Before the Bloom, before the blood, before his name whispered like a curse through District 9's back alleys - Shimura Kioska was just a boy with dirt under his nails and hope in his chest.
He was seven years old, and the world hadn't finished breaking him.
Their home was a rusted-out transit container welded into the skeleton of a forgotten skyscraper. Graffiti covered the outside - symbols from gangs long dead and tags from children trying to prove they existed. Inside, it was quiet. Cramped. Smelled like burnt copper and rain. But there was something soft in it, too.
Her name was Hana.
His mother.
She wasn't a good mother. Not really. Not always. But on the good days - on the rare, golden days when the shakes weren't in her hands and her eyes weren't sunk with poison - she made him feel like maybe he mattered.
That day had been a good one.
She was humming, back turned, boiling ramen in a cracked ceramic pot over a trash burner. Her sleeves were rolled up, and Shimura could see the faded track-marks on her arms, but they didn't scare him then. Not yet. They were just part of her - like the faded butterfly tattoo on her neck, or the way she always called him "my little bloom," even when he came home scraped and bloody.
"You were quiet last night," she said over her shoulder.
Shimura sat crossed-legged on the torn mattress. "Didn't feel like talking."
"That's fine," she said gently. "Quiet means you're listening."
She handed him a steaming bowl, fingers trembling only slightly.
He took it without a word. Slurped once. Then said, "Kuno said I'm creepy."
"Which Kuno?"
"The older one. With the bolt in his cheek."
Hana smirked. "That boy? His brain's more metal than meat. You're not creepy, Ko. You're rare."
"...He said I had shadows."
His mother froze. The smile faded for a beat too long. "What kind of shadows?"
"I don't know. I thought it was a dream. But... when I ran from the dogs yesterday, I felt like I ran twice."
Hana sat beside him, quiet. Then, slowly, she brushed his hair back with her knuckles - gentle, almost scared. She looked at him like he might shatter.
"You ever feel like you're not just you?" she asked
Shimura shrugged. "Sometimes I see something... moving the way I'm about to move. But it's not me."
She exhaled out of her nose. "You're starting to Bloom."
"What's that mean?" he said confused
"It means you're not normal." She smiled softly. "But you're not broken either."
"Then why does it feel scary?"
Her hand trembled again. This time worse. She hid it under the blankets.
"Because," she whispered, "power doesn't come free. Especially not here. But if you learn to use it, Ko... no one can ever touch you again."
There was silence after that. Not cold silence - just... full. Like something too big had entered the room.
That night, she sang him a lullaby. One he barely remembered in the years to come. Something about flowers growing through concrete. About thorns and rain. About how nothing truly ugly could stay that way forever, if it reached for the light.
It was the last night he ever heard her voice sober. The next morning, she didn't wake up for almost two days. And when she did, she wasn't really her anymore.
Shimura would never again taste ramen that warm. Or feel a touch that soft.
But somewhere deep, buried under the clones and madness and the fire -
He remembered this: There was once a world where someone wanted him to grow.