His house had been cold back then. He would trudge along in shabby clothes and thick blankets that caught in the sharp turns of the house. He thinks Hikari was twelve. Maybe eleven; he could see the small lumps beginning to form on her chest. That was how he remembered that she was a girl, not a thin connection of bones and dirty skin that smelled like oil, rotten eggs, and burnt food. But that really wasn't her fault; the whole house stunk that way, probably even Taichi, and after awhile, he didn't notice it anymore. He didn't try to breathe through his mouth or stick his head out the window, because there was no point. The odor was sticking against the walls, inside Hikari's skin, in the far back walls of the cabinets, and, soon, it would cling to him too until the fresh air outside felt strange and tangy in his nose.

"I think mommy's coming home today," Hikari whispered; Tai closed his eyes and leaned his head back. "It's just this feeling I have."

"You seem to have that feeling a lot," Taichi said; Hikari came down beside him and rested her forehead on his shoulder. "Yeah, and one of them has got to be right sometime."

Taichi turned his head back until he was looking at her brown hair, oily and brown and clumpy, in a crooked ponytail. "I wish I could buy them," he murmured.

...

Taichi didn't remember his mother leaving. Six weeks ago, he had just found Hikari near the side of his bed, her toes wet and digging into the carpet, wiping her eyes.

"There's something missing" she said, half her face obscured by shadows, and she crawled into his bed, her fingers sticky and grasping onto his arms. There are some things you can not explain to others when your shoes are waiting to be filled up, so they let their tiny fingers cling to each other like the claws of bats after sunrise and fell asleep trying to see the brown color lurking in each other's eyes. Do you know that I know? Do you know that I know that you know?

In the morning, they could both feel the cold seeping into their house, ten red crescent grooves dug into their skin.

...

The landlord liked to come by and bang on the door; Taichi never answered. All the food from the pantry was nearly gone and he had more pressing things to think about than a fat man with clean clothes and washed hair. Hikari watched her brother staring at himself intently in the mirror with a coloring book clutched against her chest. The TV was on, displaying the program that their mother liked to watch with her various boyfriends. That was how she was born, Taichi said. That was how he was born too. During the program, when their mother and father linked bodies and moaned and screamed each other's name on the couch, rocking and needing – it was like going to the bathroom after a really long wait, Taichi told her after their mother told him – until the world collapsed for them, but it wasn't enough and it took their breath away.

They liked to watch the show; it was like a bedtime story and, sometimes, when they couldn't sleep, they would drag their blankets to the couch and turn on the TV to the slow, methodical peeling and dropping of clothes until it lured them off to slumber like a mother's voice.

Suddenly, Taichi spoke. "I'm going out," he said. "Open the door only when you hear a single knock, ok?"

Hikari nodded, and looked at his feet walking away until she couldn't see anything but pain burning along the side of her eyes near the corners. When Taichi came back, her back was stiff with her body stuck in the same position, even looking at the same spot on the wall across from her since he left. His clothes were torn, but he had food and money and he was here and that was enough.

"Did you get a job?" she asked.

"Yeah, something like that," and they laughed easily for the first time in weeks and filled their belly.

...

The landlord came by more often, and he stayed longer, the edge of his voice sharper. During one of those visits, Taichi turned toward her.

"I wish we had money," he said, "so he would go away."

"Me too."

"We could move."

"Our mother might come home."

Taichi was silent. "If she didn't, and it was just you, what would you need?"

"You mean, just us."

"Sure. But what would you need?"

"I have you."

"But what would you need?"

"Just you."

"How about want?"

"A prince." Hikari looked shy now. "I want one with gold hair." And she flipped to the page in her coloring book where he stood on a horse filled up meticulously with crayon wax.

"Anything else?"

"I'm almost out of crayons," she said. Taichi smiled.

"Here's ten bucks. When that guy leaves, do you remember the store near the corner? Why don't you go there and get new ones."

Hikari grinned. "You mean it?"

"Yeah," Tai nodded fervidly, and as soon as the knocking stopped, Hikari slipped out the back door. By the time she returned, the plastic bag with the crayons chattering next to her leg, the front door was open and there was something missing.

"Tai?" she said. She went into his room. "Tai?" His bed was cold and surprisingly clean.

She ran all over the house, her cheeks sticky again. She felt hot and burdened like there was something heavy and shaking inside her chest that she couldn't let out because there was too much room. It was still growing, bloating into her stomach, and Hikari couldn't stop crying, now. She crawled over to where Taichi had first left her, the pain near the edges of her eyes, the drums in her ear, and she stared at the same spot on the wall in the same crooked, stiff position waiting for something small and single to echo through the door, tiny enough for her to catch.

It was three days later when anyone came inside the house to find her half starved and dying and frozen awkwardly against a wall. Their footsteps were too loud and it easily overwhelmed her.

tbc.