My quirk awakened when I was ten years old. I say "awakened" because, before that moment, the power I'd been able to wield was nothing compared to what exploded out of me that day.
Like many kids with an emission type quirk, I developed mine when I was around four years old. The quirk I manifested was unlike either of my parents'. My father had the ability to induce hallucinations by releasing an LSD like chemical from his sweat glands. My mother's quirk let her sharpen and elongate her fingernails into metal spikes that she could shoot out and grow back within seconds. My quirk allows me to restore a living being's physical and mental state to any point within their natural lifespan. I see every experience in a person's life like a link in a chain that I can connect and disconnect anywhere along the line. The memories contained in those links become inaccessible once they're disconnected from the starting and ending points. And as I came to learn the hard way, if I left them that way, they would quickly begin to deteriorate until it eventually became impossible to reconnect them again.
Prior to my awakening, the furthest I had been able to Restore someone was no more than a couple of minutes. Any more than that gave me horrible headaches and high stress fevers. After my awakening, the side effects diminished to a dull ache between my ears and a general feeling of uneasiness. But the most dramatic change was the length of time I was able to Restore. The chain of life experiences which had once been no longer than a jump rope suddenly stretched out further than I could see. I found that I'd become able to sift through all of the links in the chain, watching a person's entire life play like a movie in my head at phenomenal speeds. The experience was incredibly jarring to my ten-year-old mind, and it was nothing I could have ever hoped to control at the time.
The day my quirk manifested, my mother had been making lunch in the kitchen when a spider crawling down the wall had spooked her and she'd panicked, shooting out her sharpened fingernails at it. One of them had missed badly, firing into the living room where my father had been flying me around like a pretend airplane. At the sound of her panicked voice calling out, he'd immediately turned to avoid the incoming projectile. It sliced across his forearm when he lifted it to protect me before embedding in the wall behind us. It was probably the sight of the blood that triggered my quirk to activate, and I Restored my father to just before he'd been injured. As my mother apologized with tears streaming down her face to my very confused father, neither one of them at the time had any idea what had just happened. My mother, in her panicked state, hadn't noticed that my father's arm was no longer bleeding, and my father didn't remember that he'd even been injured.
They took me to see a quirk doctor the next day.
"It's a mutation. Your child's quirk factor is completely unique. She possesses none of the traits that comprise the quirks from either the mother's or father's side," the short, pudgy doctor said.
My parents looked at each other with concern.
"I recommend that you contact one of the quirk support centers." The doctor handed my father a card.
"Support center?" Mother asked.
"They specialize in providing guidance to parents and children in your unique situation," the doctor explained as he reached out to my mother, who was holding me in her arms, and handed me a sucker.
My parents looked at each other again before turning to smile graciously at the doctor.
"Thank you for the advice, Doctor."
They stood and turned to leave.
"It's my pleasure. Please do let me know if there are any further developments with the child's quirk," the doctor smiled pleasantly from beneath a bushy, white mustache, his eyes creasing almost creepily behind his goggles as he ushered the three of us out of the examination room.
Father bowed and mother dipped her head before heading off down the hall. The creepy doctor waved at me from over my mother's shoulder, but I just stared back at him, clutching the still wrapped sucker he'd given me in my left hand.
Father tossed the card the doctor had given him into the trash can on his way out the main hospital doors.
"Kyoya!" Mother called out after him in alarm.
"There's no way we're taking Misaki anywhere near one of those centers, Ami."
She hitched me up on her hip before hurrying after his quickened strides. "I know it's probably not the best option, but—"
"No!" He shouted as he stopped walking and sharply turned. The look on his face scared me and I whimpered, prompting mother to cradle my head against her shoulder with her free hand.
He sighed. "I'm sorry. Let's talk about this when we get home."
She nodded and followed after him a few paces to the car. She buckled me into the car seat in the back, taking the wrapper off of the sucker in my hand before shutting the door and sliding into the passenger seat. I stuffed the candy into my mouth as my father started up the car, but his hand stopped over the shifter before putting it into gear.
"Those places..." He started saying in a low tone. "They pretend to care about what's happening to you when all they really care about is furthering their own research into people's quirks. I won't put our four-year-old daughter through that, Ami. I can't."
She turned to him with open concern and asked, "Is it really that bad?"
He was silent for a moment, clutching his hands on the steering wheel until his knuckles turned white. "You know I had a lot of trouble getting a handle on my quirk growing up. My adoptive parents decided to enroll me in one of those centers when I was eight. They thought the doctors there would be able to help me learn how to control it better."
