Where to Start from
Kenjiro sat cross-legged on his bed, the room dim except for the faint glow of his desk lamp in the corner. His hands were still trembling—not out of weakness, but out of something he couldn't name. Adrenaline? Fear? Excitement? Maybe all of it pressed into one knot in his chest. The words from the doctor kept replaying in his head: a quirk… They had said it carefully, hesitantly, as if the word itself might slip out of their grasp.
But it wasn't just a quirk. Not really.
His eyes drifted around his room, landing on the familiar mess of books, notebooks, and the scattered pens his mother always told him to pick up. For a moment, he tried to center himself with those ordinary sights. But then his gaze caught on a poster above his desk—an old hero poster, the colors faded from years on the wall.
The hero in the image stood tall, smiling, cape billowing in the wind as if gravity meant nothing. Kenjiro stared at it for a long moment, then shook his head hard, pulling his eyes away.
"…First I gotta figure out what I can do," he muttered under his breath.
He reached for his notebook—the one that had survived everything, the one with the strange equation he had scrawled the day of the bus accident. His pen hovered over the page for a moment before he started writing a rough list, his handwriting jagged and uneven with the energy pumping through him.
1. Figure out if this is the Speed Force (or am I gonna have to A-Train it).2. Find out what my limits are (if I can do everything a normal speedster can).3. Is time tra… (maybe not this one).4. Be a Hero??
He stared at the last line for a long moment, chewing his lip. Be a Hero. The words looked almost childish written in his messy scrawl, but they carried a weight heavier than anything else on the page.
Kenjiro closed the notebook slowly, his chest rising and falling. His mind raced with possibilities, dangers, fantasies, fears. He stood up suddenly, his legs twitching with restless energy, like they wanted to move before his brain had even decided to. He glanced around his room, the walls closing in with how small the space suddenly felt.
He took a step back toward the middle of the room, preparing without even thinking about it. His knees bent slightly. His muscles tightened. He could almost feel the hum under his skin—the electricity, the pull, the thing that had carried him back from the edge of death.
And then he froze.
His eyes flicked around the cramped space: the desk, the bed, the bookshelf, the narrow window. All too close. All too fragile.
"Wait…" He blinked, shaking his head at himself. "I'm so stupid. I was really about to try to use super speed in a small space with no control."
He sat back down on his bed, running both hands through his hair until it stuck up in every direction. The notebook sat beside him like a silent witness. He pressed his palms against his face, exhaling sharply through his fingers.
For tonight, it would have to wait.
The next morning, he sat at the kitchen table, fiddling with the edge of a napkin while his parents moved around him. His mom placed a bowl of rice down in front of him, her hand brushing his shoulder gently before she sat. His dad settled across from him, folding his arms. There was no lecture in his eyes, no fear. Just… concern.
Finally, his mom broke the silence.
"Kenjiro." Her voice was soft, but steady. "We want you to know something. No matter what happens… quirk or no quirk, accident or miracle… you're our son. That's what matters."
His father nodded, the lines of his face firm but not harsh. "We'll support you. Whatever this is, whatever it means for your future—we're with you. Always."
Kenjiro's throat tightened. He nodded quickly, not trusting his voice. It was all he needed to hear, but somehow it made the weight heavier too. Because now, he couldn't let them down.
Two days later, he found himself walking through the streets near his neighborhood. The city—no, the town—buzzed with its normal rhythms: kids running, bikes zipping past, shopkeepers calling out prices. It was so ordinary that it almost made him laugh. How can the world look the same when mine is so different?
He kept walking until the streets thinned out, the air carrying the smell of salt. His steps slowed as he reached a stretch of beach not too far from home. It wasn't crowded, the sand damp from the tide and the sound of the waves covering everything. Open, wide, and empty enough that he could breathe.
Kenjiro stepped onto the sand, the grains shifting under his shoes. He flexed his hands at his sides, his heartbeat already starting to climb.
"This is it," he whispered.
He closed his eyes and tried to focus on the hum inside him. At first, nothing. Just the breeze and the surf. Then, like a crackle at the edge of thought, it came. That pull again, like his whole body was tuned to a frequency no one else could hear.
The air around him shifted. The crash of the waves slowed. The gulls overhead seemed to drag their wings through syrup. The world itself… dragged, stretching like frames in a broken film reel.
Kenjiro's eyes shot open. The sand particles beneath his feet hovered just slightly slower than they should. His breath caught in his chest, exhilaration and terror crashing together.
"…Oh my god," he breathed.
Cautiously, he bent down, lowering into a running stance. Every nerve in his body screamed at him to move. He pushed off.
The beach blurred. The air pressed against him like a wall he was breaking through, each step vibrating through his bones. He stumbled halfway, almost pitching forward into the sand, but somehow righted himself. His shoes hissed with smoke where the friction burned through the soles.
When he finally skidded to a stop, nearly tumbling, he bent over, gasping for air. His chest heaved, his legs shaking with both exhaustion and joy.
He lifted his head, the ocean wide before him, the whole world feeling suddenly new. His lips pulled into a grin, wild and disbelieving.
"This…" he panted, catching his breath. "This is awesome."