Deku's Diary
"That sure was a tough training session!" Mina said once her and Kirishima rounded the corner into the hallway, leading to there dorm rooms.
"Ha! Tough! That was nothing!" Kirishima boasted.
"Oh, whatever you say rock head!" She laughed.
Behind them was Uraraka, who too had been physically drained by the new training routine. She was noticeably more lackadaisical in her movements. Her hair was ruffled in all the wrong places.
They were walking past Deku's room when Kirishima pointed something out.
"Hey… Deku's door is open." He reached over and pushed the door open.
"Hey Deku your door is…" The lights were off, and when he flicked them on, the green haired hero was nowhere to be seen. "...open," he finished.
"Huh. Where is he?"
"O-oh! He's on a training trip with All Might. He said that they were going to the mountains so he could teach him a new technique." Uraraka informed them.
"The heck! He can do that!?" Mina pouted.
"Yeah, he said he wasn't going to be back for another week… so it's a good thing you found out his door was open before anyone could sn- and you're snooping in his room…" She muttered.
She followed them into her friends room telling them to mind their own business.
"Hey, we ain't doing no harm!" Kirishima exclaimed, playing with a little All Might figurine.
"Yeah, but this is still an invasion of his privacy!"
"Then Deku should not have left his door wide open." Mina mused.
"It was barely open, and hey! What are you doing with that!?" Uraraka yelled at Kirishima as he lifted up a green book off the top of Deku's desk.
His eyes widened. He elbowed Mina to get her attention, and after moaning in pain, she looked over at it too. Her jaw dropped.
"Its… DEKU'S DIARY!" Mina cried gleefully.
"W-what!?" Uraraka said, flabbergasted. "NO! You cannot read that!"
"But with this, we can finally find out who his crush is!"
Uraraka's face must've been redder than a tomato because Kirishima could not contain his laughter.
Ochako managed to swipe the text from Mina's hands who looked only mildly irritated.
"I am not letting you read this!"
"Oh come on please, we want to know what is says sooo bad!" Mina begged.
"No way, this is a violation of his privacy, and I cannot stand for it!"
Mina looked defeated, but perked up when she had an idea.
"How about… we won't keep asking for the diary, as long as you read it out loud to us?"
"I-I still do not think that is the right thing to do."
"Come on Uraraka, no one will know we did. You said yourself that Deku was out of town for a whole week anyway!"
Uraraka didn't budge.
"I promise it will stay just between the three of us!"
"I mean… if it's just the three of us…"
"Yeah that's the spirit!"
"But I read it only!"
"We're fine with that!"
Kirishima silently closed the door, and he and Mina sat on the edge of Deku's mattress. Uraraka sat on his swivel chair and flipped to the first page. On the inside it read the year- two years prior.
"Well he's had this for a while it seems."
"Oh come on just get to reading already!" Mina said impatiently.
Uraraka cleared her throat, and began to read aloud the writings of her friend to her two classmates.
I was born into a world where people are capable of amazing things. Such things being possible because they are blessed with super powers, or more commonly referred to as, "quirks." A large majority of the population has these gifts, and to the point where our entire society, governments, and economy run around this genetic boom of an era we currently live in.
I have devoted my whole life to the study of quirks, how they are used, how they are created, and passed down generation by generation. There is nothing that fascinates me more. Perhaps it was my envy of these people that led me to this obsession.
You see, I was born quirkless. Meaning, I did not have a superpower. Society dictates that if you have a quirk, you will forever belong. But if you happen to be the minority of the population that does not have any quirks, you are an outsider, or an outcast.
I was four years old, I plead to my mother to take me to see the doctor so they could find out what my quirk was because it hadn't manifested yet. Just the day before my best friend Katsuki Bakugou discovered his quirk; creating explosions. Seeing how cool it was I was desperate to find out what mine was to show off to him and the rest of the kindergarteners.
I sat on the cushioned chair, thumping my feet against the wooden base rhythmically, excited for what results the doctor would return with. My mom was smiling at me, I smiled back at her. I loved my mother then. I remember I was playing with an All Might action figure.
"You should probably give it up." The doctor started.
It was hard to remember, since I was so young, but everything that doctor said has been ingrained in my mind forever.
"Normally, by age four, he would have manifested one of those quirks, or some combination of the two." He then proceeded to point out an x-ray picture of my toes. "You can see by looking at this x-ray, that Izuku has two joints. Its unusual to see that these days, but that means he has no quirk."
Fast forward to when we got back home, and I was watching a video of All Might saving the day like he usually did, but my was vision blurry as it was shrouded with tears. I turned to my mother who was watching me sadly.
I asked her: "Can I… be a hero too?"
She embraced me in her arms. Tears streaming down her face.
