I breathed convulsively, my body shaking with tremors. Tears streamed from my eyes in a torrent, but I couldn't break free from my restraints. My eyes darted frantically around the white room and the equipment surrounding me, even as the bright lamp overhead blinded them. The only thing I could do was plead in a sharp, squeaky voice.
"Please don't, please don't, stop..."
But they didn't stop. They never stopped before. For a very long time, I didn't want to understand where and when everything went wrong. I didn't want to, but I understood. It was when I turned four. Before that, Papa often tossed me into the air, saying how cool and great a hero I would become, just like him, while Mama stood nearby and smiled tenderly. Later, he began to look at me strangely and anxiously, asking if I had done anything unusual. I knew he wanted to find out if I had awakened a Quirk. My father was a cool hero and had a powerful Quirk; I always watched with awe as he teleported from place to place. Mama could enhance her body for a short time, though she didn't do it often and ate a lot afterward. Months passed, and my parents began to whisper anxiously and take me to various doctors. In kindergarten, the teachers began to look at me with strange, pitying faces—as far as I remember, that's how some people looked at the man in the wheelchair on TV—and my friends talked to me less and less, stopped inviting me to games. I began to ignore it quite quickly, helped by stories and videos about heroes, especially All Might, even though Papa started talking less about his career. A thrilling feeling flared up inside me when I read articles about heroes and villains, their battles, and watched various rescue videos. And All Might was a hero who gave hope by his very presence and did the incredible. Dreams of becoming like him occurred less often in my head, but I didn't despair. A Quirk could awaken later, or in the worst case, I could become a sidekick to heroes, like David Shield was for All Might. So I started looking for study materials for Support Course students at hero academies, but when I found them on the internet, I didn't understand anything. I had to seriously study mathematics, physics, and chemistry for even the slightest understanding. My enthusiasm began to fade slightly, and the material was written in a dry and boring way, not like the stories about heroes. On my fifth birthday, my parents began to look at me with a new feeling in their eyes: disappointment. When I realized this, hopelessness and gloom slowly began to grip me. They started paying less attention to me, just like those teachers. Papa started arguing with Mama and appeared at home less often. A nasty smell began to come from Mama more frequently, the same one that came from adults drinking something at holidays. I tried more and more not to get noticed and read comics and articles about heroes, trying to understand boring formulas and the laws of physics. This all ended three months before my sixth birthday. Papa left.
We moved to another apartment, a smaller one, and that nasty smell began to come from Mama constantly. Strange men began to appear in the house. At six years old, I went to elementary school. As soon as everyone found out about my lack of a Quirk, the teachers' looks held only pity or indifference, while my peers showed mockery and contempt. The desire to socialize disappeared. I was seized by a desire to understand why I had no Quirk. I don't have the extra joint in my pinky toe, yet there is no Quirk, something the doctors couldn't explain. I decided to work backward—to understand the reason for its appearance rather than the absence of a Quirk, which turned out to be even harder. "The cause of Quirk emergence is still unknown, but there is a theory that each subsequent generation becomes stronger than the previous one." This is how most articles about the appearance of Quirks through genetics and the accumulation of mutations or something like that begin. Although about two centuries have passed since the appearance of Quirks, science has not advanced far, including the study of Quirks, due to the prolonged chaos and unrest across the world. While interested in this topic and attending school, I didn't give up on the exact sciences, and I also paid attention to those around me. If nothing changed at school, strangers began to appear at home more often, and Mama told me to sit in my room or, at times, go outside for a walk. Already accustomed to their sometimes loud stays and the increasing mess in the apartment, I locked myself in the room and immersed myself in the world of heroes and villains, dreaming about the appearance of my Quirk and becoming a hero on par with All Might. No, surpassing Him.
A single call from the neighbors to the police about the noise coming from us changed a lot. The arrival of a police squad stunned not only Mama and the guests, but also me. After their arrival and the inspection of the apartment, the matter didn't end with just a fine. People began to come and ask me various questions. I feared the unknown and new actions from adults, as I was used to the fact that nothing good would come of it. The court, the testimony of neighbors, school teachers, unknown men, Mama's confused and slightly guilty expression, people taking me away and speaking too sweetly. And my, as they called it, new home. An orphanage.
Thus, my seventh birthday was spent in the orphanage. I cried the whole first week. My hope was that if I got a Quirk or performed well and entered a hero academy, everything would return to how it was before. Mama would smile as tenderly as before, and Papa, ruffling my hair and smiling kindly, would call me his little hero. That would never happen again; I was the only one who believed like a complete idiot that this could somehow be brought back. The attitude of those around me in the orphanage, as if on purpose, was no different from how it was at school. Except here, they decided to show the "Quirkless" his place earlier. However, I stayed here for much less time. A month later, the staff called me and told me to pack my things. Later, some man with a bushy mustache approached me and began to explain about the upcoming renovation of the building, the lack of space, which is why I would be moved to another place, and so on. I paid little attention to what he said. It bothered me that he spoke as sweetly as the people who brought me here. After packing my things, we left the orphanage and got into a car. As I sat down, I noticed that the man took out and opened some jar. He quickly brought it to my face. Holding my breath, I tried to jump out of the car, but after a quick blow to the stomach and an inhale of air, I began to feel sleepy.