Chapter 1: The Weight of a Reflection
The stale air of Kyota's bedroom was thick with the scent of unwashed laundry and artificial cheese snacks, but to a seventeen-year-old completely immersed in his screen, it might as well have been fresh mountain air.
The only light in the suffocating darkness came from the glowing monitor, casting a flickering blue hue over the chaotic obstacle course of discarded clothes that covered his floor. Kyota sat at the edge of his seat, his heart hammering a frantic rhythm against his ribs.
On screen, My Hero Academia was reaching a fever pitch. It was late into the second season. Midoriya and Bakugo, battered, bruised, and dripping with sweat, were throwing themselves into a desperate, seemingly impossible battle against the Symbol of Peace, All Might. The Japanese voice acting screamed through Kyota's headphones, the raw emotion of the characters bleeding into his own veins. This was the climax. The ultimate test.
Suddenly, the blinding, clinical glare of the overhead fluorescent light pierced his retinas like a physical blow.
Kyota flinched violently, tearing one earphone off his ear. Standing in the doorway was his mother. She wore a faded robe, her face scrunched up in a mixture of sheer exhaustion and maternal disgust as she took in the state of his sanctuary.
"Do you have any idea what this room smells like?" she asked, her voice sharp and grating, slicing right through the anime's swelling orchestral score. "You have high school tomorrow, Kyota. What on earth are you doing awake at three in the morning?"
Kyota sighed, a heavy, dramatic breath of pure teenage frustration, rubbing his tired eyes. "Are you seriously still awake too, Mom?"
"I woke up to get a glass of water," she retorted, crossing her arms defensively. "And thank goodness I did."
"I'll go to sleep soon," Kyota grumbled, his eyes darting back to the glowing screen where Midoriya was winding up a desperate Smash. The tension of the episode was slipping away, replaced by annoyance. "I'm not a kid anymore. I can manage my own time."
Without another word, his mother marched past the piles of clothes, straight to the desk. Her hand reached behind the monitor, and with a swift, merciless tug, she yanked the power cable from the wall. The screen died instantly, plunging his epic, earth-shattering battle into a silent void of black plastic.
"Hey!" Kyota half-shouted, throwing his hands up.
"Say that to me next year," she said, her tone absolute, leaving no room for negotiation or argument. "For now, you are still a kid living under my roof."
She walked back to the door, her hand resting on the light switch.
"Seriously, Mom..." Kyota muttered, the fight draining out of him.
"You'd better go to sleep right now, or the Wi-Fi router gets unplugged next," she warned. With a sharp flick, she plunged the room back into darkness and pulled the door shut behind her.
Kyota groaned loudly, letting his back hit the mattress. He stared up at the invisible ceiling, the adrenaline from the anime still coursing hot through his veins, clashing bitterly with the abrupt, anti-climactic silence of his room.
"Seriously... just one more episode," he thought bitterly. He closed his heavy eyelids, letting exhaustion finally drag him under.
The Shift
As he drifted into sleep, the silence of his room began to warp and stretch. The Japanese voices of the characters seeped back into his mind, echoing in the dark. Midoriya's desperate battle cries, Bakugo's furious roars, and All Might's booming laugh swirled together in a chaotic loop.
But then, the sensory details began to change. The soft fabric of his blanket beneath his hands slowly felt rigid. Hard. The stale smell of his messy bedroom vanished, replaced abruptly by the pungent scent of aged wood, floor wax, and... sweat?
Slowly, a new sound washed over the anime voices—the rhythmic, crashing sound of ocean waves. The waves grew louder and louder, sweeping away Midoriya and All Might, until it felt like the water was rushing directly through his head.
"Lee... Lee... Lee!"
Kyota's eyes fluttered open slowly, a wave of profound annoyance washing over him. The light was incredibly bright, warm, and natural. Where was the darkness of his room?
He blinked against the glare, his vision slowly coming into focus. He wasn't looking at a ceiling. He was staring down at a polished wooden floor.
