Chương 2: Things He Wasn’t Supposed to Remember

For three weeks after the diagnosis, Ren's parents tried to make nothing change. That was how Ren knew everything had. His mother still woke him with a hand in his hair and a soft voice near his ear. His father still made breakfast too quickly and burned toast at least twice a week because he insisted the toaster had a personal grudge against him.

Their apartment still filled with the small, ordinary noises that had always built the shape of morning: running water, clinking dishes, the low murmur of news from the television, the elevator groaning somewhere beyond the front door, the neighbor's dog scratching at the balcony glass one floor below. But the silence had changed. There were new pauses now. They appeared around certain words. School. Future. Friends. Hero. Quirk.

That last one became almost invisible in their home, not because anyone banned it, but because both of his parents learned to step carefully around it, like a crack in the floor that might widen if touched. The word still came from the television, from advertisements, from children outside, from the world beyond their walls, but inside the apartment it was handled with a gentleness that made Ren want to throw something. He did not. He was four.

Four-year-olds were not supposed to throw things because adults had lied to them with kindness. At breakfast, Hana Akiyama placed sliced fruit beside his rice and watched him eat with a smile that had too much attention in it.

"Do you want more egg?" she asked Ren shook his head. She hesitated.

"You barely ate""I'm full""You liked it yesterday""I'm full" he repeated Daichi looked over from the counter. A piece of toast sat in front of him, black at one edge and pale at the other. He had been scraping it with a butter knife for almost a full minute without making progress.

"Maybe he just doesn't want egg today" he said Hana's smile tightened.

"Maybe" Ren picked up a slice of apple and bit into it. It was crisp, sweet, and cut into a rabbit shape. His mother had started doing that again after the diagnosis, as if returning to smaller rituals could reverse the appointment and make him younger than the word the doctor had given them. He chewed carefully. On television, a morning host laughed while a pro hero demonstrated a rescue drill for children. The hero had wide shoulders, dark skin, and arms that could stretch like rubber hoses.

He reached across the studio and plucked a stuffed cat from the top of a fake tree while the audience clapped. A little banner appeared at the bottom of the screen. EARLY QUIRK CONTROL AND SAFETY AWARENESS WEEK Hana reached for the remote too quickly. The television went black. Daichi stopped scraping his toast. Ren looked at the blank screen. His reflection stared back at him from the glass, small and still, sitting between a plate of rabbit apples and a future nobody wanted to name.

"You can leave it on" he said Hana set the remote down.

"I thought it was a bit loud""It wasn't" Another pause. Daichi put the toast on his plate even though it was clearly ruined.

"We can watch something else later" he said "Maybe that animal show you like" Ren did not like the animal show. He had liked it once, maybe, or his parents had decided he liked it because he had watched an episode about capybaras without complaining.

"I don't mind hero news" Ren said His mother's fingers closed around the edge of the table.

"You don't have to watch that if it makes you sad" Ren looked at her. There were several answers inside him, all too large for his mouth. It does not make me sad. It makes me remember. I think sadness is what you want me to feel because sadness is easier than fear. Instead he said "Okay" His mother looked relieved. That made him feel cruel. After breakfast, Ren went to the small corner of the living room where his toys were arranged in bins by category because his mother liked order and his father pretended not to.

Blocks in one. Plastic animals in another. Foam balls, puzzle pieces, a half-broken toy train, three hero figurines gifted by relatives before the diagnosis. Those had moved. Not far. Not enough for his parents to think he would notice. But Ren noticed everything now. All Might had been on the low shelf before. Ingenium too. A rescue heroine whose name Ren never remembered because the figurine's voice box had died the day after his uncle gave it to him.

Now they were inside the blue bin under the table, half-covered by toy cars. Not hidden. Just placed somewhere less visible. Ren pulled All Might out first. The figurine was cheap and too shiny, with a smile painted slightly crooked and one arm permanently raised in victory. Its colors were bright enough to look unreal even in daylight. Ren held it by the waist. The plastic was warm from the room. A feeling passed through him. Not memory exactly. Recognition without context.

The kind of thing that happened when a song began and you knew the next note before it arrived, even if you could not remember ever hearing it. All Might. Number One. Symbol. A pillar with cracks no one could see. Ren's fingers tightened around the toy. The plastic did not bend. Of course it did not. He set it upright on the floor. Then he took blocks from the bin and began to build. At first, he built a tower because that was what children did with blocks. Square base. Wider lower levels. Narrower top.

