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It was a little over four in the afternoon when rain arrived at the twin towns of Charleville-Mézières, nothing warned by the weather forecast the day before. In the depth of the December cold, the heavy droplets felt like icicles on the reporter’s face. Swearing under her breath, the reporter broke into a jog between the narrow coverings provided by a few shops on her side of the street, until she could squeeze herself under the balcony of an antique-looking shop, just wide enough for one person to take shelter.
“Just northern weather,” she mumbled, trying to dry her hair with a handkerchief that soon became too soggy to help. She tucked it away along with her phone that had been out of battery since noon, both now lying uselessly at the bottom of her purse.
A recent missing person case in the old town of Charleville that made the headlines was the only reason she had to trudge up this northern commune, in the dead of winter, to gather sources for a feature article that her news agency insisted upon. “We can’t lose out this time again,” her chief editor had said. “Take a couple of days and go there, make sure we get some nice scoop to cover before the graybeard at AFP or his cronies clinch it again.”
The reporter huffed. Nothing turned up so far after four days of fieldwork, and nothing noteworthy about the man who disappeared, in the exact same way as all other incidents that stumped the police. And now, being stuck in the rain, with no bus nearby that can take her back to her lodgings, was an abysmal way to end a tiring day. The rain didn’t seem like it would let up any time soon—more dark clouds were rolling in from afar, and all other sounds were drowned out by the heavy pattering against the wood jutted out just above her head.
Looking up, the reporter caught sight of an unassuming wooden board with a name carved out in cursive letters. D&C’s Haven, it read. So that’s the name of the shop acting as her makeshift shelter—upon closer inspection, it seemed to be an artisanal doll store. Lining up just beyond the misted glass panels and wooden frames, on top of cushions that looked velvety soft, were dolls of different sizes. They all had unique designs and were dressed in hand-sewn clothes, petite and beautiful under the dim light of several tiny lamps tucked in the corners.
The reporter moved closer to admire the handiwork on a little doll just half the size of her forearm, a tiny butterfly planted to the side of its head, on short, jet-black hair fanning out like silk. Despite the fact it didn’t follow human proportions, there was a strange lifelike quality about the doll she couldn’t quite describe. In the soft glow, the doll’s cheeks took on a peachy shade—looking skin-smooth, even. Whoever made this must have put a lot of time and effort into this little creation, she thought.
The door to the shop opened before she could move back. A little girl squeezed past her to get out, purchase in hand. “Thank you, Dazai!” From under her umbrella, the girl gave a brief wave, and the man who must’ve been the shop owner waved back. When he turned to the reporter, he immediately smiled.
“Oh, is there anything I can help?” He eyed the way she stood a little too close to the display on the window. “Looking for a gift? I’ll be happy to make recommendations.”
“Oh, no, sorry, I was just waiting out the rain,” the reporter hastily said. “Sorry for blocking your doorway.”
“Then there’s something I can help indeed.” The man’s brown eyes twinkled in good humour. In the grey winter light, they appeared almost reddish. “Care to step inside? Doesn’t look like my balcony is doing good enough of a job for a covering.”
A dry, warm place… That definitely sounded like heaven right now. Still, the reporter demurred. “That’s very kind of you, but I wouldn’t want to impose.”
“Nah, I don’t expect any other customer to visit in this kind of weather. Do come on in.” The shop owner opened the door fully and stepped aside as though inviting her to take a look. The fruity scent of some kind of tea wafted out along with the strong trace of lavender oil, curling in the heated air that was pushing past the doorway and warming her face. Giving her matted hair and damp coat a glance, the man offered another sweet smile. “I have tea. Shouldn’t be a bad place to spend half an hour.”
The promise of tea and warmth eventually won out, and she followed the man inside, almost sagging against the door as she closed it behind her. It did feel nice to finally be out of the cold. The shop owner—a slender man probably in his late twenties, with dark brown hair slightly unkempt—moved toward the fireplace in casual strides. Even though they were indoors, he was keeping on a long beige coat. “Tea?”
“If you’d be so kind,” the reporter said. She removed her now-wet overcoat and hung it by the doorway. There’s nothing on the coatrack: no jacket, no umbrella, save for a black hat with a thin strip of dirt orange silk attached to it perched on top of the rack. A peculiar fashion choice—she didn’t think it would go well with the man’s outfit, nor would it serve any practical purpose, especially against the type of weather they were experiencing. Still, she followed the man to the coffee table set just in front of the fireplace without a comment, settling into a single couch.
Looking around the interior of this place proved that it was, indeed, an artisanal doll shop as she had guessed. The room wasn’t very wide, but ran long, all Old World aesthetics with low mahogany furniture that gave off a reddish glow under the light from the fireplace. Lining the two walls were rows of cedar shelves, with the bark left on, to keep a number of dolls all of different sizes and makes. A sweeping look around this end of the room didn’t show any duplicates. It was as though their maker was consciously creating from a different design every time he started something new. The other end of the room, which the fire couldn’t illuminate, revealed less, but she could still see a curtain covering up the far wall entirely.
