Archive of Our Own

Going on a training camp with his team was reminding Nagi of those old lame school trips he used to hate. He was an adult now. He had officially turned twenty a few weeks ago, so, for him to hop on a bus and hear his fully grown teammates passionately shout out loud lyrics from the most striking and diverse range of stadium chants felt a little anachronistic.

A championship break and their coach's will to keep their morale and physical condition high had sentenced them all to an entire week in the mountains near some sort of forest. Nagi strongly prayed for the Internet signal to still work there. He had developed an extremely specific bed routine lately which consisted in playing Rise of Kingdom while listening to sports channels' podcasts until his eyes hurt, until sleep was inevitable. With no connection, to accomplish his routine would simply be impossible and he needed that. He needed a virtual escape from the forced labour their coach was going to impose on them. He described that torture as practicing while being surrounded by nature at its most pristine state. They were about to train mostly outside, all day, every day, no matter the weather.

Hot springs, that was what the coach had put on the table in order to win his players over. He claimed that the hot springs within the place they were staying at were definitely worth it. A well deserved reward, a treat which would help them release the fatigue from their bodies after every intense training session. So, the whole team had approved, allured by such a tempting promise, and Nagi who had expressed no preference had ended up quietly and humbly accepting the majority's decision to go.

The private sporting facility hosting them seemed a bit dated, but not inefficient. The football field nearby was considerably impressive and so well-kept that the sparkling green of its grass almost looked painted. It was cool, the scenery, the view of other distant peaks, and the majestic vegetation all around the pitch was quiet characteristic. However, Nagi couldn't help but wonder what would happen if ever a ball went past the fence and got stuck on such tall trees after a shot. How would they rescue it considering the great height? Would they need to climb? Or could they just leave it there? Or would it be considered pollution of the forest? He had no idea and when he had tried to ask, everyone had simply blinked at him, confused.

Once inside, it turned out that the facility had way more spaces than Nagi had imagined. Thermal spa aside, the place was also equipped with a gym, an astonishing number of rooms and, to add on its country flavor, what seemed like a simple tavern where all of their meals would take place.

Wood, everything seemed to be made of wood, covered in wood, immersed in wood. Nagi didn't notice any windows in the long corridor he was walking through. The sound of his footsteps was muffled by the slightly red discolored carpet covering every inch of the floor and the motion sensor was turning on the lights, automatically and progressively.

He had a backpack on his shoulders and the effects of a six hours long journey were starting to get to him. It wasn't exactly late, but the sun had set already. There was more than a reason if Nagi was so fond of his cactus and one of those reasons was tied to how similar they were. He strongly relied on daylight to find the strength to survive, to function. Just like his Choki. Nagi wasn't an actual plant, he didn't really go through a photosynthesis process, but he shared the sentiment. And he was tired now, craving nothing more than a comfortable mattress for his lamenting body.

Reo was walking right in front of him, his sporting bag kept slipping off of his shoulder as his eyes scrutinized the surface of every single door, searching for the one number matching with the keys the reception had entrusted them with a few moments ago. Their room seemed to be located a bit far from their teammates'. They had been walking for almost ten minutes now, while everyone else had quickly found their rooms in way less time. Nagi mentally sighed, it felt exhausting. Did that corridor even have an end? But before he could keep complaining, Reo suddenly stopped walking and Nagi, still lost in thought, almost bumped against him.

"I think this is it." His friend muttered as he slid the keys into the lock. Then, the door opened right in front of them and they finally got inside. The wooden floor creaked under their steps, breaking the otherwise engulfing silence. There was a bathroom, but the room itself was rather small. There was no furniture except for two separate beds, a minuscule wardrobe and a desk right under a window. A window with bars on it. Nagi wondered if that was enough to start calling Reo his cell mate.

"It's..." Reo started, as he passed his finger on the lonely lamp on the desk, collecting a clump of dust. "It's hideous." He then said with a wide grin on his face. "This brings back memories, doesn't it?"

It did bring back memories, indeed. That was not their first time inside a building which structure seemed to be heavily inspired by a jail. So Nagi nodded as he let himself sink into the bed, even if sink could be considered an overstatement. The mattress felt so hard against his shoulder blades to the point that sleeping on the ground seemed a better option. The pillow felt soft enough, though. He could make it work. He had to resist. 

Nagi unlocked his phone, not too hopeful. No Wi-Fi of course and the signal was bad. It was hell. He was free falling in hell, because if hell ever existed he was sure it didn't come with an Internet connection. He put his phone away and he stared at the ceiling. A long week. That was about to be a boringly long week.

Reo, on the contrary, seemed to be genuinely enthusiastic about being there, thing which Nagi found rather odd. He had promptly emptied his bag and he had already filled the limited drawers with his clothes. He had even sprayed an odour eliminator all over the bathroom, annihilating the sharp smell which came from the drain. And he had done all that while smiling the entire time.

He was upbeat. It had been a while since Nagi had seen him so upbeat. He was glad. Reo's spontaneous energy and liveliness had always tingled his senses, naturally drawing him in. Reo beamed with vitality, full of resources, constantly surrounded by this innate glow Nagi had never seen on anyone else. He was an explosion, a relentless and magnificent fire. Nagi couldn't help but feel hypnotized by his blinding flames as he kept getting closer to him without even realizing, unaware of his scorching skin, numb to the burns on his shoulders. He had no idea that he was bound to drown, an Icarus who had yet to meet the sea.

Reo saw him staring eventually and Nagi swiftly looked away. It was happening quite often, more often than usual. Nagi had always had the habit of sneeking glances, briefly looking at him when he wasn't looking, but he never got caught. Or at least, he didn't find himself staring at Reo long enough to get caught. But lately, Reo always noticed. He didn't say anything, though. He seemed to be pleased, delighted about it, even. 

"Well, about tonight..." Reo started off, sitting on his chosen bed. "Are you in?" He finally asked, his voice filled with expectation.

Tonight. Nagi almost forgot. Was he in? Never willingly. Would he end up giving in because Reo was insisting and using his persuasive tone on him? Very likely. In any case, Nagi had no intention of surrendering right away, he was putting up a fight first. A weak one, but still a fight.

"No." Nagi replied. Quick, simple and effective.

"Why?" Reo didn't mean to let it go and Nagi loudly snorted, hating how he couldn't even pretend to be running a game on his phone since there was no signal in there. "You said you would consider!"

"I did." Nagi said flatly.

"So?" Reo seemed to be particularly struggling with Nagi's phlegmatic attitude that day.

"So, no." He confirmed his previous refusal without much of a fuss, characteristically plain. Reo frowned at him, his gaze on Nagi so sharp it seemed to be cutting through his skin. He wasn't letting him have this one. Nagi knew Reo wasn't letting him win. He rarely let him win. It was so unfair.

"But it's gonna be a crucial moment!" Reo uttered, sounding a bit dramatic. "We're supposed to get closer to our teammates. Be friends. This is about bonding. You should be bonding too."

"I am." Nagi said back. "I am bonding with our teammates." He maintained, unfazed by Reo's persistence.

"Are you? Really?" Reo raised his eyebrow, questioning the truthfulness of his statement.

"I learned all their names." Nagi declared, confident, proud of himself somehow.

