It was when he cracked his open once more to the tendrils of light filtering through the clouded window above him that he immediately wanted to close them again.
For a split moment it was too bright, too loud (blaring music from a distant screen in his parents' room grating on his ears), and too irritating for him to bother sitting up, but there it was, that distant tick, tock, sending burning aches of annoyance along his face, but he made no move to block the sound, knowing it would help very little.
Even stranger, still, was the silence coming from the room, like quiet storms bearing on his joints and heart, though oddly enough, they felt not so strange to him as it was always this way when he woke up, right?
It always seemed so quiet, so peaceful, in the presence of the garbage and spoiled food strewn against the floor, that it almost fooled him into believing that everything was okay and that this was how things ought to be. Like those times that he had stayed over Kwan's house, something that felt so long ago, which it was since he was usually busy with, well, other things, his memory flickering to just last night, resisting the urge to vomit at thought it, and so he quickly repressed it.
Don't think about it, don't think about it.
...
...
He couldn't tell you what it was exactly that Kwan got up to in his own time; he was really private, and Dash didn't really have it in him to ask anymore. He couldn't bear the risk of annoying his friends any more than he already did.
It was sort of weird waking up to the sound of soft breathing above him, something that didn't happen unless it smelled like alcohol or tobacco.
For a breadth of a second, Dash shot up, scarce, darting eyes scanning the room around him with a frantic slight until he felt his breath leave him as a sigh. All that answered back to him was the disgruntled groan of the child resting above his head before settling back into a lulling drone of soft snores, loosing into still air of the early morning.
'You're up early. Why are you awake?'
'Awake? Should you wake Kwan up now, too?'
'No, I...I don't know, actually. Maybe I should wait, I think; he would be mad if I did that.' Lying back upon the floor, the boy closed his eyes.
This was strange, wasn't it?
Cracking open his blue eyes, Dash leaned up and propped himself upon his arms, taking careful notes of the room more than he had before. Like the rest of Kwan's home, the room was spacious and warm, bearing gifts of warm sunlight through the gossamer curtains strung just above the windows of his room. That had to be one of his favorite parts of his room, and really the entire house, the boy pondered; it was always so bright and pretty in here, apart from the lists of valuables strewn about the walls. Picture frames and certificates of practically every kind donned the soft grey area, and below them, chests of toys, bookshelves, and even a desk with a computer, greeted him in kind.
It was pristine and surely expensive, and the boy couldn't recount how many times he'd thought of asking if he could use it, but for some reason, he never quite made the move to, the very thought of touching something so valuable and pretty was almost too much for him to even consider. Imagine if he'd broken it, or scratched it, or coughed on it?!
Just the thought of what his own parents would do if they got a computer and he messed with it...it made his stomach hurt.
He remembered the one time that had touched his Dad's bottles, the ones he always kept in his closet.
Those were his favorite, but Dash couldn't quite understand the appeal; they always tasted gross to him. But it made Dad happy, so he figured that he would go get them, you know? It was just that...he was a lot shorter than, and he couldn't reach them too well on his own, but he tried anyway. "Maybe this will get him to be happy and stop hitting Mom?", he would stupidly think, and just as he'd made his way to the closet and grabbed them, maybe the chair wobbled, or his grip was loose...whatever the case, Dash couldn't stop the freezing burn of his heart as the case dropped to the ground, breaking all of the bottles on impact.
Six large bottles, tears of vodka seeping into the carpet, and him, stock-still, as the older man came rushing in.
It was his fault, you know? If he had just left it alone, if he could have just learned to mind his business and do something right, maybe his arm wouldn't have gotten broken.
Of course, it was a bit hard to explain how or why it looked like that when he arrived to school the next day, but they were actually pretty calm about it, despite the weird angle that it was in.
Over and over, as they set his arm into a cast, the boy couldn't help but think it, over and over again.
'It was my fault.'
'It was my fault.'
'It was my fault.'
And it was.
So no touching, no looking, no wanting.
He didn't want to make Kwan's Mom and Dad angry, too.
He was good at that sort of thing, making people angry, making people hate him.
