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30th of November, a child screamed his first cries in a doctor’s arms.
A healthy baby, suitable for a child of two accomplished athletes. Blue hair, blue eyes, and features faintly resembling both of his parents.
Hiori Yo, his mom had whispered, stroking his cheeks. May you be diligent, may you be kind, for your destiny is preordained.
Outside, snow painted the ground white. The sky, however, remained blue.
______
Hiori Yo grows up in blue.
When he stares at the mirror, blue hair and blue eyes stare back at him. Blue in his father’s eyes, blue in his mother’s hair. Blue, the color of the cheap shampoo stored in bottles in the boys locker room. Blue paints the diet plan his mother gives him, the schedule paper of the training programme his dad creates for him.
Blue is on the ball he kicks around everyday, blue like the uniform of his football team.
Blue is soccer, the destiny he was planned to walk on, the path that was carefully crafted down to every detail by his parents.
Blue is soccer, the reason he was even born.
At five, Hiori Yo already knows how to dribble a ball. A genius, the coach has exclaimed, he has potential! He takes this very seriously!
Hiori keens at the compliment, too, but keeps stealing glances at the screaming kids on the playground. He loves hearing compliments like any other child his age, but sometimes, he wonders how it would be like to play with them, to just be a five year old instead of some kind of football genius.
What would life taste like without the color blue, without soccer?
But then his parents laugh, wide smiles on their faces, Yes, yes he is. Our Hiori is so good at this, isn't he?
Mom strokes his sweaty hair, and says, Let’s practice and become the world best striker, Yocchan. You have the talents for this.
You have the ability to make us proud, Dad adds.
Hiori nods, swallowing the urge down. He wants to see them happy. He wants to keep being a good kid, their good kid.
Just keep practicing , voices echo in his mind, you have the ability to make us proud.
So Hiori keeps practicing, day after day, learning every kind of football technique, diligently following his planned routes. Dad and Mom attend all of his matches, cheering happily when he scores a goal. And in Hiori’s little heart, there’s nothing that can make him happier than that. He loves his parents, and his parents love him, too.
Or is it?
Hiori learns the bitter truth at eight, way sooner than he should.
Harsh sounds reverberate through the door of his room, stirring him awake. Hiori rubs his eyes, confused. Like every kid his age would do, he walks out of his room, trying to find Mom and Dad for comfort. To his surprise, the light in the dining room was on, brightness grating on his eyes.
Fluorescent white cast a rough shadow on Dad, accentuating his furrowed brows, the way veins seem to pop on the side of his temples. Mom sits on the chair, lips pursing into a thin line.
Hiori stares, dumbfounded. He has never seen his parents with this kind of expression before.
“And I’m telling you, his numbers aren’t enough! It’s your friggin’s job to take care of Yo’s diet! Take your shit together!”, Dad spits, slamming down on the table. The piercing sound makes Hiori flinch, hands shaking.
“Oh, so everything’s my fault now!”, Mom bites back, standing up angrily. There’s something strange in her eyes, something Hiori hasn’t seen before. “Maybe your training methods are the problem?”
“What? At this rate, he’s not gonna turn pro —”
Venomous words spew back and forth, and suddenly, his loving parents seem like strangers. Never would he expect Mom and Dad to say these kinds of things, to stare at each other like they want to rip the other’s face off. He doesn’t understand half of what they were saying, but he knows one thing.
That this family tethers of how well he plays football.
“If Yo can’t become no 1 in the world, then I want a divorce!”
In a split minute, Hiori’s world crumbles, illusions shattering. All he tastes is blue as he falls down — down, sharp pain slicing his foot open.
Mom and Dad rush to his side, panicking, calling his name. And yet, he can’t help as fear crawls up his stomach, blocking his airway.
“Are you getting a divorce?”
His parents stare back, dumbfoundedly.
“Is it my fault….,” he repeats, “that Mom and Dad are getting a divorce?”
In Hiori’s mind, maybe his words would shake his parents out of their furious haze. Maybe they said all of those hurtful words because they were too angry. His parents would never do that. In his mind, his parents will smile at him, reassuringly, the way they did to help him calm down before matches, and say,
No, Yocchan, no. Mom and Dad would never get a divorce. Mom and Dad love each other very, very much, Yocchan. And we love you too.
But their gaze drop to his bleeding foot instead.
“Oi, are you okay?”
“No way, is it broken…?”
“This is your precious leg, Yo!”
All of his parents’ words and panicked fussing blend into a blur as Hiori stares lifelessly at the ceiling. Ah, he thinks, blue filling up his mouth, I know now.
Mom and Dad don’t even look at him once, don’t even hear his question. All they see is a possibly broken foot, and the crushed potentials it entails. Dad carries him up the staircase, as Mom hurriedly calls an ambulance.
