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Deku sat in the corner of his numbered glass room, knees to his chest and arms wrapped around them to act as a protective barrier. He knew they were watching him, it was one of those days people stood around and stared, like they always did. But what else were they supposed to look at when the only thing in the room was Deku’s square glass room, a small enclosed metal room to the right or Deku’s, and fifty feet of open space, leading to the raised area of flooring the people stood on to watch him.
It’s as if he could feel them, the piercing eyes of everyone behind the glass, as if he were their prey--waiting for a reaction for hours on end as people gawked, knowing that Deku could still see them clear as day. And he had no choice.
Little by little the crowd started to grow in size. Deku didn’t like this and tucked the rest of his face into his knees, hoping to conceal what little self worth he had left. It was working for him. Almost. He was starting to calm himself down and his breathing was slowing but he could still feel that itch under the skin of his hands and behind his eyes. He liked when he could be calm--like no one else was actually there to watch him. Until a young girl from behind the glass, who had been one of the first to annoy Deku today when her bright green raincoat made one of the most irritating sounds as she swung her arms. Her feet stomped as she whined for something to drink. It was then she decided to throw something at the glass.
She must have been hoping for a reaction from the boy being kept inside by the way her face lit up with curiosity and how she scrambled up to grab the railing in front of her. At first, there was no reaction, as Deku was used to the people who watched him doing things to try and catch his attention. But the sound of what looked to be a coin circling its place over and over again on the cement in front of his room triggered quiet whistles to escape from Deku’s lips to match it. He started to jerk his head from one side to another, satisfying the itch that had moved its way to his neck. He turned his gaze to the floor still, making his hair fall in his face.
“Stop it,” he warned, to himself or to the people watching him, he wasn’t sure anymore. He wanted to stop moving but he wanted them all to go away more.
They needed to know that what they were doing was going to get him in trouble. Deku felt it in the air, the presence of something bad going to happen, but he knew they wouldn’t listen to him. They never did. Another jerk of his head took him by surprise and he swiftly moved to cover his mouth as another whistle, louder this time, made its way out.
“Mama did you see that?”
Deku didn’t want anyone to see. Tears came from his tightly shut eyes and flowed down his red, puffy cheeks. He tried to catch his breath, but small gasps of air was all he could do as he felt a stomp from his right foot . The air felt as if it was getting heavier, it felt thick and dense in his lungs. The invisible weight on his chest sank into him, forcing him to move.
He unwound his arms from around his legs and ran them through his long, tangled hair. Another jolt of his body caused him to yank at the green and inky black bits of hair still left in his hand. He kicked the air as if he were defending himself, repeatedly knocked his head back against the corner of the wall, and dug his nails into his scalp.
He told them to stop.
He knew this would happen.
“I told you,” Deku bit out. “I told you to-”
His words froze in the back of his throat as he focused on the glass in front of him.
“‘ Twenty-four ’,” he thought to himself. There were twenty-four people out there. “‘ They must’ve wanted a show today” ’.
Deku lifted his head up slowly, the tangled mess of his hair shifting to the right side of his head as he gave a sickly-sweet smile that would make anyone in their right mind step back.
Very cautiously he stood up, walking to the glass wall with only the sound of his bare feet padding across the cold floor. He wasn’t paying attention to the quick jerk of his head that resulted in a crack or the little stammer in his step as his right foot tried to kick itself out. Reaching up in front of him, he placed both hands on the cold glass surface and closed his eyes.
“Two of you are innocent,” he announced against the glass. “I decide who goes.”
He put all his focus on a curvy young woman with hair as red as cherries. His target, the young woman, fell to the ground in an instant with a resounding smack and Deku chose this moment to smile. There was a young man trying to pull the woman's head into his lap to see if she was okay but Deku knew she wouldn’t be. His punishments weren’t meant to be survivable.
A smaller crowd broke off from the one paying attention to Deku to lean down and scramble around aimlessly to try and help the woman on the ground whose ears had just started to leak blood. This is what Deku was after if the look of pure joy on his face was anything to go by. Soon enough, he lowered his hands from the glass as the first of many concerned screams echoed through the facility. Everyone got to witness the blood, the bright shade was almost as red as the fallen woman’s hair, while she squirmed to grab onto anything, or anyone.
In his room, Deku walked back to his corner and resumed his old position. His arms barricaded him from everything and he put head in his lap as he waited for the woman outside to die so the itch under his skin would go away.
“How many more must go?” he muttered mostly to himself.
