What if deku was neglected by his family

 

The clinical smell of antiseptic and cold, sterile rubbing alcohol would forever be etched into Izuku Midoriya’s memory. It was the scent of the exact moment his universe stopped expanding and began to collapse in on itself.

 

He was four years old, sitting on a crinkly paper-lined examination table in a pediatrician's office in Musutafu. His legs, far too short to reach the ground, swung back and forth in a nervous, excited rhythm. In his small, chubby hands, he clutched a limited-edition All Might action figure—the one in the Silver Age costume with the poseable arms. He squeezed the plastic hero so tightly his knuckles turned white. Today was the day. Today, he was going to find out how he would save the world.

 

His mother, Inko, sat in the chair next to him, her hands clasped in her lap. She looked nervous, but she always looked a little nervous.

 

Dr. Tsubasa entered the room. He was a round man with a bald head and a bushy mustache, wearing thick goggles that magnified his eyes into dark, unreadable pools. He didn't carry a clipboard; instead, he held a single, illuminated X-ray slide.

 

He didn't smile. He didn't offer a gentle preamble. He just clipped the X-ray to the light board on the wall, the fluorescent bulb snapping on with a sharp, electric buzz.

 

"You should probably give it up," Dr. Tsubasa said.

 

The words didn't register at first. Izuku blinked his large, emerald eyes, looking from the doctor to his mother. He expected a joke, a pivot, a grand reveal. Give what up?

 

Dr. Tsubasa tapped a thick finger against the ghostly white bones of the X-ray. It was an image of a foot. Izuku’s foot. "It’s a basic evolutionary trait," the doctor explained, his voice devoid of any bedside manner. "When Quirks first began appearing, researchers found a correlation with the anatomy of the foot. Specifically, the pinky toe. Humans who evolved to develop Quirks lacked the extra joint in this toe—a streamlined evolution for a changing species."

 

He turned to face them, his magnified eyes locking onto Inko, who had suddenly gone very, very still.

 

"Izuku has two joints. It’s a relic of an older, Quirkless humanity. He has no Quirk factor. He will never develop a Quirk. I’m sorry, Mrs. Midoriya, but the boy is Quirkless."

 

The silence that followed was absolute. It was a heavy, suffocating thing that seemed to suck the oxygen from the room. Izuku looked down at his All Might figure. The hero’s painted-on smile seemed suddenly mocking. Give it up. The words echoed in his small head, bouncing against the walls of his skull.

 

He didn't cry then. He was too young to fully comprehend the sheer, crushing permanence of biology. But he felt the shift in the room. He felt it in the way his mother didn't reach out to hold his hand. He felt it in the way her breathing turned shallow and rapid, her eyes fixing onto the linoleum floor as if the tiles held the secrets of the universe.

 

The ride home was a suffocating vacuum. The sky outside the train window was a brilliant, oblivious blue, but inside the carriage, a dense fog had settled over the Midoriya family. Izuku sat beside his mother, the All Might figure resting limply in his lap. He kept sneaking glances at her. He wanted her to say something. He wanted her to tell him the doctor was wrong, or that he could still be a hero, or that everything was going to be okay.

 

She said nothing. Her eyes were vacant, staring through the window at the passing city.

 

That night was the first time the apartment felt too big. The air conditioning hummed, a low, droning sound that seemed to amplify the silence. Izuku sat in the dark living room, illuminated only by the glow of the computer monitor. On the screen, a low-resolution video played on an endless loop. It was the debut of All Might. The disaster, the wreckage, the booming, boisterous laugh.

 

“Fear not, citizens! Hope has arrived! Because I am here!”

 

Izuku watched it, tears finally spilling over his eyelashes, hot and fast. He turned around when he heard the soft padding of footsteps. His mother stood in the doorway, the hallway light casting her in a hollow silhouette.

 

Izuku pointed a trembling finger at the screen. His voice was small, choked with the first real sorrow of his life. "Mom... even if I don't have a Quirk... can I still be a hero like him?"

 

He needed her to say yes. He needed her to be his anchor in the sudden, violent storm of his reality.

 

Instead, Inko crumpled. She fell to her knees, crossing the floor and pulling him into a desperate, sobbing embrace. "I'm sorry, Izuku!" she wailed, burying her face in his shoulder, her tears soaking his shirt. "I'm so, so sorry! I'm sorry!"

 

She didn't say yes. She apologized.

 

In that moment, a fundamental piece of Izuku’s childhood shattered. She was mourning him. She was apologizing for giving birth to him like this. She was looking at him, and all she saw was a tragedy.

 

Things did not get better. They slowly, agonizingly, got much worse.

 

The arguments started a month later. They were hushed at first, taking place behind the closed door of his parents' bedroom. Izuku would lie in his bed, the covers pulled up to his chin, listening to the muffled cadence of anger.

 

His father, Hisashi, had a Quirk that allowed him to breathe fire. Lately, his voice sounded like it was full of smoke—harsh, choking, and bitter.

 

"It's a genetic dead end, Inko!" Hisashi’s voice drifted through the thin walls one night, louder than usual. "No one in my family is Quirkless! It's a disgrace!"

 

"Keep your voice down, he'll hear you!" Inko hissed back, her voice shrill with panic and exhaustion.

 

"Let him hear! What kind of future does he have? What kind of future do we have? I didn't sign up to raise a cripple!"

 

Izuku squeezed his eyes shut and clamped his hands over his ears. He curled into a tight ball, making himself as small as possible. A cripple. A disgrace. A dead end. The words burned into him, branding his sense of self-worth before it had even fully formed.

 

Two weeks later, Izuku came home from preschool to find two large suitcases sitting by the front door. Hisashi was shrugging into his coat. He didn't look at Izuku. He didn't crouch down to ruffle his hair or say goodbye. He just picked up the suitcases, the leather handles creaking under the strain.

 

"I’ll send money," Hisashi said over his shoulder. He wasn't talking to Izuku. He was talking to Inko, who stood at the entrance of the kitchen, her arms wrapped tightly around her own waist, looking like a ghost of the woman she had been a year ago.

 

"Hisashi, please," she whispered, a broken, pathetic sound.

 

The door opened. The door closed. The lock clicked.

 

And that was it. Hisashi Midoriya walked out of their lives, taking the last remnants of warmth in the apartment with him.

 

Izuku stood in the hallway, his yellow backpack still strapped to his shoulders. He looked at his mother. He expected her to cry. He expected her to hug him.

 

Instead, Inko turned around and walked into her bedroom. The door shut with a quiet, final click.

 

Izuku stood there for a long time. The clock in the kitchen ticked. The refrigerator hummed. The silence rushed in, filling the space his father had left, filling the space his mother had retreated from. Izuku took off his shoes, placed them neatly in the genkan, and went to his room.

 

He didn't know it then, but the door closing on his mother’s bedroom was the beginning of an era. The era of the ghost in the apartment.

 

 

 

The transition wasn't instantaneous. It was a slow, creeping decay, like rot setting into the foundations of a wooden house.

 

For the first few months after Hisashi left, Inko tried. She would emerge from her room with red-rimmed eyes, make a half-hearted attempt at dinner—usually instant ramen or reheated rice—and sit at the table with Izuku. But she never really looked at him. When her eyes swept over his green hair, his freckles, his small, Quirkless frame, a profound, agonizing sorrow would wash over her features, and she would look away.

 

Izuku learned very quickly that his presence was a reminder of everything she had lost. He was the reason her husband had left. He was the broken thing she was stuck with.

 

By the time Izuku turned five, Inko had secured a job doing data entry from home, occasionally going into an office for meetings. The job was a lifeline financially, but it was the final nail in the coffin domestically. It gave her an excuse to retreat into her room, lock the door, and stare at a screen for ten hours a day.

 

When she wasn't working, she was sleeping. The depression was a heavy, suffocating blanket that pinned her to the mattress.

 

At first, Izuku would knock on her door when he was hungry.

 

Tap, tap. "Mom? My tummy hurts."

 

Sometimes she would come out, move through the kitchen like a sleepwalker, hand him a bag of crackers, and disappear again. Other times, she wouldn't answer at all. Izuku would stand outside the door, listening to her slow, rhythmic breathing or the muffled sound of her crying, and he would realize that his hunger was less important than her grief.

 

He learned to stop knocking.

 

The apartment began to gather dust. The blinds in the living room were permanently drawn, casting the space in a perpetual, twilight gray. The laundry piled up in the bathroom corner, a mountain of discarded clothes.

 

Izuku was six years old when he cooked his first meal.

 

It was a Tuesday evening. He had come home from school—where a boy with an explosion Quirk had pushed him into the dirt for the first time, calling him 'Deku'—and waited on the living room rug for dinner. The clock struck six. Then seven. Then eight.

 

His stomach twisted into sharp, painful knots. The hunger was a physical ache, a hollow clawing in his center. He looked down the hallway at Inko's closed door. No light shone from beneath the crack.

 

Izuku walked into the kitchen. The counters were too high. The stove was a towering metal beast. He dragged one of the wooden dining chairs across the linoleum, the legs scraping with a loud, screeching sound that made him wince and look fearfully toward his mother's room. No movement.

 

He climbed onto the chair. From this vantage point, he could reach the cabinets. He found a small, non-stick frying pan and set it on the stove. He opened the refrigerator. The shelves were mostly bare—Inko only ordered groceries online once every two weeks now, and they were running low. He found a carton of eggs and a bottle of soy sauce.