"I'm sorry Izuku! I'm sorry! I'm sorry!"
She continued to apologize to me like it was her fault.
A month later, my father came home briefly, but later left again. But this time forever. He didn't take the news well. He was enraged that my mother had born an "unfit" son. My last memories of him were the disappointed look in his eyes before he slammed the door shut.
Ever since then, my mother would dare not show me any affection. She was so caught up in her husband leaving that she began to blame me for everything. She refused to hug me back when I hugged her when I was sad, refused to talk to me when I asked her a question, or when I need help on my homework. All she ever did for me was buy me new clothes and make food. Which was substantial, of course, but I could tell something had broken her. I could tell she lost her love for me as her one and only son. She shunned me out completely.
My mother while in her misery, had turned to the bottle. She would commonly leave the house sometime in the late afternoon, and return with a six pack of beer. She would make dinner, take her plate to the couch, eat, and then proceed to drink every last drop of that six pack. At this point she was wasted, so her cognitive functions were limited. I could not stand watching her do this to herself, but at the same time, she would not listen to me if I told her to stop.
It shouldn't have been possible. My parents both had quirks! My mother can attract small objects to her, and my father can breathe fire! No one in my close family was quirkless. Yet I, was given the short end of the stick. It made me so mad that no matter how hard I tried there was no one to blame for my shortcomings as a human being.
Was I to blame? It was something I wondered from time to time. But that was detrimental to my self esteem. I tried to not think about it like that.
Needless to say… it was really difficult growing up with no one to lean on but myself. I had no father figure, and almost no motherly figure. But wait, you might be thinking that I have friends! Surely, I have some friends.
Nope. I only ever had one friend in my entire life, and well, he decided that I was beneath him once I revealed to him that I was quirkless. From that point on, No one in my age group ever openly conversed with me unless they had to. I was that weird kid who always sat by himself.
"Heh, what are you doing talking to the quirkless kid!?"
"Ew, the quirkless kid is looking at me again!"
"What's the matter Deku? Why aren't you talking!? You embarrassed or something!?"
Everything they said cut a little bit deeper into my soul. I was constantly harassed, bullied, and subjected to endless amounts of abuse by my peers. They hit me, spat on me, and pranked me every chance they could get- because they knew I wouldn't do anything.
What could I do? I was just a quirkless boy with no way to stop them. If I so much as spoke up I would be confronted with endless slander and a whole lot of shouting telling me to shut up because my opinion was not valid.
I was in a really dark place. I was regularly cutting. The pain distracted me from my emotional problems. I came really close to ending it all on two occasions.
The first time, I dug in to deep with the blade and ended up severing an artery. I was rushed to the hospital by my mother who was screaming at me, and telling me how stupid I was. I had to go into surgery to get it repaired, after losing a lot of blood.
The second time, after taking some "advice" a little too literally, I attempted to jump off of a roof, but a school supervisor managed to grab hold of me before I could jump. Again, my mother voiced her displeasure with my behavior, and she actually… beat me. She said it was all my fault, I was the reason her life went to shit.
Following the incident, she never laid another finger on me. Every time I thought she may have been slightly agitated, or drunk (which was often) I got out of her sights. It was an awful feeling… knowing that your own mother, or parent for that matter, would have so much pent up rage against their own children. At times, I found myself agreeing with her too.
I hated me. I hated how I was short. I hated how I was small. I hated everything about my appearance. I hated how cowardly I was. I hated how I cried so much. I hated how no one wanted to even talk to me.
It was pitiful to think that I could ever think of becoming anything like the great All Might. How could I be a hero if I didn't even have a quirk? How could I be a hero if I was too scared to even talk my classmates, let alone my own mother? How could I be a hero… if I never even smiled?
I tried to place myself in others shoes, and realized I wouldn't like me either. Who would ever want to be friends with the green haired Deku? I probably wouldn't even call me by my real name too…
Uraraka stopped reading. She had trouble registering what she had just read. Apparently, so did Kirishima and Mina.
"That's… just, wow." Kirishima said, massaging his face in contemplation.
"Yeah…" Mina agreed. "Maybe we should just leave the diary alone."
"No." Uraraka said, much to the surprise of the duo. "I-I'm not saying that what I just did was at all heroic, but… I think maybe if we read this, we can help him. He's clearly depressed."
"But you said he's had that for a while, right? He might've just grown out of it." Kirishima tried.
"I thought I was his best friend…" Uraraka said, biting her lip. "He never told me this. Or anything about…" She exhaled. "You guys can go, but I'm staying to finish this."
Neither of them moved.
"Well, then it's settled. Let's get to reading."
...
Author's Note: Special thanks to fencer29 for giving me some useful tips on how to improve this story!