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Blue Lock doesn’t come to haunt him as often as maybe it should. The memories of that facility come to him in dreams sometimes, or as visceral flinches when he gets a text out of the blue from someone he met there, or as the vague sense of deja vu when he kicks the ball at just the right angle and someone in the corner of his eye looks a little too much like one of his old rivals. But for the most part, he doesn’t think too much about it. He doesn’t let himself. It’s in the past.
Instead, Rin plays for Arsenal, with teammates who had nothing to do with the whole thing, who mostly don’t even know about it—and those who do know only ever talk about the program if they think he can’t hear. He lives in a little studio apartment in North London, with an emotional support cat that’s not technically certified as such and a somewhat concerning amount of baking supplies for someone who doesn’t bake. He has a small, simple life, and he plays soccer, and that’s all that matters.
He doesn’t keep in contact with any of the former Blue Lock players; not that he ever thought he would want to. When he first got to Blue Lock, he was told he would have to take down 299 of them to become the best striker in the world, and he knew he wasn’t going to be making friends.
He tries not to think too hard about the actual implications of the program itself. He tries not to wonder where some of the disqualified players had gone, after, or what they’re doing now. He has no way to contact them and he has no desire to do so anyway. He just—he gets curious, sometimes.
Sometimes. Not often enough for it to matter. Not often enough for it to count as curiosity, not really. It’s just a vague wondering.
So he doesn’t ever think about Blue Lock, not really. It only comes back to him in times like these. Times like: getting on a plane back to Tokyo for a training camp with the Japanese national team before heading to France for the Olympics. Times like: making his way through security, through the airport, and to the plane. Times like: sitting in his seat and turning to look out of the window as the plane takes off over London, over England, over Europe.
It comes back to him in waves, in memories that wash over him and then settle into his bones as a physical weight. There’s Isagi, looking straight through him and seeing something else. There’s Bachira, dancing around him and telling him that he’ll make soccer fun. There’s Aryu, telling him his hair routine is abysmal. There’s Tokimitsu, stumbling over his English. There’s the U-20 game and Isagi’s final shot, that piece of faith and luck and desperation and skill all coming together for Isagi’s win.
Two years earlier, when Rin got his first call up to the senior national team at nineteen years old—and two years out of Blue Lock—he had gone to play in a series of friendlies against the United States, and afterwards one of his Arsenal teammates had welcomed him back to London with a small party and the words, “I’ve never seen you play like that before,” slippery on wine-drunk lips.
“I don’t know what you mean,” Rin had said, trying not to wrinkle his nose at the way his teammate was so loosely holding that glass of red wine over the white carpet.
He had shrugged, the wine sloshing around in the glass. A single drop lifts over the rim of the cup and slowly slides down the glass until hitting the finger wrapped around it. “I just mean, like, with us you’re a true striker, you know? You play high up and wait for the long ball, you shoot, you score, etcetera. You know? But when you’re with your national team, it’s like…there’s a different tension. It’s like you’re playing to prove something bigger than a win.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” Rin had said again, but this time it was practically a growl.
He remembers feeling, then, like a cornered animal growling at a predator. He remembers feeling like a nerve had been taken out of him and exposed bare to be pressed, hurt, laughed at. He remembers leaving the party only a few minutes later.
Rin isn’t sure why the two year old memory has come back to him now, other than the burning, painful knowledge of why he plays like that for the national team but not for Arsenal. Oh, he gives his all to his club team; he doesn’t think he’s capable of not giving soccer his all. His work ethic and his drive are two things that have been burned into him since childhood. Playing in the Premier League has only further honed those traits to deadly sharp weapons.
But he also knows that, while his roots in soccer begin with Sae, with the brother he has yet to surpass but still aches to defeat, his drive to win found its claws in Blue Lock. He may have had a strong work ethic and skill to rival professional players beforehand, but it was Blue Lock that brought out something great in him. Something that would destroy anything in his way, something that would take down his own team to score a goal, something with teeth.
It’s been years, and he has yet to decide if this thing with teeth is a good thing or not. Blue Lock made him who he is, on one hand, and on the other hand, it turned him into something willing to break both others and himself. He wants to win—hungers for it, needs it, desires it with a fire that burns down forests.
The thing about Blue Lock is that the program was both right in what it did for him—for all of them—and, at the same time, it was so antithetical to basic principles of soccer that it took years to unlearn some of it.
