A/N: I do not own My Hero Academia/Boku no Hero Academia

The Antihero – Chapter I

Lost opportunities,

lost possibilities,

feelings we can never get back.

That's part of what it means to be alive.

- Haruki Murakami

Years ago, there had been a girl, Bakugo recalled.

Back when he and Deku were still restless toddlers who played "hero" games endlessly around their neighborhood, there had been a girl around their age who occasionally joined in on their thrilling adventures.

Bakugo couldn't remember her name or her address, but he sure could remember what she was like.

"Polka-dots," they called her, for every time they spotted her, maroon, purple and murky blue spots bloomed all over her pale arms and legs like ink droplets diffusing across the surface of water.

She had never been bothered by the nickname. At one point, one of the boys in Bakugo's mini-clique had mustered up enough courage to question the source of those bruises.

"I'm really clumsy," she would reply, a small smile adorning her delicate lips.

Delicate.

That's what Bakugo thought whenever they played with her.

Weak.

And everyone knew that Bakugo despised those who were weak.

His distaste towards her was something that Bakugo was obviously unafraid to show. In fact, it had been demonstrated very openly and frequently during their outings together. But the weak, delicate girl never seemed to care. All she wanted was to continue to play with them.

Bakugo could never forget the face of the persistent weakling.

The straight black hair that contrasted her pallid skin, an easy target for pulling and yanking. The tattered clothes and sandals she always wore, perfect for mocking her with. The patient, unbothered expression that was permanently etched into her face, a constant source of frustration.

Deku had been far too shy to actually interact with the girl. Bakugo noticed whenever Deku's curious, wide, green eyes would dart across at her direction before dashing towards a different line of sight when she returned the gaze and made eye contact. Although he didn't blame him much – there was something unnerving about the girl.

Perhaps it was because they didn't know that much about her. She had appeared one day in their neighborhood like a ghost out of thin air. No one knew exactly where she lived except that it was within their neighborhood, and no one had ever seen her mother or father pick her up from their usual playground.

Perhaps it was her sharp, light gray eyes, always observing, always analyzing. Bakugo remembered that she had been a key player in hero roleplaying games that required strategy and planning. That had been the main reason the boys tolerated her anyway.

Whatever it was that made her stand out, it ultimately didn't manner.

Only a few months after she had waltzed into their daily playtimes, the ghostly girl had vanished just as abruptly as she had appeared. There had been no forewarning or declaration prior to her sudden disappearance, only a faint memory of a promise to play again together another time.

Bakugo went home the night that they began to notice the girl's absence and asked his parents about it.

"You know her?" his mother had asked him, an incredulous look on her face.

"I'm not friends with her or anything," Bakugo grunted, "She's annoying and weak, but she was a little smart. We used her for hero games. But she hasn't been coming to the playground anymore."

His mother and father shared a look that he was not yet able to comprehend. A second passed as his mother was silent, contemplating her next words as a small frown unknowingly crawled onto her youthful face.

"We don't know much about her family," his mother admitted, "They had moved here only recently, but we did hear that their family was going through some… financial struggles. They left a few days ago to move to a different place."

And that was the end of it.

Bakugo didn't ask what his mother had meant by financial struggles. Even as a toddler, he was clever, he always had been. Thus, he dropped the topic and trudged to his room to finish his homework dutifully.

'Polka-dots' had inserted herself into Bakugo's childhood for a few, brief months before she was suddenly plucked right out of it. As a child who had spent the entirety of his currently short life in the same neighborhood, recognizing every face he passed, moving to an entirely different area in such a short amount of time seemed like a far-away occurrence to him.

Where could she be?

Was she getting more bruises?

Had her strategy skills improved?

Was he smarter than her now?

Those were questions he would never be able to receive answers to anymore, but he ignored that. Someday, he would become the number one hero, and some weak, irritating girl who happened to had been a little smart back when they were kids would be the least of his concerns.

She was just a memory, something to be filed away in the basements of his mind, accumulating dust and age.