Chapter Text
Nothing ever takes shape overnight. Not the good things, not the bad ones. Problems and solutions alike were always the slow work of days stretching endlessly into one another. Which is why, naturally, all that chaos began on a day as plain as any other, in a moment that bore no particular significance at all.
Isagi Yoichi had never thought of himself as the jealous type. On the contrary, he prided himself on being the kind of boy any mother-in-law might dream of. He’d always been a good kid, his worst flaw lying only in the sheer intensity of his nature, never in malice. More often than not, he managed to stand in people’s good graces, no matter the shape of their connection. As a teenager, he had simply been too slow, too detached, to notice the deeper feelings blooming around him. But eventually, he outgrew that blind spot – reaching a place where he could deliberately set it aside, choosing instead to keep things light, friendly, uncomplicated.
Romance had never been his field, an irony, really. His one true passion since the cradle had always been soccer. Pouring three-quarters of his life into the sport had carved the edges of his very personality. He was content with the friends who stayed closest, with the heady mix of sweat and wet grass that filled his lungs. By most standards, Isagi was plain enough, on good days, a touch above average. Cute, as his childhood classmates might have said. The sort of boy who never received chocolates on Valentine’s Day, never had much time to charm strangers, his warmth reserved for fleeting moments between matches. The only bonds he ever seemed able to forge were the ones tied in sweat and competition. Perhaps that was what doomed him.
So there he stood, in his very first relationship – one that, for once, had nothing to do with a flawless Noel Noa autograph scrawled across a perfect sphere – at the fragile age of eighteen. With someone he could, on his best days, barely tolerate.
Michael Kaiser might well have been the biggest bastard he had ever met, but what did the details matter? Were they truly so important? Isagi might have spent ninety-seven percent of his time yearning to hurl the exchange student against the wall and tear that eyesore of a tattoo straight from his skin with his teeth, but somehow their vicious rhythm of insults and half-serious threats over lunch had shifted into something else – something that left him tangled up in a breathless make-out session in the locker room after the last game of the season. The one they won.
And never, not in a thousand years, had he expected his own lips to shape the word yes in answer to that ridiculous, theatrical, rain-soaked confession in Berlin — while he himself sat in a McDonald’s in sunny Kanto, halfway through summer break — delivered through the glowing screen of a random video call, right in the middle of vacation after his very first term of college.
It was clinical, an emotional snowball Isagi had never once been forced to deal with in his life. Which left him torn, dramatically so, between swallowing it all down with a bottle of iced green tea from the convenience store vending machine on his way to class… or calling his mother in tears, begging to go back home and abandon everything he had worked for. Or, perhaps, something less theatrical.
The point was, Isagi had never been in this kind of relationship before. He had never tasted the bitter tension of jealousy, simply because he’d never needed to. In the hierarchy of his only real relationships, the ones he had with his friends, he’d always known his place. And he never felt jealous of his friends. But now it was different. Now he was his boyfriend’s boyfriend. His boyfriend, who might just be the biggest bastard alive. And for some reason, Isagi was, for the first time in his life, hopelessly in love.
Paralyzed. That was the word. He felt so deeply drawn to Michael Kaiser – not just physically but God forbid, he’d rather be trampled to death by furious lobsters than admit how attractive he found the German – but to his presence itself. That infuriating, unbearable presence that pulled at Isagi’s very core like some invisible magnet. His intensity, the jagged shards of his fractured personality… all of it drew him in. It was alarming, how much so. Like a wasp drawn not to the real sun, but to the glaring, artificial, plastic glow of a lamp pretending to rival it. Dangerous. And yet Isagi was tempted, curious to see how far Kaiser would burn before tearing himself apart. Ahem. Dramatically speaking, of course. He wasn’t about to watch his boyfriend’s legendary self-destruction unfold up close. Not yet.
But the thing that was driving him to the edge, threatening to strangle him with his own nerves, had a name. A name and a face. And if Kaiser was a lamp luring in his wasp, then Alexis Ness was a lighthouse.
Not that he was especially flashy. And Isagi couldn’t even decide if that made it better or worse.
