"What's your name?" asked the tall man. 

"Minki," the boy answered after a moment of hesitation.

"I don't like that name," he answered, tapping his foot. "Ren."

The boy didn't move. 

"You're a perfect doll... Do you have a family?"

Ren shook his head. The man smiled and took the boy's hand into his. 

"I've a new toy!!" he sang. 

Ren only blinked. 

When they returned to the man's mansion, Ren finally asked, "What's your name?"

"Baekho, but you must call me Master Baekho."

"No."

Baekho paused and turned to glare at Ren. "No?"

Though Ren's pretty, pale face remained emotionless, inside he was afraid. Baekho's eyes pierced him, frightening him to the bone. 

"Wh-Why do you want me here?" Ren asked, distracting Baekho from his rebellious act. 

Baekho's features softened. "I wanted a doll," he answered, patting Ren's soft, blonde hair. 

"Am I your doll?" asked Ren.

Baekho sat Ren down on a stool pedestal, scrutinizing his baggy, torn up clothes. 

"Yes."

"So what do dolls do?"

Baekho's eyes narrowed. "They sit quietly and only speak when I ask them to." 

Ren didn't move and obeyed. The entire evening flew by with Ren sitting motionlessly on his pedestal while Baekho moved to and fro from his sewing table and measuring Ren with a long piece of measuring tape. 

"What time is it?" Baekho sighed, leaning back in his chair. 

There was no answer from Ren. Baekho glared at him. "Answer, Ren," he commanded. 

"It's ten," Ren said without looking at the clock. Only his mouth moved. 

Baekho grinned, satisfied that he had such an obedient doll. "Stand up, Ren," Baekho ordered as he stood up too. 

Ren did as he was told. Baekho gripped his doll's hand and began to walk, but was annoyed when Ren's feet did not move. 

"Walk," Baekho growled; and Ren did so. 

Baekho had come to realize that Ren was extremely obedient, but with specific instructions. If Baekho did not tell Ren to chew and swallow his food, Ren would not do so. He was so complacent that Baekho had to grin in confidence. He'd found his perfect doll. 


"Ren, how old are you?" Baekho suddenly asked one day at breakfast. 

Ren stared emotionlessly at Baekho. "Why?" he asked. 

"Because you sound too old to be a kid, but your face is so cute," he answered, leaning on the table. 

Ren cast his eyes down at his food. "You don't need to know my age, Master Baekho," he said softly as he picked up his fork. 

Baekho glared at the blonde as he began shoveling piles of food into his mouth. A perfect doll looks its master in the eyes. 

"Why won't you tell me your age, Ren?" Baekho asked in the calmest voice he could, but Ren could still hear the rising anger. 

Ren glanced up and swallowed his food, causing Baekho to flinch. A perfect doll wasn't supposed to eat unless its master told it to. 

"I'm a doll," Ren said plainly. "Dolls don't have ages."

Baekho raised an eyebrow as Ren continued eating on his own accord. A perfect doll wasn't supposed to answer its master in such a vague way.

"But a doll must answer his master's questions... All of them," Baekho snarled through gritted teeth. 

"My age is indefinite," Ren answered after swallowing, again causing Baekho to twitch. "A doll survives for as long as its master wants it to. Until you die or decide to throw me out, I'm whatever age you want me to be." 

A perfect doll doesn't decide or predict what or what not its master does or will do. Baekho suddenly flipped the table sideways, sending plates and food crashing to the ground. Despite the earsplitting shatter of the porcelain plates and the sound of hard wood tumbling roughly on tiles, Ren did not move, his fork still raised to reach for his sausage. He blinked a couple times before glancing up at Baekho who had stood up and tightly grabbed Ren by the wrist. 

The master stormed upstairs with his doll who was being dragged. Baekho threw Ren onto the bed, crinkling the red sheets that Baekho had instructed Ren to lay out so carefully and precisely so that each side was even and smooth; the little one began to sit up.

"Don't move!!" Baekho screamed.

Ren flopped back onto the sheets, feet nearly hanging off the bed and shock hair a mess around his face. 

"A perfect doll doesn't talk back to its master," growled Baekho. "A perfect doll doesn't eat by itself. A perfect doll tells its master everything he wants to know! So, Ren... How old are you?"

Ren shook in fear, afraid of whether Baekho was asking him a rhetorical question or if he meant for Ren to answer. Silence filled the air for a couple seconds before Baekho bellowed, "Answer me, Ren!!"

"Sixteen," Ren answered softly. 

Baekho inhaled and calmed himself down. "Good," he replied with a strained voice, obviously trying to keep his voice level. "Now stay up here and do not move until I say so. A perfect doll sits still and does not talk, got it?"

Ren didn't move, and Baekho left the room. 

Baekho was pleased to see that later that night his doll was still curled up on the bed, not having moved an inch. The satin crimson sheets accented Ren's ghostly pale skin which seemed whiter in the glow of the soft moonlight streaming through the glass, gothic styled windows on either side of the bed. 

"Have you been waiting up here, Ren?" Baekho asked rhetorically, sitting next to Ren and putting a hand on his back.

He was tense, but like an inanimate object, Ren didn't move. Suddenly, due to Baekho's added weight on the edge of the bed and Ren's awkward, haphazard position at the foot of the bed, the small boy slid off the bed and collapsed on the floor, landing in a tangle of sheets, limbs, and messy blonde locks. 

