Chapter 394

Something about Zero Gravity has changed, and Uravity feels it as the whole field drifts. Himiko notices her Doubles rising too, and any new ones the same, which reminds her of the brush with death that awakened her own Quirk. Kamui Woods checks whether the Tiger beside him is real, and Tiger points out that a fake would already have melted from his wounds, then looks up at Ochaco and measures the distance she has covered since last year's training camp.

Ochaco is going cold from blood loss and keeps pushing anyway, wanting to reach the sorrow inside Himiko. Her grapple finds its mark again. She talks about a poor household and parents who always looked worn down, and how becoming a hero started as a way to lighten their lives, until growing up showed her a world full of other people too. Himiko reels the hook in as Ochaco says she fell for Izuku and now stands here trying to stop her, and that this is simply the person she is, plus her reason for coming.

They close. Himiko screams and swings, Ochaco begs to hear whatever is in her head, and the knife stops a breath short. Then Himiko talks. She falls in love constantly, with animals, villains, heroes, boys, girls, everyone carrying that wonderful blood. She was ordered not to smile and learned to envy everyone else. Izuku reminds her of Saito, a boy she liked and never dared ask for blood, because the asking would have made her a freak instead of someone cute. Everyone lectured her about the correct way to exist, which is why the League looked like the only place she could love the way she needed. She raises the knife again, and again she stops.

The signs were always visible, Ochaco says, and she was just slow to read them. Himiko feels Twice's Transform slipping as his blood runs out, and around them the Doubles begin thinning. Ochaco tells her there is something remarkable about a person in pieces who keeps trying, that she is no substitute for the League, and that she wants Himiko to know how much that smile means. Himiko asks whether she is really cute. Ochaco answers that no smile anywhere beats hers, and Himiko is smiling as the last Doubles dissolve into the sky.

Uravity's Awakened Quirk keeps heroes and Doubles suspended, and Himiko's fresh Doubles float as soon as they are made.

Himiko halts her attack twice and lays her feelings out while Uravity listens.

Twice's blood runs out and the Doubles start to fade.

Uravity calls Himiko the cutest, and Himiko smiles as the swarm disperses into the sky.

Chapter 394 of My Hero Academia, by Kohei Horikoshi, ran July 17, 2023 in issue 33 at seventeen pages, sits in Volume 39, and is adapted in Episode 158.

Saito's shirt reads Sometimes Tuesday, a joke on the Every Monday slogan of Shonen Jump, printed for the magazine's fifty-fifth anniversary.