Chương 3: The Shape of a Smaller Future

By the time Ren Akiyama turned six, he had learned that pity could wear many faces. It could look like a teacher lowering her voice when she spoke to him, as if volume and cruelty were the same thing. It could look like a classmate's mother smiling too brightly during pickup, then pulling her child a little closer when Ren passed. It could look like a school counselor with warm hands and laminated emotion cards asking whether he ever felt left behind, while the clock on the wall ticked louder than her questions.

It could even look like love. Especially love. His mother packed his lunch with more care than anyone else's. Rice shaped into stars. Vegetables cut small. Notes folded under the lid with little drawings of cats, suns, and once, after a week when Ren had stopped answering questions at preschool, a rabbit holding a door open. His father walked him to school whenever his work schedule allowed, one broad hand wrapped around Ren's smaller one, his grip steady but never tight.

Daichi had the kind of Quirk that made holding on easy, and the kind of heart that made letting go difficult. He always stopped at the school gate and crouched to fix Ren's collar even when it was already straight.

"Remember" Daichi would say "If anything happens, tell a teacher" Ren would nod.

"If someone says something cruel, you tell us" Ren would nod again.

"And if you don't want to talk right away, that's fine too" Another nod. Then Daichi would smile, but the smile always waited for confirmation. It did not stand on its own. It asked Ren to send it back alive. So Ren did. Every morning, he smiled just enough. Every morning, his father looked relieved for exactly one second before trying to hide it. That was one kind of pity. The careful kind. The kind that loved you so much it began padding the world before you reached it. Ren hated it less than the others.

At school, pity was not always careful. Sometimes it was curious. During the first week of primary school, the teacher asked every child to introduce themselves with their name, favorite food, and Quirk if it had manifested. It was meant to be cheerful. A classroom ritual. A way for children to learn one another through the most important fact society had taught them to ask.

Ren sat in the second row beside a boy whose ears were shaped like small fins and a girl who could make the tips of her fingers glow faintly when she was excited. The introductions moved around the room in bright little bursts.

"My name is Sora and I like curry and my Quirk is Jump because I can jump really high" He demonstrated before the teacher could stop him and hit his head on a hanging paper decoration. The class laughed. He laughed too.

"My name is Emi and I like strawberries and my Quirk is Color Hair" Her hair went pink, then blue, then yellow, and everyone clapped as if she had done something magnificent. Maybe she had.

"My name is Kota and I like fried chicken and my Quirk is Shadow Hand" His shadow rose from the floor like a trembling black glove, waved once, and collapsed. The teacher praised him. The class praised him. The world praised proof, even when proof shook and fell apart after one second. Then it was Ren's turn. The room became attentive in a different way. Not silent. Children were rarely silent with discipline. This silence had a messy edge, half curiosity and half warning, because most of them already knew.

Parents talked. Teachers talked. Children heard more than adults believed. Ren stood. The legs of his chair scraped softly against the floor.

"My name is Ren Akiyama" he said "I like katsudon" He stopped. Twenty faces waited. The teacher, Miss Kameda, smiled from beside the board. She was younger than Miss Morita had been, with round glasses and a soft voice she used too often around him.

"And?" Sora asked Miss Kameda's eyes moved quickly toward him.

"Sora""What's his Quirk?" A few children looked at the teacher first instead of Ren, which meant they already knew the question was dangerous. Ren looked at them. All of them. Fins. Glowing fingers. Pink hair. Stone elbows. Long tongue. Floating pencil. Shadow Hand. Small sparks. Proof everywhere, sitting in little chairs, swinging little legs, waiting to see how absence sounded when spoken aloud.

"I don't have one" Ren said The sentence landed. Nobody laughed this time. That was almost worse. Sora frowned.

"Not yet?" Ren did not blink.

"No""But maybe later""Maybe" He had learned that adults preferred maybe. It kept them from bleeding in public. Miss Kameda clapped her hands once, too brightly.