 

Izuku had watched his mother cook back when she still did. He remembered the steps, vaguely. He turned the knob on the stove.

 

Click, click, click, WHOOSH.

 

The ring of blue fire flared to life. Izuku jumped back, nearly falling off the chair. His heart hammered against his ribs. Fire. His father’s Quirk. The element of destruction. But this fire was controlled. It was a tool.

 

He swallowed his fear, stepped back up to the stove, and cracked an egg against the rim of the pan. He did it too hard; the shell shattered, dropping fragments into the sizzling white. He scrambled to fish out the shells with a wooden spoon, burning the tip of his finger on the hot metal of the pan. He hissed, instinctively popping the burnt digit into his mouth, tears pricking his eyes.

 

But he didn't cry out. He couldn't disturb her.

 

He scrambled the egg with the spoon until it was a dry, rubbery yellow mass. He turned off the burner, scooped the food onto a plastic plate, and splashed a generous amount of soy sauce over it to hide the burnt flavor.

 

He sat alone at the dining table, his legs dangling over the edge of the chair, eating his rubbery, salty egg in the dark. It was the best thing he had ever tasted, simply because it stopped the pain in his stomach.

 

That night, lying in his bed, Izuku made a silent vow. I won't be a bother. If I can do it myself, I won't ask her.

 

It was a survival mechanism masquerading as filial piety. If he was invisible, if he required no maintenance, then maybe she wouldn't leave him completely. Maybe she would let him stay.

 

 

 

By the time Izuku was eight, he had mastered the art of being a ghost.

 

His daily routine was executed with military precision, designed to leave no trace of his existence. He woke up at 6:00 AM, silencing his alarm the second it vibrated so it wouldn't echo through the quiet apartment. He dressed himself in clothes he had washed himself.

 

The laundry had been a difficult hurdle. At seven, he had run out of clean underwear and shirts. He had dragged the overflowing hamper to the washing machine, a towering white appliance with dials that looked like the dashboard of a spaceship. He had poured half a bottle of liquid detergent into the drum, resulting in a mountain of suds that overflowed onto the bathroom floor. He had spent three hours frantically mopping it up with towels, terrified Inko would wake up and see the mess.

 

Now, at eight, he knew exactly how much detergent to use. He knew to separate the whites from the colors, though most of his clothes were faded and graying anyway. He hung them on the balcony rack, careful to pin them securely so the wind wouldn't blow them away.

 

After dressing, he would make his own breakfast—usually toast and a piece of fruit—and prepare a small bento box for school. Rice, a rolled omelet, maybe some pickled plums. It wasn't fancy, and the other kids at school sometimes laughed at how plain his lunches were, but it was sustenance.

 

School was a different kind of hell.

 

If his home was a vacuum of apathy, Aldera Elementary was a crucible of malice. Katsuki Bakugo had declared Izuku’s Quirklessness a personal insult. Katsuki, with his bright, explosive palms and his entourage of sycophants, ruled the playground. Izuku was the bottom of the food chain—a pebble to be kicked, a target to be blasted.

 

"Deku," Katsuki called him. The one who can't do anything.

 

Izuku never fought back. What was the point? If he fought back, he would get hurt. If he got hurt, the school would call his mother. If the school called his mother, she would have to get out of bed, answer the phone, and deal with him. She would be reminded of what a burden he was.

 

So, Izuku took the hits. He learned to roll with the punches, to protect his face, to hide the bruises beneath long sleeves. When Katsuki burned his shoulder with a small explosion, Izuku bit his tongue until he tasted copper, refusing to cry out.

 

He would walk home alone, taking the long way through the city. He liked the city. It was loud, chaotic, and colorful. Heroes swung from buildings, villains caused traffic jams, and people cheered. It was alive. Izuku would linger on street corners, watching Kamui Woods restrain a purse snatcher, or Backdraft put out a localized fire. He would whip out his notebook—Hero Analysis for the Future, Vol. 2—and scribble furiously, his eyes wide with a desperate, starving hunger.

 

When he analyzed heroes, he wasn't Quirkless, useless Deku. He was an observer. He was smart. He was part of the world, even if only from the sidelines.

 

But eventually, the sun would set, and he would have to return to the apartment.

 

The ritual was always the same. Unlock the door. Step inside. Listen.

 

Usually, there was nothing but the hum of the refrigerator. Sometimes, he could hear the faint, rapid clicking of a keyboard from Inko's room. He would slip off his red shoes, line them up perfectly, and walk down the hall in his socks, making no sound.

 

He would do his homework at the kitchen table. He would clean whatever dishes were in the sink. He would make dinner. He would leave a plate wrapped in plastic on the counter for Inko, just in case she came out in the middle of the night. (She rarely ate it. Usually, Izuku would eat it for breakfast the next day, cold).

 

One evening, when Izuku was nine, he was sitting on the living room floor, carefully applying a bandage to a scraped knee he had gotten from being tripped in the hallway at school. The front door unlocked.

 

Izuku froze. Inko rarely left the house anymore, only for mandatory in-person meetings at her company. She walked in, carrying a plastic grocery bag. She looked exhausted, her hair pulled back into a messy bun, dark circles bruised beneath her eyes.

 

She paused in the entryway, noticing Izuku. For a moment, they just stared at each other. The distance between the genkan and the living room felt like a yawning canyon.

 

"Welcome home, Mom," Izuku said, his voice small and polite.

 

Inko looked at his bandaged knee. She looked at his small, thin frame. A flicker of something crossed her face—guilt, perhaps, or a sudden, sharp realization of her own failings. But it was quickly swallowed by a bone-deep weariness. She didn't have the energy to bridge the gap. She didn't have the emotional bandwidth to be a mother.

 

"I bought some milk," she muttered, not looking at his face. She set the bag on the counter, turned, and walked to her bedroom. The door shut.

 

Izuku let out a breath he didn't realize he was holding. He went to the counter, put the milk in the fridge, and folded the plastic bag neatly into a triangle, placing it in a drawer.

 

He was a ghost. And ghosts didn't need mothers.

 

 

 

The hardest part of raising himself wasn't the cooking or the cleaning. It was the bureaucracy of childhood.

 

Schools required signatures. Permission slips for field trips. Acknowledgment forms for report cards. Health forms. Emergency contact updates.

 

When Izuku was ten, Aldera Elementary planned a field trip to the local natural history museum. The permission slip required a guardian's signature. Izuku kept the slip in his folder for a week, dreading the moment he would have to ask.

 

On the night before the deadline, he stood outside Inko's door. He held the slip in one hand and a pen in the other. He raised his fist to knock. He hesitated.

 

He could hear her crying. It was a low, muffled sound, like an animal trapped in a snare. It was the anniversary of Hisashi leaving. She always got worse around this time of year.

 

Izuku lowered his fist. He couldn't do it. He couldn't knock on that door and shove a piece of paper in her face, demanding her attention for something as trivial as a museum trip when she was drowning in her own mind.

 

He walked back to his room and sat at his desk. He pulled out an old report card from first grade, back when she still signed things. He placed the permission slip next to it.

 

He picked up the pen. He gripped it tightly, his small hand trembling. Forging a signature was wrong. It was a crime. Heroes didn't commit crimes. Heroes didn't lie.

 

But I'm not a hero, a dark voice whispered in his head. I'm Deku.

 

He traced the loops and slants of 'Midoriya Inko' in the air a few times. Then, holding his breath, he brought the pen to the paper. He copied the signature. It was a little shaky, a little too precise, but to a teacher glancing at thirty identical slips, it would pass.

 

A heavy stone settled in Izuku's stomach. He had crossed a line. He was completely detached from the safety net of adult supervision. He was untethered, drifting in a world that didn't care if he existed or not.

 

From that day on, Izuku signed all his own forms. He forged her name on failing physical education exams (he was small and weak, and the teachers never stopped Katsuki from using his Quirk during dodgeball). He forged her name on health declarations.

 

Parent-teacher conferences were a delicate dance of deception.

 

When his homeroom teacher, Mr. Hanada, asked why Mrs. Midoriya hadn't signed up for a time slot, Izuku would bow deeply, his face a perfect mask of polite apology.

 

"I'm so sorry, Sensei. My mother works double shifts at a data entry firm. She's the sole breadwinner, so her schedule is very strict. She asked me to convey her deepest apologies."

 

It was a brilliant lie, rooted just enough in reality to be believable. The teachers at Aldera didn't care enough about the Quirkless kid to investigate further. They nodded, muttered something about 'hardworking single mothers,' and moved on.

 

Izuku became an expert liar. He lied to the neighbors, smiling brightly and saying his mother was just resting when they asked why they never saw her. He lied to the cashier at the grocery store, saying he was running errands for his busy mom when he bought band-aids, burn cream, and cheap vegetables.

 

He lied to himself, most of all.

 

He told himself it was fine. He told himself he was strong. He told himself that as long as he had his notebooks and his dreams of All Might, he didn't need a family.

 

But the lies were fragile things, prone to shattering in the quiet hours of the night.

 

 

 

By the time Izuku was twelve, the apartment had settled into a state of permanent, quiet desolation.

 

It was a rainy Sunday afternoon. The sky outside was a bruised purple, and the rain lashed against the sliding glass door of the balcony. The apartment was cold. The heater had broken a month ago, and Izuku hadn't figured out how to fix it, nor could he ask the landlord without raising questions about Inko.

 

He sat at his desk, wrapped in a thick, faded All Might blanket. The desk was the only chaotic space in his otherwise impeccably neat room. It was covered in open notebooks, highlighters, and printed news articles about recent villain fights.

