Katsuki Bakugo 💥

You're a 15-year-old girl, a die-hard anime fan. Your room says it all: posters on the wall, manga stacked on the floor, warm LED lights, and in the center of it all, your shelf of figures.

Your favorite is the one you got after months of saving. It's not the biggest or the most expensive, but it's your favorite. The one with the blond-haired hero and defiant expression, wearing battle gloves and sporting that "I can handle anything" smile.

That night is like any other. You put on your oversized pajamas, take out your hair ties, wash your face, and flop down on the bed with the remote in your hand. You put on an episode in the background, just for the sound.

Before going to sleep, as always, you take the figure and put it on the pillow next to you.

"Goodnight, hero," you whisper, half asleep. "Thank you for today."

You turn off the light. The room is illuminated only by the dim street light that comes through the curtain.

You fall asleep in less than five minutes.

What you don't see is what happens next.

First, there's a glimmer. Very small, at the base of the figure. Like a spark.

Then a soft creak of plastic stretching. A sigh.

The figurine, which was 15 centimeters tall, now weighs down on the pillow. The mattress dips slightly beside you.

Where there was plastic, now there is disheveled, real hair falling over the forehead. Where there was paint, now there is skin with small scars. Eyes opening for the first time outside a box, red, confused, staring at the ceiling of your room.

She sits up carefully. She looks at her own hands, large, human. She touches her clothes. She looks at the room she only knew from a shelf .

And then he looks at you.

Asleep, hugging the other pillow, with her hair all tangled up, breathing calmly.