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Kazemaru and Endou have known each other since before Jr. High. The cyan head doesn’t quite remember the details of their encounter, just the gist of it. Endou liked trading passes with younger kids by the riverbank and Kazemaru had started doing his track-and-field training around the field. Eventually, both kids started talking to each other and everything winded up from there. There was no spark, no feeling of serendipity when they crossed gazes. They were just two kids with their respective passion, enjoying each other’s company. Simple. Nice.
Junior High comes by and while they don’t quite lose sight of each other, their respective passion absorbs their time for the whole year. Kazemaru naturally joins the track-and-field club and invests all his energy in sharpening his skills. Training in a club is more grueling than training alone, but Kazemaru loses himself in the exhilaration of getting stronger. Each muscle tear is a step closer to a better version of himself, one that will one day compete with the best athletes of the world.
He sees Endou with his friend Kino and two other first-years, Someoka and Handa, doing their drills in whichever place they could scrape, be it near a football clubroom that has definitely seen better days, at the sidelines of the tennis court or the baseball field. Kazemaru admires their resilience and determination to continue pushing forward despite having no coach, not enough teammate and no access to a proper field.
It’s the same resilience that makes him join the soccer club the following year. He sees Endou depleting tons of energy, trying to recruit teammates for the match that will decide the fate of the club he built with his two hands. He watches him getting rejected and even mocked, and each time Endou would square up his shoulders and run to the next person with the same hope and determination.
The light in his eyes especially, is what draws Kazemaru in. Normal people would have quailed at the prospect of having to battle against a four-decades reigning champion, a battle which might sign the end of their team. But Endou, he treats it like a godsend, the peak of all the sweats and tears and hard work he has been pouring since last year. It’s a challenge, a test of his drive, and a fire burns in his eyes with a certainty that defeat is unimaginable.
Kazemaru decides he doesn’t want this fire to be put out.
He joins. They train. They win. They keep winning.
By some miracle, they win against Teikoku and rides the momentum through the tournament. Not momentum, he shakes his head. What carries them isn’t something as fickle as that. Momentum is fragile, especially when the team is such a mismatch of personality and individual skill, an inexperienced chick in a crowd of ruthless crows.
No, it works because Endou is one bringing them together. A ball of never-dying optimism, energy and confidence that sees the best in his teammates even when they don’t see it themselves. A grounding force that urges you to get up, get stronger, push on… yet never leaves you behind.
Don’t give up! His eyes shine.
You can do it! His smiles tell.
It’s intoxicating, the moment when your body feels like dropping from fatigue and just one look at this fire in Endou's eyes gives you enough energy to try one more time.
Endou is strength. Kazemaru admires that about him. He wants to get stronger, so that he can land him a hand too.
So, he trains and trains. He evolves with each match and gives his best for the team, for him.
Until… he isn’t strong enough.
In hindsight, leaving Raimon was probably the worst decision of his life, but at that time, all he saw was his powerlessness against the players from Aliea Gakuen. He sees his teammates, his nakama, getting trashed and hurt and hospitalized and heisn'tfastenough-
But Endou- Endou keeps getting up, each time getting stronger despite the struggles piling up, despite new enemies appearing after each victory, despite their newest weapons being instantly neutralized by newer opponents.
He gets up, he never gives in. The force is urging again. Get up, get stronger, push on! Kazemaru struggles. He wants to be part of that strength, he wants to be like Endou, to proudly stand beside him. But he is so weak.
What would Endou do with someone so weak?
He leaves the team.
Even now, weeks after the whole Dark Emperors fiasco, Kazemaru feels the tight knot of guilt and shame in his stomach, twisting and churning each time Endou smiles at him. His captain still runs towards him with the same promptness, squealing in delight at his moves, congratulating him for his plays and ‘let’s play soccer, Kazemaru!’
He should be happy that his captain has forgiven him- can he even talk about forgiveness? Endou treats it like nothing was Kazemaru’s fault, that the blame is entirely his and he’s content with the fact that everything is back to normal.
Kazemaru should be happy that Endou has forgiven him, and he truly is, but he is also hurt and devastated.
You just don’t betray Endou. He is nothing but an honest, straightforward soccer freak that always has the well-being of his teammates at heart. Endou protects, it’s his namesake and the purpose of his existence as a soccer player. His bottomless strength comes from his sense of duty as their captain and their protector as much as, or perhaps, more than his love for the sport. That’s the reason why you just can’t betray Endou- because he will never betray you. He’s the team strength, but the team is Endou's.
But that’s exactly what he did. He betrayed him. He, who had known him the longest, who saw first-handed his tenacity, who swore as he cleaned his bruised knuckles for the first time that he’d never let his fire die out.
He heard in covered words the chain of events that followed his departure. Depression, Impossible. Couldn’t face soccer anymore. It’s Endou! He will face everything head on! He almost gave up. No, he-
Kazemaru grins his teeth in anguish. He made Endou almost give up. How could he have been stupid to think running away would be the solution, when he has always known Endou keeps getting up because he has his friends around him. How can he smile then and let bygones be bygones with the sin that he put out Endou's fire, weighing on his shoulders? How does one free itself from that kind of guilt?
“You don’t.”
He looks up and it’s Gouenji, arms crossed in front of him, cornering him after he wounded up a sorry excuse to avoid Endou like he’s been doing after the Aliea Gakuen ordeal. Gouenji who had to leave the team too, for far nobler reasons than his, and eventually came back stronger than ever, but would sometimes look at Endou like he doesn’t deserve his smiles and laughs, not after leaving. The same Gouenji who has so much chemistry with his captain, who turned down so many scouts because soccer without Endou isn’t worth it, yet would sometimes stare at Kidou in envy because out of them all, Kidou is the one who never strayed away from their captain.
“It won’t be better over time. The guilt might never disappear.” This same Gouenji says with genuine understanding, because he has been there. He still is. “What we must now do is to become the best we can be and keep living up to his expectations, no matter what.”
Kazemaru watches him leave, most likely returning to his rightful place, half a step behind his captain, alongside Kidou who, rational as he is, always watches over Endou from the shadows. The two of them at their best to support Endou. The three of them in a dimension of their own, completely inaccessible to him.
No, he thinks when Endou once again finds him and smiles and ‘let’s play soccer, Kazemaru’ with so much love he almost cries.
The best that I can be, he thinks and lets himself be dragged into the light, bruised hand gently clenching his and never leaving him behind, to never let this fire die out again.