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Cold waves on short legs. Figures concealed in blue moon mist, blending into the dark blue of the sea, tucked away in seawater. Glittering waves.
Two figures. A football. Bare feet, sand-stuck.
“Nii-chan,” someone calls. It’s whisked away by the wind.
Blue hydrangeas, white fences. White sand, rusted train tracks. That is what Itoshi Rin remembers of his childhood Kamakura.
It’s barely changed in his time away. The old-timey, nostalgic feeling of it is preserved, whether it be because of the tourist appeal or an aura that comes with the town itself. Maybe both.
Still, it’s different. The blue, foggy dream-like quality of his memories is worn away by the years passing, and it leaves Kamakura in a different light. Grounded. Instead of feeling magical, walking along the beachside now feels a little more depressing than anything else.
It’s preferred to the suffocating stillness of his room, though. These days Rin wakes up in cold sweat and cannot remember what he dreamt of, though it leaves him feeling sticky and itchy. Waking in his childhood home brings him less comfort than it should, and sometimes he misses the bone-tiredness that constant training had levied on him.
Despite the sore muscles, at least it helped him fall asleep almost immediately in the evening time. Now, he lays on his bed with the blanket tossed to the side waiting for dreams to take him. More often than not, it leaves him uncomfortably reminiscing.
“Okaasan,” he calls into the living room. His mother in the kitchen makes a hmph noise of acknowledgement.
“I’m going out,” he tells her. He doesn’t elaborate, she never asks. That’s the way the Itoshi household functioned for the past decade of coexistence.
“Run by the Family Mart and get some eggs,” she says. “Come back before nine. The forecast said it’ll rain.”
It’s two in the afternoon. Rin nods, even though she can’t see, and pulls on his shoes.
He got new ones after he returned to Kamakura, after he left Blue Lock in a fit of rage and maybe of desperation. For what, he cannot remember. He does know he felt like he was suffocating, dizzy and fatigued. Maybe he thought that leaving would fix it.
It didn’t. It followed him right out, like it was latched on to Rin, not the environment he was in. He’s not sure what that means, what that entails, but he hasn’t wanted to think much on it. He just drags it around and hopes no one can tell how much heavier it’s gotten since then.
The soles of his shoes are worn now, though. It’s been three years since he got them. Three years since he had left.
They’re worn. He hasn’t even been playing football.
But, still, they’re worn.
An indication of his restlessness, he guesses. He’s been spending more time on walks than he has in between the four walls of his house.
The Itoshi residence is a ten-minute walk to the seaside. It’s a three-minute run, if his childhood escapades were any indication. He could be overestimating himself, though. He did do a lot of that, back then.
The paved road becomes imbedded with sand when he gets closed. That’s a clear indication. Another is the railroad tracks that run parallel to the sea, romantic and nostalgic.
He and Sae had always romanticized the notion. Slam Dunk was something they both indulged in, and one of the only shows their parents let them watch, if only because it was something they’d watched as teenagers. Maybe that’s what started their mutual fascination with sports.
Probably not though — it was written into their DNA, Rin thinks.
The show took place in Kamakura, too. That felt special. One scene, one he remembers clearly, involved a confession and a train. The Enoshima Electric Railway.
He remembers the two rushing to the tracks the day after they watched that episode and sitting on grass close to the tracks, watching the trains go by until sunset.
Like everything else in his childhood, it was covered in a distinct hazy mist — as if he is too old to be able to reminisce on those fragile memories. Like it belonged to someone else, like he isn’t deserving of them anymore.
Sae had said something along the lines of confessing to a girl here, at opposite sides of the train tracks, just like how it was in the episode.
Briefly, for no particular reason, Rin wonders if Isagi has ever been to Kamakura. At first, it’s a warm thing, then suddenly abrasive. It’s no good to think about anything Blue Lock related, their wonder striker included.
It was just another blip in Rin’s life. Something passed, something fleeting. Despite that, Rin still has Isagi’s number. He hasn’t tried to text him, so he won’t know if it was still the same number, three years later.
Lately, it feels like everything’s a sort of blip. Sort of like Itoshi Rin never existed and all, and honestly — it’s warranted, isn’t it? He hasn’t done much of anything to be remembered by.
He waves the thought away and changes direction. Mother had said something about getting eggs — he’d be better off getting them now, to waste time before the sunset. Novembers in Kamakura bring the sunset closer to noon than to midnight — four or five.
The sun should never set that early. Rin had hated it, as a kid, because it meant Sae would rush him home earlier than usual because it was dangerous to play football at night.
Now, he finds that he doesn’t really mind it. He’s old enough for his parents to leave him alone even at night, and it’s alright. The nighttime is something that doesn’t haunt him from his childhood — something newer, something for himself, in this state, to keep.