"Thank you, Ren. Everyone has different strengths, and we are all going to learn many things together this year" The lesson moved on. Ren sat down. The girl with glowing fingers leaned toward him after a minute and whispered "It's okay. My cousin's Quirk is only making his tongue blue, so yours might still be better when it comes" Ren looked at her. She meant it kindly. That was one kind of pity too. The hopeful kind. The kind that could not imagine absence staying absent.

Ren said "Maybe" She smiled, satisfied that she had helped. For the rest of the morning, he felt the word sitting on his desk like a second name. Quirkless. Not said again. Not needed. Children adapted quickly to categories if adults gave them enough hints. By the end of the month, Ren was not bullied. Not exactly. Bullying, he discovered, was a word adults liked because it made cruelty sound like an event with edges. Something that could be identified, reported, corrected, filed.

What happened to Ren was usually smaller than that. Too small to punish without making everyone uncomfortable. A boy did not refuse to play with him. He just chose teams and picked Ren last because the others had abilities useful for tag. A girl did not insult him. She just asked whether Quirkless people got sick more often because they were closer to old humans. Sora did not shove him. He just jumped over Ren's head during recess and said "Careful, normal people are fragile" Kota did not call him useless.

He just looked disappointed whenever Ren joined group exercises because Ren made their team "less interesting" It was never quite enough. Never enough for a report. Never enough for a meeting. Never enough for outrage. Just enough to teach him the shape of the smaller future adults kept trying to soften. In physical education, the lesson became measurable. The school gym smelled like rubber mats, dust, and children trying too hard. Colored tape marked lanes across the floor.

A chart hung on the wall showing average results by age. Jump distance. Grip strength. Balance. Sprint speed. Flexibility. Quirk-assisted performance was measured separately, which sounded fair until Ren realized everyone looked at the Quirk-assisted numbers first.

"Today is only a baseline test" Miss Kameda said "No one needs to worry about being the best" That was a lie teachers told because ranking children directly sounded cruel, while recording numbers in columns sounded educational. Ren stood in line wearing his gym shirt and shorts, arms loose at his sides. He did not worry about being the best. He worried about being exactly what they expected. Sora jumped first. Without his Quirk, he was only slightly above average.

With his Quirk, he launched himself across the mat and landed so far ahead that several children shouted. The teacher reminded him to control his power, but she was smiling. Emi's hair changed color from effort during the sprint, which had nothing to do with speed but made everyone cheer anyway. Kota's shadow could not help him lift or run, but it reached ahead during the balance test and steadied him just enough to earn a note from the teacher. Then Ren stepped forward. Standing long jump. No Quirk.

He bent his knees, swung his arms, and jumped. His feet hit the mat. Miss Kameda checked the mark.

"Good effort" she said Not good. Good effort. Ren looked at the number. Average. Sprint. Average. Grip strength. Below average for his age, which made something in his chest tighten because his father's Quirk was grip and Ren had not inherited even that. Balance. Slightly above average. Flexibility. Average. Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site. Reaction game. Average. By the end, his paper showed a column of numbers that said nothing dramatic at all.

That was the humiliation. If he had been weak, there would have been a story. If he had been secretly brilliant, there would have been a story. Instead, the paper said he was normal with the flat certainty of a locked door. Miss Kameda handed it to him with both hands.

"These are perfectly healthy results, Ren" He looked at the word healthy. Healthy meant no one had to do anything. Healthy meant no emergency. Healthy meant the problem was not medical enough to fix and not severe enough to name.

"Thank you" he said She smiled. He folded the paper carefully and put it in his bag. That evening, Hana found it while checking his homework folder. Ren was in the living room pretending to build with blocks, though really he was listening to the shift in her breathing from the kitchen table. Daichi was late from work. Hana read the paper twice. Ren knew because the first time was quick and the second time was slower. She came to the living room and sat beside him on the rug.

"These are good results" she said Ren placed a blue block on top of a black one.

"They're average""Average is not bad""No" The answer came too fast. His mother heard it. She touched the edge of the test paper.

