Backstory

Masafumi was born in a more remote part of Japan, namely a more remote area of the Hokkaido prefecture. At the age of 2, Masafumi’s younger brother, Doppo Aida was born. Even as an infant, Doppo was a sickly child, being someone who could get ill quite easily, this is relevant for later events.

His family was normal in pretty much every way, loving, etc. He had a number of friends as a young child and excelled in school, showing great levels of academic ability from a very young age. In particular, he seemed to be the best at the sciences, often being the top student in those subjects.

In all honesty, Masafumi had (and still has) a natural curiosity that drew him to the subject more. He was still good at the others, but science was something he was truly extremely talented at. Due to this natural talent, Masafumi dreamt of one day becoming a successful doctor, maybe even a surgeon in particular. He really loved to help people when he could, and always carried some basic medical supplies in his bag as a form of “practicing” as much as he could (very basic things like bandaids, antiseptic cream, etc). This was happening when he was about the age of 6. A textbook case of mimicking his parents.

As a young kid in school, he was quite well liked and would almost be like an older brother figure to all of the other children, doing things like helping them if they’d get hurt and doing all kinds of favors for them, even if it was a good amount of effort on his part. The firstborn son of the Aida household was always an extremely kind person.

His aspirations to become a doctor came from his parents, who were heavily involved members of the medical community. At the time, he was interested in becoming a surgeon specialising in reconstructive surgery, as he had always wanted to go into fields where he would be able to directly help people, with payment not really being as much of a factor for him. He just found helping others to be extremely satisfying, even from a young age.

Meanwhile, his brother was diagnosed with XLA, an immune system disorder. So while their lifestyle changed quite notably to accommodate Doppo, they managed to go through the transition just fine. This helped with forming both of the brother’s adaptability.

His father was a specialist anesthetist (A person who administers painkillers and manages a number of safety issues during surgery, as well as managing pain after procedures) and his mother was a pediatric gastroenterologist (a specialist who deals with issues relating to the digestive system in children). Unfortunately, his parents weren’t exactly the most charismatic, often coming off as distant or arrogant to those who don’t know them very well. This caused them to have more enemies than friends, although this did not carry over to Masafumi himself, as they had a very good relationship.

At times, his parents were very busy due to their work. There was no neglect, no abuse, nothing of the sort. The only real flaw was that there were sometimes periods of time when his parents would be dealing with a particularly difficult patient so they would be gone for longer than expected.

There was an incident that occurred when Masafumi was 10 years old, his parents were attempting to perform a life-saving procedure on a young child. The procedure was major surgery to deal with a life-threatening condition, and the chances of success were quite low to begin with. However they tried anyway. Despite their best efforts, the patient didn’t survive the procedure, naturally the parents were heartbroken and distraught, but what they were thinking exactly was unknown at the time.

One night, when Masafumi was at the age of 11, a terrible event took place. It was very late, with Masafumi’s family being asleep at the time. The parents of the deceased child had become unhinged, as that was their only child. They blamed their death on Masafumi’s parents and had been enacting a plan for almost a year to get some form of revenge which they viewed as some twisted form of justice or retribution.

The two of them set the house on fire, something that was realised by the family far too late. The smoke and fire had already gotten to an extreme point by the time they all woke up, with the fire being closer to where Masafumi’s parents were than Masafumi himself. Instinctively, he ran out of the house, forgetting entirely about his parents and younger brother until it was too late. While he was running out, some debris fell down and landed on his face, severely burning it (to the point of third degree burns).

It was only when he was out of the house, badly burnt on one side of his face with a lot of minor burns everywhere else that he realised his family was still in the building. By that point, emergency services had arrived to put out the fire and administer any necessary medical help. The boy still tried to run back into the burning building though, wanting to at least try and save his family, since they hadn’t come out of the building.

His hopes were completely crushed when the firefighters managed to find where his family was. The paramedics were still trying to get him to stop resisting, so he saw the state of his parents and younger brother. Third degree burns covering huge amounts of their bodies, seemingly not breathing…. They weren’t going to make it, and deep down, Masafumi knew it.

He felt sick to his stomach at the sight, his mind was racing, none of his thoughts being fully coherent. The paramedics used this chance to get Masafumi into the ambulance while the other first responders dealt with the rest of the Aida household, but the damage had been done. That image wouldn’t leave his head.

Masafumi had passed out on the way to the hospital as the adrenaline wore off. He was placed into recovery after the doctors had treated him and fortunately saved his life. They also managed to prevent him from losing his eyesight in his right eye (the side of his face that was burnt), but the scars of the burns would never fully heal.

Later that day, doctors came in to explain some things to him. They explained the state of his condition (requiring a stay in the hospital for up to a week so that they could sort out some issues as well as monitor his condition closely). They also told him the fate of his family. Masafumi’s parents and brother had died due to the fire, and doctors were completely unable to bring them back due to the severity of their injuries.

It was at this point where the first signs of his PTSD were developing, though it was too recent to properly diagnose. The medical professionals didn’t want to bombard Masafumi with more sudden changes, so decided to hold off on therapy for the moment, wanting to give him more time to recover physically.

