Then:

No one ever needed to tell her.

She knew it the moment she saw him.

That cute, orange haired bundle of mush laying in his crib, blowing bubbles of spit at her and giggling when they popped. Her eyes gleamed with a joy so pure she nearly cried. She reached a finger through the crib and he gripped it with his whole hand, gnawing at her nail with his wet gums. She laughed.

"Get away from him." Her mother stood in the doorway. Her hair fell loosely over her face and she looked unsteady on her feet, like a strong gust of wind would knock her down. But her eyes…her eyes looked wild. Like a caged animal's.

Rei frowned. "M—mom?"

"Don't touch him…"

"Mom? What's wrong. You don't sound like yourself."

Her mother's face contorted in anguish and she dropped to her knees, sobbing. Rei was stunned when her father appeared in the doorway, fuming. "Look what you've done! You couldn't just listen to your mother could you? You have to make everything so difficult. Get out, get out!" He grabbed Rei's arm and yanked her forcibly from the room even though his raised voice had made the baby start to cry. He pulled the door closed behind her. Her mother had already run back to her bedroom in a fit of sobs which could be heard through the wall.

Rei blinked. "But…the baby. Shouldn't we—"

"You are never to go in that room again, do you understand me? That thing is no baby. You are to stay away from it, do I make myself clear?"

Thing…it…Rei didn't understand. When she didn't answer, her father gripped her shoulders in his hands tightly and looked her square in the eyes. He had the same wild look her mother had, only she'd seen it in him before during nights he'd spent out drinking. Still he looked different this time. He looked almost…afraid. "You leave that beast where he is, Rei." He hissed, tightening his grip. "Don't test me."

Rei nodded but felt uneasy as her father let her go and stormed off down the hall, ignoring the wailing sounds of the baby and of their mother as he grabbed his coat and headed out into the night.

Days came and went, blurring into weeks, then months and still she had not been permitted to enter her brother's room. Her mother went in sparsely, and only for a few sort minutes. Rei didn't understand the full extent of the type of care babies required, but at 12 years old she certainly knew they needed more time and attention than what her brother was getting. Some days she would hear him cry for hours on end before her mother's frail figure could be seen shuffling down the hall to his room. Other days Rei had to practically beg her mother to go tend to the baby out of fear he might starve.

"Please mama, please. The baby is hungry, can't you hear him? Arn't you going to do anything? Arn't you going to say anything?"

But her mother would simply roll over in bed and pull the blankets up over her head until Rei left the room.

Her father had been on a bender for weeks, and she saw him only in passing when he came home to rummage through drawers and cabinets in search of spare change.

On one particularly long night she heard a clatter come from the kitchen. She knew she should have stayed in bed. She knew better than to approach him when he was like that. But the baby had been crying all day and well into the night and she was starting to get worried.

"Do something!" She had yelled over her mother's crumpled body. She was red faced and crying. "Do something, dammit!"

But she wouldn't. And if she wouldn't, Rei would. She got out of bed and slipped down the hall. A pool of light shown through the window and spilled onto the mess of broken dishes strewn across the kitchen counter. Her father was going through a cabinet, swiping the shelves clear in search of something. Rei wriggled her toes in her socks. The house was freezing. The first snowfall of winter had started outside and the heat hadn't been turned on yet. That was if the electric company didn't shut it off like last year. Rei wasn't sure. She stood behind her father in the doorway, surefooted and firm.

"You need to go in there," she said.

Her father stopped his searching and turned to her. His shirt was ripped at the shoulder and stained with what looked like a mixture of human and non-human substances. His shoulders hung lazily, and his eyes were wild and dark as night. "What did you say to me?"

She could smell his breath from across the room and had to suppress a gag. "I think something is wrong with the baby. Mom won't do anything about it."

"And you think that is somehow my problem? Ha!" He swayed and caught himself on the sink. He turned on the tap and took a long, sloppy gulp of water that dripped from his chin like a rapid animal foaming at the mouth.

"He could be sick."

Her father didn't say anything, just threw open a drawer and started digging through its contents. Rei balled her hands into fists. She didn't mean to but she just couldn't hold it in any longer. She screamed, "You monster! He could be dying!"

Her father swung around at her so fast she didn't even have time to react. He threw her against the wall so hard that her head spun and it took a moment for the stars to clear from her vision. He brought his face so close to hers that she felt hot spit flick across her cheek. "Don't you ever call me that again." When he released her she fell to her knees.