It had all started on what should have been just another day. A dull Wednesday, when practice had been canceled for some reason Isagi was far too irritated to bother remembering. He was scrolling absently through Twitter, wandering the halls of the Social Sciences building in search of Hiori and Kurona, since with no practice, the two of them were no doubt thinking about wasting the afternoon at the café down the street. Casually changing the song playing on spotify (because there was no way in hell he was going to listen to Snakelike again – Kaiser had cursed his playlist with that song, blasting it at the gym and even while studying), when, at the exact moment he rounded the corner, something brushed against his shoulder.
It was light, subtle, almost delicate. The kind of accidental bump no apology was needed for, harmless enough to be forgotten. What caught his attention for that split second were the curls — pink? purple? how exactly did one name that shade? Magenta, definitely. That, and the muffled melody spilling from the stranger’s headphones. The one song he couldn’t stand anymore. Snakelike. Loud enough for Isagi to recognize, even through the other boy’s distraction.
The guy didn’t even notice him, too absorbed in his phone. Isagi wouldn’t have noticed either, if not for the strange, wordless pull that tugged at him.
“Isagi.” Hiori’s voice broke the moment as he turned the corner, carrying that tired-but-cheerful tone of someone who’d survived a long day and was already dreaming of collapsing into bed with a beer. Kurona followed close behind, and Ranze gave his usual nod of greeting.
Isagi froze. The boy with the magenta curls and questionable taste in music held him captive for a heartbeat. Then he blinked, and both the feeling, and the boy himself, were gone.
“Aiyo, Yo. Ranze.” Yoichi rubbed the back of his neck, forcing a casual greeting into the sudden, awkward silence.
If his friends noticed, they chose to let it slide.
They started walking in the opposite direction, Isagi tucking his headphones away and shaking off the strange sensation. “So, how was it, three straight periods with Matsuda-sensei?” He whistled playfully.
Hiori groaned, like the memory itself caused him pain. “Felt like being marinated like chicken. Someone like him belongs in a museum exhibit, not a classroom.”
Kurona laughed, nodding along. And then, like a curse, Isagi's finger hovered over his most hated song of the week into his playlist.
“Hey, Yo, who was that guy you bumped into just now?” He tried to sound disinterested. He didn’t know why. He really wasn’t interested.
“Hm?” Hiori tilted his head, confused.
“NessNess.” Kurona muttered, tugging lightly at Isagi’s sleeve.
“Oh, yeah. Ness.” Hiori said it casually, turning back to Isagi. “Why?”
And Isagi had no idea what to do with himself. That gnawing, fragile tension crawled over him like eggshells underfoot, though there was nothing wrong at all. Just casual conversation. Completely ordinary.
Kurona and Hiori exchanged a glance at Isagi’s face, if you could call it that. He looked, for lack of a better word, emotionally constipated. They laughed quietly to themselves. Ranze, meanwhile, rolled his eyes in the direction the boy had vanished – around the corner, like magic.
“Ness. He’s in Social Sciences with us. Started out in Physics, but switched earlier this year.” Ranze offered, as if testing the waters of Isagi’s reaction.
“Mm. You don’t remember him, Isagi?” Hiori sighed. And something — something Isagi couldn’t name — shifted in his tone. Narrowing his eyes, Isagi studied Hiori’s casual, friendly expression. He knew better than to take it at face value. His throat went dry. There was something he wasn’t being told.
Should he know this guy? It felt like he should. Not just because of the bad music taste or the strange unease when he’d laid eyes on him. No, it wasn’t that. Isagi wasn’t that shallow. – Hating someone based solely on a bad vibe was Chigiri and Reo’s job, thank you very much. –
Ranze and Hiori traded another look. Isagi wasn’t sure if he even wanted to know what it meant. “Anyway,” Hiori went on lightly. “We just bumped into him outside the lab. He asked about Kiyora.”
Okay. Isagi could accept that bland, perfectly normal explanation. Even if he had no idea who Kiyora was supposed to be.
The problem was that Hiori wasn’t finished. “I figured you’d remember him… since he’s Kaiser’s ex.”
…
“What?”
