I am the villain. They say everyone is the hero in their own story, but even here I am the villain. I don't mind that. I am everyone's villain, and so everyone else can be their own heroes. They can be the saviour of their own stories, and of everyone else's, because they cannot be worse than me. Because I am a villain to all, and so by default, when they brush up against me, they are heroes to all. By hurting them, I can become the creator of the multitudes of goodness that will save this world.

Or at least, that's what I used to think.

When this story begins, I am nothing more than a baby, a mewling infant - yet it is not my mother's arms in which I lie. Instead, I am hidden away in a cupboard intended only for farm tools. I have spent many nights picturing it - the light wood paneling, vertically arranged. The shovels and hoes and various other farm instruments leaning against the wall, and there, under the shelves which house the animal medication, lies me. A crying child, abandoned there.

I do not pretend this is where my bitterness stems from, my lifelong hatred - I am not that kind of villain. Instead, I am thankful of my origin - if my mother saw fit to leave me, I probably would not have had a prosperous life with her anyway. So I grew up on the farm, the youngest of five siblings.

The eldest, my sister Julika, was a great bear in all but appearance. She wore loose, dark green trousers and a tight white top. Her golden hair was pulled back into pigtails, and she worked on the farm all morning, then disappeared into the forest until dinner. All my siblings had golden hair. I was the odd one out, as it usually goes. The golden haired, muscular heroes, and the dark haired, scrawny runt as the mastermind villain. Although, as my brothers found out again and again, I was not exactly scrawny.

The rest of my siblings were all boys. I was the youngest of the lot. My brothers, Gyro, Henry, Ignius and Priald all looked very similar - tall, physically able, perfect golden boys. It was from them that I learnt what made a villain.

Because they would do terrible things. They were cruel, mean children who would ignore their parents, steal from the cupboards and hide when asked to work - as children do. But at the end of the day, when they got away with it, they would always come back, and they would always apologise, and that meant that everything was alright again. No damage was done, and the next day would begin in the same way as the last.

Personally, when I decided to hide with them, and when the end of the day would come, I never saw why they wanted to go back. They had their food, they were off work, they had succeeded. It puzzled me why they would always return.

Was it family? Love? It couldn't be. Because I had been raised by the same people, from the same age as them, in the same way, and I felt no such connection. Not to my parents, not to my siblings, not to anyone. But maybe that's just who I am.

Everything was alright for a while. But then, as life and pretty much all things go, it got worse. My sister married and left. My brothers all coupled up and went off to live the quiet life. I remember one day, a girl tried to approach me. Poor thing, it didn't really turn out quite how she was expecting it to.

I think she was hoping for a decent conversation, then maybe a nice date, then home to meet the parents, as it goes for most young couples. Unfortunately, I've never been like most people.

It's not important what happened, only that she ran off in tears, and I was left standing by the gatepost, unsure of what I'd done wrong. Such a strange girl - and yet, she'd seen the best in me. She'd seen what no one else had, what no one else had bothered to see. She'd looked at me and she'd seen kindness, heart, charisma, bravery, something to make her think I was worth a shot, worth her love.

Or maybe she'd just seen what she wanted to.

Either way, it had touched me, that someone had seen me fit to love, fit to care for, and I realised that my whole life, even though everyone I knew had loved and cared for me, I'd never really felt like that. Like that, as if when you cried at night, when you huddled up, scared in a cupboard, when you ran from everyone else because you didn't know what you were supposed to say, they would be there, and they would hold you tight to them because they couldn't imagine anything better than helping you when you were hurting. Because they wanted to.

I was different to them, to the rest of the world, to my parents, and that was why we could never touch each other, could never become close, no matter how much love was between us. I didn't need a parent, I didn't need a brother, I didn't need any amount of friends - I needed love. True, romantic love, that stretched both ways. And I didn't know how to find it.

And now I'm writing this to find this love. For in order for someone to love me, they must see every part of me laid bare, every decision I ever made, every life I ever ended, and my motives behind it all, all spread out for you in this book. And will you love me for it, love me for everything that I am, in a way that no one has ever loved anyone else?

Truly, I don't know.