Sunday mornings at the children's home have a particular texture to them.
Slower. Looser. The kind of morning where the smaller kids end up horizontal in front of cartoons and the older one's drift toward the kitchen in a loose, unhurried orbit around whatever is being made for breakfast. Nobody has anywhere to be. The week hasn't started yet. Sunday mornings are, by unspoken agreement, the least eventful mornings we have.
Aki and I are in the kitchen when Daisuke finds us.
He's fifteen, third year of junior high, in the middle of high school entrance exam season — he'd applied to several schools and had been going through the morning letter stack every day for weeks now, the particular restlessness of someone waiting on results that keep not arriving. Most of the stack is routine. Administrative things, catalogues nobody ordered, the occasional parcel for a caretaker.
And then, apparently, not routine at all.
He comes through the kitchen doorway at a speed that is not his usual Sunday speed. Aki is mid-sentence about something — I have already forgotten what, which tells you something about the quality of my attention even before he arrived — and she stops when she sees his face.
Daisuke holds up the envelope.
UA High School. Upper left corner. Printed with the quiet institutional confidence of something that doesn't need to announce itself.
Aki puts down her chopsticks.
---
I don't know exactly how word gets from the kitchen to the rest of the house that fast. I never do. It is one of the enduring mysteries of living somewhere with this many people — information moves through the walls, apparently, faster than any individual person could carry it. By the time the three of us reach the common room it is already full.
The little ones have arranged themselves on the floor with their instinctive gravity toward occasion. The older kids fill in behind them. Two caretakers are in the doorway wearing carefully neutral expressions that are not fooling anyone. Peanut — seven now, still operating on the assumption that Aki's lap is a service provided specifically for her — is already positioned on the couch like she booked a seat.
Tanaka-sensei is near the back. Arms folded. The way he stands when he is paying close attention and has decided that close attention is sufficient contribution for now.
Aki sits down on the couch. I sit next to her. Our shoulders are touching. Neither of us moves away.
She looks at the envelope for a moment — just a moment, the private kind, the one she allows herself before a room full of people stops being something you can ignore. Her tail is still. Her ears are forward.
Then she opens it.
The letter is everything it needs to be. Official UA High School letterhead, precise institutional language, every word chosen with the care of something that understands the weight it carries. Accepted into the Hero Course. Class 1-A. Required documentation. The full package.
The common room erupts.
Not the polite kind of celebration. The real kind — immediate, uncontrolled, slightly too loud, the kind that happens when something has been genuinely earned and everyone in the room knows it. Someone is cheering. One of the younger kids starts sprinting in a circle for reasons that are unclear but feel emotionally correct. Peanut makes a sound that is not quite a word and entirely a feeling. One of the caretakers has her hand over her mouth. Another has abandoned composure entirely and is hugging the first one. Daisuke, from his position near the wall, lets out a long breath and says something under his breath that is almost certainly not appropriate for the younger kids and is absolutely correct.
Aki is sitting in the middle of all of it with the expression of someone who has worked toward something for years and is only now, at this exact moment, letting themselves believe it happened. Wide-eyed. Slightly overwhelmed. Smiling in the way she doesn't usually let herself smile in front of a room — unguarded, unheld, nothing kept back.
I am not watching the room. I am watching her.
From the back, Tanaka-sensei steps forward. Just enough. He waits for Aki's eyes to find him through the noise, and when they do he holds her gaze for a moment with the expression of a man who has believed in something for a long time and has just watched it be proven right.
"Well done," he says.
Two words. Tanaka-sensei has always understood that weight doesn't require volume.
Then someone spots the disc tucked between the documents.
Aki holds it up and it activates — Principal Nezu, projected in pale blue light above the common room table. Small. Impeccably dressed, dark red tie sitting perfectly against his white fur, paws folded with the composed energy of someone who has prepared remarks and is genuinely looking forward to delivering them. The room settles into quiet with the instinctive respect of people who understand when something is worth listening to.
He smiles. Bright, measured, the smile of someone who finds certain things sincerely delightful and sees no reason to pretend otherwise.
"On behalf of UA High School," he begins, with the cadence of someone who knows how to open a room, "I am very pleased to inform you that you have been accepted into the Hero Course."
A pause. The kind he put there deliberately.
"Now. Your entrance examination results." The professionalism holds, but something underneath it shifts — the specific quality of a man who has encountered data that genuinely interests him and cannot fully suppress the fact. "A perfect score on the written examination. One hundred percent. I want you to understand that this is not a common occurrence. Our written examination is designed with the express intention of being difficult. You answered every question correctly. That is worth saying plainly."
He lets it land.
"Your practical results — ninety villain-defeat points, fifteen rescue points — place you among the highest-scoring examinees in this institution's history. Not this year." The briefest pause. "This institution's history."
He straightens slightly. Same composed warmth.
"UA High has produced generations of remarkable heroes. It is always a distinct pleasure — a genuine one — when an incoming student arrives having already demonstrated that the next generation intends to raise the bar rather than simply meet it."
A final pause. Then, simply —
"Welcome to your Hero Academia."
