[Third POV]
The morning sun spilled across the quiet yard, its golden rays glinting through the slanted windows of a half‑forgotten garden. Long grass brushed at the base of the trees, their branches swaying gently as a soft wind passed. The air smelled faintly of dew and earth a lingering calm that didn't quite hide the feeling of loneliness surrounding the place.
Beneath one of those trees sat a boy small, still, his face half‑hidden behind a worn‑out book that looked far too mature for his age. He couldn't have been older than three or four, yet there was something unusual about him. His eyes moved with the steady rhythm of an adult's focus, his expression carrying an almost comically serious frown.
Most people, even in this world of quirks and half‑heroes, would have tilted their heads in confusion. Who looked that dramatic while reading a children's picture book?
If someone were narrating, they'd probably say: Yes. This is our one and only MC. And yes, he's doing what every reincarnated protagonist eventually does looking far too serious while planning his future .
The breeze carried the sound of his light humming, breaking the silence briefly before fading again.
[MC POV]
Three years ago, everything changed.
If you ever woke up in a hospital room out of nowhere, you'd probably freak out. I did too.
Anyone with a brain would. For me, it was like waking up between two realities—one I vaguely remembered and one that made absolutely no sense.
At first, I thought it was a dream. Maybe I'd been sleep‑deprived, or hit my head, or maybe this was some lucid dream experiment gone wrong. But the longer it went on, the more I realized… this was real. Whatever had happened, I was somewhere else now.
It began with noise.
A woman's desperate scream—"Ahhhhhhhhnn!"—ripped through the air. Then a baby's cry followed, loud and shrill.
A nurse's calm voice pierced the chaos. "Ma'am, you have a very healthy baby."
I remember it vividly, even though technically I shouldn't have remembered anything. The bright ceiling light, the soft sound of metal instruments clinking, the faint scent of antiseptic it was a world that felt simultaneously new and strangely familiar.
A woman with long silver hair and faded blue eyes lay on the bed, her face pale and her breathing shallow. She looked too exhausted for someone supposed to be celebrating new life. Her frail hand trembled as she reached out. The nurse, hesitant but gentle, placed the small baby me in her arms.
Her voice was weak but kind. "Baby… you look exactly like your father." A faint smile tugged at her lips. "I'm sorry… we can't be with you. When you grow up, please don't hate us for abandoning you. Your father… he was a great hero to me."
Her tears trickled down her cheeks as she whispered into my tiny ear. "Baby, don't worry… even if we're not there to protect you, your father and I will always be with you in your heart. Always remember us, my Kai."
Then a quite silence with the flat line of a monitor.
-----------------------------×--------
The nurse lingered only for a moment. Then she gently took the sleeping baby from her now‑still hands and walked out of the room.
I suppose you've already guessed who that baby was. Yeah, that was me.
When I first "woke up," I thought I was hallucinating. Maybe this was some bizarre afterlife bug or a bad dream that would reset once I blinked enough times. I tried to ignore the strangeness, tried to close my eyes again as if sleep would fix everything. But no matter how many times I drifted off, I woke up to the same small crying body, the same alien surroundings, the same woman speaking words I couldn't understand.
That language soft, rhythmic, almost melodic I later recognized as 日本語 (Japanese). But back then, it was just noise, warm and emotional.
She held me like I was her everything. Her tears dripped onto my forehead as she whispered a lullaby, something I couldn't comprehend but somehow understood. Seeing her crying… I wanted to comfort her, to tell her it was okay. But I couldn't even move my arms properly. The best I could manage was lying still and hoping my stillness gave her peace.
Eventually, her warmth faded. The light dimmed. I opened my eyes and saw her face one last time. She looked… peaceful. Almost serene. That expression branded itself into my memory. I forced my tiny eyes shut again, etching her smile deep inside me. She was my mother the one who gave me life in this new story.
Even now, memory feels unreal. A part of me still believes it's all an elaborate dream, but reality doesn't ask for permission.
Because yes apparently, I got reincarnated. Every otaku's ridiculous fantasy.
And before you ask no, it wasn't glamorous. I didn't get dropped into a royal family, nor was I handed divine power. Nope. Like most "edgy" protagonists, I got the orphanage bundle.
After months of lying in that hospital crib, someone finally decided I wasn't cursed or abandoned enough to die alone. They transferred me to an orphanage—gray walls, squeaky doors, and caretakers who tried their best despite their exhaustion.
Honestly? I was grateful. It could've been worse.
