Rain splashed onto the cracked pavement of a narrow alleyway in Musutafu. Thunder growled in the distance, echoing through the quiet city like the stomach of a starving beast. A girl lay there—face scraped, black hair soaked, school uniform stained with dirt. Her eyes fluttered open slowly, struggling against the weight of unconsciousness.
She didn't know where she was.
No, more importantly—she didn't know who she was.
Her heart pounded violently as she pushed herself to sit up. Every muscle felt unfamiliar, every breath too shallow. When she looked at her hands, they weren't hers. The fingers were too slender, the skin too smooth. Her chest rose unnaturally beneath a soaked blazer. Panic crept in like a cold tide.
"This... isn't my body."
Memories swirled inside her mind like fog. Not just of anime, but fragmented glimpses of another life—a room with posters of sci-fi movies, the faint sound of typing on a mechanical keyboard, the aroma of instant noodles. A voice calling out a name she couldn't quite grasp. Loneliness. Routine. Laughter. Grief. Normal human moments.
Among the chaotic haze, one memory stood out—vivid, recent, and strangely sharp. The last show they had watched before everything went blank: My Hero Academia. That memory clung to them more tightly than the rest. Perhaps it was the newest, the freshest imprint left before the fall.
Heroes. Quirks. The rise of villains. A girl with long black hair who could create anything with her body—Momo Yaoyorozu.
She remembered liking that character. There had been something admirable about her—a mixture of elegance and intelligence, of potential not yet fully realized. A character they had quietly rooted for, even as the spotlight veered toward others. That liking had burned brighter in their last days, when watching fiction had become an escape.
That name pulsed in the back of their mind.
She stumbled to her feet, the storm masking her ragged breaths. Her legs carried her with an odd precision, as if muscle memory had taken the wheel. As she leaned against a graffiti-covered wall, a broken shard of glass caught her eye.
A reflection stared back.
At first, she didn't register it. The wet hair clinging to her face. The frightened eyes. Then the subtle grace of the jawline, the soft curve of her lips—features she had seen before. Over and over. In manga panels. In anime stills. In fan art.
It was striking.
She looked eerily like Momo Yaoyorozu.
No—it wasn't cosplay. It wasn't resemblance.
The reflection wasn't like her.
It was her.
Her brain screamed in contradiction. She remembered watching the anime, not being in it. But that character's face was now hers.
Thunder cracked louder this time. Somewhere in the distance, a TV blared from a nearby window—a news report about UA High School's upcoming entrance exam.
"This year, UA will hold its annual entrance exam in three days—"
And then it clicked.
This wasn't just a coincidence.
She was in that world. And if this was the beginning…
Then she wasn't just playing the part of Momo Yaoyorozu.
She was Momo Yaoyorozu.
The storm passed above, but for her, it had only just begun.