 

He was working on Hero Analysis for the Future, Vol. 9. He was sketching a diagram of the Pro Hero Kamui Woods's arbor Quirk, noting the tensile strength of the wood and its vulnerability to fire.

 

He stopped writing and rubbed his eyes. They were strained from reading in the dim light. He looked around his room.

 

The walls were plastered with All Might posters. The Symbol of Peace, smiling brightly, triumphantly, declaring that everything was going to be fine. When Izuku was little, those smiles had made him feel safe. Now, they just felt like a cruel joke.

 

I am here, the posters proclaimed.

 

No, you're not, Izuku thought, the bitterness rising in his throat like bile. No one is.

 

He stood up and walked out of his room. The hallway was dark. He walked into the kitchen. He opened the fridge. He had gone grocery shopping yesterday, using the yen Inko had left in an envelope on the kitchen counter—her standard method of providing for him without having to interact.

 

He took out some tofu, a bundle of green onions, and some miso paste. He moved with practiced, mechanical efficiency. Chop the onions. Cube the tofu. Boil the water. Whisk in the paste.

 

He was a twelve-year-old boy, but he moved with the weary resignation of an old man.

 

As the soup simmered, he looked at his reflection in the dark glass of the microwave. He saw a boy with messy green hair, a smattering of freckles, and eyes that looked entirely too old. He was skinny, his collarbones jutting out sharply beneath his oversized t-shirt.

 

He was self-sufficient. He knew how to treat first-degree burns from Katsuki's explosions. He knew how to get blood out of his uniform collar using hydrogen peroxide. He knew which grocery store discounted their bento boxes after 8:00 PM. He knew how to walk without making a single sound.

 

He had raised himself. And he had done a decent job, all things considered. He was polite, he had good grades, and he stayed out of trouble.

 

But as he poured the miso soup into a bowl and sat alone at the table, listening to the rain beat against the window, the crushing weight of his isolation threatened to drown him.

 

He didn't want to be self-sufficient. He wanted to be a kid. He wanted a mother who asked him about his day. He wanted a mother who noticed when he came home with bruises. He wanted a parent who would get angry, who would yell at the school, who would hold him and tell him that he had worth.

 

He looked toward the hallway. Inko's door was closed, as always.

 

Izuku picked up his spoon and began to eat in silence.

 

The apartment was a tomb, and Izuku was the ghost haunting it, going through the motions of living while waiting for a life that seemed determined to pass him by. He was a Quirkless nobody, a forgotten son, a punching bag.

 

But deep down, beneath the layers of trauma, neglect, and self-deprecation, a tiny, glowing ember refused to be extinguished. It was the part of him that still rushed to the window when a hero fought nearby. It was the part of him that filled notebook after notebook with meticulous notes.

 

He had learned to survive the silence of his home and the violence of his peers. He had learned to endure.

 

And endurance, though he didn't know it yet, was the crucible in which true heroes were forged.

 

He finished his soup, washed the bowl, and dried it. He wiped down the counter until it shone. He walked back down the dark hallway, past the closed door that held his mother, and returned to his room.

 

He sat back down at his desk, pulled his blanket tighter around his shoulders, and picked up his pen. He turned to a fresh page.

 

Tomorrow was another day of school. Another day of Katsuki. Another day of being invisible.

 

But right now, he had heroes to study. If no one in this world was going to save him, he would just have to learn how to save himself.

 

The digital alarm clock beside Izuku Midoriya’s bed did not beep. He had long ago dismantled the internal speaker, clipping the red wire with a pair of cheap nail clippers. Instead, at exactly 5:30 AM, the device merely flashed a harsh, rhythmic red light into the gloom of his bedroom.

 

Izuku’s eyes snapped open at the second flash. He didn't groan, didn't stretch lazily, and didn't linger in the warmth of his blankets. He moved with the silent, mechanical efficiency of a soldier in hostile territory.

 

He was fourteen years old now. It had been ten years since the diagnosis that ended his childhood, and nine years since his father walked out the door. Nine years of the ghost in the apartment.

 

Izuku slipped out from under his All Might duvet—a faded, thinning relic from a time when he still believed smiles could fix things—and let his bare feet touch the cold faux-wood flooring. He didn't turn on the overhead light. He navigated his room by the ambient orange glow of the streetlamps filtering through the gap in his curtains.

 

He stripped off his sleeping shirt and walked to his small closet. Hanging there, perfectly pressed and immaculate despite its age, was his Aldera Junior High uniform. It was his final year at the school, and the uniform was a testament to his sheer force of will. The black fabric was beginning to shine at the elbows and knees from years of wear and repeated, harsh scrubbing. The gold buttons had dull scratches on them. The collar was fraying, tiny threads stubbornly clipped away by Izuku every Sunday evening.

 

It was a size too big, hanging loosely on his narrow, wiry frame. Inko hadn't bought him new clothes since his first year of middle school. She hadn't noticed he had grown, and Izuku had never asked for a new one. The oversized jacket helped hide how painfully thin he was, and more importantly, it provided a buffer of fabric to hide the bandages.

 

He dressed in silence. Button the shirt. Tie the crimson tie. Slip into the black trousers. Fasten the belt two notches tighter than it was designed for.

 

He stepped out of his room into the suffocating quiet of the apartment. The air was stale, smelling faintly of dust and the lavender fabric softener he bought on discount. He walked down the hallway, bypassing his mother’s closed door without a second glance. It was a habit now, an instinct as ingrained as breathing. Do not look. Do not hope.

 

In the kitchen, the routine continued. Izuku pulled a step stool—he didn't need it anymore, but it was muscle memory to stand near it—and began preparing breakfast. Rice, leftover from last night. A quick dash of furikake seasoning. A cup of green tea.

 

As the kettle boiled, a near-silent hiss of steam, Izuku’s eyes drifted to the kitchen counter.

 

There, weighted down by a salt shaker, were three crisp thousand-yen notes. Next to them was a yellow sticky note. It was blank.

 

It was Inko’s way of communicating. The money meant: Buy groceries. Pay for your school supplies. Do not bother me. The blank note meant she had nothing to say to him. She had nothing to ask him. She was alive, she was working her remote data-entry job, and she was fulfilling the absolute barest, legal minimum of her maternal duties.

 

Izuku took the money and folded it neatly into his pocket. He didn't feel resentment. Resentment required energy. Resentment implied that he deserved better, and Izuku had been taught by the world—by his father's departure, his mother's depression, and his peers' fists—that he deserved exactly what he got.

 

He ate his rice standing up at the counter. When he was finished, he washed his bowl, dried it, and placed it back in the cupboard. He grabbed his yellow backpack, slipped on his red sneakers—the soles worn almost completely flat—and unlocked the front door.

 

"I'm going," he whispered to the empty hallway.

 

No one answered. The heavy metal door clicked shut, sealing the ghost away.

 

 

 

The walk to Aldera Junior High was the best part of Izuku's day, simply because it was loud.

 

Musutafu was a bustling city, alive with the sounds of traffic, the chatter of commuters, and the occasional, thrilling roar of a Pro Hero in action. Izuku soaked it all in. The noise was a balm to his sensory-deprived brain. He watched a localized earthquake being handled by Death Arms, and he eagerly scribbled notes into Hero Analysis for the Future, Vol. 13.

 

But as the gates of Aldera Junior High came into view, the knot in Izuku’s stomach, which had temporarily loosened, pulled itself into a tight, agonizing coil.

 

Aldera was not an academy of learning; it was an ecosystem. And in this ecosystem, Izuku was at the absolute bottom of the food chain. Quirklessness in modern society was a rarity, an anomaly relegated to the elderly. For a teenager to be Quirkless was to be a living, breathing fossil. It was unnatural. It was repulsive.

 

He kept his head down as he walked through the courtyard. He avoided eye contact. He made himself small.

 

Don't be seen. Don't be a target.

 

"Hey! Watch where you're going, Deku!"

 

A shoulder slammed into Izuku’s chest, sending him stumbling backward. His heel caught on the edge of the pavement, and he fell hard onto the concrete, his palms scraping painfully against the rough ground.

 

Laughter erupted above him. Izuku didn't look up immediately. He recognized the voice, the smell of burnt sugar and ozone that always accompanied it, and the sheer, suffocating presence of the boy standing over him.

 

Katsuki Bakugo.

 

"Oops. Didn't see you there down in the dirt, Deku," Katsuki sneered, his voice dripping with venomous amusement. "Though I guess that's where bugs belong."

 

Izuku slowly pushed himself up, dusting the gravel from his palms. He kept his eyes fixed on Katsuki’s uniform shoes. "S-sorry, Kacchan. I tripped."

 

Katsuki clicked his tongue. He stepped closer, invading Izuku’s personal space. Izuku fought the instinct to flinch, holding his ground through sheer, terrifying willpower.

 

Katsuki looked him up and down. Crimson eyes, sharp and intelligent, narrowed as they took in the oversized, fraying uniform. Katsuki wasn't an idiot. He was exceptionally perceptive, a prodigy in every sense of the word. He noticed the way Izuku’s jacket hung off his shoulders. He noticed the dark circles under Izuku's eyes. He noticed that at the last three parent-teacher conferences, Auntie Inko hadn't shown up.

