Chapter Text
You're quiet until they leave. Really, really quiet.
Because... what?
I mean, that really did settle things, for you. What Kota did—you know, the magic water shit. His Quirk. You still can't think of that word without imaginary quotations, really.
You think you have finally realised you're in a dream. A pretty shitty one at that, considering you didn't even like this anime all that much. Couldn't you have dreamt about something you actually cared about, like being Gojo's wife, in your final hours? Why the hell did your dying brain pick this, of all things?
You swipe your phone open, not really sure what to do with yourself. You open the search app with mild curiosity.
Your dreams had never had such detail, specifically when it came to reading whatever's on your phone, but perhaps coma dreams (or dying dreams, depending on what was happening with your real-life body right now) are deluxe edition. A premium DLC.
Your fingers hover over the unfamiliar keyboard. Your phone is in Japanese, too. Did no one question the fact you were speaking English, earlier?
Your lips pull into a frown.
Hold that thought.
Were you speaking English?
"Testing, testing, is this English?" you pronounce aloud, as a test, but it sounds weird. Of course, you know what you said, but it just... sounds weird?
You push yourself off the bed, march to the door, and slide it open. The hallway is dim, because at some point all the lights had become less bright automatically. More considerate than what you're used to back home, you suppose.
You spot a nurse walking past, eyes glued to her phone screen.
You stick your head out and say, “Yo."
She jumps slightly and her eyes lift slowly onto you.
"Hello," she replies hesitantly. She pauses awkwardly, as if unsure whether to continue the conversation with the way you're staring like you're trying to pick her apart with your eyes. "... Can I help you?"
You just lean against the door, eyes drifting to take in every bit of detail around the hospital that your brain has so kindly provided you.
"What language are we speaking?" you ask her, offhandedly.
“… Japanese,” she answers slowly, like she’s afraid you might bite her. “Are you feeling confused?”
You stare at her.
She stares at you.
You give a small, awkward nod, slide the door shut, and stare at the ceiling for a little.
How fun. Auto-translate. You've had dreams like that before, where you could speak languages you had never learned in your waking hours, but it's never been so intricate. This DLC was going all-out. Damn. maybe you were dying out there and this was your parting gift.
You flop back onto the bed with the phone balanced on your stomach, the blue light washing over your face like the world’s saddest tanning bed.
The keyboard taunts you. It’s Japanese, obviously, but you can't search anything without knowing how to type. Eventually, when you poke around long enough on the keyboard, you find a Roman alphabet tucked away. Yippie.
Navigating to Google, you type “My Hero Academia" and hit search.
It yields no results.
Not a single wiki. Not a single merch ad. Not even a bootleg streaming site.
You try again, this time typing “U.A school".
Instantly, articles written in English flood your screen.
Actual, serious news outlets. Photos. Interviews. Architectural sketches. All headlined as if it's a real thing.
“U.A.’s New 3 Billion Yen Expansion Project to Come Underway in 20XX!”
You squint.
You try “All Might.”
The phone practically explodes with results.
“Japan’s Number 1 Hero: How Does He Compare to America’s Stars and Stripes?”
“Japan's Symbol of Peace Announces National Tour for Youth Safety Campaign.”
“All Might Sighted in America Alongside Former Sidekick David Shield."
You scroll faster and faster, your pulse thudding along unhelpfully.
Photos of him everywhere. That stupid smile. That pose. People talking about him like he’s the prime minister, Pope, and Taylor Swift rolled into one.
You swipe again.
There are even more articles in Japanese. But fuck, man, you can't read that. You're going cross-eyed just looking at it.
You drop the phone onto your face, groaning. You'd rather have replayed every embarrassing moment in your life than have to dream about this. Nova can go to Hell for even making you think about the show before you were shot, that's probably why your brain picked it.
Well, anyhoo, it's not like anything matters.
So you rip your IV free again (and wince a little, because ouch that still hurts), and the monitor flatlines in protest.
You tap your feet idly on the ground for a few moments, waiting to see if you'd be jumped by doctors again. No one comes.
That's good enough.
You slip out of bed, grab your hospital cardigan, and pad for the door, slipping out once more. A janitor's cart squeaks somewhere down the corridor.
The elevator might give up on you halfway, if your dream's budget suddenly drops, so you opt for the stairwell instead.
By the fourth flight, your breath is thin. By the eleventh, you're praying for the world to just take you already. But when you reach the final flight of stairs, you push the steel door open all the same.
The rooftop is really, really cold. Feels like winter. The city spreads out around you—Tokyo, definitely Tokyo—but different. Cleaner. Denser. Neon lights and hero billboards are sprawled across distant buildings.
