’t let her stop thinking them."If I finish you, maybe that miracle will happen again?"By tomorrow, Eddy would be perfectly complete.What would happen on the day she finished this doll? With a vague sense of expectation, Angela dreamed that night that Eddy came running and hugged her.***A little over a week after the day the former doll Eddy became a person and spoke to her.Having already finished Eddy, Angela went to see him every morning with hope. But each time, what greeted her was quiet stillness and the doll she herself had made.After several such hollow mornings, Angela became convinced she’d only dreamed it because she wanted it too much.Of course. That’s the kind of thing that only happens in dreams. Let’s stop waiting.Once she put away that last scrap of hope, a heavy emptiness opened in her chest. To fill the hole, she began plowing through the work she had put off."Ugh… I must have overdone it yesterday."Though the doll had gotten her called a witch, Angela loved her work. When the parts born from her hands were assembled into a body, gained a face, and were prettily adorned, her pride was boundless.That this beautiful, lovable child came into the world through her hands—she always thought, so this is what a mother feels when she gives birth.The problem was Angela’s temperament: she would doggedly persist until she reached a level of completion she herself accepted. Even Mark shook his head at her as a severe perfectionist; when absorbed in work, Angela would push herself without caring for her body at all."Still, I should have slept a little…."Perhaps because she’d focused so hard on making Eddy’s torso, the female body wasn’t coming out with the feeling she wanted, so she threw herself into the work twice as hard. In the process, she scrapped three or four painstakingly made bodies and started again, skipping both sleep and meals, and it seemed her body had finally given out.In truth, no matter how gifted a dollmaker Angela was, discarding something already made and starting anew was never easy. What’s more, her dolls were of a completely new material—neither the fashionable bisque nor carved wood.Driven by the conviction to make them more lifelike than wood or porcelain, Angela researched and researched again. In the end, she developed a material soft and supple like real skin yet solid in durability.The problem was that handling the material was ✪ Nоvеlіgһt ✪ (Official version) exceedingly difficult and finicky.First, she mixed the two solutions she had developed in exact proportions. Degassing it, pouring it into prepared molds, and waiting for full cure took a full two days.Once curing finished, she removed the piece from the mold, refined the form, and went through post-processing with paint and gloss—sometimes more than a day’s work—so the process was anything but easy on the hands."Maybe I should eat something first…."Creeeeeak.Thinking the stair noise was particularly raucous today, Angela started down—then stopped. Someone stood in the space that should have been empty."No way…."At the disbelieving sound of Angela’s voice, the man turned slowly."Sorry I’m so late. I’ve come back, like I promised, Angela."Eddy—the one she had longed for over the past few weeks—was there.Perhaps because she had modeled him after Edgar. Strangely, even Eddy’s voice was exactly like the Edgar she remembered."Eddy…."Maybe she had to drive her body this hard just to be able to see him. Maybe she was so tired she was having a lucid dream.Exhausted as she was, she was happy to meet the human Eddy again."Careful, hey."Maybe because she was so moved that he had truly come to see her, her legs gave out. Somehow, Eddy was already close, steadying her so she wouldn’t fall."Warm…."At a distance far closer than their first meeting, Angela reached out and cupped his cheek. Startled by the sudden touch, Eddy’s eyes widened, glittering like the aquablue glass eyes Angela had struggled to obtain and set."S… sorry. You didn’t like that…."Seeing Edgar’s body tense at her touch, Angela flinched, snatched her hand away, and lowered her head like a culprit, mumbling.She still wasn’t free of the fact that others saw her as a “witch,” or of the trauma that came with it. Even if the other party was Eddy, who until just now had been a doll."Why would you say that?""Huh?""From my head to my toes, you made all of me. It’s natural for you to touch me. There’s no reason at all I’d dislike it."For Angela—who had only ever met people who recoiled from her all her life—Eddy’s words felt like a kind of salvation."…It doesn’t make you uncomfortable?""Not at all.""Thank goodness…."As he said, since Angela had made him, it might indeed be natural from Eddy’s standpoint. Even so, hearing in Edgar’s identical face and voice that he wasn’t uncomfortable brought her comfort as if the real Edgar had said it."Um, Eddy. How long can you stay with me today?"Though it was a dream, this time she wanted to spend as much time with him as she hadn’t before."Probably until before sunset.""Really? I’m glad. Last time you left so quickly, I was very sad."With a strange feeling, Angela stared at Eddy. His face and build, even the brilliant gold hair—he was perfectly the same as Edgar."If you stare that much, I get shy.""Ah, sorry. It’s just so amazing how much you look like Edgar that I—""Edgar?"At Eddy’s puzzled look, Angela caught herself and hesitated. If he learned that the reason he was made was her purely personal desire to see a real person up close, would that offend him?"He’s the person I used as reference when I made you. I have a lot of photos here…. See? You look like him, don’t you?"Even so, Angela didn’t want to lie. Besides, she had no talent for it."Do you like this person?""E—eh?"She had never imagined Eddy—who had been a doll—would ask that question, and Angela was thrown into a panic.

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