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li-an-nie · 1 month ago

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The birth of a Star (2)

[Stories of a childhood that never was] [Part 1] [AO3]

TW: Canonical Child Abuse

~~~ ✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧ ~~~

Even in hard times, there is comfort in things. Even when winter arrives and the cold barges in, and the flat becomes freezing and blank white grey, there is comfort in things. The streets outside, with their flashing bright lights, draped like a jeweled net over the barren trees, the graining sound of Christmas music booming over hidden speakers into every little corner, the bustling crowds of people, with their heavy winter coats and ridiculously big hats and scarves, staggering under the weight of overflowing bags full of gifts and luxuries whose names you could only guess, and meanwhile there was Micha, walking through the streets with the same things he’d been wearing in spring, summer, autumn.

Except, he was wearing a scarf right now – a reward, or ‘gift’ from the old geezer. “Boy! You can’t walk around like this, it’s damn freezing outside!” he'd said, “Here, take my scarf and the hat and these gloves–“ “I don’t want them!” “You have to!!” and they’d gotten into a fight; Micha didn’t want anything, he’d already gotten enough from the old man. But that geezer had been so maddeningly persistent, holding him captive in the shop and almost making him late for his errands!– And in the end, he had no choice but to accept the scarf at least.

Now, he was trudging through the cold, down the dreary shopping street again. The neighborhood they lived in was teeming with shadows: the critters, the bad people, the homeless, alcoholics, and drug addicts. They rarely showed themselves in the daylight, but if you paid attention, you’d catch glimpses of them—lurking at the edges of alleys, huddled beneath bridges, waiting for the night to claim them like wolves emerging from their dens.

However, in a festive seasons like this, where shiny and vibrant frills dangled left and right, the upbeat tunes of music twirled through the air and people bustled around in a jolly mood, all that darkness and muck of the city would fade away—overlit by the dazzle of Christmas.

Yet again, this was something Micha didn’t know if he liked or not. He couldn’t care less about all of these festivities, nor could he care any less about his birthday, which was just around the corner. They didn’t mean anything to him–and they never had all this time before.

But, this year… this year might be different for once.

As with any festive holiday, people were enticed to spend and indulge. Shops lining the street flaunting their big display windows, with the latest fashion collections draped over slender mannequins, flashy gadgets promising cutting-edge technology at a so-called “special price”, and shelves brimming with colorful, quirky toys of every kind–from small miniatures to large kitchen replicas, from soft fabric animals to hard building blocks. Even the jeweler next to the bookshop had joined in on the fun, dressing their windows with tinsel and twinkling lights, though their exorbitant prices remained eye-watering even after all the supposed discounts.

Micha could only scoff at the sight that was offered to him left and right – this was a completely different world to his own. He had no place here, and he didn’t want one.

Where he belonged was the cold, shuttering flat that he grew up in. The dirty, cramped back alleys, where the overlooked and forgotten roamed. And also this old, cluttered bookshop – with only a string of modest fairy lights framing the windows, and a handmade Christmas wreath from one of the regulars, hanging crookedly on the door. There was simply no space for anything else, once the carts with all the books were put up outside in front of the windows.

Although Micha had been coming here almost every other day for nearly three months now, they’d barely cleaned up anything. Most of the time initially had been spent teaching him how to read, and after that, whenever the old gramps had suggested kicking off his grand clean-up plan, the effort would resolve and the gramps would reclude himself into a corner as soon as he'd gotten his hands on a book that caught his interest – which was usually the very first one he picked up.

Learning from his example, Micha often did the same, and he’d found a plethora of books that he had wanted to start but never found enough time to read.

He would only ever read when he was here, one to two hours a day inside the shop, because this was the place where all the books belonged to.

Sometimes, the geezer would say, “Just take them with you! No one’s gonna buy these obscure books you like anyway-!!” But Micha had refused every time. First of all – the books he was interested weren’t obscure at all, they talked about scientific discoveries and human history, about perception of space and the hidden body language of domesticated wild cats.

