Crybaby

FML

I don't think I can remember a time when I wasn't in pain. Even before the emergence of my quirk, my life was just a never ending loop of hurt.

Pre kindergarten me, which is where my memory starts, didn't have it too easy. I had these friends, well, to be more accurate, the children of my parents' friends - but anyways, these "friends" of mine were actually little devils of misfortune. Not only were they terribly misbehaved, they had unanimously nominated me as the official scapegoat.

Who broke this vase that I bought for four million dollars from the auction in New York? Me, apparently. 

Who cut the cat's hair and colored it green with paint? Me, because it was definitely not the kid with the green stains on his hands.

Who pushed my darling son into the thorn bushes?! (That one was actually me).

What's worse, my parents never came to my defense. Looking back on it now, they might've seen my suffering as divine punishment, as retribution for the resentment that I brought them. When I was born, they had fully expected me to be a boy, they even had the name Kouichi picked out. Apparently, it means dutiful and first. But, instead, it was me, and I ended up with the name Koko. My first mistake was at my birth, when I had the audacity to be born without a dick.

But anyways, going back to the kindergarten shitstains. Things grew unimaginably worse when their quirks started to appear. The leader of our little group, a buck-toothed motherfucker, had a strength enhancing quirk, but only in his fingers. Now, that might sound funny to you, but it is absolutely terrifying to a four year old. Imagine, a booger being aimed at you at high speed. What about a flick to the forehead when you lose a game? Pinches as well were to fear.

And feared they were, as the groups' new favorite game was "Pinch Koko". This would happen every time our parents held playdates, and even if I begged and screamed and cried, my mom would shake her head and say that they were just playing. My bad, I guess the multiple bruises that covered my skin were also a part of "playing".

But one day, things changed. The group was doing the usual: pinching me, pulling on my skin, twisting it and leaving behind bruises. And as they continued, the pinches became less painful, and my tears became less full. Instead, a weird feeling began spreading across my body, as the pain receptors on my skin slowly turned off. This was the awakening of my quirk, although I didn't know it at the time.

Sir Bucktooth, however, noticed. He called of his goonies, and approached me with a confused frown.

"Why aren't you crying?"

I didn't say anything, but stepped forward, placing a hand on his arm. He looked at me, confused, but before he could speak again, I let go. I let go of all the pain I had accumulated over the past weeks, I let go of all the pinches, all the emotional distress, and all the fear and abuse I had suffered from my ignorant parents. I let go of all of that into the body of a poor 4 year old boy.

And as he screamed and cried, I smiled, relief flooding my system as I was finally free from pain. Obviously, that didn't last long, with the full on slap my father gave me. As well as the following weeks of isolation and neglect as punishment for hurting my friend.

Looking back on it now, it was a terrible thing of me to do, but I can't bring myself to blame 4 year old me. I had just been an unfortunate child, doing what she could to survive.

Eventually, my parents couldn't stand the judgmental faces of our neighbors and community, and we moved away to a new city. The excuse was that my mother was once again pregnant, and that we needed a larger home.

Things actually started looking up, both my father and mother excited at the prospect of their new child, who had been confirmed to be a boy this time. A little bit too excited if you ask me, but back then seeing my parents smiling at their future child was better than frowning at their current one.

But here's the thing: life isn't fair.

My mother lost her second child. It had been a boy, but something happened during her labor, and the child did not make it. My dad ignored me, too angry to look at me. He'd almost had the son he wanted, and yet here he was, with no child to proudly call his own. My mother hated me as well. But with her, it was so much worse. With my father, I knew he didn't like me - he made it clear. But with my mom? All she would do is stare at me as I went about my day. She would not help me when I cried, or when I asked for help, or when I was hungry and scavenging the fridge for food. All she did was stare.

And so when I turned 6, I decided  that I had had enough of my mom staring at me like I was a curse that wandered around her house, asking for food, attention, and dare I even say, love. And so I approached her.

"Do you want to forget?" That was the question I had asked her. I don't remember much else about the conversation, but it ended with her saying yes. So I reached for her hand, and I took it all. It wasn't really that hard, all I had to do was remember how it felt pouring my pain into the boy, and reverse the feeling. 

I took her memory of the boy she had grown in her belly, and the pain of the labor, and the pain of losing the boy nevertheless. And the pain that followed, the pain of not loving her own daughter, the pain of hating her own daughter. I took it all.

But the funny thing about pain, it's as defining an experience as joy. It is what makes you, you. I had overdone it and had also absorbed the pain from her first heartbreak, the pain from losing her own parents, the pain from nicking herself on the knife on her wedding day, the pain from wearing a pair of shoes that was too tight on her and my father's fourth anniversary. And when I let go of my mother's hand I was screaming in pain, crying in fear, and all she did was stare, an empty husk of the human she once was.

My father, understandably, disowned me - I had basically killed his wife. 

At the age of six, I was already an orphan and halfway there to becoming a murderer.

Author's Note: 

Koko's quirk is multi-faceted, and as the story progresses we'll discover all of its different aspects. The first aspect is that Koko can transfer pain that she has felt. This pain can be accumulated.

The second is that Koko can take away the pain from other people by absorbing it herself. As is seen with her mother, because pain can be closely related to memory, if pain is taken away from an individual, it might take away that person's memories as well. Although Koko's control over this will get better, in her mother's case, she took away so many of the memories that it left her mother basically an empty husk.