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“Do you have a girlfriend, midget?” the middle schooler asks him.
Minoru’s face wrinkles in disgust. “Ew, girls have cooties!”
The middle schooler snorts, “Of course you’d think that, you little fa****.”
Minoru flinches away. He doesn’t know what that word means yet, but he will.
---
He is much smaller and physically weaker than the other kids in his class, and doesn’t have normal hair. His mutation isn’t even cool-looking, like the girl in his class with tiger stripes and claws, or normal-looking until it’s used, like the boy who can turn himself to prehensile putty and squeeze his arm through a crack in a door, or even just kind of neutral, like the girl whose hair changes colour based on her mood, but is still recognisably hair.
Of course he gets bullied.
One day in the future, when he hears about what Midoriya and Shinsou went through, he’ll realise he didn’t really have it as bad as he could have.
But he’s seven years old and sobbing in the bathroom at lunch because he has no friends and the class bully has smushed Minoru’s food into his chest, ruining his lunch and his uniform in one go, and he hasn’t the knowledge nor inclination to try to compete in the oppression Olympics just yet.
He’s seven, and crying, and it’s the worst thing that’s ever happened to him, and thought he doesn’t know it yet, it will keep happening to him.
---
The same middle schooler who asked him about girlfriends, is hanging around after school to pick up his cousin, Minoru’s class bully.
Minoru tries to hurry past.
“Hey, look, guys, it’s the little qu**r. Oi, fa****! Suck any dicks lately?”
Minoru’s classmate and his friends snigger at the older boy’s words.
Minoru gives up all pretence of nonchalance and runs past them, thankfully only their laughter and jeers following behind.
---
“How’s school, kid?” Uncle asks.
“Okay.” Minoru whispers.
Uncle looks up from his book, eyes sharp. “Are you giving ‘em hell, kid? You’re not being a pushover anymore, right?”
“Yes, Uncle.” Minoru says, voice louder but not firmer.
“If you act like a wet sock, they’re gonna treat you like a wet sock. It’s a dog eat dog world out there, you gotta learn to stand up for yourself!”
Minoru’s mother walks in with Uncle’s cup of tea.
“You’re telling him not to be a pansy, right, Sister?” Uncle says to her. “These years are formative for children, he needs to learn to stand up for himself, or he’s going to deserve everything he gets.”
Years later, as an adult in therapy, Minoru will question his uncle’s logic. If his parents are responsible for shaping him, then how can Minoru himself deserve what he gets if they fail to do so? If he deserves to be bullied, then how can the actions of adults external to himself change that inherent quality?
But right now he is eight and intimidated by his sharp-tongued uncle, who sneers at Minoru’s mother and grandmother, and says things like what are you, a girl? if Minoru cries or shows weakness.
---
When he’s nine, his parents move to a different town because of his father’s job.
Minoru thought it would be better, because here no one knows him, and maybe he can have a fresh start.
He is wrong.
---
The class bully is a girl.
Mostly, she picks on the other girls, but Minoru, being an outsider in small town district, and small and shy, is easy pickings.
“You’re more of a girl than I am!” She mocks him when he can’t keep up in the long distance run in Physical Education class.
He is ten when he’s in the change room after PE and one of the boys pull his pants down, to ‘check if you’re even really a boy!’
Minoru’s parents get called in after he tells the teacher, and a lot of noise is made about the event, but nothing comes of it.
A day later the boy who did it is back in class, and he and his friends are much worse.
The class bully girl, sensing weakness, turns Minoru into a full time project rather than an occasional distraction.
---
“You need to act like a real man, and then this nonsense wouldn’t happen.” Minoru’s uncle scoffs in disgust. “If you act like a qu**r, they’re going to treat you like a qu**r. Shape up, kid, what the hell is wrong with you?”
---
When he starts middle school, in another district yet again, Minoru takes his uncle’s advice.
He’s been listening, watching, taking mental notes of what a real man is supposed to be.
He talks down to the girls, talks himself up to the boys, makes as many sexual comments as he understands enough to do so.
His first week of middle school goes swimmingly.
---
By the time he’s finishing middle school, Minoru has become a miniature copy of his uncle, or of his old bully’s older cousin, or of dozens of horrible but idolised fictional men admired by the kinds of people who used to push him down into the dirt.
If you can’t beat em, join em, they always say.
---
Minoru did just that.