Second of all – just like with the scarf, he disliked taking so many things from the geezer. He’d taught him reading and that was enough, he didn't want any more, he wanted this whole thing to stay purely transactional.

Third… he didn’t know how he could have explained bringing all these new books home to his father. Although he could of course say that they had been stolen – but it would’ve felt wrong somehow, for him to say that something this valuable was stolen.

“Fine by me then,” that old geezer had said, “it just means that you’ll come here more often to read, eh? More company for me!”

And today, it was already the Second Advent, they were sitting in the back of the shop clea–... reading again. And just like any other day, the geezer had asked him to take a book home and Micha had refused.

As they sat in silence, the old man seemed lost in something. Finally, he spoke up, asking what had likely been on his mind for weeks.

“Say, kid… isn’t it boring hanging around old me all the time?” The old geezer shook his head. “Truly, I’ve never seen a boy read as much as you!”

“…”

“Don’t you wanna go outside, hang out with the other kids sometimes? My grandchildren, they're about yer age, and they always want to go out. Always ask me to play tag or frisbee or soccer with 'em.” He snorted. “But look at me – I’m an old man already! My knee would give out before I could even make the first kick!!”

“…”

“Don’t turn out like me, boy!! Move your body and stay fit while you still can!!”

And as the old man rambled, Micha just kept his nose behind the pages. He didn’t want to talk about the topic, but he still listened to what the gramps had to say. He didn't want to play with the other kids, he never had. He wasn't a kid like them, he didn't want to be – instead, he wanted to grow up, fast. He wanted to grow up so that he could leave this place, become an independent adult, buy his own clean flat and make real transactions with other people. But, he also thought, he didn’t wanna grow up too fast, otherwise he’d end up like this old geezer right here.

“By the way,” the old man continued, “I never asked yer age. How old are you?”

“...eight.”

“Aha! That's when I had my first crush!”

“...”

“And when’s your birthday?”

“…25th of December.”

“Ah?!? That's just around the corner!!” the old man shouted out in surprise. “But also Mighty God, what an unlucky date for you!!”

“…What... Why?” Micha asked confused.

“Well don’tcha only get half the presents every year then? Knew a guy once, his big day was on the 24th. And he always complained about it – how his parents cut corners, and all of his friends were away with their families, y’know! But I said to him, you’re lucky to even get gifts at all!! ‘Twas a hard time back then, I still clearly remember. Christmas, it was completely different… couldn’t imagine the streets looking even half as good as today. We weren't even really allowed to call it Christmas, hear..!”

And he rambled on again, about traditions and the break of those traditions and the past, and Micha saw that it made him really passionate, but he really couldn’t care less about any of that. The old geezer was talking about a time from half a century ago, and Micha lived here, in the present, he didn’t need to know about any of that.

“…Anyway,” the old geezer said eventually, “unfortunately, just like that guy’s friends, I won’t be around during holidays. Gotta see my daughter and her kids in the countryside, eat that awful goose she always makes. She's always complainin' that I shouldn't live by myself, but look at her, she can't even cook without me there to help! I have to go all the way to her just for the goose!” He sighed dramatically. “And how come a gramps like me's still living in the city, while the whole rest of the family’s now stuck outside? The world’s gone crazy, I tell ya,” he grunted.

Micha chuckled a bit, despite himself.

“So I won’t be here on your birthday,” the old man said, rubbing his chin, “but I’ll still think of something for ya.”

After that, Micha had hung around the shop for another hour or so, not doing any of the cleaning he was supposed to. When it was time to head out for his work, the old geezer had stopped him at the entrance.

“Boy,” he’d said, “make sure to come back next week.” He'd smiled. “There’s gonna be a surprise for ya!”

And those words had lingered in Micha’s mind when he’d returned home. They had lingered when he’d sunk into his bed, fallen asleep with the book next to him. And they lingered over the next few days, over Sunday and Monday when the shop was closed, and they lingered when he was out in the day doing his errands and his work and his misdeeds again.

