The air in Class 2-C reeked of sweat, ink, and spite.
"Kai, why are you even here?" someone sneered.
A chair screeched across the floor. Laughter followed.
Kai Takamiya sat in the back of the room, hunched over his notebook. His pencil trembled in his fingers. He didn't look up. He didn't need to. The shadows of his classmates loomed tall and crooked under the flickering ceiling lights.
Quirkless.
That label followed him everywhere. In a world where 80% of the population possessed some supernatural power from birth, he was one of the rare ones—cursed by genetics. The ones society whispered about with either pity or disgust. The ones heroes forgot and villains ignored.
He didn't want attention.
But attention always found him.
"Hey, Takamiya," someone called from the middle row. "Did your mommy forget to inject you with Quirk juice when you were a baby?"
More laughter. A paper ball hit the back of Kai's head. He closed his eyes.
He had gotten used to it.
The routine of it all—the mockery, the isolation, the way teachers pretended not to notice. It was like being submerged in tar every day, breathing through a straw that got smaller each year.
"Kai!"
Something cold splashed against his desk. He flinched.
Water.
His notebook soaked instantly. Ink bled like veins across the pages he'd meticulously filled.
One of the popular boys grinned. "Oops. My water bottle slipped."
Kai finally looked up.
Riku Shiba. Strong Quirk. Son of a mid-tier Pro Hero. His eyes sparkled with cruel amusement, like he was waiting for a reaction. Like always.
Kai just stared at him, face blank.
"Cat got your tongue, freak?"
Behind Riku, a girl with long red nails giggled and whispered, "He's like a ghost. Maybe his Quirk is invisibility… except it only works on respect."
That got a bigger laugh.
Kai's jaw clenched. His fingers twitched slightly. Not from rage. Not from fear.
From pressure. From something bubbling inside his chest like acid.
He stood up.
"Sit down, Takamiya," Riku barked.
The command came too fast, too naturally—like Riku believed he owned the air itself. Kai didn't move.
"You deaf now?" Riku grabbed the soaked notebook and tore it in half, sending paper shreds into the air like a burst of dying feathers.
Snap.
That was the sound in Kai's head.
Something cracked.
Not outside. Not on his desk.
Inside.
Behind his eyes.
His vision blurred. A red haze trickled over everything, turning outlines into shadows. The room's lights dimmed, or maybe the light itself was dying. His heartbeat thundered in his ears, and then—
Pain.
Searing. Like fire threading into his optic nerves. He fell to one knee, clutching his head.
Gasps filled the room.
"What the hell's happening to him?"
"Is that… blood?"
Kai's hands trembled as he brought them up to his face. Sticky. Wet. His eyes were bleeding.
But he felt no weakness.
Instead, something ancient stirred within him. Something that whispered not in words, but in sensations—rot, ruin, and wrath.
He stood.
And opened his eyes.
They were no longer black.
They were crimson, with six jagged cracks forming a star-like pattern across his irises. Unlike any Sharingan ever seen in the stories, this one was fractured… diseased.
The Rotengan.
And it was hungry.
Riku stepped back, uneasy. "W-What kind of Quirk is that?"
Kai's voice was low, distant.
"I told you not to touch my stuff."
For a moment, no one moved. Then Riku laughed nervously. "Scary cosplay, dude. What, you buy red contacts off the dark web?"
He reached forward again, trying to snatch Kai's bag this time.
He never touched it.
In the instant his fingers came within inches of Kai's desk, his hand began to rot. Flesh turned purple and flaky. The nails blackened. Veins popped.
"AAAGHHH!!"
Riku screamed, stumbling backward, clutching his disintegrating hand. Skin flaked off like ash. Bits of his palm were turning to dust.
"WHAT THE HELL IS THIS?!"
Panic exploded across the room. Chairs toppled. Students screamed. One girl fainted. Others ran for the door.
Kai blinked once.
The decay halted.
