Chapter 1: ✨Home Page✨
Chapter Text
Names
Hiroko 寛 女
Shuji 秀司
Zen. 全
Yoichi 与一
Surname
Shigaraki 死柄木
-Preliminary information about the story-
Yoichi and Zen are not twins in this au. There is an age gap like nine years. Yeah, nine years. Zen was nine years old, one month after his birthday, when Yoichi was born. Their mother and father were not perfect. Not like the canon one, their mother wasn't an alcoholic and didn't live in streets. So, they had a modern house. Their father was around, even if he wasn't around emotionally.
So, Yoichi born sick. More so, Yoichi was born prematurely. Zen was always there even if he didn't understand the whole situation. With the years, Yoichi's condition got worse and their mother mostly dismissed Zenbecause he was the 'elder' one and more responsible. So, their mother made sure Zen take care of Yoichi when she wasn't around. In simpler terms, she made Zen a "parentified child¹" and "glass children²".
Yoichi got their mother's attention, Zen didn't. He was the elder one, he had to support and help his mother. Their father didn't give a shit actually. He just provided everything. He wanted them to be 'successful' for their family's name and legacy.
Their mother; Hiroko was kind, lovely and a sunshine person, "mostly". Their father, Shuji was grumpy and workaholic. Hiroko has white hair and green eyes like Yoichi, that's the main reason for Zen's obsession in this AU. Her height was 165cm. Shuji has blonde hair and blue eyes. His height was 179cm.
I wanted to make their nationality mix so Shuji is half German from his own father and Hiroko is Japanese. And that's the reason why AFO looked a bit different blah blah. So yeah...
Hiroko means: From Japanese寛 (hiro) meaning "tolerant, generous" combines with子 (ko) meaning "child". Hinagara; ひろこ
Shuji means: 秀 means "excellent, outstanding, superior and 司 means "administer, manage, control." Hinagara; しゅうじ
¹-Parentified Child Syndrome-
Parentification occurs when parents look to their children for emotional and/or practical support, rather than providing it. Hence, the child becomes the caregiver. As a result, parentified children are forced to assume adult responsibilities and behaviors before they are ready to do so. In addition, they do not receive acknowledgment or support for taking on these responsibilities.
Instrumental Parentification vs. Emotional Parentification
In cases of instrumental parentification, children take on practical responsibilities such as:
• Taking care of siblings or other relatives because a parent is unable to
• Assuming housekeeping duties, such as cleaning, cooking, and grocery shopping
• Paying bills and attending to other household tasks
Emotional parentification involves a child providing emotional support to a parent, including:
• Listening to a parent talk about their problems
• Offering advice to a parent
• Mediating between a parent and another family member
• Serving as a confidante for their parent
• Providing emotional comfort and support to a parent
Long-Term Parentification Effects
• Inability to trust others
• Involvement in violent or otherwise unhealthy relationships
• Inappropriate sense of entitlement or authority
• Greater risk of anxiety, depression, substance use disorders, and eating disorders.
²-Glass Children-
Glass children syndrome is not a medical condition or diagnosis. It is a term used to describe the difficulties experienced by siblings of children with chronic diseases, disabilities or special care needs.
The family constantly takes care of the disabled child and neglects healthy child. Healthy child is expected to become an adult at an early age and be able to solve their own problems. In some families, this may go as far as sharing the responsibility of the disabled child with the mother. Receiving limited attention and love from their family, being neglected and being raised as a lonely child will naturally affect them badly.
"We're called glass children," explains Arena, who is also a glass child, "because our parents are so devoted to the needs of our siblings that when they look at us, they look inside us like we're made of glass."
"You can't underestimate your children's emotional health. Every emotion you feel -whether it's pain, anger, frustration, fear, anxiety, crises of faith because of your special needs child- is also your healthy child 's feeling all of these fellings too, but your healthy child is struggling to cope with a child's coping skills. Not with the support of their family. So when you ask your healthy child, 'Are you okay', they say 'yes mom, I'm fine', don't believe them. They're not okay."
Chapter 2: The House
Notes:
https://www. /caritamaroll/794866286540865536/white-feathers-of-two-birds-chapter-2?source=share
A little art here! I wanted to draw a scene of little Yoichi and Zen!