 

A flicker of something—confusion, perhaps, or a deep, unrecognized guilt—flashed in Katsuki’s eyes. He remembered when Auntie Inko used to bake cookies. He remembered when she smiled. But Katsuki’s entire worldview was built on strength. Weakness was a sin. If Deku was suffering, it was because Deku was weak. If Deku’s mom was neglecting him, it was because Deku wasn't worth paying attention to. It was the only way Katsuki could rationalize the decay of his childhood friend without accepting any blame for it himself.

 

To admit that Deku was a victim of circumstances beyond his control would mean admitting that Deku possessed a kind of resilience. And Katsuki could not allow Deku to have anything resembling strength.

 

"You look like a hobo, Deku," Katsuki spat, his hands sliding into his pockets. "If you're going to be a useless extra, at least try not to be an eyesore."

 

"R-right. Sorry," Izuku mumbled, clutching the straps of his backpack.

 

Katsuki scoffed, losing interest, and walked away, his lackeys trailing behind him like pilot fish on a shark.

 

Izuku let out a shaky breath. His palms stung. He ignored the pain and walked into the building. It was going to be a long day.

 

 

 

The classroom was a cacophony of adolescent energy. Students were showing off their Quirks—stretching fingers, producing small illusions, levitating pencils. The homeroom teacher, a balding man with tired eyes, stood at the front of the room holding a stack of papers.

 

"Since you're all third years, it's time for you to think seriously about your futures," the teacher announced, his voice barely cutting through the chatter. "I'll pass out handouts for your future plans now, but..." He suddenly threw the stack of papers into the air, a wide grin breaking across his face. "...you're all pretty much planning to go into the hero course, right?!"

 

The classroom erupted in cheers. Quirks flared violently. Fire, water, hardened skin, elongated limbs. It was a chaotic display of genetic lottery winnings.

 

Izuku kept his head down, his hands resting flat on his desk. He didn't cheer. He didn't raise his hand. He stared intently at the wood grain of his desk, trying to blend into it.

 

"Yes, yes, you all have wonderful Quirks," the teacher said, waving his hands to calm the class. "But using your powers at school is against the rules!"

 

"Sensei!"

 

The voice cut through the noise like a scythe. The entire room fell silent.

 

Katsuki leaned back in his chair, his feet propped up on his desk, a look of supreme arrogance on his face. "Don't lump me in with this bunch of losers. I'm not gonna be stuck at the bottom with the rest of these rejects."

 

The class immediately bristled, shouting protests and insults.

 

"You all should shut up like the extras you are!" Katsuki barked, silencing them again.

 

"Ah, Bakugo, you're aiming for U.A. High, aren't you?" the teacher asked, looking down at his clipboard.

 

Whispers broke out. U.A.? The national school? The acceptance rate is insanely low!

 

"That's exactly why it's the only place for me," Katsuki declared, leaping onto his desk. "I aced all the mock tests! I'm the only one at this school who could possibly get into U.A. I'll surpass All Might and become the top hero! My name will be inscribed on the list of top earners!"

 

He was glowing with confidence. He was a sun, blinding and hot, pulling everyone into his orbit.

 

Izuku shrank further into his seat. He knew what was coming next. He braced himself, closing his eyes.

 

"Oh, right," the teacher said, scanning the clipboard again, completely oblivious to the social landmine he was about to step on. "Midoriya wanted to go to U.A., too, right?"

 

The silence that followed was absolute. It was the kind of silence that precedes a shockwave.

 

Then, the classroom exploded into laughter. It was vicious, tearing laughter. Students pointed at him, clutching their stomachs.

 

"Huh?! Midoriya? No way!"

"You can't get into the hero course just by studying!"

"He doesn't even have a Quirk! What can he do?"

 

Izuku shot up from his seat, his face burning, his hands waving frantically. "Th-they got rid of that rule! There's no rule against it anymore! I could be the first one—!"

 

BOOM.

 

Katsuki’s palm slammed down on Izuku’s desk. The explosion detonated with a deafening crack. The concussive force threw Izuku backward. He crashed into the floor, his chair clattering loudly against the tiles. The smell of caramel and burnt ozone filled the room.

 

Izuku’s ears were ringing. The right side of his face felt hot, the skin pulled taut from the proximity to the blast. He looked up, his vision swimming, to see Katsuki standing over him, his hands smoking, his eyes filled with a murderous rage.

 

"Listen up, Deku!" Katsuki roared, the veins in his neck bulging. "You're even worse than the rest of these rejects! You're completely Quirkless! How can you even stand in the same ring as me?!"

 

Izuku scrambled backward on his hands and feet, pressing his back against the chalkboard. "No, wait, Kacchan! It's not like I'm trying to compete with you or anything! Believe me! It's just that it's been my dream since I was little. And well... I won't know unless I try..."

 

"Try?!" Katsuki stepped closer, the smoke from his hands curling into the air. "What the hell can you do? You're going to take the exam just to 'try'? What can a Quirkless nobody like you possibly do?!"

 

Izuku looked around the room. His classmates were glaring at him, their expressions ranging from amusement to disgust. He looked at the teacher. The man was organizing his papers, deliberately looking away, pretending the assault wasn't happening.

 

No one was coming to help him. No one ever did.

 

Izuku lowered his head. He pulled his knees to his chest, making himself as small as possible. The ringing in his ears faded, replaced by the suffocating silence of his own isolation.

 

He didn't speak again for the rest of the day.

 

 

 

The final bell rang at 3:15 PM. The students packed their bags with the frantic energy of prisoners being released. Within minutes, the classroom was mostly empty.

 

Izuku remained at his desk. He was taking his time. He didn't want to leave yet. Leaving meant walking home. Walking home meant opening the heavy metal door. Opening the door meant stepping into the tomb.

 

He pulled out Hero Analysis for the Future, Vol. 13. He flipped to a fresh page, smoothing the paper with his thumb. He had seen Mt. Lady debut that morning. He needed to document her Quirk's limitations regarding urban collateral damage. He clicked his pen.

 

Suddenly, a hand snatched the notebook from his desk.

 

Izuku gasped, looking up. Katsuki stood there, flanked by two of his lackeys. Katsuki held the notebook between his index finger and thumb, reading the cover with a look of utter disdain.

 

"We're not done talking yet, Deku," Katsuki said, his voice low and dangerous.

 

"Katsuki, what's that?" one of the lackeys asked, peering over his shoulder. "'Hero Analysis for the Future'? Seriously?"

 

The lackeys laughed. "He's delusional!"

 

Izuku stood up, reaching out desperately. "C-come on, Kacchan. Give it back."

 

That notebook was his lifeline. It was the only tangible proof that he existed in the same world as the heroes he admired. It was his hard work, his intellect, his only source of pride.

 

Katsuki looked at Izuku. He saw the desperate plea in the green eyes. He saw the way Izuku’s oversized sleeves swallowed his hands. And it infuriated him. How dare this broken, pathetic thing try to cling to a dream that belonged to Katsuki?

 

Katsuki slammed his palms together, sandwiching the notebook.

 

BOOM.

 

An explosion rocked the classroom. Izuku flinched violently, raising his arms to protect his face. When the smoke cleared, Katsuki was holding the smoldering, blackened remains of the notebook. The edges were charred crisp, the spine melted.

 

"Ah..." Izuku let out a pathetic, breathy sound. It physically hurt to look at it.

 

Katsuki casually tossed the ruined book over his shoulder. It sailed out the open window, dropping down to the courtyard below.

 

"Most top-tier heroes have stories about them from their school days," Katsuki said, his voice eerily calm. "I want the shine of being able to be called the only student to make it into U.A. from this mediocre city public middle school. I mean, I'm a perfectionist."

 

He stepped closer to Izuku. Izuku couldn't back away; the desk was trapped behind him. Katsuki placed a heavy, smoking hand on Izuku’s shoulder. The heat bled through the fabric of the cheap uniform, searing the skin beneath. Izuku bit the inside of his cheek, refusing to cry out.

 

Katsuki smiled. It wasn't a happy smile. It was a predator bearing its teeth.

 

"So anyway," Katsuki whispered, the smoke curling around Izuku’s neck. "Don't apply to U.A., nerd."

 

He patted Izuku’s shoulder, leaving a scorch mark in the shape of a handprint on the black fabric, and turned to leave. His lackeys snickered, following him to the door.

 

Izuku stood frozen. His body trembled. The unfairness of it all choked him. He wanted to scream. He wanted to yell that he had a right to dream, that he had a right to exist. But the words were trapped behind a wall of pure, paralyzing fear.

 

At the doorway, Katsuki paused. He didn't turn around. He looked over his shoulder, his red eyes catching the afternoon light.

 

"If you want to be a hero that badly, there's a quick way to do it," Katsuki said. His voice was casual, offhand, as if he were suggesting a new video game to play. "Believe that you'll be born with a Quirk in your next life, and take a swan dive off the roof of the building!"

 

The silence in the classroom snapped back, heavier and more oppressive than before.

 

The lackeys gasped, looking at Katsuki in shock. That was a line. Even for Bakugo, that was a line. But they didn't say anything. They just hurried out the door after him.

 

Izuku was left alone.

 

He didn't move. He couldn't move. The words echoed in his skull, bouncing off the walls of his mind like a physical blow.

 

Take a swan dive off the roof of the building.

 

Tears finally welled up in his eyes, spilling over his freckled cheeks. He wasn't crying because he was scared. He wasn't crying because Katsuki was mean.

 

He was crying because of the terrifying, undeniable truth that accompanied those words.

 

If he did it... if he walked up the stairs, opened the roof access door, took off his red shoes, and stepped over the railing... who would care?