The move from Blue Lock to the Premier League had been a wake up call, of sorts. He was a good player coming out of the program and he knew it, and international leagues around the world knew it, but he didn’t have the ability to work in a team Arsenal wanted from him. He could score as many goals as he could, defeat as many players one on one that he’s capable of, and none of that made up for the fact that he wanted to do it all by himself.
Blue Lock brought the egoist, the striker, the winner in him. It took years to unlearn the sense of survival of the fittest that came with those lessons.
He’s not going to lose everything if he loses a game anymore. He’s not going to lose everything if he makes a mistake. These are things that had been so untrue for so long that moving to a professional league elsewhere felt almost like a downgrade. Like he was losing something, some sort of sense of desperation.
Being back in Japan makes all of that come rushing back—even just getting on the plane makes it come back.
Which is to say that the plane ride is full of memory: a game against the Team Z of his own wing in Blue Lock, shooting against holograms and winning, defeating every team that came his way in the Second Selection, stealing Bachira only to realize that he could never make anyone look at him the way people like Bachira looked at Isagi.
And more: a game against his brother, losing to Isagi even in the same moments as they won the game. A series of matches under the careful eye of Loki. Trying to collaborate with Shidou; failing. Being the Itoshi brother, at the start, and being Rin, at the end.
By the time the plane touches down, Rin is itching to get his feet against a ball and to take out all those frustrations, all those memories, on a goal and its goalkeeper. He makes his way to the dorms they’re all staying at, and instead of going to practice like he had wanted to, he crashes into bed as soon as he gets to the dorm. He was more exhausted from the traveling than he thought he would be, and the jetlag from the time difference seems to hit harder than it has in the past.
When he wakes, it’s light outside and he’s going to be late for their first practice if he doesn’t get out of bed immediately. He hates being rushed in the morning, but he forces himself to get up and ready in half the time he usually spends on his morning routine.
Getting to the training facility, he half expected Ego to be there. It’s been a while since he’s been in Japan, and even longer since he’s seen the man, but whenever he goes to train here, part of him always thinks he’s going to hear the scratch of that voice and end up in that facility again.
But Ego isn’t there, because Ego has no influence over the national team anymore, and Rin remembers to breathe. He remembers that Blue Lock is over. The only thing he should be focusing on now is training for the Olympics in a few weeks. That’s the only thing that matters right now—the gold medal, and the path of destruction to get there.
He still thinks of soccer as destruction, somehow. He still thinks of it as something that destroys, something that takes. Something that has taken everything. He still thinks of it as something he must give everything to if he’s going to survive it.
He’s not sure why he still thinks of it like that—he’s long since moved past the time in his life when it was the only thing that he cared about and the only thing that he knew how to do. He’s moved on from the belief that being good at soccer is the only thing he’s worth.
Still: soccer is a survival, of sorts. It’s a game, yes, but it’s also the kind of game you don’t win. It’s the kind of game that doesn’t end until you break or you retire. It’s the kind of game that grips tight onto you and doesn’t let you go. It’s something you survive, and it is also a weapon.
It, too, is something you do in order to survive. It’s something you do in order to keep walking with your head upright. Or maybe that’s just him. Maybe that’s just him and his fucked up sense of self-worth; something he’s well aware of and has no plans on changing.
At the training facility, Rin finds that he’s the first one there, as planned. It’s practically part of his routine to be the first one to get to training; it relaxes him in a way, gives him a moment to breathe and center himself before the chaos of the rest of the team arrives.
He knows who’s been invited to the training camp; it was all public information. He knows who’s coming, and what it’s going to be like to see them: memories upon memories upon memories.
It’s all coming back to him, and he hates it. He wants to move on, he’s been trying so hard to move on. It’s part of why he had gone to England to play instead of staying in the J.League. So many of the Blue Lock players had gone abroad with the bids that had been made on them right after Blue Lock finished, but most of them had returned to Japan eventually. For some of them it had been personal reasons—family, friends, homesickness—and for some of them it had been not being able to make it abroad in the way they thought they would be able to.
Rin experienced neither of those things, and so he stayed in Europe, eventually moving from France to England. He stayed as far from Japan as he could without going to the Major League Soccer in the USA, and he hadn’t regretted it for a second. The only time he ever questions his decision is when he’s back in Japan and wondering why the country—his old home—all feels so alien to him. Why none of it seems to quite fit anymore. Why it all feels somewhat distant, unfamiliar, like it isn’t his anymore.
The only thing that feels familiar here is soccer. Soccer, and the Blue Lock players arriving at the facility as he sits in the conference room.
“Rin—” and there’s Bachira, as bright as ever, despite his own travels from Portugal the day earlier— “it’s been a while!”