A massive sign offers you a washing machine with eyes and hands, and a slogan you can't read. Freaky.
You cross over to the railing and grip it tightly, staring down. Cars slide past, tiny and weightless. Dream or not, it's pretty scary.
The railing digs into your stomach. The city barely looks real.
It doesn’t feel real either, though you suppose you have already established that it isn't.
Your fingers curl tighter around the metal.
"Definitely a dream," you murmur aloud to yourself.
The wind tugs at your hair like it agrees. Your fingers tremble like they don't.
Your heart keeps sprinting anyway. You want proof. Something final. Something that forces the answer.
So you guess it's time to be a fucking idiot.
You lift one leg over the railing. It scrapes loudly, the hospital gown fluttering stupidly around your knees.
You look down. The distance glitches like your mind refuses to give it depth. Just blurred lights.
"Shit, shit, shit," you whisper, voice hoarse, "am I really doing this?"
If it’s real, you’ll die. But if it’s fake, you’ll wake up.
That logic feels solid enough for a dream.
You suck in a breath that burns all the way through your ribs.
Footsteps skid behind you, sharp and sudden.
“Miss Izumi—!?”
A hand clamps around your arm before you can shift your weight forward. Another wraps around your waist, yanking you back from the railing so fast your feet stumble. The metal clangs behind you as you trip over it, backwards.
You slam into a warm chest in a flurry of panicked movement.
“N-No— no, no— please don’t—!” The nurse’s voice cracks. She’s shaking. "Miss Izumi, what are you doing!? You can’t— you can’t—”
Her arms lock around you like she thinks you’ll bolt straight over.
She’s pale. Breathless. Eyes blown wide with fear. Not annoyance, not confusion, just pure fear.
And it hits you, cold and heavy, as sirens start screaming down the hall and more nurses and security rush through the door you left open on the rooftop entrance.
She’s not acting.
She’s not part of a bit.
She’s not treating this like scripted dream brainrot.
"... This is real, isn't it?"
The shattered light in her eyes is answer enough.
Someone presses a blanket around your shoulders. Someone else keeps repeating the name Miss Izumi like the fake identity might shatter if they stop saying it long enough.
You can’t make your mouth work.
You feel sick.
A doctor appears in your peripheral vision. Tall, calm and clinical in the way someone only gets after years of dealing with bullshit such as you.
"Miss Izumi,” he says quietly, like he’s trying not to scare you. “We’re going to take you down to the psychiatric ward. You’re safe now.”
The sentence makes your spine lock.
“What!? No—” you choke out, voice raw. “I wasn’t—I didn’t— I thought—”
Every pair of eyes on you is drawn tight with concern. Your own eyes flit and dart between all of them frantically.
And suddenly you’re aware of how the railing felt under your hands. How close you were. How real it all was.
“I wasn’t trying to do anything,” you manage, but your voice is thin and reedy. “I thought it was a dream. I thought—”
The doctor exchanges a look with the nurse. You know that look. You know exactly how this is going to be interpreted. Fuck, they all think you're crazy again!
“You don’t understand,” you snap past his conspiratorial glance, except it comes out too brittle, too desperate, "I thought none of you were real!"
That… does not help your case.
The doctor softens his voice further. "Hallucinations and derealisation can follow trauma and long-term comas. We’re not upset. We’re here to help you.”
“No—no, just listen—”
Your lungs squeeze tight. You can feel the panic rising as the elevator dings loudly from inside and someone takes your elbow gently like you might break.
“Please,” you try again, quieter. “I didn’t want to die. I didn’t think I could.”
The doctor nods in that condescending way professionals do when they’re not agreeing with you, just acknowledging that you said something.
“Of course,” he says. “We’ll talk more once you’re in a safe space.”
You want to scream at the word safe, but your voice has completely deserted you.
They lead you into the elevator.
And as the doors close, you catch a glimpse of the nurse who'd pulled you back from the rails. Her hands are trembling far from imperceptibly at her sides, chest rising and falling too quickly, eyes rimmed red. Guilt squeezes your heart.
She isn’t fake.
None of this is fake.
The elevator doors slide shut.
And you stand there, hollowed out, realising for the first time with horrible clarity that you weren’t hovering above the end of a dream.
You were one step away from dying in the middle of a world you’ve only ever known as fiction.
They promptly check you into an observation room, despite your many, many protests.
It’s small with no sharp edges and padded walls. Just a bed bolted to the floor and a chair that’s too soft to throw. They must think you're the fucking Joker.
You sit on the edge of the mattress, hands tucked between your knees to stop them from shaking.
