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li-an-nie · 3 months ago

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The birth of a Star

[Stories of a childhood that never was]

[Oneshot, Child POV, Origin Story, Christmas, Sad, Fluff, Angst, AO3 link]

TW: Canonical Child Abuse

~~~ ✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧ ~~~

A love letter to a broken child. Life is about hope, and how it all gets taken away when you're about to grasp it.

Happy Birthday, Michael Kaiser.

~~~ ✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧ ~~~

He was born from a star.

That's what the picture book in the closet always said.

Children are born from the stars in the sky. When a mama and papa fall in love and dream of having a little one, they make a special wish to God, who hides above behind the clouds. If he sees their hearts are kind and their love true, and they can grant their child a bright future too, he’ll smile and bless them with new life by putting up a new star in the sky – and when home is ready and the time has arrived, the star will fall down to Earth into the hands of the mother; as she holds it close it will sparkle and glow, and out comes a baby with the blessings of God.

Out comes their son.

Out, came Michael.

…He closed the book.

His wary eyes scanned around–no sounds could be heard from the room outside. Clenching the pages, he climbed on the bed and curled himself up, and as he pulled his knees closer towards himself, he looked at the book in his hands again.

The story was fake, of course.

It was hocus-pocus, made-up, a barefaced lie, and only stupid children would believe something as nonsensical as this, anyone with the right mind would see through that flimflam immediately. There were no stars that fell down onto Earth, there was no sparkling and no glowing, there was no God, and there was no mother who could hold onto a falling star and not die from the impact.

Instead, children were born on Earth, they were born from inside the womb of their mother. And as for him… he was born from the womb of a stranger.

He was born from a star.

The boy embraced it, pressed the book in his arms. It was blocky and square and the hard rugged edges dug into his flesh, but he still hugged it tightly, and he felt this faint, indescribable fluttering in his chest again, the same feeling that would always appear when he did this.

This book was one of the last few things left from that stranger.

This book was likely the last thing left for him.

And it was trash.

Just like everything in this flat was. These little square meters of space, consisting of a rundown living room and a dirty kitchen filled with trash, an unsightly tiny bath that was also filled with trash, a big and a small bedroom that only had the purpose of accommodating trash, and his trash closet with this trash book and his dirty, little, ragged self.

The book was trash, but to him it was treasure. It was the only thing he could redeem when that rancid father of his had discarded everything in their house in yet another fit of rage. From the moment that stranger had left them, his father had wanted all traces of her gone, ruined, killed, into oblivion. The boy had still been too young to remember at that point, but it essentially meant that everything would have to be gone–and even someone as imbecilic and short-sighted as his father was able to see the impossibility of that option. So instead, over the years, he'd just slowly replaced the things–or rather than replaced it was better to say he threw them out and just brought in other new trash, most of it financed by the efforts and plunders of the boy.

The only thing he wouldn’t throw out was a single blue rose, carefully placed inside a crystal clear glass dome. It looked so ethereal and pristine, so delicate and untouchable, so unlike everything around it, and it represented all the things that weren’t and would never be in this house.

But sometimes, the sometimes stopped at some point, but there were some times the boy could still find traces of that stranger. Traces of something that used to be, could've been, of a family, and of a home.

One day, he was still five, that rancid father of his had bashed open the door to his room and come in drunkenly. He’d thrown a tantrum, made a mess of the place again that already had nothing inside to begin with. And then, he’d stopped and looked up—staring at a dusty moving box, stacked near the ceiling on top of the closet. He’d asked, huh, what the fuck’s that, and he’d climbed up the nightstand to get it off, and in his clumsy state, fumbled and carelessly let it slip off his hands–bashing into the ground, almost falling onto the boy, who’d been just fast enough to dodge onto his bed in time.

The boy, he would’ve almost cried out in shock, if not for the fact that he’d barely spoken a word the past months. It just stopped at some point–when your body and throat hurt all the time, you just stop at some point.

His rancid father, for once, had stopped though as well – he was looking at the contents spilling out of the box, just as the boy was. They were both silent and staring, doing the same thing, a rare occurrence in this house if not the first.

