Work Text:
I.
Isagi liked his middle school team, he did! It was only—everyone loved football, but their eyes started glazing over whenever he went on and on about strategies and perspectives and the layers of thinking behind that one goal Noel Noa made in the UEFA finale. His teammates liked to go to the arcade after practice, or run back home to catch a new anime episode.
Isagi enjoyed playing puzzle games and he didn't mind a few television recap sessions—but what he loved was the flat grass beneath him, the football nestling between his feet and the rush of scoring a goal by weaving through the defence.
Maybe they just liked football in a different way than he did.
He dribbled his ball in a park alcove, all by himself, losing himself in trying to find the perfect rhythm until a voice chirped out, “Hey, that’s not the best way to do that.”
Isagi turned. There was a boy, body half-hidden behind one of the park trees. Yellow eyes blinked back at him. He had a band-aid on his chin. Isagi was annoyed, and then he saw the football the other kid had gripped to his chest.
“Do you—want to show me how, then?” he offered, and the other boy burst into a grin.
They kicked the ball back-and-forth, settling into their own private symphony. The other boy adapted to Isagi, and Isagi moulded his kicking angles to the newcomer. They fit each other, he thought, with a rush of bright pleasure; and then in the lull as the ball darted between them, he called out, “Hey! What’s your name?”
The boy with golden eyes and the coolest dribbling skills Isagi had ever seen beamed and said, “I’m—”
II.
“—Bachira Meguru! Pleased to meet you!”
Isagi didn't want to be impolite, but it was a little difficult to shake hands when your fingers were covered with clay. He settled for a smile he hoped didn't come off as insincere.
“I haven’t seen you around the workshop before,” he prodded. “Is there something you need?”
Bachira beamed at him—or rather, at the unfinished sculpture before him. “My mother tutors the Fine Arts students. She mentioned there was someone working on an insane sculpture here, so of course I had to come take a look!”
Isagi blushed. Insane was a good descriptor for his project. Terracotta gently shaped into feathers and overlaid on top of each other; baked intermittently so the feathers solidify and merge into an indestructible whole. His mentor had warned that it would be an arduous task, but he found the repetitive work of moulding a single clay feather into perfection—soothing.
Bachira peered at the sculpture. “Hey, he kinda looks like Totoro!” He glanced back anxiously at Isagi. “Not, that I’m saying that’s a bad thing of course, Totoro is cu—”
Isagi laughed. “That’s my favourite movie,” he explained, setting down his chisel to rest his hands on the work-table.
Bachira cooed. “That suits you, somehow.”
Isagi resisted the urge to ask him what that was supposed to mean. Artists were famous for eulogising their work whenever possible, but Isagi had always felt a little intimidated by presenting his own art to a crowd. Bachira, though; Bachira was pleasant enough.
“It’s a piece called Childhood Dreams,” he said haltingly, fiddling with his chisel.
“Dreams, huh,” said Bachira. He wasn’t smiling anymore; he gazed down at Isagi with a strange sort of understanding behind his eyes.
“They don’t always come true,” Isagi continued. “But they’re beautiful—like feathers. And comforting, like...”
“Totoro!” Bachira finished. He stared appreciatively once more at the feathered sculpture. Isagi resisted the urge to fiddle with his hands again. He liked the studio to be desolate while he worked, and he hadn’t been used to company in the past few weeks he’d been shaping the statue.
“I like your style,” said Bachira, interrupting his train of thought. “We should do a project together sometimes!”
“Don’t you do oil painting?” said Isagi, eyeing the acrylic paint stains at the end of Bachira’s fingertips.
“Then it could just be multimedia! My mom always tells me art is whatever you make of it.”
Isagi let out a helpless laugh. “I like the sound—“
III.
“—of that,” he lied. A coffee shop business meet; how... superficial. We have perfectly good conference rooms at the office, he almost burst out. And e-mail servers. And video-calling software.
He was proved right the next day. He’d arrived promptly at the spot at 9AM, ordered a small green tea for himself and impatiently pulled out his spreadsheets.
Half an hour passed. The heavens opened in a deluge. He watched dourly as the notifications popped up in the company Slack channel. Reschedule. Tomorrow. Same time? I hope no one got caught in the rain.
A flurry of thumbs-ups poured in. Isagi added his own to the crowd and shut his laptop.
“Did your meet-up get cancelled too? That sucks.”
He glanced back. In the adjoining table, a man with a choppily-dyed bowl-cut sat dressed in the most rumpled suit he’d ever had the misfortune to lay eyes on.
“Yeah,” he answered ruefully. “And I don’t think the trains or taxis will be running in this weather.”
“I’ve always wanted to dash through the rain using my jacket as shelter,” said the stranger thoughtfully. “Like something out of a movie, y’know.”
Isagi stared back at him silently, and the other man chortled. “I mean,” he said conspiratorially, “between you and me, that’s probably the best use I can get out of this suit.”
