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The Quirkless Boy
Peace was a language I had to relearn. The silence left behind after Kageyama's capture wasn't an empty void; it was a fertile ground. The constant, low-grade dread that had been my background noise for months was gone, and in its absence, the ordinary sounds of life rushed in to fill the space. The creak of the floorboards, the distant laughter of children playing in the park, the steady rhythm of my father's breathing as he napped on the sofa—these were no longer just sounds. They were notes in a symphony of normalcy I had almost forgotten.
My body responded to the ceasefire with a profound gratitude. I slept deeply and dreamlessly, my small form finally allowed to dedicate its energy to the simple, vital work of growing. The dark circles under my eyes faded. My appetite returned with a vengeance. I was a plant that had been surviving on stolen sips of water, suddenly given a long, deep drink.
My parents' relief was a warm blanket around our home. The tense, silent conversations ceased. Their smiles were easier, their laughter less forced. They watched my recovery with a cautious joy, as if I were a fragile bird that had finally found its way back to the nest. The question of 'what' had been wrong with me was gently shelved, replaced by a grateful contentment that it was over.
In the Dreaming, my work transformed. The frantic, defensive triage was replaced by a return to gentle curation. I wandered the restored landscapes, not as a sentry, but as a restorer admiring a repaired masterpiece. I spent time with Akari's dream, which had stabilized into a permanent, quiet meadow. I visited the young chef, whose nightmares of fire had been replaced by dreams of receiving a coveted award. The city's subconscious was healing, and I was its humble gardener, pulling the occasional weed and encouraging the blooms.
I was careful, now. The encounter with Kageyama had taught me the limits of my vessel. I was a god in my own realm, but my body was human, and a young one at that. I could not wage a war on two fronts. So I built new boundaries, not just in the Dreaming, but within myself. I learned to recognize the warning signs of strain—the faint headache, the metallic taste at the back of my throat that preceded a nosebleed. I learned to pull back, to rest, to be 'Just' Arata for a while.
This balancing act became my new normal. My days were for living. I was four years old now, and the world was a vast and fascinating place to be explored with new words, new questions, and a body that was finally cooperating. My nights were for stewardship. It was a good life. A balanced life.
And then, the world decided it was time for a different kind of test.
It started subtly. A playdate with a boy from my mother's parenting group. His name was Kaito, and his Quirk had recently manifested—the ability to make his skin temporarily change colour, like a chameleon. He was eager to show off, his arm flashing through a rainbow of hues as we played with blocks.
"Your turn!" he said, his eyes bright with expectation.
I just blinked. "I can't do that," I said, stating a simple fact.
Kaito's face scrunched in confusion. "Everybody can do something."
"Not me," I said, and went back to building my tower.
The incident was small, forgotten by Kaito moments later. But it was the first pebble in a landslide.
As I inched closer to my fifth birthday, the social world of children began to organize itself around the central, defining fact of Quirks. The playground became a showcase of nascent abilities. A girl could float her jump-rope a few inches off the ground. A boy could whistle with such volume it could startle birds from trees. They compared, they competed, they bonded over their shared, extraordinary normalcy.
And I was on the outside.
I didn't mind, not really. My inner world was so vast and complex that their simple displays of power held little fascination for me. Their conversations about whose Quirk was "cooler" seemed childish and trivial. I was content to play alone, or to observe with a detached, quiet curiosity.
But my lack of participation did not go unnoticed. Children are brutally efficient social cartographers, and they quickly mapped me into the空白 space on their map: The Quirkless Boy.
The term was never said to my face, not at first. It was whispered behind hands, a label applied with the unthinking cruelty of youth. I was the exception. The anomaly. I was "just plain."
My parents heard the whispers too. I saw the way my mother's smile would become fixed when another parent asked, with well-meaning curiosity, "And what's Arata's Quirk?" I saw the way my father's shoulders would tense, the way he would quickly change the subject.
The worry returned to our house, but it was a different flavour. It was a quiet, sad anxiety. They had feared a dangerous Quirk. Now, they were starting to fear the opposite.