"That's not bonding, Nagi. That's basic human decency." Reo corrected him, unable to contain the deep sigh which had escaped his mouth. Nagi did not agree, at all. It required effort to remember all those names and surnames and nicknames sometimes. It required space in his memory storage. A lot of it.

"Okay." Reo looked at him, acknowledging their diverging opinions on the matter. "So you said you know all their names, right?"

"Yes." Nagi firmly confirmed.

"Good." He said, inadvertently raising his chin, his eyes fixed on Nagi, eager to challenge him. "What's our second-choice goalkeeper's name then?" He consequentially asked.

He knew that. Nagi knew the answer. That was easy. Reo had obviously underestimated him.

"Kaju." Nagi replied with no second thoughts.

Reo closed his eyes and he sighed, again, for the second time in a span of no more than five minutes.

"That's his dog." He then stared at Nagi, disappointed. "Kaju is the name of his dog. The goalkeeper's name is Hayato." Reo told him and Nagi frowned at him because that couldn't be.

"No, that's not true." Nagi lifted himself up, now sitting on the bed with his legs crossed. He could clearly recall the pet in question.

A couple of weeks ago, said second-choice goalkeeper had shown up at practice with his dog because he didn't want to leave it alone and the dog sitter, who usually watched over it, had been arrested and was being held in custody by the police force for alleged murder. The man didn't seem to be worried about the situation, though. He truly believed in the dog sitter's self-claimed innocence. He kept saying it was temporary and that he would be soon cleared of all charges. "It's that he has a twin in the yakuza. That's what he told me. It's not his fault. Sorry about the dog."

Whilst said dog had taken a particular liking to Reo, following him around, waging its tail, constantly demanding pats on its head, it hadn't turned out to be an actually friendly dog overall. It had proceeded to flat every ball coming its way, during the entire training, with its disturbingly pointed teeth and it had kept manifesting nothing but intolerance towards Nagi. He had barked at him a few times and he had concluded the scene by barging into the locker room and peeing on his backpack, unprovoked. So, there was no way Nagi could forget that dog, its owner and its name.

"It is. Here, have a look." Said Reo as he showed Nagi a picture from Hayato's Instagram account. Kaju, that was the name engraved into the silver metal collar around the dog's neck.

"Oh." Nagi's expression suddenly dropped as Reo moved away his phone, sliding it back into the pocket of his jacket.

"Yeah." Reo seemed to be chuckling now. "It turns out you didn't remember shit. How could you mix them up?"

"Shut it." Nagi rolled his eyes, but Reo kept laughing. He laughed a lot, Reo. And he smiled a lot too. Nagi could do the lamest thing in the whole world, blurt out the most unfunny combination of words the human kind had ever had the misfortune to hear, Nagi could be merely existing and Reo would laugh. And not in the mean kind of way, he never laughed at him. It wasn't like that. He just seemed uncontrollably happy to be with him. And Nagi wasn't used to it. He wasn't exactly used to people being uncontrollably happy to be with him. No one ever was.

"Nagi." Reo tried again and when Nagi turned to look at him, he found his eyes to be simply inescapable. "C'mon." He insisted. "It's gonna be fun."

"It's gonna be lame." Nagi replied.

Reo clicked his tongue and Nagi had to force himself not to start staring at his lips. Not again. "Sakaki said they do this every time the coach drags them somewhere. It's like a ritual for the team. They need three guys for tonight. I think we should do it."

"I don't know." Nagi looked away. "I just wanna sleep tonight." And he was telling the truth. He was tired and playing a prank on their coach in the middle of the night, no matter how noble and rooted in camaraderie that was, seemed way too much of a hassle for someone who just wanted to rest.

But Reo wasn't withdrawing. He kneeled, all of a sudden. Reo was on the floor, right in front of Nagi, who was still sitting on the bed. "Give me your hands." Reo said.

"What?" Nagi turned around, looking confused. Reo didn't wait though, he deliberately grabbed Nagi's hands and he wrapped them in his.

It was just a simple touch. Nevertheless, it had Nagi's heart skip a beat. "What are you doing?" He asked.

"I'm begging."

"You never beg." Nagi said dryly. He didn't trust him. He knew better than this.

"Never." Reo confirmed, still staring at him, still on his knees. His grip strong, yet gentle, around Nagi's hands. It was his palms, Reo's palms were absurdly soft for a guy almost in his twenties.

"I need you." His voice came out in a whisper and Nagi found himself shivering.

It wasn't the first time. It was not the first time Reo had told him so. It was not his first time hearing those words. Yet, they kept echoing inside his brain, reverberating throughout his ribcage, twisting his insides and clenching his lungs. It was insufferable, the way he felt and more insufferable was the fact that it made no sense. For his chest to feel so heavy, for his thoughts to keep rushing and crashing against what seemed to be a dead end street. He felt like he was constantly missing something. A brick in the construction, an element in the equation, a note in the symphony. Incomplete. All his thoughts, when thinking of Reo, felt incomplete. As if the two key pages of a murder mystery book revealing its assassin had been irreversibly glued to each other, making it impossible for its reader to finally understand and see the truth. Nagi found his thoughts to be glued as well.

"And you need a hotspot." Reo added. A hotspot. Of course he needed a hotspot. His flourishing Roman Empire needed the grace of the Internet.

"Your phone gets signal?" Nagi was listening now and Reo was unable to hide the grin forming on his face.

"It does." He hummed. "I could make it a router, you know. Give you access to it, but..."

"But?" Nagi frowned.

"If you don't join me tonight, I won't grant you my Internet. That's it." Reo concluded as he stood up, still not letting go of his hands.

"This sounds like coercion." Nagi muttered, slightly annoyed.

"Make it sound like you want, I have my lawyers."

When he looked up, he saw victory all over his friend's face. "You're a jerk." Nagi said.

Then Reo had brought the latter's hands to his lips, to kiss them. "Born and raised." And he had smirked. That one smirk he made every time he succeeded into getting things to go his way.

He could never win. Nagi hated to lose, but when it came to Reo, he knew he could never win.

As if everything that day had been part of the great scheme of a superior god called Irony, the three men sent on a mission that night ended up being Nagi, Reo and the infamously feral dog's owner Hayato.

The plan was rather simple: sneak into their coach's room while he was asleep and draw cat like whiskers on his face with a permanent marker. Why were three men needed for that? Logical: one would open the door, another one would keep the door closed and the other one would actually do the deed and draw the whiskers. A simple plan indeed. But not necessarily an easy one.

The three had met up in the corridor, 2 AM, blessed by the favor of the moon. The lights were off, but a dim glow coming from outside had Nagi realize that the corridor had windows. A few, actually. Hayato was standing right in front of them, his swollen eyes telling Nagi that he wasn't the only one who had been forcefully dragged into that. The guy was wearing something which seemed to be a pyjamas. A navy one with a giant picture of his dog printed on it. Strange.

"Interesting shirt." Nagi had tried to act friendly under the weight of Reo's expectations.

"I know." Hayato had shrugged, unimpressed by the tentative appreciation. "You guys want one? I'm considering creating a collection on my own, so I may have spare ones. These are like samples." He had asked while unzipping a backpack Nagi had failed to notice until then.

"I just think your dog is ugl..."

"A collection? That sounds ambitious. Are you into fashion?" Reo had promptly cut his comment off, glaring at him once Hayato had started inspecting the inside of his own backpack.

"No." Hayato replied. "Kaju's a fan, though. He likes Prada and all that stuff. He asked me to do it."

