Chapter Text
The apartment door slid open with a sharp metallic click. It sounded final, like a cell door locking shut.
Cold evening air rushed into the cramped hallway, biting through Sumire’s thin socks. He stood in the doorway in his little boots, clutching a faded red and green backpack that was almost as big as his entire five-year-old torso.
One of the straps kept slipping down his narrow shoulder. No matter how hard he tried to hitch it up with his tiny fingers, it kept sliding back down.
A constant reminder of how much too small he was for the world.
Behind him, his mother wouldn’t look at him. She refused to meet his eyes.
“Stand still,” she snapped.
Her voice didn't sound angry; it sounded hollow. She shoved another shirt into the bag, her hands shaking. “You’re making this harder.”
Sumire froze immediately. He didn’t understand why everyone had been so angry after his doctor's appointment.
The visit had been long and quiet. Too quiet. Afterward, his parents hadn’t spoken to him except in short, sharp words that made his stomach twist into painful knots.
Quirkless.
He didn’t know exactly what the word meant. He only knew that every time the doctor or his parents said it, they looked at him with a heavy, crushing disappointment.
As if he had failed a test he didn’t even know he was taking.
His father stood farther back in the apartment, arms crossed tightly over his chest.
His jaw was rigid with irritation instead of sadness.
“Just take him already,” his father muttered to the wall. “The agency said they’ll place him somewhere.”
Place him somewhere. Like a piece of unwanted furniture.
Sumire looked between them, his chest tightening. “Mommy…?” His tiny voice wobbled, thin and fragile. “Where we goin’?”
His mother finally looked at him then, and somehow, that was worse than her anger. Her eyes weren't fiery anymore. They were dead. Tired and completely empty.
“We aren’t going anywhere, Sumire.”
The little boy blinked slowly, trying to process the words.
“…Oh.”
He waited for the rest of the sentence. He waited for her to say 'You are.' or 'We're staying here.' It didn’t come.
His small fingers tightened around the backpack straps until his knuckles turned white. “I-I can be good,” he whispered quickly, his chest heaving as panic began to bloom. “I can do chores now. I can clean my toys. I won’t cry anymore, Mommy. I promise.”
Neither adult answered. The silence stretched so long and heavy that even a five-year-old could feel the suffocating weight of it. Sumire’s lower lip trembled violently.
“Dad?”
His father exhaled sharply through his nose, a bitter scoff. “You should’ve had something,” he muttered, staring at the floor. “Anything. Just a small quirk.
Anything but nothing.”
Sumire didn’t understand the word nothing, but he understood the tone. It was the exact tone his father used when he dropped a glass mug and watched it shatter on the linoleum.
The tone reserved for broken things that were too dangerous or useless to keep.
His mother crouched down suddenly. Her hands were stiff and freezing as she fixed his crooked collar. She didn't hug him. She didn't kiss his forehead.
“There’ll be other children there,” she said flatly, avoiding his gaze. “You just need to behave.”
“There…?”
“The home.”
Home. The word made no sense. This apartment was home. The little rooms with the noisy, clanking pipes, the cracked balcony rail, and the colorful All Might stickers peeling off the fridge.
Sumire looked past her shoulder into the living room. His stuffed rabbit was still sitting on the couch, right where he had left it after breakfast. Its floppy ears were tucked under its chin.
“Bunny,” he said softly, reaching a hand out.
His mother grabbed the backpack zipper before he could move, pulling it shut with a harsh zzzzzt.
“You don’t need it anymore.”
His eyes widened, pooling with hot tears. “But Bunny gets scared alone! He needs me to hold him!”
Something flickered across her face then—a sudden, sharp spasm of guilt—but she masked it instantly, hardening her features.
His father walked over, his patience entirely gone. “This is ridiculous. Just put him out.”
Before Sumire could even gasp, large, heavy hands gripped his shoulders and turned him toward the dark hallway.
The apartment behind his parents suddenly felt enormous, too bright, and devastatingly warm. His boots slid uselessly against the floor as he was pushed out onto the cold concrete walkway.
“Dad—?”
The heavy metal door began to swing shut. Panic exploded in his chest, hot and blinding.
“WAIT—!”
Tiny hands smacked against the metal door just before it slammed.
“Mommy! Mommy, I’ll be good! Please! Don't leave me!”
The door stopped for half a second. For one impossible, beautiful, hopeful heartbeat,
Sumire thought the door would swing back open and his mother’s arms would wrap around him.
Instead, the lock clicked. Once.
Then the deadbolt clicked. Twice.
Total silence.
The hallway hummed faintly with the buzz of old fluorescent lights. Sumire stood frozen, both of his small palms pressed flat against the cold metal.
“…Mommy?”