Up until now, that's all there had been – just simply trying to get by, his days preoccupied solely with the efforts of living. But now, somehow, this new thing that would always stay at the back of his mind and distract him had appeared. When he'd passed the sweets shelf on his errand that day, he'd unwittingly let the eggs slip out his bag – by the time the staff noticed he had long disappeared, but he was thinking to himself, a distraction, a distraction, it must be a bad thing after all.

Yet, whenever night fell, and he was left all alone with only his thoughts, instead of blaming those thoughts, he let them linger inside his mind.

The night, it had grown bitterly cold, and his thin, run-down blanket just wasn’t cutting it anymore, but each time the memory of those words resounded inside him, they would warm him up in his chest just a little bit.

And slowly... he was realizing. He didn’t want to admit but he couldn't help it – he was realizing, he was actually looking forward to something, he was looking forward to what the geezer had said. He was looking, towards the future, just ever so slightly, not because he wanted the present gone, but because for once, he wanted the future to come. He wanted to know what the geezer would give him.

And he was going to accept it. He didn't know what it was but he wanted to accept it too, even if that meant he wouldn't give anything in return, even if it meant he would make this something more than transactional. But he also thought to himself that maybe, it already was. Maybe it already had been, since long ago.

On the morning, after three days had passed, he'd woken up in his bed. And for the first time in forever, he’d woken up and thought at the same time; maybe it wasn’t so bad to wake up in the cold after all. Even in times like these, there is still comfort in things.

So he was walking down the now so familiar side street again, where even during Christmas time, only a few souls could ever be seen. This stretch of road was quieter than most after all, the usual hum of the season muffled in this tucked-away corner. He turned round the crossing and passed the jewelers again, stopping at the entrance of the second-hand bookshop. When he reached for the door, he tried to push it open, but it didn’t budge.

It didn't budge. It was locked.

He peered through the glass. The shop… it was dark inside.

The old geezer hadn’t opened yet? But it was afternoon already. The carts that were usually put up front weren’t out yet either – that was strange.

Micha stopped again and looked around. The people on the streets were just passing by... they didn’t look at the shop, didn’t notice him or the closed door, they just strolled past as if this was normal, as if there was nothing off about this.

He shook his head to himself, of course they wouldn’t know... the few customers that came here were all regulars, why would strangers find any of this odd?

He looked around again. He decided to ask in the jewelry shop next to it. He knew he didn’t look the part to step inside, with his age and that ragged get-up of his, but he had to try.

The small bell above the door jingled as he entered.

“...A child?” The cashier said in surprise. “Where are your parents, kid..?” His voice drifted off a bit when he saw the scruffy clothes on the kid.

Micha ignored his question. “Where’s the old geezer from the bookshop next here?”

The cashier blinked. “Oh, him? I was wondering about that as well. He’s usually already open by the time I get here.” Then he shrugged, only smiled with uncertainty. “Maybe he just had an appointment today or something..?”

No, that couldn’t be right. The geezer did have an appointment, but it had been an appointment with him.

Micha clenched his fist. Without a word, he turned and walked out of the shop again, leaving the cashier looking after him puzzled.

Micha returned to the entrance door and decided to just wait in front of it. He had no way to contact the geezer, so all he could do was wait and hope. He still had a few errands to run later, but he came here earlier than usual today, he could wait two or three hours depending on the weather.

After a while, some forty minutes or so must’ve passed, Micha was still just sitting and staring next to the entrance, when a middle-aged woman in a long coat appeared round the corner. And when her gaze landed on him, she stopped in her tracks and narrowed her eyes.

“You…!” she said suddenly, striding toward him.

Micha, startled, scrambled to his feet. Instinctively he turned to run, but the woman was quick and blocked his path.

“Hey, don’t leave!” she said with a flustered face. “You’re the boy who’s been hanging around Hr. Heinrich, aren’t you?”