A nurse sits across from you with a clipboard. She’s different from the one who caught you from falling. Calmer and practiced, like she knows things you don't. She probably does, in all fairness.
“Miss Izumi,” she starts, in that same voice teachers use when they're disappointed in you but don't want to make you cry, “do you understand why you’re here?”
You narrow your eyes at her. “Because everyone thinks I tried to kill myself.”
Well, you did. Just not in the conventional sense that everybody assumes.
She nods. “You were in an unsafe situation. That’s enough for us to step in.”
You work at your jaw. “I didn’t want to die. Not for real."
“Then tell me what you did want.”
You hesitate.
This is the part where the truth sounds insane. Waiter, waiter, more padding in the walls, please!
“I… thought I was dreaming. So I was trying to wake myself up."
She writes something down immediately. You almost laugh at the absurdity of it.
“I need you to understand,” you say, trying to outrun her pen. “I was shot, in England. I woke up here. Everyone keeps calling me by a name that isn't mine. I don’t know this place, I don’t know these people, and I definitely don't know this language. Nothing makes sense.”
She raises a slow eyebrow with professional neutrality. “And what place do you believe you should be in?”
“My city, my world, my actual life!” It bursts out of you too loud, and you grimace at how unhinged you sound.
She writes more, barely sparing you a glance. That kind of pisses you off.
You grit your teeth. “Look, I know how this sounds. But I swear, I’m not suicidal. And I’m not hallucinating. I’m just… really, really confused. You have to let me get out of here."
She sets the clipboard down slowly and looks pointedly at you, which tells you that she is definitely not going to do that.
“Miss Izumi—”
“That’s not my name,” you snap, then immediately regret snapping.
She keeps her voice level. “People who wake from long comas sometimes feel displaced. Memories can feel… wrong. Missing. Time can feel unreal. That doesn’t make your feelings any less valid.”
“But you don’t believe me.”
“I believe you’re scared.”
God, you want to tear your hair out.
"Yeah, no shit," you grind out. "Anyone would be scared if they were me!"
The woman doesn't reply. She just stares at you, eye twitching slightly, and lips twisting like she's trying to figure something out.
"Miss Izumi," she starts, brows furrowing together like something is perturbing her, "What is your Quirk?"
You almost roll your eyes, but force yourself to not make yourself look even crazier by insisting there is no such thing.
"I dunno, Quirkless?" you try, shrugging fast. Is that what they call it? It is, right? "Don't have one. Why?"
Again, she doesn't answer you, but stands up and crosses the room. She pulls a file out from a drawer and flicks through it with quick precision. She looks down at it for a few long moments, looks back up at you, then back down again.
"Hello? Can you tell me what the problem is?" you ask, waving at her obnoxiously. She sets the file down after long.
The woman exhales slowly through her nose. Like she's recalibrating, you can practically see the gears turning in her head.
“It isn’t matching,” she murmurs, almost to herself.
"What is the problem?" you ask again, albeit gruffly.
The therapist taps the file. “My Quirk should be working on you.”
That pulls a small, incredulous laugh out of you. “And what is your Quirk?”
She ignores your question and keeps flipping through the papers. “You are responding verbally, but not emotionally. You’re… resisting. Not consciously."
You stare. “… Okay?”
What is she even talking about?
Her eyes narrow, studying you too intently. “This only happens with patients who have mental-type Quirks. Psychic dampening, emotional shielding, cognitive disruptors. Something in that category.”
You rub your face, exhasperated. “I told you. I’m Quirkless.”
“No,” she says calmly, turning the file so you can only see the header. “Your chart says you have a water-based Quirk that manifested at age five."
You shake your head mutely in disbelief, but she’s still talking. Of course she's still talking.
“I assumed you were a different type of emitter because my ability doesn’t fail otherwise. Not unless the patient is actively neutralising it.” She tilts her head, studying you again. “But there is nothing in your file to suggest that you should be able to neutralise anything. Or that you're resistant in any way."
You stare hard. “Maybe your Quirk’s broken, lady.”
Her expression doesn’t budge. “My Quirk isn’t broken.”
There is a beat of tense silence, where your eyes practically battle. She wins when you tear your gaze away first.
You look down at your hands. “Well, I don’t know what to tell you. I don’t have anything like that.”
She closes the file with a soft snap. “Then there is a discrepancy. And discrepancies concern me.”
A chill runs up your spine.
She sits across from you again, calmer, but more alert now.
“Miss Izumi,” she says, voice gentler but somehow sharper, “if you are not blocking my Quirk, then something is deeply unsettling your baseline cognition. Enough that my ability cannot reach you. That is not normal.”
Your pulse stutters.
