Twice a day Serizawa Katsuya looked out his window.

One in the morning and once in the afternoon. Right now it was the afternoon. He sat by his window, the curtain pulled back just so, just enough for him to see the sidewalk down below. When he had been little it used to make him sad, looking out the window, that was why Mom had gotten him the blackout curtains. They worked better than his old curtains for keeping out the light….the world. When he had first come to his room, when he'd been short enough that he'd had to stand on his tiptoes to reach the top of the curtain rod, he used to hate the light. The view of the world.

There had been nothing to love about it.

Back when he'd first come to his room, back when he had still been short, he'd hated looking out his window every morning and watching the kids walking to school. Kids he used to know, not well of course, but kids he'd seen around. Kids who had gone to his school. Kids who lived on his block. Kids who he'd seen at the library, the arcade, the park…all places he couldn't go anymore. Not since it happened. Not since he'd lost control. He hadn't mean to….it had just happened. The other kids used to like to pick on him, to push him, to tease him into doing something 'weird'. It was fun for them but never for him. Normally the worst he'd done, when they teased him, was make the lights flicker or the room shake or maybe some of the books on his desk would start to float away…well not on that day. On that day…he didn't know what happened. One minute he'd been hunched over his Gameboy on the playground, hiding underneath the slide where he had thought he was safe, and then the next he'd been surrounded by people….

And then there had been screaming….

And then the next thing he knew he'd run all the way home. He'd run home, kicked off his shoes for the last time, and went to his room. And he hadn't come out since….well not in any real way. When Mom wasn't around he went to the bathroom and sometimes took a bath, but most of his day was spent in his room. In the dark. He'd always kept his curtains closed but at first they had only done so much. His Pokémon curtains had looked cool but they hadn't done much to keep out the sunlight…to keep out the reminder of how many days passed. One…then two…then three….then four….and then five. By six he had ripped the sheets off of his bed and tacked them up over his windows. He'd had to stand on his tiptoes and hadn't done a good job. Mom had seen them from the front yard and asked if he wanted real curtains. He'd said…for the glare. That was the excuse he gave. The glare on the screen from the afternoon sun….

He still couldn't stand the glare of the afternoon sun.

It got in his eyes. He never turned he lights on. There wasn't any point. He knew where everything in his room was and his TV gave him plenty of light. He didn't need light…he didn't' want it. Light was too bright, too much, and it made him look around. Normally his room was shrouded in darkness. Even the little but of light coming in from the window…if he turned around he could see his mountain of empty ramen cups, the massive bag of empty chip bags he'd nestled together, the collection of bottles he saved for when he had to pee and Mom was on the second floor of the house….he turned around. Turning around didn't really help, of course, since he knew that the mess was there. He should have cleaned it up….or let Mom clean it up. The most that he could do was move trash from one side of the room to the other and then back again. Mom came into his room and cleaned while he was in the bath sometimes…but it wasn't bath day. Bath day had always been on Friday nights. It had been that way for as long as he could remember, since he was three or four, until now. He forgot, sometimes, most of the times. Mom was the one who reminded him. He had hidden all the clocks in his room and his calendar had been stuck on April of 2002 for years. He had even taken the clock and calendar of off his computer, DS, 3DS, and anything else that would have reminded him of how much time had passed…he hated thinking about it…

He hated time and he wished that it would have stopped a long time ago.

Back before he got this tall. Back before he had to curl up in a ball, practically, to lay in his bed. Back before he had to start wearing Dad's old clothes since his didn't fit anymore. After a year his clothes had stopped fitting and Mom…Mom had wanted to come in and measure him. She said that she hadn't seen him in a while but she could see how his stuff was getting stretched out. She had just wanted to see how tall he'd gotten…but he hadn't wanted her to know. To see him. To come in. It wasn't safe in here, near him, and…and he hadn't wanted anything new to wear. She had tried to come in and they'd had their first ever fight…one that he'd won. One that he wished he hadn't won. One that he wished he hadn't had with Mom in the first place. Eventually she'd stopped knocking at his door and eventually he'd gone to sleep. When he'd woken up he'd found a stack of pajamas at the foot of his bed. They'd all been too big…they'd been from Dad…

He'd grown into them.

He was a lot bigger now than he'd been before, probably bigger than Mom. These were Dad's old clothes after all, mostly, and he'd seen pictures of Dad. He'd been taller than Mom…than most of the people Serizawa had met in his life. Serizawa had always been small when he'd been a kid. That was the first thing the other kids had noticed. His height. The way his hair felt. The way he was always scared. Later on they'd noticed that if they'd gotten him scared enough 'freaky' things would start happening. Pencils would float…the windows would open and close themselves, desks would fall over like dominos…they'd made a game of it.

