Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

The alarm didn't go off because Ichigo hadn't set one.

He woke up at 4:47 AM on December 12th, his eyes snapping open in the darkness of his room like he'd been shocked awake. The house was silent. Outside, the world was still black, the kind of deep winter darkness that made everything feel heavier.

He sat up slowly, careful not to make the bed creak. His duffel bag was already packed, sitting in the corner where he'd left it the night before. Three months. The letter had said three months. That was good. Would be better if it was even longer. He didn't want to spend a single more second in this house or this town.

Ichigo pulled on his clothes in the dark. Jeans, a thick hoodie, his puff jacket over the top. The jacket was black and made him look bulkier than he was, but it was warm and that was all that mattered. December in Karakura was brutal. He could already feel the cold seeping through the window glass.

He slung the bag over his shoulder and stood there for a moment, looking around his room. The posters on the wall. The desk where he'd done homework he didn't care about. The window that looked out over the street. None of it meant anything to him anymore. It was just a room. Just a place he'd slept.

The hallway was dark. He moved carefully, placing each foot down slowly so the floorboards wouldn't creak. His father's room was at the end of the hall, door closed. Karin's room was to the left. Yuzu's was to the right. He didn't look at any of them.

The stairs were the hardest part. Old wood, prone to groaning under weight. Ichigo took them one at a time, testing each step before putting his full weight down. It took him almost two minutes to reach the bottom.

The front door was right there. Ten more steps and he'd be outside. Ten more steps and he'd be gone.

He made it to the porch before the light switched on.

Ichigo stopped. He didn't turn around. He just stood there, one hand on the door frame, his bag heavy on his shoulder.

"Big brother?"

The voice was small and wobbly and it made something twist in Ichigo's chest. He closed his eyes for a second, then opened them again.

"What is it, Yuzu?" His voice came out harsher than he meant it to.

"Where are you going, Ichigo?"

"How's that any of your business?"

There was a pause. Ichigo could hear her breathing behind him, could picture her standing there in her pajamas, probably with her hair all messy from sleep.

"Where are you going, Ichigo?" she asked again, and this time her voice cracked.

He heard a sniffle. His scowl deepened. He made to move again, to just walk out and not look back, but then he felt her hand grab his sleeve.

"Please don't leave, Ichigo."

Her arms wrapped around him from behind, her face pressing into his back. She was sobbing now, her whole body shaking against him.

"I... Did I do something? I'm sorry, okay? I don't want you to go!"

"Yuzu, just stop."

"Aren't you supposed to protect me? Didn't you use to say that all the time to me?"

The words hit him like a punch to the gut. He had said that. Years ago, when things were different. When he'd had his powers. When he'd been someone who mattered.

"You're not a child anymore," Ichigo said, and his voice was cold and hard. He felt his eyes getting wet but he blinked it away. "I can't protect you. I can't protect anything. Get off me."

He shoved her off, harder than he needed to. He heard her stumble back, heard the sharp intake of breath as she tried not to cry louder.

Ichigo felt his lip wobble. His vision blurred for a second and he shook his head violently, like he could physically shake the tears away. It was better this way. Better that she knew. Better that she understood how worthless he was now. How utterly useless he'd become without his powers.

He walked out the door without looking back.

The cold hit him immediately. It was the kind of cold that made your lungs hurt when you breathed in, that made your eyes water and your fingers go numb even inside your pockets. The sky was still dark, but there was a faint grey line on the horizon where the sun would eventually rise.

Snow covered everything. The street, the sidewalks, the roofs of the houses. It had snowed heavily the night before and nobody had been out yet to clear it. Ichigo's footsteps were the first to break the perfect white surface.

The crunch of snow under his boots was the only sound. No cars. No people. No birds. Just the crunch, crunch, crunch of his feet and the sound of his own breathing, visible in white clouds that dissipated into the frozen air.

The streetlights cast orange pools of light onto the snow, making it look almost warm. But it wasn't warm. Nothing was warm. Ichigo pulled his jacket tighter around himself and kept walking.

The houses on either side of the street were dark. Everyone was asleep. Everyone was warm in their beds, safe and comfortable and completely unaware that Ichigo Kurosaki was walking past their windows at five in the morning with a duffel bag over his shoulder.

He passed the convenience store where he used to buy drinks after school. It was closed, metal shutters pulled down over the windows. He passed the park where he'd played as a kid, the swings buried under snow, the slide a white ramp leading to nowhere.

Everything looked different under snow. Softer. Quieter. Like the whole world had been muffled.