She continues, “This, combined with your behaviour earlier today… I cannot in good conscience discharge you without supervision.”
Of course. Of course this is happening.
You look at the floor, jaw clenched. She watches you like she can see straight through you, even though she just told you she can’t.
“Someone will be with you at all hours,” she adds. “Until we understand what’s happening.”
You nod once, stiff and mechanical, because what else is there to do?
"Can't you..." your words choke out from you, frustrated, "don't you have someone that has a lie detector power or something? You'll see I'm telling the truth."
She barely throws you a glance, before making to stand.
"We do," she says simply. Then sets the file down and brushes herself off. "But all hallucinating patients have the similar belief that they are telling the truth. It doesn't make it reality, I'm afraid."
When you don't reply, she works at her jaw and scoops up her things in preparation to leave.
"You'll remain here until I deem you fit for discharge." When she catches you staring at your feet in heavy silence, she throws a match onto the oil, "Expect your parents to swing by."
The door closes gently behind her, but not after a nurse gently bumbles past like they're swapping shifts.
"Hi, Miss Izumi," she smiles, eyes crinkling kindly as though you'll try to kill yourself again if she's not nice enough to you. "My name is Hanao. I'm going to be with you for some time, okay? I'm not actually a nurse, but I'm employed by the hospital. My Quirk will allow me to put you to sleep if anything worrying happens."
You don't think you can even reply to her. Your brain is toast.
You're actually alive.
My Hero Academia. You're in My Hero Academia, like some kind of isekai.
It's not even just the fact that you're stuck in a piece of fiction that's sending you off the rails. See, if you got transported into, say... Grey's Anatomy, you'd be less inclined to scream.
Point number one being that there's no one in that show that could kill you with supernatural powers in your everyday life. They might have even been willing to pick your brain apart to find out what happened, and you'd trust them if they told you that you'd suffered brain trauma and merely imagined them being fictional characters.
But this? No. No, no, no, no. You know you're not crazy.
Even the MCU franchise would have been easier to digest. Sure, rich man builds a suit to help him fight, we've already got people like Elon Musk trying to be his own main character.
Lab experiments? Sure, Captain America and Wanda, I do believe you when you say that the U.S. and Russia are willing to do that.
Quirks? Anime? Now, you must be having a laugh.
But hey, what if you are now the main character of a show in someone else's world? An isekai anime, where My Hero Academia isn't a real show? Maybe you are already getting hate comments in another plane of existence for not immediately adapting and thanking the Goddess (where is she? where is your cheat code?).
Actually, you're getting more sick just thinking about that.
This is not good.
This is bad, so bad! You're screwed! Fuck your life (your second life? Did it all count as one?).
At least it wasnt Attack On Titan. Maybe you'd have woken up outside the walls and been spawn-killed.
If it had been Haikyuu, your worst fear would have been a concussion from a volleyball. You're sure you're also statistically more likely to die here, right now, than you would have been crossing the street blindfolded in your previous life. How does someone come to terms with that?
Do you get plot armour? Or are you the girl that says "Hey everybody, look! A villain!" and then gets turned into soup? Please say the former.
Maybe you could start up a quaint little shop! That would be cute, right? Far away from Tokyo! Actually, no, you've seen those scenarios of 'Ground Zero/Deku/Pro-Hero Adjacent crashes through the window of your flower shop'. Maybe that isn't such a good idea.
God, forget a parting gift, this is your damn penance. You don't even know how to begin manoeuvring this place! What if—
"Stop."
Hanao's voice sounds, curt and clipped. The previous pushover-like kindness in it is nowhere to be seen, and that makes you notice that you're spiralling again. Your breaths are far too fast and shallow for anyone watching to not be concerned.
She crouches so her face is level with yours. "Look at me."
You try, but your vision is, admittedly, doing backflips. Your breath stutters again, and her expression tightens in worry.
“Okay, sweetheart, that’s enough.” She shifts closer, one hand bracing your shoulder, grounding. “You’re safe. Nobody is going to hurt you down here. You just need to breathe.”
You're going to cry. Shit, you're really going to cry.
Your face crumbles before you can stop it.
"I— I want to go home!" The cry rips out of you, raw and loud and embarrassingly childish.
Her expression softens, and so does the firm hand she has on your shoulder. She shifts, then, and wraps her arms around you. You sob loudly into the front of her shirt.
"Oh, dear, you're just a child. Of course this is too much for you..." she murmurs, petting your hair. "You have been so brave."
"I want to go back! I want to go home!" you repeat, fisting her sleeves in a grip so tight your knuckles are pale.
You feel her sigh.
"You can't, sweetheart. Not yet," she says.