The boy had no words. There were things flowing out he’d never seen before – no, he'd seen them, he just never understood what they were good for. Stuffed animals with limp head arm and legs, made of faded fabric and empty beaded eyes, garish toys of plastic he couldn’t recognize, with their sharp and hard edges and jarring neon bright colors, little pieces of clothes that looked like a doll's, and square books with thickly pages that were different from the few left in the living room–not just because they were still so clean and untouched, but they also looked blockier, colorful, more childish somehow.

“What is this..?” he was almost about to ask. But before he could move and react, his father had exploded in another fit of rage, grabbed the box with both his arms and stormed out of the room, out of the flat, his heavy steps on the staircase still audible to even the boy's room in the back.

The boy, stunned by what just had happened, climbed down from his bed, looked at everything. The fall from the box had scattered his things across the floor like broken pieces of glass, and there was a new dent in the wall, next to the dozen other ones.

Dusting off his shorts, he knelt down and started picking up the debris on the ground. Just like after any other tantrum from that rancid father of his, he was used to it by now. And even though he knew it would happen again very soon, he wanted his own room to feel at least a little bit clean. He didn’t care about the clean in itself, he just wanted it to be different from the rest of this place.

As he bent down to retrieve the last scattered items, he saw something wedged beneath the bed he didn’t recognize – a flat object with thickly pages.

He pulled it out – it was a book. His eyes widened. It must’ve fallen off from that box and slipped away from his father's sight.

He inspected it closely.

The book wasn’t clean and untouched anymore – there was a dent on the edge that had probably come from the fall, the dust from under the bed was clinging onto it now, and the hands of that boy had smudged and sullied it all over – the book wasn’t clean and untouched anymore, not like when it had been those four, five years lying dormant on top of his closet. It was one of them now, it was trash.

He looked at the cover; it had the drawing of a flying star and a child on it. A fantasy story?

He opened the first page. There was a small illustration of a star in the corner, and something was written in ink above it. He turned to the next page. It was another drawing, this time bigger, depicting a sky full of stars, and there were now even more words above it. He flipped again, again, and then again, it was a book made of drawings and words above them. The boy couldn’t read, but he didn’t care for the words anyway, he was engrossed in the pictures, the lines, the soft and warm colors, not like those ugly bright colors of those plastic toys he’d seen minutes ago, no, these drawings had something soothing and gentle in them, they looked like the crayon paintings he’d sometimes see on the streets, just so, so much better and closer and real.

He liked the feeling the drawings gave him, but he didn’t know if he liked what was inside them. He didn’t know if it was because he couldn't tell what the story inside was about. Flipping through it, there was this yellow star from the cover, an old man with a long white beard on a cloud, a laughing man in a blue shirt and a smiling woman in a red dress, and towards the end of the pages, there was a child, he didn’t whether boy or girl, but he stared at the child for a while and he wondered, why are you only there towards the end of the story, even though you’re the one on front of the book?

And although he found this book strange, he wanted to keep it. He thought, if I'm going to like this book, then it has to earn it my like first, because he needed to be frugal with what he cared for, he didn’t have all the like in the world after all.

He was still so caught up in it when he heard sounds, heavy steps coming up the stairway again. He panicked and looked around quickly, and then stashed the book under a blanket in his closet.

That book must have been from the stranger after all. He couldn’t let that rancid father of his find it, under no circumstances.

This was a trace. A remnant, a footprint, a memory. It was proof that there was once a life that could have been.

And he’d keep it under that musty green blanket in the closet, he’d hug it whenever he couldn’t fall asleep. And sometimes, as he lay there in the quiet darkness, he wished he could remember the first one or two years of his life, even though he’d been nothing but an infant back then. But then maybe he would have remembered the face of that stranger, the traces of those objects that told the story of a warmth that once used to be.

He was born from a star.

He was eight and a half, he wasn’t a boy any longer. Summer break was over, he’d been going to school for two years now–or rather, he was supposed to. He never went of course. Every child in this country was supposed to go to school, it was law, and even that rancid father of his couldn’t be bothered to evade law.