Ichigo's breath came out in steady clouds. In, out. In, out. His fingers were already going numb despite being in his pockets. His ears burned with cold. But he didn't care. The physical discomfort was almost welcome. It gave him something to focus on besides the look on Yuzu's face when he'd shoved her away.

The walk to the station took twenty minutes. By the time he got there, the sky had lightened to a dull grey. The station was small, just two platforms and a ticket machine. There was one other person waiting, an old man in a heavy coat reading a newspaper.

Ichigo bought his ticket and stood on the platform, watching his breath form clouds in the air. The train arrived ten minutes later, its headlights cutting through the grey morning like knives.

He got on. Found a seat by the window. Put his bag on the seat next to him so nobody would sit there.

As the train pulled away from the station, Ichigo looked out the window at Karakura disappearing behind him. 

He didn't feel anything.

The Blue Lock facility was massive. Ichigo had seen the address on the letter but he hadn't really processed what it meant until he was standing in front of it. The building was modern, all glass and steel and sharp angles. It looked like something out of a science fiction movie.

The main lobby was already crowded when Ichigo walked in. There had to be at least two hundred people in there, maybe more. All of them young, all of them athletic-looking, all of them wearing expressions that ranged from excited to nervous to cocky.

Ichigo squeezed himself in through the doors and immediately felt eyes on him. Lots of eyes. People turning to look, elbowing their friends, whispering to each other.

He scowled. Maybe it was just what had happened with Yuzu still weighing on him, making him more irritable than usual. Or maybe it was just annoying to be stared at like he was some kind of zoo animal. Either way, he didn't like it.

But he understood why they were staring. The nationals had been televised. His face had been all over the sports news for weeks. "Karakura's Orange-Haired Rocket" one headline had called him. "The Fastest Striker in High School Football" another had said. He'd scored a hat-trick in the finals. Of course people recognized him.

"Yo, you're Ichigo Kurosaki, right?"

Ichigo looked to his left. A boy about his age was standing there with a kind smile on his face. He had white hair, almost silver in the lobby's fluorescent lighting, and sharp features. He was tall, maybe an inch shorter than Ichigo, with an athletic build.

Ichigo recognized him immediately. Kira Ryosuke. "The Japanese Jewel" is what the media called him. His team had made it to the semi-finals of the nationals. They'd been strong, really strong. Their teamwork had been incredible, their passing crisp and precise. Karakura had only beaten them because Kenji Tanaka had scored in the 91st minute, the goal coming from broken plays that shouldn't have worked but somehow did. It had been closer than any other match they'd played.

"Hey, what's up," Ichigo said. "Kira, right?"

"Yeah, man." Kira held out his hand and Ichigo dapped him up.

"That was a hell of a match you guys played in the finals. That third goal you scored was insane."

"Your team played well too. That passing sequence in the second half, the one that led to your goal, that was clean as hell."

Kira grinned.

"Thanks, man. Glad to see some familiar faces here. This whole thing is pretty wild, huh?"

"Yeah," Ichigo said, though he didn't really feel wild about it. He was just here because he didn't want to be in Karakura.

As they talked, Ichigo noticed a smaller boy standing a few feet away, staring at him. The boy had black hair and an intense expression, like he was trying to memorize Ichigo's face. Ichigo didn't recognize him from any matches he'd watched. Probably just another player who'd seen him on TV.

Ichigo paid him no mind.

He and Kira chatted for a few more minutes, mostly small talk about the facility and speculation about what Blue Lock would actually be like. Then Ichigo excused himself and pushed further up through the crowd, finding a spot closer to the front where there was a massive TV screen mounted on the wall.

The screen was black. Everyone was waiting.

The face that appeared on the screen was striking. The man had dark hair with bangs that fell across his forehead, and he wore glasses that reflected the light in a way that made it hard to see his eyes.

"Welcome," the man said, his voice echoing through the lobby's sound system, "to Blue Lock."

The room went silent.

"My name is Jinpachi Ego, and I am the director of this facility. You are here because you have been identified as one of the three hundred most talented young strikers in Japan. You should feel proud of that. But pride means nothing here. Talent means nothing here. Your past achievements mean nothing here."

"Japanese football is weak," he continued. "We have never won a World Cup. We have never even come close. Do you know why? Because we lack the one thing that every great football nation has. We lack a world-class striker. A player who can score goals that change matches. A player who can carry a team on his back. A player who is selfish enough, hungry enough, egotistical enough to take the ball and say 'I will score. Not you. Me.'"

The screen changed, showing footage of famous strikers from around the world. Ichigo recognized some of them. Cristiano Ronaldo. Lionel Messi. Lewandowski. Harry Kane.