 

His father was gone. His classmates would be relieved. His teachers would sweep it under the rug to protect Bakugo’s record.

 

And his mother...

 

Izuku thought of Inko. He thought of her closed door. He thought of the crumpled yen on the counter. If he didn't come home today, she wouldn't notice. She would leave another three thousand yen on the counter tomorrow. It might take her three days, maybe a week, before she realized the yen wasn't moving, before she realized the apartment was just a little too quiet.

 

I am a ghost, Izuku thought, the tears dropping onto his scarred desk. And you can't kill something that's already dead.

 

He stood there for a long time. Eventually, the tears stopped. He wiped his face with his sleeve, picked up his yellow backpack, and walked out of the classroom.

 

 

 

The courtyard was empty. The afternoon sun cast long, melancholic shadows across the pavement.

 

Izuku found his notebook in a small koi pond near the school gates. The fish were swimming around it, nibbling at the charred edges, thinking it was food.

 

"That's not fish food, stupid," Izuku muttered, his voice hoarse. "That's my notebook."

 

He reached into the cold water and pulled it out. The pages were soaked, the ink bleeding and running together, ruining months of meticulous work. He held the ruined book in both hands, staring at it.

 

Idiot, he told himself. Stop crying. Stop feeling sorry for yourself. You decided to live like this. You promised you wouldn't be a burden.

 

He squeezed the water out of the notebook, shoved it into his backpack, and began the long walk home.

 

He didn't take the scenic route today. He didn't look for hero fights. The city around him felt muted, like he was walking underwater. He passed a park where a mother was pushing her young son on a swing. The boy laughed, a bright, clear sound, and the mother smiled, brushing the hair from his forehead.

 

Izuku looked away quickly, his chest aching with a hollow, phantom pain.

 

He arrived at his apartment building. It was a brutalist block of concrete, identical to a dozen others on the street. He climbed the stairs to the third floor. He stood before door 304.

 

He reached into his pocket and pulled out his key. It slid into the lock with a familiar click. He turned the handle and pushed the door open.

 

The apartment was pitch black. The blinds were drawn. The air was stagnant.

 

"I'm home," Izuku whispered.

 

Nothing. Not the rustle of clothing, not the creak of a floorboard. The only sound was the low, steady hum of the refrigerator.

 

Izuku took off his red shoes. He lined them up perfectly next to a pair of women's slippers that hadn't moved in a month. He walked into the kitchen.

 

He looked at the counter.

 

Next to the salt shaker, under the blank yellow sticky note, were two crisp thousand-yen bills.

 

She had come out of her room while he was gone. She had taken the old note away and placed a new one. She had walked through this kitchen, probably made herself a cup of coffee, and went back into her room without checking to see if his shoes were there, without checking to see if he had made it to school safely.

 

Izuku stared at the money. He didn't touch it.

 

He turned away and walked to the bathroom. He turned on the harsh fluorescent light, wincing as it buzzed to life. He looked at himself in the mirror over the sink.

 

His eyes were red and puffy. His green hair was a tangled mess. There was a streak of dirt on his cheek from when Katsuki had pushed him into the gravel.

 

He slowly unbuttoned his uniform jacket and shrugged it off. He unbuttoned his white collared shirt and let it drop to the floor.

 

He turned his shoulder to the mirror.

 

There, on his right collarbone, blooming like a gruesome, violent flower, was a fresh starburst burn. The skin was angry and red, the center a blistering white where Katsuki’s palm had made direct contact.

 

Izuku didn't wince. He just stared at it, analyzing it with clinical detachment. Second-degree. It would scar, joining the constellation of pale, shiny marks that already littered his arms, shoulders, and chest.

 

He opened the cabinet beneath the sink. Tucked behind the bleach and the spare toilet paper was a plastic tackle box. Izuku pulled it out and set it on the counter.

 

This was his most prized possession. He had bought it with the grocery money he skimmed over the years. Inside was a meticulously organized trauma kit. Gauze pads of various sizes, rolls of athletic tape, burn salve, antiseptic spray, butterfly stitches, tweezers, and a small pair of medical scissors.

 

He opened a tube of silver sulfadiazine cream. He squeezed a generous dollop onto his fingertips. He brought his hand to his shoulder.

 

As soon as the cold cream touched the angry, blistered skin, a sharp, white-hot spike of pain shot through his nervous system.

 

Izuku’s breath hitched. His hand trembled. He bit down on his lower lip so hard he tasted the metallic tang of blood.

 

He massaged the cream into the burn, forcing himself to be thorough. The pain was excruciating. It made his vision swim and dark spots dance at the edges of his sight. But he didn't cry. He didn't make a sound.

 

He had learned a long time ago that crying in this apartment was useless. Tears were a biological mechanism designed to elicit sympathy and aid from a caregiver. If there was no caregiver, tears were just a waste of hydration.

 

He cut a square of sterile gauze, placed it over the burn, and taped it down securely with surgical tape. He checked his handiwork in the mirror. It was neat. It was functional. It would hold until tomorrow.

 

He packed the tackle box away, put his shirt back on, and walked to the kitchen.

 

He was hungry. He hadn't eaten since 5:30 AM. He opened the fridge. There were some leftover vegetables, a pack of udon noodles, and some chicken broth.

 

He cooked in silence. He boiled the noodles, chopped the vegetables, and warmed the broth. The repetitive motions were grounding, giving his hands something to do so his mind wouldn't wander back to the roof of the school.

 

He poured the soup into a bowl and sat at the dining table. The only light in the room came from the small bulb over the stove.

 

Izuku ate his noodles. They were bland. He had forgotten the salt. He didn't care. He chewed and swallowed, fueling the machine of his body.

 

As he ate, the silence of the apartment began to press in on him.

 

Usually, the silence was a comfort. It meant he was safe. It meant he hadn't disturbed her. But tonight, the silence was heavy. It was pregnant with the memory of Bakugo’s words.

 

Take a swan dive.

 

Izuku looked toward the hallway. Inko's door was firmly shut.

 

If I did it, Izuku thought, his chopsticks pausing mid-air, she wouldn't have to leave yen on the counter anymore. She wouldn't have to hear me using the stove. She could just be alone. Truly alone. Maybe she'd be happier.

 

The thought was insidious. It wrapped around his heart like a dark, suffocating vine. It made twisted, logical sense. He was a drain on resources. He was a genetic failure. He was the reason his father left. Erasing himself from the equation was the most heroic thing he could possibly do for his mother.

 

Izuku set his chopsticks down. He pushed the half-eaten bowl of udon away. His stomach churned, a wave of profound nausea washing over him.

 

He couldn't stay in this apartment. Not right now. The walls felt like they were closing in, the silence screaming at him to just give up, to let go, to stop trying so hard to exist.

 

He stood up abruptly, the chair legs scraping loudly against the floor. He didn't care if Inko heard him. He grabbed his yellow backpack from by the door and pulled out the ruined, soggy Hero Analysis notebook.

 

He walked to his bedroom, tossed the notebook onto his desk, and sat on the edge of his bed. He buried his face in his hands.

 

He needed to survive. He didn't know why, but a stubborn, primal part of him refused to die. The same part of him that took the hits without fighting back so he could walk away. The same part of him that forged signatures so he could stay in school.

 

But he couldn't survive if he came straight home tomorrow. If he came back to this silent tomb immediately after dealing with Katsuki, the dark thoughts would win. He knew it with a terrifying certainty.

 

Tomorrow, Izuku promised himself, his hands shaking against his face. Tomorrow, I'll take the long way home. I won't come back until it's dark. I'll go into the city. I'll find a crowd. I'll find some noise.

 

He lowered his hands and looked at the All Might poster on his wall. The hero was pointing directly at him, smiling that impossible, radiant smile.

 

Izuku didn't smile back. He just stared at the poster, his green eyes hollow and exhausted.

 

He would take the long route home tomorrow. Under a bridge, through the commercial district, wherever there were people. He just needed to be around living, breathing people. He needed to prove to himself that the world wasn't entirely made of scorch marks and silences.

 

He turned off the bedside lamp, plunging the room into darkness. He lay down on top of his covers, fully clothed, and stared at the ceiling.

 

He didn't know that his decision to take the long route the next day would alter the trajectory of his entire existence. He didn't know about the sludge, or the bridge, or the fateful encounter waiting for him.

 

Right now, in the dark of his silent bedroom, Izuku Midoriya was just a boy trying to find a reason to wake up the next morning. And for tonight, that was enough.

 

The afternoon sun was a blistering, indifferent eye glaring down at the city of Musutafu. The heat radiating off the asphalt blurred the horizon in wavy, distorted lines.

 

Izuku Midoriya walked with his head down, the straps of his yellow backpack digging into his thin shoulders. True to his silent promise from the night before, he had not gone straight home. When the final bell at Aldera Junior High had rung, he had waited for the classroom to empty, slipped out of the building like a shadow, and walked in the exact opposite direction of his apartment.

 

He had no destination. He just needed to keep moving. He needed the ambient noise of the city—the rumble of the trains overhead, the chatter of high schoolers outside convenience stores, the blaring advertisements from digital billboards. It was a chaotic symphony that kept the silence of his own mind at bay.

 

If he went home now, the quiet would consume him. He would look at the blank sticky note on the kitchen counter, he would look at his mother’s closed door, and Katsuki’s words would echo against the walls until they drove him to the roof.

 

Take a swan dive.

 

Izuku gripped the straps of his backpack tighter, his knuckles turning white. His right shoulder still throbbed with a dull, insistent ache where the second-degree burn was hidden beneath layers of gauze and his oversized uniform jacket.