In their eyes, he is all that is: soccer. Not their blood, their child, but a soccer prodigy. They love him, but only if his talents stays the best, if he keeps being a vessel to resuscitate their long dead dreams of fame and achievement. Suddenly, his parents seem like monsters wearing the faces of the people he has loved his whole life.
His foot keeps bleeding, but it feels numb compared to the ache in his heart.
No one should experience that kind of earth-shattering realization at eight. But Hiori does.
______
Despite all that, Hiori Yo keeps playing. He continues playing throughout primary school, and secondary school too. As long as he keeps playing — his family will stay together. Keep up that facade, and maybe he can keep his family intact. Keep on trying, and maybe his parents will finally love him, see him for who he is.
He practices diligently, follows his parents' meal plans, and scores more goals than ever. Trophies after trophies fill up the shelf in the living room. He’s doing nothing but fulfilling his fate, his parents’ expectations, like living out a character’s programmed path. Life is easy, or he should feel that way.
And yet, the more he tries to love soccer, the more numb he feels. The more he plays, the more he feels drowned in blue.
Hiori reads somewhere that red is the color of love. It makes him think more than he should, because his parents see red at the sight of each other, too, but not in that way. They only see red, the red of anger.
He wonders what would the red of love feel like. Wonders if he’s anything other than blue to his parents.
Sometimes, Hiori wonders, if he cuts his veins open, would blue instead of red ooze out of that wound? Sometimes, Hiori longs to become one with the blue in their school’s swimming pool, longs to let the color that has been ruling all over his life to truly consume him, entirely.
The blue in his eyes, his hair, a constant reminder that he is his parents’ child. The blue he has been growing up with. The blue that has taken over his life.
The blue he so very hates.
And so Hiori longs for something else, some other color, just something not blue, not soccer.
Hiori takes up gaming. It’s entertaining, and helps him release stress. The stress he can’t tell anyone about, because he’s too busy kicking balls around to make real friends in school.
Besides, it gives him contentment. Clicks after clicks give him short-lived satisfaction, as he finishes tasks after tasks, annihilating any obstacle on his path. No expectations, no football technique, just brainless button pressing and murdering.
If only I can do the same in real life too, Hiori thinks.
On the screen, disfigured zombies let out a blood-curdling scream as they get blasted to a million pieces, red splattering on the screen. Briefly, they have his parents’ faces.
Hiori stares, blankly.
______
Hiori gets invited to Osaka’s youth soccer team. There, he meets Karasu Tabito.
Karasu is… an interesting person, the more Hiori plays with him.
To be honest, Hiori never really tries to get close to his teammates. He learns about their strengths and weaknesses, uses it to help his team on field, and leaves it at that. His teammates do the same, too, never talking to him about anything outside of football.
It’s different, with Karasu. One match together is enough for him to see right through Hiori, peeling back layers of that “soccer genius” facade he so desperately tries to keep. There’s a certain kind of wisdom in his words, something his ball-kicking peers probably can’t even imagine.
“Find something that truly gets your blood pumping”, Karasu had said as Hiori stared at him, wide-eyed. He would be lying if he said that these words didn’t shake him.
But how?, he wants to ask, how do I even do that?
His heart has lay dormant in his rib cages for a long, long time.
What do I really want to do with my own life?
Hiori doesn’t get it. Despite that, Karasu’s words keep ringing in his mind, and Karasu himself, too.
They continue to play together. Karasu continues to shake Hiori with his straightforward words. They peel him back, layer by layer, until Karasu seems to get him all figured out, the complex psychology of Hiori Yo the genius lying right in his palm. The way Karasu just gives unsolicited advice freaks him out a little, at first, but it really does come from Karasu’s own compassion.
Hiori hates being perceived, hates being scrutinized under someone’s eyes, and yet, Karasu looking at him feels… different. Maybe it’s because this is the first time someone truly sees him for who he is. Not Hiori Yo the football player. Not Hiori Yo the talented striker.
Karasu's eyes are blue, too, but not the kind of empty, heartless blue Hiori’s eyes seem to be. Karasu’s dark blue ones feel warm, sympathizing. Karasu sees Hiori, as pathetic as he is, and doesn’t pity him. That’s the most comforting thing.
He’s resting on the field after a particularly hard practice match, when Karasu drops two water bottles into his arms.
“I can’t stand seeing you like this, genius,” Karasu sighs, sitting down beside him. “It feels… wasted.”
Hiori stares at him, silently admiring how Karasu’s normally sharp gaze softens into something softer under the golden cast of the afternoon sun.
“Not saying that you’re wasting your potential, but…”, Karasu stops, opening a water bottle and chugging half of it down.
“But?”, Hiori repeats. His fingers tap, a bit anxiously, on the grass they’re sitting on. As much as he likes talking with Karasu, his… distaste with football is still something he’s not really that comfortable talking about.