"Did they?"
"Yeah. But only because I knew if I didn't learn to control it, I'd have to keep going there. I hated every second of it. Getting hooked up to all kinds of machines. Doctors sticking giant needles in my arms to draw blood. People behind glass walls staring at me undergoing stress tests," he cut himself off and reached up to rub a hand over his eyes. "Every day in there was like torture."
She was silent for a long moment before she reached out her hand to rest against his cheek. "I'm so sorry you had to go through all of that."
"That's why... I won't put Misaki through that hell too."
She smiled at him. "I understand. It's okay. We'll figure it out together."
He reached up to lay his hand over hers and smiled back at her. "Thank you."
She dropped her hand and turned to look back at me in the car seat. "Even though we might not know anything about what to expect from now on, from what I've seen so far, Misaki's quirk is the type that's meant to help people. We'll just have to do our very best to make sure she's able to grow into it as best she can."
Father turned his head to look back at me as well. "Mom and dad are going to help you in any way we can, little blossom. Don't you worry about a thing."
They couldn't have known then how that decision would one day end up costing them their lives.
~*~
Many of the decisions my parents made concerning my upbringing could have been considered "questionable". In order to avoid any possible scrutiny, they had paid an underworld counterfeiter to forge documents they had used to register me as quirkless. I remember being told almost every time we left the house that under no circumstances was I to show anyone my quirk. There had been a few close calls during nursery school, but since my quirk only affected the person I used it on, and they didn't remember me using it, I was able to quietly stay under the radar. By the time I was seven, I had complete mastery over my abilities, and I was able to use them more conscientiously.
By the time I started grade school, my father had been released from his job at the docks after the company had suffered some financial setbacks and was forced to lay off a bunch of their employees. They had given him a three-month severance package which had lasted just long enough for him to find other employment. He'd managed to find a fairly well-paying job working as a traveling salesman; meaning that he was away a lot more often than he was home. Due to my age and the potential volatility of my quirk, my parents had decided that my father would work while my mother stayed home to look after me when I wasn't in school. That decision placed a heavy burden on father to be the sole provider for our family of three, and on mother who was left to care for me on her own while he was away.
Neither of them had handled the separation well.
I could tell, even at my young age, that they had begun to drift apart. The few times a month when father was home, he spent nearly all of his time talking to me about his travels and helping me with my schoolwork or my quirk training. That was probably the reason why mother became so resentful. She hid it well when father was home, but when he left, she'd become cold and distant. She would lock herself up in her bedroom and surf though bidding sites all day and night, buying and selling all kinds of stuff she didn't really need.
I was a pretty self-sufficient child by that point, so I usually just left her alone. I knew how to cook my own meals, bathe and clothe myself, and get to and from school on my own. I could do the dishes and the laundry. I did most of the vacuuming and dusted the blinds. I scrubbed the bathtub and watered the plants. I was basically living by myself anyway; mother hardly ever came out of her room while I was there.
Three years passed in that manner. The only times that varied from that routine were a couple of Sunday mornings each month when father would come home, and we'd all have breakfast together. I always looked forward to those days. Mother and I would make pancakes together in the kitchen and then we'd all sit around the dining room table to talk about the week we'd had. It was almost like a switch was flipped for those few hours in the morning and we were all a family again... Until breakfast was over and the cycle of neglect started all over again.
It was one of those Sunday mornings when I experienced my awakening.
Most young girls by the time they were ten had been spoken to about the changes that would be occurring in their bodies as they started going through puberty. Due to my mother's neglect with my upbringing and my father's lack of interest in how she'd been parenting me, I was quite a bit behind the curve in that respect. I'd been seeing the warning signs for months as my body began to mature, but nothing had prepared me to wake up that morning, drenched in my own blood. I was terrified. And for the first time in I don't know how many years, I cried out for my mother.
Both of my parents came rushing into my room at the same time.
"Misaki!" Father called out as he flung open the door.
"What's going on?" Mother asked from behind him, peeking around the side of him to stare into my room.
"Help me!" I cried out hysterically as tears streamed in hot rivers down my face.
I could see father's face twist in horror at the sight of my bloody hands reaching out to him. "What the—?"
He rushed over to me immediately, grabbing me by the shoulders and giving me a gentle shake. He looked me over quickly before staring into my eyes and asking, "Where does it hurt?"
"I don't know!" I wailed, breaking off into heavy sobs.