A tall structure in red, yellow, and blue. But as his hands moved, the tower changed. It became too wide. Then circular. Then divided into sections. Water. Fire. Rubble. A central plaza. Ren stopped. He stared at the shape on the carpet. His heartbeat became very loud. There was a dome. He could not see it, not really, but he knew there should be one. A great curved roof above separate disaster zones. A training facility. A place built to teach rescue. A place where something went wrong. His breathing shortened.

A black shape unfolded in his mind. Not a person. Not smoke. A gate with eyes. A voice speaking politely while children screamed. Ren knocked the blocks over with both hands. They clattered across the floor. His mother appeared at once from the hallway.

"Ren?" He stared at the scattered pieces. Hana crossed the room and crouched beside him.

"What happened?" Ren looked at the blocks, then at the All Might figurine standing untouched amid the wreckage.

"I didn't like it""The tower?" He nodded. Hana reached out slowly and touched his back.

"That's okay. We can build something else" Ren wanted to ask her if she ever remembered things before they happened. He wanted to ask whether the inside of her head sometimes opened and showed her pieces of a world that felt like a story told in the wrong order. He wanted to ask whether four-year-olds were supposed to know what a narrative was. Instead, he picked up a yellow block and placed it in the bin. Hana helped him clean. She did not ask again.

That evening, after Ren fell asleep, his parents talked in the kitchen. They thought the door was closed. It was not. Not fully. Ren lay under his blanket with his eyes open and listened to the thin line of light beneath his bedroom door.

"He's too calm" Hana whispered Daichi answered quietly.

"He's always been calm""Not like this" The apartment hummed. Refrigerator. Pipes. Distant traffic. A neighbor's television muffled through the wall. Hana spoke again.

"He asked to watch hero news""That doesn't mean anything""It does""Hana""He's four, Daichi. He should be crying. Asking questions. Getting angry. Something. He just watches us like he's trying to understand what answer will hurt us least" Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings. Ren stared at the ceiling. His mother's voice cracked on the last word. Daichi was silent for a long time.

Then he said "Maybe he doesn't understand yet" Hana gave a soft, broken laugh.

"He understands too much" Ren closed his eyes. Behind them, images waited. A boy with green hair clutched a notebook to his chest. A classroom. Smoke. A stadium so loud the air seemed to shake. A hand reaching through darkness. A smile on a skeletal face. Ren opened his eyes again. The ceiling was white. Safe. Familiar. His mother whispered "What if we make it worse by trying not to make it matter?" Daichi exhaled.

"I don't know" That was the most honest thing Ren had heard since the clinic. He slept badly. After that, the memories came more often. They did not arrive like dreams. Dreams had stories, even when they were strange. They moved from one thing to another with the confidence of nonsense. Ren's fragments were different. They were sharp, isolated, and without mercy. They struck in daylight.

They came attached to sounds, colors, names, gestures, headlines, hero costumes, the smell of rain on hot concrete, the crackle of static from old speakers. A news clip showed a support company unveiling a new line of armored rescue gloves, and Ren saw a girl with wild pink hair laughing through smoke. A child at preschool made a toy float across the room, and Ren saw a brown-haired girl falling through the sky with her hand outstretched.

Someone said the word festival, and Ren's ears filled with a crowd chanting names he could not hold onto. His father dropped a glass one morning, and the sound of it breaking became bones. So many bones. Ren sat frozen at the table while Daichi swore under his breath and Hana rushed for a broom.

"Don't move" Hana said Ren did not. A shard glittered near his foot. For one second, he saw a hand bent the wrong way, fingers swollen and purple, a boy smiling through pain as if pain were an acceptable price for being useful. Then it vanished. Ren looked down at his own fingers. Small. Unbroken. Unchanged. He curled them slowly. The world was full of people who could do impossible things by instinct. Ren had impossible things in his head and nothing in his hands.

Preschool became difficult after the diagnosis, though no one was openly cruel at first. That would have been simpler. The teachers were careful with him. Too careful. When the class discussed Quirks, Miss Morita smiled in Ren's direction with visible effort and said everyone developed at their own pace, even though everyone knew Ren had already been assessed. When children practiced safety exercises, Ren was assigned to stand near the teacher, away from the more unstable displays of power.

When a boy with rough stone patches on his elbows shoved another child too hard, the teacher moved Ren behind her before she moved anyone else. Protection had a texture. Ren learned to recognize it. It felt like being lowered into a box lined with cotton. One day, during outside play, a girl named Emi showed everyone how she could change the color of her hair if she held her breath. She turned it blue first, then pink, then a muddy green that made everyone laugh.