It was law, but it wasn’t law how people worked.

It wasn’t law when he’d shown up the first time alone, late to class. Apparently they had another sort of event going on before that, but instead of carrying a jarringly colorful spiky bag with glitter and dinosaurs, he’d carried the old patched up backpack that had collected dust in the living room, and the kid next to him had made fun of it and the boy, as a response, had just punched him in the face and ran out of school. He’d come home, the first day, and that rancid father of his had sat on the coach and stopped to look at him, and he'd laughed. He had laughed like a maniac and said “That’s right, little runt, you see it now? You’re better off doing errands and work, you’re better off this way because you don’t belong there, no, you don’t belong anywhere!!–”

That wasn’t part of the law, and it also wasn’t law if he never showed up again afterwards. It wasn’t law if all the adults never paid any attention, and at some point all just stopped bothering to care.

So instead of sitting obediently at a table, writing the same wonky letters again and again, wrapping his head around imaginary numbers, he’d gone out into the world instead, the real world, taken things, stolen, sold them off, a boy his age. No one ever questioned it because first; it wasn’t law, and second; the boy never questioned it himself.

He didn’t question it because for him, that was his life, and for him, that was all there would ever be to his life. Except–he still wanted to know what the book was about.

So he learned how to read.

On his way to his errands, he’d sometimes pass by a dusty side street that few people ever frequented. There was an old geezer, a suspicious and rough-looking gramps, in the second-hand bookshop next to the gaudy jewelers, and he'd often give the boy funny faces. Or–they were supposed to be funny, the boy didn’t really know what to make of the weird scrunchy eyebrows or stuck up noses or sticked out tongues that always appeared on that old wrinkly face. One day, after his haul from the supermarket, the boy had passed the shop, and the geezer had asked “Why aren’t ya in school?”

And the boy, who felt like he hadn’t spoken to a real person in ages, could only stay silent.

That old gramps, was he stupid?– It was afternoon already, of course he wouldn’t be at school at this time!

“I always see ya loitering around. Don’t think I haven’t noticed! You’re always here in the morning too, skulking, always on the look-out for somethin’. What's going on, huh? Scared you’ll get caught for something bad?”

At the mention, the boy’s heart almost jumped. The surprise must’ve shown on his face, the geezer let out an amused laugh. He grabbed something from his vest and suspiciously held out his hand. “Here, have some candy!”

And he opened it to reveal a few pieces of wrapped chocolate candy. The boy's eyes widened. He'd seen those things before, in the stores.

But he didn’t move and kept his hands in his pockets.

“You don’t want it?” the old man asked.

The boy didn't reply.

“Fine,” the old man shrugged and threw one candy into his mouth. “Mmmh, it’s so good! I love me some candy!~”

He was munching on it like some kind of gorilla, moving and chewing way more than you'd ever need for just a simple candy.

But the look on his face, it was so delighted, and he kept mmmming and aaaaing, and the boy couldn’t help but stare at him the entire time with big wide eyes and finally, his craving curiosity betrayed him.

“One,” he mumbled, keeping his face under his hoodie.

“Oh?” The old geezer stopped to look at him. “Ya already rejected my offer before though.”

“Just… one…” the boy muttered, staring at the ground.

The old geezer blinked surprised, and then laughed out loud, “Just one, huh? Fine! But be careful not to get hooked on these!” and he dropped one piece of candy into the boy’s open hand.

The boy warily peeled off the wrapping paper, revealing a single ball of chocolate. He recognized it from the pictures on the larger packages he'd seen—it wasn’t just chocolate, but the kind with a nutty filling hidden inside.

The boy hesitated. He knew what candy tasted like. He’d stolen it, from supermarkets and restaurant entrances and cashier desks. But only ever small amounts, and he had conflicting feelings about them. How to say… he loved the taste of sugar on his tongue... but he also hated it, resented it to its core. Because every time he would get a taste of that sweetness, he was left with that wicked and lingering craving, he wanted more, but oftentimes there just wasn’t more – that was it, all that's left, just a single piece.

