I did not expect to die on a Tuesday.
Tuesdays are like off-screen days after all, barely enough to register their existence in your mind.
And the even more problematic thing was my death. Yes, I was scared of suddenly dying. No, it would be more accurate to say I was terrified.
But there was also some disappointment.
My death was... well, very annoying.
All I heard were gunshots, there was a scream, and a body fell down.
I lived in the USA, so shootouts were not exactly unheard of, but the thing was, the body that fell at the start...
Yup.
That was me.
The first victim who only served as an alarm for everyone else to run away.
I had been walking out of school to the busy streets of New York, headphones on, half-thinking about an unfinished math assignment and half-thinking about nothing at all.
Hell, I never even saw the shooter clearly.
I died too fast for all that.
Sadly, as I fell down, no one even bothered to check up on me, as they were too busy running away. Maybe I would have lived if someone had called an ambulance or something?
Probably not...
Getting shot in the neck tends to ruin your chances.
I could sense everything around me turning into chaos. People running as fast as they could, with their lives literally on the line.
I remember staring at the sky between the buildings.
'So this is how it ends?'
I was eighteen years old.
An only child.
I had plans for my future.
College applications half-finished.
There were many regrets, some big, some small.
I had a fight with my mom yesterday over something as stupid as her not agreeing to let me go on a vacation with my friends before leaving for university.
'Maybe I should've made up with her and hugged her before leaving today?'
My dad had told me to be careful that morning.
I had just rolled my eyes.
Maybe I had raised some red flags there?
Then everything went quiet.
Yet the next sensation was not darkness.
Strangely...
It was light.
Sharp, blurry and painful.
And an unbearably loud crying.
My own crying.
I tried to focus and check my surroundings but found that I couldn't control my body.
My limbs felt wrong.
As if all strength had been drained from them.
I couldn't even form coherent thoughts for several seconds because my brain felt... compressed?
Voices echoed around me.
A strange language...
Definitely not English.
Probably some Asian language. I didn't know which one though, they all sound the same to me. The only time I had heard languages like that was when I tried watching subbed anime, only to switch back to dubbed versions within a minute.
I tried moving my hands, but I was unable to do so.
Still, I could feel my body, my hands... they were tiny.
'What...?'
Thankfully, my vision gradually cleared enough for me to inspect my surroundings.
A white ceiling with warm lighting.
And a massive face hovering above me.
It was a woman.
I could not make out her face clearly, but tears filled her eyes, yet she was smiling.
She whispered something as she hugged me.
The embrace was warm.
I didn't understand the words.
But I understood the emotion behind them.
Love.
And maybe relief.
I tried to speak.
To reply.
But all that came out was a weak newborn cry.
And somewhere deep inside, a realization formed.
'I'm not dead... No, I mean, I technically am...'
This was a very, very familiar concept.
I'd gotten isekai'd.
Although there was no truck involved.
I was getting a new chance at life.
And that was all I could think before falling asleep.
It took months for coherent awareness to settle in.
I remembered that sensation.
In my previous life, it had happened somewhere around when I was three.
One day, you suddenly become conscious, and everything before that feels like background story you don't remember.
Maybe it was because my newborn brain had finally grown enough to contain all that information. My memory gradually became clearer.
My old life.
My old name... which was James Carter Jr.
My parents... whom I miss very much, and am worried about dearly, considering that I was their only child, they must be very lonely right now.
The shooting incident... but without knowing who killed me, there was only frustration.
My death... very scary, totally not a recommended experience.
I did not have any cheat abilities on me, except my memories perhaps.
But it was enough to make me realize that this new life wasn't exactly a bad one.
Scratch that.
It was awesome.
No responsibilities.
No assignments.
No work.
And judging by how aesthetic everything around me looked, my family had to be rich.
Soon, I learned my new name.
Hayato Fujiwara.
I learned it through repetition.
From the way my mother gently said it.
From the way my father spoke it with quiet pride.
I was Japanese now.
Because Hayato sounded like the name of an anime protagonist, and my mother called me Hayato-chan.
Now, unless my parents were some next-level weebs, that wasn't happening outside Japan.
I learned Japanese the way a baby would.
Just much faster.
Because mentally, I wasn't a baby.
Everything was going smoothly.
I was fully prepared to live a vain life of luxury.
But by the time I turned two, I realized something was very wrong.
The television showed things that shouldn't exist.
And no, not in movies or cartoons.
The news.
There were people flying.
People shooting fire from their hands.
People stretching their limbs unnaturally.
Explosions happening in city streets that were followed not by panic, but interviews.
There were costumed individuals straight out of cosplay called heroes.
And criminals called villains.
And commentators analyzing something called "quirk compatibility."
The word repeated constantly.
Quirk.
Quirk.
Quirk.
My father had one.
I saw it once by accident.
A subtle distortion in the air around his hand.
Like space itself bending inward.
Objects shifted position without crossing the space between.
Some kind of spatial manipulation, probably.
My mother's quirk was different.
Probably some kind of healing ability.
She would sometimes use it on me while I was sleeping.
I found that out by pretending to be asleep one day.
And God, that felt comfortable.
Whatever her quirk was, it made my body feel completely refreshed.
Neither of them showed off their quirks.
But they didn't hide them either.
Because in this world, having a quirk wasn't strange.
Not having one was.
I realized it slowly.
Then one day a familiar title flashed across the television.
"U.A. High School Entrance Ceremony."
That was when I finally accepted the conclusion I had arrived to.
This wasn't just a new world with superpowers.
It was structured exactly like something I had once watched at three in the morning on my laptop.
My Hero Academia.
The realization didn't bring excitement.
It brought unease.
I was inside a fictional universe.
Or perhaps...
It had never been fictional at all.
Whatever the case, I knew one thing for sure.
This world was messed up... I was not the biggest fan of the anime, and had at most skimmed over the work.
And it was not exactly the best place to live when villains capable of leveling city blocks existed.
By age three, people thought I was disturbingly observant.
I wasn't, actually.
Everyone else just assumed I was.
Acting like a child was surprisingly difficult.
In hindsight, I discovered the best way to imitate a child was to simply act on random whims with absolutely no filter.
Still, my father noticed my intelligence.
"You're a little genius," he would say with a small smile while patting my head.
My mother would laugh and claim I got it from both of them.
They were wealthy.
Very wealthy.
They even had that rich-person laugh. Ha-Ha-Ha-Ha... I should practice it too.
My father ran multiple international corporations focused on logistics and infrastructure technologies, personally overseeing operations despite having enough executives to retire twice over.
My mother led one of the largest private hospital networks in Japan and Southeast Asia.
She still worked long hours.
She still wore her doctor's coat herself.
They loved me deeply.
That part felt real.
Too real.
And that was the problem.
Because I remembered loving someone else too.
Another mother.
Another father.
Another life.
Now, I wasn't some emo kid.
I wasn't going to claim I only loved one set of parents and not the other.
No.
Both sets had raised me.
One had given me my first life.
The other had given me my second.
Theoretically, I should only love the parents of this life.
But since I remembered my previous one...
Loving both wasn't cheating, right?
As I reached the grand milestone of four years old, I understood one thing clearly.
I was expected to awaken a quirk soon.
Most children did between the ages of four and six.
Society would categorize me based on it.
Though honestly, with how rich my family was, I could probably pull off the Batman route even if I ended up quirkless.
I was fairly certain my parents wouldn't care.
They had little interest in heroics.
If anything, they expected me to inherit the family businesses and live a comfortable life.
But the same couldn't be said for me.
I was very much looking forward to my quirk.
No matter how common it was.
I wanted a superpower of my own.
What it would be...
Only time would tell.