Author's Note: My computer died on me last Sunday and with it the current chapter of "Blindside". I'm rewriting it from memory, but if you're wondering why it hasn't popped up yet? That's why.

In the meantime, here is a story that was lucky enough not to die with the computer. Originally it was going to be a one-shot, but it got a lot longer than I anticipated, it's still not completely finished, and the second half is related to the first half, but also very different. So I figured it would be bigger to break it up into two parts and post the first. I hope you enjoy it.

Oh, and the tale mentioned is an actual Japanese story. It's about a crane who repays a debt by weaving a very precious cloth from her own feathers.

Kenji's birthday is the same day he first wore his own clothes.

It hadn't really been planned. It just happened that Yugo was sheltering this blue-haired kid who had no name, no home, no memory. Nada. Temporarily, Gado had said, until his family was located.

Yugo's pretty sure that Gado knew just as well as he did from the start that that was bullshit. Any records on this mute kid would've been in the building they'd just demolished. But Yugo had said fine, you look for them and I'll take care of the kid, wouldn't trust you with one anyways. (Later, Yugo met Shina--and his opinion didn't change.) He figured they'd eventually find a zoanthrope family willing to take the kid in.

So the kid came home with Yugo, lived under his roof and ate his food and slept (shook) under his old bedding. Which was fine (except for the trembling, which Yugo didn't know how to stop), but there was only so long that the kid could meander around the apartment in hand-me-downs from their neighbors. They'd been too kind, really, Yugo owed them big time; but the boy next door was three years older, with a larger frame. The blue-haired kid practically drowned in the clothes.

Yugo couldn't go clothes shopping without the kid, so he came along for the ride, even though the teenager wasn't sure about how the little one would deal with crowds. He actually coped pretty well, if you overlooked his managing to cut off all the blood circulation to Yugo's right hand. The hand got some relief from the death grip in the clothing store, which was a little less crowded than the rest of the mall. The taller zoanthrope took the apprehensive kid to the boys' clothes, told him to pick out something he wanted, and sighed at the blank stare that answered the instruction. Yugo couldn't wait for Gado to find the kid a home, with someone who'd actually know how take care of him and handle all his...quirks.

Yugo made choosing as easy for the kid as possible by narrowing the options. Red shirt with white stripes, or blue shirt with white stripes? Which one do you like better, kiddo?

Still that blank look. The teenager decided to interpret this as 'I don't like either' and put those two back, returning with a solid red shirt and a solid blue shirt. Which one do you like better, kiddo?

More staring. Okay, maybe he just hated those colors. Yellow shirt and green shirt this time, both long-sleeved with one black band across the right sleeve--which one, kiddo?

The boy's finger hooked into the collar of the faded olive green shirt he wore, tugging insistently. "I don't understand," he murmured at last. "You've already given me apparel." Another one of the kid's quirks: he didn't talk, but when he did, he used words no other kid his age would. "Why do I need more?"

"I guess you don't need more," Yugo told him. "But don't you want to look nice?"

The blank gaze of incomprehension was still there. "Want...?"

Yugo gave him the yellow shirt and told him to go change in the dressing rooms. The boy took only half a minute before reemerging--the older zoanthrope was relieved to see he'd managed to eyeball the right size. He steered the kid to the mirror and prompted him with a "Well?"

The boy was staring at the glass like he'd never seen himself before. "...It's good."

"That's because, hey, it actually fits you. Now let's pick out some more."

Turned out the kid did like red and blue, and a whole bunch of other colors too, all of them bright and bold. Yugo didn't usually like shopping, but seeing the kid get interested in something was worth the time spent in the store. They ended up buying six shirts and two jeans and sneakers from another store, and the boy asked if he could carry the bags. He seemed ridiculously proud of his new clothes--he didn't smile (Yugo wasn't sure he could), but there was a difference in how the kid held himself straighter even carrying those two bags, staring at the floor less and looking at other people a little more--and Yugo wondered if the kid had ever gotten to choose something for himself before.

The thought was both depressing and infuriating; with what had happened to Uriko, Tylon could have done virtually anything to this kid, and there was no way of telling because of his amnesia. Not that forgetting had ended the effects of his treatment. Amnesia didn't make people emotionally flat, and it didn't make them fear other people or develop hair-trigger reactions aimed to kill (Yugo had learned the very first morning to never, ever, wake the kid up by touch; it was safer to call to him and be out of range until he had remembered where he was). That was all the result of whatever sick experiments he'd been used for.

Yugo wished he could just fix the kid somehow, make him know that he was safe now. For the moment, the teenager settled on trying to make the little guy happy. He wanted to give the kid something really special, not just clothes that made him look decent but something that was purely for enjoyment.

The teenager considered the toy store, but the place was jam-packed with parents and shouting children--he could feel the small nails digging into his hand at the very suggestion of being so close to so many people. So they went instead to the nearby bookstore and Yugo told the kid, "Pick something you want."

They'd already gone through this routine at the clothing store and the shoe store, so it was a small surprise when those unemotional amber eyes looked up at Yugo, and with them rose an objection: "But I don't need any of these things."