“Don’t look at me like that, Hiori,” Karasu laughs, wiping sweat-drenched bangs out of Hiori’s face. The sudden touch makes he flinch a little. “You look like you’re about to skin me alive.”
Hiori shuffles, a bit uncomfortably. He’s pretty much aware of how… empty his eyes look, without the facade he always keeps up around people.
"Sorry,” he mutters, “This topic’s a bit…”
“I know, I know”, Karasu says, taking Hiori’s sweating fingers in his warm palms. Physical touch comes to him so naturally, so effortlessly, even with a person with a strong touch aversion like Hiori feels natural holding hands with him.
“I’m not saying that you’re wasting your potential, it’s more that I feel like you’re wasting your own time.”
Hiori looks up, a little surprised at his words.
“If you don’t truly love football, if you really hate it, then you should quit.” The elder says, leaning his face on his hand. “Quit football, and find something that makes you happy. It will take time, but at least it’s gonna make you feel less miserable than this.”
The sudden naivete from the sentence almost makes Hiori laugh, albeit painfully. Karasu is so wise sometimes that Hiori forgets he’s only a year older than him.
If only quitting was that easy, he bitterly thinks.
Hiori’s not only incomplete without football. He would not exist without it, his family will split apart the second he expresses the desire to quit. If there was no football, there would not be him. Football is his destiny, the preordained path he was forced to take, a trail his parents had laid out for him before he was even born.
He wishes he could say all that to Karasu, to lay out the tragic ways their family are entangled under Karasu’s watchful eyes, to spill all of his suppressed misery to a boy he barely knows, to vomit it all out of his blue-stained guts.
Sadly, Hiori is not that brave yet. So he just laughs pathetically, hiding his face in his arms.
“I can’t,” he says, voice muffled, “my parents won’t let me. They won’t be happy when I quit.”
“And if you continue, will you be happy?”, Karasu says, voice firm but not pressing.
“.... No,” Hiori breathes out. He hopes the shakiness of his voice isn’t that obvious.
“You do deserve to be selfish, for once,” Karasu says. His tone is kind, comforting, and Hiori can’t help but wish that Karasu had been here with him a little sooner. “If you hate football that much, choosing this path will make you feel miserable your whole life.”
He thinks briefly, for a second, then continues. “It’s your life, you know. You deserve to be something else than your parents’ child.”
This guy really does know the right words to say, does he, Hiori thinks, but Karasu’s words keep repeating in his mind.
“I see,” Hiori says, “Thank you.”
Karasu is right. Hiori can’t keep following expectations in misery forever. If Hiori keeps crawling on this path, it’s sooner or later he loses his mind. He’s more than his parents’ creation. He deserves to be selfish, to have his own passion, his own self too.
Silence fills the air between them, but Hiori welcomes it.
“Besides,” Karasu laughs, the sound clear and ringing, “I don’t want to see my remarkable kouhai keep running in circles like this.”
Then, he leans down, gently lifting Hiori’s face out of his arms. “Come on, genius, let’s get home.”
Karasu’s hands are warm on his cheeks, and the dark blue, pinning gaze of his eyes is on Hiori. The sun is remarkably softer at this hour, pouring honey on Karasu’s face, highlighting his sharp features, the mole under his eyes.
And suddenly, for a long, long time, Hiori’s heart stirs. Blue stops filling his veins for a moment. Instead, he tastes red on his tongue.
Red, not in anger, not in danger, but in the dizzying, profound way of yearning.
Hiori understands, now, why people use red to describe love. Because right now, he only wants one thing: to push Karasu down this field and kiss him breathless, until blood fills up their mouth, until scarlet gets stuck between his own teeth.
“Kiss me, Karasu,” he grits out, the words foreign to his ears.
Karasu looks at him, surprise apparent on his face. “Is this a new kind of saying thank you?”
“It’s not,” Hiori says. The shakiness in his voice is obvious. He doesn’t bother to hide it. “You tell me to be selfish. So I do. I want to kiss you.”
“Just so you know,” Karasu leans closer, an unreadable expression in his eyes, “me too.”
And it’s the only warning Hiori gets before he’s pushed down, back hitting the grass.
Karasu laughs, face so close Hiori can feel it against his lips. “That speech of mine really does stir you up, huh?”, he smirks, bringing their lips together, and all Hiori can taste is Karasu, all he can feel is Karasu's lips on him, Karasu's finger carding through his hair, Karasu's hot breath against his skin.
Hiori’s heart beats on his own, for the first time in his life.
Hiori Yo, Karasu whispers, hands stroking his cheeks, I like you for who you are.
Above them, the sun paints everything golden. Hiori's gaze, however, remains on the dark blue of Karasu’s eyes, the red on his flushed cheeks.