I vaguely remember hearing mother's voice from the doorway as she asked, "Has she started her period already?"
Father turned his head to look back over at her in shock. "What do you mean, already? Didn't you talk to her about this?"
Mother's face scrunched up in contempt at father's accusatory tone. "She's only ten years old, Kyoya. I didn't have my first period until I was twelve. How was I supposed to know she was already budding?"
He let go of my shoulders and stood, turning to face away from me. His voice was colder than I'd ever heard it before when he addressed her again. "If you'd been taking care of her like you were supposed to be you might have seen the warning signs, wouldn't you?"
"Don't lecture me about my parenting when you're never around at all!"
That was the first time I'd ever heard mother raise her voice. The shock of it stopped my tears and I sniffled, wiping my face with my sleeve as father yelled back at her.
"I'm working, Ami! That was the deal! I go to work and you take care of our daughter! That's what we agreed to!"
Mother shot forward all of a sudden and pushed him back toward my bed. "Well I didn't agree to be your nanny! I'm your wife, Kyoya! But every time you come home all you want to do is spend your time with her!" She pointed at me accusingly. "I may as well not even exist to you anymore, you son of a bitch!"
She raised her hand and slapped him across the face before turning around to storm out of my bedroom. I'd never heard Father raise his voice as loud as when he reached out to grab her by the arm and bellowed, "Don't you walk away from me!"
"Stop it!" I screamed, grabbing onto the back of his shirt and squeezing my eyes shut. I collapsed onto the floor beside my bed into a heap of clothing a second later. As I stared in shock at the blood-stained shirt in my hands, mother collapsed to her knees in front of me.
"Oh my god... Misaki, what have you done...?" She gasped as she reached out with shaking hands and picked up a sleeping infant from the pile of trousers on the floor.
At the sight of my father's infant body, I instinctively knew that I'd been the one to do that to him. Tears began pouring out of my eyes, blocking my vision, and a sickening feeling of nausea clenched my stomach. I screamed, clutching his shirt to my chest as I bawled.
My mother's frantic voice chastised me, "Stop crying and fix this!"
I struggled to speak around the sobs wracking my body as I rocked back and forth on the floor, still clutching my father's shirt. I squeezed my eyes shut and shook my head. "I—I can't... I don't know—!"
Mother's palm connected with my cheek and sent me sprawling across the floor. She grabbed me by the collar of my pajamas and lifted me up to scream in my face, "Change him back right now!"
I lashed out in a panic at the crazed look on her face, squeezing my eyes shut and throwing my arms out in front of me as I screamed, "Get away from me!"
The sound of chains linking resounded in my head and I opened my eyes with a gasp to see my mother's body shrink down into an infant right in front of me. She landed softly next to my father on the floor, both of them peacefully asleep.
A sickening feeling of dread enveloped me, and I scrambled forward on my hands and knees toward them. "Oh no... No no no no no!"
I tentatively laid my shaky hands on each of their rounded bellies, muttering to myself, "Ch-change them back... I—I have to change them back. I have to—I have to hurry!"
My tears once again clouded my vision as my head began to pound with a dull headache and the nausea I'd felt when I'd restored my father multiplied. I doubled over, laying my forehead against the ground between them and sobbed, "I don't—! I don't know what to do...!"
The sound of an infant's cry rang out over my own cries and I lifted my head to stare down at my squalling father. My mother began to stir next to him a moment later, likely woken by the sound of his cries and I could feel the links in their chains slowly beginning to disintegrate. I swallowed against my nausea and wiped my tears on my sleeves. Reaching out, I laid my hands on their bellies again and forced my quirk to activate.
Searing pain shot through my skull, but I pushed through, reaching with both hands for as many of their disconnected links as I could. I forced what I'd been able to gather back together as quickly as I could before I was blown back. I hit the edge of the nightstand with the back of my head. I must have passed out because I awoke sometime later to the feeling of four small hands shaking me. I opened my eyes to see two toddlers staring down at me, their tiny faces only a few centimeters from my own.
"You a'wight?" The little boy asked.
I struggled to sit up, still feeling some pain in my head and nausea in my stomach. "I—I'm fine, I think... Are you alright?"
They looked at each other then back up at me, nodding in unison. They'd put their shirts back on and were practically swimming in the material now with their miniature sizes.
"Do you... Do you know who I am?"
They both shook their heads.
I dropped my head, staring down at the blood-streaked floor underneath me.
"Who awe you?"
