Chapter Text
Hisaki wouldn’t say she had a hard childhood per se. Her mother loved her as much as possible even if Hisaki never saw her for more than a few days at a time. Naomi watched her almost daily and her family friends came over whenever they didn’t have school.
No as a young girl, she didn’t even notice that mommy and daddy didn’t sleep in the same bed. Not even when they were both home, as rare as that was. She didn’t notice that all the other kids parents would drive them to school and pack their lunch and kissed them goodbye. Even if she did it wouldn’t have mattered, she had Naomi and Leiko and Nobu and Yasashiku.
However, when she was around five she had noticed that all of the friends she had at school were getting quirks. Fire, horns, hypnosis, weather control, you name it. Hisaki felt like she was being left behind. One day while watching a movie, she decided to ask Naomi about it.
“Mimi? Why don’t I have a quirk yet?” Hisaki asks in a timid voice.
“Oh honey, it just hasn’t shown up yet. Just have a bit of patience some quirks are subtler than others. Maybe you just have your mom’s quirk or a variation on it.” Naomi suggested not even bothered. It was likely that Hisaki was just a late bloomer or hadn’t been in the right circumstance to discover her quirk yet.
Even so, every day grew longer when she still didn’t have her quirk. Some days Sunako would take Hisaki with her to the park along with her own kids. Yasashiku would often lead the charge into the woods surrounding the park, for the purposes of conquering whatever evil they were fighting in the games they would play.
The games would last all day until they managed to find whatever treasure they were looking for. Used to worry the parents but kids always came home in one piece. Most of the time exploring the woods was enough for Hisaki she could spend hours trudging through. Finding the unfindable, maybe discovery was her quirk.
Some days, however, she longed to help out in the quest. Nobu would lift the rock covering the secret treasure with his mind, Leiko pretended to mind control the bad guys, and Yasashiku would shrink to get to any hard to reach places. If only she could do that.
As the months went on, Hisaki tried everything in her power to discover. No plants began to grow from her hair. Tears would only exasperate her father. People would lie and she couldn’t know for sure. Telekinesis and mind control clearly wasn’t going to happen any time soon. She couldn’t shrink or grow.
Her hope had begun to worn thin just as others noticed her lack of quirk.
It all fell apart one day when she went to school
“Nakajima,” A young girl, Hino, called out to her.
“What?” Hisaki responds turning to the girl. Two others stood next to the girl on either side.
“Do you have a quirk yet?”
“No, not yet, but I think I almost got it.”
“We’re six, my daddy says that anyone who doesn’t have a quirk right isn’t gonna get one, never ever,” one of the other girls claims with her hands on her hips.
Hisaki opened her mouth in an attempt to defend herself before she was interrupted by Hino.
“Guys, that means she's one of those quirkless freaks,” Hino giggles before pushing Hisaki to the ground. “Wow, maybe that’s why you're so weird. If you didn’t have any friends before then you definitely won’t have any now. No one wants to be friends with a freak.”
Hisaki was confused. The word quirkless seemed familiar but appeared to be calling a blank.
School that day was hard. People were whispering about her. No one wanted to be her carpet buddy until the teacher forced one of them to.
The boy she had ended up being partnered up with was, for lack of a better term, an asshole. He spends the entirety of circle time pulling her hair and flicking her arm. She was so upset when she got home that when Naomi asked how her day was she burst into tears.
“Honey, what’s wrong?” she asks, her smile transforming into a look of concern.
“Hino came up to me and told me that if I didn’t have my quirk yet I was never gonna get one, never ever,” she sobbed, “Everyone kept whispering about me and calling me a quirkless freak.”
Naomi hugged her tightly, attempting to comfort the crying child. She was right, after all, a majority of quirks would just appear randomly between the ages of four and six. There was a couple that would appear in life or death situations, those would often lead to the misdiagnosis of quirklessness but it was more likely that she simply did not possess a quirk.
Which was a horror to Naomi. When she was in elementary school, she had seen kids without quirks bullied all the time. Hell, she may not have been proud of it but she did engage in that type of behavior from time to time. Now the little girl who she saw as a sister would be harassed daily by her peers for something she can’t control.
What a cruel world this is.
Hisaki’s friends were the next to know. While she had made a valiant effort to never be in a situation where it was brought up, sometimes kids are just curious.
It was when Nobu shook a tree while in the woods when Yasashiku finally asked her why she hadn’t used her quirk yet.
“Hey Saki, why haven’t you showed us you're quirk yet? Most kids get it by now right?” the eleven-year-old asked. It was a question of genuine curiosity without malicious intent so when Hisaki burst into tears his shock was written all over his face.
“Well, there you go jackass you made her cry,” Leiko criticized, rolling her eyes.
“Hey don’t swear around Hisaki, actually don’t swear at all,” her twin said.
In response, she flipped him off. Nobu made a face of offense and was about to respond when Yasashiku spoke up.
“Hey shut up,” he turns his attention to Hisaki, “What did I say to hurt your feelings cause I didn’t mean to.”
“You still hurt her feelings dumbass,”
“Leiko you are not helping and stop swearing, you're eight.”
Hisaki finally looks up and begins to explain why what he said made her cry.
“I don’t got a quirk and the kids at school say I ain't ever gonna get a quirk,” she sniffed her eyes still damp and threatening to spill over. She looks back up. “Sashi, they said I’m a freak.”
“You're not a freak,” he proclaims, “You're just different.”
“Isn’t that just what nice people call freaks?”
“No, you are a beautiful little girl and anyone who says otherwise will have to go through us,” Nobu pipes, standing tall next to his sister.
“Hell yeah!”
“Language, Leiko.”
Aina found out about her own daughters quirklessness from Sunako. She’s not mad that her daughter doesn’t have a quirk. She’s mad that she knows the effect that it will have on her life. She remembers her own quirkless mother and what some would say to her.
It really was a curse to be quirkless in this world but that is the one that Hisaki will find herself growing up in.
Oh and Kiyoshi, what would he say if he found out?
Aina would not only have to shield her daughter from the world but from her own father. Nothing was going right in her life anymore.
When she put Hisaki to sleep that night, she reminded her of something she wanted to make sure she would never forget.
“You know I’ll never abandon you right?”
“Of course not, you're my mommy so you love me very much.”
“That’s right baby,” Aina cooed before turning off the lights.
From that day forward Aina told herself one little lie that she knew deep down wasn’t true. Even if she needed it to be.
It will all be okay.