 

He found himself wandering toward a municipal underpass. It was a shortcut through a less populated commercial district, a concrete tunnel that offered a brief reprieve from the oppressive afternoon heat. The shadows inside were deep and cool. The air smelled of damp earth, old graffiti paint, and stagnant water.

 

Izuku’s footsteps echoed against the curved walls. Tap. Tap. Tap.

 

It was too quiet here. It reminded him of the hallway outside his bedroom. He quickened his pace, wanting to reach the sunlight at the other end.

 

He didn’t hear the metallic clatter of the manhole cover behind him. He didn’t hear the wet, sickening squelch of something shifting its mass from the sewer to the pavement. The only warning he got was a sudden, foul stench—a mixture of raw sewage, rotten eggs, and something sickly sweet.

 

Izuku turned his head.

 

A massive, undulating wall of dark green sludge rose to the ceiling of the tunnel. It wasn’t just a liquid; it was alive. Two bulbous, yellow eyes swiveled wildly within the viscous mass, and a jagged maw of liquid teeth formed into a grotesque grin.

 

"A medium-sized invisibility cloak," a voice gurgled, sounding like it was bubbling up from the bottom of a swamp. "Perfect."

 

Izuku’s brain froze. The survival instincts he had honed over a decade of dodging Bakugo’s explosions screamed at him to run, to move, to do anything. But his legs were rooted to the concrete. He was a Quirkless nobody. He had no defense against a monster that was made of living fluid.

 

Before he could even draw breath to scream, the sludge lunged.

 

It hit him with the force of a tidal wave. The impact knocked him off his feet, his backpack hitting the ground with a dull thud. But he didn’t hit the pavement. The sludge enveloped him, a freezing, suffocating mass that wrapped around his arms, his legs, and his torso, pinning him completely.

 

"Don't struggle, kid," the villain coaxed, the voice vibrating directly against Izuku’s eardrums. "It’ll only hurt for about forty-five seconds. After that, it'll all be over. You're my hero, you know that? I didn't know he was in the city."

 

Izuku thrashed wildly, his eyes wide with primal terror. He opened his mouth to gasp for air, to cry for help, but it was a fatal mistake.

 

The sludge forced its way down his throat. It tasted like decay and copper. It coated his tongue, slid past his tonsils, and began to fill his lungs. The sensation of drowning on dry land was agonizing. His chest heaved, his diaphragm spasming as it fought for oxygen that wasn't there.

 

His hands clawed at the viscous fluid covering his face, his fingernails tearing at the substance, but it was like trying to grab water. The sludge just reformed around his frantic fingers.

 

Dark spots danced at the edges of his vision. The world began to narrow into a tight, gray tunnel. The pain in his chest was a searing, white-hot fire.

 

I'm dying, Izuku realized.

 

The thought didn't bring the blind panic he expected. As his struggles grew weaker, his arms dropping uselessly to his sides, a strange, terrifying calm washed over him.

 

If I die here, it’s not suicide, a dark, insidious voice whispered in the back of his fading mind. Katsuki won't have my blood on his hands. Mom won't have to pay for groceries anymore. She won't have to see my face. She can finally just be alone.

 

He was a ghost anyway. What did it matter if he just faded out a little earlier than expected?

 

Izuku stopped clawing. He stopped fighting. He let his eyes slip half-closed, surrendering to the cold, suffocating dark. He was so tired. He just wanted to sleep.

 

Suddenly, a loud metallic CLANG reverberated through the tunnel.

 

The sludge villain flinched, the grip on Izuku loosening just a fraction. Through the murky green fluid covering his eyes, Izuku saw a massive silhouette blocking the sunlight at the end of the underpass.

 

"Fear not, kid!" a voice boomed, rattling the concrete walls. It was a voice Izuku had heard a million times through computer speakers and television screens, but hearing it in person was like feeling the shockwave of a bomb. "For I am here!"

 

All Might?

 

"Texas... SMASH!"

 

The wind pressure was catastrophic. It didn't feel like air; it felt like a solid wall of force. The gale ripped through the tunnel, catching the sludge villain and tearing his liquid body apart at a cellular level. The fluid was violently expelled from Izuku’s throat and lungs.

 

Izuku hit the concrete hard, gasping, coughing up strings of foul-tasting slime. He greedily sucked in oxygen, his lungs burning with every breath. Above him, the colossal, muscular form of the Symbol of Peace loomed, frantically collecting the scattered pieces of the villain into two empty two-liter soda bottles.

 

Izuku tried to speak, to push himself up, but his body had reached its limit. The oxygen deprivation, the physical trauma, and the sheer shock of seeing his idol in the flesh short-circuited his brain. His eyes rolled back, and the world faded to black.

 

 

 

Smack. Smack. Smack.

 

"Hey! Wake up! Thought we lost you there!"

 

Izuku bolted upright, his lungs expanding in a desperate gasp. He was sitting on the sun-baked pavement just outside the underpass. He blinked rapidly, his vision clearing to reveal a face with sharp, shadowed features, brilliant blue eyes, and two massive tufts of blonde hair shaped like a V.

 

All Might was leaning over him, one massive hand raised as if he had just been lightly tapping Izuku’s cheek.

 

Izuku scrambled backward, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird. "A-All Might?! The real thing?! You look so different in person—I mean, you're huge!"

 

"Glad to see you're okay!" All Might boomed, giving a hearty thumbs-up. "Apologies about getting you caught up in my villain-hunting! I don't usually make mistakes like this, but I was fired up in a new city!" He patted the pockets of his enormous cargo pants. "I've contained the villain in these bottles! Safe and sound!"

 

Izuku’s mind was racing. His idol. The man who had been his only beacon of hope in the dark, silent apartment for a decade. He was right here.

 

"I-I need an autograph!" Izuku stammered, frantically looking around for his ruined backpack. He pulled out the soaked, charred Hero Analysis for the Future, Vol. 13 and flipped it open. Across a sprawling two-page spread, a massive, looping signature had already been penned in thick black marker.

 

"He already did it!" Izuku gasped, bowing so rapidly he nearly headbutted the pavement. "Thank you! Thank you! It’ll be a family heirloom! A treasure!"

 

"Right, well! I must be off!" All Might declared, turning his back to Izuku and bending his knees, preparing for a monumental leap. "A pro hero battles not only enemies, but time as well! I must deliver this fellow to the police!"

 

Wait.

 

The word echoed in Izuku’s head. All Might was leaving. The one person who could answer the question that had been haunting him for ten years was about to launch himself into the sky.

 

If All Might left now, Izuku would have to go back to the apartment. He would have to go back to being nothing.

 

I need to know.

 

"Wait! I have to ask you something!" Izuku called out.

 

But All Might was already springing. The concrete shattered beneath his boots, and he rocketed into the sky with the force of a missile.

 

Izuku didn't think. Driven by a desperate, reckless impulse forged from years of neglect, he lunged forward, grabbing onto All Might’s thick, muscular leg just as the hero left the ground.

 

The wind immediately became a roaring hurricane in Izuku’s ears. His skin was pulled taut against his face, his eyes watering furiously as they ascended hundreds of feet into the air in a matter of seconds.

 

"Hey, hey, hey!" All Might shouted, looking down in shock. "Let go! Your fanaticism is too much! You'll fall to your death!"

 

"If I let go now, I'll definitely die!" Izuku screamed, his fingers digging into the fabric of All Might’s pants, the wind threatening to rip him away.

 

"Right, good point!" All Might muttered, a streak of blood suddenly flying from his mouth, though Izuku couldn't see it through the wind. "Close your eyes and mouth! I'll find a place to land!"

 

Seconds later, the terrifying ascent ended with a bone-rattling thud. Izuku collapsed onto the hard, gritty surface of a rooftop, his limbs trembling violently. He rolled onto his back, gasping, staring up at the bright blue sky.

 

"Good grief," All Might sighed, stepping away from the roof's edge. "That was entirely too reckless. If you knock on the door down there, someone will let you into the building. Now, I must be going—"

 

"Wait!" Izuku scrambled to his feet, ignoring the burning ache in his shoulder. "Please, just one question!"

 

"No! I will not wait!" All Might said, not looking back.

 

Izuku stared at the broad, muscular back. He saw Hisashi walking out the door with two suitcases. He saw Inko turning her back and shutting her bedroom door. Everyone left. Everyone turned their backs on him.

 

"Even if I don't have a Quirk," Izuku shouted, his voice cracking, raw and desperate. "Can I still be a hero? Can someone without a Quirk be like you?!"

 

All Might froze. The hero stopped in his tracks, one foot poised to step toward the roof access door.

 

Izuku stood trembling in the afternoon sun. All the pain, all the silence, all the isolation of the last ten years poured out of him.

 

"Because I don't have a Quirk, I'm... I'm a punching bag," Izuku confessed, his hands clenching into fists at his sides. He looked down at his ruined red shoes. "Maybe that's why, but... I think saving people is the coolest thing you can do. I want to save people with a fearless smile! I want to be the greatest hero, like you!"

 

He looked up, hoping to see that radiant smile, hoping to hear the words his mother had never given him.

 

Instead, a cloud of thick, white steam erupted from All Might’s body. There was a horrifying sound of deflating air, like a balloon losing pressure.

 

Izuku gasped, backing up. When the steam cleared, the colossal Symbol of Peace was gone. In his place stood a skeletal, emaciated man. His clothes hung off his frame like a scarecrow's garments. His cheekbones were hollow, his eyes sunken into deep, shadowed sockets.

