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Hitoshi was five when he realized how broken the world is.
Blue hair taken care of, an innocent smile, everything was okay. Now, he lives to prove every person from all those years ago wrong, for him and everyone else.
Strangely, Hitoshi used to be a talkative person, very different from who he is now. He could have talked all day, with the spark in his eyes. Lovingly expressive.
Hitoshi always used to look up to heroes. That was what he would be one day. He wanted to help others with whatever quirk he would end up with. That is why he was so excited the day he got his quirk.
Her name was Airi and she was his friend. She looked like a friend. She had light brown hair that went down to her shoulders and a smile that would cheer just about anyone up.
“Airi, should I do it?” He asked. They were at a small playground near both of their homes, standing at the top of the structure. Hitoshi was smart, but he wanted to know what would happen if you jumped off. He asked that question slightly jokingly, and Airi understood.
“Yeah, sure,” she said sarcastically. “If you want to die.”
Hitoshi laughed but at the moment, something changed. He felt a strange feeling in his stomach, although he played it off as nothing. After all, he was having too much fun.
“Well then, how about you do it?” He said, matching her sarcastic tone.
He looked back at his friend and something was different about her as well. Airi stared into the distance and her eyes looked smaller in a way, as if she wasn’t real at that moment.
Airi ended up jumping off. The playground wasn’t very high, so she should have been fine. Hitoshi was still worried about her. He rushed down and helped her stand up. After that, she wouldn’t do anything.
“Airi? Are you okay?” Hitoshi was starting to get worried. What happened to his friend? Had the fall hurt her mind? He shouldn’t have done that.
But she just stayed silent and stood. Hitoshi decided to brush off the dirt on her legs. She was okay. After all, she didn’t fall, she jumped. Then why was she like this?
“Airi?” He started to get desperate. “Answer me!” He yelled.
“I’m alright.” Airi responded, though no emotion stood through those eyes.
He was immediately relieved.
He climbed up the playground structure once again, ready to start having fun again. His friend didn’t follow.
“Airi! Come up here!” He yelled, slightly annoyed by now. “If this is a prank, stop it!”
She met him absent-mindedly. She still wouldn’t make eye contact as she usually did. Hitoshi looked straight into her distant eyes.
“Did that fall hurt you?” He asked while joking, although half of him thought this was true. He slightly knocked her on her head. Suddenly she was back to her normal self. Her pupils filled her eyes once again, and she looked confused more than anything.
“What happened…?” She asked, in a slightly confused and dazed state.
“Why’d you jump? That fall must have hurt you pretty badly… You weren’t acting normal…”
Airi just stared at him. “I didn’t jump.”
“Yes you did, Airi!”
“It’s alright, Shinsou. Although, I feel a little strange right now…”
It wasn’t until the next day he realized he might have gotten his quirk. At school, he did a similar thing with one of his classmates. He was furious and assumed Hitoshi used his quirk against him. Hitoshi tried to respond, “But I don’t even have a quirk–” And he realized he really did.
His face lit up. He was so excited to have a quirk, he didn’t really care about what it was. He didn’t even exactly know what it was. He was just so happy at the possibility that he could be a hero.
That day, when he got home, he immediately told the news to his mother.
“Mom! Mom! Guess what?”
His mother responded and he accidentally set off his quirk again. He panicked and tried anything to get her back to normal. Clever Hitoshi realized his ‘victim’ would only do something when he asked them.
“Please, Mom! Go back to normal!” He hoped this would erase the effects. To top it off, he hit her, the same as he did with Airi. He was very relieved when she returned to normal.
“Hitoshi… What did you do? Why are you crying?” Hitoshi sat in his mother’s arms.
“I’m sorry, Mom…” He said, in between slowly calming sobs. “I accidentally used my quirk against you, I think.”
“It’s alright, Hitoshi,” she said. “But, since when did you have a quirk?”
“Since today! I mean, yesterday?”
His mother smiled. “Tell me all about it.” And he did. He told her about the encounter with Airi, about how he could control her, about how he had to hit her to get her back to normal. He told her about how asking a question must have started it. He thought he had figured out his quirk, and he was so happy he got a cool and powerful quirk.