A boy named Kota could make his shadow wave independently for three seconds at a time. Another child sneezed and produced bubbles from his ears. They were small Quirks. Useless Quirks, some adults might have said. Ren thought no Quirk was useless to a child who had one. A circle formed around Emi as she turned her hair bright orange. Someone clapped. Someone demanded purple next. Then Kota looked over at Ren.

"Can you do anything yet?" The question spread faster than sound. Several children turned. Miss Morita heard it from across the yard and began walking toward them. Ren looked at Kota's shadow. It trembled at his feet, stretched by the afternoon sun, darker than the boy deserved.

"No" Ren said Kota frowned.

"Nothing?"

"No""That's weird" Emi's hair faded back to brown. She looked uncomfortable.

"My mom says some people don't get one" she said Kota made a face.

"Everyone gets one""Not everyone""My dad says only really old people didn't because Quirks were rare before" Ren listened. He had heard adults talk like that too. Not in front of him, or not on purpose. They spoke of Quirklessness as if it belonged to history, to statistics, to medical articles and distant places. Something that still existed but should not appear in your classroom, your apartment building, your child. Kota looked at Ren again.

"So what are you going to be?" It was an innocent question. That made it dangerous. Ren could have said doctor. Teacher. Engineer. Office worker. Firefighter. Policeman. Something ordinary. Something acceptable. Something that would make Miss Morita's shoulders relax when she finally reached them. Instead, Ren said "A hero" The silence that followed was immediate and complete. Then Kota laughed. It was not a villain's laugh. Not cruel enough to belong in a story.

It was a child's laugh, surprised and sharp and thoughtless.

"You can't be a hero without a Quirk" Miss Morita arrived.

"Kota, that isn't kind""But it's true" The teacher's face tightened. Ren watched her carefully. She wanted to correct him. She did not know how. Because Kota was wrong in the way children were often wrong, which meant he had repeated the truth without learning how to soften it. Miss Morita crouched in front of Ren.

"You can be many wonderful things" she said Ren looked at her. Not a hero. Many wonderful things. There it was again. A hallway of open doors, none leading where he had pointed. He nodded because nodding ended conversations faster than arguing. That night, he asked his father what jobs Quirkless people usually had. Daichi paused with one sleeve halfway off as he changed after work. Hana looked up from the laundry basket. Ren sat on the floor with a picture book open in his lap. He had not read a single page.

Daichi pulled his arm free from the shirt slowly.

"Why do you ask?"

"What jobs?" His parents exchanged a look. Ren hated that too. Daichi sat beside him on the floor. His father did that often when conversations mattered. He lowered himself to Ren's height as if equality could be created through posture.

"Any job, if they work hard and study" Daichi said"Hero?" His father's answer was not immediate. Hana stopped folding laundry. Daichi looked at Ren for a long moment.

"There have been people without flashy Quirks who worked in rescue support, analysis, police coordination, disaster planning""Hero?" Ren asked again Daichi's mouth tightened. Hana said "Ren" He looked at her. She came over and sat on his other side.

"Being a hero is dangerous even for people with very strong Quirks""I know""You can help people in other ways""I know""Then why?" Ren looked down at the picture book. It showed a rabbit carrying a basket through a forest. A fox watched from behind a tree, smiling too widely. Why? Because All Might would fall someday. Because black fog would open in a place built for rescue. Because a boy with green hair would shatter himself trying to hold up a world that had once told him no.

Because Ren remembered fear that did not belong to him and could not decide whether it was warning or fate. Because the word Quirkless had landed on him like a lid, and something inside him had begun pushing upward from the dark. He could not say any of that. So he gave the only answer that fit inside his body.

"Because people get hurt" Hana's face changed. Daichi looked away first. Later that night, Ren found his father on the balcony. The city glowed beyond the railing, restless and bright. Advertisements crawled across towers. Distant sirens rose and fell. Somewhere far above street level, a hero with wings crossed between buildings in a smooth arc, silhouetted briefly against the moon. Daichi leaned on the railing with both hands. Ren stepped outside in socks. His father turned immediately.

"You'll get cold""I'm okay" Daichi sighed, then crouched and opened one arm. Ren went to him. His father's body was warm from the apartment and the day's tiredness. For a while, neither spoke. Then Daichi said "When I was your age, I wanted to be a hero too" Ren looked up.

"You?" His father smiled faintly.

"Don't sound so surprised""What happened?"