Chapter Text
Before they were curses whispered in alleyways, before their names tore through history as One for All and All for One, they were just boys... brothers.
Brothers. Born in a house that looked perfect from the outside.
In Hinohara, one of the villages in Tokyo. There were a wooden house painted beige. Neither too modern nor too old. A simple, unobtrusive house. Near the river, near the road. A perfect place.
But inside those walls, love was divided.
Shigaraki Shuji, the father, stood tall and stern; a man who worked too much, smiled too little, and spoke only when it was about his children's grades, discipline or his family's legacy. His presence filled their home, yet it was like a furniture; solid, unavoidable, but never warm.
Shigaraki Hiroko, the mother, was the opposite. Sunshine in human form. Her laughter spilling in the kitchen, hands soft with affection, green eyes that glowed whenever she looked someone. To the neighbors, she was kindness itself.
Zen, born with strange condition. There was a hole in each of his palms. No matter how healthy he was born, that's what everyone was stuck. Holes. Shuji and Hiroko were horrified. That their little boy born with a medical problem. But doctors told that his holes doesn't have any meat or fat tissue underneath. None. As if those were black holes. Hiroko tried to stay positive, lighting the mood. But Shuji? He felt pity for his son.
Zen grow up quickly, too quickly to his peers. He crawled earlier, then walked earlier for his age. His eyes were gray, which made no sense for their family. They assumed, Zen must be an albino. Pale skin, white hair and gray eyes? They dismissed it, didn't wanted to look deeper into it.
When Zen was a toddler, he was always hungry, could not get enough no matter how much he eats. But he wasn't eating at all. He was constantly itchy, constantly scratching his palms. Near the holes. Something felt empty inside him. He wanted to fill the void, but no matter how much he ate, he was never satisfied. They ached for something. Scratching drew attention to the holes in his hands.
Everything turned sideways when people started to talk about the "Luminescent Baby" and people suddenly having "powers". Shuji looked at Zen with different gaze, from a different angle, from a different reality. Because his son was a meta like people call them. Shuji felt a sense of disgust but couldn't show it. So he played happy father.
"I can't believe my son turns out to be a damn monster like those disgusting things, a freak."
Shuji's voice was harsh, cold. Like he wasn't talking about his own son. Zen flinched by the cruel words, but couldn't say anything. He didn't want to piss his father more.
Zen never got over his itching. So, her mother bandaged his hands. She didn't want him to hurt himself.
"Darling, I know it ithces. We will figure something out how to deal with it, okay?"
"But, o-ka'a-san!"
"Bandages will help, Zen. At least you won't be able to peel the skin off your hands while scratching..."
Zen grumbled. He objected and didn't want to wear it because he couldn't scratch his hands, couldn't ease the aching.
"Honey, I know you don't want to wear. But please, I don't want to see you hurt yourself"
The bandages smelt gross. They smelled antiseptic and were unpleasant when wet. And they would get dirty while eating or being outside. And he hated it.
"But those smell gross! And that's stupid! These are squeezing my hands! I hate it when these get wet too!"
A week full of tantrums of Zen, and he finally accepted the bandages. Because at least, people stopped looked at his palms. And the people he don't know stopped looked at him with disgust. He figured out of he wears them, people will act like his mother but not like his father.
"Finally, looking like a normal people a bit"
Shuji commented cruelly. Zen flinched and felt uneasy by his father's voice tone. Shuji's face was filled with contempt and disgust. Even if it's less than before.
"If these makes me more human... I will keep them on. And maybe people will treat me like I am a human being too, like them..." Zen said to himself one day while looking at his empty, gray eyes in the mirror. "If that's what they want, I will give them what they want".
After Zen started school, he started to act out too. He wasn't the kind person like her mother. Hiroko always knew something about Zen also wrong. The way he didn't feel anything when an animal or bug died when his peers cried. There were times when he would drag dead cats or dogs from the side of the road. No tears, no questions, no fear. Those gray eyes were empty. He would drag them to the side of the road as if they were still alive, then go to his friends for play. He never cried when he scratch his knee or when they pulled his teeth.
He never complained about school. Just went. His appearance was both striking and frightening for his peers. But his teachers loved Zen. A quiet, calm child who listens to class, takes notes, and does everything on time.
The night Yoichi was born, the house was in a suffocating silence.