His mother looked afraid, for just a second. Then she went back to normal. Thoughts and worries ran through her mind: Hitoshi had managed to control her so easily, she didn’t remember a single thing, he could do this without anyone realizing, had he done it before? What was really his fault? But she hid this whole plethora of feelings. It’s alright. Her son would never.
Would he?
“How about you go to sleep now, ‘Toshi?” She said in a soothing tone. Really, she didn’t want to worry him. Hitoshi peacefully slept while his mother stayed awake. Really, she knew her child was a good kid. But with the power he now had… it might not have stayed that way. People would get angry, he would get angry, even at that cute and innocent face. People can’t see past what made him different. But was it really that far away to blame him for something? With a quirk like that… you could never tell what he did.
He could have lived a manipulative life right before her distant eyes.
The next day, Hitoshi woke up to the bright sun in his eyes. He sleepily opened his eyes, then remembered the previous events of yesterday. He shot awake in excitement. He had to tell all his friends.
He changed his clothes and brushed his teeth, getting ready to go to school. He grabbed his schoolbag and met his parents downstairs. They were talking to each other in a different room, and he could only hear part of the conversation.
“Dangerous… Can’t control… Powerful… Someone will get hurt…”
Hitoshi’s heart broke when he heard his name in the conversation. He realised they were really talking about him. He wasn’t dangerous.
“Mom? Dad?”
They immediately became silent for a second. After that, he could hear their voices once again through the closed doors.
“I’ll tell him,” the voice of his father said.
“You don’t have to! It’s alright! Hitoshi is a good kid…”
“And how do you know that?”
Hitoshi tried calling out again. “Can you come out?”
They stayed silent.
“He just… He just asked a question, dammit. Don’t answer him, no matter what,” his father said, slightly… fearful? At that moment, the doors opened. His father came out with a stern expression. Looking inside the room, his mother looked worried.
“Hitoshi… Uh, you’re not going to school today, or until you can control your quirk. Alright? It’s dangerous.”
“I’m not dangerous!” Hitoshi shouted. “What’s so wrong with my quirk? My classmates got to go to school after they got their quirks.”
“There’s nothing wrong with—” He stopped himself. Under his breath, he muttered, “Damn you, Hitoshi.” His eyes went small. Hitoshi panicked.
“No!! Dad!! I– I didn’t mean to!!” He cried. Even the clever Hitoshi couldn’t calm himself once again. Then, his mother walked in the room with an annoyed expression on her face.
“Hitoshi. You know you can’t ask questions.”
“But… Why– I mean, um, I’ll control my quirk!”
She sighed. “No you can’t. You’ll just hurt more people, like your father.” Her face looked sympathetic, but he saw through it. She really was mad. Hitoshi managed to un-brainwash his father, and from that moment, everyone looked at him differently.
Did everyone always suffer this much when they first got their quirks? Or was it just him that was a ‘bad’ child? He vowed that he would never ask a question again. Yeah, it would be easy. Just like that. Everything would go back to normal again. Then he would use his super cool quirk to defeat villains. Yeah! It would be amazing!
Hitoshi was all alone in his room, sitting on his bed. He was feeling down. His parents looked really mad, but would they get angry if they used his quirk again? He couldn’t help it..!
He got up and looked at himself in the mirror. Tears were already welling up in his eyes. How could he be a bad kid? How could he hurt people…?
Then he realized, all he ever did was hurt people. He sank down and wished and wished that his quirk could be normal. That he could be normal. He had to earn forgiveness and to change. He sat in his room for a couple more minutes, thinking about whether he should face his parents again. He could hear loud noises from the rest of his house. He periodically got up and opened the door a few inches, then sank right back.
Hitoshi eventually gathered the courage to open the door and face them.
“You know, if he asks more questions… Until he can control himself… We should get one of these for him.”
“What?! Please don’t! It’ll hurt him.”
“It’s what is needed. Come on, it’s for the best of him too.”
“...Will it really be fine?”
“Yes, of course! It won’t hurt him, if that’s what you’re thinking. I’ve seen people use these all the time when I was a child. It’ll be fine.”
Tension hung in the room. They didn’t even notice little Hitoshi standing in the room; they were talking about him as if he wasn’t there.