Micha stopped. “Herr… Heinrich?” he repeated confused.

The woman, stunned, only blinked for a moment. “The shop owner!” she then clarified in surprise. “You… you didn’t know his name?”

“...He never told me.” I never told him mine either.

The woman, still a bit perplexed, just said, “Anyway, boy, it’s probably better if you go home now...” She gave him a rueful smile. “Mr. Heinrich won’t be back. Not for a while, at least.”

Micha froze.

…What? Why?

There was something in the way she said those words, like an irrefutable fact of truth, that made his chest tighten.

“What..?” he croaked again.

The woman looked at him, her tone somber. “Mr. Heinrich, he... as you might know, he's always had a bad knee. And yesterday night…” She looked to her feet as she paused in those words. She sighed.

“...he had an accident. Slipped on the ice, landed very badly. He’s in the hospital right now, it’s not life-threatening, but… the doctors, they don’t know if he’ll be able to walk properly again in the future.”

Micha’s heart dropped to the ground.

“N-no…” he tried to stammer something else, but his throat was so tight, all he could do was shake his head in denial.

The woman raised her hands. “Don’t worry! His daughter’s with him, she’s taking care of everything right now. I helped with Mr. Heinrich’s accounting sometimes, so she called me this morning to explain.”

Micha swallowed. “Wh-What about the shop?”

“I… I don’t know,” she said, “Mr. Heinrich... he’s always been more of a collector than a shopkeeper, really. He loved– loves gathering all sorts of things. Things most people would have just thrown away.”

She shook her head, her face filled with a quiet sadness. “But with his injury… I don’t know if he’ll be able to keep running this shop. He’s getting older, you know. He opened this place mainly to pass the time, make a few bucks here and there, maybe get rid of some of the stuff he’s collected over the years.”

Her eyes drifted to the cluttered display visible through the glass door, and Micha’s gaze followed. The shop, usually alive with books and odd trinkets, felt empty, almost mournful in its stillness.

“And I'm not sure his family– his daughter will want to deal with all this,” she added with uncertainty. “It’s a lot to sort through. If he can’t manage it himself…” She trailed off, glancing down at the ground.

Micha’s throat tightened. He couldn't say anything, couldn't really think clearly right now. And he couldn’t believe the words that woman was saying. She was a regular, he remembered now, he'd seen her before, but he still couldn’t just simply believe her. It couldn't be–that old geezer was supposed to be here today. He was supposed to be here, today, and tomorrow, and the day after that, and every day from Tuesday to Saturday until the Fourth Advent, and then, he said he’d go to his family and be back after New Years, he’d be here again, every day from Tuesday to Saturday. He was not supposed to just… disappear like that. This place, the one place that felt like he belonged to, couldn't just simply disappear like that.

There was a clot in his throat, so heavy and thick, and he didn’t know what to do about it. He wanted to get rid of it, cough it up, swallow it down, but it felt impossible.

“Hey, you alright, boy?” the woman asked worriedly. She saw how tightly Micha was gripping his scarf, his hand almost white. She’d seen him before, and she’d always found it strange, his unkempt hair and the worn-out clothes he was wearing. She found it strange why Mr. Heinrich had never said a word about it to him or anyone else before, why he’d just always laughed, always treated him like any other boy. And then, she realized, maybe that’s why that boy had always come here in the first place, maybe that's exactly what he had wanted, more than anything else.

She tightened her fist. “...I don't want to give you false hope, Mr. Heinrich wouldn't want that. But he's a tough old man, and nothing's ever set in stone. If he still manages to pull through, and I really want to believe in him, then he'll return... It would be a while before that would happen, but... you should check in here again. Just in case, after New Years or so.” And she bent slightly down.