The already dimming sky has the light from the Family Mart illuminating the slightly wet tile. He’s been here so often that the elderly grandmother that sits behind the counter during her shift from 3-6 knows him by name.
He greets her with the tip of a head, before ambling into the refrigerated section, looking at the few cartons of eggs.
His mother likes the white ones. Said something about how clean they looked, once. Rin doesn’t really get it — they all look the same when in the pan, anyway.
Opening a carton, he examines the two rows of eggs. Bright white, unblemished. He closes it again and picks it up, ready to head out.
“I’ll just have this,” he tells the grandmother at the counter as politely as possible.
As she rings him up, his gaze wanders until they fall on the quiet humming of the television tucked into the corner with stacks of books partially obstructing it. What he sees nearly knocks the breath out of his lungs. A football into his gut. A fist in the jugular.
On the grainy screen is the familiar green field of a football field. The World Cup, something he’s been avoiding, is playing from it, figures clad in white and blue running around the parameter like he used to. Doing the quick calculations in his head, he can conclude that it must be the finals.
The flags are covered by the stack of books — he squints, but can’t figure out what it is.
The grandmother follows his gaze and smiles fondly when she sees he’s staring at the screen. He wonders what sort of expression she sees on his face, but she must mistake it for wonder.
“Isn’t it crazy?” she asks. Her voice is nice and motherly and makes the pit in his stomach ache. “Japan against a team like Spain’s, in finals. Our players have been working hard, haven’t they?”
Japan. Spain. The worst combination for the black hole in Rin’s chest, certainly. His hands are suddenly as icy as the freezer those eggs were in.
“Yeah,” he agrees. Chokes on it. “They have.”
His eyes fall to the screen again despite himself and wonders briefly which one of those white uniforms is Sae. Wonders which one of those in blue is Isagi. Burns with the uncertainty.
The both of them stay in silence with the carton of eggs between them on the counter, eyes stuck to the screen. It’s beautiful, how football brings people together. A grandmother two generations older than Rin is captivated by the same thing he is.
At least, he would've thought like that once. Now, football is a stone in his gut, cradled by his organs like some terminal illness just waiting to kill him.
Still, he cannot look away.
The crowd on the TV roars as a figure clad in white passes the ball to another, lightning-fast and vicious. The speed of it shoots through Rin’s brain like the longing for home, and in an instant, he recognizes something tied to him in blood.
That’s Itoshi Sae, for sure. It must be. Who else passes like that, if not his older brother?
He feels a little nauseous, all of a sudden. The crowd roars again, but Rin rips his eyes away from the screen before he can see why.
“Thank you,” Rin suddenly says to the grandmother, placing the appropriate number of paper yen on the counter and grabbing the eggs. Still half-entranced by the game, the grandmother takes it with a smile. “Have a good night.”
In that motherly, gentle voice of hers, she watches him go with a quiet irasshaimas.
As he steps out the door, his hands shake so badly he’s afraid he’ll drop the carton of delicate eggs and watch it splatter against the tile like brains do.
His brother, in the finals. Japan. Isagi. Blue Lock.
It opens old wounds in a way he’s never imagined possible, in a way that reminds him violently why he’s been blocking every football account, why he’s deleted his socials and never once touched the sports broadcasts on their family television.
He thought that he’d at least gotten a bit over it, but obviously not. He feels the way he does when he wakes up in the middle of the night, cold-sweating and feverish, like that day in the snow watching Sae’s back leave into somewhere he could not hope to follow.
“Fuck,” he whispers to himself, fingers squeezing tightly into the cardboard carton.
It takes a few moments for him to collect himself, to stop shaking so violently. He bites his lip so hard he tastes iron.
Overhead, the sun is setting quickly. The first hints of pink and purple and blues already streak themselves across the Kamakuran sky, in a way that’s intimately familiar.
It’s about time. He heads down to the ocean.
Sae dribbles the football across the wet sand, and as usual, Rin gives chase. His older brother is fast, so fast his legs burn trying to catch up.
When his older brother sees him struggling, though, he always slows down a little and waits for Rin. He’s always comfortable in that knowing, that his older brother will wait for him to catch up. That he’ll never be left behind.
“Nii-chan,” Rin whines. “Wait for me.”
“Stupid brother,” Sae calls back at him, but stops anyway.
The water welcomes him like a familiar friend, after he sets the eggs on a nearby bench then strips his worn shoes and socks off and steps into it. It welcomes him almost like an older brother. Like home.
The sand is softer against his bare feet in the water than out, carving out a space for his footsteps as if tempted to drag him down every time he tries to take a step. He steps further out, anyway.