Three years passed quietly, uneventfully, but quickly enough for me to realize how strange my existence was. By then, I had learned enough Japanese to hold simple conversations. Not because I was some reincarnated genius, but simply because children's brains are built for learning. Having an adult's consciousness helped. It's like running a modern computer on toddler hardware not ideal, but functionally superior.
With each day, I could speak, think, and understand more. At first, I kept to myself hard not to, when you're trying to process rebirth but the other kids treated me well enough. I was quiet, maybe too quiet, but I helped them with reading, and they won't bother me afterward.
Then, one day, I saw it a man lifting a delivery truck off the road with one hand. Another man exhaled a torrent of flame like a flamethrower. The crowd clapped. They called them "heroes."
'That's when it clicked can you belived it?'
I'd seen this before. Online clips, episodes, and fan edits I knew that uniform, those badges, those words. This world wasn't random.
'Holy shit'
I was in the world of My Hero Academia.
At first, I thought I was hallucinating again. Maybe the reincarnation glitch was still breaking. But when the shop's television replayed a live broadcast of a certain symbol of peace saving civilians with his trademark grin, my suspicion turned into stunned realization.
All Might.
I almost choked on my hospital cookie.
Yeah, it was that world. The one filled with smiling heroes and terrifying man child psycho villains. The one that looked fun until you remembered just how often cities exploded.
So what did I do? I started to think like normal people do.
Kids my age boasted about tiny sparks of quirks, little displays of power. I tried a dozen tricks and nothing happened. No fire, lightning, or super strength. I worried, genuinely worried, that maybe I was one of the unlucky few—quirkless. The orphanage worker said every child awakens their quirk at four, so I just had to wait for one year.
And if that was true… well, let's just say a quirkless kid in this timeline rarely gets a fair hand.
Still, I didn't despair. I studied everything I could, memorized local broadcasts, news articles, anything that might hint at the events I knew were coming League of Villains attacks, USJ incident, Shigaraki's chaos.
But here's the problem: my knowledge only went so far. I'd watched three seasons of the anime before dying, and the rest? Only scattered fan edits and half-spoilers from late-night Reddit threads. Not exactly reliable end‑of‑the‑world guidance.
Shigaraki razing cities, All For One's shadow schemes, the eventual war I knew the gist, not the details.
Which meant all I could really do was prepare.
That brings us back to now to this quiet, overgrown garden where I sit with a book far beyond my reading level, pretending I'm a calm strategist while secretly freaking out about my fate.
The sun's warm on my face, the orphanage is quiet, and I look, by all appearances, like a normal child. Inside, though, I'm running mental calculations like a finance manager during apocalypse week.
"If this world is heading where I think it is," I muttered under my breath, "then luck isn't going to save anyone."
Not that anyone could hear me. The other kids were playing tag somewhere near the orphanage fence, shouting noisily every time a butterfly got in their way.
Meanwhile, I sat here a pseudo‑adult trapped in toddler form with the unwavering determination to survive long enough to see what destiny had in store.
Because survival came first. Heroism could wait.
And besides, I had bigger worries.
"Please," I whispered one evening, peering through the small dorm window toward the endless night sky, "whoever sent me here—god, ROB, fate, cosmic gacha machine—just give me something. A quirk, a cheat, anything that keeps me from ending up cannon fodder when everything burns."
Of course, there was no answer. The stars remained indifferent, twinkling like smug developers watching their protagonist grind through early game suffering.
I sighed, throwing my blanket over my head.
"Fine. I'll figure it out myself."
And I meant it. Because if there's one thing I've learned from anime, from life, from watching people who never gave up it's this: power doesn't appear because you beg for it. It's earned, shaped, and if you're lucky discovered in the strangest moments.
Days turned into weeks. Seasons changed.
The orphanage garden stayed my quiet corner, where sun met dust and the breeze carried whispers from another life. Despite the uncertainty, a strange contentment filled me whenever I looked at the sunrise. Maybe it was my mother's memory. Maybe it was the echo of her last words your father and I will always be with you.
Whatever it was, it kept me grounded. Reminded me that even in a dangerous world, life had beauty worth protecting.
One day soon, I'd find out if I had a quirk. If destiny was kind or if cruelty was, as always, the better storyteller.
But for now, in this peaceful corner of a chaotic world, I simply turned another page of my book and muttered the words that had become my quiet promise:
"My name is Kai Takamura. And I will survive no matter what this world throws at me."