"It's not about needing."

"I haven't earned anything for you yet."

The kid's eyes weren't as blank as Yugo had first thought; there was a dull wariness in them. People aren't this nice, it said; that, and there's a trick here.

"You're not supposed to be earning money or anything like that, not for a few more years," Yugo said quietly, so no one else would hear. "You're just a kid."

There was no protest to that. Yugo decided to take the silence as agreement and led the way to the children's section. There was a mom and daughter in one corner, reading a book together, but otherwise they were alone and Yugo sat himself against one aisle, watching the boy as he scanned all the different books.

Soon enough the boy brought over a book for Yugo's approval: an illustrated collection of Japanese folk tales. He wondered a little at the choice, but then, it wasn't like he knew a lot about the kid.

"Good choice. Let's go buy it."

The train ride home was quiet and peaceful; the kid was reading the first few stories in the book, and Yugo didn't want to bother him. So he leaned back and relaxed, glancing down every once in a while. Looked like the kid could read pretty fast. Yugo mulled over which grade the kid was supposed to be in, and then peeked at him again.

Something was different about the kid's face, and it took a second for Yugo to actually register: the kid was smiling--a small, faint smile, sure, but the lips were curling up and everything. The teenager peered at the open book, curious about which story it was, and caught the colorful, flowing depiction of a weaver turning into a crane as an old couple stared at her in amazement. Maybe the boy thought she was a zoanthrope like them.

The boy seemed to realize someone was looking over his shoulder, because he turned his eyes onto the wolf zoanthrope, the smile fading back into that blank expression.

"It's nothing," Yugo told him, and then decided that was wrong; the kid had actually smiled, honest-to-god smiled. It was a special event, and just like that, he knew what the occasion was. "Happy birthday, kid."

Welcome to the real world. You don't have to stay in your shell.

"The doctor said he was probably eight or nine, right?"

"Yes, she did," Gado's voice said over the phone. "Why?"

"Okay, he's nine now."

"He remembered how old he is?"

"No. He's still blank on all that. We celebrated his birthday today. Wish him a happy birthday already." Yugo set the phone on the table where the kid was eating his slice of a small chocolate cake--an impulse buy at the local bakery, split between the two of them. Kid looked up curiously at the movement, but he picked the phone up anyway and listened.

"Happy birthday," he murmured into the mouthpiece, and then passed it back.

Gado sounded a little amused. "I think you need to tell him what a birthday is."

"Whatever," Yugo answered. "He's got the 'happy' part right."

As things turned out, 'temporarily sheltering' became 'adopting' soon after Yugo decided the boy needed a name besides 'kid'. "What do you want me to call you?" the boxer asked, and when he was met with a baffled expression he started listing all the decent boy names he could think of.

"Kenji," he said at last.

"Kenji," the boy echoed. Testing the sounds. "Kenji...Kenji Ohgami."

"You know what 'Ohgami' means, right?" Yugo didn't know if the kid actually understood the purpose of last names.

But the boy nodded, lowering his eyes to the floor, suddenly timid. "It's a...family name."

Yugo hesitated and then smiled; he'd gotten used to taking care of the child and knew that at this point, it'd hurt to see him leave. "Yeah. That makes you my little brother." He reached out to the kid's head--and the boy flinched, still not completely comfortable with contact, but he relaxed as his blue hair got ruffled and mussed up. "Always wanted one," Yugo said and watched one of those rare smiles creep up on the kid.

A call to Gado, who knew the right people, got the paperwork started, and three months before Kenji's tenth birthday everything was complete: the kid had legal documents establishing that he was the second son of Yuji. Birth certificate, medical records--all falsified, of course, but they held an important truth: Kenji was a normal child, with family who cared about him.

Yugo called Gado up again on Kenji's next birthday--the boxer figured the old guy was practically Kenji's uncle or godfather or whatever, being a family friend and having helped the kid out so much--and frowned when a disembodied voice informed him the number dialed was no longer in use. Wasn't a total surprise, he supposed, one of the pitfalls of Gado being a mercenary. Kind of a shame, though.

Other than that, Kenji's birthday went perfectly. Gifts were no longer a foreign concept to the kid, so he accepted the wrapped present with only a bit of surprise that Yugo expected him to tear the decorative paper. (Kenji did not, in fact, rip the wrapping, but instead peeled it back so cautiously his older brother ended up going to the kitchen for a glass of water during the wait.)

For his eleventh birthday, Yugo asked if he had any friends from school he'd like to invite for a birthday party, and Kenji thought long and hard about this before naming two boys in his class. Yugo stuck around to make sure nothing got out of hand and managed to stop Kenji before he could protest being given presents by his friends of all people. (And man, the talk they had afterwards. "I didn't know I would obligate them with my invitation..." "If they didn't want to give you presents, they wouldn't have brought them.")

But gradually, Kenji learned to accept that family and friends, even strangers, could be kind to him, and not because they thought he needed it or had earned it or because it secretly benefited them--just because they wanted to, and his twelfth and thirteenth birthdays passed by quietly, happily.