“You’re not a local, aren’t you?” the shop owner asked, placing a cup of tea in front of the reporter. The rose-apple scent was welcoming, and she found herself relaxing by a bit. “The name is Dazai. Osamu Dazai,” he added.
“No, I’m not,” she replied, giving him her name, and then her hand for a handshake. She could ask him the very same thing: a Japanese descent speaking perfect French certainly wasn’t something one would see everyd—only to jump, flushing, when he took her hand and dropped one soft kiss on her fingers. The kiss was quick, though, and entirely gentlemanly, and when he pulled back she could see the amusement in his eyes for having caught her off-guard.
“Travelling for pleasure?”
“Oh no, God forbid,” she laughed. And then, she decided to add, “I’m a journalist.”
“Ah, so you’re here for that incident,” the man—Dazai—observed.
She nodded.
“But not only for that, am I right?” he gave a smile that was the slightest bit smug, as though he’s just gotten hold of one of her trade secrets.
After all, it’s not always the case that a disappearance could make the headlines.
The man who went missing last week was, in fact, the twentieth person to have disappeared in the last two months, all within the small town of Charleville.
When missing person reports piled up unnaturally from about four weeks ago, the police started to suspect the work of a serial killer, but all attempts at tracking down a lead had been in vain. There was nothing common among the missing people—‘victims’ now, as called by the press—other than that they were all healthy adults in their early twenties. Height, gender, occupation, residence—there was no pattern whatsoever that could lead investigators to crack the culprit’s modus operandi or motive, assuming there was a culprit behind these cases. No bodies had been found, no extortion threats, no nothing. Just like that, twenty young adults were gone, as though in a puff of smoke, never to be seen again.
AFP, their rival news agency, was the first to have speculated about a serial killing case, a ‘murder mystery’ as they called it in their special issue. Sensational, yes, but profitable enough for her own chief editor to send her up north as they discovered yet another disappearance, in hopes of finally edging their competitor out.
“So I guess you follow the news.” An unspoken affirmation of Dazai’s guess. There’s not much to hide, she supposed. “How’s it like around here? Are people, I don’t know, afraid?” There weren’t a lot of people out on the streets on her way here, but at the time she simply chalked it up to people being more reluctant to go out in winter.
“Mm. Some are. Others don’t really buy into that murder story—after all, there’s no… corpse, right?”
“I don’t suppose you knew any of the missing people?” she tried. Frankly, she would much rather not think about this right now, but if there’s anything that could turn into a feature… Then she realised something. “Please don’t get me wrong, I’m just trying to get an article done. You know, to grab attention. These things…” she made a vague gesture with her hand, “do tend to take up readership.”
“I hate to disappoint lovely ladies like you,” Dazai winked, and she flushed a little again, “but all I know is that this is bad for business. People hardly take their children out anymore. Even if it’s not some murderer, you still can’t get too careful with children, you know.”
As he spoke, Dazai reached into a basket beside his own couch and took out a piece of wood, along with a carving knife. Having no more interest nor hope in pursuing the ‘missing person’ talk, the reporter instead let her eyes wander around a bit more, taking in the exquisite furniture, rows after rows of handmade dolls, and slowly focused back on the dollmaker’s work. The piece of wood was a tiny arm, she realised, and Dazai was working on carving its fingers. The patient, gentle strokes of his knife captured her in an almost trance-like state, to marvel at the air he exuded, an endless calm blended with such cold precision that she thought only surgeons would possess.
“Have you been doing this for long? Is this…” she gestured around the shop, “…a family business?”
“Should I expect an article about me soon?” Dazai asked, a teasing edge in his voice. Seeing her fidget some more, he laughed, and continued. “No, actually. I only got into the profession a few years ago.”
“Amazing,” she couldn’t help blurting out. She turned toward the shelf closest to her and admired the level of detail on one doll. Cloaked in black, the doll sported a tiny white cravat under a set of sharp jaws, face delicately framed by black hair with carefully painted-on white tips. Right next to it was another, equally exquisite, with uneven grey hair and cheeks that swelled just a bit more plump. “I’m no expert, but I could see this took some serious skill.”
“You could say I was… inspired,” the dollmaker replied, angling his left hand slightly toward her. That’s when she caught sight of a simple gold wedding band on his third finger.
“Ah, I see. Your wife?”
“Mm,” the man hummed noncommittally. “Too bad, my partner is away right now. You two would’ve gotten along well, I think.” He paused for a bit, eyes lingering on her face for a moment too long, and carried on as though nothing happened. “It’d be nice if you two could meet. You remind me of my partner a lot, actually. Your eyes, that is. The same blue.”
