The Boy Who Wont Forget

Ren awoke to the coppery scent of blood, a dying light bulb fluttering weakly overhead. His eyes flickered open, and everything felt wrong-scared, small, weak. His limbs felt heavy, and lifting his arm took far more energy than it should have. He blinked once, twice, and slowly his eyes accommodated to the dimly lit and tiny apartment he lay within. The walls were peeling, the table was cluttered, and the smell of rotting food clung to the air.

He sat up, the trembling of his fingers in his hair, which was short, messy, and black. His mind was abuzz with fragments of thoughts. Memories of another life—being older, stronger, and dying painfully—ushed in, colliding with flashes of this new reality: school uniforms, bullies, and afternoons spent alone in this apartment.

I've been reborn again, he realized, a chill crawling down his spine. But unlike last time, he wasn't fully in control. The memories and feelings of the boy whose body he now inhabited were tangled with his own, making it hard to think clearly. He felt like himself, but at the same time… he didn't. His breathing quickened.

"What the hell is happening to me?" he muttered. His voice cracked—high-pitched and childlike. He glanced down at his hands, pale and small. A sinking dread filled his chest. I'm a kid again.

Suddenly, a groan from across the room snapped him out of his thoughts. His head whipped toward the noise, and that's when he saw him.

The man—his guardian, his brain supplied—was slumped against the wall, blood pooling around his torso from a stab wound in his abdomen. His eyes were half-closed, his breathing shallow. For a moment, Ren just stared, unable to move as the boy's emotions surged through him. The man wasn't a stranger. His memories were faint, yet they held a strange weight in them, like remembering a lullaby once loved but no longer hummed. Ren's lip shook, and tears welled before he was even aware of them. "No, no, no," he whispered, crawling forward onto the man. His small hands pressed against the wound, trying to stem the bleeding. "Don't die. Please don't die."

The man's eyes flickered toward him but his lips didn't move. His chest rose once, twice, and then stilled.

The silence hit Ren like a gut punch. He sat back on his heels, his face streaming with tears. He didn't even understand why he was crying so hard. This isn't even my real body, he thought, but the grief was suffocating. He sobbed, hugging his knees as his mixed consciousness spiralled.

A sudden sound of footsteps, heavy and in slow pace, came from the hallway outside. Ren's head jerked up; tears forgotten as survival instincts kicked in. Still feeling weak, his body was overridden by the adrenaline that burnt through the fog clouding his mind. The creaky door opened, and a large broad-shouldered man stepped inside.

The man's gaze tore across the room, landing first on the body slumped against the wall, then on Ren. He gave a smirk as he swiped the bloody knife on his sleeve. "Didn't think there'd be a witness," he growled, voice gruff. "Bad luck, kid."

Ren scrambled backward, his small hands slapping against the floor smeared with blood. His heart raced furiously, yet his mind was running a thousand times faster. The thug wasn't any ordinary thug-reinforced Ren knew that emblem on his jacket: Shie Hassaikai, Overhaul's men.

He had seen them in the My Hero Academia anime and manga. But this was it: the world he had read about was real. But that knowledge did little to help him right now. He was just a kid in front of a killer. The man approached him, stalking, a knife shining under the low light. "You should have stayed in bed."

Ren's body shook, but his chest began to fill with a rising heat, and he felt something in the depths of him stir. His fingers jerked, and before he was aware of it, the blood on the floor acted. It slithered around like a living thing, tendrils reaching out toward the thug.

The man paused, eyes narrowing as the blood wrapped itself around his ankles. "What the—"

Ren didn't get it, and he didn't need to. He homed in on the blood as the tendrils tightened and then launched upward, wrapping around the arms and neck of the man. The thug dropped the knife, tugging to get free, but the blood only squeezed tighter.

"No!" he choked, eyes bulging as the tendrils lifted him off the ground. Ren watched, wide-eyed in terror, as the blood pulsed-then, snap!-the tendrils sliced through the man's body like a wire through clay. Blood sprayed across walls, and pieces of the man fell to the floor in a wet heap.

Ren gasped; his breathing was ragged. His shaking hands fell, and the blood tendrils retreated, dripping to the floor. A moment longer he sat there staring at what he had done. His heart thundered in his chest, bile rising in his throat.

"I-I didn't mean to," he whispered, shaking. "I didn't-"

A noise down the hall snapped him back to the present. Footsteps, heavier this time-several pairs-up the stairs. His head whipped toward the window, and without any thought, he sprinted to it. He flung it open and looked down-three stories. His body trembling, the voices behind the door made the decision for him. He climbed out onto the ledge and jumped.

The wind whipped past him and he hit the ground hard, pain shooting through his legs. He gritted his teeth, forcing himself to his feet. In a surge of adrenaline, he ignored the throbbing ache and he limped into the alley, disappearing into the night.