No answer. He knocked again, much softer this time, his knuckles scraping against the paint.
“Dad…?”
Still nothing.
The little boy slowly slid down the metal door, his legs giving out.
His backpack crumpled awkwardly beneath him, forcing his knees up to his chest.
He stared at the blank expanse of the door through a thick veil of blurry tears.
Then, in the tiniest, most desperate whisper imaginable, he comforted himself with the only hope he had left:
“…I can still get a quirk.”
Sumire cried until his throat was raw and scraping.
At some point, the tears stopped making noise.
They just kept falling quietly, dripping off his chin and soaking into the collar his mother had just straightened.
The hallway lights buzzed overhead while he sat curled beside the threshold, rubbing his eyes with tiny, dirt-streaked fists. Every few minutes, the elevator down the hall would chime.
He would jump up, his heart soaring, hopeful for half a second that his parents were coming back, or that the "home people" had arrived to help him.
The elevator doors would open. Strangers would walk past. The lock on his door never clicked.
Eventually, the hallway grew darker as the sun fully set.
Neighbors came and went. Most of them looked down, saw his oversized bag, and stepped around him, averting their eyes.
One old woman paused briefly,
her brow furrowing with pity.
“Where are your parents, little one?”
Sumire swallowed hard, trying to keep his voice steady like a big boy. “They’re inside. They’re waitin’ for the home people.”
The woman hesitated, looking at the tightly locked door, then back at the small child. She looked like she wanted to help,
but then another apartment door opened down the hall, a dog barked, and she simply sighed, shook her head, and walked away.
The little boy waited longer. And longer.
By the time deep night settled outside the building’s frosted windows, his stomach hurt so badly it made him dizzy. It felt like a beast clawing at his ribs. But his mother had said: “Wait for the home.”
So he stayed. He didn't move an inch, terrified that if he left, he would miss them.
At midnight, Sumire finally pulled himself upright using the cold wall for balance. His legs wobbled like jelly. Maybe the people from the home were downstairs instead. Maybe they didn't know his apartment number. Maybe they were lost and scared in the dark, just like him.
He sniffled, wiping his nose on his sleeve, and adjusted the heavy strap slipping down his shoulder.
“O-okay,” he whispered to himself bravely, trying to mimic the heroes on TV. “I go help them.”
The elevator was a gaping, terrifying metal box alone, so he took the concrete stairs. He had to take them one careful step at a time, sitting down on each step and sliding his bottom down because his legs were too short to reach.
By the time he reached the lobby, he was exhausted. The security guard barely glanced up from the glowing screen of his phone.
“Kid, where’re your parents?”
“The home people comin’,” Sumire mumbled, his chin tucked into his chest.
The guard grunted distractedly, not processing the words of a wandering five-year-old, and went back to scrolling.
No one stopped him when he pushed open the heavy glass doors and walked out into the night.
The city at night was a monster. It was enormous and loud. Cars hissed past on wet asphalt, throwing up sprays of dirty water.
Neon billboards flashed in blinding shades of pink and blue, reflecting like broken glass in the puddles.
Every shadow cast by the streetlights looked like a villain waiting to grab him.
Sumire stood frozen on the sidewalk outside his building, craning his small neck to stare upward at the rows of windows glowing gold against the black sky.
One of those windows belonged to his kitchen. He could see the familiar, warm yellow light filtering through the blinds. He could picture the table.
He could picture his bunny sitting alone on the couch.
For a terrible, agonizing moment, he thought about going back upstairs.
He wanted to scream and pound on the door until his hands bled.
But he remembered the cold, biting irritation in his father's eyes. Sumire had already messed up today by being quirkless.
He didn’t want to mess up anymore.
So instead, he sat down on the cold concrete near the building entrance, pulled his heavy backpack into his lap like a shield, and waited for the home people.
They never came.
The first night was the hardest because he still expected a miracle.
The second night was colder, freezing the damp edges of his clothes.
By the third night, the illusion of rescue began to splinter.
Hunger had become a permanent, agonizing ache sitting inside his stomach like a jagged rock.
When he lingered near the brightly lit vending machines just to feel the warmth radiating from the compressors, a shop owner came out and yelled at him, calling him a nuisance.
When he finally found a half-eaten piece of sweet bread in a trash bag, a bigger, older boy shoved him into the dirt and snatched it out of his hands.
When he saw a group of older kids hanging out near an arcade and asked them, with tears in his eyes, if they knew where “the home people” lived, they just laughed.
“You got dumped, idiot,” one of them sneered, blowing cigarette smoke into the air. “Your parents threw you out like garbage.”
Sumire didn’t fully understand what dumped meant in that context. But the cruel way they laughed made his chest hurt worse than his empty stomach.
