It becomes a habit, picking up food from cheap convenient stores and cheaper wallets from people who need it just as much as he does. The guilt eats at him, so Aster buries it. Under whatever grave his Dad is in 一in whatever casket his Papa is in, if they didn't just up and leave him to rot. He thinks that they might've, maybe. Maybe he was bad; jiisan is bad, maybe一maybe. Aster doesn't think about it, it's not like he could get much worse. At least he's taking care of Hitoshi.

Hitoshi is sweet, like daifuku. Except he's purple一less daifuku, more lavender, he reminds Aster more of flowers than he does junk food. That's what it is一he tells Hitoshi; that's what Dad told him, Papa said he could only have it on special oc-casions (Aster doesn't really know what those are). He tried to look for Dad before一before.

Before Hitoshi.

Hitoshi helps preen Aster, because he can't reach the back, and Hitoshi doesn't get too loud, like Aster does. Hitoshi doesn't like it much when Aster's loud一Aster can see it in the way his shoulders square and the way his pupils thin. It reminds Aster of Dad way back before they were gone. Dead, maybe. It gets a little hazy, and he knows his Dad and Papa are not fireproof, just as he knows that they were running from a fire. Fire that was not blue. Somebody set that house on fire, maybe.

(Aster stops thinking about it. The thought of red makes him nauseous. He's glad his feathers burned to white, that his hair bleached itself.)

_

Aster is eleven and a half and there are three rules he knows about the way he works.

He cannot trade in favors to get out; he cannot be spotted; he does not have a last name (he doesn't have a first one either). He doesn't have a first one either, to be fair. There are no records. Takami Aster does not exist. So he steals enough money and he gets someone to change his identity. Shinsou Hitoshi does exist, for all that he wishes not to. Aster switches up his last name. The documents tell it all if anyone would ever bother to look it up.

Then, then, Aster does something Papa would think of. He covers it up. Gives himself an alias and tells the woman that gave him the papers to mark him as dead, but not untraceable, as she can. Aster is eleven, almost twelve years old, when he becomes the recently deceased Shinsou Tori, who died in an accident at seven years old, leaving his parents and little brother to mourn for him. He isn't Aster to anyone but Hitoshi. Just like he isn't supposed to be Angel so anyone but Dad and Papa.

It makes him feel all smart and shit, switching his name to Keito and Hitoshi's name to Toshi. That's what he calls him, in any case.

The legal documents say his and Hitoshi's last names are Shimura.

It's been a couple months, and everyone around here called him Angel for his wings for a while一then they saw him burn, and he became Fallen. Aster doesn't really know what that means.

Okay一look. It's not that he's illiterate, despite what Hasaki and Chung say, he can read quite well and has a penchant for stealing books. A really bad one, it might get him caught, but he likes reading. Helps him stay on the ground longer. Not in the flying sense一though it is kind of like that, if he really wants to think about it. The lady from down the block, Isuki-san, says that he's one of the smartest bastards here. Aster doesn't know what that means; whether it's good or bad. He'll pick good. The psychology book said that positive reassurance is healthy. He had to look up what reassurance meant at the computer in the library at the nicer side of town: uptown Hosu. He's meticulous about it, covering his tracks and such, even if he doesn't really have to.

It scares him, when he doesn't. It'll eat at his skin some, until he can't breathe and he has to burn his arms to think about something else or Hitoshi has to drag him out of it. Eyes cold and crying.

Aster is always warm, his body temp is fucked up sideways and right side up - that's what Akito Jun says anyway. He doesn't really get along well with the Akito's. They bare their teeth awfully at him and call him a pigeon. Or Dove, he doesn't like that name. The only person he hates more than the entirety of the Akito family is Reyes. Reyes still calls him Angel even though he hates the name. Only his parents are allowed to call him that. He doesn't have parents anymore so nobody should. He gets angry about it when someone does一well, he almost stabbed Reyes' eyes out with his talons.

Reyes couldn't look at him for a week, and when he did, Aster clacked his teeth and stared, unblinking. Reyes avoided him as much as possible. Akito Jun didn't, he was alway high or drunk, and Aster doesn't think there was a day he wasn't. He got high as a kite on his sixteenth birthday. What was the word? He'd read it sometime, for fun. Some highschool kid said he was really smart and he didn't know how to respond other than scrunching his face up. The highschool kid made a wrangled cooing noise at him.

Aster thinks he hates sixteen year olds, he's eleven year old and he's got Hitoshi to take care of; he doesn't even have the money for it.

(Addiction: the fact or condition of being addicted to a particular substance, thing, or activity.

Aster writes it wobbly on a piece of copy paper.)

_

Sleeping isn't really a Shimura thing. Neither is talking, really.

Hitoshi stays up all night, staring at the ceiling or with his head buried in Aster's wings. Sometimes he'll even fall asleep like that. Aster sleeps less than Hitoshi does, though, anything that moves grabs his attention and he wants to take it and never let go; to break it apart and eat it until all that's left is bone and skin. The fucking books called it stress grip instinct; Hitoshi said he could grab onto his paper-thin arms to soothe the stress, but Aster's held on to rats and they spew their organs up. He doesn't want Hitoshi's arm to break, there aren't many doctors around here at all. Not the legal kind, anyway.