Don't say a thing, Reo had mouthed when Nagi had shared with him an extremely confused expression. 

"Shit." Hayato uttered, disappointed. "I'm sorry, guys. I guess I don't actually have those spare ones here. I could give them to you next week, though."

"Sure." Reo replied. "Whenever is fine."

"Never is also fine." Nagi found himself thinking out loud.

"What did you just say?" Hayato had frowned.

"I think we should go." Reo intervened, strongly poking Nagi in his ribs. "It's getting late, isn't it?"

"Yeah." Hayato agreed, a bit hesitant. "Let's get going." He said and then he had started walking, swiftly disappearing behind the corridor's corner. Nagi was about to do just the same when Reo had stopped him, grabbing his forearm.

"What..." But before he could ask, Reo had pressed his lips against his. Quickly, so quickly Nagi had wondered if Reo had really kissed him, right there, in that corridor, aware of their teammate being only a few steps away and that he could turn around and see them at any minute. But he didn't seem to care. Nagi was wonderstruck and Reo was laughing. Again.

His cheeks felt unusually warm. Stupid. That was stupid. It had been just a peck. 

"C'mon, now. Let's go." Reo brushed it off, leaving Nagi no choice but to follow him.

When they reached the coach's door, Hayato was crouched down, his hand holding with two fingers what turned out to be a hairpin.

"Are you really gonna open the door with just that?" Reo had been vocal about his doubts, squinting a bit, trying to recognize the tiny object in the dark.

"Yeah." Hayato shrugged. "It's an old lock. Pretty basic. From the eighties, I assume. It comes undone quite easily. My niece taught me everything about locks."

"Did she?" Reo asked, surprised. "Door locks? Is she like a blacksmith or something?"

"My niece?" Hayato replied, shaking his head. "Oh no, she's not a blacksmith. She's dating a thief. It's been... five years now. They're getting married in June if he manages to get out of prison in time."

"Is he serious?" Nagi was puzzled, keeping his voice low as he whispered to Reo's ear.

"Do we really wanna know?" Reo asked the real question and Nagi decided that no, they did not really want to know.

Then a dull sound breaching the silence all around them announced Hayato successfully breaking the lock open. He gave the door a light push and all of them tiptoed their way in. The coach's room wasn't all that different from the one Nagi and Reo were staying at. It looked a little more spacious, however. Probably because of the wide window which gave a complete view of the football field outside, but that aside, it didn't differ much. The three of them stopped for a moment, looking around, checking the surrounding. Their target was sleeping, laying on his bed, a trail of saliva delicately and slowly streaming down the side of his mouth as he snored deeply. He was vulnerable. It was a perfect scenario. It was time for action.

Reo stayed behind, leaning against the closed door while Nagi walked towards the bed, stealthily, trying not to make any sort of noises. He constantly looked around in order to let his eyes get used to the darkness as he stepped forward. Then he stopped by the side of the bed. The coach's breathing was quiet, his sleep still intact. Nagi felt almost jealous. He wished he were the one to be sleeping so peacefully.

Hayato, who was standing right beside him, handed Nagi the marker. There was no turning back. Nagi leaned over, his fingers wrapped around such a dangerous weapon.

He traced the first line. His hand firm and steady as he started drawing whiskers on the man's face. Nagi tilted his head as if taking the measures for his next stroke, suddenly committed to the job he had been entrusted with. He took his time, he drew accurately and with proper care and, when the marker left the coach's skin at last, he knew. Nagi simply knew.

"This is amazing." Hayato exhaled, his voice exuding pure admiration. "Those are the best drawn cat like whiskers I've ever seen." He said, patting on Nagi's shoulder. "You've got some real raw talent here, man."

Years. All those years spent doodling in class had seemed to pay off eventually. "Thanks." Nagi quietly replied.

"Are you done over there?" Nagi heard Reo say and he was about to positively reply when Hayato tightened the grip on his shoulder, his finger pointing at the coach's face.

"You missed a whisker." He said, his tone comically serious.

"What?" Nagi whispered.

"Look." He told him. "Four on the left and only three on the right. You missed one."

Nagi mentally counted the lines. It was true. He had forgotten to trace the last one. He grabbed the marker again, determined to fix and finalize his work of art. The clock was ticking, he noticed. A clock on the nightstand Nagi hadn't noticed when they had first entered the room. But he could hear it now and it was loud. Loud, to the point the clock hands seemed to be stuck in his ears. It was annoying. Almost exasperating. 

"Dude?" Hayato called. "Is everything alright?"

His words snapped Nagi out of his own head. So he just nodded as he moved the marker closer to the coach's face.

A single line needed to be traced and then they were all free to go. Nagi would be free to go. Just one.

"Shit."

The marker slipped out of Nagi's hand as the man who was definitely not sleeping anymore prevented him from drawing by grabbing his wrist. "You guys really thought I would come to the battle front unprepared?"

That had been what Nagi had heard before the counterstrike happened. Before his vision blurred and the sound of something being sprayed on his face resounded throughout the room. It all happened quickly: he felt his other wrist being surrounded by a way more familiar touch as he found himself being dragged backwards. Everything around seemed to be spinning at an insanely frenetic speed, Nagi's eyes still closed due to the strangely airy substance which was making them itch a little.

"I think he was looking for his glasses back in there." He heard Hayato say, his tone alarmed, as the three of them had seemingly managed to reach the corridor outside after having slammed the door shut behind their backs. 

"And is it bad?" Reo asked, still holding Nagi by his wrist.

"I don't know, but I think we'd better..."

The screeching sound of the handle being pulled down had all of them flinch. "Run." Hayato concluded and everything started moving again.

The light touch of Reo's fingers on his skin being Nagi's only constant within all that chaos. They had to run, but there was nowhere to run. Their rooms were too far and the coach's steps were getting closer. Nagi never thought a bald sixty years old could be that fast. They turned around the corner, temporarily out of their coach's sight. That's when Reo's grip tightened around his wrist. Before he could realize it, Reo had opened a random door and pushed the both of them inside an extremely narrow room, not to say claustrophobic.

"Wait. What is..." Nagi tried to utter when his back accidentally hit what felt like a broomstick.

"Quiet." Reo hushed him swiftly, his breath short as he recovered from all the running. Nagi did as he was told and didn't dare to move. He couldn't move anyway. The place was way too small, so small that his chest was almost brushing against Reo's. Reo, whose back was already touching the wall.

Footsteps, nervous footsteps from outside seemed to be approaching. Nagi's heart was pounding, so relentlessly he could feel it climbing up his throat.

"If I get your faces, your life will end by tomorrow!" They heard the man say with threatening intentions. "Fertilizer! Whoever did this is turning into organic fertilizer for the woods nearby!"

Nagi and Reo almost winced when the coach had presumably bumped his fist against the door of the closet they were hiding in. Both of them holding their breaths, waiting. Either for the man to walk away or for them to get busted. "Youngsters." He was grumbling. "I'm too old for this shit." He said, as his voice started sounding less clear and more distant.

"Did he really not see us?" Nagi whispered, finally getting to breathe out.

"He didn't have his glasses on, apparently." Reo replied, keeping his voice low. "He can't see anything without them."

Convenient, incredibly convenient, Nagi thought. Then, as the danger seemed to tone down, becoming less imminent, it started bothering him again. The thing he had on his face. Whatever that was.

