Neuropsychiatrist Specialist

Board-Certified Psychiatrist.

When I first awakened my Quirk, people said I might ruin the world one day.

I was thirteen.

"Will you try it one more time?"

My homeroom teacher asked with a stiff face. He was straining to sound like his usual self, but the fingers he'd lowered beneath the desk hadn't stopped drumming against his knee for a while now.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

The faculty office was unnaturally quiet. Faint voices of children drifted in from the playground where a PE class seemed to be underway, and the fluorescent lights hanging from the ceiling hummed in a low drone.

At first, it had been just the teacher and me.

Exactly — at first. Once word of my Quirk traveled from the principal's office to the Education Board and Hero Public Safety, adults I'd never seen before began trickling in one by one.

Two men in business suits stood in the corner of the office. One scrutinized my face obsessively from start to finish; the other kept typing something into a tablet resting on his knee. Every time I so much as twitched a finger, their eyes followed it.

It didn't feel great.

"Should I do it like I did before?"

"Yeah. Just don't push yourself too hard. I'm a little nervous too."

Nervous.

I gave that word a moment's thought. Such a handy little word.

"Then would you raise your right hand for me?"

"My right hand?"

"Yes. Just relax."

The teacher lifted his right hand. Between his thumb and index finger, he held a red ballpoint pen.

"It moves fine, right?"

"Of course. Obviously."

He wiggled his fingers a few times. His expression had loosened a little compared to before — apparently relieved that nothing was happening. I nodded slowly.

"That's right. Everything's fine right now."

Then I deliberately paused for a beat.

The teacher's gaze, still on his moving fingers, swung back to me. He was waiting to hear what I'd say next.

Once I confirmed that, I said quietly, "But your right hand's felt a little heavy for a while now, hasn't it?"

The teacher's expression shifted, just slightly.

"……Mine?"

"It never did that before?"

"Yes. From the beginning. Your fingers looked a bit stiff, too."

"Really?"

"You're gripping that pen harder than usual, aren't you?"

The teacher unconsciously adjusted his hold on the pen.

Good.

I put on the face of someone who noticed absolutely nothing, even while watching it happen.

"But that's not strange or anything."

"What do you mean?"

"That's just what happens when you're nervous. You said you were nervous earlier, remember?"

"Ah…… right, I did."

"So it's perfectly natural for a little tension to build up in your hand."

The teacher's gaze dropped to his right hand. He wiggled his index finger once. His thumb followed. Then he clenched his fist and opened it again.

This was the same hand that had been moving without a second thought just moments ago. Now, every single movement required him to think about the movement itself.

I lowered my voice a little.

"You don't have to force it, you know."

"……."

"If you try to push strength into it on purpose, it might actually feel stiffer."

The teacher's fingers slowed.

"I suppose that could happen."

Those weren't my words. The teacher had said them himself. So I picked them right up.

"Exactly. Just relax. There's no real reason you have to keep moving it anyway."

His wrist sank a little.

"It's easier if you leave it still."

The pen between his fingers tilted, ever so slightly.

"The more you strain, the heavier it gets."

Thud.

The ballpoint pen dropped onto the desk. The teacher's right hand jerked reflexively to catch it.

Then it froze.

"……Huh?"

The hand had stopped. The teacher's lips parted slightly. He tried to move it again. There was unmistakable tension in his forearm, tendons standing out along the back of his hand.

But his fingers wouldn't move.

"Hold on."

The teacher's voice was different now. He grabbed his right wrist with his left hand and lifted it. The right arm rose without any problem — but the moment he let go, it flopped back down onto the desk.

"Why won't this……"

"It won't move?"

"Wait. No, it should move……"

The teacher gritted his teeth and strained again. Nothing happened.

"I kept telling you that would happen," I said, perfectly naturally.

And in that instant —

The hand tapping away at the tablet in the corner of the office stopped dead. Both of the suited men snapped their heads up at the same time.

From that day on, my life went to hell in the most literal sense.

At first, they called it a common mental-type Quirk. They tested me again, and the classification changed. They tested me again, and the risk tier went up. They tested me again, and the case officer changed.

My Quirk wasn't the kind that turned someone into an instant puppet the moment I gave them a single order. Nobody actually jumped off a rooftop just because I said, out of nowhere, Jump. Blunt, direct commands like that almost never worked.

Instead —

I could nudge a thought a person already had. Just barely. Suspicion. Anxiety. Affection. Expectation. Fear.

Any emotion that existed at all, even faintly, was enough. I pushed it in the same direction, over and over — in different words, in different situations.

As if it had been in their head from the very start.

And then, at some point —

The other person arrived at the conclusion I wanted, all on their own. Or at least, they believed they had.

Academics explained it in long, convoluted jargon. I read a few pages of their reports and gave up.

The general public picked far more intuitive, far more inflammatory words.

Hypnotist.

Fuck.

A thirteen-year-old, a national-level security risk.

Reporters showed up outside my apartment. At school, kids who spotted me would gasp and grab the sleeve of whoever stood next to them.

"Hey, that's him, right? The kid from the news."

"Keep your voice down. What if he hears you?"

