Testimonials

How it began, how it deepened, and how it changed me.

I first crossed paths with him in 2021, back when My Hero Academia was taking over my screen, my thoughts, and what felt like every corner of the internet. Like so many, I was pulled in by the sheer coolness of his design—his plague mask, his sharp eyes, the quiet danger that clung to him like a second skin.
At first, it was just a fleeting crush, barely more than curiosity. Another name, another face. At the time, I loved someone else, though looking back, it didn’t run nearly as deep.
I’ve selfshipped for as long as I can remember. Since I was ten, I’ve built little worlds in my head with fictional partners—most of them temporary, most of them fading once the obsession burned out. The longest one lasted two years. I thought that was the peak.
I thought I’d always be this way: loving fictional people because the real ones around me made it seem like I was impossible to love in the first place. And I was terrified—terrified that this would be the only kind of love I’d ever know.

Then in 2024, he resurfaced.
Out of nowhere, his name, his image. Him.
I was falling out of love with something else at the time, drifting. And when I stumbled across a random Overhaul x Reader fanfic on Wattpad, something cracked open in me. I didn’t expect it to hit the way it did. I didn’t expect to feel anything at all.
But I did.
It took until February 2nd, 2024, for me to admit it to myself:
I was in love.
And for once, I didn’t run from it.

Out Of All The Characters In My Hero Academia, Why Him?

I could say it’s the way he looks because honestly, it is. His design is striking, haunting. Those sharp gold eyes, his delicate lower lashes, his eerie calmness. I’ve always had a soft spot for monsters too, and his monstrous forms—the way his body twists and fractures when fused, those only made him more fascinating to me. There’s something beautiful in the grotesque, and I’ve always seen it in him.
But that’s not the real reason.
The real reason is that I saw myself in him.
I saw the bitterness.
The cold detachment.
The anger that simmers beneath calmness, not because I enjoy the violence but because I've been carrying rot inside for so long that I no longer remember what it’s like to be soft.

We mirrored each other: two people walking through life like shadows, cold, numb, watching everything through glass. Both angry at the world for what it took from us. Both too broken to know what to do with kindness when it came.
That’s what made me stay.

The Unseen Things I Love

I love his anger-not because it’s beautiful, but because it’s real. The way his voice drops when it slips out, the way his hands move, the way all that carefully curated calm shatters into something primal. It’s terrifying. It’s mesmerizing. It reminds me that even the most composed people can be undone by feeling.

I love that he’s passionate about something, anything. That he was willing to tear the world apart to try to make it clean, even if it was all twisted and wrong. There’s tragedy in his determination.
And I love that beneath the villainy, the violence, the decay—he’s human.
I don’t pretend he’s good.
I don’t think he deserves blind forgiveness.
But I think he deserves the chance to find something other than bitterness.

I’ve always resonated with this quote from Bojack Horseman:
"I would like to see Bojack find some sort of peace. I don't know if happiness is the right word. I don't know if he deserves that but I would like to think even a soul as lost as Bojack can somehow crawl his way toward redemption."
That’s how I feel about Kai. I don’t know if he deserves happiness. I don’t even know if I do. But I want to believe that peace, however small, however fragile, is possible for people like us.

How He Changed Me

Loving him helped me love the parts of myself I used to hide. The strange, the dark, the monstrous. He became the mirror I couldn’t turn away from, the one that didn’t flinch, didn’t judge. Through him, I’ve explored the murky parts of morality, of forgiveness, of self-worth.
Through him, I started to believe that maybe I wasn’t too broken to build something of my own.
And so this shrine exists because love, even for the unwanted, deserves to be seen.