Sunggyu lays in the grass on his tummy and hums the new song his mother taught him.  Sunggyu kicks his feet around and scratches out a sketch of the clouds with the new chalk set the lady next door bought for him.  Sunggyu likes the way it screeches when he draws bright white clouds. 

He likes to draw people sitting on the clouds with long, rainbow wings that he can’t draw very well with chalk, but the picture is in his mind.  They spread wide across his back and they reflect the light in a way that makes them shimmer.  And they always have so many colors dancing on them like the stained glass in churches. There’s always a large array of colors swimming on his back and it makes him feel angelic.   Angelic with pitch black eyes and a crimson red pupil that reflects the thirst for blood on his tongue like the wings reflect the colors of the sun.

Sometimes the old lady stops and asks about his picture.  “Angels,” he smiles a big, toothy grin, and the woman bends down to ruffle his hair and continues on.

“They have pretty wings, Sunggyu-yah!” she calls out to him. Sunggyu doesn’t tell her that those aren’t wings; he isn’t allowed to. 

One cloud has a happy family of three angels all holding hands.  They all sit above the rest and have black dots for eyes and flashy big smiles.  Sunggyu’s only regretful that he can’t give his father the right type of Kagune.  It would be too suspicious. 

Sunggyu sits at the dining table while swinging his legs and with his chin pressed against his palm.  He whistles a low tune under this breath and colors the clouds in his picture red.  He gives them sharp teeth and black irises and draws blood dripping from their mouth.  Sunggyu takes a long sip of his coffee – bitter and black – before drawing fingers hanging from its mouth. 

He pretends that his mother’s fingers aren’t shaking.  He pretends that her face isn’t sickly pale and that her hair hasn’t thinned out to a point where a small little tug pulls out a chunk so big you’d think she’s at least sixty (she’s only thirty-five).  Sunggyu pretends that the red streaks trailing down her eyes and dripping off the tip of her nose into her cold coffee aren’t tears.  He pretends that everything is okay.  “Sunggyu-ah,” her voice is not small and croaky, it isn’t scratchy or raspy.  Her sky blue eyes aren’t hollow, they haven’t lost their brightness.  They aren’t dim. 

“When’s dad coming home?”  Sunggyu gives his cloud pitch black eyes and closes his ears to his mother’s screams.  Sunggyu closes his eyes and starts dragging his crayon along his paper, scratching out kanji from memory and pretending his mother isn’t screaming.  It touches deep in his soul, anyway.  He feels her cries circling his heart and crushing it to bits and he feels his throat closing but he shuts his eyes tight and scratches the kanji darker and only prays that he got the right letters because he’s too scared to open his eyes and check.  

Sunggyu feels bony fingers slide up his cheeks and he feels them trembling against his face.  He hears the ghost of his mother’s voice whispering in his ear.  “You have to hide.  You can’t make a sound.”  Sunggyu shakes his head and his eyes are blurred with tears when he opens them and whimpers out something he can’t make out anymore.  His mother runs her cold fingers through his hair and presses a soft kiss to his temple and squeezes his head so hard against her chest Sunggyu finds it difficult to breathe.  “You have to hide, you have to understand.”

Sunggyu tries to protest not because he wants to keep his mother alive.  He’s scared.  He’s scared of being alone and helpless.  He’s scared of being forced to hunt on his own and he’s scared of being chased by investigators and it isn’t something Sunggyu can do alone.  “Don’t leave me,” Sunggyu forces out a whimper and tears squeeze out of his eyes.  “Umma I’m scared, please don’t leave me,” 

She digs her nail into his arms until blood leaks out and Sunggyu would cry out but it’ll heal soon anyway.  He just had a fresh package of meat yesterday.  “Umma,” Sunggyu cries and wails but his mother presses a bony finger to his lips and demands silence with her eyes.  They are the liveliest Sunggyu’s seen them in weeks – the liveliest he’s seen them since his father was murdered. 

She shoves him into the closet as gently as possible but it’s a tight squeeze.  Sunggyu used to hide in here when he was young.  When his father counted loudly and pretended to open all the doors and windows and pretend to cry that he’d lost his one and only son until Sunggyu would crawl out and into his chest and laugh at him for being silly.  Now that Sunggyu is eight, it isn’t a snug fit anymore.  It’s so tight that some of the hangers pierce into his chest but the sting in his heart hurts more.  He starts counting the seconds.

Sunggyu wants to reach out and pull her in.  He wants to tell his mom they can run together, that they have nothing left here.  But he knows that she won’t do it.  “If they find me, they’ll leave you alone,” She shuts the door in his face with a fleeting kiss to his hand and Sunggyu is plunged into darkness.

Sunggyu counts to five-hundred sixty-five when he hears the first knock on his door.  His heart pounds against his chest and he covers his mouth with his palm.  Sunggyu closes his eyes tighter and pictures the pretty white clouds stained with blood and imagines him and his family sitting on one of them and he wonders why Angels have to suffer the most.  The knock comes again, firm and rough, and Sunggyu hears raspy voices calling something, something threatening probably, or maybe it’s the mail main again. 