"Ren, you don't have to turn everything into a verdict" He looked at her. He knew that word. Verdict. It belonged to courtrooms and judges and the doctor's clean white office. Hana's expression shifted as she realized what she had said.

"I mean" she began, then stopped. Ren waited. She took a breath.

"I mean one test does not decide who you are" He looked back at the blocks.

"No. The other test did" Hana went very still. For a second, Ren wished he could take the words back. Not because they were untrue, but because they had done exactly what he had intended and hurt exactly where he had aimed. His mother folded the paper in her lap.

"The Quirk assessment did not decide who you are either" Ren placed another block.

"It decided what I'm allowed to be""No" The word came sharper than usual. Ren looked up. Hana's eyes had gone bright, not with tears this time, but with something closer to anger.

"No" she said again "People may treat you that way. The school may make you feel that way. The world may be unfair in ways I cannot fix by pretending otherwise. But no test gets to decide the size of your life" Ren stared at her. This was different from comfort. Comfort softened. This did not. This was his mother putting one hand against the lid the world had placed over him and pushing, even though she knew she could not lift it alone. He did not know what to do with that. Hana looked down at the folded test.

"I wish I knew how to make it easier" she said Ren said nothing.

"So does your father""I know""We are trying""I know" Her mouth trembled.

"That does not mean we always do it well" Ren's throat tightened. He looked at his blocks because looking at her was harder.

"I know" She reached for him slowly, giving him time to refuse. He did not. She pulled him against her side, and for a little while, he let himself be held without turning it into data. The next day, Ren ran during recess until his lungs burned. No one told him to. No one raced him. He ran laps around the far edge of the yard where the painted lines had faded under years of shoes. At first, children watched because children watched anything unusual.

Then they got bored when he did not fall, glow, transform, or make a noise worth repeating. His chest hurt after three laps. His legs after five. By seven, his breath came in broken pieces. By nine, the world narrowed to asphalt, fence, tree, wall, asphalt, fence, tree, wall. By eleven, Sora shouted something Ren did not catch. By twelve, Miss Kameda called him over.

"Ren, that's enough" He stopped. Not immediately. He took three more steps because stopping when told felt like losing something. His hands went to his knees. Air scraped in and out of him. Miss Kameda crouched in front of him with concern already arranged on her face.

"Why were you running so much?" Ren breathed. In. Out. Pain like sparks in his ribs.

"Practice""For what?" He looked at the yard. Children climbing. Children floating pebbles. Children changing colors. Children casting shadows with hands that were not hands.

"For not stopping" Miss Kameda's face did something complicated.

"Ren" He stood straighter.

"I'm okay""You need to drink water""Yes""And rest""Yes" She studied him.

"You can tell me if something happened""Nothing happened" That was true in the adult sense. Nothing reportable had happened. Nothing with witnesses that mattered. Nothing except a paper full of average numbers and a future he could feel pressing downward from all sides. Miss Kameda did not believe him, but she let him go. The next day, Ren ran again. Fewer laps. Slower. More controlled. His legs hurt before he started. He ran anyway. That week, he learned something small and important.

The body complained before it failed. There was a space between discomfort and danger. Narrow, shifting, easy to misjudge, but real. In that space, decisions could be made. Pace could change. Breath could steady. Pain could be watched instead of obeyed. Ren did not have language for training yet. He had only instinct and a child's dangerous clarity. If the world had given him an ordinary body, then the ordinary body would have to be used completely. At home, he began asking questions. Not all at once.

That would have alarmed them. Small questions.

"What makes muscles stronger?" Daichi looked up from washing dishes.

"Use, food, rest""How much use?"

"Enough to challenge them. Not enough to hurt yourself""What is the difference?" His father turned off the faucet.

"That is a very important question" Ren waited. Daichi dried his hands slowly, considering.

"Pain that means effort is one thing. Pain that means injury is another""How do you know?"

"Experience. And honesty" Ren frowned.

"Honesty?"