He didn’t let it ruin his week – at least, not in ways anyone else could see. But something twisted low in his stomach, coiled tight like a knot of wire. Jealousy, perhaps. Or guilt, for never having looked closely enough at that boy to even recognize him. Or maybe it was all of it at once, tangled together with the stifling tension of facing Kaiser every day afterward, as if every glance, every word, came laced with a secret weight. Outwardly, he moved through his days as usual. Inwardly, though, it grew harder, stranger, to meet Michael’s eyes. Still, he convinced himself nothing had changed, that his behavior remained as ordinary as ever. Of course he knew Kaiser had been with others before. Everyone did. It was simple logic: if you dated someone, they carried a past. But Isagi didn’t. He knew he was an exception, an outlier, a case apart.
And yet something was devouring him, chewing at the edges of his composure. Jealousy, he was certain. But he didn’t know how to hold it, how to control it, or how to let it go. Why now? Why him? He had never felt this way before, never known the bitter taste of envy, until he found himself sinking into Kaiser’s couch on movie nights, his mind suddenly spiraling into thoughts he didn’t want. Wondering which corners of the apartment that magenta-haired boy had lingered in most. Which side of the bed he had claimed. What small, invisible habits of his had once filled these rooms. Had Isagi ever done something – anything – that made Kaiser’s mind flicker back to him even while they were together?
Isagi didn’t know Alexis Ness. Not in any real way. He had only been dimly aware of him, as one is of a shape at the edge of vision. But after that humiliating, one-sided brush in the hallway, he realized the truth: Alexis had been closer to his life than he’d ever dared to notice.
It went back to the beginning, his first semester of college. The days when he had just joined the team, when he first met Kaiser and wasted no time in hating him with his whole being. Even then, Ness had been there. Always there. At Kaiser’s side in every moment — on the pitch, at lunch, in the halls, even during casual run-ins in the city. He was fixed to Kaiser like a charm on a keyring, a quiet shadow Isagi had chosen not to see, and had kept ignoring for far longer than he could admit.
A silent, attentive presence. Always steady, always smiling softly, with an expression that seemed gentle enough to dissolve into the background. A voice pitched too low for Isagi to catch whenever he was too busy shouting at Kaiser. And a face that always pulled back, always glanced at him with something subtle, strange, a look that hovered on the edge of caution. And now, in hindsight, those faint signs that he had once dismissed felt deafening. They were blaring at him, merciless, impossible to unsee.
The second “encounter” was as abrupt as the first, just a handful of days later, while he was scrolling mindlessly through his Instagram feed over lunch, bored and detached, until the app deemed it fit to drop before him, out of nowhere, a photograph of someone with whom he shared no mutual followers.
Alexis Ness.
Isagi felt unsettled, almost jarred — how had he never noticed before? That German exchange student was criminally beautiful. Too beautiful to ignore. You would need the most appalling taste to disagree, and clearly the world didn’t: the boy had gathered over a thousand likes in less than four hours. Four hours. And Isagi recognized the café in the blurred background at once.
The same Cafe he himself had visited only days ago.
So this beautiful boy frequented the very same place? Since when? Isagi and his friends had been there at all sorts of times, almost daily, and yet he had never once noticed the other’s presence. Had Ness only recently begun going? And why? Perhaps Hiori had mentioned something, hadn’t they been friends, in some sense? They were even cordial to one another… except when Alexis refused him so much as an apology for a passing collision in the corridor.
Breathe, Isagi told himself, drawing the air deep into his chest. His finger hovered dangerously over the photo, there on that public account. How scandalous would it be to like a picture posted by his boyfriend’s ex? Worse still, to withdraw the like afterwards. He couldn’t pretend not to know him, that would be absurdly rude, even for someone like him, who had spent all of high school blithely dismissing the feelings of others under the guise of “sincere friendship.” Better not to risk it. And yet his hand trembled, clutching the phone as though it were ticking down like a bomb. He was sweating cold, his insides roaring while his exterior remained torturously still – so much so that when a notification suddenly chimed, he jolted violently in his seat, holding the device like a live explosive, a soundless cry breaking from his throat.
