But there was always something off about Touko. The other students could tell that, whenever she sneezed, she got kind of…funny. And her parents were weird— After all, who had two mommies and one daddy that all lived together? No one bothered to explain what being poly was to them, and with such, the children simply classified it as ‘weird.’ Plus, Touko could read. She could read well. While her fellow classmates had been figuring out to write their name in their chicken scratch penmanship, she had been getting through primary school chapter books and taking notes in neat handwriting. How was such a thing possible? She was just weird. Touko Fukawa was weird.
On one particular day, Touko sat by herself in the baseball field. She picked a few daisies, weaving them into a little crown. She’d give it to her teacher when she was done. With a proud smile, Touko held up her work to the sun and admired it.
She heard laughter from some of her classmates. They were girls that Touko personally considered friends, even though they never seemed to really include her in games unless she asked. Wondering what they laughed about, the tiny girl crept closer, hiding her small body in the long grass.
"I c-c-can’t," She heard one of the girls shriek, "I c-c-can’t do it! I can’t t-t-talk without s-stuttering!" The other girls burst into laughter. A cold sliver ran down Touko’s spine. They were making fun of her stutter. They were making fun of her.
"P-Pardon me, teacher! I’m going t-t-to read now— I’m so m-much better than the others, right?" The speaker continued on, encouraged by her friends’ laughter. Touko buried her face into the sweet-smelling grass, letting out a choked cry. After a few minutes of hearing the abuse, she couldn’t take it anymore.
"You know, I think I’d want to kill myself if I looked like her," One of the girls piped up. Being so young, none of them understood what the words meant. Too small. Too innocent. They were words that they had heard their parents use variations of, and were simply repeating them. But Touko knew what they meant.
The to-be literary girl crawled away, escaping from the sunshiny playground into the dark, cool classroom. She buried herself into the tiny class library, refusing to come out for anything. Her smile didn’t come back. It never did.
Years later, Touko Fukawa knew that none of the girls had understood the extent of what they were saying. But as they grew older, they learned what the words meant, and they continued to say them to Touko.
Her smile never came back, not as she became a famous author, not as she made it into Hope’s Peak Academy, not as she survived the impossible.