"I can't see anything now." He said.

"Oh." Reo looked at him and then he proceeded to partially wipe Nagi's face with his hand. "Better?" He asked.

"Yeah." Nagi replied and now that he was able to give an actual look around he realized that they were indeed inside a broom closet. It was too soon to get out of there, though. Their coach could still be sticking around, waiting for them to make a fatal miscalculation. Reo was probably thinking the same since he had yet to suggest for them to leave and go back to their room.

"What's this anyway?" He asked instead as he stared at his own hand. "It looks like cream, doesn't it?"

Nagi wasn't sure. It was white, though, and the consistency did resemble cream, so Reo could be right.

"I'll try it." Reo announced and before Nagi could say anything, he just did it. He moved his hand to his mouth and then he licked the supposedly cream off his fingers. "That's it." He confidently shook his head. "Whipped cream." Reo then stated. "Why did coach choose spray cream as his defense weapon, though?" 

Nagi ran his tongue over his lips, trying to catch the whipped cream still lingering there. "It's good." He said. It must have been the most expensive spray cream at the store, Nagi considered.

"Not bad at all." Reo agreed as he sucked on his index finger, which was still covered in cream. And Nagi hadn't meant to let his gaze fall for that, but the forced proximity wasn't being much of a help. Reo's lips were curled around his finger and they seemed to be glowing in the dark. A string of glistening saliva formed and broke, subsequently, after his finger had left his mouth. Nagi inadvertently swallowed, an odd feeling weighing on his chest.

Reo seemed to notice, but he didn't say a word. His hand moved again, instead, to Nagi's face, collecting some other whipped cream from his chin and then he placed his two fingers back on his own lips. He moved his tongue across those fingers, slowly, almost tentatively. He wasn't looking at him, but, in the back of his mind, Nagi wanted him to do it.

Nagi took a step forward, just one, the only one step forward he could take within such a tight space and he almost fell in the process, tripping on an empty bottle of detergent on the floor. As he palmed the wall with both hands, searching for stability, he ended up trapping Reo with his body. They were even closer now. Way too close.

Reo chuckled at his clumsiness and Nagi felt mesmerized. Reo looked up, finally, and leaned towards him, placing his lips on Nagi's cheek to taste the cream once again, licking it off from there. It should have disgusted him, Nagi found himself thinking. It should have disgusted him the feeling of someone licking whipped cream away from his face, but it didn't. He wasn't finding it gross, not even in the slightest. His skin seemed to be prickling every time Reo ran his tongue on his cheek. His heart exceeding every single speed limit, beating so loud Nagi wondered if Reo could hear it as well.

Reo pulled away. There was some cream left on the side of his mouth, but he seemed to be unaware of it, so Nagi instinctively thought of returning the favor. He leaned in, he traced the lines of Reo's lips with his tongue and then stopped, lingering on the spot with still remaining whipped cream.

It had a fluffy texture, nice for his taste, but before he could swallow it, Reo had decided to pull him closer. He pressed their lips together, forcing Nagi to open his mouth so he could suck on his tongue and steal what was left of the cream. Then, Reo just started kissing him.

Bewitched. Nagi found himself to be weirdly bewitched. The whipped cream liquefying as their tongues moved, considerable the amount of saliva they were sharing and it should have taken him aback, but it really wasn't. The overly sweet aftertaste and the extraordinary eagerness coming from Reo, who kept kissing him with a voracity Nagi had never experienced before. He was crushed, completely. At every breath, at every whine, at every tiny little shiver. He was shattering, breaking into pieces. He was lost, prey of a boundless ocean, helplessly facing a destructive storm, but he wasn't fighting it anymore. Water kept flowing into his lungs, his oxygen was running short, but he dived deeper.

Reo grabbed Nagi's wrists, both of them, as he kept kissing him. He placed Nagi's hands on his shoulders, then he let them slide down his body, slowly, excruciatingly slowly, guiding them to his chest, then to his stomach and then again to his hips. Nagi thought about complaining when Reo hadn't let him hold his waist, but soon he discovered that his friend had different plans. Reo's grip was firm while leading Nagi's hands to his lower back and even firmer when he had those same hands running down further.

When Reo freed his wrists and he realized where his hands were resting on, he pulled away from the kiss, his nose still touching Reo's. Nagi was hardly breathing, feeling a range of emotions he found confusing to deal with. Reo was hardly breathing too and the confidence from seconds ago seemed to be gone. He opened his mouth, trying to speak, but nothing came out of it. He leaned in for a kiss which wasn't much of a kiss actually. A brush, a mere brush of lips, then he retreated.

Reo was hesitating, sorting out Nagi's reaction before attempting anything else.

He didn't want Reo to hesitate, whatever he was hesitating about. So Nagi leaned in again and, as they kissed, he impulsively rubbed Reo's ass and then grabbed it with much more determination.

He had heard him before. Nagi had heard Reo make sounds. A variety of sounds, actually. But that? That was different. That breathy moan Reo had uselessly tried to suffocate had nothing to do with any other noises escaped from his mouth. Nagi didn't know what kind of force had been driving him in that moment. What kind of flame had awakened inside of him, but something did switch. Irreversibly.

Reo instinctively bit on Nagi's lower lip as they kissed, not too gently to pass unnoticed, not too hard to actually hurt. But he did find the slightly rough pressure compelling.

All of a sudden, Nagi felt hot and he generally didn't feel hot. Hands always cold, feet always freezing, but now it felt like a huge furnace had been freshly installed inside that broom closet, taking the heat to unimaginable levels.

And then, in a matter of seconds, the temperature dropped to the Ice Age.

Reo pushed him away so out of the blue that Nagi frowned at him, clearly confused, but then he heard them too. Footsteps.

"Guys, I think he's gone." The door opened and Nagi squinted as the light from outside reached his eyes. "Good night." Hayato raised his hand to wave at them and then he walked away, absurdly calm.

Nagi touched his own face and noticed how the whipped cream was still partially there, so he turned around to look at Reo who had apparently managed to wipe his before Hayato could suspect anything.

"We should go." Reo murmured, his mind seemingly elsewhere.

He walked down the corridor and Nagi did the same, not questioning why his friend appeared to be so lost in thought all of a sudden. Once they reached their room, Nagi immediately went for the sink in the bathroom in order to finally wash his face and get rid of that sticky sensation. The cold water felt like a blessing, falling droplets like translucent pearls adorning his skin. As he reached for a towel, he got a glimpse of his reflection in the mirror. Then his eyes fell on his own lips, still a bit red and swollen. Reo had never kissed him like that, with so much hunger and need. He had always let Nagi enough room to lead if he wanted to, he had always let him set the rhythm if he felt like it, but things had been different in the broom closet. Reo had been overwhelming and domineering, yet desperately anxious. There had been urgency in the way Reo had kissed him, tension in the way Reo had touched him. Nagi's mind seemed to be restless, creating an entire film reel out of those few minutes, replaying every single scene, every single sensation, every single breath. He started wondering what would have happened if Hayato hadn't interrupted them. He started wondering what Reo was thinking. Even now.

Nagi shivered. It was still a bit cold and he was still tired. Practice would be intense that whole week, he had to sleep.