The issue came up as to who would take Masafumi in, as his relatives were unknown, unable to take him in, or refused to do so. It was obvious to anyone with a brain that he was likely gay, considering many of his previous behaviours. As well as this, the heads of the family had disowned him as a form of revenge against his birth parents for rejecting traditions (as well as his sexuality).

Due to this, he was placed into the foster care system at the age of 11. The money that he inherited from his parents wouldn’t be given to him until he reached the age of 18, and while the house was burnt down, it was insured and thus Masafumi received extra money equivalent to the value of the house as part of his inheritance, as well as gaining ownership over the property itself. Essentially, he was set for life. This didn’t make him feel any better though.

While in foster care, Masafumi was a very quiet and distant child, obviously due to the incident that took place. His burn scars made him far more self-conscious than usual (and still do), and with no way to hide them as much as he wanted to, he kept to himself as much as possible. This started a cycle where people were unable to help him because he was too distant, making him more difficult to talk to, starting the cycle all over again. When he had the opportunity though, he’d hide the scars as much as possible (like if a mask was available to him).

He would bounce around from family to family (all in the local area to prevent his life from being upheaved too much), some were better, some were worse, but none of them were truly evil. Masafumi would spend his time studying and trying his best to keep himself distracted from what had happened to him. However, he just couldn’t get it out of his head, he would frequently have vivid nightmares about the incident, and couldn’t handle seeing fire as it threw him into an incredibly panicked state.

This continued as he started high school, with his colder demeanour and unmanaged mental health.

As he got older, his peers began to lose their childhood innocence, becoming cruel to those outside of their cliques. Naturally in rural Hokkaido, you can imagine what types of viewpoints were common. In terms of what Masafumi experienced directly, homophobia would be the main one.

However fortunately for him, being a giant at this point, few people would try anything with him. The ones who did wouldn’t come away from it looking too good. Less fortunate is what happened to Shouya Kanemaru, one of his peers in a similar boat.

Shouya was an academically minded student, but was also physically very weak. At this time, he hadn’t developed some of the skills he has now, so he was an easy target for bullies at the school. He would often leave the campus with bruises and other injuries, varying in severity depending on the day.

At the time, Masafumi really didn’t have much going on, and even less to actually spend his time on outside of schoolwork. So it only makes sense that he ends up noticing one of his classmates walking home with injuries so frequently.

So one day, the famously silent boy approached Shouya, offering to help with treating the injuries. Initially, he declined, not wanting to show any signs of weakness, especially not to someone he didn’t know. One thing that most don’t experience is Masafumi’s persistence in its rawest form: trying to persuade someone to go to a fucking doctor. So, he would continue to offer help almost daily, and be rejected every time.

However, this changed on a particularly bad day, where the injuries Shouya received were out of his league to treat, but fortunately, within Masafumi’s skill set. With him being unable to go to a doctor due to his parents (a situation Masafumi was unaware of at the time) and the injury being bad enough to require stitches (which he didn’t know how to do), he wasn’t left with many options.

So he accepted the offer, allowing it to be done as he had no other choice, expecting it to go horribly wrong somehow. It did not, an extremely rare occurrence of genuine good intent, something new to Shouya.

This was quite a rare instance of Masafumi breaking rules, stealing supplies from the nurse’s office secretly to ensure Shouya’s privacy, though he was unaware of the specifics as to why it was so important. All he knew was just that if Shouya’s family was involved, it would end badly.

Later, they would find that this would be a pattern of theirs, with Shouya helping Masafumi come out of his shell and occasionally be a bit selfish, and Masafumi providing a safe environment (however short lived it may be) for Shouya, where he was able to safely be himself.

This would range from Masafumi treating Shouya’s injuries, to hiding him in whatever home he may be living in at the time when his safety may have been at risk. Shouya in return provided companionship that the other desperately needed in his life, as he had been essentially alone for years at this point.

Naturally, this led to the two of them growing closer, they would both be excluded by others, leaving only the two of them for things like group projects and eating lunch. They discovered very early on that they shared quite a few interests, both being more academically minded with a strong interest in the sciences.

With a supportive person around him, Shouya felt more comfortable letting his personality shine through a bit more, revealing him to be a playful, but certainly not malicious boy.

Their friendship was quite hard to explain in many ways. They were friendly academic rivals, challenging eachother in ways they found nobody else could. They would start spending time together more, outside of when other circumstances necessitated it. They would have their arguments (often caused when Masafumi’s bluntness came up against Shouya’s pride), but would work through it eventually.

However, one day, Shouya vanished. Nobody knew specifically what happened, and Masafumi has never seen him since.

At the age of 17, Masafumi was adopted by a kind couple, at the time he completely failed to bond with them, but was still respectful and passive. He just wasn’t in a state of mind to adjust to a new family due to the death of his parents still being fresh in his mind. They understood this, giving him time to adjust and organise his thoughts appropriately.

Despite this however, Masafumi didn’t want to give up on being a doctor. Even if his family had been wiped out by the fire, he wanted to become someone who could make them proud.

From there, things were much more normal for him. He graduated high school with flying colours, being able to get into med school easily.

He also became closer with his adoptive parents around the age of 19 as well, he tried to come out of his shell a bit for them and they were supportive of him in return. With both of them making an effort to accommodate eachother and make eachother happy, Masafumi managed to form a proper bond with them (he does consider them to be on the same level as his biological parents in terms of how he feels about them).

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