Rin shrugs. He’s never really known how to talk to Bachira. Even years older, he still doesn’t quite know how to handle him. Bachira has always been unpredictable in a way that Rin knows he himself isn’t, and something about that bothers him. It itches at the back of his neck, like he’s constantly feeling eyes watching him, and constantly waiting for some knife to find its way to his back.
But the knife never comes, because Blue Lock is over, and because Bachira wouldn’t do that to him now. There’s no reason to distrust these people now; they’re not competing to destroy each other for a place on the national team. They’re all here, they all made it. There’s no reason to want to tear each other to pieces for something they already have.
But old habits die hard. Old habits die hard, and Rin forgets, sometimes, that he’s not going to lose his place here if he fucks up. He forgets that the people on this team are on his team, and they’re not all trying to score goals at any cost. There will be no stealing the ball from each other, there will be no fighting to score a hatrick even if they lose 4-3, there will be no destruction of his dreams if he chooses to pass instead of shoot.
That kind of thing isn’t really tolerated under the senior team’s coach. The senior team’s coach values individualistic playing if it gets them the goal, but doesn’t stand for egoists who won’t cooperate when it comes down to trusting their teammates. It’s why Barou still hasn’t made it, and why Isagi has.
“How’re you?” Bachira asks, undeterred by Rin’s lack of a response. “Damn, it really has been so long. Since the last training camp here, right?”
Rin grunts a little, just to acknowledge the words. He doesn’t really want to make small talk with him; he’s not exactly known for his friendliness and approachability. This does not seem to make Bachira want to walk away.
And he remembers, too: Bachira coming up to him, daring him to play one on one even if he knows he’ll lose. “I promise to make it fun,” he had said. Fun. Rin had scoffed at the idea then, but now he thinks maybe Bachira was onto something that he still doesn’t quite understand.
“I’ve never seen someone look so sad on the field as you,” Bachira had said in that same conversation.
Rin hated that, hated that sentiment so much, because he hated that Bachira could see through him so easily. At the time, he hadn’t realized how much anger and bitterness he channeled into his game play. He hadn’t realized how much his hurt had been driving his need to play. But Bachira said that, said someone who looks so sad, and the reality had all come crashing into him.
“I’m good,” he says eventually. “Been a while.”
Bachira hums, sitting down in the chair next to him. “I’ve been watching your games. You’ve gotten better since we last played together. I’m excited for this.”
“This?”
“For the Olympics,” Bachira clarifies, “and for playing with you all again. It’s fun. I forget what it’s like to play with you all sometimes, and it’s always good to come home to it.”
Fun. There’s that word again. In response, Rin just shrugs.
“Oh, Isagi!” Bachira is calling out, waving a hand to the man who’s just walked in the room.
Rin looks over at Bachira, feeling slightly betrayed even if he knows that Bachira and Isagi are close; Isagi is the last person he wants to sit next to. That said, they’re both older now, and while their rivalry has never faded, it’s become something almost friendly now. It’s become something that pushes them forward, pushes them to get better and to help each other get better, instead of something that they use to destroy each other.
Grand statements of egoism and thinly veiled threats are things of the past. “A front row seat to my ascension to the top,” is a laughable claim now. They’re climbing to the top on the same team now. Neither of them had gotten eliminated from Blue Lock before the program shut down in favor of most of them making it to the U-20 World Cup, and so they’ll cooperate now. They have no choice.
Besides, Rin can admit, now, that Isagi has gotten good. He still watches the J.League games now when he can’t sleep and the time difference becomes convenient. He can admit that Isagi had improved by leaps and bounds since they were young teenagers, and he can admit that he’s a worthy rival to have.
“Bachira,” Isagi says, grinning as he comes over to them. “And Rin, hey. It’s good to see you two.”
Rin knows, in that last statement, that he’s really moreso referring to Bachira than him. The two of them have remained close despite meeting in Blue Lock and going on to play in two different countries—something that Rin never fails to begrudgingly be impressed by when he’s reminded of the fact—but they don’t actually get to meet in person until national team training camps. There’s no way Isagi thinks about him nearly as often as he wishes he could see Bachira.
Isagi sits down next to Bachira, dropping his gym bag at his feet. He sighs, yawning wide as he settles into his seat. “I was thinking the other day—”
“Never a good sign,” Bachira teases, and Isagi smiles a little. “What were you thinking about?”
“I was thinking about Blue Lock,” Isagi says, and on Bachira’s other side, Rin tenses. Isagi is staring out at the front of the room, where an empty whiteboard stands. Others are beginning to gather in the room; both former Blue Lock players and others. “Just that it’s been so long.”