“Let's keep our fingers crossed for him, okay?” She made a cheerful gesture with her hand, trying to lighten the mood. And although Micha barely looked at it, he nodded, with the clot still in his throat. The woman smiled bittersweet, she really did hope for the best, she said goodbye to the boy and left, and when she boarded the bus and sat down, she thought, Oh, I could’ve given him Mr. Heinrich’s contact info – not that that old man ever uses his phone anyway.

But what she didn’t know was that that boy never had a real link to the outside world. He couldn't use the landline, and he would never hold a phone until he’d steal his first one at the age of 12. And what she also didn’t know was that the boy had never allowed many things into his life – he never had much to begin with, and he didn’t want to lose his footing in reality by having too many things. Things he would never be able to keep anyway, things that would only slip away through his fingers like sand again, just like this, just like what had happened today, he knew it, he’d always known, he knew it would have happened eventually.

As he was running back through the cold empty streets, he couldn’t get rid of this damn clot in his throat, and he thought, that’s right, I should’ve never allowed this into my life, if I hadn’t, then I wouldn’t have had all these stupid hopes, all these stupid wishes and dreams and cravings… I wouldn’t have this clot in my throat right now.

He was holding onto the scarf, grabbing it tight while the cold wind from the West blew into his bare face, and he regretted, he regretted so much ever stepping foot into that rusty old shop – but at the same time, there was a tiny speck in him that wished, it wished he would have accepted all those things from the old geezer, it wished he would’ve brought those books home with him and the candy and that ugly thick hat and the oversized gloves, he wished he would’ve accepted and taken them, he regretted that too.

When he came home and opened the door, his father stood before him.

“What’s this?” his father asked as he held a tattered, blocky picture book in his hand.

The boy froze.

“What’s this?” that rancid father of his asked. And then again, “What’s this, what’s this, what’s this-” and then he tossed the book across the room onto the wall, and it plopped down with a thud as his father turned towards him, “you had this? You had this, the whole damn time? In your room, hidden from me? You think you could hide her from me, huh?!” “No–“

“How’d get your hands on that? How’d you get your hands on that thing, huh? You sneaky little bastard, why do you keep this shit when I am fucking trying to clean this goddamn place of all the trash—”

And as he raised his fist and was about to grab the boy, he noticed something around his neck–a scarf. He pulled it off, while the boy could only stare frozen, and he looked at it with big, wide eyes, almost as if he’d found the next shiny treasure, forgotten about his previous reason of rage already. He grunted, “What’s this? You stole this from somewhere? You steal a scarf for yourself, but not for your damn father?” And he threw the scarf onto the wall with a sharp, violent motion, “Fucking thief.”

No–no, the boy could only shake his head, that scarf wasn’t stolen–it was given to him, he had received it from someone, it was a gift, a gift, a gift, a gift, not something he’d stolen–

“Where’s the food? Your bag’s fucking empty,” his father grabbed the backpack, looked inside and clicked his tongue in disgust. And with a sudden, vicious movement, he flung the bag against the wall too, watching as it plopped to the ground with all the other trash. “What’s wrong with you these days, you little runt? Running around all day, going places, doing everything but your fucking errands–you plan on leaving your father, huh? Plan on leaving me all alone here?!”

He grabbed the boy, threw him onto the ground, and he leaned over him as he slowly clutched his fatty, rugged hands around his neck—

“Well I won’t let you– you have nowhere to go anyway!! You’ll always be something she and I created, always be a piece of trash!!” and as his clutch tightened and tightened like shackles, the boy gasped for air but he couldn’t, he couldn't, the eyes above him in that dark silhouette, they started to glow like a monster, and from the towering body above him escaped a sickening howl, “Doomed by fate, I tell you!! You and I are doomed by fate, and there’s only one person to blame!!!” His voice was a mockery of joy, an insanity borne from years of bitterness and rage, and he kept laughing like a maniac, a lunatic, as he clamped tighter and tighter around his neck, and the boy’s vision was a blur he saw stars and dots and black and white, but from the corner of his eyes he could spot something else... a musty green blanket lying on the coach. and he realized. he realized, and then laughed in his head, Ah, I really hate winter after all. God has played a joke on me yet again. And as his vision faded and his mind slowly fell into unconsciousness, there he felt the clot in his throat dissappear as well, and he thought at last, I guess this is where I'm supposed to be, this is me, this is my life, this is where I belong after all.