Isagi tried to force his face into stoicism, but the hint of a smile escaped him anyways. “If you know that, why haven't you bought a better one yet?”
“I only ever use it for these stuffy meetings,” said the stranger, yawning. “And besides, I’ll be fired soon anyways.”
Isagi squinted. He’d never been good at reading expressions. The other’s tone was melancholy, but his face was almost gleeful. The stranger took pity on him and added, “That’s a good thing, by the way, I hate this job.”
Isagi was startled into almost-laughter for the second time in the conversation. He leaned across the partition, and said in a low whisper, “I don’t particularly like mine either.”
“No way!” exclaimed the other man. “I saw your spreadsheets—just a glimpse while you were setting up your laptop, I wasn’t spying—and you looked super organised. Not like me,” he added ruefully. “I’m not built for the corporate life.”
“I’ve always liked data analysis, but the work I’m assigned just feels like a chore,” confessed Isagi, loosening his stupid tie. “Nothing like what I enjoyed doing back in school—I was the kid who could name every football player’s stats.”
“Oh yeah?” said the stranger, lips twitching, chin cocked back in a challenge. “What was the club Noel Noa won his second Ballon d’Or with?”
Isagi snorted. “PXG.”
“Who has the highest number of goals in the English league?”
“Chris Prince, 242 goals.”
“Damn, you really know your stuff!” whistled the stranger.
Isagi rubbed his head, embarrassed. This wasn't what he'd expected the missed meeting would lead to—but he wasn't complaining. The stranger was mowing down the last of his pastry now; it looked like pineapple. On impulse, Isagi said, “And I’d like to know your name too.”
The other man put his fork down and grinned at him coyly. “One last question. What martial art is Lavinho’s special dribbling style based on?”
Isagi hemm-ed, haw-ed, and scrunched up his eyes to think. “I don’t know,” he said finally, and the other man laughed.
“It’s capoeira, and I was playing unfair anyway; Lavinho is my favourite—I know all sorts of useless trivia about him. And my name,” he added, “is Bachira.”
Bachira. It suited him. “Like a—”
IV.
“—bumblebee!” hissed Isagi at half-time. They had to shut down the opposing team’s main striker somehow; he kept fluttering in out of nowhere and zig-zagging through the defence all by himself. Like a particularly annoying insect.
“Calm down, Isagi,” said the Ichinan coach, and then he turned to the rest of the team. “One for all, and all for one; remember, boys? The other team may have one exceptional player but we can shut him down with our teamwork.”
Isagi resisted the urge to bite out, Our teamwork hasn’t really done much for the entire first half of the game, and swallowed down the words.
The whistle blew, the game resumed. Isagi was marking #8, Bee-Boy. It was strange, he considered, how the other’s teammates didn’t seem to be in sync with him. If Isagi was his teammate, he would pass to him near the penalty box, then run all the way to the corner and—
“Hey! Don’t zone out, Isagi,” yelled another Ichinan player. Isagi trapped the ball on instinct. Right; mid-game was no time to be lost in imagination. He ran down the midfield and passed. Ichinan scored, evening the points; but then #8 pulled out another one of his unpredictable moves and streaked off to steal the ball all by himself.
Another team loss. Isagi hated losing. He sipped at his energy drink morosely after the match, sitting cross-legged on the bleachers. The Namikaze High team was leaving the changing-rooms now, joking amongst themselves—but #8, the star of the match, wasn’t with them. Isagi frowned. He picked up his sports bag and inched towards the changing-room exits. And there was Bee-Boy, hands in his pockets, going all the other way around by his lonesome.
“Hey!” he called out, unsure of what exactly he was doing himself. “Hey, you, wa—”
V.
“—it up!” he complained. The hallway to the playersʼ entrance to the World Cup stadium was a lengthy hike, and Bachira was skipping along ahead of the pack.
Bachira laughed. “Cʼmon Isagi, don't you feel the energy? Just listen!” he said, and he pointed up to the ceiling.
Isagi could feel it, then—the steady heartbeat of the crowd congregated above their heads. He shivered. The two of them had left the rest of the team behind and the hallway was now their own private sanctum.
“All this,” he mused, “because you helped me out in that tag game all those years ago.”
“Nah,” said Bachira carelessly. Heʼd come closer now and was staring at Isagi with those same bright gold eyes that had blinked awake on the floor of a Blue Lock training room and zoned in on Isagi immediately. “I mean, Iʼm not selling myself short—we definitely couldnʼt have won the semi-finals if it wasnʼt for my dribbling breaking the defense! But you, Isagi; I think youʼd find your own way in every world.”
Isagi hummed. He lifted up his head, drank in the rhythm of the crowd above them. He faintly heard an echo of Nippon! ripple through the cement.
“Then Iʼm glad,” he said, “that I found you in this world.”