Bachira nods thoughtfully. “Yeah. What is it? Five years now? Since it shut down?”
“Something like that,” Isagi says, tilting his head up to the ceiling as if he’s seeing a room other than this one. “It’s kind of funny. How far we’ve all come. We’re going to the Olympics.”
“I knew we would,” Rin says quietly. It was a comment meant mostly for himself, but Bachira and Isagi both turn to look at him.
Bachira grins. “We?”
Internally, Rin curses. He hadn’t meant to say we. He hadn’t meant to admit that he’s always known the two of them would go far—if not to the national team, then at least far into the rankings of Blue Lock. He hated Isagi from the start, hated what he stood for, hated when he beat him in the U-20 match.
But at some point during the Neo Egoist League, he realized that if there was anyone who was going to take him down, it was going to be Isagi. As much as he hated the idea of it, as much as he was going to fight it, chipped tooth and broken nail: Isagi looked at him like he was nothing. Like he had devoured his every skill, and now he was an empty shell; useless to him.
This did nothing but drive him further forward. Drive him to get better, get stronger, tear Isagi’s wings off and drag him back down to the ground where Rin could trample over him. He had been sixteen and losing, and desperate.
“There’s a different tension,” his Arsenal teammate had said. “It’s like you’re playing to prove something bigger than a win.”
Rin knows, in some deep and vulnerable place, how true that is. He’s always trying to prove something, no matter the team he’s playing for and with. But when he’s with the former Blue Lock players, there’s a different desperation to it. There’s a different hunger in every bite.
He is trying to prove something bigger than a win, something bigger than his win: he’s trying to prove it worked. For all of the wrong, awful lessons he unlearned, Blue Lock did teach him something valuable. It must have. It had to have.
And if nothing else: it brought him this.
Isagi is grinning at him. “I knew you believed in us, deep down.”
“I’ll kill you,” Rin says mildly.
Growing up, he thinks, has been both a blessing and a curse. He can be civil with Isagi now, can give and take teasing comments without wanting to destroy him. He also still wants to beat him thoroughly and entirely.
“Nah,” Isagi says. “You won’t.”
Between them, Bachira laughs a little. “It has been a while, huh? It still feels like yesterday that you two were at each other’s throats over learning English.”
Isagi hums. “I’m glad, I think. That we’ve grown up. That we can play together now, instead of fighting each other.”
“Me too,” Bachira says, knocking their shoulders together. Then he looks at Rin, one of those gentle, friendly smiles on his face. “I know you are too, Rin. You don’t have to say it.”
And it’s true, isn’t it? They really have grown up. And he’s glad they’re out of Blue Lock, and that they can rib at each other like this without any actual bite. He’s glad that they can compete and push each other’s limits without pushing each other to the point of a breakdown.
Blue Lock doesn’t let me be alone, he remembers thinking once. It was during the U-20 game, back when he was frothing at the mouth to beat Sae and yet Isagi was winning against both of them.
Blue Lock doesn’t let me be alone. At the time, he had been mad about it. He hated the idea. It had made that fire in him burn hotter and stronger without being any more productive in making him get better. It had made something strong in his chest shrivel up and dry out, the turn to ash. It had made him harden into stone instead of diamond.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Rin says. It’s a lie and they all know it.
Blue Lock doesn’t let me be alone.
That desperation to win, to beat everyone, has sharpened with time into something else, he thinks. It’s sharpened into a kind of passion, like there are things bigger than dragging Isagi to the ground and punching some civility into Shidou.
But that passion, that fire, are also all things that come from Blue Lock: from wanting to devour Isagi whole, from wanting to destroy Kaiser’s dreams, from stealing Bachira and then losing him, from losing to Sae and then getting up onto his feet again.
His desperation has sharpened into drive and desire. He knows he has people like Bachira and Isagi, once the most frustrating of rivals, to thank for that. They’re teammates now, and Rin thinks it’s far past time he learned to trust them.
He’s always known that they—everyone who came out of Blue Lock whole, really—have their own passion bright enough to rival the sun. Now that they’re free of that competition, that awful fear of loss, he thinks he can start sharing in their light. Time really has softened him, hasn’t it?
“We’ll win that medal,” Isagi says, and there’s no question in his words. No question in the we.
Blue Lock is where they became things with teeth. As teammates today, together their bite down can sink much deeper into gold. Blue Lock forged them in Olympic fire. Now, Rin thinks, it’s time to reap the rewards.