It was Christmas. The 25th of December.

The blocky book was long gone, tossed into the communal trash outside, whisked away to somewhere far away by the garbage men. Even if the boy had sneaked out at night and tried to retrieve it before dawn, he could have done nothing about the torn pages and the smell of alcohol on them anyway, and he also had lost the need in him to hold onto that book at all.

The scarf had been snatched by his father, he’d worn that thing that was meant for the boy and he’d worn it ragged in just a matter of weeks, he’d complained about the itchy feeling, then thrown it out in the garbage as well. When the boy had gone to retrieve it, it’d been taken away already, by someone who probably needed it more than him.

A few days after his father had strangled him unconscious; there was an incident down the road at the jewelers. It’d been robbed, it appeared, or there was an attempt at robbery – in any case, that shop deserved it anyway, with those exorbitantly high prices. But when the robbers had made a run for it and gotten cornered by the police, the three teens, clumsy and panicked looking for somewhere to hide, had smashed the window of the bookshop next to it – but they had such difficulty navigating inside, knocked over nearly everything in their path, that they'd gotten caught by the police immediately. It was over before it had even begun.

As the boy was walking past the crime scene, arriving at the area cordoned off with yellow police tape that couldn’t prevent anyone from entering, he glanced from behind the barrier inside the shop. It was too dark, and too cramped, to make out any clear details, but he didn’t need to see much anyway–he knew what it looked like inside well enough, he’d been in there so many times already and his memory was sharp and strong enough to recall every cluttered corner.

He remembered his past transaction with the owner of that shop. He was supposed to help clean it up in exchange for something. But they hadn’t gotten very far with it, and now, it seemed like their inaction had unwittingly helped the police in this case.

The shop, however, now looked more disorderly than ever – no one had bothered to clean it up after the crime. Who would even? The owner was here no longer, and these were all things people considered trash anyway, useless things no one wanted or needed.

There was no one in this world who would ever want to rob this place.

…

The boy glanced around cautiously. Making sure no one was watching, he slipped under the tape and climbed through the gap in the broken window.

The rusty, woody old smell was gone. It was silent, there was no sound coming from anywhere, just the faint whoosh from the wind drifting in through the broken glass. His mouth felt dry, and bitter, and his body shivered a bit, his hands freezing from the cold, and this place, this whole place also just felt cold now.

He wandered around, stepped over the piles of scattered books, magazines, and records. The clutter seemed even more chaotic than before, like a graveyard of forgotten things. He walked towards the back where he spotted an old chair, still piled high with scarves and hats like some kind of makeshift clothes rack.

He looked around the back of the shop again, and he saw something stashed in the shelf next to the desk.

As he approached it, he saw a red cushion, with words he could read now written on it.

...

Everything in this place was trash.

Just like in his home, there was nothing of value to people in here, and the only ones who would ever care about trash like this were the humans who had already lived their lives.

There was really nothing worth stealing in here.

But it was his birthday, and it was Christmas. So might as well take this one thing that no one needed.

He was walking down one of the bigger avenues. The shops were all closed by now, but there were still many people around, and there was also still Christmas music blasting through the speakers, and also still fairy lights hung up on barren trees and lanterns, illuminating the cold night streets.

Light snow had started flurrying from the sky.

Although it was already past Christmas Eve, the boy decided to play Santa for once. As he strolled along the sidewalk, turning into a larger plaza, his attention was caught by two kids playing tag around one of the wide plaza trees. They looked like siblings – they had to be, otherwise they wouldn’t be wearing the same scarfs and same hats with the same identical hatch pattern. Two adults that appeared to be their parents were watching them from a bench on the side, and as one of the kids, a little girl, tripped and slipped on the snow, the woman shot up and rushed to her in panic.