"With yourself" Daichi said "The body tells you more than pride wants to admit" Ren filed that away. The next morning, he asked his mother "Why do people get fevers?" Hana nearly dropped a spoon.

"What?"

"Fevers. Why?" She looked at him for several seconds, then answered because Hana believed questions deserved answers even when they frightened her.

"It is part of how the body responds to infection or inflammation. Heat can help fight some things, but too much is dangerous""Body uses heat to survive?"

"Sometimes""Heat can hurt and help?"

"Yes" Ren thought about that all through breakfast. Heat could hurt and help. Pain could warn and strengthen. Effort could damage and build. The body was not a fixed thing. The body responded. That thought became a seed. Too small to see at first. Too deep to remove later. When Ren was six and a half, he heard the name Midoriya for the first time outside the broken rooms of his memory. It happened on a rainy afternoon at a small public library two train stops from home.

Hana had taken him there because the school counselor had suggested encouraging interests unrelated to hero society. It was a well-meaning recommendation, which meant Hana followed it with painful sincerity and Ren endured it because his mother looked happier when she had a plan. The children's section smelled like paper, wet umbrellas, and floor polish. Low shelves formed little corridors. A few children sat at round tables drawing or reading.

Near the back, a screen played muted educational clips about famous rescue operations, because even places trying not to be about heroes eventually became about heroes anyway. Ren drifted toward it without meaning to. Hana noticed and sighed, but she did not stop him. The clip showed All Might catching a collapsing bridge support before it crushed a bus. The footage was old. The resolution poor. Ren had seen it before, or something like it, or perhaps remembered seeing it through other eyes.

Two boys sat at the table near the screen. One had green hair that curled wildly around his head. The other was ash-blond, sharp-eyed, and restless even while sitting. Tiny pops sparked from his palms whenever he got irritated, which seemed to be every few seconds. Ren stopped between two shelves. His body knew before his mind did. Green. Ash-blond. Muttered analysis. Explosions. Kacchan. The name struck like a thrown stone. Not spoken yet. Remembered.

The green-haired boy leaned forward over a notebook, pencil moving quickly as the All Might clip looped.

"His left foot shifts before he jumps" the boy whispered, more to himself than anyone else "He adjusts for the weight distribution before catching the support, so maybe he knew the bus angle before he reached it, or maybe his reflexes are just that fast, but if the bridge had fallen another six degrees then he would have needed to""Deku" the blond boy snapped "Shut up" The green-haired boy flinched. The pencil stopped. Ren's fingers curled around the spine of the book he was holding. Deku.

The word did not feel like a name at first. It felt like a wound someone had learned to answer to. The blond boy shoved his own chair back.

"You're mumbling again""S-sorry, Kacchan" Kacchan. There it was. Ren's head filled with smoke. A teenage boy screaming through explosions. Red eyes wide with fury. A medal between teeth. A hand reaching down, not gently. A voice saying something Ren could not hear over the roar. He gripped the shelf until his knuckles hurt. The green-haired boy looked up. Their eyes met. For a second, neither moved. Izuku Midoriya was smaller than Ren expected. That thought arrived whole. Not the green-haired boy. Not that child.

Izuku Midoriya. Ren knew his name before hearing it. A chill moved down his spine. Izuku stared at him with wide, anxious eyes, then looked quickly at the book in Ren's hand. It was an illustrated guide to emergency preparedness. His gaze sharpened with immediate interest.

"You like rescue analysis?" Izuku asked The blond boy made a disgusted sound. Ren should have walked away. Instead he said "Sometimes" Izuku's face brightened with the desperate speed of a lonely child finding a shared language.

"Most people only watch the big moments, but rescue heroes do so much before the impact. Evacuation routes, debris patterns, crowd behavior, line of sight. Even All Might looks like he's just using strength, but he almost always positions himself where the most civilians can see him first, because if people see him, panic drops, and then movement becomes more predictable" Ren stared. Izuku stopped. Color rose in his cheeks.

"Sorry" he whispered "I talk too much" The blond boy laughed.