He must have found some change in the draw because he crumpled up a few bills and shoved them in his pocket before slamming the door and leaving.

She breathed hard, gripping her chest and willing herself to stop trembling. Kneeling on the cold hardwood floor, one lone thought came to her; Fuck this.

She got to her feet and went down the hall, opened the door to her brother's nursery and went in. The baby was red faced, his little voice hoarse with a day's worth of wailing.

"Shhh…it's okay. I'm right here." She reached into the crib and offered him her finger, which he gripped onto but the crying didn't cease. Rei frowned.

He sucked on her finger with vigor and it didn't take much to figure it out. "Poor thing, you're hungry aren't you?" She reached down to pick him up and 'poof'. In a dusty cloud of orange smoke her baby brother disappeared from her arms. For a moment she gasped in horror at the thought that she had dropped him. But when the dust cleared she saw a small orange kitten sitting where her brother had just been. She blinked and blinked again. The kitten turned in a circle in the crib, pawing at the bars then biting at them. Mewing insistently. She couldn't believe it and yet she couldn't deny it either. Was this what they were all so worried about? She was still in awe as she lifted her brother and held him close to her. Felt his warmth, his heartbeat. Those things hadn't changed. It was her brother. She held him up. His bright orange tail twitched and he cocked his head to the side. She felt tears start at the corners of her eyes. "You're...so precious." And she hugged him to her body.

He mewed again and she was alert once more. She wiped at her eyes and set him down on the floor. "Right, food. Well this...complicates things a little. What do we feed you? Baby formula? Kitten food?" She looked around the room as if for a sign of what to do. Then it came to her. "Stay right here, I'll be right back." She left him on the floor for a moment, gnawing at the leg of the crib.

She went back to the kitchen and opened the trashcan. It hadn't been emptied in several days. She shifted around some rotten banana peels and empty boxes of microwavable meals until she came across what she was looking for. An empty box of baby formula. "Yes!" She said triumphantly under her breath. She wiped the dirty smears of food from the box and brought it with her down the hall.

"Look what I found," she said, but as she rounded the corner it was not a kitten she found on the floor but her baby brother. A human baby again, sitting there, looking at her with wide eyes. "Oh you are going to keep me on my toes, aren't you?" She knelt down and tussled his hair. He giggled. "You think that's funny, huh? Let's get you cleaned up first, okay?"

She searched around until she found one of three clean diapers that were left in the box in the corner of the room. She didn't know exactly what she was doing, but how hard could it be? When she lifted him to put him on the changing table; poof. Again he had turned into a small orange cat. She held him, puzzled. "Holding you, is that it? Does being held turn you into a cat?" She thought back to the day he was brought home from the hospital. It was her father who had begrudgingly carried him inside and put him in the crib. Come to think of it she hadn't seen her mother pick him up even once. She only saw her disappear into the nursery from time to time. So maybe it wasn't being held that caused him to change, but who did the holding? "You can't be held by a girl then, is that it?" The baby hiccuped in reply. Rei sighed heavily and scratched at her head. "This might be a little harder than I thought." She lifted her brother and set him back down in the crib. "Look," She said to him through the bars on the crib. "It's too cold out there for me to bring you with me, especially if you're just going to keep changing into a cat every time I pick you up, so you're going to have to wait here." She pressed her lips together. "But I'll be back. I promise." She leaned down and planted a kiss between his ears.

She went to her room and reached underneath of the small music box her mother had gifted to her on her 6th birthday. It had belonged to her grandmother. She had kept 1,300 yen stashed away under there for emergencies. It was a years worth of scrounging around under bus seats, and a chunk of money her neighbor had given her for helping pull weeds from their garden. She took it all, stuffed it in her pocket, grabbed a coat and headed out into the night.

The 24 hour store was a thirty minute walk each way on a good day, but at night in the snow it took Rei almost twice as long. She lifted her boots high, wadding through the gathering snow. She pulled her wool hat down tight against her frost bitten ears but the hat was too snug and it left her earlobes exposed to the bitter cold. Finally she rounded the corner 17 blocks away from her house. The neon glow of the open sign cast a wash of fluorescent pink across the snow covered parking lot. The bells jingled above the doorway when Rei entered but as far as she could tell, the store was empty. She scanned the rows for baby supplies. Up in the corner a television played a old 90s rerun of some gameshow Rei had never seen before. One of the contestants was jumping up and down and yelling. Even though the television was muted it was obvious the woman had just won a large sum of money.