Notification ➥ Mihya ‹3
Are you planning on coming home today?
I think I'll be stuck in the studio until later (٥↼_↼)
The shock brought him back to himself. He stared at the notification, sighing, unsettled by a tangle of feelings he couldn’t quite name.
Beautiful. His eyes drifted back to the photo. That easy smile, carefree, cream left deliberately on his lip, a blur of Isagi’s favorite café behind him like a taunt. A cheap orange filter making him look unfairly gorgeous. That brat knew exactly what he was doing, and it was driving Isagi’s nerves raw. He sighed, stared, and closed Instagram. For the rest of the day. And yet, through nearly every moment that followed, his mind twisted around the image of perfectly styled brown curls fading into a soft ombré of magenta at the tips, freckles scattered like surgical pinpoints, and a pair of thighs hidden almost criminally from sight. He couldn’t stop thinking about him.
That night, sunk into Michael’s expensive couch, he couldn’t pay attention to the movie. He couldn’t focus on the movie his boyfriend had chosen – and not just because Yoichi found thrillers and psychological horror unbearably dull, their twists far too easy to guess. His mind kept circling back, over and over, to that Instagram feed, that photo, that feeling. How he felt now.
Because Alexis Ness was ridiculously beautiful. And Yoichi, at his best, was only cute.
“What’s with you tonight?” Michael mumbled, chin propped on his palm, slouched on the couch, exhausted after overtime hours at the tattoo studio.
“What do you even see in me?” The question slipped out before Yoichi could stop it. He asked automatically, watching Kaiser’s reaction like an owl.
Michael gave a snort, then a weary frown. “What kind of question is that?”
He started ran out of patience. “Can’t you just answer?”
“What did you see in me?” Kaiser shot back, mocking. shot back.
The dark-haired boy pressed his lips together, gaze weighted, feeling strangely frustrated. “Your intensity. That unyielding, untouchable fire that pulled me in. Mostly... I like piecing you together, even if you’re a time bomb.” He sighed.
For once, Kaiser was at a loss for words. Suddenly, the movie he’d been waiting all week to watch became nothing more than irritating background noise. He stared at Yoichi for long, heavy minutes with an unreadable expression, so unreadable that Isagi bit the inside of his cheek in frustration. The German clearly hadn’t expected something so disarmingly honest, and it triggered alarms in Isagi’s mind he hadn’t even known existed.
Finally, “I hate admitting this, but we’re irritatingly alike.” Michael muttered through clenched teeth. Yoichi found himself strangely curious, though his body remained perfectly still, waiting for something Kaiser wasn’t even sure he knew how to give. “You have... this effect on me. It annoys me. I don’t understand it. I hate not understanding, not being in control. But... it’s refreshing. And terrifying.”
Then he turned back to the screen as if nothing had happened. Isagi stayed silent, eyes flickering to his phone on the elegant glass coffee table; too fragile for its own good, liable to shatter under the lightest weight, and yet it was made to carry it. — That table fits him perfectly, Isagi thought. And he laughed at the ridiculousness of it.
He picked up the phone quietly, settling back, his fingers moving on instinct, Instagram opening before he could stop himself. He glanced at Michael over the edge of the screen: still, focused on the film, silent. And Isagi accepted that, took it as an answer in itself, perhaps more than he deserved.
Cafés, restaurants, bars. Never alone, always an extra beer bottle on the table, always the same type of coffee, the same hashtags in the captions. Freshly baked cookies. A shot on campus where Yoichi caught a glimpse of Hiori in the background with other familiar faces. And – begrudgingly – he had to admit: Ness looked beautiful even when he didn’t want him to. Different brands and styles of clothes, though sweaters seemed a favorite. He liked macchiatos. Dogs. He owned a German Spitz, traveled often, favored underground music, and apparently collected the Percy Jackson saga. All of this pieced together in just minutes of scrolling through Alexis Ness’s personal Instagram. Always too beautiful. And then — Kaiser.
Yoichi was hooked. Biting his lip, he noticed tiny things, too much blue in his wardrobe, a homebody streak beneath the party photos, but never truly alone. And there were photos of Kaiser.