Stealing larger amounts of candy had never been an option. If anything, they were on the very bottom of his priority list. His bag would be filled with bread, eggs and milk first, before any kind of useless sweets or candy. And especially this brand, he’d never even considered stealing before. The big, scrunchy plastic packaging it always came in would just cause too many sounds, draw too much attention.

But... maybe, just maybe, he should've still tried at some point. Because suddenly, these candies became really important, they felt more important than bread, eggs, or milk right now, and they felt like the best thing he'd had in ages.

When he put that ball of chocolate in his mouth, his whole body and face suddenly lit up – a burst of chocolate and nut filled his senses. It was so scrumptious and sweet, but not the sickening kind of sweetness he’d always had with other candy, no this was warm and gentle and just the right amount, and the taste of nut inside had a funny texture, it was crumbly but also soft and so satisfying to chew on. He closed his eyes and took in, absorbed the taste, and although the ball was small, he kept it inside his mouth and licked and chewed on it for as long as he could, when eventually he realized there was nothing left anymore and all that remained was the empty aftertaste of that delicious full chocolate.

When the boy finished licking up the final last remnants from his teeth, he glanced down at the empty wrapper in his hand and tucked it inside his pocket. He turned to the old man.

The old man was silent. He’d been watching the boy the entire time, and now he was just staring back blankly for a while–there was an indescribable look on his face. The boy blinked. What was wrong with the old geezer this time? He’d never seen someone do that kind of face before. But… it felt so familiar for some reason. It almost… it almost reminded him of himself somehow. The face he’d sometimes see when he looked at his reflection in the mirror.

Then, suddenly, the old geezer shook his head with a grumble, his wrinkled face breaking into an obnoxiously wide grin. It stretched from one ear all the way to the other. “Ha, it’s good, right? Told ya so!” And he sneered. “They got that price tag for a reason!”

He knocked on his pocket, and the sound of the wrapping paper going against each other could be heard from miles away.

“I’m not the richest man myself, ya see. I already gave you one – If ya want more, ya gonna have to earn it!”

The boy looked up surprised. “…earn it..?”

“Come with me!” The old geezer opened the door to the shop and gestured him to follow inside. When the boy hesitated, he said, “Don’t worry – I don't bite! I’m an upright citizen of this country, I tell ya! And if yer worried about other people... no one's there. Not a soul shopping out here at this time of the day anyway.”

...The boy didn’t what had propelled him that moment. It definitely wasn't the candy. And this uneasy feeling he'd usually have with strangers, it wasn't here this time, he couldn't feel it for once. Likely because that old geezer wasn't a stranger – he was just a damn lunatic.

In the end, the boy followed the old man into the bookshop… and to say it was chaos inside would be an understatement. It was chaos – left and right, above and under, front and back, wherever you looked. It wasn’t dirty or ragged or rotten like his home, it was a surprisingly orderly kind of chaos, but it was still filled to the brim with things, things he would've considered a waste of space–papers, books, magazines and records and countless other items strewn around the entire shop, spilling over the shelves and tables, with not an inch of space left untouched. There was a faint rusty smell in the air, mingled with the old scent of wood and paper. It was odd, unlike anything the boy had ever encountered before, and it was so strange to his nose, like it should've felt mucky and off-putting, but he actually liked it, there was something warm and comforting underneath it.

“As you can see,” the old man said as he turned towards him, “this place’s quite a mess. My customers tell me they find that part of the charm, but eh.” He sighed. “When ya get old like me, ya start to forget about where you’ve put certain things.”

He gestured towards an empty chair. Or maybe not quite so empty–this place was chaos after all. There were scarfs and hats hung up on its rails and arms, making it look like some sort of clothes rack, and there was a weird red cushion on top of the seat. There was something written on it.

The boy stopped and looked questioningly towards the old geezer. The old man only waved again. “Whatcha doing? Just sit already, I have stuff to tell ya.”