Rei found the formula, only one box left on the shelf. She grabbed at it hastily and held it both hands, protecting it like a lion protected it's kill. That's when she saw the price tag. 15,000 yen. Her heart sank. She paused for a moment, but only a fleeting one, then she slipped the formula into her coat and—

"A little young to be needing baby formula, aren't you?"

Rei froze, her blood ran cold.

"But then again," A woman came around the corner, her swollen pregnant belly appeared even before she did. "Who am I to judge?"

"It's not for me. I mean, it's not my baby. It's for my baby brother."

The woman smiled at her. Her smile was soft and surprisingly unaccusatory for someone who had just caught her trying to steal.

"Baby brother, huh? How old?"

Rei blinked at her. Why wasn't she calling the police? "A few months."

"Just a little fella then. What's his name?"

"I—he doesn't have one."

The woman tilted her head in question.

"My parents haven't agreed on one yet."

"Maybe you should come up with one then."

"I wouldn't know what name to pick."

"The key is not to overthink it. Just let it come to you. You'll know when a name feels right."

Rei nodded. "Do you know what name you're going to give your baby?"

The woman leaned against a rack of pretzels and brushed a strand of hair from her face. "We have a couple of names picked out. We'll know what fits when we meet her."

"You're having a girl?"

The woman nodded. "We'd be happy either way but," She looked left and right as if to be sure that they were alone. "Between us, I've always wanted a daughter. And what about you?"

"What about me?"

"Your mother must be very proud, having a daughter who's willing to help with the baby is a true rarity these days."

Rei looked down at the box of baby formula still clutched in her hand. "She doesn't know I'm here," she said quietly.

The woman crossed the isle toward her, brow furrowed in a way Rei couldn't properly identify. "Maybe it's your brother who's the lucky one then, huh?"

Rei let go of the box on the shelf and placed her hands in her pockets, empty. "I should go."

She made it to the door before the woman called to her. "You're forgetting something." She tossed her the box of formula and Rei caught it against her coat.

"Oh no, I don't have enough for this."

"What do you mean? You just paid for that."

Rei smiled bashfully. She looked at the yellow name tag on the woman's shirt. "Thank you, Ms. Honda."

"Just call me Kyoko."

It took a while to figure out the logistics. How to get a baby to sit up without being able to properly pick him up was like performing a trick at a circus. Many careful maneuvers and a few close calls later, Rei sat on the floor with her baby brother propped up against a couch cushion, happily gulping down a bottle. She laid on the floor, her socks still soaking wet from the icy slush that had made its way into her boots on the walk home. But somehow it didn't seem to bother her. Somehow she was perfectly warm. She held the bottle until the last drop was gone and even then the baby reached out, grabbing fistfuls of air in search of more.

"Sorry, Kiddo. That's all there is for right now."

For right now.

She rolled onto her back and let the thought sink in. When morning came she would need to go through the whole thing all over again. Assuming that her mother had no plans to do so herself (which Rei highly doubted she did) she would need to figure something out. She reached out and let the baby feel along the creases of her hand. "You got any ideas?" She asked.

The baby cooed at her and yawned. He leaned his head against her leg and for a moment, Rei winced in anticipation of the 'poof' but it never came. Carefully she placed a hand on the small of her brother's back. "Okay," she breathed. "I guess this is okay then."

That's where the two of them were laying when their mother found them the next morning. She was standing in the open doorway when Rei woke up. The baby was climbing onto her jacket, playing with a zipper. She sat up when she noticed her mother who stared down at the two of them in disgust. A sneer crossed her face and she grunted before she stalked off down the hall.

Rei could only imagine what her father would do when he found out. But in order to find out he'd have to come home first and who knew when that would be. She decided not to think about it. Not until she had to. For now she would turn her attention to more important matters. She offered her brother both of her pointer fingers which he grasped readily. With tired eyes, she breathed, "We did it, kid. We made it through the night."

And we'll make it through this night, She thought to herself. It was that thought that gave he strength, that made her feel a surge of energy through her bones. That's all she had to do was get up each day and tell herself those words; we will make it through this night. And they would. They had to.

She pressed her cool forehead against her brothers pink cheek and hummed ever so softly. It would all be okay. She would make sure of it. Even if it wasn't easy, good things never were. And it helped to know that there were good people in the world even if there were some not so good ones. Good people like the woman working the Quickmart that night.

And just like that, she felt the realization rush through her like wind.

A smile creased her lips. "I have the perfect name for you."