Seawater of his childhood covers his ankles first, then his calves, then his upper thighs, further and further until he’s wading in ocean water reaching up to his stomach.
It lightens the black hole opening in his gut, at least. Carries him, until the terrible things rolling in his stomach are weightless in water.
His mother never questions why his clothes come back dried stiff smelling of salt and dead things and in some places damp. Rin reckons that she’s got a successful enough of a son to cover for both of her kids, enough for her not to worry too much about Rin’s future.
He’s not sure if she really thinks he has one, at this point. He’s not so sure himself. In short, Rin’s pretty sure she’s given up on her second son.
It doesn’t matter. Rin closes his eyes as the sun explodes in its last attempt at color, streaking the sky in pinks and oranges overtaken by dark blue sky, and breathes. His chest pushes against the water as he wades deeper, carried by strange gravity.
As children, he and Sae played football on the beach. Sand stuck to the bottoms of their bare feet and somehow sometimes to Rin’s hair. Sae would complain about that whenever he washed Rin’s hair and picked the little beads out.
Afterwards, Sae would stop by the Family Mart and buy them both ice creams on a stick. With salt and sand on his tongue, the sweetness somehow tasted even better. Looking back, maybe it was just because it was Sae buying him all those sweets.
Probably. Whenever Rin tries to buy it himself nowadays, it never really tastes the same.
He’s stopped playing football now, too. That could also be part of the reason.
Does Sae still play football barefoot on the beach? With the rest of Real Madrid, or maybe that antennaed freak Shidou? He wouldn’t know. He hasn’t been in contact with Sae for many years — his older brother has probably changed his number to some Spanish one.
How different are the beaches of Madrid from their childhood Kamakura?
Does Sae still remember it, even?
Rin watches the waves roll around him with wide eyes. Sae has to, right? Or does he not? Did those memories wash away for his older brother the way their shared dreams did?
The thought makes him feel ill. He wades deeper into the water to rid himself of it.
Why did he leave Blue Lock? It’s because of the desperation to escape, but when he did, he realized that the thing he wanted to leave behind wasn’t anything to do with Blue Lock. It was himself.
Rin has been trying to leave his own skin for the past three years, maybe even longer. His own failures, his own skin, drags him down until it’s tiring to step outside. He does anyway, because the monstrous empty feeling making a home in his body roars within the confines of his childhood home.
The ocean, the night, is the only thing that alleviates him of that feeling.
He feels strangely light in the water. Alone and quiet but never quite still, the seawater carves out a space for Rin to fit in.
Sometimes it’s tempting to close his eyes and step so far in that no one, not his parents and not the Coast Guard, can differentiate him from the blue waves of his childhood Kamakura. It’s tempting to let himself drown, so maybe the person inside of him can finally escape from the heaviness of his skin.
Maybe then, the blue haze of his childhood memories will dissipate until all Rin sees is himself and his older brother in beautiful warm, clear light.
It’s tempting. It’s always been.
Rin cannot remember a time in these past three years when he did not want to die.
He never does. Like most things, his reasoning is petty and pathetic.
Sae has beaten him at football, just as he’d always promised Rin. Blue Lock was his last chance at ever catching up to his brother, and look where that had taken him?
Life is not another thing Rin can let his older brother beat him out. If there is nothing else Rin can do, no hobby nor emotion, then he needs to strip himself down to the most primitive: to live.
He imagines if he were to die. Would Sae laugh? Scoff? Probably.
The thought makes him sick, the thought of losing at something as easy to Sae as living, and so he does not stop breathing. Does not let himself float away in the current.
Dark blue skies gleam overhead, the same color as Rin’s hazy memories of childhood. Kamakura’s waters are such a beautiful shade under the night sky, rich with blues and blacks.
Rin stays in the water for a few moments longer, letting himself drift but anchored to the seafloor so he cannot be carried away.
He remembers the glistening white shells of eggs, and his mother’s cautioning. Come back before nine. The forecast said it’ll rain.
Rain. Thunder. Ocean. That’s not something Rin wants to be caught up in.
Maybe it’s about time to go home, now.
That’s what he does, and does not feel any less heavy walking away from the ocean as he did walking towards it hours ago.
Two figures trudge out of the Family Mart slightly wet, covered in the blue dark of night. They both hold rapidly melting popsicles in their sandy hands, smelling of sweetness and sweat.
“C’mon Rin,” one says, tone exasperated but eyes sickeningly fond. The other doesn’t seem to notice it. “We’re not supposed to be out so late, you know that.”
The younger one, Rin, frowns, but takes the other one’s hand anyway.
They both feel so, so light.