Maybe not ever, you think.
You fold forward with a choked sob, and she braces you with an arm around your back, holding you upright as your whole chest caves inward around your panic.
You stay like this for a while, long enough that you've stopped counting the seconds. What is a reasonable amount of time to stay in a stranger's arms? You would've cared in your previous world, but all sense of shame is thrown out of the window when most of this new world doesn't make sense to you anyway.
You're interrupted by muffled noise in the halls. Shouts? Panic? Something akin to that, and it almost makes you tense up in fear all over again before the door bursts open and the panickers flood in.
Mrs. Izumi rushes in first, her husband behind her. The woman's hair is mussed like she’d run the whole way. Her husband's shirt is buttoned wrong, off by one.
They’re both shaking.
Mrs. Izumi reaches your bedside so fast she nearly stumbles. Her hands hover over you, unsure where to land, like touching you wrong might shatter you.
"I'm so sorry, baby, we missed the calls, we—" She's choking on her words, fighting back her tears. Her husband behind her is biting his lip, eyes swimming and similarly trying hard not to burst. "I'm so sorry, we're here now, we're here—"
Hanao takes a step back, watching from a distance but not leaving the room. She looks at the wall as if that would give you any semblance of privacy beyond the sound of sniffling in the room.
Mr. Izumi steps forward cautiously, taking his wife's hand.
"We're here now. We came as soon as we could," he says, voice cracking as he speaks. "And we're not going to leave again. We'll stay here for as long as you need."
You blink, grimacing at the sour taste that rolls through your mouth.
"You... don't have to worry about me," you whisper, gaze unsteady and unsure because you truly don't know if that's the right thing to say. "It was... just a misunderstanding."
Their breaths shudder. You watch what you suppose is your biological father's hand tighten around, again, what you suppose is, your biological mother's. You still don't think of them in that way, but what else can you call them? Your benefactors in this new world?
The silence stretches. Long enough that the ticking of the clock in the room feels deafening.
Your father kneels beside your bed, like he's praying, and takes your hand.
"We want you to talk to us." His words are solid, punctuated. "However you're feeling, whatever you're thinking, we want to help. But you can't withdraw from us, not anymore. You have to let us in, ripple."
Ripple... ? What kind of stupid pet name is that?
You brush off your cringing shudder, and shake your fingers free from his clammy palm.
"I'm telling you, I'm fine." They look at you like they don't believe you. Honestly, you wouldn't believe yourself, either. "But I really don't want to be here."
Your parents look over at Hanao like she'll be able to help. As expected, Hanao just shakes her head.
"She's down in the books for at least another week, until we can reassess her psyche," she explains. Her tone is sympathetic, head tilted in that kind way. "With her being so young, she is highly vulnerable, and..."
She lets the sentence drop. Your parents seem to understand.
Your mother reaches for your hand but stops short, like remembering that her touch overwhelms you, what with your current 'amnesia'.
“We love you,” she whispers instead. “Whatever this is… we’ll face it with you.”
Their fear hangs heavy in the air.
The sun begins to creep up behind the blinds, faint and pale. Their faces are loving, so loving yet so terrified, that you cant tear your eyes from them.
But all of a sudden, something cold drops through your stomach. A realisation so utterly crushing.
Kota.
Kota Izumi.
Isn't he supposed to be... an orphan?
You know this as fact. Remember all the nights Nova had spent blabbing on to you about her precious orphan children, their parents brutalised before they'd even learned their times tables.
These two people— these warm hands and shaking voices—
These two are meant to die.
It hits like a punch.
Your breath stutters. Not a panic attack this time, something worse. But something quieter.
You stare through them like you’re seeing ghosts.
Your mother notices. Her brows pinch.
“Sweetheart? Are you okay? You...”
She gently reaches for your shoulder.
You jerk back violently out of instinct. A recoil driven by the sheer terror of touching someone whose death flags are flashing red.
The room freezes.
Hanao straightens, alert once more.
Your mother’s hand falls away slowly. “Honey… ?"
You force yourself to blink, to breathe, to not look like you’ve just been shown their gravestones.
But the horror won’t leave your face.
Of course it won’t.
You’re staring at two people fated for deaths you're not certain you can do anything about.
Hanao steps in with a calm, practiced gentleness that doesn’t fully hide her worry.
"I think she needs space. And rest.”
Your parents don’t argue. They just look at you, devastation crawling across their faces, trying to understand why you won’t speak to them. Why you seem so afraid of them. Why their daughter is no longer their daughter.
But they don’t know. And they can't know.
And suddenly, being in this world isn’t just terrifying.
It’s cruel.