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He was born screaming.
And they never let him forget it.
“You didn’t cry like a baby,” his mother liked to remind him. “You howled. Like the world owed you something.”
At seven years old, Katsuki Bakugou knew better than to speak when she had that look in her eyes—wide, twitching, like the whites were straining to escape her skull.
He stood in the center of the kitchen, knees locked, throat tight. His party hat drooped to the side like a broken crown. There were no balloons. The decorations peeled off the wall with every humid breath. The cake sat under the flickering ceiling light, lopsided and sweating, its frosting bleeding into the sponge.
No one had come.
Because of course they hadn’t.
“You drive people away,” Mitsuki snapped, her words venomous. “It’s embarrassing. Not a single brat showed up. Not one. What, did you threaten them? Burn them like you did that hamster?”
Masaru snorted from the corner, swigging from his bottle. “Wouldn’t surprise me.”
Katsuki shook his head. “I didn’t—”
SLAP.
His face snapped sideways. Cheek burning. Ears ringing.
“Don’t talk back!” Mitsuki shrieked. “You’re always talking back. Always exploding. Can’t keep your damn hands to yourself. What the fuck is wrong with you?!”
He trembled, heat sparking at the base of his palms.
“I didn’t mean to—”
“Didn’t mean to kill Deku’s rabbit either, did you?” Masaru slurred. “Still dead though, huh?”
The room tilted.
No. Not the room. His vision.
Reality slipping.
His heart thundered like a fuse winding up. All he wanted was to blow out his candles. Eat one piece of cake. Be told one nice thing. Something human. Something soft.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered.
Mitsuki’s laugh was a crack in the floor.
“Sorry?” she hissed. “Sorry?! That doesn’t fucking CUT it, Katsuki. You don’t even deserve to be alive if this is what you are.”
Then she was dragging him. Nails like claws, digging into his arm. Toward the hallway. Toward the door with the four locks.
The closet.
“No, no—PLEASE—I’ll be good, I swear, please don’t lock me in there again—”
The air around him hissed. The temperature spiked.
The candles on the cake shivered.
Sparks crawled up his arms like insects. Flickers. Pulses. A rhythm.
boom-BOOM boom-BOOM
Thump.
The cake hit the floor.
The candles stayed lit.
Mitsuki turned. Masaru blinked.
And the flames leapt.
⸻
Fire doesn’t scream.
People do.
It began as a flicker. But it wanted more.
The curtains caught first. Then the tablecloth. Then her hair. Mitsuki shrieked, spinning, clawing, her face disappearing behind an angry mask of light.
Masaru tried to douse her—his hands slapped her shoulders, his voice slurring half-prayers, half-accusations.
“Look what you fucking did, Katsuki—LOOK WHAT YOU DID!”
But the fire crawled into his mouth. Down his throat. He gurgled as he fell, eyes boiling in their sockets. Skin peeling like wax paper.
Katsuki backed into the wall. The flames didn’t chase him.
They danced.
They curled around him like old friends, whispering things in a crackling language.
They made you.
They called you a monster.
So be one.
He screamed. But the sound was thin. Weak.
Because something was laughing beneath the fire. A voice that wasn’t his mother. Or his father. Or his own.
The laughter echoed in his bones.
⸻
He got out.
Stumbled barefoot into the street, covered in soot, reeking of death and smoke and birthday cake. Neighbors opened their doors, drawn by the sirens and the burning sky.
They found him standing there.
Blank-faced.
Staring.
Behind him, the house shrieked. Not from the fire—but from something inside the fire.
Like it was alive.
⸻
The police blamed trauma.
Too young. Too scared. “Accidental quirk discharge.” No charges filed.
But Katsuki didn’t sleep.
He couldn’t sleep.
Because every time he closed his eyes, he saw the fire blink at him.
He smelled the cake.
He heard his mother’s voice, slurred and sizzling:
You don’t deserve to live.
And behind that voice was another:
But you will.
Long enough to burn everything else too.
⸻
Years later, at U.A., he keeps a lighter in his drawer.
Not because he needs it.
Just to see the flame.
To ask it a question.
And sometimes, late at night, it answers.
With the smell of scorched skin.
And the words:
Happy Birthday, Katsuki.