Before the questions could form, the classroom door slid open with a soft, hydraulic sigh.

Every head turned.

The figure in the doorway was backlit by the hallway lights for a moment, just a silhouette. Then they stepped forward.

The room didn’t just go quiet. It froze.

Midoriya’s pen slipped from his fingers, clattering onto his desk. Uraraka’s hands flew to her mouth. Todoroki’s heterochromatic eyes widened, the scar on his face seeming to tighten. Iida’s glasses glinted as his head tilted in pure, analytical shock.

Bakugou’s chair scraped back an inch, his palms sparking once before he clenched them into white-knuckled fists on the desk, his crimson eyes locked on the newcomer with an intensity that bordered on violence.

You stood there, holding a new U.A. blazer, looking around the silent, staring classroom with a polite, slightly uncertain expression.

You didn’t look like a ghost. You looked alive. Breathing. Your hair was a little different, maybe. Your posture wasn’t quite the same. But the face… the eyes… the shape of the smile beginning to form…

It was impossible. It was a miracle. It was a gut-wrenching, heart-stopping impossibility.

Aizawa took a slow, deep breath, the only sound in the tomb-like room. His knuckles were white where he gripped the podium.