As she lifted her up, the girl started to cry, but not because she had slipped–no, apparently she had lost the game, as her brother had tagged her before her fall and he was now triumphantly strutting round the tree.

The woman was unable to comfort the little girl, while her brother, full of smug pride, decided to take a break. He plopped down next to his father on the bench.

And then–

Pfofffffpffpfpht!!

The loud sound of an uncomely accident erupted, blasting over the Christmas jingles and echoing throughout the plaza.

A few onlookers turned and chuckled.

“Wha-how-” the boy spun around in shock, “wha–, who put that there?! ” He gasped and turned to the man next to him, “Papa?!”

“Hey–don’t look at me!” the father snot back, raising his hands in self-defense.

The little girl, now completely distracted, laughed out loud at the scene and teased, “Haha! You stink, Willi, you stink!” And she was trying to contain herself, but she bubbled the whole time when she continued, “A kid! There was a kid! Didn’t you see?”

And the father could only shake his head and admit to his lack of spatial awareness, while the boy and the girl had already forgotten about their game of tag, occupied with the new toy that had appeared as if out of nowhere. The girl, her cheeks rosy from laughter, glanced up and around the plaza once more, trying to spot the mysterious kid she thought she'd seen. But what she didn’t know was at that point, he'd already been long gone by then.

The boy, the dirty and ragged one, dashed by a corner, ran through another snow-dusted road, and he felt like he was supposed to smile or laugh or rejoice at what happened–a good deed, if he could even call it that, for the first time in a long while, he’d given something away again without needing anything in return.

But instead of all that, he slowly came to a halt, and he felt his chest and throat tighten and his vision blur, there was something glossy, a stinging wetness at the corner of his eyes. He brushed it away quickly, as if the cold wind were to blame.

As he walked, his steps quieter now, past the rows of closed and towering shops and their large, dimly lit windows, his mind kept wandering to things he didn’t want to think about. It kept wandering, to something that once used to be, to things that once could have been.

His treasure was gone, and so was the place he could have belonged to.

He should have known from the beginning. He should’ve never wanted, never accepted these things in the first place. He should’ve never let them, let wishes and let hope into his life – because then it hurt all the more when they were taken away from him.

The snow stopped falling, and he looked up. He looked at the sea of stars in the sky, and he stretched out his hand.

The stars, they represented the freedom he'd never have.

And they were looking down on him – mocking, taunting his measly existence.

No—they probably didn't even know of it.

If the stars up above, in their oh so high-and-mighty place, couldn’t be bothered to fall down and acknowledge even the average man’s life, then what made him think they would ever be able to see him, ever be capable of acknowledging his?

There was no one in this world that could acknowledge his existence. Neither among the stars up above, nor here on this cold, unforgiving Earth.

Nothing would ever belong to him, and he would never belong to anything.

Nothing belonged to him, and he belonged to nothing.

He'd turned nine on that Christmas.

One or two months after that December, blue-collared appeared round the bookshop and started taking everything out, and ironically, the clean-up he once thought would take more than a lifetime had been finished in just a matter of days.

The posters he’d sometimes see of the stranger whose womb he came from, her face, her poise, and that smile of hers – they started to move him less and less, there was nothing connecting him to her anymore. There was only the rose, which wasn’t even really his, an object whose meaning he couldn’t comprehend yet. And as he watched himself grow taller, his features sharpening and molding more and more into hers, he slowly started to get sick of her face – because it was now his as well.

Nothing belonged to him, and he belonged to nothing.

He would tell that to himself, again and again, the man, his father, those words would echo in his mind and repeat like a mantra.

But deep down, he felt, he knew something was wrong.

His life had been nothing but a collection of trash–yet even inside that heap of garbage, there’d been moments he had treasured like gifts.