So without second thought, the boy sat down. And then—

Ppfofffffpffpfph!!

“AaH!!!” The boy jolted up in surprise–What in the world was going on?? He spun around to look at the chair–or, no, the red cushion on top of it!! Was that the thing that had made the awful sound just now??

“HAhahA–!!” The old man next to him laughed. He was laughing like a maniac.

The boy snapped towards him and gasped baffled. “What– what… what did I just do?”

“Pfffft, hahaha!!” The old man just continued to guffaw, he was hitting on the table like a damn lunatic!! The boy was starting to get irritated, he frowned, didn’t understand what in the world had just happened. When he looked at the cushion and pushed it down, it made that pfofffffpffpfp sound again.

“What-what is this?!”

“I’m sorry–sorry,” the old man screeched out under his breath as he continued to cackle, “I didn’t expect ya to actually sit on there!!”

“What is this?” the boy asked again, now more sternly. He didn’t know what exactly this situation was right now, but was that old guy making fun of him? He scowled, he couldn’t tell, but if he was then he really didn’t like that right now.

“It’s–“ the old man wheezed, trying to compose himself, “it’s a cushion that lets out a fart sound when you sit on it!”

…What? The boy’s eyes widened. “A fart sound..? Why would you want something like that..?”

“To make people laugh, of course!!” And the old geezer laughed out loud again, and he hit on the table and then on his knee, and upon hitting his knee he yowled a bit and flapped his hand while he spat out a few improper curses, something the boy was much more familiar with.

After a while, the gramps had finally calmed down, and he leaned back in his chair and heaved out a loud breath. “Save to say, it worked, boy. Yer a real strange fellow, but you've got promise. You could make some real good comedy with that deadpan face of yours.”

The boy didn’t get what he was talking about, and in that moment also felt like he didn't want to.

The old man grumbled quietly and leaned forward on his seat again.

“Anyway kid, back to the topic. Like I said, I’m getting pretty old, and this place’s a mess.” He gestured towards the different bookcases, tables, shelves and boxes inside the shop. “I need some young flesh to help me carry all this stuff around. And since ya don’t go to school anyway, might as well give an old man a hand and earn yourself a few treats on the way, eh?”

The boy looked at the gramps and shook his head. “I go,” he said, “I go to school.”

“Liar. You look like you should be in third or fourth grade already. But you couldn’t even read what was on the cushion just now!”

The boy’s eyes darted towards the chair again. “What..?”

“It says Fuuuurz, boy,” the old man said as he spread his arms wide, “FUUUUURZ. Let that be ingrained in your head!!”

What! The boy felt his face flush bright red as he realized how easily his mishap just now could’ve been prevented.

At the rare sight of the boy's embarrassment, the old geezer couldn't help but cackle again.

“Anyway, don’t worry boy, your dignity's staying with me.” He winked and then pointed towards the messy shelves again.

“It’s a lotta work, but you’ll get some good rewards. What’dya say?”

Good rewards..? What was the old geezer talking about? It was just candy. He wouldn’t give out his free labor just for some fleeting moments of unsatisfactory gratification.

Besides, when he let his gaze wander over the shop... this looked like an impossible task after all. Cleaning, he already wasn’t the best at it. He didn’t know if it was the flat's fault or his own, but he couldn’t remember that place he called home looking clean even once in his memory. He already needed so long to clean his own little room – and ‘cleaning’, in this sense, just meant picking up the things that'd been thrown on the ground. Compared to that, this place was so different after all – the chaos wasn't on the floor, it was all on the tables and cases and shelves, it was filled with so many, too many things. There was no way in hell that they'd ever be able to clean all of this up in a lifetime.

The boy’s throat tightened.

But… still. There was something in here. Something that dizzied and blurred his brain, made it mushy and weird and cloud his judgement. The candy, the old gramps, and the nice rusty smell… if he was going to loiter around the streets during the day anyway, he’d rather spend his hours in here instead, maybe even do something that was considered ‘good’ for once–and he could get a reward on top of that.