"I got older""That's not an answer" Daichi laughed once under his breath.

"No. It isn't" The city hummed below them.

"My Quirk is useful" Daichi said "But useful isn't the same as heroic. I was strong for my age. Good balance. Good grip. Hard to knock down. I thought maybe that would be enough" Ren listened closely.

"What happened?" he asked again Daichi's smile faded.

"I learned that wanting to help people and being able to survive helping them are different things" Ren turned that sentence over in his head. His father looked at him.

"I'm not telling you to give up because I think you're weak""Then why?"

"Because I love you" That answer hurt more than Ren expected. Daichi placed a broad hand over Ren's small ones.

"If you chase something impossible, the world won't be gentle when it stops you" Ren looked out at the city. A hero billboard flashed across a building. All Might again. Always smiling.

"What if the world is wrong?" Ren asked Daichi did not answer quickly. The wind moved over the balcony, cold enough that Hana would have scolded them both if she saw. Finally Daichi said "Then you would still need to survive proving it" Ren looked at his father's hand. Grip Quirk. Balance. Stability. A useful body that had once dreamed of more and learned the shape of its limits. Survive proving it. The words sank into Ren deeper than any comfort had.

That became the first lesson his father gave him, though neither of them knew it yet. Not believe. Not dream. Survive. The next week, Ren began watching hero footage differently. At first, Hana seemed relieved. If Ren wanted to watch heroes, perhaps that meant the diagnosis had not crushed him completely. She allowed him thirty minutes after dinner, then forty, then sometimes an hour if he had behaved well at school and Daichi pretended not to notice the extra time. Ren did not watch like other children.

He did not cheer when heroes struck dramatic poses. He did not mimic catchphrases. He did not argue about rankings. He watched feet. Where they stepped. How they landed. Which heroes looked before moving and which trusted their Quirks to compensate. He watched civilians. Where they froze. How they clustered around exits. How often they ran toward open streets without checking whether the danger was moving there too. He watched villains. Not their speeches. Not their costumes. Their shoulders. Their hands.

Their breathing before activation. Their delay after using too much power. Their habits. He noticed that heroes with strong offensive Quirks often overextended when they believed the fight was already won. He noticed that rescue heroes constantly looked upward. He noticed that people with mobility Quirks forgot how slowly everyone else moved. He noticed that All Might did not fight like a man who expected to lose. That last observation frightened him.

Because somewhere in Ren's impossible memory, All Might lost something. Not a battle, maybe. Something worse. Ren could not see it clearly. He saw a thin man coughing blood into his hand. He saw steam. He saw a smile held together by will. He saw a green-haired boy staring up at greatness as if greatness had just chosen him. The image always broke there. Ren began keeping notes in secret. Not writing at first. His handwriting was still large and clumsy, and his parents checked his drawings sometimes.

So he used arrangements. Blocks. Toy cars. Lines of string. Small marks behind pages in picture books. A child's private language built from things adults would not recognize as planning. Three red blocks meant danger. Blue meant water. Yellow meant light. Black meant unknown. The All Might figurine became the center of many arrangements, always upright, always too large for the structures around it. Around him, Ren placed smaller figures and objects, testing distances, exits, sightlines, collapses.

One afternoon, Hana found him lying on his stomach, staring at a layout of blocks across the living room rug. There were too many black pieces. She stood in the doorway for several seconds before speaking.

"What are you building?" Ren did not look up.

"A rescue" She entered slowly.

"It looks complicated""It went wrong""What went wrong?" Ren's fingers hovered over a little plastic car lying sideways near a blue block. He did not know how to answer without frightening her. Instead he said "The exits are bad" Hana sat beside him.

"Can I see?" Ren almost said no. Then he moved one green block aside. Hana studied the arrangement with a seriousness that made his chest feel strange.

"This is the danger?" she asked, touching the black pieces Ren nodded.

"And these are people?"

"Yes""And this one?" She pointed at All Might. Ren hesitated.

"The one everyone waits for" Hana's hand stilled. The room seemed suddenly very quiet.

"That sounds lonely" she said Ren frowned.

"For him?"

"For everyone" Ren looked at the layout again. He had not thought of it that way. Hana reached for a white block and placed it near one of the exits.

"What is that?" Ren asked"A light""There wasn't one there""Maybe there should be" Ren stared at the block. His mother smiled a little.

"You're allowed to improve the design, Ren" For one irrational moment, anger rose in him. She did not understand. You could not just add a light because you wanted one. The fragments came as they came. The black fog opened where it opened. The people stood where memory placed them. The story had a shape. Then the anger stopped. The story. Ren went cold. He sat up too quickly. Hana reached for him.