Riku collapsed, sobbing. His hand was half-skeletal now, steaming.
And Kai?
He just stood there.
Silent. Distant. Changed.
---
Thirty minutes later.
The building was quarantined. Four Pro Heroes stood outside the classroom, keeping reporters at bay.
Inside, Kai sat handcuffed in the nurse's office, his eyes hidden behind black medical patches. His body ached, but not like before. This wasn't fatigue—it was withdrawal.
The power had faded. But it had tasted freedom. It would return.
Across from him sat a tall man in a white suit and glasses: Detective Naomasa Tsukauchi, known for his Lie Detection Quirk.
"Your file says you're Quirkless," Naomasa said calmly. "But your eyes don't agree."
Kai didn't respond.
"I've never seen anything like that. Not even in the Hero Registry. It was… surgical. Specific. Rot without contact."
Still no answer.
Naomasa leaned forward. "Did you know you were capable of that?"
Silence.
The detective sighed. "We're not here to hurt you, Kai. But we can't ignore what happened. You permanently damaged another student's body."
"He attacked me first," Kai finally said, voice hoarse.
"True. But you went further."
Kai's head tilted. "Should I have let him destroy everything I own?"
"No," Naomasa admitted. "But what you did wasn't just defense. It was... punishment."
Kai didn't argue.
Because the detective was right.
---
Later that night.
They let him go with a warning. Because technically, he still didn't register any Quirk. His blood test was irregular. His retinal scans unreadable.
But the government didn't like anomalies.
Someone would come for him eventually.
Kai walked home in the rain, clothes soaked, backpack half-empty. His body still buzzed with residual energy. He couldn't stop thinking about Riku's scream.
About how good it had felt.
Not righteous.
Not evil.
Just… honest.
When he arrived home, his apartment was dark. His parents were long gone. They'd left him when he was nine—after his third "Quirkless evaluation."
He'd been surviving off government stipends and odd jobs ever since.
He dropped his bag, peeled off his uniform, and stared into the cracked mirror above the sink.
His eyes were normal again.
But only on the surface.
He touched his left eye gently. The whisper returned.
"You are born of rot and ruin. You are no longer part of their world."
"Then whose world do I belong to?" he whispered.
No answer.
Only silence.
But something within him grinned.
---
Flashback: Age 6
"Another failed test," the doctor said.
Kai sat on the examination table, legs swinging.
His mother sobbed. His father cursed.
The doctor continued. "He has an unusual neural pattern. Highly active occipital lobe, but… no Quirk markers. It's like his brain is designed for something else entirely."
"What the hell does that mean?" his father snapped.
"It means your son may never develop a Quirk. I'm sorry."
---
Present
Kai awoke in the middle of the night, gasping.
The room was dark, but not empty.
A figure stood in the corner, hooded. Tall. Silent.
Kai sat up quickly, but the figure didn't move.
"Who are you?" Kai demanded.
The figure raised a gloved hand.
And Kai's eyes burned again.
The pain returned, sharper this time—but faster. His vision bled red. The Rotengan reactivated like a surge of lightning behind his skull.
"You are the first," the figure said. "The first in centuries to inherit it fully."
Kai's heartbeat spiked. "Inherit what?"
"The Rotengan. The Eye of Collapse. It does not come from Quirks. It comes from before them."
"Before Quirks?"
The figure nodded. "A remnant of a forgotten war. A mutation born of death itself. It skips generations. But it lives in blood."
"Why now?" Kai asked, standing slowly.
The figure took a step forward. "Because the world is on the brink again. And it needs rot to cleanse it."
Kai's fists clenched. "I'm not your weapon."
"No," the figure said. "You are your own weapon. But choose wisely… rot too much, and even you will collapse."
With that, the figure vanished—melted into shadows like smoke in the wind.
Kai stood alone in the darkness, heart pounding.
Not with fear.
With awakening.
---
End of Chapter 1