Listening to the commotion around him brought him just the littlest bit of peace. The woman had blood covering the top half of her dress. ‘She should’ve lasted longer. How fascinating!’ Deku thought to himself. He could hear the little girl in the raincoat from earlier, now sobbing out of fear. The medics were called from the security guard who led the group in and from then, Deku didn’t seem to care anymore.
No one else seemed to notice him smiling. Everyone was focused on the now dead woman on the floor.
Except for one.
A boy who stood still and did absolutely nothing. He was tall, from what Deku could tell and he was wearing normal clothes-a lilac colored knit sweater paired with black jeans and a jacket. It made Deku miss his old clothes. He hated how loose fitting the gown was on him and wished he could feel the broken-in denim of his favorite jacket on his arms once again. The boy observed from behind the railing like everyone else, keeping quiet and didn’t seem to be noticed. He’d had to have been here from the beginning, just watching and waiting to see how things play out. His decision to stay put and not make a sound would’ve been a success had he not been noticed by Deku from in the glass.
Deku ignored the crowd of annoying, and now terrified, people leaving. Nor did he give the medical team picking up the dead women a second glance. They were used to this, to Deku’s chaotic behavior. He was too focused on the boy in the room and how he wanted to get his attention.
“Hey!” Deku yelled in the direction of the boy still standing in the corner. “Hey you! Come over here!”
The boy looked up at him slowly. His face was still covered in shadows like before, but Deku could still sense his presence in the room. He smiled at Deku and held his finger up to his lips to keep quiet. Deku should’ve known if he could just keep quiet and not make a sound, everything would go over smoothly. But he had already made his choice of wanting the attention of the boy outside.
Deku, sensing his movement, got antsy as he assumed the boy was walking to him. When he noticed he wasn’t coming any closer, he stood up and started to bang on the glass. It started to shake even more with each strike from his fists. This caught the attention of the man who watched over Deku throughout the day. He calls him one of the Watchers.
That’s all they really do all day, is watch Deku and take notes. Most of them quietly scribble on their checklist and don’t say anything. Deku liked the quiet ones. They left him alone and didn’t pick on him to the point of murderous rage. This particular Watcher however was one of the few who spoke aloud, his voice sounding so mechanical and monotone as he took notes this morning on Deku from what he remembers hearing him say to himself while checking up on him.
“Behavior today: calm. Physical appearance: tame. Mental state: looks to be bored. Anything else to note: tics are still present; not yet known if it’s a result of medication or a disorder. Subject still calls himself ‘Deku’.”
So when the Watcher decided he’d had enough of Deku’s beating on the glass, he drew a line straight across the part of his analysis that stated Deku was calm and instead wrote the word ‘erratic’ in its place.
“217!” the Watcher in a deep voice. “Knock it off!”
Deku ignored him, knowing if he were to take his anger out on the Watcher for telling him to be quiet, the consequences would be worse on Deku’s end, and continued to pound on the glass. He wanted to find out who the boy was and if this was the only way Deku could think to grab his attention, he was determined to continue. He was one of the innocents. Deku didn’t understand why or how, but he just knew. The Watcher dug around in the drawer of the desk until he pulled out a blue bottle. Deku stared down Watcher with a pill in his hand as he punched in the code to the room.
3-3-5-8-2-1-7
“No,” he whispers to himself, immediately stopping his pounding on the glass. “No! Stop! I’ll be good!”
He runs back to his favorite corner and bends his knees up into a ball as the Watcher gets closer. His body doesn’t listen to him once again and he grabs his hair and pulls instead of wrapping himself up. Watcher stops in front of him with his creased black boots and wrinkled grey pants. He crouches down to his height and forces Deku to look him in the eye by grabbing his chin.
Sighing, the Watcher let go of him and sat down.
“We go through this every time,” he whispered to the shaking boy in front of him. “I wanted an easy shift tonight. You even got to play one of your little games on the crowd.” Deku could hear him shuffling around to get comfortable. His boots let out a high pitched squeak as they shifted next to each other.
“I don’t want to sleep right now,” Deku said quietly. “I’ll be good. I’ll stay quiet.”
Watcher just sighed again, slowly and gently tipping Deku’s head up. His eyes were puffy once again and his unruly hair fell back into his face. He knew he’d have to take the pill, but he hated what it did.
“Take it.” Watcher told him as he held it out to him. “No one will do tests on you tonight if you listen and take it now.” Deku took the pill into his hands and slowly, he brought the pill up to his mouth and swallowed it as quickly as possible. He hated how it was blue but tasted like cherries.
