Thieves Aren’t Supposed to Play Hero
Most people carry memories of their family like photographs tucked safely in a wallet.
Mine are more like water-damaged scraps, blurred faces from a life I left behind.
Walking away should have hurt. But somehow, it didn’t.
Like tossing out an old sock riddled with too many holes to mend.
Cruel, I know. Families were supposed to mean more than that.
But mine hadn’t left me with much worth missing.
Chicago had stopped feeling like home a long time ago.
It was a maze of cracked sidewalks, screaming sirens, and dark alleys where I’d learned one useful skill: survival.
Apparently, surviving in all the wrong ways was still enough to get the right person’s attention.
As Hawk Guy once said during his first trip to America, “You only get one shot, so don’t blow this opportunity, alright?”
Well, I got my shot.
I just hadn’t expected it to fire me halfway across the world.
Japan.
U.A. High School.
U.A. High School, the most prestigious hero academy in the world and the last place someone like me belonged.
The recommendation letter felt impossibly heavy between my fingers as I sat inside the cramped closet Monica generously called a bedroom.
No matter how many times I read my name across the top, I couldn’t understand why they had chosen me.
Sure, I’d saved someone’s life, but that sounded far more impressive without the full story.
Calling it heroic was far too generous. Calling it accidental was honest.
Five seconds earlier, I’d had my hand buried in that same person’s pocket.
Saving them had been a reflex, a split-second decision made before my brain could remind me that thieves weren’t supposed to play hero.
Apparently, someone had been watching.
A few weeks later, a Pro Hero I never expected to hear from had submitted a recommendation in my name, as if one decent choice could erase years of bad ones.
And now I was holding the result.
I unfolded the letter.
The small device attached to it flickered.
Then the room exploded with a voice loud enough to wake the dead.
“I AM HERE!”
I nearly dropped it.
All Might’s enormous face suddenly appeared in front of me, filling the tiny screen with enough brightness to illuminate practically every corner of my miserable room.
“CONGRATULATIONS!”
I blinked.
“YOU HAVE BEEN SELECTED FOR THE HERO COURSE AT U.A. HIGH SCHOOL!”
His smile somehow grew even wider.
“WE CANNOT WAIT TO WELCOME YOU THIS FALL!”
Hero material.
Was that what they saw when they looked at me? Because it sure as hell wasn’t what I saw.
I stared at the screen, waiting for the punchline, the rejection, or a correction explaining that they had contacted the wrong person.
All Might kept smiling like I’d won the lottery instead of a one-way ticket into a school packed with future heroes who had probably never picked a pocket to pay for dinner.
Very slowly, I began folding the letter closed.
Maybe I could pretend I never saw it.
The recording suddenly continued.
“OH! AND ONE MORE THING!”
Every muscle in my body locked.
All Might leaned closer to the camera.
“YOU HAVE ALSO BEEN SELECTED FOR THE PRE-MEDICAL HERO PROGRAM!”
My fingers stopped halfway through folding the paper.
“...What?” The word scraped out of my throat.
“THIS SPECIAL PLACEMENT WAS RECOMMENDED BY NONE OTHER THAN RECOVERY GIRL!”
I stared at him so hard my eyes began to burn.
Recovery Girl? As in U.A.’s legendary nurse? The woman who healed future heroes for a living had looked at my file and thought, Yes, give that disaster medical training.
“YOU ARE GOING TO HAVE A VERY BUSY YEAR, YOUNG HERO!”
The screen snapped black, taking All Might’s impossible smile and my last shred of peace with it.
Silence rushed back into the room, broken only by the distant wail of a siren outside my window.
I looked down at the letter.
Then at the dead screen, which offered absolutely no explanation.
Then back at the letter.
Hero Course.
Pre-med.
U.A.
Japan.
I lowered myself onto the edge of my bed. The mattress springs groaned beneath me, sounding almost as overwhelmed as I felt.
What the hell had I gotten myself into? More importantly, did U.A. know their newest future medic and hero was technically a thief?