Mom told him so.
Chancing another look around, he could narrowly see a crack in the door of his room, leading to the quiet bustle of something downstairs, just out of earshot. Someone was moving about, the laughter of some others as the gentle wafting scent of food levied towards the room.
Food.
Just then, his stomach growled, loud and obnoxious as the scents of bacon, eggs, and waffles swirled in the air around him.
He knew that, deep down, it would be best to stay, to remain here in the quiet of the warm light until someone came, and that's what he would have done if his body hadn't already been moving. As if moving of its own volition, his delicate bones rose from the ground with steely fervor so intense that the boy practically ran to the door, drills of persistent hunger pulling at his muscles and twisted his gut in agony.
Hungry, so very, very hungry.
Opening the door completely, the boy tiptoed out, keeping a careful watch over his shoulder to the soft breathing of Kwan, whom he'd left behind in the room, placing watchful steps over certain regions of the floor that he remembered creaked the least. On his way, he couldn't help eying the home again, the twinge of something icky and bitter tugging at his heart before forcing it back down into the depths of his person.
Fine artifacts of many kinds adorned the halls, delicate urns and paintings of, well, he didn't know really, were left hanging and leaning against the displays. Some were splatters, others nondescript marks and shapes that, whilst he didn't have the heart to ask, still wondered from time to time what they were supposed to be.
Kwan's mom was...interesting, to say the least.
Taking pause at one of the paintings, it was a figure (or more like what he could guess was a person) sitting on a stone, appearing to weep in a black circle, swirls of grey and white enveloping them. Some of the shapes were like others, fellow humans crying into the void.
At times, she would come by to look at them with him, and she would ask him what they meant. He wasn't sure what to say most of the time, weird and introspective things like this, he felt, just a bit out of his realm of expertise, but he would try anyway. Usually she would simply nod, leaving without so much as another word, and others she would smile and chuckle, asking him to elaborate about his ideas, his interpretations about the work before him. The first few times, he recalled, there wasn't much more that he could say, and he would usually say something small or inconsequential if only to end the conversation sooner, however, after a while, the idea of thinking more about the meaning of something, the way the shapes begin to blur into forms and emotions, he found that he would have less of a harder time, if only to keep the conversation from lulling.
In the back of his mind, there seemed little time to ponder on this, the burning ache of hunger very clear to him, yet still he paused, and wondered.
What say he to the person that would ask of this painting's meaning? What would he say to them if they asked him what it meant, what it was trying to say?
Gazing softly at the listless, forms creatures upon the canvas, sunken, solemn eyes cast ever downward to the black chasm before them, one word shimmered in the low light of his thoughts before he went to stand and finish his trek to the kitchen: sadness.
And oddly enough, for that singular second, he felt another hunger rise in him, but in that same breath, he choked it, suffocated it.
What it begged for was something that he could never have.
Easing towards a set of stairs, glass railing set to a spiraling case before evening out to the floor below, Dash took the bar in hand and pattered softly down, catching within earshot of the two below, Kwan's parents, he presumed as they were usually the only ones awake at this point, but he paused on the staircase, taking in the small whispers and wanderings, ones that had used his name in kind.
"...and his clothes? They were a mess, weren't they? I'm honestly not sure how they were able to hold together in the state that they were in. And the smell, too...you washed them, yes?" A woman, small and lithe, swept a paintbrush across a canvas; for a far as he could see, it was another one of the weird splatter ones. Another, this time a man swept beside her and looked at the painting, too, plates in hand. Placing them onto the round table, nearest a window that he found himself fond of, the boy listened in as he responded in kind.
"I washed them, sure, but that definitely didn't help the fact that they looked like...that. It isn't as though he can fit them, either. He's wearing clothes for a much smaller child, too; the smell is still there, though, but it's slightly better." To this, the delicate clang of plates erupted in his ears, and the smell, oh the smell.
If his curiosity didn't outweigh his hunger, than he would have sprung down there just then...but he didn't. He listened and watched, tracking them with lidded blue eyes.