"You think?" Ren ignored him.

"No" Ren said "You're right" Izuku froze. The words seemed to hit him harder than an insult would have. Ren looked at the notebook. It was filled with cramped writing, little sketches, arrows, timing notes, costume observations, Quirk interactions. Messy. Emotional. Brilliant in a way that made Ren feel both admiration and irritation at once.

"You watch heroes like they are problems" Ren said Izuku blinked.

"Problems?"

"To solve" Izuku looked down at his notebook.

"I think I watch them like they're answers" Ren considered that. It was a strange difference. A dangerous one. The blond boy stepped closer.

"Oi. Who are you?" Ren looked at him. Up close, the boy's presence was all pressure and sharp angles. Even at six, he had the confidence of someone the world had applauded too early and too often. His palms twitched with unused sparks. His eyes moved over Ren's face, his clothes, the book, then dismissed all of it as uninteresting.

"Ren Akiyama" The blond boy's lip curled.

"You got a Quirk?" Izuku's face went pale. Ren looked at him first. That was how he knew. Not from the question. From Izuku's fear of the answer. The green-haired boy was Quirkless too. Or believed he was. Something inside Ren shifted. Two boys with no Quirks standing near the gravity of an explosion child, and only one of them knew enough to be afraid of the future. Ren looked back at the blond boy.

"No" The answer hung between them. The blond boy stared. Then he grinned. Not happily. Triumphantly.

"Hah. Another Deku" Izuku flinched again. Ren did not. The blond boy noticed. His eyes narrowed.

"What are you looking at?" Ren thought of many answers. A child with too much power and not enough fear. A future disaster. Someone who has never been told no by anything strong enough to make him believe it. He chose the simplest.

"You" A small explosion cracked in the blond boy's palm. Hana's voice came from the end of the aisle.

"Ren?" The librarian looked up sharply from the desk. The blond boy clicked his tongue and closed his hand.

"Whatever" He grabbed Izuku's notebook. Izuku made a panicked sound.

"Kacchan, wait" The blond boy flipped through a few pages with exaggerated boredom.

"You're still writing this creepy stuff?"

"It's not creepy""You're not gonna be a hero, idiot" Izuku reached for the notebook. The blond boy held it above him. Ren moved before thinking. Not far. Just one step. Enough to enter the space. The blond boy's eyes snapped to him. Ren was not strong. Not compared to him. Not compared to anyone who could make explosions with sweat and anger. He knew that in the most practical way possible. But the library aisle was narrow. There were bookshelves on both sides. The blond boy had one hand occupied with the notebook.

His right foot was slightly back. His weight was forward. If he lunged, he would overcommit. If he blasted, adults would intervene. Ren saw all of that without knowing how he saw it.

"Give it back" Ren said Izuku stared at him. The blond boy stepped closer.

"What did you say?"

"Give it back" Another spark popped. Hana appeared at the end of the aisle and stopped. The librarian stood behind her. The blond boy saw them. His expression twisted with annoyance. He shoved the notebook into Izuku's chest hard enough to make him stumble.

"Trash sticking together" he muttered Then he walked past Ren and deliberately bumped his shoulder. It hurt. Only a little. Not enough to matter. Izuku clutched the notebook with both hands.

"Thank you" he whispered Ren looked at him.

"You should hold it tighter" Izuku blinked.

"What?"

"If it matters, hold it tighter" The words came out colder than he intended. Izuku looked down at the notebook. Then, slowly, he nodded.

"I'm Izuku Midoriya""I know" Ren realized the mistake as soon as he said it. Izuku tilted his head.

"You do?" Ren's mind moved quickly.

"He said Deku. I assumed it was a nickname. Your notebook has Midoriya written on it" Izuku looked at the front cover. His name was indeed written there in careful letters.

"Oh. Right" Hana reached Ren's side and placed a hand on his shoulder.

"Is everything all right?" The librarian frowned toward the aisle where the blond boy had gone. Izuku nodded too quickly.

