I died on a Tuesday.
It wasn't dramatic. No explosion, no act of heroism. Just a patch of black ice, a red light, and the sickening crunch of metal folding like paper. I remember the cold, the weightlessness, and the odd thought that I'd left the stove on.
And then—darkness.
But I didn't stay gone.
I woke up crying in a hospital in Musutafu, Japan.
Only… it wasn't the Japan I remembered. Not the one from Earth.
This Japan had heroes flying through the sky, news broadcasts about Nomu attacks, and billboards plastered with the smiling face of a blonde mountain of muscle named All Might.
It took me five years to fully accept the truth:
I'd been reincarnated into the world of My Hero Academia.
A world where nearly everyone had a Quirk. A world of heroes and villains, power and prestige. A world where people were born different, and that difference defined their fate.
My name is Aren Kuroda now. And unlike most kids, I didn't awaken my Quirk at age four.
No, mine came on my twelfth birthday. And it was something else entirely.