Identity

"Who... am I?"

Kaori said, as he touched his face. His white silver hair reflected the sunlight peeking into the room. He touched his chest carefully as if it was about to break.

"I'm... alive?" he whispered.

He rushed outside, the frozen floor stinging his bare feet. Every step he took he yelped and stopped for a few seconds.

Kaori had arrived at the lobby. The large windows gave way for the sun to come in, he could see the pain in each frozen body and on the floor was a frozen stringed instrument. He was mesmerized with the statues, they were all reaching towards the center of the room. after a few hours of studying each statue, he went back to the room he woke up in, it was the only warm room. The god prepared him some clothes and kept it at the far back of the room near a torch, thankfully Kaori made use of it.

"Now what?" He stood in front of the frozen body of a god.

He looked at his fingers and stretched them, he even tried bending them further back but ended up hurting himself.

The huge entrance of the shrine had icicles hanging from it, Kaori shivered in nervousness as he went under them. The steps were buried in hard snow, it took him a few tries to walk over it without slipping. There were houses on the hills, houses under the snow, and of course with the most common sense this puppet had he went for the houses on the hills.

"What kind of creature am I?" he kept talking to himself on the way. He stopped for a second.

"What happened here?" He stood looking at the wide area of ice and snow and shrugged, continuing towards the hill.

When he reached the hill he immediately went inside the only good looking house and sat down at the floor. He closed his eyes and panted, for a "new born" like him, sixty kilometers were miles. As his eyes opened slowly, a frozen statue greeted him. He screamed and gripped tightly on the door knob. Five minutes later he decided to try and move the statue outside... he did give up at some point and destroyed the statue, throwing its pieces outside the window. Once he was done, he sat down near the door way and stared at the shattered frozen statue.

"You look like me... Well before I broke you into pieces."

He leaned back and thought more. What is he? All that happened within an hour is... nothing. Finally, Kaori stood up and wandered deeper into the house. The basement was cold, but he found it interesting. All the candles were later lit up and the room was somewhat more comfortable. There were bookshelves and a little table with a stool under it.

[Human Anatomy]

[Human Metabolism]

[Notes on the Human Body]

"Human?" He thought. He flipped through the pages and saw the images that looked like him. The parts were all the same, could he be what the book says "human"? He thought even deeper since the books did not have balls for joints. He dug through all the books, notes, sketches, just for an image that looked exactly like him but he saw nothing. He sat on the stool and sighed, he decided to just call himself human... but he wants to learn more about the true humans. The notes mentioned a "library", maybe he can find some answers there.

He went out again in the middle of the night with a torch and walked towards the area where there were roofs peeking out. As he went closer, a certain roof stood out amongst the others, he went to what he thinks is the front of the building and saw a balcony with a window like door.

"A structure filled with books of all sorts..." he repeats what the notes say.

He tried to dig down the snow to uncover the floor... but looks like there was soil under the snow. The gigantic plant pots and the hill beside the building might explain the reason why there was a thick layer of snow and soil at the balcony.

(Attempt 1:)

He dug through with his bare hands. It did not work at all.

(Attempt 2:)

He broke the plant pot and used a rather big enough piece to dig through. It worked.

He was lucky enough not to have gone through attempt three.

He pushed the door, it took him more than three attempts... how unlucky.

At the last attempt he finally opened the door. He didn't expect it to open at that attempt so he use all his strength and as a result he fell to the floor and hit his head hard on a piece of ice that slid in with him. He laid there for a few moments to whimper about his injury but sprung up when he remembered what he was planning to do in the library.

Kaori brushed off the soil and snow off his clothes and looked around, it was darker than the basement. There were unlit torches hanging on the walls, so he did his best to light most of them up. Of course, he couldn't reach them and was a little annoyed and started punching the air. He then saw a ladder right beside him, how convenient.

All the progress he made in an hour was to light up a torch and with it, he got a mild burn on his wrist. It took him until day break to light up five torches, and soon gave up.

There were books everywhere... On the floor, shelves, tables... everywhere. The went down the freezing first floor and started to scan the pages of the open books on the floor, just to realize that the books are ancient enough to be impossible to read... He spent half the day trying to understand the languages in the books, and later decided to take a break and light up the rest of the torches.

"Ouch... another burn." he sighed and leaned on a lectern with a thick book on it. A spider touched his hand and turned to see it. As he looked for the spider, he read the title of the book.

[Aomori]

"Aomori?" he dusted the book to see golden outlines on the text.

Within its pages were the weaponry and sports of the country. Practices and rituals, along with the history of the very first clan and the noble bloodlines. He found the weapons very interesting specifically, the bow.

Kaori smiled and looked up to see more of these books, making his smile even wider. "Interesting."