Baekho chuckled lowly as he gazed at the seemingly lifeless doll laying so awkwardly on the floor, as if he were broken, yet in Baekho's eyes, Ren couldn't be more beautiful. To him, Ren was always pretty. Only when his doll disobeyed him was he ugly. 

"Stand up, Ren," Baekho ordered. "I bet you're hungry."

Baekho took Ren by the hand and commanded, "Walk with me."

The night proceeded as it had always been, Ren being controlled by Baekho. 


"Ren, walk down to the cellar and give this to the man down there. When you've finished, come back to me."

Baekho gestured for Ren to hold out his hands and then dropped a heavy wooden box onto his outstretched hands. 

"Go."

Ren wasn't remotely interested or curious about why Baekho had a man in the cellar. He was handsome as far as Ren could tell by his scarred face, red cuts fresh with dripping blood, hands shackled together, and Ren wondered how he got down here.

"You're the baby doll Ren..." he suddenly said, voice raspy. 

He shouldn't have. Baekho hadn't given him permission to do so, but he nodded. 

"That box for me?" he asked, pointing to the wooden case.

Ren laid it in front of the man and he opened it cautiously. The man scoffed. It was a knife.

"Tell Baekho I'd rather die than murder Aron and Minhyun," he growled.

Ren turned around, stopped, and turned back toward the man. He flexed his jaw for a moment, contemplating the consequences of his next actions, but decided that if he kept quiet enough, Baekho would never find out.

"Name..." One word, but the man had understood.

"JR. Junior Royal, baby doll," he answered. "I'm down here because Baekho doesn't like me. Aron, Minhyun, and I aren't good people either, Ren--drugs and all--but remember this, Baekho is worse than us. If you go up to one of his spare bedrooms, you'll find a whole load of 'dolls.'"

Ren cocked his head and turned around again.

"Baby doll," JR called.

Reb glanced back at him.

"Remember, the perfect doll can work behind its master's back and never be discovered. The perfect doll is silent."

Ren climbed up the stairs and returned to Baekho. 

"Did he say anything?" asked Baekho. 

Ren nodded. 

"Tell me what he said."

"He'd rather die."

And so he did the next day, and Ren felt his heart harden with anger as he watched Baekho drag JR's bloody corpse out of the house.

And after the cleaning was done, Baekho showered and dove into his bed. 

"Come to bed," Baekho ordered Ren, and the young boy did so, slipping under the covers next to his master, but his eyes were trained on the floor-to-ceiling window.

It was snowing. Christmas was approaching. More than six months have passed, and Ren decided that he needed a new master.


Ren had been sitting on the red bedsheets all morning, unmoving, like the perfect doll. Suddenly, without warning, Baekho entered the room loudly. 

"Guess what today is, Ren!" he chimed. "Christmas Eve! And I was so excited to give you your present that I wan to give it to you right away!"

"What is it, Master?" Ren asked, but Baekho either didn't notice or disregarded that his doll had spoken out of turn. Ren blamed the holiday spirit for clouding Baekho's usual preferences. 

"It's a new outfit!!" he announced cheerily, placing the outfit next to Ren on the bedsheets. "Put it on!"

Ren did so without being told specific instructions, yet still, Baekho made no signs to reprimand him. Only a small twitch at Baekho's left eye told Ren that Baekho was slowing becoming bothered that Ren was moving of his accord. 

As the small boy stood in front of the large mirror, he said, "I don't like it." Those words shattered Baekho's spirit. 

"You spoke without permission..." he mused out loud. 

"I really hate the color pink," Ren said, poking at the shirt. 

"You're talking..."

"This fabric is itchy too."

Baekho suddenly picked Ren up by the front of his shirt and sat him on the edge of the bed roughly. "You listen to your master, doll!" he screamed. "A perfect doll sits still! A perfect doll looks its best to the way its master wants it to! And a perfect doll does not speak!! At all!! Do you hear me, Ren?!" 

The boy sat as still as a statue. A moment later, numerous loud footsteps were heard thundering up the stairs and the door was kicked down. Men dressed in black uniforms armed with guns surged through the room, two of them seizing Baekho by the arms. 

"What the hell?!" he screamed. 

"By order of the police department and government, you, Kang Dongho, underground name Baekho, are arrested for dealings of illegal drugs and murdering a man named Junior Royal."

"T-That's not me!!" Baekho lied. "It's not!! Ren! Tell them!"

The police glanced at the boy sitting on the bed, still, unmoving, like a doll. 

"It's a doll, son," the officer said. "I'll put on your record that you're mentally insane."

"No! He's a real boy!! He's not really a doll! Ren!! Tell them I'm innocent!!" And then Baekho's words echoed back in his ears. 

"A perfect doll does not speak..."

"REN!!!!"


Everything was dark, and the doll expected nothing less since it was midnight; the police had left long ago, but Ren still refused to move. Soft footsteps gingerly made their way up the stairs and into Baekho's bedroom where Ren still sat perfectly still. 

"Oh! There you are, baby doll," a boy about Ren's age said. "Look this way."

Ren did so. He was young with a kind face. 

"I'm Aron... Your new master," he said, extending his hand. "Stand up and walk with me, baby doll..." Ren stood up and took Aron's hand. "And you name?"

The doll gazed up at his new master. "Ren..."