When he exited the bathroom, Reo happened to be still awake, setting the alarm for the next day. Nagi approached his bed and he was about to lie down when his phone on the pillow lit up because of a notification. A Rise of Kingdom notification. Strange, but then Reo spoke.

"I set up the hotspot." He said briefly.

Nagi opened the app and his Roman Empire was there. "You should really set a passcode by the way." Reo then added. "What if someone steals your phone?"

"Nobody has ever stolen it." Nagi replied, his head now finally touching the pillow.

"Yeah, but that could happen." Reo considered. He wasn't all wrong, so Nagi clicked on settings.

"Done." He said after a couple of minutes. 

"It's one, two, three, four, isn't it?" Reo tried to guess, slightly amused.

"No." Nagi immediately denied.

"Really?" His friend asked skeptical.

Nagi sighed, there was no point in lying. "Okay." He admitted. "It's one, two, three, four."

Reo laughed softly and then he pulled the covers up over his shoulders. "Good night, Nagi." He just said.

Nagi put his phone away and he turned around. Reo's eyes were closed and his breath was calm, almost imperceptible. His hair messily falling on his forehead. His skin gently kissed by the moonlight. He looked like a prince, Nagi found himself thinking. He hadn't been read many fairy-tales as a kid, but he knew princes were supposed to look like him: delicate yet strong, clever, but kind. Ambitious, yet never arrogant. And if Reo were to be a prince and that was his story, what would that Nagi make? A servant, a knight, another prince coming from afar. Did even Nagi belong to Reo's world, to his tale? Or was he temporary? Was he simply passing by?

He fell asleep and when the sun came up he simply forgot about all the dwelling. 

〰️

Running into the woods was not the experience Nagi thought it would turn out to be. Running into the woods meant keeping an eye on everything, from roots to branches, from insects to animals Nagi had no idea how to name. Running into the woods meant excessive sweat, unsustainable effort and obviously it came with the chance of getting lost and Nagi had to be the one falling within chances. There was a path in there, a very normal and human tailored path. Their coach hadn't had them running in the actual wild of the forest, but, when everyone had turned to the right, Nagi had failed to notice and turned to the left. He didn't even have Reo that morning since the team had been split in two for practice. Ergo, his best friend was unaware, probably trying out new tactics on the pitch.

Nagi had tried to walk back and return to the right path, but that had been proved to be harder than he had imagined. Not even hugging a tree had worked, that had just let ants find their way inside Nagi's shirt. A rather terrifying experience. But then, when everything had seemed to be lost, he had heard footsteps coming his way, crunching leaves on the ground. Hayato had shown up, all of a sudden, telling him that everyone had been wondering where he was and when Nagi had asked how he had found him, Hayato had just shrugged and said: "Kaju taught me how to do it. Following the scent and all that stuff."

Impressive, but weird nonetheless. "Can you... are you able to talk with your dog?" Nagi had asked and Hayato had laughed at him.

"I can't talk with my dog. That's impossible. I just... listen." He had said and then proceeded to tell Nagi the entire story.

Apparently, Kaju had always been a stray dog before meeting Hayato, and Hayato had always been alone before meeting Kaju, living in an orphanage for most of his youth. Despite the staff members' efforts to keep the allegedly dangerous dog away from the small kid, the two had soon grown inseparable, to the point whoever thought about adopting Hayato had to take in consideration adopting the dog as well. Lots of couples had preferred to take a step back for this very reason, but, at last, Hayato and Kaju had found a new family and started living together under a brand new roof. They had been knowing each other for ten years now.

Nagi still didn't like Kaju, but he felt like he could understand Hayato's affection towards it. "I have something like that too." He had told him. "But it's a cactus. Its name's Choki."

"A cactus?" Hayato had replied. "That sounds awesome." And so they had started bonding over their connections with non human living beings.

Three days had gone by since their training camp had started. Practicing in such a different environment was tough, but Nagi was somehow enjoying it. The clear air felt refreshing and he found his body to be more responsive and intuitive at the same time. His reflexes faster and sharper, as his mind seemed to be analyzing the things happening around him on the field more quickly and much more in depth.

As for now, Nagi was deep into the water of the hot springs. The constant chatter of his teammates sounding muffled and distant as he freely floated with his eyes shut, quietly relaxing while the heat helped his blood flow to his sore muscles. Those hot springs were not as incredible and as massive as their coach had painted them out to be, but they were nice and Nagi ended up staying there until his skin got wrinkly every single night.

"What do you mean I don't stand a chance?" One of his teammates, last name Ichinose, 31 years old, three divorces under his belt, father of two, had asked to another one of his teammates, last name Takahiko, 28 years old, four years into his marriage with a German model. Nagi had actually learned their names. He was doing his homework now, to Reo's surprise.

"She's too hot. She'll never swipe right on you. Just deal with it." Takahiko cackled.

"What are you even implying? That I'm not enough? I'm a football player, I have my status, I earn tons of money. Of course she'd swipe right on me." Ichinose strongly disagreed, causing the water around him to splash towards Nagi's direction.

"You could be this country's Emperor and she would still swipe left." Takahiko stated harshly. "You're way too ugly for someone like her."

"Ugly?" Said Ichinose, clearly outraged. "I'm not ugly. No woman ever called me that. And I dated a huge amount of women."

"Cause women are used to do charity." Takahiko clicked his tongue and Ichinose frowned at him, irritated.

"Alright." He said. "Let's ask someone else. Seishirou!" Nagi heard his name being spelled out and he considered swimming away, but the two men were looking at him already. He had no chance to escape. "Look at this girl. Is she out of my league or not?" Ichinose hunched forwards, shoving his phone in Nagi's face.

He couldn't even look properly at the girl on the screen, so how could he judge? However, he didn't care enough to voice that out. He just said the first things coming to his mind. "It could work." Nagi presumed.

"See?" Ichinose turned to Takahiko, a shark grin on his face. "Seishirou's here says it could work."

"He's a kid." Takahiko stated as he rolled his eyes. "He doesn't want to cause trouble telling his senior that he looks like shit." 

"You're talking shit as if you could pull this girl." 

"I don't care about pulling that girl. I'm happily married."

"Yeah, everyone says that." Ichinose looked at him sideways.

"I think none of your ex wives has ever said that, though." And by the time Ichinose was attempting to drown Takahiko, Nagi had stopped listening. His entire attention stolen by the person who had just made his entrance and was now on the other side of the bath. Nagi realized how, that day, he hadn't come across Reo until that moment. His different training schedule hadn't let him see him. Nagi could have walked to him now and joined him, but he found himself unable to do so. Reo was laughing at something someone had said, a radiant aura surrounding him and Nagi felt a kind of warmth flaring inside his chest. He couldn't look away, Reo was there and Nagi could not look away.

"So?" Ichinose had been calling him. "Seishirou?"

"What?" Nagi asked, still distracted.

"We said: what about you?" Takahiko tried to clarify, but Nagi was oblivious to the context.

"Ehm... what about what?" He asked, tilting his head.

Ichinose snorted, entertained by Nagi's puzzled expression. "We just asked you if you have a girlfriend." He cleared out, that sneer carved into his face.

"Oh." Nagi said, suddenly conscious of his teammates' stares on him. "No." He replied. "I don't."

"Told you." Ichinose looked triumphant as he glanced at Takahiko who was glaring back in response.

"Like... never had a girlfriend?" The latter sounded surprised.