The hologram clicks off.
The common room loses itself all over again.
---
"The scores," one of the older kids says when the noise settles enough to hear anything. Already on their phone. "Pull up the website. Put it on the TV."
Aki pulls up the UA results portal and throws it to the common room screen. The numbers load in front of everyone.
Her name is at the very top.
Written exam: 100%.
Practical: 90 villain-defeat points. 15 rescue points.
Second place is forty-two points behind her.
The room goes quiet for exactly the length of time it takes people to understand what they are looking at.
Then it doesn't.
The third eruption is louder than the first, which should not have been physically possible and yet. Someone knocks a cushion off the sofa. Daisuke is telling someone the story of finding the letter as if he personally had something to do with the scores, which, to be fair, he did in the loosest possible sense. The younger kids have mostly stopped processing specific information and are simply participating in the noise on general principle, which is the correct approach.
At some point in all of it Aki turns to me. I don't know exactly when. I just become aware that she is looking at me rather than at the room, and that the expression on her face is the one she doesn't wear for everyone. Quieter. More direct. The one that means something is being said specifically to me.
She doesn't say anything out loud.
She doesn't have to.
I open my arms. She doesn't hesitate.
She settles against my side the way she always has — the way that stopped requiring thought somewhere around the fourth or fifth year of us doing it, the way that just became part of how we exist in the same space. Her weight is steady and real and familiar in the specific way that only comes from a long time.
I hold on.
The room stays loud around us. Someone's still arguing about the scores. Peanut has made herself comfortable and has no plans to move. None of it requires anything from me right now, which is good, because right now I'm only paying attention to one thing.
I'm aware of it the way you're aware of something you've been carefully not looking at directly — not a new thought, not a surprise. Just the same quiet fact it's always been, sitting there, not asking anything of me.
I rest my chin on top of her head. She lets me. She only lets me when she's too tired to remember to decide about it.
So I stay still. I don't pull back, don't move, don't do anything with the thing I'm not looking at directly. I just hold on, and watch her scores sit on the common room screen, and let the moment be exactly what it is and nothing more.
Around us the room is still going. Peanut has migrated to Aki's knee. Tanaka-sensei has returned to his position near the wall, watching all of it with the quiet satisfaction of a man who has been patient about something for a long time and has now been vindicated.
Class 1-A. The top of the top.
I think about nine years old and a yard and a couch and Mirko on the television. I think about years of mornings before the house was awake, about the jutsu I turned over and over until I found its other side — weight going both ways, heavier and lighter, Dragon Ball gravity chamber sessions and Rock Lee ankle weights made real, every rep of every brutal morning we never skipped. I think about the moment she stood up in this same room, Peanut hanging off her tail, and said I want to be a hero like it was the simplest true thing she had ever said out loud.
I was right then, about what that look on her face meant. I knew it the same way I know a lot of things about her — quietly, without announcement, before I've fully decided what to do with the knowing.
That result was never in doubt.
---
Three days after the letter comes, Peanut asks Aki to tell them about the test.
And when Peanut asks for something, it basically happens. That's just how it works.
So the common room fills up the way it always does for story time. The little kids sit on the floor. The older ones pretend they're just passing through, but they stop in the doorway and stay there. Someone turns off the big light and leaves just the lamp in the corner on, because one of the seven-year-olds says it's better that way. And honestly? They're right.
Aki sits on the couch with Peanut in her lap. She has that look on her face — the one that means she's decided to really tell it.
I've seen Aki tell stories before. Usually she keeps things short, factual, like she's reporting rather than remembering. This isn't that.
"Okay," she says. "You want to know what it was like?"
Everyone says yes.
She leans forward a little. The lamp catches her eyes. I watch her decide how to start.
"So. The gate opens."
And then she's in it — not just telling it, but back there, the way her hands move through the air showing trajectories I can almost see. Present Mic's voice, she says, telling them real fights don't wait. The gate just opening, no countdown, and the fake city spreading out in front of them.
She stops talking about what she did and starts showing it. The little kids lean in.
"Everyone starts running," she says. "But I stop."
Peanut's eyes get really big.
"Just for one second. I take one breath."
I notice the way she says it — not because she was scared, not because she needed to think. Because her whiskers could already feel everything. Where the robots were moving. Where the ground was shaking. Where metal was around corners.
She knew where they were before she saw them.
One of the kids asks how many robots. Aki just says "Everywhere" in a way that makes everywhere sound like exactly the right amount.
She keeps going, and I watch her find the balance — enough detail that the little ones stay hooked, enough restraint that it doesn't become bragging. She makes sounds when she describes the impacts. CLANG. CRASH. The little kids jump and giggle. Her hands move through the air, showing angles and momentum, and I recognize the movements even in pantomime. Years of mornings. Every one of them visible in how she describes not wasting motion, how every landing was already the next jump.
"Like a pinball," Daisuke says from the doorway.
Aki's face does something I've seen before — the flash of disagreement, quick and certain.
"Like a hunter," she says. "Pinballs don't choose where they go."
