Chapter Text
The first time Izuku had seen someone of the more unearthly kind was when he was seven. It was on a rainy September day when the second-grade elementary children had been brought to the park to play and experiment with their quirks as their primary teacher was ill. Whilst all the others played amongst themselves under the shelter of umbrellas brought by staff, Izuku sat alone having long been ousted from the friendship group he’d previously been accepted by as soon as they’d found out he would never develop a quirk .
Izuku stared at the dirt underneath his shoes, moving his feet in circles and forming mud from the dust and rain. He liked the rain and always felt somewhat happier when it was raining but little did he know that this was due to the veil being thinner when it rained and the spirits close . After a few minutes, Izuku could feel eyes staring at him so he decided to move away from the bench he was sitting on to instead walk over to the tree where nobody was and where he wouldn’t get in the way of anyone.
However, when Izuku reached the tree, he saw another boy there once he tilting up the rim of his hat to let him see where the roots of the tree were so he wouldn’t trip over on them. The boy was unfamiliar to him with large blue eyes, pale skin and white-blond hair; someone who looked so foreign that he was sure he would have remembered if he had seen them before. He was crying, legs curled up to his chest where he sat in the thick roots of the tree, holding something in his hands above his knees as he stared into the distance.
For some reason, Izuku felt drawn to him so he reached out and touched him on the shoulder, hoping that the boy wouldn’t be like the others in his class. The boy jumped slightly, lowering his legs slightly and angling his hands in a way which Izuku could see what he was holding. Clasped in his hands was a light blue plastic ball, the kind that Izuku had seen before in the shops, cheap and widely made for anyone who desired them.
“Hi?” Izuku questioned, shuffling closer to the boy and inwardly smiling as the boy relaxed further, the tears dribbling down his cheeks slowing to a halt.
“Hi,” The boy echoed back, his voice sounding strange to Izuku in a way which he would soon come to know as the way that spirits sounded when communicating to him from the beyond .
Izuku decided to sit down next to him on one of the tree’s large roots which poked out of the ground. “What’s wrong?” He decided to whisper back to the other as whenever he was sad, he wished that someone would come along and ask him what was wrong and cheer him up. The boy didn’t respond for a long time, instead, wiping away his tears and fiddling with the ball. Izuku remained silent, partially worried that he had scared the boy away by asking him the question.
“It’s nothing you can help me with.” The boy eventually responded in a whisper as he stood up. This was when Izuku noticed how he wasn’t wearing a raincoat and nor was he carrying an umbrella. Instead, the boy’s clothes were soaked and his hair was plastered to his head. After thinking it over for a minute or two, Izuku took off his hat and placed it on the other’s head once he’d stood up and faced the other boy, attempting to stop the boy from getting soaked further.
Izuku beamed at him. “Can I play with you for a little bit?” He questioned, wondering whether he had managed to find himself a friend, someone who wasn’t obsessed or driven by quirks and quirks alone , usually by now they would have asked him what his quirk was . The boy stared at him for a moment before looking down at the ball in his hands. As he looked back up at Izuku, the left side of the boy’s mouth quirked up slightly as he smiled faintly at the green-haired boy before nodding.
“If I throw the ball, will you get it for me?” The boy questioned, his grasp on the ball loosening. Izuku nodded his head frantically as his grin widened, backing away so that there was enough room for the boy to throw the ball and so he could catch it. Pausing for a moment, the boy stared back down at the ball, as if he was wondering whether he really wanted to throw it or maybe if he really wanted to play with Izuku in general before he tossed it towards Izuku, overshooting and causing the ball to fly over Izuku’s head, settling into the dirt close to the bench where Izuku had been sitting before.
Immediately Izuku turned around to run and get the ball. ‘I’ve finally made a friend!’ He cheered internally before turning back around to face his new friend, having picked up the ball that had been thrown. When he turned around, the boy was no longer there and shortly after the ball in his hand turned to sludge before being washed away by the rain.
Izuku felt hurt. He felt like how he’d felt when his previous friends abandoned him. He thought that maybe this time it would have been different, he hadn’t mentioned his quirk, he didn’t think that he’d pressured the other boy into anything and he thought that he was doing okay, that maybe this time he would stick around for longer than a minute. Trudging back to the tree, Izuku sat down on the root of the tree, waiting there until his classmates were called to go back to the school. He followed behind the staff and other pupils, knowing that he was an exception to the group and that it didn’t matter whether he was with them or behind them as the staff would always count him as away. By the time Izuku got home, he’d almost forgotten about the other boy, brushing him off as someone created by another’s quirk to trick him.
It was later that night when Izuku was sleeping that a police report was released and television stations broadcast a story.
‘We’ve had some very sad news tonight. Earlier today a six-year-old boy was found dead in the Edo River in the Chiba prefecture. It is believed that he was accidentally knocked into the river on his way home from school after it closed early due to a villain attack. His death was incredibly tragic and a reminder of how we need to look out for all members of the public, regardless of whether or not there is a villain nearby. Yukio Yuu was a quirkless boy with blue eyes and blonde hair, originally arriving from Fra-’