"Never." Nagi confirmed with a shrug of his shoulders. No girl had ever been interested in him, no girl had ever approached him and Nagi had never cared about girls anyway. Reo was the one who cared about girls. He had always seemed to appreciate their company, their presence, their looks. Nagi knew Reo had been friendly with people who were girls, so it was natural for him to wonder if he had ever had a girlfriend. 

"It's okay." Ichinose remarked in a patronizing tone. "You're young. You have your entire life to build experience and..."

"I have experience." Nagi said without thinking it first, cutting him off.

"So you're seeing someone, but you're not dating her?" Takahiko looked even more surprised now.

"Yeah. It's something recent." Nagi replied. "I'm not dating..." Him. His eyes instinctively leaped to the side, indulging a fleeting glance.

"Oh, oh!" Ichinose eagerly exclaimed. "So you're a player even out of the pitch." He raucously chortled as he dragged himself out of water. "Who would have thought!"

"No." Nagi tried to correct him. "It's not..."

"Don't mind him." Takahiko told him. "He's an idiot. First relationships are tough. Just don't be a dick and everything's gonna be fine." 

"Yeah! Don't be a dick!" Ichinose was rubbing his neck with a towel. "I destroyed four marriages by being a dick."

"Four? Didn't you marry three times?" Takahiko asked, snatching the towel from him.

"One's not mine. It was my cousin's." Ichinose innocently said and Takahiko hit him with that same towel.

"You're sick." He spit out and then he turned to Nagi. "See you, Seishirou. Have a good night." And Nagi had murmured a barely audible night before his back hit the wall of the bath where he leaned on as thoughts started clouding his mind.

Relationship, Takahiko had said, but that wasn't it. That was not what Reo and him had. Not in the bland generic sense of it. They were just friends, that was clear. But Nagi was not an idiot: he knew friends didn't act the way they did. He was not so detached from reality to not realize that friends didn't kiss, that friends slept in another bed, that friends weren't normally as close as they were, but they were still friends, in their own way.

So that was not what had bothered him, that was not what had caused a deflection in his ordinary thought process. It had been the first, that simple word had struck Nagi's curiosity and attention. Because Reo had been all of his firsts, consciously or not.

He had been the first person to see him, the first one to sit with him on those old high school stairs. Reo had been the first to believe in him, the first to choose him for a group project, his first supporter, his first friend, his first night out, his first dream, his first fight, his first kiss. Reo had been there every step of the way. Reo had stolen all of his firsts and sentenced Nagi to an existence irreversibly tied to his. Nagi, who had a tendency to forget, realized he could never forget Reo, not even if he wanted to. Everything in his life was so tangled up with him that he would find difficult to pull the string without ruining the entire tapestry. Impossible to bleed off the stream of their memories together from himself without bleeding out.

He was condemned to remember Reo until the end. But was Nagi Reo's first? That was the question. Would Reo remember him at fifty years old, looking at some kids playing football on the street? Would Reo think of him, at sixty, passing by a flower shop, getting a glimpse of a cactus through the windows? Would Reo's mind run to Nagi, at seventy, while waiting for a train, pretending not to see two young boys secretely sharing a kiss? Would Reo remember him even if they happened to part ways? Would Reo still need him even after their careers had been over and their goal achieved?

"Hey." He almost flinched when he heard Reo's voice. There was no one around anymore. Everyone had left. He, however, hadn't noticed. "Long day. I haven't seen you at all." Reo casually said as he reached Nagi's side of the bath.

"I got to talk with the new guy, that Adrian. I asked him why was he even here, playing with us in Japan when he's Swedish. He said coming here was his dream. Can you believe that?" Reo told him, water splashing a bit as he moved around. "And I found out Sasaki wanted to be a filmmaker when he was a kid. That's why he brings his camera everywhere. He filmed coach picking his nose by accident. Disgusting, but he said it could be useful. Blackmail reasons, I guess."

Nagi just nodded, his eyes fixed on the air bubbles coming up to the surface. Reo had a quick peek on his face, then he set his gaze on those same bubbles Nagi was looking at. And they stayed like that for a while, just staring at the bubbles until Reo talked again.

"You're being quiet." He noticed, his bare shoulder brushing against Nagi's.

"I'm always quiet." The latter replied plain, as he was started feeling cold right where the water wasn't embracing his skin. Reo didn't contradict him. Nagi wasn't wrong, he had never been much talkative and Reo knew, but Reo also knew him. He didn't always understand him right away, but he was patient and he seemed to be able to listen and recognize his every silence. Nagi had always appreciated that, he had always liked not having to use words for Reo to get him, but Reo's perceptiveness was irksome now. Because Nagi wasn't understanding those ominous feelings at the pit of his stomach and he didn't want Reo to figure them out before he could do it himself.

"Is there... something on your mind?" Reo asked, timidly, his tone unsure.

"No." Nagi replied immediately. A lie and he never lied. He didn't recall a time in his life in which he had lied. To lie was uselessly intricate and he liked to keep things simple. But he was lying now, there was something on his mind. Someone. It was him: Reo. Reo was on his mind and he wouldn't leave.

"Okay." Reo drawled, slightly moving away. "I'm pretty worn out." He said. "So I think I'll just go to sleep. Don't stay too much in here or you'll shrink." He gave him a tentative smile and then he turned around.

The water kept producing and shaping empty spheres bound to break once they reached the surface, one by one.

"Reo." Nagi moved by instinct, reaching for Reo's wrist. Reo turned his head, looking at Nagi over the shoulder, his features stretched into a confused expression.

The tips of his fingers touching Reo's skin seemed to be burning. His grip wasn't firm, not at all. Nagi was shaking, imperceptibly, but still shaking. 

"What?" Reo was waiting, but Nagi didn't know what to say. He didn't know what was going on. He was thinking too much, he was feeling too much and none of that made sense to him. Everything seemed to be overflowing, fiercely destroying barriers inside of him. His lips parted, for what? To say? To ask? What did he want? Nagi needed words, but he didn't have any.

"Nagi?"

Bubbles kept breaking against the surface. Ephemeral. Soundless in their explosions.

Nagi couldn't even hear his voice. It took him over, the noise. "Reo." The chaos. "What am I..."

And then it all stopped. It all quietened down. The lights went out and the both of them were suddenly surrounded by the dark.

"What's going on?" Reo leaped away. "A blackout?"

Nagi blinked. The weight compressing his stomach disappeared, fading away as if it had never been there. Better, he thought as he took a deep breath, he felt better like this. Then the lights lit up again.

"A power outage, I guess." Nagi supposed. It seemed so stupid. All those thoughts not going anywhere seemed so stupid and so insignificant now. A complete waste of energy.

"Yeah. Seems so." Reo gave a look around as if to make sure everything had stayed the same. "Well." He then turned to Nagi. "I'll go now."

"I'm coming with you." Nagi said, feeling normal again. "I'm tired."

"Hayato told me you got lost today." He said as he got out of the bath, stretching his arm, offering his hand to Nagi who gladly accepted it.

"I even hugged a tree." Nagi informed him, suppressing a yawn as he let himself get dragged out of the water.

"I wish I could have seen that." Reo laughed softly. "Oh, wait." He then stopped. "Were you saying something before? I mean, before the lights went out."

"No." Nagi replied. "Actually no."

"Alright." Reo smiled at him and Nagi could finally breathe. 

