Work Text:
…
When the ego dies, the soul awakes.
…
The soccer ball ricochets wildly off your foot and soars overhead. By some miracle, you managed to deny Bachira Meguru, resident dribbling king, the game-winning goal. Your eyes never leave the ball, as possession of it is now up for grabs.
One more, you think.
One more goal will end it, Yoichi.
This final goal—you want it. With one goal, you can advance forward. At Blue Lock, you can discover yourself anew, and with every winning goal, your lifelong dream of becoming the world’s best striker-footballer is closer to reality. Your desperate drive to win is a visceral need, an automatic action, like an uttered prayer before impending death or deprived lungs gasping for oxygen.
The ball descends through the air; thick anticipation mingles with the dust and dirt in the atmosphere. Sweat drips from your concentrated brow as time slows to a crawl. Muscles tense up and down your body as you prepare to race back upfield and score. Your confidence is set at an all-time high, and this moment is yours for the taking. Nothing will stop you; you decide. You will counter with quickness to setup the final goal the instant your teammates recover the loose ball…
Only none of them do.
How could they?
They’re not in position.
Oh, shit.
You realize far too late that none of your teammates are in the penalty box, as they had stopped their rush downfield several seconds earlier. Instead, the ball lands at the waiting feet of the opponents’ team ace and No. 1 player, Itoshi Rin.
Huh? The worst possible outcome?!
You look on helplessly, disbelief etched on your face.
—Fate, mercilessly, cruelly, descended upon its victor—
In the split second between the ball making contact with Rin’s strike, you know. You’ve witnessed this ending once before—a bitter ending you can’t forget. A losing ending. Déjà vu threatens to collapse you to the ground if the bubbling nausea in the pit of your stomach doesn't do it first.
Rin takes the shot, and the ball arcs with perfect precision into the back of the net, just as you foresaw it would. A complete obliteration comes, with one strike.
It’s…over.
You want to vomit.
The whistle blows out, cutting through the invisible weight of despair that is crushing down on your slim shoulders.
—GAME OVER!! TEAM RED WINS—
The red jerseys celebrate and cheer with excitement, while white-clad comrades huff at your side in exhaustion, but you see nothing except missed opportunities and hear nothing except the rushing blood pounding in your ears.
You do not blink, and you do not move.
Unexpectedly, you have arrived in a future where you are not the victor but the loser. The contrast between your confidence and the reality of the result looms large… You wonder if your dreamed journey to greatness will go any further.
In this moment, you feel as if the world has been ripped out from under your feet, as if you’ve been told that gravity is a myth. It’s just a soccer scrimmage, but it is also so much more. The victory you were so sure of didn’t come. With your career hanging in the balance, this defeat feels monumental.
You fucking lost, Yoichi.
Again.
Again.
Only this time you tried everything you knew to do and still failed. You fought through those hellish rounds to challenge the best footballers in Blue Lock for a second time, only to be confirmed second-best. If even that.
You’re unsure if you can find the will to congratulate the victors, like you were taught back on your idyllic high school soccer team in suburban Japan. The tenuous desire to maintain some illusion of sportsmanlike decorum shatters like a mirror into so many millions of shards of glass.
You collapse under the shattering vanity, your knees buckling to the turf below. You booked on this moment and expected to win. You invested everything you had to win, and it wasn’t enough. More waves of despair break on the banks of your consciousness.
Those preparations and game plans, in the end, all came to nothing. You let yourself down. You let your team down. You let everyone down. You didn’t change anything, after all. Those accusatory thoughts come unbidden alongside spiraling feelings.
How you wish you had led your team to a win! You had hoped the Goddess of Victory would smile down upon you. Instead, there is only the lamest god of loserdom glaring at you in her place and the harsh sting of defeat.
It cuts.
It burns.
It persists.
The ethereal goddess has eluded you to become a harlot; she stands over the other team, basking them in her glow, while mocking you with a sneer.
A roar rips from your throat, frustration cracking your voice as the sound reverberates across the field, unhinged. Your fists clench into turf blindly, as if seizing earth between your palms will relieve the sting of loss and the ground will keep you from sinking down further. You swear your throat might rupture on the spot and you do not care.
"GRAHHHHHAHH!!"
Screaming out in raw frustration comes surprisingly easily to you, dignity aside. By swallowing your pride, you might avoid choking on humiliation.
—So much for ego.—
There will be no fond fist bumps exchanged with Nagi today. No friendly head pats from Chigiri. No disgruntled “loser” pet-name calling from tsundere Barou. Perhaps worst of all, you will not roar out in victory, as her goddess has fallen silent. Instead of being able to eagerly select a new member for your team, there is the unwelcome knowledge that someone will be taken from you.
Your plan to steal back Bachira, your first real friend and playful partner in this soccer internment camp, is foiled. Instead, another partner will be offered up on the chopping block. You cannot stand to lose another teammate, so you stay seated, knees still buried in the grassy turf.
Who could it be?
Would it be Barou Shōei?
Chigiri Hyouma?
Or this time, could it be Nagi Seishirō?
You stiffen immediately.
No.
Not him.
For some undefinable reason, your heart sinks to your feet at the thought of losing Nagi Seishirō.