Watcher got up to leave without a word and locked Deku’s room back up. He left the lab a few seconds later, his boots surprisingly quiet which contrasted with the way he let the door swing shut behind him loudly. Deku was so focused on the sounds that he didn’t even notice someone in front of the glass.
“Hi.”
In front of him was the boy from the shadows, now illuminated from how bright Deku’s room was. “Who the hell are you?” Deku asked. He got up from the floor and cautiously shuffled up against the glass to see the boy up close.
“I’m Number 824,” he replied smoothly. “Sorry if I scared you. I tend to scare a lot of people.”
Deku gave him a confused look. ‘Scare a lot of people. How?’ he thought to himself. “What do you mean? No one here even saw you.”
The boy brushed it off as if the question meant nothing, “I have no idea. I guess I’m just quiet.”
“Well, I’d be scared, I guess, since you’re as pale as a ghost!” Deku felt his hands shaking, dismissing it as one of his many tics. “Do you know what’s going on?” Deku asked 824 quickly. Deku wanted answers and was waiting for them for a while.
Number 824 started rocking on the balls of his feet nervously. Looking at a jittery Deku, 824 looked to be trying to assess his situation but he knew that this wasn’t the time. “I mean this building is some type of lab. Originally a school I guess,” he explained.
“They tore it down for research or something. I already knew this.” Deku recalled. He looked away, saddened, as this used to be one of the places he chose to study. “I used to study here.”
824 pointed a finger at Deku, looking him up and down from where he was now standing still once again. He was unsure why this boy had any reason to suffer in this room. There looked to be nothing wrong with him in his eyes. “You must be a favorite test subject for this kind of stuff since they’ve kept you here for so long.”
Deku gave him a look, gazing down to his bare feet. “I don’t like being here y’know. I don’t even know how I can do the things I do,” he mumbled. His voice was getting quieter and a whistle coming from him sounded softer than before as the sleeping pill was starting to kick in.
“Deku?” Number 824 asked. All he got in response was a soft ‘hmm?’ as he slid down the wall to sit on the ground. His body made a quiet impact and he had his eyes shut tight as he held himself in a ball.
“I’m not gonna ask how--” Deku interrupted himself with a cough, “how you know my name. But I suggest you get back because these sleeping pills throw me into a fit. It’s not exactly pretty.”
“No one really asks how I know the things I know.” 824 mumbled quietly while he started to walk to the Watcher’s room where the pills were kept, deciding it best to rummage around inside. He knew exactly what he was looking for and took out a syringe. “Though, telling people, that’s what got me stuck in this place.”
In his room, Deku fell to the floor in agonizing pain, clutching his stomach with his right hand and pulling his own hair with his left. He couldn't move without feeling a burning sensation within him. He was alone, stuck inside his little glass room, feeling stuck inside of his head.
“I hate this!” Deku screamed over and over, which then turned into ear-shattering screeches with each new wave of pain that washed over his body.
Deku threw his head back and his eyes started to glow a bright and eerie red hue, crackles of a bright green lightning popping off his skin to follow, and transform back to the original green color they’ve always been. 824 stayed close by the glass, looking down with hopeful eyes that things wouldn’t get too bad, but didn’t even know what ‘too bad’ entailed. His old pills did nothing like this to him. He watched as Deku’s body jerked him around and forced random sounds and screams from his mouth.
Letting out one final scream, Deku curled up into a ball that he thought would protect him from any more harm and fell asleep almost instantly from exhaustion. His cheeks were tear-stained, and sweat stuck his hair to his forehead.
As Deku slept, the faint sound of his door code being punched in and opening made him turn to face the noise, only to fall back to the ground again to sleep. Before Number 824 could reach him, he dropped what he was holding, and it tumbled to the floor with a ringing sound that should've woken the sleeping boy up. He picked up the syringe, the purple liquid inside glowing like a firefly in a dark sky. He bent down and grabbed Deku’s wrist, only to inject the mysterious substance into it, causing the sleeping boy to visibly tense up in his slumber.
Deku starts to stir awake quicker than expected, reaching up to grab onto something. His hand finds 824’s sleeve of his jacket and he grips it tightly. The quiet surrounding them didn’t last very long though as one of Deku’s Watchers, the one who just left, made his way back into the room. Deku heard the stomp of his boots come closer to the glass, the Watcher continuing to walk up to the entrance of the glass room.