He lifted his head, and his breath hitched.
Standing a few feet away from him was a towering man clad in a blindingly bright green jumpsuit, complete with vibrant orange leg warmers. The man looked startlingly, impossibly like Might Guy from Naruto.
But the man wasn't looking directly at him; he was looking down at him. In fact, everything looked completely wrong. The ceiling was too high. The room was too vast.
Kyota scrambled to his feet, his heart skipping a beat. The sudden movement felt incredibly light. He was standing in a massive, traditional Japanese dojo. Sitting along the edges of the wooden floor were dozens of young children, all watching intently. Directly in front of him stood another boy, roughly his height, wearing a crisp white karate gi.
Wait, Kyota's mind raced, his 17-year-old brain struggling to process the data. Why am I so short? Didn't I just go to sleep in the middle of the night? Why is the morning sun shining through paper sliding doors? And why is this weird cosplay guy staring at me like that?
"Lee!" the man in green barked, his voice booming off the walls. "What is the matter with you? Are you spacing out?"
Lee? Kyota swallowed hard. Who is he talking to? Who is Lee?
Instinctively, Kyota turned his head to the left. The entire left wall of the dojo was lined with tall, spotless mirrors.
The Reflection
Kyota froze. The air in his lungs vanished.
The reflection staring back at him was not a seventeen-year-old high schooler with dark circles and messy bedhead.
Staring back at him was a young boy in a white martial arts gi. The boy had perfectly round, impossibly wide black eyes. His hair was cut into a shiny, bowl-shaped style that perfectly framed his face, and resting above his eyes were two eyebrows so ridiculously thick they looked like fuzzy caterpillars glued to his forehead.
It was Rock Lee.
Kyota's mind flatlined. A cold sweat broke out across his neck. Trembling, he slowly raised his right hand. In the mirror, the bowl-cut boy raised his right hand.
Kyota touched his cheek. He felt the soft skin beneath his fingertips, and in the mirror, the boy did exactly the same.
This wasn't VR. This wasn't a dream. He could feel the grain of the wood beneath his bare feet. He could smell the dust in the air.
He opened his mouth to speak, to scream, to demand answers from whoever had done this to him, but his vocal cords refused to work. His chest tightened in a vice grip of pure, unadulterated shock. His mind, the mind of a teenager from the modern world, was violently rejecting the reality placed in front of him.
"Alright, enough dawdling!" the booming voice of the instructor echoed through the dojo, shattering the silence. "Get ready... BEGIN!"
Wait, what? Kyota's wide eyes snapped back to the front. Begin what?!
Before his brain could even process the command, the bald boy standing opposite him let out a ferocious, ear-piercing battle cry.
"Hooooowatchaaa!"
The boy launched forward with terrifying, explosive speed.
Kyota saw it happening. His seventeen-year-old brain registered the incoming threat perfectly. He saw the shift in the boy's footing, saw the hip rotate, saw the foot blur through the air aimed directly at his face. Move! his mind screamed. Duck! Dodge it! His new body was perfectly capable of moving. He felt the latent energy in his legs. But his mind was completely, utterly shattered by the reflection in the mirror. The overwhelming impossibility of the situation acted like a heavy chain around his brain. The shock was absolute. He was a spectator trapped inside a frozen vessel.
He didn't twitch a muscle.
The foot, clad in a white martial arts slipper, connected cleanly and violently with Kyota's cheek.
The impact sounded like a cracking whip. The world spun sickeningly as Kyota's feet were swept out from under him. He hit the hardwood floor with a brutal thud, the impact knocking the remaining air from his lungs.
His vision immediately began to darken at the edges, collapsing into a tunnel. The sounds of the dojo—the gasps of the children, the shuffling of feet—turned into a muffled, distorted hum, like he was sinking underwater.
As his heavy eyelids slowly slid shut, the last thing he heard was the panicked voice of the man in green, echoing as if calling out from a great distance.
"Lee! Lee! Seriously, what happened to you...?"
Then, the world faded back to black.