He threw a second piece of chocolate candy into his mouth. “I’ll help.”

Before the geezer could even register what had happened, the boy was already chewing nonchalantly on the reward that he was supposed to get after work.

“Wha– how-“ the gramps gasped. He spun around himself in surprise, touched his pockets confused staring at the boy.

“How’d ya do that?” he asked, first in astonishment, then suddenly with an irritating delight on his face.

“I’ll help,” the boy just repeated himself, “But I want a different reward instead.”

“Oh..?” The old man stopped in his tracks, listening intently.

The boy mustered up all the might in his chest and said – as threateningly as he could – “I want you to teach me how to read.”

…The old man blinked.

He blinked a few times, and the boy wondered whether he might’ve demanded too much after all – when the gramps suddenly burst into big laughter again!

“Wha-…“ the boy’s voice drifted off before he could even think of something to say.

“Dear, oh dear,” the old man chortled, “I was going to do that either way!!–” he smiled at him, “–You’re in a bookshop, you won’t be of any help around here if ya can’t even read!!”

And the boy’s face flushed bright red again, and the annoying old geezer kept laughing like a loony, which he found annoying, so very annoyingly annoying, but the boy didn’t know why, there was also something else in his chest. This sound of laughter filling the air, this old rusty smell of wood and books seeping through everything, the lingering taste of chocolate and nuts and sweetness in his mouth, this place, the air filling this atmosphere, he didn’t know why it all felt so warm in his chest. Like a light or a candle had been lit inside him, a small and a faint and feeble one. But he didn’t know why, why it also all felt so wrong, like he was not meant to, not supposed to feel this way – and he couldn’t even really tell if he liked this feeling or not, he really couldn’t, there were good and bad things conflicting in his heart, he felt like he needed it gone too, like he had to get rid of it, almost like a primal instinct in him. But he thought, even if he tried to do that, he didn’t think if it would be possible – he could try to put out the flame, but the warmth would still there.

If… if this feeling did indeed stay. If it stayed, for just a little while longer, then… he wouldn’t mind. If that happened, then he also really wouldn’t mind that at all…

Over the next few weeks, the old geezer slowly guided the boy through the basics of reading–starting from the alphabet, to numbers and signs, to simple words, sentences and eventually entire paragraphs and texts.

It was almost astonishing, really, how fast that boy could learn, or rather, how eager he was to pick it all up. The old geezer didn’t quite understand how – was it because all the boy's attention was focused solely on words, whereas other children learned science, math, music and arts alongside? Or was it simply because that boy, more than many others kids, poured all his free time of the day into learning, rather than playing outside? Or was it a mixture of all these things?

It’s a shame, the old geezer had thought to himself, that he won’t go to school. Alas, he has to teach himself the knowledge of the world through books and silly old me, than how it would’ve been through ordinary classes and teachers.

Meanwhile, the boy had long passed the skill level required to read that book filled with drawings. A few weeks after he’d started going to that geezer, he decided to read the story he’d been wondering about for three years –

And it turned out to be dogshit.

The story was about the birth of a child. How the parents make some sort of wish towards an omniscient old man, and the child is created as a star in the sky, then drops down towards Earth and comes out of its shell. It was a nonsensical tale that was selling a lie, and he asked himself, what was the point of this story? Every story was supposed to have a point or a message, no? That’s what the old man had said to him. But he couldn’t see it in this one, there was no protagonist, no conflict, no flaws, no resolution, it was presented like a matter of fact but with no rational basis. It was dumb and absolutely pointless, just like all the other blocky picture books he’d found stashed in the boxes of that old bookshop. He’d rather read the books about science and real life, the ones he’d seen the old gramps lost in sometimes, he had tried to start one, but at this point of time his level still hadn’t been good enough to just read any book he wanted.

Why, then, was he left with this single piece of garbage? He felt betrayed, wanted to throw it away, even though the pictures had given him comfort for three whole years, even though this was one of the last traces of a life that could’ve been. He wanted to throw it away, but… he could never. Because there was one other thing in it that was priceless to him – the first page.