Sunggyu knows it’s not the mail man. He always brings a putrid smelling chocolate bar that Sunggyu can smell from down the street.  And he always likes to ruffle Sunggyu’s hair and ask him about his day and sometimes he even writes Sunggyu letters because he asked him to bring him mail when he was very young.  Sunggyu grew up, but he still wrote him letters.  He also knocks soft and careful, not firm and intrusive. 

Sunggyu hears the door burst open and he hears the sound of cracking wood and screaming voices at six-hundred forty-two and he clasps a hand over his mouth and breathes as silently as possible.  He prays for his heart to quiet down and he prays they won’t find him. Sunggyu stops counting seconds and starts counting the crunch of wood beneath their boots.  He closes his eyes tighter and tries to imagine his father’s voice and playing in the sun and tries to drown out rugged voices countering his mother’s weak one. 

Sunggyu hears the click of a briefcase and pretends it’s the sound of a picnic basket with fake food.  Sunggyu hears the swish of a Quinque and pretends it’s his father’s Bikaku Kagune and Sunggyu’s swinging on the edge.  He hears a scream and a cry and he pretends it’s his mother yelling at his father for being so wreck less.  He hears a slice and a scream and he hears it echo in his ears and all over his body until it settles in his heart.  Sunggyu shoves his fist deep in his mouth to silence his cries.  He feels tears rolling down his cheeks and over his fist and shuts his eyes so tight that he sees rainbow spots on the inside. 

He starts counting the footsteps again and ignores the sound of voices, deep and low, whispering scary words outside the closet door.  Sunggyu makes himself as small as possible when he hears a deep chuckle, it sounds like a mad man.  Sunggyu doesn’t understand how humans could possibly be so afraid of ghouls when he’s cowering from the sound of a laugh.  “Should we stick around for the kid to come around?” 

“No, it probably won’t survive a day.  Besides, the poor thing left us a message,” Sunggyu hears the tear of paper and retreating footsteps. 

He starts counting seconds again and waits until he counts to one thousand before he tries to slide open the door.  It was jammed tightly, clothes sticking out all over and Sunggyu ends up withdrawing his Kagune and slicing through the wood.  It’s a tight squeeze and it hurts like hell until Sunggyu manages to rip the wood open and tumble out. 

At his feet lies his pretty red clouds with eyes and fingers sticking out of his mouth with scribbled kanji all over.  It’s ripped in a way so one half reads ‘I don’t’. 

The other half reads ‘want to die.’

Sunggyu vividly remember the first time he lost control.  He’s been forcing himself to survive on stolen coffee beans and scraps of rotting corpses his own species leaves lying around alleys.  But it’s not enough – not enough for a boy who’s used to eating one full body every two weeks.   His eyes have sunken in and the youthful glow in his face disappears little by little each day.  He barely looks twenty, let alone the twelve he actually is. 

Sunggyu doesn’t feel twelve anymore either, he feels like he’s already dead and is wasting away waiting to be taken and see his parents again in heaven. 

It happens in the middle of the night, when his hands are shoved deep into the pockets of his hoody and his hood is drawn and he looks like a lost, gloomy teenager out causing trouble.  Sunggyu wrinkles his nose when a warm scent surrounds him.  It’s the scent he notices first – not the tugging on his leg.   But he notices that too, eventually.  When a little girl with tears glowing in her eyes looks to him desperately.  “I-I lost m-m-my mom.”  Sunggyu feels drool forming at the corner of his lips and wants to lean over and rip open and taste fresh blood on his tongue. 

The desire makes him feel sick to his stomach.  He feels a weird mix of hungry and disgusted and Sunggyu can’t quite pinpoint which needs to be taken care of and which one suppressed.   “U-Um…” he mumbles nervously and the girl buries her nose into his knees and her tiny little fingers grip his jeans (oh how naïve, it’s cute – she’s as innocent as he should be).

“P-P-Please help me,” she whimper and sniffles and looks at him with big, glossy eyes and Sunggyu’s mouth is watering.  She smells so good. 

He tries to push it down, he really, truly does.  “I-I don’t think I can help you,” Sunggyu stammers out, he tries to speak while holding his breath.  He tries to speak while avoiding the smell.  But it gets so, so, hard. 

“P-P-Please help me, I’m scared.” 

Umma don’t leave me, I’m scared.

Sunggyu holds out his hand and gives her a smile that makes his eyes crinkle up and bring back the youthful touch to his face.  “Ok, come with me then,”  He keeps his grip on her tiny fingers firm and he feels his Kakugan stealing control and his Kagune itching to rip open his clothes and slice her in two. 

Sunggyu doesn’t end up using it, though.   It only takes a simple twist of her neck and the sound of a delicious crack for her screams to silence into the night and his ghoul nature to take over.   Sunggyu starts clawing at her neck hysterically, tearing flesh apart with his teeth and swallowing without bothering to chew.  He rips out her heart and crushes it in his teeth until blood oozes down his mouth and over his clothes.  She tastes so good.  So ing good. Sunggyu starts ripping at her limbs and is careful to drink every last drop of blood.  He from his face, from the ground and savors the crunch of her bones.