 

"W-what?" Izuku stammered, looking around frantically. "You deflated! Where is All Might? Are you an impostor?!"

 

"I am All Might," the skeletal man said, his voice ragged and wet. He coughed, a spray of blood splattering onto the concrete.

 

Izuku shrieked, taking another step back.

 

With a heavy sigh, Toshinori Yagi sat down against the rooftop railing. He looked exhausted, defeated. He pulled up his oversized white t-shirt, revealing a horrific, sprawling mass of purple and red scar tissue covering the entire left side of his chest. It looked like a crater in his flesh.

 

"An injury I got in a big fight five years ago," Toshinori explained, his voice devoid of the booming bravado. "My respiratory system was nearly destroyed, and my stomach was removed. I've wasted away from repeated surgeries. Right now, I can only do hero work for about three hours a day."

 

Izuku stared, horrified. The invincible god of his childhood was mortal. He was broken.

 

"The Symbol of Peace cannot be daunted by evil," Toshinori continued, looking down at his bony hands. "I smile to show the pressure of heroes and to trick the fear inside of me. Pro heroes are always risking their lives. Some villains just can't be beaten without powers."

 

Toshinori looked up. His blue eyes met Izuku’s green ones. The hero saw a scrawny, trembling kid. He saw the danger of the job, the sheer brutality of villains like the one in his pocket, and he made a decision based on realism and safety.

 

"So, no," Toshinori said, his voice flat, resolute. "I honestly don't think you can become a hero without a Quirk."

 

The words struck Izuku with the physical force of a bullet. The air left his lungs.

 

"If you want to help people, become a police officer," Toshinori added, standing up slowly and wiping a drop of blood from his chin. "They get mocked because villains are delivered to their doorstep, but it's a fine profession. It's not bad to dream, young man. But you have to consider what's realistic."

 

Toshinori opened the roof access door, stepped inside, and let the heavy metal door slam shut. The mechanical click of the latch echoed across the empty roof.

 

Izuku was alone.

 

He didn't cry. The pain was too profound, too absolute for tears. Dr. Tsubasa had diagnosed his body. Hisashi had rejected his existence. Inko had rejected his heart. Katsuki had rejected his worth.

 

And now, All Might had rejected his soul.

 

It was unanimous. The entire universe was in agreement. Izuku Midoriya was a broken, useless thing that had no place in the world.

 

He walked slowly to the edge of the roof. He looked down. The people on the street looked like ants, bustling about their lives, entirely unaware of the boy standing on the precipice above them.

 

Take a swan dive.

 

Izuku grabbed the railing. The metal was warm under his palms. He looked at his ruined, scuffed red shoes.

 

He didn't want to die. But he didn't know how to live anymore. If there was no hope, if there was no future, what was the point of going back to the apartment? What was the point of cooking dinner for a ghost? What was the point of washing his fraying uniform?

 

Before he could swing a leg over the railing, a deafening explosion shattered the quiet of the afternoon.

 

BOOM.

 

A plume of thick, black smoke rose into the sky a few blocks away. The ground trembled slightly.

 

Izuku blinked, tearing his gaze away from the pavement below. He looked at the smoke. The instinct to run toward the incident, to open his notebook and analyze, flared up automatically.

 

No, he told himself. I'm done. I'm not a hero. I'm not even a person.

 

But he turned away from the railing anyway. He walked to the access door and began the long descent down the stairs. He moved like an automaton, his eyes hollow, his limbs heavy.

 

 

 

By the time Izuku reached the shopping district, a massive crowd had formed. The heat from the fires blazing in the alleyway washed over the onlookers. Police had set up a barricade, holding back the citizens.

 

Izuku drifted to the back of the crowd, numb. He peered through the gaps between the adults.

 

His breath hitched.

 

In the center of the fiery chaos, a massive, undulating wall of dark green sludge was rampaging. The villain from the underpass. All Might must have dropped the bottles.

 

Several Pro Heroes were on the scene. Death Arms, Kamui Woods, Mt. Lady, Backdraft. But they weren't attacking. They were standing by, watching helplessly.

 

"Why aren't the heroes doing anything?" a man in the crowd muttered.

 

"The villain captured a middle schooler," another replied. "He's using the kid's Quirk to keep them at bay. It's a hostage situation."

 

Izuku’s eyes widened. He pushed his way to the front of the barricade, slipping past the yellow police tape.

 

He looked into the center of the sludge. Through the thick, bubbling fluid, he saw a face. Spiky ash-blonde hair. Crimson eyes wide in desperate, agonizing panic. The sludge was forcing its way down the boy's throat, suffocating him, using his body like a puppet to unleash massive explosions.

 

Katsuki.

 

Izuku froze. His mind short-circuited. Katsuki was dying. The boy who had told him to kill himself just hours ago was being consumed by the same monster that had nearly killed Izuku.

 

Izuku looked at the heroes. Death Arms was shouting about not having the right Quirk. Kamui Woods was complaining about the fire. Mt. Lady was complaining about the lack of space.

 

They aren't going to save him, Izuku realized with sudden, chilling clarity. They're waiting for someone with a better Quirk. They're going to let him die.

 

Izuku looked at Katsuki’s eyes. They weren't angry. They were terrified. They were begging for help.

 

In that split second, something inside Izuku snapped.

 

It wasn't a heroic awakening. It wasn't a sudden surge of bravery. It was a dark, twisted realization born from a decade of profound neglect.

 

My life has no value, Izuku thought. I was going to jump off a roof anyway. If I'm worthless, if my body means nothing, then I can spend it here.

 

He didn't have a Quirk to offer. But he had a body. A body that could take a hit. A body that no one would miss if it was broken.

 

Before the police or the heroes could react, Izuku bolted.

 

He sprinted past the barricade, his red shoes pounding against the pavement.

 

"Hey! Kid! Stop!" Death Arms roared.

 

Izuku didn't stop. He ran straight into the inferno. The heat seared his face, but he didn't care. The burn on his shoulder throbbed, but he ignored it.

 

The sludge villain turned its massive, yellow eyes toward him. "You again?! The brat without a Quirk!"

 

The monster raised a massive tentacle of sludge, ready to smash Izuku into the asphalt.

 

Izuku didn't slow down. He ripped his yellow backpack off his shoulders and hurled it with all his meager strength. The heavy bag unzipped mid-air, spilling notebooks, pens, and a pencil case. The corner of a textbook caught the sludge villain right in one of its bulbous eyes.

 

"Argh!" the monster shrieked, recoiling.

 

The grip on Katsuki loosened just enough. The blonde boy gasped, tearing his mouth free from the slime.

 

Izuku closed the distance. He didn't have a plan. He had no martial arts training. He just grabbed handfuls of the viscous sludge and pulled, digging his fingernails in, trying to pry the monster off his tormentor.

 

"Deku?!" Katsuki coughed, spitting slime. "What the hell are you doing here?!"

 

"I don't know!" Izuku screamed back, tears streaming down his face. Not tears of fear, but of sheer, overwhelming exhaustion. He looked at Katsuki, his green eyes burning with a desperate, self-destructive intensity. "You looked like you were asking for help! And I don't care what happens to me!"

 

The words hit Katsuki harder than any physical blow. The absolute lack of self-preservation in Izuku’s voice was terrifying.

 

"I'll kill you both!" the sludge villain roared, recovering from the blow to the eye. It reared back a massive, hardened tendril, aiming directly for Izuku’s fragile spine.

 

Izuku didn't flinch. He just kept digging at the sludge. This is it, he thought. At least I won't have to go back to the empty apartment.

 

The tendril whipped down.

 

Suddenly, a massive hand grabbed Izuku’s collar, yanking him backward with impossible speed. Another hand grabbed Katsuki, pulling him free with a wet shhhhk.

 

"I really am pathetic," a familiar, booming voice echoed through the alleyway, devoid of its usual bombast, replaced instead by a raw, furious determination.

 

Izuku looked up.

 

All Might stood between them and the villain. He wasn't smiling. He was bleeding from the mouth, his massive muscles trembling with the sheer, agonizing effort of forcing his broken body past its limit.

 

"I told you the traits to make a great champion," All Might roared, raising his fist, drawing in the air around him until a miniature hurricane formed in the alley. "But I didn't live up to my own ideals! Pros are always risking their lives!"

 

"ALL MIGHT!" the villain shrieked.

 

"DETROIT... SMASH!"

 

The punch didn't just hit the villain. It hit the very atmosphere. The air pressure exploded outward in a shockwave that shattered the windows of the surrounding buildings and extinguished the alley fires in an instant. The sludge villain was vaporized into a fine green mist.

 

Then, impossibly, the force of the punch forced the clouds above to converge. Within seconds, a heavy, cleansing rain began to fall over the alley.

 

He changed the weather with a single punch.

 

Izuku sat on the wet pavement, gasping for breath, drenched in rain. He watched All Might stand victorious, a towering monument of strength. But as the crowd cheered, Izuku felt nothing but a hollow emptiness.

 

The adrenaline faded, leaving him freezing, exhausted, and utterly broken.

 

 

 

The aftermath was a blur.

 

The heroes swarmed Katsuki, praising his powerful Quirk, his resilience, his bravery. They fawned over him, wrapping him in blankets, marveling at how long he had held out against the villain.

 

Izuku was dragged to a nearby ambulance. He wasn't praised.

 

Death Arms and Kamui Woods stood over him, their faces twisted in anger.

