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People were mean.
Midori learned this at age seven when she saw an older kid picking on some of the younger kids between classes. She learned this when she stood up for said younger kids and ended up getting put in a psychiatric hospital because as Midori stared up at the older kid, her hands had glowed, and then they were being taken to a hospital. She learned it when she heard her parents fighting over her and when her mom suddenly disappeared the next day.
She learned this several months later when she returned to school, and all the other kids stared at her and whispered about her and avoided her. They called her things like monster and freak, and it made her cry when she got home. Her dad always got angry when she cried.
That was another thing. Midori's dad changed too. He used to be so kind before everything happened, but now he was cold. She had no idea when he changed so much. She hated it.
Her friends changed too. Her best friend stopped hanging out with her, never talked to her. At least she was never mean to her. Midori went through her school days alone, with no one daring to speak to her or even come near her. She was lonely and hated for an accident, and no one cared about what she had to say.
At the young age of seven, Midori Shinrin learned that people were cruel.
It happened again.
It was a different kid this time. They had black hair, and they were shorter than the kid they were picking on. She stepped between them.
The black-haired kid didn't like that. He yelled at her and tried to push her away to get back to the other kid, but Midori had always been stubborn. Unfortunately for her, that made him even more upset. He shouted at her and insulted her and called her names that made her eyes sting and her gut twist.
Don’t cry, she told herself. Don’t cry.
She cried.
Midori felt fat tears roll down her cheeks as the boy yelled at her, trying to shove her away. As she sobbed, she felt something in her gut tug, and suddenly the boy wasn't yelling at her anymore. She felt more than saw that flash of emerald color as she struck out. Now he was crying too, holding his arm from where she had broken it.
At the age of eleven, Midori learned that there was no redemption for someone like her.
At the age of fourteen, Midori's father decided he wasn't putting up with her anymore. He had to pay for the times she spent in psychiatric wards and the hospital bills when she accidentally hurt someone. He was tired of it. That night they yelled and screamed and argued for who knows how long before he slams the door in her face, and Midori finds herself running into the woods near the house.
She wanders. She wanders through the mossy trees and over the small creeks for minutes, or maybe hours or even days. She doesn't know. She may have also been crying.
She didn't understand why she was so sad. It wasn't like her dad was ever nice after that incident when she was seven. He was always distant, but Midori had chalked it up to him being busy. Of course, the things he had said to her made her realize that he wasn't working. Her father didn't want to be around her.
At the age of fourteen, Midori learned that no one would accept her.
Midori wasn't sure how long she walked. It could have been days. It could have been hours. By the time she came across the cave, it was dark again, and she could hear sounds all around her. Since Midori didn't fancy getting eaten alive, she ducked inside.
The cave was dark. It was hard to see in, so Midori reached for that odd feeling in her gut and pulled, creating that green glow that she had come to hate so much. The light danced across the cavern, illuminating the cold stone and revealing all sorts of individual tunnels.
That's odd, she thought. Why were there so many tunnels in one cave? Midori felt her curiosity growing. Where did they lead? Should she go down one of them? It wasn't like she had anything better to do. Or anything to do at all.
Choosing one of the many passages, she started to wander farther into the cave. Fungi littered the surface of the tunnel; no matter where she turned her head, she couldn't see a single large patch of bare stone. She reached out to touch it as she continued to walk into the cave.
Midori walked along the dark shaft, lost in her feelings. She was angry and upset; she felt betrayed. She had never meant to hurt anyone, and yet she was still thrown aside for something she had no control over. She sighed, pushing those thoughts away and focusing on the task at hand- finding out where this path led.
As she stepped further into the cave, she felt an odd sort of tug. It came deep from her gut, almost like when she was feeling anxious for a presentation. As she moved deeper and deeper into the tunnel, the twisting in her stomach got stronger. It felt like anticipation.
As the tunnel began to widen, Midori frowned. There was a faint glow coming from up ahead, where the passage rounded into a soft corner. She quickened her pace, curious as to what could be causing the mysterious light. It had a golden hue, almost like the lamps her father used to let her light on special holidays. Midori turned around the corner, and the intensity of the light skyrocketed so suddenly that she had to shield her eyes.
Trying to squint through the brightness, Midori took in her surroundings. The shaft had widened into an underground room of sorts, and in the center lay the source of the harsh golden glow. Stepping forward, she moved to grab it. It looked almost like- Paper? Why would someone leave a piece of paper down here? And why is it glowing? Paper doesn't do that!
It was hard to get a better look at the paper-looking thing, but it wasn't a book. Maybe it's a kind of advanced flashlight, Midori guessed to herself. But why would it be shaped like a sheet of paper? That seems inconvenient. Maybe that was why it was there.
Reaching forward, Midori snatched the strange paper off the ground. As soon as her fingers made contact with it, the intense light immediately cut off. Now that there wasn't a harsh glow trying to blind her, she could tell it wasn't a paper. It was a scroll, old and weathered with Japanese kanji scribbled all over it.
Well, that's even weirder, she thought. Was the scroll haunted? Midori had never actually believed in the ghosts and beasts from the childrens' stories her mother used to tell her, but she had never thought that paper could glow too. The writing was a deep gold color, and the edges of the parchment were yellowing and curling in on themselves.
Luckily for Midori, her father was Japanese, and he had taught her how to read kanji. The writing spelled out several strange techniques and instructions, with drawings of- a fan? The ink designs looked like some fan created entirely out of crystals. Midori frowned, squinting at the sketches. There wasn't anything supporting the fan blades, just four diamond-shaped crystals floating around a rhombus centerpiece. It was a strange-looking fan, and probably not just for show. Words were scribbled near the pictures, suggesting how to use the fan.
That was another thing. The kanji for Tessenjutsu - the iron fan technique- was written near the top of the page. Midori knew enough about Japanese culture to remember that it was a fighting style that involved a fan, which suggested that this strange fan was also a weapon.
The thing that struck Midori as odd was that said fan was nowhere in sight. She scanned her eyes over the cavern, but all she could see was more fungus. Why would someone leave instructions on how to use the fan without leaving the fan itself?
Confused and a bit unsatisfied, Midori rolled up the parchment and shoved it in her hoodie pocket. She would have more time to go over the strange scroll later. Right now, her stomach was growling, and she was getting tired. With one last glance around the cave, she turned and started to trek back along the tunnel that had led her there. The scroll seemed to weigh down her pocket, and as she walked out of the cave, she felt the anger she had been trying so hard to suppress filling her lungs. She was angry at her father and the kids that had jeered at her in school. She was angry at the people that flaunted their status like they hadn't just been born into it.
She wasn't sure if the paper in her pocket had some spell on it, but when she stepped into the moonlight, she felt conviction and a strong sense of justice rise in her gut and mix with the already festering rage in there. She would do something about her society- she would fix it no matter what.
At the age of fourteen, Midori learned it was okay to be angry.
Several months later, someone new appeared. They hopped from place to place around the city, taking down people who had money, power, and fame. Those too caught up in their glory met a quick end - at the hands of a white-haired woman with a black mask and a crystal fan the color of a deep forest.