"So what? It's not like hearing you changes anything, they said."

"Hey, still, don't. He rewrites your whole way of thinking."

"Is it true you get hypnotized just from making eye contact?"

"Who knows. They said talking to him for too long is dangerous."

"Seriously, chills. How do I even know the thought I'm having right now is actually my thought?"

I walked past without a word.

I couldn't control people just by meeting their eyes, and I wasn't a mind reader either. But nobody cared about that. What I actually thought didn't matter. All the public wanted to know was what kind of monster I could become.

Adults weren't much different. On TV panel shows, experts whose names I'd never heard debated me in grave tones.

"Nothing has happened so far only because he's still a young student. Is there any guarantee he'll maintain that same level of restraint once he's an adult?"

"Which is why I argue he should be transferred into a hero training institution as early as possible. Quirks like his demand the strongest possible ethical education and oversight."

"And if the boy himself doesn't want to be a hero?"

"He is a minor. When the safety of society as a whole collides with an individual's choice, which takes precedence — that's a question worth pondering, isn't it?"

Listening to all that, I quietly turned off the TV.

And what about what I want to do?

Nobody asked.

Some said I would become a future Villain. Some said that to prevent it, I should be made a hero whether I liked it or not. Some insisted the state itself needed to chain me up, for my own protection.

Protection. Management. Education. Control.

Only the vocabulary changed. From where I stood, every one of them sounded the same: We will decide the course of your life.

And then —

There were people in this world whose greed was a great deal less subtle.

Winter, the year I turned fifteen.

It was on the dark road home from the academy. A black van blocked the entrance to the alley, and the moment it stopped, the doors slid open roughly and three big men in masks climbed out.

The man in front called out my full name — my real one, with perfect precision.

"If you don't want to get hurt for no reason, come along quietly. We've got no interest in putting our hands on you either."

I knew in that instant. They hadn't grabbed the wrong kid. They'd come for me.

And they knew exactly what my Quirk was.

Before I could even open my mouth, the man strode forward and reached for my face. Not for my collar, not for the back of my neck.

My mouth. He'd gone for my mouth first.

"Hold on a second."

The man's hand stopped, just for a moment. That was enough.

"What if something goes wrong because he can't breathe with your hand clamped over his mouth?"

"Shut up."

"You were ordered to bring me in alive, weren't you?"

The hand slicing through the air slowed, just barely perceptibly. I wove my breathing into the words and kept pushing.

"If something happens to me right here, that's a problem for you gentlemen too, isn't it?"

"I told you to shut your mouth."

"So just let me get in the car on my own two feet. If you drag me by force and I trip and crack my head open, that's a bigger mess for everyone."

The man behind grabbed the first one's shoulder.

"Boss, just let him in. Orders from above were not to leave a mark on the kid."

"We have to cover his mouth first. Do you even know what his Quirk is?"

"Of course I do. But that beats us taking the fall because he suffocates and the job goes sideways."

And then, at some point —

"Isn't this route crawling with checkpoints?"

‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠

"It is. No point rattling the kid and making more trouble for ourselves. Let's take the side roads."

"But if we go somewhere too out of the way and something happens, that's on us too."

"Then let's stick to roads we know. We can just have the kid guide us."

When I came back to myself —

The van was cruising down a four-lane road I knew far too well. My neighborhood.

"Take a right at the next intersection, please."

The driver said nothing and flicked on his turn signal. Only much later did the man in the passenger seat ask, as if something had just struck him as odd.

"Hey. Wait. Where are we going right now?"

"Your place, kid."

"……Why?"

The driver kept his mouth shut for a few seconds, then frowned and answered as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

"……We have to see you home safely, don't we?"

"Ah."

The guy next to him nodded along, convinced.

The van pulled to a stop in front of my apartment building's entrance. I opened the door, paused halfway out, and looked back.

"Hey, gentlemen."

"What."

"You failed today, you know."

The driver's face twisted.

"……Yeah."

"You need to understand why it failed, or you'll make the same mistake next time, right?"

"I suppose so."

"Then tell me exactly how you planned to take me, exactly where it started going wrong, and — above all — exactly who gave the order."

A brief silence settled inside the van.

That last part was the one I wanted. I drove the wedge in with a voice that sounded utterly indifferent.

"You can't leave out who gave the order. Isn't that right?"

The driver drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. Then, like a man in a trance, he blurted it out.

"The Paranormal Liberation Front gave the order. Don't know any names."

"Got it. Then drive safe."

"Yeah."

The door closed, and the van pulled away. I stood there until its red taillights had vanished completely beyond the edge of the apartment complex.

I'd been kidnapped.

Except the kidnappers had escorted me safely to my own front door. And then, out of the sheer goodness of their hearts, snitched on who sent them.

……Fuck. That's terrifying.

My Quirk.

That night, I lay in bed and thought for a long time.

The government said I needed to be managed. The hero side said I needed to be trained. The Paranormal Liberation Front wanted to put a leash on me outright. The press tore into a kid who hadn't done a single thing yet, calling him a future calamity.

What I wanted — nobody asked.