The Watcher stopped and for a while didn't say anything. Deku thought he was leaving before he heard the familiar monotone voice from this morning, “824? What are you doing out of your room?”
The boys inside the glass room both stiffened at the question, 824 more so than Deku.
824 took a deep breath in and covered Deku’s ears which caused him to open his eyes and look up at him with a confused frown. 824 only smiled down at him and turned his attention to the Watcher. But instead of the calm looking eyes Deku thought he had before, they flashed a fierce yellow.
“824 was never here. Your afternoon check on subject 217 went well and you are leaving with nothing to report.” 824 instructed. Deku watched as he kept his gaze situated on the Watcher, and felt his ears warm under 824’s hands.
The Watcher blinked slowly, and repeated what was said to him. “824 was never here. My afternoon check on subject 217 went well and I am leaving with nothing to report.”
He leaves. 824 drops his hands from Deku’s ears and takes another deep breath, looking down at the now awake boy on the ground. “Sorry you had to see that. I usually don’t like to use it...whatever it is” he apologized.
Deku looked back up to face 824 with his mouth slightly ajar and wide eyes. He’d never seen anyone do anything remotely close to what he could do and now that he has,he wasn't sure how to react.
“Listen,” 824 started, his arm reaching up to hold onto the back of his neck, “I know you just woke up, and I'll watch over you, but you wanna walk with me? We both don't have to be alone anymore, okay?”
Deku was still staring at 824 in awe, but moved to sit in front of the boy to try and get the words out that were on the tip of his tongue. He was shocked to say the least and did not entirely know how to deal with the new information processing through his brain. In his groggy state, he was usually able to focus much more and keep still for a small amount of time, but right now all he could think of was a jumble of words.
“I-, but you-, he just left and-” Deku watched as a smile crept its way onto 824’s face and he couldn’t help the excited itch he felt in his hands, shaking them to get rid of it. “You're like me?” he finally whispered, tilting his head to the side like a confused child.
“We don't have much time until he comes back y'know?” 824 chuckled and put his hands over Deku’s to help try and calm them down. It didn't work. “Can I explain later?”
Deku cleared his throat, nodding his head and stood up quickly, bringing the taller boy with him. “Leave?”
824’s smile grew, mimicking Deku’s. “Yeah let's go-”
He was cut off by the sound of the doors across the room being slammed open and three Watchers marching in. The one in the middle held onto something blue in his hands. He, and the other other Watchers on each of his sides walked to face the glass door of Deku’s room. The woman to his right with dark braids in her hair reached up to punch the code in his room, letting the other two Watchers walk in with an authoritative presence radiating off of them.
The one holding the blue object, which Deku had recognized in his hands as a syringe, stepped forward, and had set his gaze on 824. “Subject 824. You are to come with us.”
Deku grabbed onto his arms and held 824 behind him, shielding him from the Watchers in front of him. “I can and will hurt you.”
The other woman, this one with a much lighter skin tone similar to the man decided to speak up. “You will get punished. Are you willing to undergo more tolerance testing?”
“I don't care,” Deku bit out, pushing 824 behind him. “He can make you leave, can he? And I don't plan on letting him leave without me so-”
Deku cut himself off, paying attention to the Watcher who had yet to come into the room, noticing her pointing to her ears and putting her finger against her lips. There was something blue just barely sticking out from her ears, and the rest of the as well.
“They wearing earplugs Deku.” 824 whispered dishearteningly.
Understanding what was about to happen, Deku turned back to the Watchers and watched on as the man moved forward, grabbing 824’s wrist, and injecting the blue liquid into his system. He scoffed at the boy and signalled to the women that they were leaving with a nod of his head.
“He can stay, it’s not my fault what happens to them,” he sighed and left the boys to themselves as he stomped back off towards where he and the other two Watchers came from.
Before Deku could truly process what was happening again, he felt 824 lean his full weight on him from behind, and slowly fell to the floor. Deku caught him just in time, carefully setting him to the ground.
As 824’s eyes looked to be getting heavier to hold up, he turned his attention to Deku, smiling softly. “By the way, I lied about my name. It’s Shinsou...Shinsou Hitoshi, code number 6-4-6-3-8-2-4.”
Deku let out a quiet snort and moved closer to his new cellmate on the floor. “I lied too. I’m Izuku, 3-3-5-8-2-1-7.”
“Well you were right,” Izuku sighed, reaching over and laying a hand down on Hitoshi’s forehead, smoothing his purple hair back. “We’re not going to be alone anymore.”