Just A Child
is a Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid fanfiction on Archive of Our Own written by the user Johnny Mueller. Beginning with the rape of Kanna by one of her teachers, the story then expands to the rest of the canon characters and a few OCs as they react to the situation and try to deal with their own individual traumas.
This fanfiction provides examples of:
- Abusive Parents: Daiki's father hits his daughters and is both physically and verbally abusive to his son.
- Adaptational Name Change: In the manga, Kanna's father is named Kimun; in this fic, he is named Seiryu.
- All Therapists Are Muggles: Kanna has to lie about her family and past to her therapist, since she doesn't know about dragons.
- Blind Date: Lucoa is set up on one with the doctor who treated Kanna by her brother.
- Bloodier and Gorier: Compared to the other chapters, where violence is either implied or limited in brutality, the final scene of Chapter 14 increases the gore factor, as a warehouse where a missing girl is found is covered in gore, and the girl is described as being almost completely torn open.
- Bullying a Dragon: Literally happens in Chapter 9, when a group of boys harass Kanna and Saikawa.
- Child Soldiers: Tohru began helping her father kill humans when she was young.
- Cluster F-Bomb: Detective Ryuji is given a colorful introduction:Ryuji: God damnit, where’d the fuck did I put my papers?... How the fuck am I still a detective?
- Cruel and Unusual Death: Whatever happened to the girl that Hina was looking for. As the medical examiner describes it:She appears to have been opened up at the torso, arms, and legs and had everything from those areas removed: organs, bones, veins.
- Cry into Chest: Daiki does this to Matsunoki after he tells her about his father.
- Darker and Edgier: Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid: A light-hearted slice of life anime about family and culture clash. Just A Child: A Dark Fic about rape and trauma.
- Domestic Abuse: Lucoa's nephew, Lacandon, tells her that his previous partner physically and sexually abused him.
- It is also revealed that Kanna's father has started to hit her mother. Except not really.
- Daiki's father is stated to be an abuser, as Daiki says he hits his daughters and rapes his wife.
- Double Take: Kobayashi does a verbal version of this when Kanna references Tohru's love for her.Kobayashi: Ah, I see- Wait, what?
- Eye Scream: Kanna performs this on a dragon with her claws.
- Family Theme Naming: All of the Kamui children are named after different Ainu gods: Pauchi (god of insanity), Apasam (god of the threshold), Kim-un (god of bears and mountains), Yushkep (god of spiders), Kina-sut (god of snakes), and Kanna (god of lightning and thunder). This is both continued and Averted with the parents; the mother is named Tokapcup, the Kamui of the sun, while the father's name is Seiryu, a name that has no relation to any Ainu gods.
- Flashback Cut: When Kanna's brothers bring up her oldest sister Pauchi, Kanna has a memory of her sister being hurt, implied to be Kanna's fault.
- Gory Discretion Shot: Whatever happens to the man in the restroom in Chapter 19 can only be interpreted through some small visual details and the sounds.
- Guilt-Induced Nightmare: Tohru has one in which a village of humans that she killed come back from the dead and kill her.
- Hospital Hottie: Tokapcup becomes a nurse at Yamato's hospital and the first thing he notices is her body.
- Massive Numbered Siblings:
- Kanna is the youngest of six siblings, as opposed to the manga/anime, where no siblings are mentioned.
- Daiki is revealed to have thirteen sisters.
- Masturbation Means Sexual Frustration: Kobayashi masturbates while thinking about Tohru having sex with her.
- Parental Favoritism: Seiryu admits that he loves Kanna the most out of his children.
- Promoted to Love Interest: In the manga, Elma and Iruru have barely, if any, interaction with each other. They end up together in this fic.
- Puppy Love: Kanna and Saikawa, even further than the manga/anime, as they kiss each other several times.
- Rape as Drama: The impetus of the plot. Also present in Elma and Iruru's backstories.
- Rape Discretion Shot: The only part of Kanna's rape that is shown is her teacher, Mr. Sunohara, laying his hand on her shoulder.
- Realistic Diction Is Unrealistic: Characters have a tendency to stutter and pause in their speech, particularly if they're upset or distressed.
- Red Oni, Blue Oni: Kanna's older twin brothers act in this fashion, with Yushkep being the red and Kim-un being the blue.
- Religion of Evil: Elma and her family used to belong to one, where the children there were raped, tortured, and sometimes murdered to "cleanse" them of their evil.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: After realizing how fucked up his culture was, Seiryu decided to take his family out of their world and head somewhere else.
- Sex Slave: Iruru became one after she was kidnapped by people who murdered her parents.
- There Are No Therapists: Averted. After her rape, Kanna begins to see a therapist recommended to her.
- Troubling Unchildlike Behavior: Kanna displays this when she viciously murders a dragon in Chapter 22.
- Vertical Kidnapping: Wyvern takes Henri up like this before hanging him in Chapter 20.
- Wham Episode: Chapter 16, "Reunions Aren't Always Fun". As it turns out, Seiryu's abuse of Tokapcup was part of an act meant to trick the other members of the clan and prevent them from killing the Kamui family. Eventually, they decided to leave the other world and come to Earth. This chapter also has Kanna revealing her rape to her family members.
- Working with the Ex: It is implied that Yamato and Hina dated each other, and they consult with each other on rape cases, including Kanna's.