"Strange, right? Smoke and just dirty; you know, I sometimes worry that he's going to bring something over to Kwan one of these days." The woman set her brushes down upon her words, a worried expression upon her face.
Bring something? What was that supposed to mean? Like, something icky or bad?
Leaning down to smell himself, the boy couldn't help recoiling, acknowledging the stench that rolled from his pores, something along the lines of sweat, smoke, and alcohol.
Did he...did he always smell like this?
Sure, his house didn't really have a shower or anything like that, but he tried his best to be clean; he tried to wash up and use his mother's perfume, but sometimes that would run out, but he didn't think that it was this...bad. A rolling wave of embarrassment collapsed on him, realizing with horror that this had been the case all day, every day; school, the park, stores with his friends...
Why...why didn't anyone tell him? Why would they let him know that he didn't smell good or look good?
He didn't understand.
Weren't friends supposed to help out when someone else needed it? It was one of those things that would need to be mentioned, had to be mentioned, right? That's what he would have done; he learned that being honest was good, so he would tell his friends if they didn't smell too nice or their hair was messy. It was what you were supposed to do...so why hadn't they done that for him?
'Maybe...maybe they didn't notice it? Or they didn't want to hurt my feelings, probably...', That made sense to him, didn't it? Of course they wouldn't want to seem mean and stuff, so they didn't tell him so that he wouldn't feel bad. Yeah, that had to be it. Why else would they being saying this when he wasn't here? Kwan's Mom and Dad probably wanted to keep it a secret so they wouldn't make him feel embarrassed and everything, so of course they would say this when he wasn't around...
Yeah...that had to be it.
Otherwise it would hurt more, though he'd be lying if there wasn't a shadow of something sticky and hurtful lying under the gaudy smile he plastered onto his features as he traversed the rest of the stairs, catching their eye as he waved with a jubilant energy that matched that early morning sun.
Always smiling, always laughing.
He had to keep smiling.
"Good morning Mr. and Mrs. Wu! Something smells really good; is it time to eat?" Turning around, the pair smiled gingerly, though Dash couldn't help but notice how they'd stiffened at the mark of his passing, appearing to scrunch up their noses as he sidled by.
Pausing and trekking back, slower this time, he walked back over to the stairs, still smiling though he could feel it waver just a bit. The two considered him for a moment before their expressions smoothed out again, widening their calm eyes.
"Ah, yes, actually. It's just about that time, but how are you feeling this morning? Okay, we hope." They were being so nice to him, he could have fooled himself into believing that they actually meant it, you know? Maybe he would have, had they not stared at him for that second too long.
"I feel fin - I mean great! I feel really good! Should I go get Kwan? I think he's still sleep." Backing up to the stairs, he had a single foot placed back onto the first stair before they called him back.
"Oh, actually...I think Mr. Kwan wanted to talk to you about something; I can go get Kwan while you two take care of that." To that, the young woman motioned past them and up the spiraling staircase, the careful patter of her footfalls fading down the hall as only the two of them, Mr. Wu and Dash himself, was left behind. It was silent for a moment before the older man made his way over to the youth, one of which had distinctly continued smiling, though the action had caused a fair bit of pain in his cheeks.
Just keep smiling.
"Here, let me show you something, Michael." The boy couldn't help the rush of blood that filtered in his ears at the touch of the former, stock still as the man gently coaxed the boy over to the couch, allowing him to sit down, though he noticed that he was urged to sit upon the carpet before it as the other sat upon the soft upholstery.
Images of his Mom, his Dad, other people pulling him to a couch, touching him...hitting him.
He hadn't been bad.
He'd been good.
That only happened when he was bad.
"Please, it hurts!" He could hear himself cry.
"Mommy, Daddy, please, I don't want to!" He said, but no one listened.
"P-please, n-no. No!" That word didn't mean anything.
'No, no, no, no, no, no...please, don't. I don't want to-' He was stopped by the sight a beautiful, jewel red cloth, finely woven in the shape of a jacket. White sleeves swung at the motion of the older man's grip as they seemed to sway in tandem to the other's temptation to swipe the fine piece from the air. Shining buttons and vibrant sleeves coaxed his attention from the burning ache of his head to the subtle touch of felt fabric beneath his fingertips, and for a hair's breath of a second, he was able to breathe, smiling faintly amongst his rushing heart.