The official test came a month after my fifth birthday. It was a mandatory health check-up, a standard part of growing up in this world. The doctor, a cheerful man with a butterfly-shaped pin on his lapel—a testament to his own minor Quirk—did the usual things: measured my height, weighed me, looked in my ears and throat.
Then came the part I'd been dreading. He produced a small, simple device. "Alright, Arata, just a quick look," he said, his voice still light. "This will show us the little extra-special thing that makes you, you!"
He pressed the device to the base of my wrist. It glowed with a soft, blue light. We all watched the small screen on its side. My mother held my other hand, her grip just a little too tight.
The screen remained blank. Not a zero. Not an error message. Just… blank.
The doctor's cheerful expression faltered. He frowned, tapped the device, and tried again on my other wrist. Again, nothing. The blue light scanned, found nothing to lock onto, and shut off.
"Well," he said, his voice losing its melodic quality and becoming professionally neutral. He set the device aside. "That's that."
The silence in the room was heavy. My mother's hand had gone limp in mine.
"Is it… is it broken?" my father asked, his voice hopeful.
"The device is fine," the doctor said, not unkindly, but with a finality that was like a door closing. "Some children are just late bloomers. We'll note it in his file and monitor it. But by this age… well, it's not unheard of."
He was using all the right, clinical euphemisms, but the truth was there in the air, stark and unavoidable.
'Quirkless.'
The ride home was silent. My mother stared out the window. My father's knuckles were white on the steering wheel. I sat in my car seat, watching them. I didn't feel sad. I felt a strange, protective pang for *them*. Their dream—the common, universal dream of parents in this world—had just been quietly declared null and void. The future they had imagined for me, a future of Quirk-based schools, of heroes and possibilities, had just evaporated.
I was their son. They loved me. That would never change. But I could feel their grief for the life I wouldn't have.
That night, in the Dreaming, I went to their dreams.
My father was dreaming of his own childhood, of showing off his minor telekinesis to his friends, their faces full of wonder. In the dream, he looked for me to show me, but I wasn't there.
My mother was dreaming of a family photo, but in the dream, I was a blur, a smudge of colour where a person should be, while everyone else was in sharp focus.
Their subconscious was grappling with the news, trying to process a reality that didn't fit the narrative of their world.
I could have changed their dreams. I could have given myself a brilliant, fantastic Quirk in their sleep. I could have made them dream of me as a great hero.
But that would have been a lie. And I loved them too much for that.
Instead, I did something else. I stepped into their dreams, not as a god, but as their son. In my father's dream, I walked up to him and took his hand. I didn't make things float. I just held his hand.
In my mother's dream, I stepped into the family photo. I didn't make myself clear. I remained a blur, but I put my arms around her and my father.
The dreams shifted. My father's dream of showing off became a dream of teaching me to fly a kite, his telekinesis holding it steady in the air as I laughed, my hand in his. My mother's blurred photo became a picture of us all laughing, the blurriness not a lack of definition, but a captured moment of joyful movement.
I couldn't give them a Quirked son. But I could remind them of the son they had. The one who loved them. The one who was still me.
The next morning, they were quiet, but the sharp edge of their grief had been softened. They looked at me not with pity, but with a renewed, fierce determination.
Over breakfast, my father cleared his throat. "You know, Arata," he said, his voice deliberately casual. "Some of the most brilliant people in history were late bloomers. Or… you know. It doesn't matter. We're going to the science museum this weekend. I hear they have a new exhibit on quantum mechanics."
It was a five-year-old's nightmare of a boring day out. But it was his way of saying: *Your mind is your gift. We see it.*
My mother kissed the top of my head. "And after that, we'll get ice cream," she said. Her way of saying: *And you are still our little boy.*
The label was now official. I was Quirkless. In the eyes of the world, I was less. A statistic. An outlier.
But as I sat there, eating my toast, I felt a strange sense of calm. The pressure was off. The waiting was over. The secret I had been keeping was now hidden in plain sight, behind the most perfect camouflage imaginable.
I was the most powerful being they could never imagine. And they had just declared me powerless.
It was, I thought, the beginning of a very interesting life.