"I..." I looked up at them. Knowing they wouldn't understand if I told them who I really was, I said. "I'm someone who cares about you. A lot."
The little girl reached out her hand to pat me on the leg, her big golden eyes staring up at me as she asked, "You hab a owie? Yowa bwood come out."
I looked down at myself. "Right... Um, can you two stay here for a couple of minutes while I get cleaned up?"
"Hewp?" She asked, craning her neck to look up at me as I stood.
I shook my head. "No, I'll be alright on my own. Thank you."
I walked into the bathroom in a daze, peeling off my bloody pajamas as I walked. I hit the button on the wall to start the bath heater before stepping into the cold water. I brought my knees up into my chest and wrapped my arms around them, letting my helplessness and regret wash over me and bring a fresh round of tears to my eyes. I ducked my head and sobbed into my legs, clamping a hand over my mouth to muffle the sounds so they wouldn't hear me in the other room. By the time the water had warmed up, I'd finally managed to get some control over myself.
I slid down underneath the surface and stared up at the pink hued ceiling, thinking about what I was going to do now. I'd been pretty much taking care of myself for the last three years, but would I be able to take care of two toddlers? Wouldn't people start asking questions when father stopped showing up for work? And who was going to pay the bills now? I was too young to get a job. And what was I going to do about school, and food? A home?
I shot up out of the water. Mother still had her stash of bargain buys. I knew her scheme. She'd buy stuff at a low price then resell it at a markup online. I could sell off whatever was left and hopefully that would be enough to feed all of us.
With my new plan in mind, I got out of the bathtub and drained the water. I'd have to scrub it later. My pajamas were done for and I needed to do something about the floor and the bed too. I didn't hurt anywhere, and as far as I could tell I wasn't bleeding anymore, so I decided to just look up what "period" meant on the internet later. I dried off and dressed as quickly as I could. Walking out to the living room, I noticed that the toddlers had found the remote to the television and were sitting on the couch, watching Sunday morning anime.
I walked over to them and asked, "Are you two hungry?"
They both nodded back at me eagerly.
"How about pancakes?"
"Yummy!" They called out in unison.
They were almost cute enough to distract me from the fact that they were actually my parents.
Almost.
I busied myself making breakfast for the three of us, trying to use only as much as we would all eat. We had a limited supply of food to last the three of us until I could figure out a way to get us some money. When we'd finished eating, I settled the toddlers back in front of the TV while I did the dishes. Peaking at them to make sure they were still hypnotized by the show they were watching, I decided to take a look in my mother's workroom.
Rows upon rows of boxes were stacked on one side of the room. The hurriedly tossed futon made my heart clench in my chest, but I shook off the feeling. Swallowing heavily, I walked over to the computer sitting on the lap desk in the corner of the room and turned it on. A sign in prompt popped up on the screen.
"Password?"
I had no idea what she would have used as a password. I typed in my father's name and hit the enter key on the keyboard. A red error message flashed across the screen for a moment before the password prompt popped up again. I tried his birthday. Wrong again. I tried a combination of the two. Nope. I tried password after password, all of them bringing up the red error message.
I flopped back on the futon in frustration, wracking my brain for anything I hadn't tried yet. A thought suddenly dawned on me and I felt my eyes widen. I sat up slowly, daring not to hope as I reached out to type.
Little blossom.
The screen began to load.
I lifted my hand to my mouth and gasped. I'd spent so long believing that my mother hated me for taking all of my father's attention away from her. Why would she have used his nickname for me as her password?
The computer finished its login sequence and I let out an involuntary sob at the picture that appeared on the screen. It was the three of us at my first Hanami when I was three. I was riding on my father's shoulders and reaching up to brush my fingers against the multitude of cherry blossoms above me. All three of us had wide, happy smiles on our faces.
The knee jerk pain I felt in my heart was almost unbearable, knowing that we would never be that happy family again. We could never be any kind of family again. I had to face the stark reality that, at this point in my life, I couldn't take care of my parents. I reached out for the mouse with a heavy heart and opened the internet browser, typing a query into the search bar with shaking hands.
Orphanages in Minami Ward, Fukuoka
~*~
"Wha'da we got?" The gruff voice of a man called out as he walked through the front door of my house.
It had been eleven days since I'd left my parents at the orphanage. The school had probably called the police when they couldn't get ahold of my parents to ask them why I'd stopped coming to school. Two police officers had shown up, asking me if my parents were home when I answered the door. I'd let them into the house when they nicely asked if they could come inside. A little while later, several more police officers and a group of people in paper suits showed up and started looking all over the house.
