The orphanage was an undoubtedly boring place. On paper, it seemed like a place that should be filled with wonder and endless fun for the potential occupant: after all, it was just a bunch of kids, with nothing to do all day. Surely, they would resort to just playing all day, and living a very careless life. But of course that would not do. The staff ensured that the kids were kept busy. They cleaned, cooked, ran errands for the whole village and undertook mock lessons from house-wives, who had nothing better to do than to attempt to teach someone else's kids the things they could not get their own children to learn. Some days, they would receive visitors; eager-eyed couples who for whatever reasons, wanted to take one of the kids away from here. Most of the children found the concept exciting, and those that didn't, were encouraged by the staff to do so.

Norio liked to spend his time observing these kid-thieves. They came in all shapes and sizes, with different preconceptions of the child they wanted to obtain. The whole process seemed quite awkward to the young boy. The couple would work around, asking questions to the children they found to their liking. Simple things, but often double-edged. Some kids tried to answer in a way that they believed the parents would appreciate. The staff would even teach the children the sort of things they should say. So the kids tried that, but the success of the words was never implicit.

The thieves seemed to be drawn to the prettiest children. It seemed logical enough, Norio mused. After all, you want to steal the highest quality product. Thus, girls were often the most sought after, though the boy did not understand how that choice was made. Some girls were favoured because of their long hair, others because of the colour of their hair. The couples seemed to favour good mannered children, but Norio knew many of these girls to be loud, obnoxious, needy crybabies. Why anyone would want them, was beyond him.

Almost no couples sought to speak to the boy. They were missing out. He could tell them everything about their potential catch. Which toys they liked. Who they were friends with. Their worst habits. How many times they had nightmares. Norio recorded it all in his diary. At the moment, the worst possible candidate for the couples to take was Takeshi, but he had a way of smiling that made all the couples "aww". If only they knew that he himself was a little thief. He always bragged about stealing apples from the market; the kids loved him, but only if he shared his prize. One day, Norio had taken the apples from his pouch, and so when the boy began to talk proudly about his catch, he reached into his bag to find that all the apples were gone. He was so embarrassed that he ended up crying for a week. The apples were pretty delicious.

The best catch had to be a seven year old girl called Ayumi, but Norio understood his opinion to be biased. She was only a year old than him, but for some reason, she liked to follow him around. He had found that very annoying at first; the youth liked his privacy. But she seemed pretty smart, and would talk with him about everything. Well, mostly talk at him, but he liked listening to her voice. She had an unfortunate scar on her face, that was likely the reason why no couples were particularly interested her. Furthermore her hair was always messy and she wasn't very good at cooking, though that didn't stop her from trying to poison Norio. Somehow, the boy thought that she would never be stolen from the orphanage, but she eventually was by a slightly older couple than most. The woman had lost her daughter in an accident, and Ayumi reminded her of the girl.

After that Norio had no friends to speak of. He continued to write things down in his diary, until he could blackmail just about anyone in the orphanage. Like Miss Natsumi. She gave bigger portions to the children that she favoured, and smaller portions to the ones who angered her in some way. Norio's portion was always very small, until he had put a dead rat in the woman's bed one night. There was also Miss Norioko. She was selling cigarettes to the older boys. Norio knew her price to be extortionate, so he decided to obtain and sell cigarettes himself, forcing her to lower her prices until they seemed reasonable. She never found out that it was him.    

Most days, the orphanage was an utterly boring place. The young kids would be playing the same game for the millionth time, while the older kids would be moaning about something or other. That was their game; the complained, seemingly challenging each other to complain the loudest about the most obscure issue. Once they complained about a window creaking too loudly at night. Norio found it amusing to, the very next night, go outside and purposefully move the window as much as he could to make it creak throughout the whole night.

Most days, Norio would sneak out from the orphanage and play in the snow. He found the snow extremely calming; it reminded him of his mother. He would lay in it often, his eyes looking for answers in the skies. Other times, he would make big structures out of snow, using the energy his father taught him about, to reinforce them so that they would stay upright. Once, his hand accidentally released so much blue energy, that the structure collapsed and he had to make it all over once again. The unreliability of this energy would plague him many times, so it seemed logical to him to work on controlling it. He was already spending a lot of time playing around with his puppets. He did so in the secrecy of his room, which he shared with three others, whenever they were not there. But that was not enough. He would thus take the puppets outside, and use them to help him build castles of snow. But that was not as fun as building them himself, so eventually, he would use one hand to control the puppet and another to help with piling up the snow. Eventually, he could control multiple small puppets with one hand and in the end, one finger was all he needed to use these little workers to build very precise structures.

There was a nearby forest, which the boy loved to explore. He would disappear for days on end; everyone would think him dead and then one day, he would appear, all muddy but happy. He was rarely happy. In the forest, the boy climbed trees, chased animals and sat on a lake. The last skill took many weeks to develop. He had discovered the fact that he might be able to keep his body atop of the surface purely by accident, but one the possibility was known to him, he worked very hard to make it reality. Once he could stand on the lake, he taught himself how to sit and then how to lay on it. He would spend hours balancing himself on the silver surface, watching fish swim below him. They were not aware of his presence, and so went about their fishy business, doing what fish did.  

The youth liked to sleep in the forest. The night starry sky was his favourite to observe. He liked to count the stars and imagine himself catching them with a net, much like one might catch butterflies. He would dream interesting dreams and then in the morning, try his hardest to remember and analyse them. He would sit in the snow, and think about many things. He would imagine his mother, his father whose face was increasingly a blur, and see them together, happy like before. The idea would anger him and he would find that snow had melted around him. This he had to study and did study. He would find that if he felt angry and focused, flames could protrude from his fingers. Much later he would discover that he could also produce small bits of electricity. It was all very interesting, but not quite as much as controlling his puppets, which he was slowly making bigger and more intricate. He took his puppets to the forest, and played around with them for ages, make-believing that they were a people trying to create a village in this remote location. The task was however exhausting, as he found himself tiring quickly, when he was playing with multiple puppets at the same time. The more he did so, the longer he could do it, but it would take many months of practice, before he could play with them for a very long time. By that point, he was older, more mature and his interest lay elsewhere.