Nobody really cares that they're kids, or that they live in a shoddy abandoned apartment after their last shitty home. It's survival of the fittest in their world. Really, Aster doesn't have the freaking constitution for sleep.

Hitoshi snores into his wing, he giggles. Yeah, survival of the fittest.

(He'll rip the spine out of anyone that tries to hurt 'Toshi.)

_

Aster is outside. It's.. warm, not burning, and he's wearing short sleeves, but it's summer, he's sure of it. The sun is a blinding white and Papa is holding him like he's a star. Like he's something holy. Dad is picking daisies by the stream, they're blacking around the edges but Aster doesn't mind. He doesn't really mind lots, because Papa's reading to him. Aster already knows this 一 he won't tell Papa of course, because he likes the way his voice sounds against his brain. His head doesn't shut up sometimes.

(Thoughts don't.. stop. His brain's been screaming at him.)

It's not like it really matters, not any more than Ru-chan's biting back, because she's got two teeth that are super strong; they're called incisors. Aster doesn't have those, he's got pointed teeth, all of them are sharp, like a swan, Papa said. Swans have their beaks serrated. That means that they're sharp, like the knives with pointy thorns on their blade.

Papa's saying something, and Aster's sure he knows this part even though he's never read the book before, but 一

"'Oh Angel,' They cried," Papa says, eyes red and wings gold. "'won't you drown in the weight of sin?' and the angel said to the people. 'No, for I am as unholy as they come.' and he disappeared, fallen from grace. The people could not look at him, with his wings burnt off. He was no longer a saint. He was what they all feared."

"What's that?" Aster feels his mouth move, hears the words, he doesn't say them though. His mouth is shut. He was never much of a talker.

"You."

Aster wakes up. He cannot breathe.

_

"Hey, Fallen!"

Today is going to be a good day, he decides. Even if he has to deal with Akito Ichi.

"The hell'd'ya want 'Kito?" Aster hisses.

"Shit's fucked, there's a book sale at Shinokun'n Zurafo. Shiromi says you got a little fucker like me to take care of. I know I'm an ass, but you can read better than the most of us here; they're having a book sale, an'well. You一yer better than the most of us. If you got the money, y'can teach that fucker o'yers to read." Akito's fumbling, like in those stupid books. "Anyhow, Shiromi said you didn't go to school一an'yer gonna send the little fucker. So, uh."

He hands Aster a paper like it has crack in it and skirts off to his day job. He's the older one of the three, but he's dumb as rocks, so he's treaded like he's the youngest. Eighteen and it's a wonder his parents haven't kicked him out yet.

Hitoshi doesn't say anything about Aster's foul mood if he sees it (he probably does, he's observant for a seven-in-two-weeks year old). Aster ought to buy him something special for his birthday. Hitoshi deserves it 一and he's been helping Aster do things. Hitoshi's great. Aster steals a backpack and three-thousand yen. He tells Hitoshi he's gone for the day and he goes to the nicer part of this awful place and he buys ten books for 100 yen each. And two cupcakes and a candle.He'll teach Hitoshi to read sometime when he isn't trying for a cash grab the illegal way.

They laugh about it for the whole day. They laugh about it until Hitoshi cries and Aster has to coo him to sleep. It's a wonderful day, he thinks.

He wouldn't give it up for all the money in the world.

_

When he's almost twelve, Aster figures out how to control all his feathers at once. He stuffs them in his backpack and snaches money from whoever has any. They live in a world where anything you have will be taken if you do not hold on for dear life. Aster grins with teeth sharp enough to cut through bone.

He is never caught.

It's a little funny when he thinks of it in retrospect.

_

He almost slits someone's throat in a back alley on his twelfth birthday, they give him a wallet and he runs away before they can properly look at him. It takes him six more tries before he almost gets a tooth knocked out for it; it takes one more try before he spends the day throwing punches at wood and figuring out how to control his stress grip.

It takes him two months to learn how to choke down the fear and anger and the need, it takes him longer to learn how to let it out in controlled bursts. Aster grins, though, when he finally does learn; he gets Hitoshi some takoyaki and he gets wangu and he cooks them together.

They try to talk, but there's nothing to speak about.

_

Teaching Hitoshi how to read kataka is easier said than done, he spells out the letters and sounds them out, but Hitoshi still takes way too long and way too much paper to memorize the words he knows and the components that make them up. Letters swirling in circles or curved lines, but by the end of the month, Hitoshi can read it. They move on the hiragana for a couple of months and then kanji.

Between it all, Aster figures out how to make his feathers into knives, little blades. Easier for catching the rats trying to eat the food, and it means more for Hitoshi. That Aster gets his own meal of peeled back skin and stringy meat. It isn't the best, but it stops that chatter in the back of his head for something real. Something more. He's gotten used to killing the sparrows in the neighborhood and eating the meat off the bone. He hides the little bird carcasses from Hitoshi in the yard down the block. Buries them when they're made of bone and feather and things Aster cannot eat.

When Aster is two weeks to thirteen Hitoshi is reading books with his older brother. He's forgotten his birthday this year, and he's sure he will next year, too.