I stared at the ceiling for a long while, and then I spoke.

"Fine."

Somehow, my mind had gone completely calm.

"Fuck it."

The conclusion was simple.

"I'm not doing a single thing you people want."

Villain? Not doing it. Hero? Not doing it. Public Safety? No. Soldier? Absolutely not.

Dark puppet master scheming to rule the world — exhausting just to hear.

So what should I do?

A job nobody would ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠predict. One that was perfectly respectable in the eyes of society. One with ironclad job security. And above all, one where I alone had total control over my own life.

It didn't take long to find the answer.

A doctor.

Specifically — a board-certified neuropsychiatrist.

At first it had been pure spite, half a joke of a career choice. But the more I looked into it, the better it fit.

Emotion. Memory. Cognition. Behavior. Trauma. Anxiety. A field devoted to dissecting how the human mind breaks — and how it heals again.

The boy whom the world had cursed as a future brainwasher would become a doctor who fixed minds. Legally.

The more I thought about it, the more I liked it.

"This is it."

The problem was the studying.

I slowly looked up the entire process of becoming a doctor. Medical school admissions. Pre-med. Med school. National licensing exam. Internship. Residency. Board certification.

The further I scrolled, the harder it became to breathe. I stopped halfway down the screen and threw my phone onto the bed.

"……Insane."

I was absolutely not the kind of human being who sat at a desk of his own free will and buried himself in books for years at a time.

I actually tested it for a few days. One hour of studying. Ten minutes of phone. Another thirty minutes of studying. Opened the fridge for no reason. Went to the bathroom. Came back to the desk, did three pages of problems. And then bed.

At this rate I could study until the end of time and still never become a doctor.

But I didn't want to give up. Becoming ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠a psychiatrist was no longer a simple career aspiration. This was one enormous middle finger, launched at every hypocrite in the world who'd tried to control my life.

And then a perfectly obvious fact drifted across my mind.

Wait.

I set down the pen I was holding.

My Quirk is suggestion.

It worked on other people's heads. There was no reason it wouldn't work on mine.

"Studying is fun."

It wasn't fun yet.

"Learning new things is a joy."

Still boring.

"Solving a problem I don't understand makes dopamine flood my brain."

Something shifted. It was long past the time I'd normally have slammed the workbook shut and dove into bed, but I found myself wanting to solve just one more problem.

I looked at the clock and thought for a long time.

It works.

And with that — apart from the self-suggestion, I decided to lean on my Quirk as little as possible.

The people of this world had only ever seen my Quirk.

What could he do with that power? Whom would he move with it? With a Quirk that incredible, everything must come easy to him.

In the end, everyone talked as if my Quirk mattered more than the fundamental substance of who I was as a human being.

You think I can't do anything without one lousy Quirk?

I wanted to prove — at the very least, to myself — that I was no cripple living off a single parlor trick. Because I was more than that. I was.

Of course, before any of that, there was one massive problem to solve first.

My name recognition was far too high. So high that becoming an ordinary doctor would have been impossible as things stood.

So I decided to kill myself.

I didn't mean ending my actual life.

I meant killing, from every record in the world and every memory in people's heads, the very existence of the boy who awakened hypnosis.

"I remember he transferred out to the countryside."

"I don't think he came back to school after the accident."

"There was a missing persons report filed, wasn't there?"

"Wasn't he declared dead after that?"

I placed a self-suggestion on myself — for the sake of becoming a doctor.

I made the duration long. At first I thought about three years, but no matter how I looked at it, that was far too short.

Five years was murky too. If I got into med school and the reins came off, knowing my personality, I'd start slacking immediately. To survive all the way through specialist training, it needed to be far longer.

I counted on my fingers.

Seventeen. And then —

"Ten years."

Ten years from now, I'd be twenty-seven. By then, surely, something would have come together.

I turned to my own reflection in the mirror and pronounced it like a sentence.

"For the next ten years,"

"I am madly, obsessively in love with studying."

"I will savor every single one of the horrific stages required to become a doctor."

"I will not find this state the least bit strange."

And one last line, short and plain.

"And I will rely on my Quirk as little as possible."

Perfect. That was perfect.

From that day on, my life flowed along with astonishing smoothness.

◇◇◇◆◇◇◇

…….

‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠

My finger stopped.

The tip of my highlighter had frozen mid-stroke over a single sentence in an English-language psychiatry journal.

I stayed like that, motionless, for several seconds. The sentence had been flowing easily. The content had come through naturally too — the study design, its statistical limitations, all of it clear at a glance.

And yet.

"……This is boring."

I heard myself mutter it.

Something was off. Not the fact that a journal article was boring — of course a journal article was boring; that was the natural state of the universe.

The problem was that until a few seconds ago, I had been reading this thing with genuine, honest enjoyment.

I set the highlighter down slowly. A small click of plastic against the desk.

And in that instant —

A voice buried long ago came vividly back to life inside my head.

For the next ten years.

My own voice, at seventeen.

I am madly, obsessively in love with studying.

I didn't move.

And then, very, very slowly —

I looked at the calendar sitting at the edge of my desk.

Today was exactly the tenth year.