Ultra Responsibility (My Hero Academia X Spider-Man Reader)

Issue 46 - The Black Suit

I didn't fall.

It felt more like I stopped.

Like someone hit pause on me mid-breath and the world politely agreed.

One second there was concrete under my cheek and blood in my throat and the echo of fists. The next... I was sitting on a bench.

A wooden bench. Old paint. A few scratches carved into it like bored ghosts had passed time here. The air smelled like wet pavement and distant car exhaust and something sweet I couldn't place.

New York.

I knew it the way you know a song you haven't heard in years, the way it still finds the same spot in your ribs.

Only... it was wrong.

Everything was washed out. Not black-and-white, not quite. More like someone drained all the colour and left the world in its underwear. Grey streets, grey sky, grey faces drifting past with their heads down like they were late for something they'd already missed.

My hands were in my lap.

Clean.

No blood.

No pain.

No broken anything.

That was the part that scared me most.

My chest rose and fell like it belonged to a normal person.

I stared at my palms, then up at the street ahead, and my brain tried to assemble a reason. Tried to build a bridge from warehouse concrete to this quiet bench.

Nothing connected.

Footsteps approached, soft and familiar. Someone sat down beside me with the weight of a life that had once made the whole flat feel warmer.

Uncle Ben.

He looked the same as he did in the old videos. The kind of tired that didn't mean broken, just... lived-in. That small, stubborn smile that always said I've seen worse, kid.

"Hey," he said, voice gentle. "How you hanging, sport?"

My throat tightened. The sound of his voice hit me harder than any punch.

I blinked and for a second it felt like I might wake up coughing blood again.

"Ben?" My own voice came out thin. "How... how did I get here?"

He didn't answer right away. He just looked at me, eyes soft, like he'd been waiting for me to ask the question and hated that he had to hear it.

I swallowed. The truth pushed up anyway, heavy and unavoidable.

"I... I shouldn't be here." I stared at the street, at the colourless people walking past like shadows pretending to be human. "I don't... I don't understand."

I paused, breath catching on a bitter laugh.

No. That was a lie.

I understood way more than I wanted to.

I turned my head slowly to him. "Am I... dead?"

Ben's smile faded.

He didn't say yes.

He didn't say no.

He just put a hand on my shoulder, warm and steady, and the sadness in his face did all the talking for him.

For a while, he didn't try to fix it. He didn't try to lecture me. He just sat with me, like he always did when I got too inside my own head.

Then he nodded across the street, like we were just two guys killing time.