Not knowing how to read into that comment, the reporter opted to shrug a bit. “I don’t suppose they’re that rare. There must be quite a lot of people with blue eyes in Charleville, right? Or in France,” she finished lamely.
“No, I would know.” Dazai fixed her with an unreadable look. It wasn’t enough to make her uncomfortable, per se, but… “I would know.”
Wanting to break away from the strange atmosphere that had settled around them for the past couple of minutes, the reporter stood up from her couch and chanced a look out of the window, wondering if the rain had stopped. Her hope was quickly thwarted, however, because the rain was still pelting on the glass panels, cloaking everything beyond in a thick grey mist. She then stepped closer to the dolls on the shelves to inspect them up close. She still couldn’t shake off the funny feeling upon seeing them for the first time—there was a lifelike quality about the dolls that mesmerised. Down to the flecks of grey in their irises, the crystal-like look of the eyes… She never saw the appeal of the toy nor did she have any hard feelings against it, but seeing these creations—
“These dolls make for some really great gifts, you know. Sure you don’t want any?” Dazai’s voice came.
She almost said no by reflex. But then, these little things were really making her reconsider. The man took her lack of answer for indecision, and only sweetly added, “There are more inside, if you’re interested. We can go take a look. I can even give you a discount, if there’s any that catches your eyes.”
She traced the curves of one doll. “Do you take custom orders?”
“Yeah? Sometimes, I guess.”
Looking at the distinctiveness even between ones that shared hair colour and size, she wouldn’t be surprised if they each had a name. The hand-sewn clothes were all made from high-quality materials, some of which she never thought about wearing for herself. Whoever could afford these must’ve been loaded. “I’m just amazed at how unique they look.”
“Oh, those were for me to practise.”
“Practise?” she echoed.
“Yeah, those were dolls made in my early months. Well, not all, as I’m sure you could imagine the earliest ones were crap, but those were the first successes,” he calmly explained. “They’re all different because I needed to make sure that I’d become… dexterous enough. That I could carve out all the shapes and forms I want, until I’m good enough to make the perfect doll.”
“Wow,” the reporter said, slowly walking along the shelves and past the fireplace to wander deeper into the room. “I never thought that’s how one would learn to make dolls.”
“Maybe it’s just me,” Dazai chuckled. “But for me, the art of making dolls is very simple.” A brief pause. “It’s just about assembling pieces. Like playing puzzles. Once you could find—I mean, make the perfect individual pieces, then all you have to do is putting them together, and you’ll have the perfect body of a doll.”
Even though they made perfect sense, the man’s words still gave her a strange prickling sensation, tugging at the seams of her mind like something wanting to be discovered. The talk about missing people, the art of dollmaking… Almost as though everything she had experienced in this tiny town of Charleville all belonged to a puzzle with scattered pieces, only waiting to be assembled, when Dazai was voicing it out.
The inner part of the room was less illuminated, and there’s another smell underlying the scents of lavender oil, cedar wood, and rose-apple tea in the room. Was that pickles? Some sort of disinfectants? She couldn’t put a finger on what, and hesitated to go in, but at the same time that only added to her growing curiosity. What is it about these dolls…?
“Did you manage to make it yet? The perfect doll you mentioned?” She turned back to look at the dollmaker, who only now stood up and idly started toward her.
“I’m getting there, I think,” he replied, not hiding the pride in his voice. His tone turned wistful, almost like a dream, and there’s a touch of tenderness, unmistakable, gently unfurling in the air between them. “I’m getting better and I’m getting there. My ultimate creation.” Coming to stand side-by-side with the reporter, he turned his gaze to her, the look infinitely soft. “Want to see it?”
It occurred to her that that was the most human she had seen him, ever since stepping into this room.
Not waiting for her reply, he reached out and flicked on a light switch.
Bright, white light flooded the room that blinded her for several seconds, and when she came to, she saw rows and rows of more, more dolls. All identical in design but vastly different in sizes—some as small as a toddler’s toy, and others bigger, and bigger, as big as half the human adult. All in three-piece suits that looked exactly the same, and overcoats lined with the same dirt orange colour she saw on the hat near the door. All in leather chokers whose buckles gleamed under the light, all with red, red curls tucked behind one ear, and—
From behind the reporter, Dazai pointed at the curtain that covered what she thought was the far wall of the room, and lovingly said, “My ultimate creation is just behind this drape. I’m just missing one final component. Wanna see it?”
Right at that moment, she realised the one thing about the dolls that caught her attention.
Staring at her, from behind long, long lashes, were hundreds of piercing blue eyes.
She whipped around, and—
“I’ve been waiting for someone like you, you know,” the dollmaker said, softly still. “Such beautiful blue.”
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