"Yes. Sorry. We were too loud" Hana looked at Ren. Ren gave her the smallest possible nod. Her hand tightened once, then relaxed. After that, the afternoon became ordinary again on the surface. The librarian warned the blond boy, whose mother apologized loudly enough to be heard by everyone while sounding more embarrassed than concerned. Izuku returned to his table. Ren's mother guided him toward another shelf, pretending not to hover. But Ren felt the shape of the encounter long after it ended. Izuku Midoriya.

Quirkless. Analytical. Hopeful in a way that looked almost painful. Bakugo. Explosive. Cruel. Important. The fragments in Ren's head had grown teeth. That night, he could not sleep. Rain tapped against the window. His room was dark except for the faint amber line from the hallway. His All Might figurine stood on the small shelf across from his bed, one fist raised forever. Ren lay still and replayed the library. Izuku's notebook. Bakugo's sparks.

The way adults arrived and everything became smaller than it had truly been. No one had been hurt. No report needed. No real problem. Just a strong child teaching a weaker one the rules of their world while everyone else turned the volume down and called it childhood. Ren got out of bed. He took a notebook from his desk. It was not new. Hana had bought it months earlier because the cover had a blue whale on it and Ren had once said whales were interesting. Half the pages were empty.

The first few contained drawings he no longer cared about. He tore them out carefully, one by one, moving slowly so the paper would not rip loudly. Then he sat at his desk with a pencil. For a long time, he did not write. He could see the title before he touched the page. Not Hero Notes. That belonged to Izuku, though Ren did not know whether Izuku called them that. Not Future. Too dramatic. Not Quirk. Too empty. He thought of the fitness test. Average. He thought of the doctor. Quirkless presentation.

He thought of Daichi on the balcony. You would still need to survive proving it. He thought of Hana placing a white block near the exit. You're allowed to improve the design, Ren. The pencil touched paper. Ren wrote one word at the top of the first clean page. LIMITATIONS The letters were uneven but readable. He underlined it once. Then he began listing. Height. Weight. Grip. Balance. Sprint. Jump. Endurance. Pain. Fear. Reaction. Adults. Rules. Quirkless. Memory. Midoriya. Bakugo. All Might.

He stopped at the last name. For a moment, the room seemed to tilt. All Might's figurine smiled from the shelf. Ren looked at it. Then he wrote beneath the list. A limitation is not only a wall. Sometimes it is a measurement. He stared at the sentence. It sounded too old. He kept it anyway. Below that, he wrote another line. If it can be measured, it can be tested. And another. If it can be tested, it can be changed. Ren sat back. The rain tapped on. The city breathed beyond the glass.

Somewhere, heroes patrolled under neon and storm clouds. Somewhere, Izuku Midoriya was probably writing in his own notebook, filling pages with hope sharp enough to cut him. Somewhere, Bakugo Katsuki was sleeping easily, surrounded by a world that had already told him he was powerful. Ren looked down at his hands. No sparks. No glow. No floating objects. No proof. He placed his palms flat on the desk. Small hands. Ordinary hands.

Hands that had stepped into a library aisle even though they had no right to stop an explosion. His shoulder still ached faintly where Bakugo had bumped him. Ren pressed two fingers to the spot and held them there until the sensation became clear. Not injury. Not really. Just impact. Pressure. Reminder. He opened the notebook again. On the second page, he wrote a new heading. THINGS TO IMPROVE Then he paused. A smile almost touched his mouth. Almost. He crossed out the heading. Too soft.

He wrote something else beneath it. THINGS THAT MUST CHANGE This time, the words felt right. Ren picked up the pencil and kept writing until the hallway light went out and the apartment sank fully into sleep. By morning, the notebook had twelve pages of lists, questions, and crude diagrams. By the end of the week, it had twenty. By the end of the month, Ren had begun running at recess with a number in mind instead of anger.

By the end of the year, he had learned the first rule of the smaller future adults had prepared for him. It was only smaller if he agreed to live inside it.