They weren't going to find anything. My parents were already long gone.
"Textbook case of child abandonment, detective," one of the other officers informed the big, burly looking man that just walked in.
The detective took a piece of gum out of his pocket and folded it into his whisker lined mouth. "Any trace a the parents?"
"No, sir. Vanished without a trace."
The detective looked around. "Wha'bout the kid?"
"Hasn't said a word since we got here," the officer said, pointing over his shoulder at me, sitting on the bottom of the staircase.
Shoving his large hands into his pockets, the detective tilted his balding head in my direction and said, "Well, lemme give it a shot."
He walked over and sat down next to me, then asked, "Ya got a name, kid?"
I didn't answer.
"Come on. Ya gotta at least have a name, right?"
I ducked my head and grudgingly replied, "...Misaki."
The detective smiled down at me gregariously. "It's nice ta meet'cha, Misaki. I'm detective Ganjou."
I nodded my lowered head in response.
"Can ya tell me what happened'a ya parents?"
I turned my head to look away.
The detective leaned back against the stairs and sighed, "Well, tha's okay. No need ta force yaself. Ya hungry? Can I get'cha anything?"
I shook my head.
"Well, alright." He reached out a hand to clasp my shoulder and I looked up, finally noticing the woman in a business suit standing in front of us.
The detective nodded to her and said, "This nice lady here's with child protective services. She's gonna get'cha settled inta one a them group homes fer a bit. Till we can find someone ta look after ya."
The kind looking woman bent over and looked me in the eye, holding out her hand to me. "Hello Misaki. My name is Hogo-san. Would you like to come with me?"
"I can't stay here?" I asked, looking over at the detective.
He glanced down at me from the side with a piteous smirk. "Fraid not, kid."
Lowering my head, I slowly stood up and reached out to take the social worker's hand, letting her lead me away from my childhood home as I stared back at it longing over my shoulder.
Deep down I had known this would eventually become my fate. Neither of my parents had been close with the rest of their families. Mother's parents were from America and had both passed away before I was born. Father was the child of a pair of villains who'd died when he was a baby while they'd been on the run from the law. He and his twin sister had been raised by a distant cousin of his mother's in the countryside. Shortly after they'd graduated high school, his sister had left the country to start a new life, and father had moved to Fukuoka to attend college, where he'd met mother. I doubted I had any family left who would be able to take me in. But I was okay with that. I'd pretty much been taking care of myself for the last three years anyway. I'd be fine on my own. Besides, the less people I had around me, the less chance there was of them turning out like my parents. Until I got better control over my quirk, it was better if I was just left alone.
I let the social worker lead me to her car. She opened up the door for me and I climbed into the back seat, securing the safety belt. She smiled at me and got into the driver's seat, starting the car, and driving us off to the Child Protective Service main office. When we arrived, she got out and opened the door to let me out, holding out her hand to me. I took it, but not with the intention of letting her guide me into the building. As soon as my hand touched hers, I activated my quirk.
I restored her back a little over an hour, to just before she'd been handed my case. I slipped my hand out of hers and turned around, walking off down the sidewalk and disappearing into a crowd of people. I looked back over my shoulder to see the social worker blink and look around, probably wondering how she'd wound up outside. I knew she wasn't looking for me. She had no idea I even existed anymore. I felt kinda bad for her, knowing she was probably going to get in trouble later for losing me. But I didn't dwell on it.
I flipped the hood on my sweatshirt up and reached into my pocket to pull out the prepaid smart phone I'd bought on the internet a few days ago. I'd managed to sell off all of my mother's remaining inventory. Adding that to the amount my parents had in savings, I had a little over three hundred thousand yen to my name. It should at least be enough to get me by until I could find my own source of income. I pulled up the bus schedule on the phone. It would be another seven minutes before the bus headed back to Chikushigaoka was scheduled to arrive. I settled down on the bus stop bench to wait.
By the time I got back to my house the police were gone. I unlocked the front door and ducked inside underneath the yellow tape. Knowing it wouldn't be a good idea to spend too much time in the house, I ran up the stairs to my bedroom and pulled the backpack I had packed that morning out from the back of my closet. I stopped to take a quick inventory: three sets of clothes aside from the two layers and I was already wearing, towel, pillow and blanket, toothbrush and toothpaste, ATM card, IC card, fake ID card that listed me as fifteen years old. That hadn't exactly been easy to come by... But if I was going to find a place to live and work, I was going to need it.