Weeks bled into months. And slowly, horribly, the five-year-old boy learned how to survive.
He learned which convenience stores threw away their expired bento boxes at midnight, and which managers would chase him with a broom.
He learned which dark alleyways had heavy exhaust vents that blew out hot, greasy air he could sleep next to.
He learned to identify the adults with shifting eyes and cruel smiles—the ones who looked dangerous, and the ones who looked kind until they got close enough to hurt him.
He learned to run at the first sound of a raised voice. He learned to sleep with one eye open, waking up at the slightest footstep. He learned how to swallow his saliva to trick his stomach into thinking it was full so he could fall asleep.
His faded red and green backpack became his entire universe. Inside were his only possessions:
- Two shirts that were rapidly becoming too big and severely stained.
- A toothbrush with frayed, blackened bristles.
- A juice-stained All Might keychain, its plastic scratched so badly the hero's smile was fading away.
- And a tiny, crumpled notebook he couldn’t read properly yet.
Every single night, no matter how cold it was, Sumire would pull out that notebook with trembling hands. He checked it carefully because his mother’s handwriting was on the first page. It was just an old, mundane grocery list—milk, eggs, detergent. Nothing important.
But her fingers had touched this paper. Her pen had traced these lines. It was the only proof he had left that she had once existed, and that he hadn't just dreamed her up. He treated that crumpled piece of paper like the rarest treasure on earth.
By the third month, the little boy knew the labyrinth of the city alleys better than most adults. He also knew, with absolute certainty, that nobody was coming for him.
That realization didn’t arrive all at once like a sudden blow. It came slowly, eroding him in agonizing pieces.
It came when he realized he couldn’t remember the sound of his grandfather’s laughter anymore.
It came when he noticed he had entirely stopped walking past his old apartment building, unable to bear the sight of that kitchen window.
It came when he looked at his reflection in a puddle and realized that when adults looked at him, they didn’t see a lost, frightened child anymore. They didn’t look around for his mother.
They saw a street kid. A rodent. A public nuisance. Something dirty and unfortunate that they had to step around to avoid ruining their shoes.
One freezing, torrential evening, Sumire was curled beneath a massive concrete overpass. The rain hammered the road overhead with a deafening, rhythmic roar. The wind whipped through the underpass, soaking the edges of his cardboard bed.
His stomach growled, a hollow, echoing sound. He pressed his face deep into the dirty sleeves of his oversized shirt, shivering violently, and whispered the words that had become his nightly prayer, his only anchor to sanity:
“I can still get a quirk. If I get a quirk, they'll want me back.”
The morning after the storm was quieter than most. The sun was shining brightly, its golden beams trying their absolute best to dry a cold, unforgiving world.
Sumire had managed to find a small patch of dry concrete behind a row of industrial trash bins where the icy wind couldn’t cut through his clothes as easily. The city was already roaring to life around him: the distant hiss of traffic, a vendor shouting on a street corner, the low, uncaring hum of a society that never paused for anyone—especially not a child like him.
He was crouched carefully on the concrete, holding completely still, just like he’d learned to do. His small chest rose and fall in shallow, silent breaths
And right now, behind those rusted metal bins, there was something fragile in the universe that he desperately did not want to scare away.
A cat.
It was impossibly small. Thin, skeletal ribs pushed visibly against a coat of matted gray fur that was patchy and bald in places, bearing the raw scars of a creature that had survived too many bitter winters entirely alone. It stood just a few feet from him, shivering behind a splintered wooden crate, watching Sumire with cautious, unblinking eyes. For the first time in months, someone was looking at Sumire not with disgust, but with the exact same terror he felt every single day.
Sumire didn’t dare speak at first. He hardly dared to breathe.
With agonizing slowness, he reached into his oversized backpack, his small hand trembling as he pulled out a tiny, mangled scrap of food—a soft piece of discarded bread crust he had painstakingly saved from a trash bag the night before, ignoring his own screaming stomach just to have a safety net. He held it flat in his palm, lowering his hand until it rested directly on the freezing concrete.
“It’s okay,” he whispered.
The sound was barely more than air passing through his chapped lips. It was a voice that hadn't been used to speak to another living soul in weeks.
“I won’t take it back. Promise.”
The cat didn’t move. Its ears twitched, pinned low against its skull.
Sumire remained perfectly rigid. Minutes stretched out, long and heavy, until the oppressive roar of the city faded into a distant hum. The entire world shrank down to just the two of them—two small, broken things caught in the vast, uncaring concrete expanse.
Eventually, tempted by the scent, the cat took a hesitant, wobbling step forward.
Then another.