It hadn't been a fun game.

He'd done little things back then, because he'd been little. It got worse as he got bigger. He had no idea how to stop it or even what it was. Mom wasn't like him. She didn't glow purple when she got upset, and she couldn't even see it when he did. She couldn't move things without touching them. She didn't explode like a bomb when she got scared. She didn't make the lights flicker and the house shake. She had never accidentally sent him flying before. She was normal…she was just like everyone else. Dad might have been like him. Mom said that she hadn't known if he was or not…she hadn't known him for very long. He had left when Serizawa had been a baby….when he'd been one.

He'd spent twenty eight years without Dad and one with him.

He couldn't remember if Dad had been like him. For the first twenty seven years of his life he'd thought he was alone…not until Mom met someone. Someone who was like him but…red. Red and scary. It had been amazing, there had been someone else like him in the world, but…but scary, too. Too much. The world that he had been working so hard for so many years to hide away from had come to his room and just…just intruded. That was a good word for it, he'd gotten that one right on the last vocabulary test he took. The world had intruded in the form of a very scary man….one who had wanted Serizawa to go with him. The answer had been 'no'. He hadn't had to consider let alone reconsider. He couldn't leave this room. Nothing, not even if there were a thousand other people like him in the world, would ever get him out of this room. He had been given the man's name and a number to reach him at. Serizawa had lost it somewhere in the mountain to trash…if it was even still in here to begin with. He wasn't going to be leaving anytime soon…anytime at all. The world…it was not for him.

The most he could do was watch it go by.

The sky, the sun, the clouds, the squirrels, the dogs, the cats, the cars, and the people…the people were the hardest. Over the year the kids he'd known, the ones he'd gone to school with, had gotten taller. They'd gotten taller in the same way he'd gotten taller. They'd changed, too, in the same ways he'd changed…sort of. They'd changed into middle school uniforms. He changed into his Dad's old pajamas. They'd grown into high school uniforms. He'd grown into his pajamas. They'd walked past every single day in their uniforms with the whole world stretched out in front of them. His world didn't stretch past these four walls. They'd changed as the time went by, getting taller, getting older, changing from day clothes to uniforms, and then to different uniforms, and finally to day clothes again. The ones that were left. Every year he recognized fewer and fewer people. 'For sale' signs popped up in more and more yards. Sometimes more than once….he was a difficult person to live next to. He didn't just make his own house shake, no, he bothered the people next to him…but they never bothered him.

Not even when they made his house shake.

He pulled the curtain back a little more. He could see it better now, the house next door. An old couple had lived where when he'd been a kid. They'd let him take the fruit from their peach tree back when he'd been little….they had been nice. They'd asked after him when he'd first hidden away in his room. Mom had told them the same lie she'd told everyone else. He'd gotten very sick with a genetic condition and she didn't know if or even when he'd get better. The people next door had brought him things at first, fruit from their tree, homemade soup, cookies…it had been nice…they had been nice. He used to watch them work in their front garden. They'd loved each other a lot…it had been nice to watch them…but then only the woman. The man stopped coming outside….and then she was gone too…and then there had been a 'for sale' sign on their lawn. New people had moved in, a family, but they didn't stay long. Not long enough for their kids to have gotten older than him…older than he had been when he'd locked himself away. It was hard to remember, sometimes, how old he was. If he sat perfectly still he could almost imagine no time had passed at all….but it had. Enough time had passed for him to get not one, not two, but three sets of new neighbors. This last set was the one he liked best. There was a family there, a mom and dad with a boy and a girl. Kids who had been a little younger than him…than the age he had been when he'd first locked himself away in his room. Now they were older than him….older than he'd been back then. They both wore middle school uniforms now but the girl had gone first.

She must have been the older one.

He didn't know a lot about her. He watched her every day, twice a day, but he didn't even know her name. He knew that she liked Hello Kitty, or at least Hello Kitty backpacks, and he knew that she liked milk-pops since she ate those on the way to school sometimes and he knew that she went to the same middle school that he would have went to and…and he knew that she was like him. She had colors too. His were purple and then more purple. Hers were pink and blue….

And they were just like his.

Sometimes…sometimes she got scared too. He could feel it. Mom had told him, happy that he had been asking about other people for once, that they'd come all the way from Seasoning City. That the parents had said because the schools were better here. That it had looked like they had been lying. Mom had said that she knew that the house had been shaking more than normal and that she knew that it hadn't been him. The parents hadn't really wanted to talk to her after that…but that was ok. He knew…well he thought that he knew what had happened.

It wasn't like he had ever sat down and had a conversation with her.