He has been the lifeline that helped keep you afloat in this second selection madness until now…
(“If we lose again, you’ll be the one who gets stolen, Nagi, not me...”)
You recall your words from back then, so miserably spoken. There was a crack of insecurity ready to yawn open into a maw. Now fear threatens to rise again: Maybe Nagi will be chosen, as he deserves, and you will be ignored.
My dream… will die—?
(“Cut the crap, Isagi!”)
No, I…
You shake your head, defying the temptation to quit fighting. It won’t help—not here, not now, you know. The world spins and realigns.
I’m not the same as I was back then.
Rin did beat you for the second time, in amazing fashion, but you were so close. You were right there. It was within your grasp. No matter what, victory had been a real possibility this time. It’s miniscule, but it’s something.
“What? What could I have done better? What is it? I did everything… I did everything I could… so, what? What separates me from them? It was just a little bit of luck, then?” You mutter under your breath, with the grass all ears.
As usual, you barely recognize your surroundings; you are so consumed by thoughts.
“Come, Isagi Yoichi.”
The sound of your name jolts through swirling storms sweeping your mind. The bright lights on the field are near blinding as you look up from the turf. A tall specter looms there in the brightness, with cold indignation carved over his features. Rin is beckoning you to join him.
He... wants me?
You don’t understand.
Bachira is smiling at you, eyes tearfully shining with warmth. It’s nice, but you are confused. You rise up to your feet from your place in the dirt. You shuffle, stumbling forward on autopilot. You feel disoriented by another result you didn’t expect. As Bachira drags you on, awareness creeps back in with each step you take.
So this is what it feels like to be chosen...
Somehow, you impressed Rin. You were selected. Relief comes now that you will move on, but almost immediately thereafter, you recoil inwardly at your powerlessness. The egoist inside bristles. You’ve been chosen but you cannot have what you want. You hate this. You would rather choose.
You would choose to steal Bachira back in a heartbeat.
And you would choose to stay with—
(“Choose me, Isagi Yoichi.”)
Ah!
Like water trickling down a damp stone and collecting in a pool, that frustratingly cool and calm voice disturbs your stupor. Your stumbling gait slows. The sound of heavy breathing at your back stops you completely in your tracks. You turn and walk toward your (abruptly) former teammates, where they still stand hunched over, grass and sweat clinging to their heaving bodies.
What can I say?
What is there to say?
Should I say anything at all?
“I’m sorry guys, but we were so close! That last goal was pure luck, so it’s not a total loss—!”
Surely it is an aimless effort to console, but whom, them or you, you are not sure. It doesn’t matter anyway. The words rush out in a garble, and as soon as they escape your mouth, you regret them; still, you won’t take them back.
“Cut it out!” Chigiri interrupts, his eyes razor sharp as he peers at you with a curtain of his silky red locks framing his pretty face. You nearly keel over from the force of his glare. He looks exhausted, but the princess isn’t the only one to speak.
“If I have to look at you any longer, I will try to kill you, you scrub,” Barou growls, his voice and forehead veins teeming with poorly hidden hostility.
“But-,” you try to voice your defense in a hurry, but another interjects. The cool voice comes again, this time not in your head.
“I’ll crush you next time we meet, Isagi.”
This time, it is laced with unfamiliar animosity. This time, it is dipped in bitterness. You could almost shiver if you weren’t caught so off guard.
Nagi…
“We’ll come back from this without you,” Nagi continues, unusual determination in his cool voice and unfamiliar fire blazing in his dull eyes.
But it's a gut punch to your stomach.
Hearing that damn voice rebuff you leaves you frustrated. A cool voice that is sometimes soft, sometimes sharp, rarely cruel, and often bored, but always sincere.
And the owner of that voice is lazy to a fault. In the beginning, Nagi could hardly be bothered to wake up for soccer, much less struggle. He thought of nothing but his games and his shut eye and his piggybacks with Reo.
And yet, Nagi changed. You witnessed it with your own eyes.
(“It’s thanks to you that I’m able to see the game this way, Isagi.”)
How did someone with so annoying an attitude become so indispensable so quickly?
Wait, indispensable? Nagi…?
His skills, certainly. And, well… all of them, really, you reason.
As you continue to stare at your fallen comrades, something else stirs. It is not pompous, and it is not twisted. It is not debt, and it is not regret. Instead, it’s honorable. It’s fond. It’s ego, yet it’s not; it’s softer, though also stronger.
Without those guys, I never would have made it this far…
...the fact that I was able to fight alongside them is a badge of pride.
“You damn well better.”
A challenge is issued. A look is given.
You stoke the fire in their striker hearts with those words, as unquenchable heat blazes in your eyes. You say no more and walk on ahead to Bachira and Rin.
Here on a broken battlefield, your soul is calling out to another’s. You feel pure and unfiltered gratitude for those whose stories touched yours, whose soccer plays inspired yours, and whose dreams helped keep your dreams alive in this hell. You hope to be reunited.
You’ll have to trust that they’ll respond.
I want to hear him again.
I want to see them again.
Perhaps, just this once, your soul is singing out:
to Chigiri,
to Barou,
and, of course, to Nagi.
…
When the ego dies, the soul awakes.
…