I packed everything back in the bag and zipped it closed, slipping it onto my back before jogging down the stairs. I stopped as I got to the front door when a sudden wave of nervousness cascaded over me as I reached for the handle. I turned around to look back at the darkening, empty house once more. It was the last time I would probably ever see my family home. Swallowing heavily, I took the house key out of my pocket and dropped it into the drawer of the entryway table. Turning the handle, I ducked back under the police tape and exited the house, closing the door with a sense of finality behind me.
I'd managed to get by pretty well on my own after that. As far as living situations went, I'd spent most of my first year crashing in net cafes that offered food and showers. That was where I'd met the guy who had taught me how to write computer code. He was a bit eccentric and kept to himself most of the time, but we managed to establish a sort of master student relationship that benefited both of us. I was pretty much his gofer and he taught me coding as payment. We lost touch after he left the University's technology research program and went to work for some big tech company. I never heard from him again after that.
What he had taught me I'd been able to put to good use though. I forged the necessary documents I needed to rent myself a one room flat in my old neighborhood. I'd also been able to find a job working as a code breaker for a security software development company online. The advance they'd paid me after I passed their anonymous online test had been enough to buy me my own computer system. I spent the next year and a half working nonstop in order to save up enough money to cover my living and school expenses for the next six years.
By the time I turned twelve, I decided that it was time for me to go back to school. I knew that's what my parents would have wanted for me. Even though I hadn't really finished grade school, I was able to pass the entrance exam for junior high pretty easily. Most of the information on my application form was totally bogus, but I figured if I kept my grades up nobody would have any reason to dig any deeper into my living situation. I sailed through the next six years of junior high and high school with relative ease. I'd pick up a job or two every once in a while to pad my bank account and keep my skills sharp, but for the most part, I was able to stay under the radar; doing well enough to keep suspicions at bay but not enough to draw any unnecessary attention to myself.
When I graduated high school, I knew it was time for me to let go of the made-up persona I'd been hiding behind while I was still considered to be underaged. I still had quite a bit of money saved up from my coding jobs, so I decided to see if it would be enough for a down payment on a house. During small talk while I'd been filling out the loan paperwork at the bank, the loan officer mentioned that they were looking for some help. The more I thought about that the more I got the feeling like I should apply for the job. I was making great money as an anonymous contractor, writing and breaking computer code. But I was trying to get away from that persona, and in order to do that, I had to cut ties with all of it. Buying a house and starting a respectable job seemed like the most logical next step in my life's journey.
After I'd learned how to hack into computer databases, one of the first things I'd done was go looking for my parent's adoption records. The house I'd purchased was in the same neighborhood as the one both of my parent's new families lived in. After I'd gotten moved in and had started my new job as a teller at the bank, I went to see them for the first time since I'd dropped them off at the orphanage. I sat in a nearby park and waited for them to walk by on their way home from school.
That day, I cried for the first time in almost eight years.
It wasn't just sadness I was feeling for the time that we'd lost as a family. I was glad that they looked so happy. The last memories I had of my parents before turning them into babies was of them screaming at each other and fighting over me. As I watched those two teenagers walking hand in hand through the park with blushing cheeks and giddy smiles on their faces, I found myself overcome with a sense of relief. Maybe what I'd done hadn't been so bad after all. Maybe what I'd actually done was to give my parents a second chance; at life, and at love.
I still blamed myself and my quirk for what had happened to them. The struggles we had all gone through because of my actions that day could never be erased. I would carry that guilt with me for the rest of my life. A life that I would live in the way my parents had wanted for me.
Normal. Quirkless. Quiet. And alone...
***
Misaki leaned forward, setting the mug on the table and fixing Eraser with an insistent stare. "That's why I know that giving into the fear and running away from her quirk will only make matters worse for Eri in the long run. When I read about her situation, I knew that I had to be the one to help her. Not just because I could..." She looked down for a moment, her expression softening into one of hopeful solace. "But because I hoped that maybe we could help each other."
"I think she'd like that," Eraser said softly, and she noticed a small smile on his face when she looked back up at him.
Misaki smiled back warmly as she said, "I really hope so."
~*~
AN:
Phew! Origin story is in the books! Why are these things always so tragic?!
Hawks is back for the next chapter, and unfortunately there's gonna end up being some manga spoilers for any anime only readers... 😞 Blame Bones, they messed up the order of the story! (but like, why...? 🤨)
As always, thank you so much for reading! ❤️
LOLSAT