 

"What were you thinking, kid?!" Death Arms scolded, pointing a thick finger at Izuku’s chest. "You have no Quirk! You were just in the way! You could have gotten yourself killed, or worse, gotten a pro killed trying to save your reckless hide!"

 

"That was incredibly foolish," Kamui Woods added sternly. "Leave the hero work to the professionals. You're lucky to be alive."

 

Izuku sat on the edge of the ambulance, a thermal blanket wrapped around his shivering shoulders. He looked up at the heroes. His eyes were completely dead. They were dark, hollow, and devoid of the spark that usually accompanied his hero worship.

 

He didn't apologize. He didn't flinch. He just stared at them with an apathy that made Kamui Woods shift uncomfortably.

 

I know I'm useless, Izuku thought. You don't have to yell at me. I've known it since I was four.

 

When they finally let him go, the sun was beginning to set, casting the city in long, bleeding shades of orange and purple. Izuku pulled his ruined, slime-soaked backpack over his shoulder and began the walk home.

 

He had survived the day, but it felt like a failure. He was still here. The apartment was still waiting.

 

"Deku!"

 

Izuku stopped. He didn't turn around.

 

Katsuki ran up behind him, panting heavily. The blonde boy looked a mess—his uniform torn, his hair plastered to his forehead with sweat and rain.

 

Katsuki stopped a few feet away, his fists clenched tight at his sides. He looked at Izuku’s back. He remembered the look in Izuku’s eyes in the alley. The complete, terrifying absence of a will to live. It had deeply unsettled him, cracking the foundation of his worldview. Deku wasn't looking down on him. Deku just didn't care if he died.

 

"Listen here, you Quirkless loser!" Katsuki yelled, his voice cracking slightly. "I didn't ask for your help! I didn't need it! I was fine! Don't think you can look down on me! I owe you nothing!"

 

Izuku slowly turned his head. He looked at Katsuki with the same dead, hollow eyes he had given the pro heroes.

 

"I know, Kacchan," Izuku said, his voice quiet, carrying no malice, only a profound, exhausted resignation. "You didn't need me. Nobody does."

 

Katsuki flinched as if he had been struck. The words stripped the wind from his sails. He stood frozen on the sidewalk as Izuku turned and continued walking, disappearing around the corner.

 

Izuku kept walking. He just wanted to go to sleep. He wanted to close his eyes and forget this day ever happened.

 

"I AM HERE!"

 

Izuku gasped, stumbling backward as All Might suddenly lunged out from a side alley, sliding into view with a ridiculous, dramatic pose.

 

"A-All Might?!" Izuku stammered, his heart giving a painful lurch.

 

Before Izuku could say another word, the hero erupted in a cloud of steam, deflating back into the skeletal form of Toshinori Yagi. He coughed a spray of blood into his hand, wiping it away with a grimace.

 

"Young man," Toshinori said, stepping forward, his blue eyes intense and focused. "I came to thank you, to revise my earlier statement, and to propose something."

 

Izuku took a step back, clutching his backpack tightly to his chest. His instincts, honed by years of disappointment and sudden betrayals, flared up. Why is he here? What does he want? Adults don't apologize. Adults don't propose things to me unless they want me to go away.

 

"If you hadn't told me about your life... if you hadn't run into that alley, I would have been a worthless bystander," Toshinori said, bowing his head slightly. "Top heroes have stories about them from their school days. Most of their stories have one thing in common: their bodies moved before they had a chance to think."

 

Izuku’s breath caught in his throat. He remembered the feeling of running into the fire. But Toshinori was misinterpreting it. Toshinori thought it was bravery.

 

"That was true for you, wasn't it?" Toshinori asked, looking up.

 

Izuku looked down at the concrete. No, he thought. My body moved because I wanted to be destroyed. But he didn't say it. He couldn't.

 

"You can become a hero," Toshinori declared, his voice carrying a weight and certainty that resonated in the quiet street.

 

The words Izuku had begged to hear from his mother, from his father, from the doctor. They were finally spoken. But hearing them now, after a decade of trauma, they didn't heal the wound. They just scraped painfully against it.

 

Izuku didn't cry. He didn't drop to his knees in gratitude. He just stared at Toshinori, his expression wary.

 

"I deem you worthy of inheriting my power," Toshinori said, pointing a long, bony finger at Izuku.

 

Izuku blinked. "Inheriting... your power? What are you talking about?"

 

Toshinori chuckled, wiping blood from his chin. "It's a secret I've guarded closely. My Quirk is not innate. It was passed down to me like a sacred torch. I was Quirkless, just like you. The Quirk is called One For All. And I want to give it to you."

 

The skeletal man stepped forward, reaching out a hand to place on Izuku’s shoulder, a gesture of fatherly reassurance.

 

Izuku’s reaction was instantaneous and violent.

 

He didn't just step back; he violently flinched away, throwing his arms up to protect his face and neck, his entire body curling inward as if expecting a blow. He tripped over his own feet, falling hard onto his backside on the concrete.

 

Toshinori froze, his hand hovering in mid-air. The hero’s eyes widened in profound shock.

 

He had seen that flinch before in victims of severe abuse. It was a reflex born of deep, ingrained trauma. It was the physical manifestation of expecting pain from a figure of authority.

 

"Young man...?" Toshinori whispered, his hand slowly dropping.

 

Izuku scrambled backward, his chest heaving, his eyes wild with suspicion and fear. He looked at the frail man offering him the greatest power in the world, and he didn't see salvation. He saw a trap.

 

"Why?" Izuku choked out, his voice shaking. He pulled his knees to his chest, making himself as small as possible on the sidewalk. "Why would you choose me?"

 

"Because you were the only one who acted—"

 

"That's a lie!" Izuku shouted, the raw, ugly truth of his existence finally boiling over. "I'm nobody! I'm Deku! I'm useless!"

 

Izuku pointed an accusing, trembling finger at Toshinori. "You saw the other people! You saw Katsuki! His Quirk is amazing! He's strong! He's a prodigy! And there are thousands of other people out there with perfect bodies and perfect lives! I'm a Quirkless failure whose own father didn't want him! My own mother can't even look at my face!"

 

Toshinori felt a cold spike of horror pierce his heart. The casual, devastating way the boy revealed the absolute ruin of his home life hit the hero harder than the sludge villain’s blows.

 

He's raising himself, Toshinori realized, staring at the scuffed shoes, the oversized, fraying uniform, the too-thin wrists protruding from the cuffs. My god, this boy is completely alone.

 

"Why?" Izuku sobbed, wrapping his arms tightly around his legs, rocking slightly. "Why would you choose something broken when there are so many perfect people out there? What do you want from me? I don't have anything left to give!"

 

The silence on the street was deafening. The setting sun cast long, dark shadows over the two figures.

 

Toshinori took a slow, deliberate breath. He didn't step closer. He lowered himself, sitting cross-legged on the rough concrete of the sidewalk, bringing himself down to Izuku’s eye level. He made himself as unthreatening as possible.

 

"I don't want a perfect person," Toshinori said gently. His voice was no longer the Symbol of Peace addressing a citizen. It was a man talking to a deeply wounded child. "Perfect people don't understand what it means to be powerless. Perfect people don't run into fires when they have nothing to protect themselves with."

 

He looked at Izuku’s tear-streaked face. "You asked me why I would choose something broken. I'll tell you the truth. My body is broken. The world thinks I'm invincible, but I'm holding myself together with tape and willpower. I know what it's like to feel useless."

 

Izuku sniffled, looking up, his eyes searching Toshinori's gaunt face for a lie, for the hidden agenda. He found none.

 

"You ran in today because you didn't value your own life," Toshinori said, his voice thick with sorrow, accurately piercing Izuku's darkest secret. "I saw it in your eyes. You thought your life was currency to be spent. That is a terrible, tragic burden for a child to carry."

 

Toshinori offered his hand again, but this time, he kept it resting on his own knee, palm up, allowing Izuku to make the choice.

 

"I am offering you this power not because you are perfect, but because you have a hero's heart trapped in a world that has been unspeakably cruel to you," Toshinori said softly. "I want to help you, Izuku Midoriya. I want to give you the strength to save others, yes. But more importantly... I want to give you a reason to save yourself."

 

Izuku stared at the offered hand. A large, scarred, bony hand. It wasn't the hand of an invincible god. It was the hand of a man who understood pain.

 

For the first time in ten years, an adult was looking at Izuku and not seeing a tragedy, a burden, or a ghost. He was seeing Izuku.

 

Slowly, hesitantly, Izuku uncurled from his defensive ball. His hand trembled as he reached out. He expected Toshinori to pull away. He expected it to be a cruel joke.

 

But as Izuku’s small, scarred fingers brushed against Toshinori's palm, the hero’s hand closed around his, warm and incredibly firm. It was an anchor in the storm.

 

"Will you accept?" Toshinori asked.

 

Izuku looked into the blue eyes of his hero. The ice around his heart, built up over a decade of silent dinners and locked doors, cracked just a fraction.

 

"Yes," Izuku whispered, his voice thick with fresh, healing tears. "I'll do it."

 

Toshinori smiled—a real, gentle smile. "Good. We have ten months until the U.A. entrance exam. We have a lot of work to do. Not just on your body, but on everything else."

 

As Toshinori helped Izuku to his feet, the boy realized with a sudden, overwhelming sense of vertigo that the era of the ghost in the apartment might finally be coming to an end. For the first time in his life, he wasn't entirely alone.