My mother died giving birth to me.
For most of my childhood, that fact existed without context. No one sat me down and explained who she had been, what she had loved, or what kind of life she might have imagined for herself before it ended. Her death was mentioned only when someone needed a reason for my father's bitterness or another way to explain why my existence felt like an offense.
I found her photograph years later, hidden inside a box at the back of my father's closet. It had been buried beneath old documents and winter clothing, tucked away carefully enough that he clearly did not want anyone to find it, but not so deeply that he had truly intended to forget it. Even then, I understood the difference. Throwing the photograph away would have meant letting go. Hiding it allowed him to pretend he already had.
She looked young in the picture, no older than twenty-five. Her dark hair had been pulled back in a traditional style, though a few loose strands framed her face. She wore a pale kimono and stood beneath the cherry tree in the eastern garden, smiling at whoever held the camera. Her expression was warm and unguarded, unlike nearly every face I had known inside the compound.
I studied the photograph for a long time, searching for something familiar in her features. The shape of her eyes. The angle of her jaw. Some proof that part of her had survived in me. I wanted to believe that, had she lived, there would have been one person inside those walls who looked at me and saw more than what I lacked.
Perhaps she would have held me and told me I was enough.
Perhaps she would have looked at me exactly as my father did.
The dead are easy to idealize because they can never disappoint you. Eventually, I stopped pretending I knew what she would have chosen. She remained a kind face in an old photograph and a question no one could answer.
The midwife who delivered me stayed in the family's service for several years afterward. When I was old enough to ask, she told me my father had refused to hold me after the birth. He stood beside the bed where his wife had died and stared at me as though I were an object someone had left behind by mistake.
For three days, he would not give me a name.
The servants referred to me only as the child. My brother was kept away from the room, and the family elders handled the arrangements for my mother's funeral while my father locked himself inside his study. It was only when the paperwork could no longer be delayed that he finally chose what I would be called.
Toji.
Winter Solstice.
The longest night of the year.
As a child, I believed he had chosen it as a punishment. My birth had marked the darkest day of his life, and he had stamped that darkness onto me so neither of us could ever forget it. Every time he spoke my name, I heard accusation in it.
It took me years to consider that he might have meant something else. The winter solstice is not only the longest night. It is also the turning point, the moment when darkness reaches its limit and the days begin growing longer again.
Perhaps he had meant the name as a promise that his grief would eventually end.
Perhaps he believed I would become the proof that something worthwhile could survive the worst day of his life.
By the time I understood that possibility, it no longer mattered. Whatever hope he had attached to the name died in a doctor's office five years later.
The examination room smelled sharply of disinfectant and plastic.
I sat on the edge of a padded table while the doctor adjusted the x-ray machine near my feet. He was an older man with thinning hair and the careful friendliness adults often used around children. His voice remained light as he explained the procedure, though I understood almost none of it.
"We just need an image of your foot," he said. "It won't hurt. All you have to do is hold very still for a few seconds. Can you do that for me, Toji?"
I nodded.
My father stood against the wall with his arms crossed. He had not spoken since we entered the building, except to provide my name at the front desk. The doctor had tried to include him in the conversation twice, but both attempts had ended with short, dismissive answers. By then, the man seemed to understand that my father had no interest in reassuring either of us.
The technician guided my right foot into place beneath the machine and adjusted my ankle until it rested at the correct angle. I stared down at my toes and tried not to move.
"There we are," the doctor said. "Perfect."
The machine gave off a low hum. There was a brief flash, subtle enough that I might have missed it had everyone in the room not gone still at the same moment.
The image appeared on the monitor.
At first, the doctor's expression did not change. Then he leaned closer. His brow tightened, and the professional smile faded from his face so gradually that a child might not have noticed.
My father noticed.
"What is it?" he asked.
The doctor did not answer immediately. He adjusted the image, enlarged one section, and studied it again.
"I'd like to repeat the scan," he said at last.
"Why?"
"There may have been an issue with the positioning."
It was a lie, though I did not understand that at the time. The technician understood. I saw it in the way her hands became more careful as she moved my foot back beneath the machine.
They took another image of the right foot, then one of the left. The doctor displayed all three scans beside one another and examined them in silence.
The room seemed to shrink around us.
My father stepped away from the wall. "Well?"
The doctor pointed toward the smallest toe on the first image.
"There is an additional joint here," he said. His voice had lost its reassuring warmth. "The same structure appears in both feet."
My father stared at the monitor. "Explain."
"People who develop quirks almost universally have a single joint in the pinky toe. Two joints are associated with the older human skeletal structure." The doctor paused, choosing his next words with visible care. "It is overwhelmingly present in people who are quirkless."
I looked from the screen to my father, waiting for one of them to explain what that meant for me.
Neither did.
"Run it again," my father said.
"We already confirmed the result in both feet."
"Then check the equipment."
"The equipment is functioning properly."
My father's jaw tightened. "There are exceptions."
The doctor lowered his hand from the monitor. "There are rare cases of late quirk manifestation, even with this bone structure."
"How rare?"
The doctor hesitated long enough to answer before he spoke.
"Less than one percent."
For the first time since we arrived, my father looked directly at me.
His expression did not change dramatically. There was no outburst, no visible anger, nothing that a stranger would have recognized as cruelty. Whatever disappointment passed through him was colder than that. It settled into his face like a door closing.
The doctor glanced toward me and then back at my father. "I'm sorry."
My father said nothing.
I knew what quirks were, of course. Every child did. I had watched Jin'ichi summon solid fists of energy into the air and send them crashing into training targets. I had seen relatives move faster than my eyes could follow or construct weapons from nothing. I knew that children were praised when their abilities appeared and that adults spent years discussing which bloodlines might produce stronger ones.
What I did not understand was what it meant to have nothing.
I did not know that the images on the screen had just placed me outside every future I had been raised to expect. I did not know that my position in the family had already changed, or that the people waiting at home would soon know. I only understood that something terrible had happened and that, somehow, it was connected to me.
My father took the medical folder from the doctor.
"I see," he said.
That was all.
The appointment continued for another fifteen minutes. The doctor explained follow-up examinations and the possibility, however remote, that a quirk could still appear later. My father signed the necessary forms without asking questions. I sat quietly while the adults discussed my future as though I had already left the room.
When we finally returned to the car, my father entered first and closed the door behind him. I climbed into the back seat alone.
Neither of us spoke during the drive home.
Kyoto passed beyond the tinted windows in fragments: crowded sidewalks, convenience stores, bicycles weaving between cars, schoolchildren laughing beneath bright signs. Everything outside looked exactly as it had that morning. People crossed intersections when the lights changed. Shopkeepers arranged displays in their windows. Somewhere, a mother bent to fix the collar of her son's uniform before guiding him into a building.
The world had continued without noticing that mine had narrowed to almost nothing.
I rested my forehead against the cool glass and watched the city blur past. I tried to understand what I had done, which rule I had broken, and why my father could no longer look at me.
At five years old, I knew only that he was disappointed.
Children assume adults are fair until they are taught otherwise.
So I believed the fault had to be mine.
...
Join my Patreon for access to more chapters!
https://www.patreon.com/ZimaBlue29