Hello Fellow Readers!

I would first of all like to apologise for my long absence and deletion of work. I wanted to start fresh with a new one-shot collection I wrote while school started again. And while I had time to write.

Again, thank you for reading, and please enjoy.

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Izuku doesn't celebrate his birthdays. He resents his birthday, he's sure both he and his mother knows that.

It starts after being diagnosed quirkless. Diagnosed, like it was a disease, a plague. It wasn't but his schoolmates sure made it like it was.

His 5th birthday was the first blow to his slowly depleting optimism. It was already noon, a few hours well into what was said in the invitations his mother reassured him that was given to his teacher to distribute, but somebody has yet to ring their apartment doorbell.

Needless to say, this birthday was just newly 5 year old izuku, his mother, and a sad, small cake the midoriya's bought with his saved allowance.

It went like that for a few years, him still hanging to hope that at least one person he knows in class, or in school, for that matter, come and greet him a happy birthday but no one really does.

He doesn't really know what to feel because why wouldn't they go to his birthday parties? He's never been hostile to them; he always lends his crayon box, uncomplaining when it comes back to him with a few crayons snapped in half, he never goes in anyone's way, always doing what is asked of him.

so why?

The day he turns 10 is when he finally opens his eyes and feel the crushing weight of helpless, futile hope crumbling under Kacchan's popping palms and hateful sneer when they come face to face after school, searing his skin with pain that will always sting.

'stay out of my damn way, stupid Deku.'

He burned me. Izuku slumps down the classroom and leans his head on the wall, disbelieving of how his childhood bestfriend looked at him. Hate is what he saw, an almost overflowing amount of it. All of that directed to Izuku.

He feels numb, that nervous smile that he always wears stuck on his face, shock stilling him into doing anything but stew in the fact that him and Kacchan aren't really bestfriends anymore, wasn't for a good 6 years now, and that all that rough housing he thought was games isn't really rough housing as it is bullying and-

Izuku inhales, clawing at his throat as he begins sobbing, the truth replaying over and over in his head. After several minutes of crying in an empty classroom, he composes himself and does what he's done best after these past few years, albeit subconsciously.

He plays pretend.

He plays pretend and goes home that day smiling to his mother, like his throbbing shoulder isn't sending jolts of pain throughout his body with each movement, like he isn't a puppet with its strings cut, laying broken at the center of the stage with the audience long gone.

They eat Katsudon that night, Izuku dissuading his mother from going out and buying him a cake saying, 'it's okay, kaa-san, we can use that money for better things. I won't be able to finish my slice anyways.'

After they bid each other goodnight, he all but trudges to his room and brings out burn cream, deftly applying it to his sore shoulder. It hurts, he thinks as he lays down on his bed, it hurts everywhere. Izuku might've laughed at that understatement if he wasn't so exhausted.

He closes his eyes and dreams of a dream he can't wake up from; popping palms and his ringing hearing.

The next day, he stops living and Midoriya Izuku starts surviving.