Sumire’s heart leaped into his throat, a sudden flare of hope so intense it almost made him dizzy. But he kept his body frozen, locking his muscles into place just like the streets had taught him.
Be invisible. Be still.
The cat’s damp nose twitched, sniffing the dirt on his knuckles.
Then, slowly, it began to eat from his palm.
The sandpaper texture of its tongue sent a jolt of warmth straight to Sumire’s chest. His small shoulders relaxed so completely it looked as though he might collapse right there onto the pavement from sheer relief. A tiny, fragile smile crept onto his face—the very first smile his lips had formed since the door clicked shut three months ago.
“Good kitty…” he murmured, his eyes stinging with sudden, hot tears.
When the last crumb was gone, the cat didn’t turn and bolt. It stayed put, its small body leaning slightly toward the boy's warmth.
Sumire hesitated, his breath catching in his throat.
He slowly, fearfully extended his fingers and touched the crown of the cat's head.
Soft.
Warm.
Alive.
His fingers shook violently as he carefully stroked the matted fur, slower this time, burying his hand in the only warmth he had known in a lifetime.
“You’re alone too, huh,” he whispered, leaning his forehead down toward the concrete. “Nobody came for you either.”
For a few beautiful, impossible seconds, the agony of the past few months evaporated. The deafening city noises faded into nothing. The gnawing, clawing hunger in his belly vanished. Even the biting morning chill seemed to thaw.
Just him. And this little friend.
Then—The air shifted
It wasn't a loud noise at first.
Just a subtle, sickening pressure in the air behind him.
A soft, deliberate crunch of gravel that didn't belong to the chaotic, random rhythm of the street traffic.
Sumire froze, every instinct screaming.
The cat’s head snapped up instantly. Its pupils dilated into black pools, its back arching violently as a sharp, terrified hiss tore from its throat.
A shadow stretched across the pavement, blocking out the morning sun.
Too big.
Too close.
Before Sumire could even twist his head around, a massive, bruising hand wrapped tightly into the fabric at the back of his filthy shirt.
“Got one.”
Sumire’s breath hitched, completely trapped in his throat.
The world tilted violently,
spinning in a blur of gray concrete and blue sky as his small body was violently yanked off the ground. His heavy backpack slipped sideways, the worn straps tearing at his arm as his tiny boots kicked instinctively, dangling uselessly in the empty air.
“W-wait—!”
The word cracked instantly, a high-pitched sob of pure, unadulterated panic.
The cat bolted. It vanished in a frantic blur of gray fur and kicking dust, fleeing back into the safety of the shadows.
“No—my kitty—! Come back!”
He twisted his body hard, thrashing against the crushing grip to see who had trapped him.
All his blurry eyes could catch was the heavy fabric of a dark sleeve and a cold, emotionless mask obscuring the stranger’s face.
Another voice cut through the air, closer now, dripping with absolute indifference.
“Useless or not, the doctor is paying a premium for quirkless specimens. No one looks for these ones.”
Specimen. The word meant absolutely nothing to a now five-year-old boy.
But the sheer, clinical coldness of it sounded worse than any monster he had ever imagined.
Sumire began to struggle with everything he had left, his tiny fists striking uselessly against the man's iron forearm.
“I didn’t do anything wrong!” he shrieked, his voice breaking into a ragged, desperate wail. “I was just—I was just petting the cat! I’ll be good! Please let me go!”
His tears didn't matter.
His words didn't matter.
His existence didn't matter.
The grip on his shirt tightened, choking him.
The narrow alleyway blurred into a streak of dirty brick as he was dragged ruthlessly toward a rusted, windowless van parked half in the deep shadows of the overpass.
As they threw him toward the open vehicle, his forgotten backpack burst open.
The cracked toothbrush rolled out, clattering onto the pavement.
The juice-stained All Might keychain snapped off, its faded smile landing in a puddle of dirty water.
And then, the little notebook slipped loose.
Sumire watched in slow motion as the crumpled pages fluttered open, hitting the asphalt.
For one agonizing microsecond, his mother’s neat handwriting—the mundane, beautiful grocery list that proved he had once been loved—lay exposed under the pale morning light.
Milk. Eggs.
Then the heavy metal doors of the van slammed shut with a deafening, final BANG.
Absolute darkness swallowed everything.
The engine roared to life, a violent vibration that shook the floorboards beneath him.
Sumire scrambled blindly through the pitch black, throwing his entire weight against the cold, unyielding metal of the interior doors, his fingernails scraping uselessly against the seals.
“Kitty…” he whispered into the dark,
his voice completely spent, collapsing into the pile of his own oversized clothes.
“Mommy…”
But outside, the engine reeled, the tires screeched, and the city simply kept moving on without him, erasing every single trace that Sumire had ever been there.