Chapter Text
Being different is never easy. It’s a weight you learn to carry before you can name it. Being different is like wearing a coat that will never fit; heavy, itchy and impossible to take off. I feel it in the way people look at me, the silence that fills the air after I speak, the way my thoughts never quite match anyone else's. I have always been different; I still am.
I used to be normal, well as normal as someone like me could be. I wasn’t popular so to say, but I had friends. People would wave and smile as they walked by, greet me good morning and ask about my day. It was simple. It was enough.
It changed when I turned seven. I was the only person in my class without a quirk. It didn’t matter that Sato Kanami in class C, or Yamatomo Yuriin in class A, hadn’t had their quirks emerge yet either. They were pretty: small, delicate, the kind of girls whose tears summoned immediate sympathy. But I wasn’t pretty. I wasn’t. I was a stain on their perfect image, tan-skinned, round-faced, my words edged with a soft English lilt. I wasn’t like them.
I didn't have beauty or status to hide behind. I was the chubby girl without a quirk. Every time my name was called, the room would tilt, a quiet pause that was filled with snarky giggles and hateful eyes, searching for the quirk that wasn’t there. Their laughter felt like glass; sharp, glittering, and impossible to touch. So I learned early that pity was a currency I couldn’t afford. So I built my own armour, forged with silence and stubborn pride. Two years passed, and every day I waited, for a spark, a sign, something, anything, to prove I wasn’t broken.
I was nine when my quirk emerged. It wasn’t quiet. Not like my classmates whose quirks bloomed with the grace of a swan. Mine screamed and tore through me like a storm, violent and unstoppable. My own tempest.
I remember it vividly. The classroom smelled faintly of chalk and disinfectant. Afternoon light spilled through the windows, warm and harmless, until it wasn’t.
I sat at my desk that was covered in small etchings of insults. My hands clenched tightly around my pencil, trying to ignore the whispers that weren't really whispers. They wanted me to hear. No quirk freak. I’d die of embarrassment if I was her. Maybe she should just die.
The words had weight, pressing against my ribs until I could barely breathe. Then, something shifted.
It started as a pressure, a knot of heat blooming beneath my sternum. My heartbeat thundered, too loud, too fast. The air thickened, vision blurred.
“Stop it,” I whispered, though I didn’t know who I was speaking to.
My friend, Shimizu Rika, the only one who ever smiled at me, reached out. “Hey, are you okay?”
That touch broke something.
The pressure exploded outward. A scream tore from her throat, but it wasn’t sound, it was substance. Dark, pulsating masses erupted from her mouth and skin, splattering across the floor like living tar. They writhed, shuddered, then launched outward. Her eyes widened.
The blobs struck, bursting in a psychic shockwave that rippled through the room. Desks flipped. Glass shattered. The laughter stopped.
The world went silent except for the wet sound of the masses dissolving, leaving behind faint, weeping wounds on her arms and chest. I could feel it. Not just see it. The terror I’d inflicted. It crawled through my veins. Writhing under my skin whispering her fear back into my mind in rapid pulses. I tried to move. My limbs felt heavy, hollow, all I could feel, see, taste, hear was fear. Soul gripping, mind crumbling fear. The warmth inside me had turned to ice.
When the teachers rushed in, they didn’t see a frightened child. They saw a monster.
I don’t remember much after that. The world blurred into screams and shouts. Heroes came, young, bright, burning with a kind of hope that shimmered too clean against the wreckage. It was hard to tell whether that light was ignorance or mercy.
They wrapped me up. Tightly. Whether for comfort or restraint, I’m still unsure. Thick reels of blanket cocooned me against the crumbled wall, the fallout of my own making. Heroes hovered over me, their voices soft and rehearsed, trying to placate me with words of comfort and reassurance. It’ll all be okay. It was just an accident. You’ll be okay.
My parents came next, faces pale, eyes hollow. Muttered curses slipping between their lips of pity and shielded disgust. My Mother could hardly look at me. She was already disappointed in me, although she would never admit so. Her gaze trembled with rancorous distaste, a revulsion she couldn’t hide. I could feel it. In the way she looked at me, the way they all looked at me. Beneath the veils of empathy lay pure, unbridled fear. The same kind Shimizu felt, I felt.
They didn't mention her. Shimizu. Maybe they thought the silence would spare me. Maybe they thought I was scared. I wasn’t scared though. I didn’t feel anything. Couldn’t. So I stayed, wrapped in dirty, tear soaked cloth, an unwanted monster that even a mother couldn't love.
A Visceral Rejection.
The bathroom light flickered, a tired pulse. Steam curled around the fractured mirror, softening the edges of her reflection until she almost looked human. Almost.
I lean closer to the mirror. The girl staring back wasn’t the one I remembered. Her skin was ashy in tone where it used to be warm, her eyes ringed with shadows that never faded. Faint scars traced her collarbone, reminders of the damage she'd done, the damage she could never take back.
I traced her scars, lightly, gently. It pulsed faintly, like something was alive beneath the surface.
Eight years had passed. Eight years since what happened in that classroom. Eight years of containment, therapy, then containment again and whispered warnings. Don't get upset. Don't lose control. Don't be dramatic. You know what happens if you feel too much. Don't feel too much.
I’ve learned to smile when people ask if she was ‘better’. We’d learned to lie.
The mirror fogged again, and for a moment, a flicker of a dark shadow crossed behind her, me, us. The reflections lips twitched before I did. I froze.
My breath caught. I could feel it again. The pressure. I have spent years trying to forget that day, but the mirror never did. She never did. It remembered every scream, every shard of glass, every ounce of fear.
I hoped. I hoped for a dangerous thing. That maybe, just maybe, in another universe I’d still be that smiling girl. Maybe in another universe. Maybe in another universe, I’m still a child, blissfully ignorant to the storm of pain and terror that shimmers beneath my skin. Maybe in another universe…
But why can't it be this one?