"Ren?" He stared at the blocks. Story. The word was a key in a lock he could not find. A screen in the dark. Pages turning. Chapters. Names. Characters. No. Ren pressed both hands over his ears. Not because the room was loud. Because his head was. Hana pulled him into her arms. He let her. For several seconds, the world flickered between her sweater, her heartbeat, the scent of soap, and a memory of watching people who did not know they were being watched. Characters. The thought was horrible.

He pushed it away with all the strength a four-year-old could possess. His mother held him until his breathing slowed.

"Too much?" she whispered Ren nodded against her shoulder. She kissed his hair.

"Then we stop" He wanted to tell her that stopping would not help. The things in his head did not care whether he looked at them. They were already looking back. By the time Ren turned five, he had learned to divide his mind into boxes. There was the child box. That one knew how to answer teachers, hug his mother, laugh when his father made toast jokes, color inside lines when asked, and pretend not to notice when other children whispered. There was the memory box.

That one held names without faces and faces without names. Izuku. Bakugo. All Might. U. A. League. One For All. Tomura. Festival. USJ. Words that burned if he touched them too long. There was the useful box. That one watched. It watched hands, feet, exits, lies, pity, danger, power, weakness, adults trying to be kind, children learning cruelty by accident, heroes smiling for cameras, and the exact moment after a Quirk was used when the user became human again. The useful box became Ren's favorite.

It hurt less than the others. At preschool, Miss Morita introduced a career board. Each child was given a paper star and told to draw what they wanted to become. Firefighter. Doctor. Rescue hero. Singer. Support engineer. Chef. Sidekick. One boy drew himself as a dragon even though his Quirk only gave him slightly sharp teeth. Miss Morita praised his imagination. Ren stared at his blank star. A crayon sat in his hand. Yellow. All Might yellow. He placed it down and picked up black. That was a mistake.

Miss Morita noticed immediately.

"Ren, sweetheart, do you need help?" He shook his head. Around him, children scribbled bright costumes and capes and masks. Ren drew a door. Then another door behind it. Then another. Small at first, then larger, each one slightly open but not enough to show what waited beyond. Miss Morita crouched beside him.

"That's interesting" she said carefully "Can you tell me what you're drawing?" Ren looked at the doors.

"A way in""To what?" He did not answer. Because the answer was simple, and because saying it would make the teacher's face do the thing he hated. A way into the place they would not let him go. When the stars were hung on the wall, Ren's door drawing sat between Emi's rainbow-haired hero and Kota's shadow ninja. Parents came later to pick up their children and smiled at the display. Hana stood in front of Ren's star for a long time. Daichi came after work, tie loose, sleeves rolled to his elbows.

He looked at the drawing, then at Ren.

"A door?" he asked Ren nodded. His father's mouth twitched.

"Good choice" Hana looked at him. Daichi shrugged.

"Doors can open" Ren remembered that. He remembered it more clearly than most of the impossible things. That night, after his parents fell asleep, Ren slipped out of bed and went to the living room. The apartment was dark except for the city light leaking through the curtains. He moved quietly, not because he was afraid of punishment, but because being found would require explanations he could not give. He opened the blue toy bin. All Might's figurine was at the bottom again.

Ren took it out and placed it on the rug. Then he found the blocks. Red. Blue. Yellow. Black. White. He built the tower first. Then the dome. Then the exits. Then the scattered people. His mother's white block went near one door. A light where memory had left none. Ren sat back on his heels and stared at it. The arrangement still felt wrong. Incomplete. But less helpless. He touched the white block with one finger. Maybe his mother was wrong.

Maybe the future could not be improved with something as simple as a light. But the block was there now. He had added it. The layout had changed. Ren's breath caught. Changed. The word opened a space inside him so sudden and bright that for a moment he felt dizzy. If this world was a story, then perhaps stories could be altered. If his memories were warnings, then perhaps warnings could be used. If he was Quirkless, then perhaps he needed something other than power. Ren looked at All Might.

The figurine smiled at nothing. The world outside continued glowing through the curtains, full of people who could fly, burn, stretch, harden, vanish, and break the rules of flesh just by existing. Ren had none of that. But he had fragments. He had fear. He had doors. He had a white block his mother had placed where no light had been before. Slowly, carefully, he began rearranging the pieces. Not to match the memory this time. To see how many ways it could fail. And how many ways someone might survive.