Zen sat outside the bedroom door. His knees pulled to his chest, his bandaged palms pressed against the wood. The holes itched and burned, but he stayed quiet. He had learned quickly: his father despised the sound of his complaints. And to avoid it he learned to keep quiet.
Inside the room, his mother screamed. Once, twice... then the cries broke into a weaker, rasping sound. The midwife’s voice rose, urgent, then hushed. Zen’s stomach twisted. Something was wrong. He believed that something was wrong.
"O-ka'a-san...?" Zen whispered to himself when the room felt so quiet.
Then, at last, a sound came. Not strong, not loud. A thin, trembling cry made his skin crawl.
When the door creaked open, the midwife’s face was pale with worry. In her arms lay a bundle so small Zen thought at first it was only the swaddling cloth. Then he saw him: a baby with shock-white hair like his plastered damp to his forehead, his tiny chest rising in shallow, desperate gasps. Desperate to holding on to life. His skin was almost translucent, as if the world could shatter him with one careless breath.
The midwife crouched, lowering the child into Zen’s arms. “He came too soon, honey” she whispered. “Too soon… but he’s alive. He is strong”
Zen looked down at his brother. So frail. So fragile. The baby’s fingers twitched weakly, barely curling against the fabric. His eyes fluttered open. Green, like their mother’s, glowing faint in the dim lamplight.
Zen didn’t move. He didn’t breathe. Something inside him latched onto that fragile life like a chain snapping tight. The constant feeling of itching and aching suddenly gone.
Mine. Mine to protect, to care, to love.
Behind him, Shuji’s voice cut the moment in two. “Pathetic,”. He muttered. “First a monster, now a cripple. What use are sons like these?”
Zen held Yoichi tighter, so close the baby squeaked. His palms throbbed beneath their bandages, the hunger stirring. He ignored it.
For the first time, Zen smiled. Not the smile of a boy. Not the smile of a brother. The smile of someone who had already decided: if the world hated them both, then the world would have to burn before it touched his little brother.
Zen, the eldest now, was nine years old. Yoichi was too fragile that Hiroko called him miracle. Hiroko’s world collapsed around that tiny body. Zen, who had been her first miracle, was quietly shifted into another role; not son, but second parent. Not child, but caretaker to the little one who is sick and need constant care.
Zen learned to measure medicine, to hush his brother’s coughing fits at night, to wipe tears without crying himself as a child don't know how to soothe a baby. He learned to cook when his mother was gone. He learned some easy stuff. Boiled eggs, rice, fried eggs, noodles, salad. Easy but still satisfying things. Her mom told him to keep the house in order because “your father mustn’t see weakness.”. He learned that if he wanted attention, he had to be responsible enough to earn it, but not so needy as to take it away from the little fragile Yoichi.
They call them parentified children. They call them glass children. Words that didn’t exist for Zen, but chains he wore all the same. Even if anyone understands it, they dismiss it as "But the elder one must be the responsible"
And still, Zen loved Yoichi. How could he not? Yoichi’s white hair shone like their mother’s, his green eyes too soft for a world this cruel. He fall in love with his little brother the time he saw Yoichi in his arms, the way that green eyes looked at him.
He looked at bathroom where her mother is taking shower after two days. She never asked what he did at school, nor how was his day. Her whole world revolved around Yoichi. He leaned over the cradle and looked at that tiny baby. And he smiled. A smile that promises whatever happens, Yoichi will be his in the end. He won't let Yoichi live the life people look at him with disgust, pity. His smile got tighter, a promise.
But love born from neglect grows strange. It is not healthy, nor balanced. Zen was not nurtured as a son, only forged as a guardian for his brother. And a boy who doesn't understand love sees it differently. And guardians who are never children don't know how to stop guarding.
It began there, in that modern house with its picture-perfect façade. Two boys. Two fates. One family name',
Shigaraki.
Suninn (Guest) on Chapter 1 Sat 26 Apr 2025 10:14PM UTC
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Suninn (Guest) on Chapter 1 Sat 26 Apr 2025 10:16PM UTC
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Aviva_ismyhomegrl on Chapter 1 Sun 27 Apr 2025 01:01PM UTC
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the_void_speaks on Chapter 1 Wed 28 May 2025 09:22AM UTC
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