The word sits in the room for a second. Heavy and true. I see a couple of the older kids look at each other, some private understanding passing between them about what that means.
She talks about the small robots that tried to swarm her. How she went up a building and came back down right in the middle of them. Peanut makes a little sound like she just learned something very important. I don't know what the sound means, exactly, but whatever Peanut heard in that moment, it landed.
"Six minutes," Aki says. "Seventy-eight points."
The older kids look at each other again. I know what they're doing the math on — we all saw the final score. Ninety villain-defeat points. Which means she got twelve more after the six-minute mark.
Then Aki's voice changes.
"And then the zero-pointer came out."
She says it like she's talking about a storm. The whole room reacts — everyone sucks in a breath at the same time.
I watch her build it. The biggest thing you've ever seen, she tells them. Now make it bigger. The way it came around a building and the building moved. How the ground shook. How everyone ran away, which made sense, because it was worth zero points. You couldn't break it. Running was the smart thing.
She stops.
I know what's coming. I can see it in the way she's sitting, the way her tail has gone still. The whole room is quiet, waiting.
"But there's this girl two streets over."
And there it is.
Not running fast enough. Something wrong with her ankle. And a boy who's just frozen, stuck in place. The zero-pointer coming. Not enough time for them to get away.
I watch the little kids' faces. They've gone very quiet, the way kids do when a story gets serious in a way they understand is real.
"So I look at this thing," Aki says. "This building-sized thing that I definitely can't beat. And I think: okay. That's fine. I don't need to beat it."
She leans forward. The lamp makes her eyes bright.
"I just need to get its attention."
One of the older kids makes a sound. I glance over — they've figured out what's coming and are already bracing for it.
"So I yell at it," Aki says. "As loud as I can."
Someone on the floor says "What?" in a voice that's half-shock, half-delight.
"I yelled at it," Aki says again, and I can hear the grin in her voice before I see it on her face. "Because it has sensors. It looks for targets. And I was being a very loud target."
It worked, she tells them. The whole head turned around and looked at her.
The grin goes sharp. Not nice. The grin of someone who knew exactly what they were doing and did it anyway.
"And then I ran."
She tells them how she led it. Left, then right, then up a wall, then back down. Never staying in one place. I watch her hands trace the path through the air and I can see it — the way she would have moved, just interesting enough to follow, just fast enough that it couldn't catch her.
The ground shaking with every step it took, she says. BOOM. BOOM. BOOM. But she was counting in her head because the clock was still going.
And she led it away, and away, and those two kids got clear.
Peanut hasn't moved. Nobody has. The whole room is watching Aki's face like it's the only thing in the world.
"There's maybe thirty seconds left," Aki says. "And I think: okay, now I can leave."
She spreads her hands.
"So I go straight up. Up the wall, four floors, five floors. And I look down and the zero-pointer is right there beside me, looking at me."
A pause. Just enough.
"And Present Mic yells TIME."
She drops her hands.
"And that was the test."
Everyone breathes out at once. I realize I was holding my breath too, even though I already knew how it ended.
Peanut turns around to look at Aki's face, checking to make sure the story really ended okay. Whatever she sees makes her happy. She settles back down, satisfied.
"You saved them," one of the little girls says. Not asking. Just saying it like a fact that needs to be confirmed out loud.
I watch Aki's face. Watch the way she hears it.
"I got the robot's attention away from them," she says. "They got themselves safe. I just... changed where the robot was looking."
"That's the same thing," the girl says.
For a second Aki doesn't say anything. I see it happen — the moment she hears what she just described from the outside, the way someone else would hear it.
"Yeah," she says quietly. "I guess it is."
The room starts to shift back into motion. The little kids asking questions, the older ones arguing about villain-point math, someone asking if she was scared. Normal story-time aftermath, the part where everyone processes what they just heard.
I stay quiet.
I'm thinking about the way she told it. Not the scores, not the perfect written exam, not even the ninety villain-defeat points that put her in the record books. She told the part where she couldn't win. The part where the smart thing was to run and she didn't. The part where she chose to get hurt instead of letting someone else get hurt.
Fifteen rescue points.
I think about what those points measure. What they mean you did to earn them.
Aki's still answering questions, Peanut still settled in her lap, and I'm watching her the way I've been watching her since we were nine. The same way I watched her in the common room three days ago when the letter came. The same way I'll probably always watch her, if I'm honest about it.
She's going to be a hero.
I knew that already. Have known it for years, probably, in the quiet way you know things about someone when you've grown up beside them.
But watching her tell that story — watching her choose which part mattered enough to really tell — I understand it differently now.
She's not going to be a hero because she's fast, or strong, or scored higher than anyone in UA's history.
She's going to be a hero because when she had six minutes and seventy-eight points and the smart move was to run, she looked at two people who needed help and decided the points didn't matter.
That's the part she wanted them to hear.
That's the part she needed to say out loud, maybe for herself as much as for them.
I don't say any of this. I just sit there, shoulder touching hers the way it always does, and let her finish her story.
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Author's note:
So the UA stuff begins!
also for any one wondering what Aki looks like I will be putting her image (inspiration) in the comments.