For years, Grog had found so much disgusting: his neighbors, his parents, nearly everyone he met, and himself too, though the last wasn't entirely his fault.

For years, he sulked around in his hometown, depressed that other children, and adults, seemed to have avoided him because of how he looked. It wasn't just the style he favored, comprised of large leather shoes, black and clunky, his green-brown pants, baggy and a little too short, and the cuffs and rings he usually wore. It wasn't just his facial features and the perpetual expression of frustration plastered on his face. Everyone could see how emaciated he was, especially since he was usually shirtless because he disliked wearing shirts due to long hours working with cuccos, often having feather shafts stuck in all his shirts, poking and scratching him. He had an unusual disease, one that even the best physicians could not figure out what the cause was, but no one could contract it from him. The best they could do for him was to give him painkillers, supplements, and steroids to keep the pain and the disease at bay, hoping the steroids would build back his muscle.

Grog was dying.

He was born a fairly normal boy, or so he was told, but he somehow contracted this disease that so terribly weakened him: he often tired, his muscle mass deteriorated, and continued to grow more and more skeletal. Everyone expected Grog to die within the first year, but for some reason, he still lived. Now, everyone realized that he was becoming a monster, a stalfos, and wanted him to die soon of some other cause, hoping he wouldn't return as a skeleton, which he nearly was already. Everyone wanted him dead so they could sleep calmly, knowing a monster would attack from inside village walls any day.

The dying man snorted. "Sorry to disappoint, but I'm still here," he said to himself.

Grog remembered being curled in bed, both the pain killers and condition making him too tired to move. Leaning against the wall his bed was pushed up against, he heard his parents talking about the neighbor's complaints, and their own worries. After all, he did have a younger sister, Anju, and they didn't want anything to happen to her because they wouldn't stop a monster. His mother suggested taking him somewhere else away from Kakariko, and leaving him behind. His father outright suggested killing him, that he could easily put him down while he was sleeping with a hammer to his skull, or by dumping him down the well. Few people used the well these days due to stories of a dark being sealed below the well, and it didn't hurt to be cautious, there was a river just outside the village that had fresh flowing water and fish.

Anju had been in the room with him, bringing him a routine meal of bread, water, and medication. She wasn't disgusting – she was innocent, and they had bonded over tending to cuccos together. On Grog's bad days, Anju would tend to Cojiro, his favorite rooster, rare and blue feathered, for him. He could see her cringe as the conversation continued, as she did whenever people whispered to each other. Anju was the one who suggested that he sleep outside the house so their parents couldn't hurt him while he slept, and if he slept during the day, he could rest in a pile of straw near the coop while she tended to the cuccos. It left him wondering if his parents would kill him in daylight, when people could hear him scream and struggle before death, or if his parents would kill him out in the open so others could see that he died not of his condition, but of something that might make him stay dead.

Every night since that night when he was twelve, he'd sleep during the day by the coop, concealed by piles of straw that would replace the cucco coop liner when it got dirty. The pile was always large, and only Anju could see him buried neck deep in it, his head concealed by the shadow of the overhang. His ruby haired sister would bring him food early in the morning before the sun rose, at six in the evening when he awoke again, and four hours after that for six years.

At night, Grog knew he couldn't sleep, which is why he only slept during the day. The gaunt man knew that it wasn't safe for him to, especially since the people who he was supposed to trust and depend on were the ones most likely to harm him. He might catnap against a tree by the entrance of the village if he needed to, under the tree facing the entrance so people might not be able to pick out see his pale skin, greying, in the darkness. If someone ever did, he might be able to make it down the steps to the river and throw himself in, hoping it would carry him away from his attackers.

It pained him to not see Anju, who took care of him and did love him unlike his parents, and only see Cojiro early in the morning when he was about to go to sleep after the rooster finished waking the residents. Grog didn't regret avoiding his parents – they were disgusting for more than just talking or planning to kill him.

After Anju reached her teenage years, she seemed oddly nervous and lost, which only made sense after her sleeves hiked up, revealing dark bruises on her upper arms and shoulders. When she leaned forward some, Grog could see angry pink marks across her chest that descended lower. Words failed him, and when she realized that he saw, she winced, pulling her sleeves down and her shirt up. "I didn't want to tell you, knowing you'd worry about me. I didn't want to fight back because things would get worse if I did, and if I tried to leave, that would leave you homeless and the cuccos would likely starve due to neglect."

"You can't just put up living with this – you're fifteen! I've been walking around town at night when it's safe enough, so I'm at least strong enough to travel some distance. It would be good for me to leave and not have to wonder if I'm going to wake up the next night, or if I'm going to be found in the dark. Our parents are so disgusting; we shouldn't have to go through this!" Grog hoarsely groaned.

"What about your medicine? You're still frail, and while you may be able to walk well enough, stalchildren roam the fields outside. What would we do for money and food and your medicine? There is no way we can make it, and if we could, where would we go?"

"We can go to Castle Town. I'm nineteen now and there are plenty of places to work there. The gate shuts at night. We'd be much safer, they probably is at least one potion shop where we could find me medicine. There's always Lon Lon ranch – they're bound to have cuccos there. I've been out on Hyrule Field at night, and the stalchildren didn't attack me. They milled around as if I wasn't there, or more likely, as if I was one of them."

The last sentence made Anju sob, and Grog pulled her to him, trying to comfort her without touching any hidden bruises. "That might be just as bad if not worse. Mother has been seeing other people, and a few of these men are from castle town. They recognize me when I'm caring for the cuccos. They call out to me and some of these bruises are from them too . . . I try to act cheery still because I'm scared that if I try to do something about them, they'll do something worse."

Grog pounded his fist into the dirt beside him, and Cojiro strutted over, perching in his lap to try to calm him. He stroked the vibrant feathers while coming up with another plan.

"Lon Lon ranch won't work – they are family-run only, and they wouldn't have space for us. Their stalls are full of animals, and there are vicious birds at the range at night, so we couldn't sleep outside. Mr. Ingo and I have done business together to talk about the cuccos, and I don't like how he looks at me."

Frustrated that he couldn't think of anything else, he put his head down in resignation. "I'm sorry, Anju. Someday I'll figure something out."