If you opened the first page, there’d be a small sketch or drawing of a star in the corner. And above it, written in cursive and dark blue ink,

für Michael

…to Michael.

That was the first time in forever that this name, which was supposed to be his, reverberated through his mind again.

Für Michael.

He didn’t know what to make of it. To him, he was I, and to his father he was piece of trash, and then except for that, there had never been anyone else in his life that had ever needed to call him out by his name.

Für Michael.

He didn’t know if he even liked it. It was just like all the other things in his life – at some point, everything just started to feel wrong, no matter how, why, what, where and when, it just felt wrong, and this name, which was given to him, he wanted to refuse, but he also wanted to accept it so badly.

Für Michael.

Michael was his name. It found him again, and whether he liked it or not, the fact that this was his name, he couldn’t change. It felt wrong, and he didn’t know if he was even capable of truly embracing it – but just like that warm feeling in his chest, he thought, he wouldn't mind, if this was his name after all, then he really wouldn't mind.

Michael… Michael was his name.

Micha smiled.

Micha frowned.

Micha sulked.

Micha grumbled.

Micha looked towards the door.

Micha looked at the closet.

Micha looked out the window.

…maybe this wasn’t so bad after all. He would have to get used to it again, this piece of treasure that found him. But if he could slowly regain his identity, if he could build and make something out of it once more, then maybe it was a good thing after all.

Micha looked back at the book.

Für Michael.

Für Michael – he continued to stare at the words for a good while. He thanked the words, and he thought about where they came from.

Except for the drawing, there was nothing else on the page. There was no signer, no other words indicating who could’ve written that name. But he knew… he knew there was only one person who could’ve done it.

The stranger whose womb he’d come from.

She wasn’t a mystery to him. She was a real star, ironically.

Although his father had tried to erase all traces of her existence except for the rose, it wasn’t like he could erase the traces of her that lived in the present. She was a star, and apparently she was an actress, because that one evening a few years ago, when his father had watched TV after dinner and Micha, as a sort of punishment, had to stand and observe silently from the corner – the TV had been glowing bright blue in the dim room, illuminating only the couch and the face and heavy body of his father – he’d seen, in that moment, his eyes go blank wide, as on the screen a woman appeared with the face of an angel – luscious blond hair, striking blue eyes, and a charming confident smile that made even Micha’s heart flutter – and just a split second later, in a fit of rage, his father had almost bashed the TV in. And looking back, he wished his father would’ve gone through with it, he wished that because then he might’ve not turned towards Micha instead, might not have stormed over and pushed him towards the ground instead, beating, cursing, strangling him almost unconscious, and he might’ve been able to hold the image of that beautiful woman in his mind, wallow on it for just a little while longer. But instead, he’d been hit with the face of reality;

“Why, why,” his father had panted under his ragged breaths, “why do you look just like her, why? Why can't she stop haunting me, even so many years after, why did she decide to leave me with the curse that's you?!”

That stranger was the reason his life was like this right now.

She was the reason why his father was like this, why their home was like this, why his own little ragged self was like this.

Yet, whenever he saw her pictures on the streets, her photos and ads and posters and face plastered on columns and walls and tall towering billboards, with that poise, that smile, that confident smile – he’d reach out his hand just ever so slightly. He didn’t know why, but he thought; she was so close yet so far away, and if he could, he wouldn’t mind falling down again, he wouldn't mind falling down onto Earth and into her hands again. If he could do that, if it was possible then he really wouldn’t mind.

So despite the story he couldn’t believe, he chose to keep the book, chose to treasure it. And he’d hug it sometimes whenever he went to sleep, even though books were really not meant to be hugged. This rough feeling of hard edges and corners digging into his skin, it just became yet another part of his life.

~~~ ✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧ ~~~

The Christmas part is in the 2nd half haha

full fic on AO3: The birth of a star

2nd part: tbp

#michael kaiser #blue lock #bllk #blue lock fanfiction #fanfic #ao3 fanfic #backstory #christmas #happy birthday #oneshot

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