Sunggyu pauses for a moment and reaches over to gently close her eyes.  They still have that trusting look in them.  It’s only for a moment, though, that he feels that pang of sympathy before his need for food usurps him again and he’s clawing at every piece of meat he can stomach. 

With blood dripping down his chin, and glowing black eyes, Sunggyu thinks he’s made the transition from angel to devil over the course of three months.   His throat starts to close up again and he lets out a strangled cry when he looks at his own handiwork.  His fingers are coated in blood and he can feel the sweet taste on his lips, sliding down his throat.  He pictures the girl’s mother and father, maybe her siblings, maybe grandparents, maybe aunts and uncles and Sunggyu covers his bloody face with his bloody hands and starts to choke out tears.   Whispered apologies leave his lips and he can practically feel the fires of hell nipping at his heels and Sunggyu can’t bear to look at the innocent look in her eyes.  He starts to chant I’ve ed up until the words have lost their meaning and warp into I want to die, please kill me.

Sunggyu flinches back when he feels a soft hand on his shoulder.  His eyes that have sunken are filled with tears and he trembles with fear.  “You don’t like doing this?”  The man pulls out a napkin and starts to wipe away the blood caked onto Sunggyu’s chin. 

Sunggyu gurgles out a response, something he can’t understand and the man chuckles lightly.  Sunggyu’s body still trembles, and he’s still shaken with hiccups but the man runs warm fingers through his hair and reveals a pair of Kakugan that make Sunggyu visibly relax.  “How would you like to go to school? Become like a normal human? I can teach you if you want to,”

A part of Sunggyu is wary and he thinks back to the safety videos his mother showed him about strangers.  But that was back when he had a mother and a father and fresh meat on his plate every two weeks and back when he had nice neighbors and fresh chalk to scrape on the sidewalk and he was as normal as a ghoul could be.  That was back when Sunggyu wasn’t already living in hell.  So he doesn’t think twice when he wraps his arms around the man’s torso and let’s his tears fall like the girl did to him.  He doesn’t think twice when the man pats him gently on his back until he’s wasted all his tears and gently takes him back to his apartment with promises of school and being a boy that is allowed to live. 

He still can’t go to heaven, Sunggyu thinks.  But when he thinks of the meat on his plate from his parents, he figures he will meet them in hell.  He chokes out a small question and Jongwan rubs his back with warm words in response

“Is there something wrong with me?”

“With you? Nothing.  With this world? Everything.”

Jongwan, the man who rescued him from cold nights and homelessness, chuckles when the new boy clings to Sunggyu.  Sunggyu learns quickly he wasn’t Jongwan’s first rescue and he most definitely isn’t his last.  The boy (looks about Sunggyu’s age, maybe a little younger) clinging to him with fat tears in his eyes is proof of that.  “Uh…what’s your name?” 

The boy mumbles something under his breath and Sunggyu strains his ears to hear him.  “C-Can you repeat that?”  The boy responds by burying his nose deeper into his back and Sunggyu tries not to squirm away at the ticklish feeling. 

Jongwan runs his fingers through his hair and speaks softly. Jongwan’s voice is one Sunggyu always found soothing and melodious.  It’s best when he sings him and some of his other children to sleep at night and it almost reminds him of his mother and her soft lullabies.  “You can’t remember, can you?”  The boy sniffles and shakes his head.  Jongwan tosses him a solemn smile and gives Sunggyu an amused one, “Sunggyu can name you,” 

Sunggyu splutters and tries to reach out to Jongwan before he leaves, but it’s pretty difficult with the boy still clinging to his back and Sunggyu sighs instead.  He manages to pry his arms off and finally gets a good look at the kid.  Sunggyu bites back a gasp; he’s in a horrible condition.  His eye is swollen and he’s shaking so hard he looks like he’s about to crumble.  Sunggyu fears that if he lets go of the boy’s shoulders he’ll sink to the floor.  There’s a trail of blood leaking from his hair and Sunggyu rationalizes that it’s his own and not because he was feeding.   He has these big eyes that look so vulnerable and it reminds Sunggyu so much of himself.  He thinks back to the darkness of his mother’s closet and he thinks back to ripping open the throat of a little girl and prays this kid hasn’t had to do any of that. 

“Do you remember anything?”  He sniffles out a no and says all he remembers is passing out and waking up in this strange man’s house.  A part of Sunggyu is grateful for that, he hopes the boy never remembers.  He knows the only reason he’s in Jongwan’s house is because he has nowhere to go. 

“You can be Lee Sungyeol now, and you can call me Hyung.”  Sunggyu beams at him and a small smile flickers at the corner of Sungyeol’s lips.  He holds Sunggyu’s hand the entire time when Jongwan explains to him what happened and Sunggyu even lets him curl up against him at night.  Sunggyu’s been through hell out there, and he knows that there’s worse. 

Sunggyu decides he’ll keep Sungyeol as far away from that as possible.

He only wishes someone could have done that for him.