In a world filled with impossible variations of unique quirks, it comes as no surprise that some quirks are the result of mutated genes. I was thankfully not the product of a quirk marriage, but considering what quirk I ended up with, I might as well have been.

Mum can manipulate her hair, and by manipulate, I mean she can make it move. She can change the length, the style, the texture. And it all moves according to her whims. Dad, on the other hand, is entirely immune to poison. He can secrete poison through the surface area of his skin, and he can produce venom that comes out of his teeth.

The thing about their quirks, is that while they sound particularly overpowered, Mum gets absolutely killer headaches if she uses her quirk too much, and Dad permanently has some pretty extreme symptoms of a fever. His body has to get rid of the poison, but he creates poison in his body, and the vicious cycle continues on. What I meant by "immune" was that poison can't kill Dad.

So, in theory, if I ended up with a mixture of their quirks, like poisonous hair or a hairy but poisonous body, I would have bad fever symptoms and killer headaches as a byproduct. But I didn't, because my quirk ended up a mutation, so instead of pain, I got my creepiness factor upped by about fifty percent.

In conclusion, my quirk doesn't give me any pain, but it brings me a lot of pain. I guess that sort of balances it out?

I had a completely, totally, entirely rational fear of spiders.

They were scary and sometimes hairy, they were terrifying and petrifying.

Did I need to say more?

I'm mostly over it.

Imagine my surprise when I woke up at the age of four, and looked into the mirror, only to see that my normal eyebrows had disappeared, and in their places were three sort of raindrop shaped patches of hair. Take a wild guess at what those six black patches of hair plus my own two eyes ended up looking like.

I still remember the scream I made (and my room has never been the same since). My screaming triggered something in me, and my parents ran into the room only to see their four-year-old half-spider-half-human child flinging spider silk wildly, sclera morphing from white to black, teeth becoming progressively pointier, canines lengthening and sharpening, voice turning as raspy as a 50-pack-per-day chain smoker's.

None of those were even the biggest change to my body. Four gigantic spider legs had ripped through the back my shirt, and were pointing forward threateningly.

It's hilarious when I think back on that memory now, but I had been screaming "Get it off! Get if off!" like it was somehow going to help.

Mum had to use her quirk to tie me up, and then we all spent the next three hours lying in bed.

So.

Spiders.

Lots of people have varying degrees of arachnophobia. I, myself, used to be included, but I can handle having spiders walk on my arms and legs, now. Of course, tiny spiders are much easier to handle, rather than tarantulas.

I do still wish I were more like a snake, though. Snakes are completely fine.

But, in regards to my arachnophobia, Mum and Dad had to actually bring me to a therapist to talk about my fear. I had to go to the therapist because nothing my parents did helped with me being scared to use my own quirk. Like they tried exposing me to spiders, and that really only ended with me screaming and wrapping the spiders up in my webs.

After I turned four, I had to start going to school. And let me just say, children are probably harsher villains than actual villains are. (Sticks and stones, but ouch.)

There's the saying: A nail that sticks out gets hammered down.

Because my quirk was so different, I was obviously bullied.

Spiders were apparently bugs, bugs were bad, and bad is basically a synonym for evil. So by their logic, I was a villain.

Two years.

Two years of being called a villain.

Half a year of me going home and crying to my Mum asking why, a year of my just letting words roll of my back, and half a year of unjustified (but also justified) anger.

The year I turned seven, my birthday gift was moving to a different city. New neighbors, new environment, a less poisonous air. My parents left their cushy office jobs to make sure that their child wasn't going to accidentally kill a bully. And I was going to start elementary school without any past prejudices following me there.

But first, new neighbors. The apartment that we ended up renting was undergoing renovations since the original building was built nearly fifteen years ago, so we were one of the few tenants that moved in.

The door across the hall housed a nice old lady (her name was Kaneko-obaa-san, but I called her Neko-obaa-san) who took crazy cat lady to the extreme. She smelled like cats, kind of sounded like a cat, and was surrounded by cats all the time.

Now, the other apartment housed the Monoma family. A mother, a father, and a son who was my age. And let me just say he was the cutest thing I had ever seen. Big blue puppy eyes and blonde hair, oh my.

Monoma Neito and I bonded over our so-called villainous quirks, and we became fast friends. So when we went to school together, we ended up being bullied even more, for being twin nerds with villainous quirks.

I didn't even notice that we had similar coloring, in the beginning. I was just glad to have a friend that I could share things with and talk to. But a lot of the kids kept asking if we were siblings, and every time we said no, they'd make fun of us for lying.

I called him Mohō because of his imitation quirk, and he called me Mimi (since I told him Kumo was out of the question). And we both stood in front of a mirror one day, stared at our reflections, and laughed at our classmates misunderstanding because they were honestly right. We looked a lot like blood-relations.

Blonde hair, blue eyes, and pale skin.

That's me, Hakamata Mirai.

And my unofficial twin, Monoma Neito.