"Blue Lock exists to create that striker," Ego said. "We will take you three hundred and we will break you down. We will strip away everything you think you know about football. We will rebuild you into something new. Something better. And at the end of this process, only one of you will remain. One striker who will lead Japan to World Cup glory."

The footage changed again, now showing a diagram of the facility. Multiple blocks, each containing teams of players.

"You will be divided into five blocks of sixty players each," Ego explained. "Within each block, you will be ranked from one to sixty based on your abilities. You will compete in matches against other teams within your block. The losers will be eliminated. The winners will advance. This will continue until only the strongest remain."

Ego's face reappeared on the screen, and this time Ichigo could see his eyes behind the glasses. They were cold and calculating.

"This is not a team sport," Ego said. "This is about individual excellence. This is about ego. This is about being selfish enough to take what you want and skilled enough to actually get it. If you cannot do that, you will fail. If you cannot become the best, you will be eliminated. There is no second place in Blue Lock. There is only the striker who wins, and everyone else who loses."

The screen went black.

For a moment, nobody moved. The lobby was completely silent, two hundred young players processing what they'd just heard.

Then the small black-haired boy, the one who'd been staring at Ichigo earlier, suddenly broke into a sprint. He ran toward the doors at the back of the lobby at full speed, his footsteps echoing off the walls.

That triggered something. Like a dam breaking, everyone else started running too. The lobby erupted into chaos as two hundred players all tried to get through the doors at once, pushing and shoving and sprinting as fast as they could.

Ichigo didn't move. He just stood there, watching the stampede with a detached expression.

Within thirty seconds, the lobby was almost empty. Only three players remained standing still.

Ichigo looked to his right. There was a tall boy with white hair, even taller than Kira, with a lean build and an expression of complete calm. He looked like he was waiting for a bus, not standing in the middle of a high-stakes football selection program.

To Ichigo's left was another boy with purple hair and sharp eyes. He was staring at Ichigo intensely, his gaze never wavering. Ichigo figured the boy probably recognized him from the media coverage. Everyone seemed to.

The white-haired boy paid Ichigo no attention at all. He just stood there, hands in his pockets, looking bored.

Ichigo started walking. Not running, just walking at a normal pace toward the doors. He wasn't in a hurry. He wasn't fired up about any of this. He was just here because he had nowhere else to be.

As he reached the doors, he saw Ego standing off to the side, watching the last few players file through. Their eyes met for a brief second.

Ego didn't even glance at him. Didn't acknowledge him at all. Just looked right through him like he was nobody.

Ichigo kept walking.

The coach that took them to their assigned blocks was sleek and modern, with comfortable seats and tinted windows. Ichigo sat near the back, staring out at the facility grounds as they drove. Everything was pristine. Perfect grass fields, state-of-the-art buildings, equipment that probably cost more than his house.

When they arrived at Block Five, Ichigo was the last one off the coach. He walked into the changing room and immediately felt eyes on him again.

The room was large, with lockers lining the walls and benches in the middle. There were already about fifty players in there, all in various states of changing into their Blue Lock uniforms.

Ichigo found his locker. Number 234. He stared at the number for a second, his eyes widening slightly.

That was his rank. Out of three hundred players, he was ranked 234th.

His eyes actually bulged out of his skull. That was how low his rank was. He'd scored a hat-trick in the national finals and he was ranked 234th?

Then he looked around the room and realized something. He started checking the numbers on other players' lockers. 271. 289. 299. 298.

Pretty much everyone in this room was ranked lower than him.

Which meant he was the best player in his team.

He spotted Kira across the room, pulling on his Blue Lock jersey. Kira's number was 243. Nine ranks behind Ichigo.

Ichigo felt something shift in his chest. Not excitement, exactly. But something close to it. There must be a lot of talent in Blue Lock if he was only ranked 234th overall. That meant there were 233 players better than him. Or at least, players that Ego's system had rated higher.

That was why he liked football more than athletics. In athletics, his speed felt like cheating. He was just naturally faster than everyone else and that was that. But in football, speed was only one part of the equation. There was technique, vision, positioning, decision-making. All the things Ichigo wasn't particularly good at.

It didn't feel like cheating when the competition was this stiff.

As he pulled off his jacket and started changing, he noticed a boy staring at him from across the room. The boy was built like a tank, all muscle and broad shoulders. He had orange hair, almost the same shade as Ichigo's, and a stern expression on his face.

He looked like a muscular version of Ichigo.

Their eyes met. Neither of them looked away. They just stared at each other with questioning looks.

Then they both went back to changing.

The Blue Lock uniform was simple. Black shorts, black jersey with a white number on the back, black socks. Ichigo pulled it all on and stood up, rolling his shoulders. The material was high-quality, breathable and light.