〰️

A shot from one of his teammates had almost hit Nagi in the face when the sporting director had called him. It was the morning of their seventh and final day there, in the mountains. The training camp was about to end and everyone would be back in Tokyo the following day. Back to civilization. Back to a more stable Internet connection. Not that Reo's hot-spot hadn't worked out, but Nagi was starting to miss the familiar Wi-Fi symbol on his screen. And he missed his bed, a real one, because there was no way that paper-thin mattress hard as a rock he had been sleeping on the entire week could pass for an actual bed. Anyway, the torture would be over soon. The comfort of his studio apartment would be within reach in less than twenty four hours.

Droplets of sweat were embedded on his forehead crowning him like royalty and his jersey was covered in a mixture of mud and grass as he walked towards the middle aged man who had just requested his presence. The man's name was Kitamura and Nagi was able to remember that because of those huge triangular sunglasses he always had on and the vast variety of Sanrio pins fixed on his necktie. Questionable choice of fashion, but Nagi couldn't say he was an expert on such matters. He knew nothing, actually.

"Morning." Nagi greeted him, a little out of breath, his mind still focused on the bicycle kick he had colossally failed during the little practice game they had had.

"Good morning to you Seishirou." The man smiled bright at Nagi who could see his own reflection in his mirrored lenses. "You know, I'll make it quick. I don't want to be a bother while you're training."

"Okay." Nagi simply said, fixing the gloves on his hands.

"As you might know, I have a daughter." Kitamura started saying.

"Sure." Nagi replied even if he had no idea of the existence of his daughter.

"She's the one who gifted me with all these pins." He specified, showing off his tie.

"That's cool." Nagi worded out, trying to hide his lack of interest.

"Yeah, it is and..."

"Ball!" Someone screamed to warn them and they both crouched down to dodge the deadly shot.

"Sorry." Reo raised a hand to apologize on the guys' behalf as he walked past them in order to recover the ball. Kitamura nonchalantly brushed it off and then he turned to Nagi again.

"Okay, so: speaking of my daughter. She happens to be a fan, a football fan. When Blue Lock was airing that was all she talked about. She's pretty passionate." He explained and Nagi nodded. "She religiously follows the league and you're her favorite player."

"Am I?" Nagi raised his eyebrow at him.

"Of course you are!" Kitamura reiterated. "And the point is: she's coming here today. My wife is out of town and she doesn't like to be alone, so she'll be here in a few hours to spend the day with me."

"And... what do I have to do with that?" Nagi genuinely asked, the chill air drying off his sweat already.

"It's about tonight." The man clarified. "She would love to meet you. I was thinking about having you meet her at dinner, here, at the tavern. Quite informal. You don't have to dress up or anything. It's just my girl, after all."

The offer sounded terrible, but it was a kid. Nagi could handle a kid. Or at least he could try. "Alright, it's fine to me."

"Really?" Kitamura seemed to rejoice. "She'll be ecstatic about this. I didn't want to tell you, but she kinda has a thing for you. How do people call it these days? Crush?"

"What?" Said Nagi.

"What?" Another voice echoed him.

Both Nagi and Kitamura turned around. Reo was there, the ball in his hands. "Sorry." He said, scratching the back of his neck. "Don't mind me. Just passing by." Then he looked at Nagi, his expression clearly amused.

"Anyway." Kitamura was back on the topic. "Don't tell her I told you. She would disown me and start living with her aunt. She already tried once." He was laughing, but he awkwardly stopped when he noticed Nagi wasn't. "Okay. See you tonight. Thank you for the favor." And then Nagi watched him veer elsewhere. 

A ball hit Nagi eventually, right on his stomach and he bent over. He looked up to discover who the culprit was when he saw Reo laughing. "So you have a date tonight?"

Nagi rolled his eyes. He wasn't letting him live, wasn't he?

"What? You don't like it?" He said as he ran backwards to get back on the pitch. "You don't like to be every middle school girl's dream?"

"You're insufferable." Nagi tried to glare at him, but the dazzling sunlight tormenting his eyes didn't let him.

"As if that could hurt me." Reo grinned smugly.

Oh, he wanted to kiss him. Nagi really wanted to shut him up and kiss him.

Once the evening came, after an exhausting day of practice, everyone seemed to be keen to sit around the table and finally get to eat. The tavern's people had treated them well the whole week, always serving exquisite food, always welcoming them with fond smiles. That's why the coach had insisted on having the staff in its entirety join the team for that last meal there. The air was warm, the fire was crackling inside the wood stoves and bottles of saké were already passing from hand to hand as rosy-cheeked faces sonorously laughed, elated, relishing the moment. Nagi, who had mastered the art of nodding, quietly followed his teammates' talks, participating only when he was directly consulted. Reo, on the other hand, seemed way more energetic than him as he could count on his solid eloquence. Plates clashing, glasses being nailed down on the table as conversations flowed, water carelessly spilled on the white cloth. The conviviality of the atmosphere had Nagi relax completely, to the point he was starting to feel a bit sleepy, but it was too soon to leave. 

He almost considered resting his head on the table when the loud chattering died down. Every single head turned towards the two people who had just stepped in: the sporting director Kitamura and a young woman around Nagi's age, presumably. She seemed shy, hiding behind the man's broad figure. Kitamura pompously greeted everyone in the room and then he sat down next to the coach and the mysterious woman did the same, not leaving his side.

"Who's that?" Nagi heard Takahiko ask, but nobody seemed to have an answer for that. Then Kitamura's eyes met Nagi's and his expression opened up in a sparkling joy. It's her, he mouthed. She was not a middle school girl, not at all.

"Isn't that Kitamura's daughter?" The words flew across the table and they reached Reo's ears.

"Is she?" He asked, his tone peculiarly alarmed.

"Seriously?" Ichinose appeared next to him like a devil on his shoulder. "Is that the girl with a crush on our Seishirou?" He snorted, clearly having fun. "She's hot."

Nagi looked at her a second time. She seemed lost, holding on to the shadow of his father, looking around through her long eyelashes. She was pretty, he supposed, the way most girls were pretty.

"Yeah." Nagi heard Reo murmur. "She's beautiful."

Nagi turned to look at him. His face was fine, but his hand seemed to tremble as he held his chopsticks. Nagi was about to say something to him, anything, but he got interrupted by Kitamura calling his name. "Seishirou! Come here!"

Ichinose grabbed him by the shoulders and he lifted Nagi up, forcing him to stand. "He's calling you. You better go." He said, trying to make him budge, but Nagi's feet were anchored to the ground.

"What?" Reo said, looking up at Nagi, giving him one of his brightest smiles. "A fan is a fan, right?"

"You heard him. Be the great striker that you are!" And with a final push, Nagi started walking towards the sporting director and his daughter.

"Sit with us! There's a seat here." Kitamura invited him, pointing at an empty chair between the two of them. Nagi did as suggested and when he sat down he felt Kitamura's arm sliding around his shoulders. "So, how are you?" He asked.

"Good." Nagi could sense a general unease growing in him. "Just like this morning."

"Right. We met this morning." The man immediately took away his arm, seemingly embarrassed. "Ehm... Anyway, this is..."

"Dad, enough." Her daughter spoke, interrupting him as she shook her head. "I'm Minori. I apologize for my father's... exuberance." She said. "Whatever he told you please don't believe him."