This wasn't what he'd been expecting at all.
"Now, I know that it's a little big, but Ai and I had been talking about getting you something for your birthday. It was on the fourth, wasn't it?" The boy nearly didn't register the question, but a glimpse at the patient, but expectant, gaze of the older man whipped his attention back, and he nodded silently in kind.
"Y-yes, sir. It was on the fourth...", Placing his hands back into his lap, he waited until a smile broke out from ear-to-ear from the other man to look up, tempting a shifting glance back to the jacket as it was pressed against the other's chest.
"Well, we know that this is a bit late, with it being nearly two weeks since then, but we wanted to give you something, and we think we found just the thing." Urging the article closer, Dash almost couldn't fathom touching it again, fearing that he would misinterpret what he had meant.
He...he didn't mean...
"We thought that you might like this. I've seen you looking at it many times before, and though this is from my own days as a student, however many years that was," Finishing with a chuckle, he continued,"...I think perhaps it's time to give it to someone that needs it more than I." With a light nudge, the older man placed it within his hands, standing with a firm nod to his wife as he went to greet the half-asleep Kwan who had nearly stumbled down the steps in jest. Though, Dash didn't mind that, couldn't mind that, staring with confounding shock at the clothing in his grasp.
Surely this was a mistake, a joke, a prank.
Right?
Opening and closing, flipping and folding, the boy looked in every nook and cranny just to spot anything; a fold that held a slip, a tear, a nick. Something that would make this make sense.
Something that would tell him that his fears were valid, and that no one would ever bother giving him anything...ever.
He didn't deserve it. He wasn't owed this.
He definitely didn't earn it.
'So why?', He wanted to asking that laughing man that said those things before.
Why in the world would anyone ever want to give something as dirty and filthy as him something so beautiful and clean? Something so amazing and awesome that the boy almost felt wrong and disgusted simply looking at too long, let alone touching it.
He wasn't supposed to.
This wasn't right.
"M-Mr. Kwan? I don't...I don't understand...I can't - I don't -," Picking up the jacket, the boy set it back upon the couch, wavering blue eyes glued to the carpet, ringing his hands upon his worn shirt. For a moment, the man regarded him with a silent gaze before giving him a small but kind smile from his lips.
"You don't have to, but I know that it is something that you really want, so accept the gift. It's alright to have things from time-to-time. Never feel guilty for something like that. Now," Easing up to the table, the man took his seat and pulled out the chair to offer it to the boy.
"...I imagine that you'd like to eat now, right?" The three of them smiled at him, softly beckoning for him, and despite the roaring calls of the voices,
'They're lying to you!'
'Stupid, can't you see that this is all an act? They can't stand you.'
...he couldn't bear to keep them waiting, but he left the jacket upon the chair.
He would want to be clean first before he put it on.
Those moments seemed so far...away. Like gilded dreams, imagined by a deluded child lead through their wishes of something more, but how could that be? How could he want for more when he was already so...happy?
Right?
Taking one hand that he struggled to steady, the boy reached up and stroked one arm of the jacket, playing with the stringy fleece before releasing a thread.
It had been so long since he'd last seen them, Kwan's parents. They were so kind, so...amazing. It was hard to believe it at first, that his parents were so different from his own, and that baffled him, scared him; to this it was a mystery that he still hadn't quite cracked.
Why did they hug him and kiss him? Why wasn't his skin red and purple, or they didn't yell at him as his parents did for him? The boy once, a long time ago, had enough will to ask that of his mother, when his father had kindly taken the evening to drink with friends, leaving them alone. There was an odd sort of quiet that had settled over the home as the words left his mouth, but in the same breath, he could feel it, that burning look that seared into his skin and made him squirm. She was staring at him, hazy blue eyes suddenly crystalline and clear as she, despite her hunched stature, still towered over the boy.