The experiences that shaped him, the few things that had given him hope, they never completely left his mind. And although they faded from his memory eventually, the thing that stayed was the ember in his heart, a tiny speck of the hope he resented so much.

Nothing belonged to him, and he belonged to nothing.

But to him, he wouldn't treat it like hope – he didn't want hope to be the thing that would drive him.

Instead, he treated it for what it truly was. A fire, a desire, a search for purpose.

Nothing belonged to him, and he belonged to nothing.

His existence was nothing, it was meaningless.

But that also meant he could give it any meaning he wanted to.

If the stars up above were looking down on him, if heaven couldn't be bothered with existences like his, if he was truly still born from a star, and carried the blessings of God alongside him — then he'd throw all of that out the window. He'd rise, and he'd climb his way up, he'd climb the stairs and reach for the sky, reaching for the heavens and then putting them in their place. And when he did, he wouldn't just stop there. He'd go even higher, reach the very top – he would become the highest star among them all.

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧

Three years after that fateful Christmas day, he was walking down the same street again.

Hands buried in the pockets of an oversized black hoodie, and the tattered jeans he’d already worn in spring, summer, autumn. It was cold, but he was used to it by now, had been for as long as he could remember.

He hadn’t touched a book in years – there was simply no place for that in his life. He’d started going for bigger loot now, stealing jewelry, watches and pick pocketing off the street. The naive daydreams of real transactions he’d once had as a kid were long gone, he was a thief, a criminal now, and he’d come to embrace it, there was simply no place for doubt in his life anymore.

With the loot, he was able to save up money. As he walked, the sound of it would come out his pockets – a few large bills and coins were stashed inside. He’d been saving for more than one, maybe two years already... and today was Christmas. Today was his birthday.

He was walking, and he passed by a big display window. He barely glanced at the festive decorations – Christmas wreaths, gifts and twinkling lights adorned the inside, just like at all the other shops. But instead of displaying fashion, gadgets, or toys, it showed two mannequins, dressed in sports jerseys – soccer jerseys. The store, purely dedicated to soccer, displayed the usual array of merchandise: cleats, shirts, scarves. And then his gaze drifted lower to the ball at the foot of one of the mannequins.

…A soccer ball.

...

He didn’t care what it was. He just wanted something that wouldn’t be a waste of money. Something solid, something that would last, even if it was just a stupid ball.

Something that could make him feel again. Feel alive, just a little bit more.

Something that could maybe even give him meaning, a purpose, however small it was.

Something that he could accept, without needing anything in return. And that would accept him, without anything in return.

Something that could belong to him, and that he could also belong to.

A soccer ball.

On that day, he chose something to live for.

~~~ ✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧ ~~~

Afterword:

Hi, thank you so much for reading! It's really crazy what an obsession with a certain character can do to you. Seriously, I've never had someone fictional occupy my mind as long and so extremely like Kaiser - saying it out loud is so weird haha, but I've started seeing things differently because of him (call me crazy). I appreciate my home city a lot more now, and whenever I was strolling through Christmas markets the past weeks, my mind just kept going back to Kaiser and I got sad, but also so empowered through his story. Save to say, I *had* to do something for his birthday, and in the end this jumble of words came out!

I wrote most of this freeform, that's why there might be some weird pacing and tonal shifts in the story lmao (I also didn’t expect this to get so long and have a side character become so important.) I wanted to touch on different themes for the story, but also nothing majorly coherent, I think some of the stuff is clearly spelled out and some is up to your interpretation.

if you wanna read some more background info on the story and how it came to be, check the rest of my Author's note on AO3! (sorry it's pretty long): The birth of a star

I hope I was able to explore the themes of this character a bit better, give him some of the warmth and love that is usually associated with Christmas, but also stay true to that harsh coldness and reality of his past. In the end, his story is one of strength and empowerment though, a middle finger to destiny that shows that nothing is impossible, and that every one of us has the power to change our own fate.

Thank you for reading and happy birthday, Michael Kaiser <3

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

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