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If one looked at the Xiao-Family from outside, nothing strange would be worth noting.
Xiao Tiehan was a hard-working mechanic with raven black hair, his wife a slightly younger brunette from Bridon working as a hair dresser.
They had four sons that people saw plenty, polite young boys who at worst could be considered spoiled- the fifth, so they told people, was sickly, ill and unable to leave the house.
In truth, he really was sickly. Though it stemmed from no illness.
The truth was that Xiao Weiying tended to sit silently in the last room of the basement. Silent, lonely and hungry. The door was locked, more often than not.
If he was lucky, the twins Xiao Zhifei and Xiao Mengfu would come down to visit him and forget to lock the door behind them. More often than not, he lacked that luck.
One of Vein's earliest memories is from when he was around four years old. A memory of the sibling-duo coming down the stairs, the lack of a window making it impossible to tell if it was day or night for Weiying.
"A'Ying" he heard one of his brother's call, the nickname like a cruel mockery of what it was supposed to be.
"A'Ying, A'Ying" called Zhifei with a laugh, one that sent shivers down Weiying's spine, and unlocked the door. The duo was the spitting image of their father, leering down at him where he was pressing himself into a corner.
They were also older than him- the duo was eight. They were younger than Sen, who was eleven, and Shanli, the oldest at fourteen.
The twins still all but loomed over him, and Mengfu kicked him in the side to get his attention. "They're aaarguing agaaain" the younger twin announced cheerfully. "About the thiiing"
Weiying frowned, uselessly attempting to push himself further into his corner. "Dunno why they think you're so scary" Zhifei grabbed him by his hair- it was getting longer. The youngest of the siblings winced.
He glanced up, swatting at the hand holding his hair. His bangs shifted aside just enough for his siblings to see his eyes. It was enough to make Mengfu yelp. "Ough, he looks so creepy" he complained.
Zhifei giggled, loudly. "He's a freaaak" the older twin announced. "We don't want a freak in the basement"
Weiying remembered very little, after that. Just Zhifei shoving him back by the hair and his head hitting the wall.
~
Another memory that is vivid to Vein is that of his mother grabbing him by the hair, shaking him.
She was always yelling at him, no matter if Weiying was in the basement where he "belonged", or upstairs to clean whatever mess his siblings had made.
Weiying had learned early on that it was pointless to run to his mother- not that she even let him call him that. Lissa was what he was supposed to call her.
Once, he'd heard Sen call her "Mother" and Mengfu "Mama" and had done the same. It's less a memory and more a vague sense of 'it happened', but he does feel his cheek sting at the thought of calling his mother by anything his siblings call her as though slapped for a grave transgression.
It was the same with his father, but rather than a stinging cheek, it felt as though his ribs ached under a kick that just barely bordered on 'gentle' enough not to break them.
As it was, he remembered plenty times in which Lissa yelled at him. Usually when Xiao Tiehan had too much of the horrible smelling drinks, was asleep and couldn't be woken by the yelling.
If his mother yelled while father was awake, it'd end in a screaming-match and the blame game. Who cheated on who, who was at fault for the cheating, who 'is the demon-brat's real father, huh?' and other things that were shouted in the heat of the moment.
Sometimes, Xiao Shanli appeared and guided Weiying back to the basement or upstairs to hide in his room. Sometimes, he even gave him something to eat and hid him until morning.
That day was no such day.
That day he got shaken, roughly, and cried out at the pain.
Vaguely, he thinks she was yelling at him because he bit Sen that day. The memory as to why he did such a thing is long since lost to time.
"Demon-brat", she called him, "Bastard child. Unlovable. Horrid. Terrible. Better of dead, like the good for nothing that you are!"
Dead. Death.
A morbid thing for some so young to try and grasp.
Once, Shanli had helped him outside during the night. They'd found a dead baby bird together. "It's dead", his brother had said and when Weiying had tilted his head, he'd added: "That means it's sleeping forever, it's no longer hurting"
Later, perhaps the same day, even, he remembered that moment with vivid clarity in a moment of pure chaos around him.
There were hands on him, too many for his young brain to count. A person was yelling something in a language he didn't understand. Routinely, water thrown from a golden cup hit his face.
He trashed and sobbed, trying to get away. It was futile, only resulted in the person talking to yell at him more, resulted in his mother yelling, more water and the hold on him to turn bruising.
It became a weekly thing.
At one point, he couldn't help but think: I want to be the bird.
"They're trying to get rid of the demon possessing you" Mengfu giggled one evening after the fifth exorcism attempt, and Zhifei added haughtily: "They keep pretending the demon isn't you yourself, little Weiying"
He remembers little of their visit, beyond those words and kicks that left him aching. It was easier naming what didn't hurt, he couldn't help but think often.
Shanli visited him later that night with a cupcake and a sandwich. They sat together in Weiying's favorite corner, the youngest sibling all but wolfing the offered food down. When the teen tried putting a hand on his shoulder, Weiying flinched away.
The oldest couldn't find it in himself to wish him a happy birthday, that day. There was nothing happy about his youngest brother's life, after all.
Things kept on like that for a while, though the weekly exorcisms turned monthly, eventually.
They did nothing but turn a quiet, scared child quieter and more and more terrified.
(If Vein looked back now, he could only scoff at what a scaredy cat he'd been at such a young age. Then again, even now his hands would tremble at the memories.
The memory of being held down while a priest yelled and threw 'holy' water, trying to drive out a demon that didn't exist... there was a reason he avoided physical touch as much as humanly possible outside of fights and negotiations.)
And eventually, Shanli stopped coming into the basement. Brought him no more food, no more quiet words of comfort. He simply stopped. There was no good bye.
Weiying, silently, assumed his brother had finally realized what Sen, Mengfu, Zhifei and their parents had told him all this time: Weiying was an unlovable monster. Even the kindest now seemed to agree, so that was that.
He didn't know that Shanli had been caught trying to bring him food, and had thus received house arrest as punishment.
To Weiying, he'd simply disappeared without a trace.
It didn't matter much.
Not too long after, he was taken away to Bridon under the guise of having found a specialist there that could treat his illness... and then he was alone.
No siblings, no parents. Just him, alone, in a country he'd never been to before, unable to speak their language.
Eventually, Weiying died to the streets and Vein took his spot. Never again did he long to be the bird.
Weiying, who longed to be the bird, got what he wished. Vein, instead, got his own wish: he became the wolf haunting the streets of Bridon.
There was no place for the weak if you desired to live, after all. And truly, who was stronger than a wolf?
It didn't matter to him, between the streets, the cult and the mafia, if he was worthy of love or not. Who cared, really, if he deserved or did not deserve to find his own kind of 'family' that cared about him?
(He did care, and he still does, yet he refuses to ever admit his thoughts aloud.)