He pressed his face to the cool glass of his window. He looked in the direction she normally came from. She always walked alone. Her little brother left school before she did and got home after her. He had a student council armband, he must have been busy with that…at least that was what he thought. He hadn't even actually spoken to her and asked. He hoped that it hadn't been what his first thought had been. Whenever she did walk with her brother he stood away from her…and one time he'd brushed his bangs up and Serizawa had seen a massive scar on his head. Serizawa had, thought, wondered…if maybe….

If maybe he and the girl were more alike than he thought.

But they weren't. She hardly made her house shake. She could probably control the curse they'd both been born with. ESP, the man had called it, the one who'd visited him all those years ago. She probably could control it, she had found a way, and that was why she could do all the things that he couldn't. That was why she could leave her house and go to school and…and that was the extent of it. What he knew about her. He only saw her twice a day after all, when she left her house and when she went home, so the rest of her day was a complete and total mystery to him.

He hoped that she had a lot of friends.

Girls were better at that, it seemed, than boys. Shows and games with boys as the main character were usually about fighting. Shows and games with girls as the main characters were usually about making friends and living your daily life and stuff. Girls were just so much better at things like that…they were so lucky. They knew how to make friends and there were always so happy and they got pretty, too, when they grew up. Not taller…well they got taller like everyone else did but they never got to be as tall as Serizawa. She certainly wasn't, the girl next door. She was about as tall as he used to be. She was really pretty, though, and not just because of her colors. She was just…really pretty on her own as a person.

There she was!

The room shook a little. He took a deep breath and tried his best to calm down. She had just turned the corner. She was so pretty. Normally she had her hair in braids but now it was down and long and it was all shiny…it looked really soft. Girls had always looked like they had soft hair, he didn't know for sure though. He'd never gotten close enough to a girl to talk to her let alone to see what her hair felt like. He'd never even had the chance. Girls had never liked him, even when he'd liked them, especially when he'd liked them. He had never done anything when he'd liked a girl, he'd never given anyone White Day chocolates or asked anyone to sit with him at lunch, he'd mostly just watched them. That was all he'd wanted to do, just watch them be…there. Pretty. He used to watch them and think about what kind of people they might have been like. He always imagined the girls he liked as being really nice. Nice enough to maybe come up to him at lunch and sitting with him. Asking him what he was playing. Maybe even pulling out her own Gameboy and a copy of Pokémon, but one he didn't have, and then they could trade or battle or….or anything. No girls had ever been that nice to him before. When they'd noticed, finally noticed, that he'd been staring at them they said something like 'ew' and 'oh God he's looking at me' or worse…girls were never as nice in life as they were in his head.

But maybe she was.

Maybe she was the nicest girl in the world. Maybe one day…one day she would turn her head just a little just enough to see him. He could see her, now, walking down the street. All she had to do was turn her head and then…and then he'd see her and she'd see him and they'd see how alike they were. She would look at him and tell him that he wasn't alone, that he was right and she was like him, and they could be friends and…and just like each other as friends. He knew better than to get his hopes up. He knew that he would never so much as talk to her, or any girl, let alone have her like him like him back.

She would never, ever, have liked him back….but that was ok.

He didn't need her to like him back. He didn't need her to talk to him. He didn't need her to even look at him. She was walking past, now, past his house…his room. He watched her. She was smiling a little…she must have had a good day. She must have spent a lot of time with her friends. She must have had a good, great, wonderful day…..he could only imagine it. He could only imagine her right next to him sitting on his floor and just…just talking to him. Being near him. He hadn't been near another person in so long….in so many years. She would have been…she would have been so nice to him and she was so pretty and-

-and she was looking right at him!

There. She had turned her head as she walked past. She turned around and….and she was looking right at him! Their eyes met…she had really pretty eyes. She had really kind eyes. She had really soft and…and sparkly eyes. She would have sparkled if she had been in a game or an anime…she kind of sparkled in real life, actually. Her colors…the way the light got caught in her hair, the way her eyes lit up when she saw him…she was still looking at him! This was on purpose! She was walking past and looking at him and…and his heart was going to beat out of his chest! He was going to have a heat attack and die right on the spot! She was so-so-so nice and-and-and she was looking at him and-

-the room shook.

He jumped back from his window and landed on the floor. The pillow from his bed jumped down onto him. He clutched it to his chest and hugged it. She had looked at him. The pretties, nicest, girl in the whole world had looked at him! She had walked past him every single day and now…now she'd looked at him! She had looked at him and-and he'd never been so happy before! He held his pillow to his chest and smiled. He thought…he imagined…he imagined at lot of things that he shouldn't have. That she was with him, that she wanted to be with him, that she would have let him hug her like this…she never would have wanted to set foot in this room….so he didn't imagine. He didn't know why he was even thinking about imagining anything.

She had looked at him, the girl next door had looked at him, and he couldn't imagine anything that could have made this moment any better!