"What? I just told him that you're a fan and you like football and..." But then Minori glared at him and he immediately stopped. 

"He talked about you as if you were twelve." Nagi said bluntly, adding fuel to the fire. "And the pins didn't help."

"I'm twenty and I'm the current manager of the Sanrio Shinjuku Store." Minori explained as she kept throwing daggers at her father. 

"Fine!" Kitamura chose to surrender. "I'm sorry! But you've always wanted to meet the guy and all those pictures in your phone, I..."

"Please." She almost begged and Nagi could notice the faint pink painting her cheeks. An awkward silence fell over the two and Nagi seriously thought about leaving with some sort of excuse, but he didn't have it in him. He was a nice person, apparently. 

"I liked the pins by the way." Nagi uttered and he wasn't lying, the pins were actually cool. Not matched with suit and tie, but cool.

Minori raised her gaze and she found the courage to look at him, for the first time that night. "Really?"

"Mh, mh." Nagi replied. "Do you have others?"

And so she smiled. "Plenty!"

Nagi found out that Minori was as cool as the pins she so willingly gave out to anyone who asked. She had long, very long hair, she knew lots about football tactics and history and she was incredibly talkative. She talked so much that Nagi didn't even have to burden himself with the weight of the conversation: she happily filled the blanks for him whenever he struggled to find something to say. She felt strangely familiar and Nagi actually enjoyed her company. She was bubbly and lively, but never invasive and Nagi had been content to follow her outside to keep talking to her without having to shout, far from the noise of the dining table. Minori had tattoos and she smoked and she dreamed of making it big as the first female coach in the J1 League. She was ambitious, Nagi liked ambition, even if that was something he lacked.

"It's clear that you're going to win this year." She stated. "I mean the championship. I don't think there's a team able to antagonize you. Your victory's almost inevitable."

Nagi was sitting on a bench facing the football field while she was standing there, holding a cigarette in her hand as she formed small and grayish clouds. Their coach wouldn't like to hear this. He wanted his players to stay focused, match after match, no premature celebrations. So Nagi didn't say anything, even if she wasn't wrong. The gap between them and the second place was too striking to pass unnoticed.

"What are you gonna do?" She turned around as she inhaled the smoke.

"What do you mean?" Nagi looked at her, her face barely illuminated by the lamp hung on the wall behind them.

"After you guys win the championship. Are you staying?" She asked, the end of her cigarette between her fingers was burning red. "Dad told me you got a buyout clause. And it's surprisingly low."

Buyout clause. Nagi remembered his agent mentioning it a few times, but he had never put much thinking into it. "Great clubs could be watching you." Minori exhaled one last time before putting the cigarette out. 

"I just wanna play and see where things go." Nagi said quietly.

"But you must have a plan, right? An idea or something along those lines." She insisted. Of course Nagi had a plan. He was planning to win the World Cup. With Reo. And Reo had voiced his interest towards the Premier League. Nagi would simply follow that path and go anywhere that led.

"Yeah." Nagi told her. "I do. I do have something like a plan."

"Good." She uttered. "It would be heartbreaking to see such a great talent go to waste." Nagi liked it, the sincerity in her voice. "It's getting late by the way. Time for me to go and rescue my father, but it was nice to meet you." She was about to bid farewell when she suddenly seemed to recall something. "Wait. Do you still want those pins?" And after that, they politely said their goodbyes to each other.

When Nagi went back inside he noticed it was past midnight, but some of his teammates were still there, sitting around the table, laughing at some joke someone had made. Nagi didn't see him, though. Reo didn't seem to be there. He didn't bother to ask the others where he was. If Reo wasn't there, there was no other place where he could be but their room. So, Nagi left the tavern and he followed the corridor, intending to reach its end, but halfway there he spotted him, Reo, whose appearance was impossible not to recognize. He was standing in front of a window, his eyes staring at something outside. Reo wasn't much of the contemplative type so Nagi walked to him, curious.

"What are you doing?" He asked and Reo didn't even wince at his sudden apparition. He didn't even turn to look at him.

"The moon is very bright tonight." Reo said, his voice trailing off a bit. "And weirdly close."

Nagi gave a look outside. "That's not the moon. It's just one of the field's floodlights." He noticed.

"You're lying." Reo frowned. "That's the moon right there." And when he turned around a sharp smell had Nagi's nose itch.

"Reo, are you drunk?"

"Drunk? No." He brushed it off with a hand gesture. "Why would I be drunk?" But his eyes were coated in a watery veil and his cheeks were red.

"Your breath smells like alcohol." Nagi replied.

"That's because I drank, but I'm not drunk. The saké just kept coming in my direction and I had a few drinks, that's all. I'm not..." He furrowed his brow as if something had just slipped from his mind. "Drunk." He concluded then. "I'm not drunk."

"But it still looks like you're drunk." Nagi kept investigating.

"Being drunk is for those who don't have a hold on themselves. The ones with no self-restraint, alright?" Reo seemed to be swaying as he talked. "I don't get drunk, okay? I've never gotten drunk my entire life. And now I am..."

Reo stopped mid sentence, his body giving in and falling forward. Fortunately Nagi was there to catch him. "Okay, you're definitely drunk." He said and Reo laughed against his neck.

"Am I?"

Nagi lifted his arm and he placed it around his shoulders to carry most of his weight. Reo's head was drooping to his chest as he mumbled indistinctly. Nagi sighed, but he held him tight until they reached the door for their room. "Nagi." Reo spelled slowly against his ear. "You can let me go, I'm fine. I'm perfectly able..." He paused. "Nauseous. Bathroom."

And so Nagi spent half an hour holding back Reo's hair as he unsuccessfully tried to throw up, his hands grasping the sides of the toilet.

"Why did you drink this much?" Nagi genuinely asked as they were both sitting on the floor, Reo looking completely shattered as he leaned against the wall.

"It just happened." Reo shrugged, his eyelids falling. Nagi couldn't let him sleep there.

"Stand up." He said. "You need to change."

Reo did not protest. He stood up, faltering a little, got out of the bathroom and quietly sat on his bed, letting Nagi help him to wear something more comfortable. Nagi wasn't used to take care of Reo. It was usually the other way around. He reached for his rubber band and he took out Reo's ponytail so that he could rest his head on the pillow.

"Better?" Nagi asked, sitting on the edge of the bed as Reo lied down.

"You're spinning." Reo replied, looking at him.

"Just close your eyes." Nagi suggested, but Reo didn't listen. He pulled Nagi by his arm, forcing him to lean over and then he settled his chin in the crook of his collarbone. His soft breath flowed in like a warm infusion.

"I think I'm scared." Reo had whispered, but his words had been clear, scratching his skin. Nagi didn't move and the air seemed to stand still too.

"Of what?" He found the strength to say, but no answer came. Reo had fallen asleep, locks of hair framing his face.

When the morning came, Nagi woke up to the sound of Reo finally throwing up in the bathroom. "I'm never getting drunk again, I swear." He made his resolve as Nagi stood by the door frame. "Don't tell coach."

"I won't." Nagi assured him.

Six hours later they were back to Tokyo, the forest and its whispering distant. A brand new week approaching. Nagi never asked Reo what he had meant the night before. He didn't even know if Reo remembered any of that. Nagi never asked him what he was so scared of.

Because deep down, somewhere still unreachable, Nagi was scared too.