“I’m sorry,” a small, broken voice spoke. Hitoshi looked down at the ground.
“See, now you’ve made him cry,” his mother said, so that she thought only his father could hear.
“Please, will you forgive me–?” He didn’t think much of the comment at first.
“Again with those damn questions!” His father snapped. He yelled right in his face and pulled on his blue hair for a split second; It was slightly ruined. “I told you, you can’t control yourself!”
Hitoshi started full on sobbing.
“You’re crying? All you can do is cry! Cry and manipulate and get us to answer your questions, and as soon as you’ve got us, your tears will dry!” He shouted. Hitoshi couldn’t say anything. His father continued, in a quieter voice, “I’m ordering the device right now. He needs discipline.”
“I’m sorry!” He sobbed. “I didn’t mean to!” He turned to his mother.
“Just… go to your room…” she said. He wasn’t controlling her, but her face still looked cold and distant. He followed the instruction, even though he didn’t want to.
In that room, Hitoshi thought. He thought a lot. He really couldn’t stop his tears from crying. Even if he didn’t mean to… maybe he was secretly manipulating everyone around him..! Even his quirk agreed. He could be a better person if he accepted this discipline…
But the other part of himself was angry. Very angry. He was a good kid. His father was wrong. He wanted to prove him wrong, and to earn his love, and forget about it all, and make everything okay. Without his quirk. He would become a hero. No matter what anyone thought. But could he… really?
He didn’t even bother to comb his ruined hair. He was going to be a bad kid no matter what. No hairstyle would change that. At this point, he didn’t really care. He stayed there for hours, and his anger built up.
His father opened the door to a brooding Hitoshi lying in his bed. He held a strange device with a grid made of metal and straps attached to it.
“Wear this,” he said with no sympathy in his voice.
Hitoshi snapped. “I won’t wear this! You’re keeping me in a control I don’t need! What makes you so convinced I’m going to use my quirk for bad, anyways?” He covered his mouth at the last sentence, realizing he’d asked a question again even though he didn’t mean to and was just talking without thinking. He tried to stop the tears from flowing out of him but he knew he wouldn’t get forgiveness. Quirks were serious business.
“Wear it, dammit!!” He grabbed onto him and pushed him onto the floor to keep him still. Hitoshi fought back but he still got the behavioral device on. It was tight. Really tight. He couldn’t move his jaw to talk. It hurt a little just to swallow. Of course, he couldn’t fight back.
“That’s not coming off until you’ve learnt your lesson. No. More. Questions. I know you’re smart Hitoshi, and I don’t know what you’ve been doing behind my back. It’s for your own good.”
Hitoshi made a mmm! sort of sound while trying to talk, and gave up. The door locked and he was all alone with just his thoughts. Someone looked at him through the window. But he ended up walking away. Yeah, no one wanted to see a kid being punished. Hitoshi closed the blinds out of embarrassment.
He thought about what his classmates had to go through when they got their quirks. Did they get punished just like this? If so, he hated quirks for just causing suffering.
His parents said that he only caused suffering with his quirk. But, he didn’t want that to be very true for long. He was going to be a hero. This was just a bad start with a bad quirk.
In those hours, his device was only removed for eating dinner. He didn’t dare say anything, not one sassy remark that ran through his head. His mother stared at him with a worried expression. He looked back at her, and she turned away.
It was put on again to sleep, so that he ‘wouldn’t cause trouble while his parents were asleep’. He would never! He was so angry, angry at the world.
He couldn’t sleep that night. The device hurt too much. It pulled his jaws tight. He couldn’t adjust for comfort. He couldn’t even get up to drink water. Maybe he couldn’t control himself. But that didn’t mean he had to go through all this. Maybe, just maybe, he considered turning sides for just a moment. In the end, he decided against it. He would control himself. He would be a good kid. He would become a hero, no matter what anyone else thought.
He was Hitoshi Shinsou. His hair was messy. That face eventually became not innocent, after days and weeks of the same thing. He became angrier. He recalled various points of his life that people were scared of his quirk, even if they didn’t mean to. But he would prove them wrong.
He would prove them all wrong.