He wasn’t sure how far down he’d scrolled when his chest tightened at one image: his boyfriend, caught like an unwilling subject in the corner of an aquarium selfie. Kaiser looked annoyed, almost startled, while Alexis glowed beside him, arm around his neck, smiling like the world itself had been gifted to him. Yoichi’s grip on the phone tightened, eyes flicking toward Kaiser again — relaxed, weary, teetering on sleep, utterly unconcerned.
How was he supposed to feel?? Guilty? Lucky? He didn’t know. All he knew was that it hurt. He was jealous, maybe just a little, but wasn’t that irrelevant? He was the one in Michael’s apartment. His boyfriend’s home.
And still, he scrolled, as if somewhere down there he might stumble on the answer. Kaiser’s presence grew almost constant in the boy’s feed, post after post rewinding all the way to two years ago — before Yoichi had even entered college. Trips, shopping, hotel rooms, interviews, parties. Meanwhile, Isagi had likely been locked in his bedroom, suffocating on exam prep and yearning to bolt out the window and onto the nearest pitch, surviving only on sheer willpower.
Yoichi and Michael never went out. He and Kaiser never went out. Isagi was a homebody; he disliked parties, alcohol, preferred to spend free time training or sketching. Michael was much the same, content with movies or endless match analyses, old games dissected until neither could declare victory in the debate. Did Kaiser like going out?
“Michael.” He whispered. And his boyfriend, Just thirty percent awake, grunted in reply. “Let’s go out.”
“For?” The blond muttered, eyes closed, body slack.
Yoichi pressed his lips together, bitterness on his tongue. He sighed, pretending to scroll something important. “Nothing. Just... out. On a date. Dinner, maybe.”
“Sure.” Michael said automatically, eyes still closed.
The Japanese boy nodded, content enough, though still sensing that something was off. He ignored it, curling up against a cushion, eyes lowered, staring rather stupidly at his phone screen.
March, 2014. Michael looked ridiculously happy. Clearly younger, long blond hair, fewer tattoos, still carrying a certain innocence – smiling so easily with his head resting against his midfielder’s chest, both of them sweaty on some pitch in Germany. It was one of the oldest photos on the profile. Isagi found himself staring at it for far too long. Nearly six years ago, and it already seemed Ness had been making Kaiser happy for a very long time.
He paid little attention to the rest of the photos. Michael was far less present in them compared to even just a year back, as though something had shifted drastically, and it wasn’t only the midfielder’s phone. Ness cutting and dyeing Michael’s hair in their dorm room, amateurish, with snacks pulled from a vending machine, snacks that, only a year later, would be strictly forbidden from his diet. Fragile, genuine, a memory that could shatter like ice, like a glass table breaking under the very weight it was made to withstand.
But it was absurd, they were just pictures. Photos of lunches, of landscapes, of a former teammate failing miserably to grab a stuffed koala from a claw machine while Michael laughed freely in the background. Memories.
When the movie finally ended and Michael dozed off, Yoichi wasn’t even sure how long he had been sitting there. He simply slid the phone back onto the coffee table and surrendered to his own fatigue. Thoughtful. In silent.
Five years of a relationship. And Isagi couldn’t recall seeing Kaiser and Ness in the same place since classes had started again. Nearly six years, and they had been fine, eating together in the cafeteria as though no one else existed, until the summer break. Just a single month of summer, and halfway through it Isagi received a phone call and a confession. Suddenly, six years of closeness vanished into nothing, not even friendship, just two strangers.
Ness was irrevocably attractive, talented down to his bones, and so sweet he had even managed to earn the favor of the infamous Noel Noa back at Bastard München. Overly friendly — something Isagi could never hope to be. He was cute, a hard-working prodigy, an amicable person, but he wasn’t beautiful. He couldn’t bake cookies, nor muster the willpower to take up an engineering course, to learn a new language in months, to shrug off the sight of his boyfriend grinding against another man in the locker room after a victorious final and simply move on as if nothing had happened. God, wasn’t he a terrible person?
And how long until he became the next one?
He loved Kaiser. For some reason, he was drawn to him, no matter how awful he could be, no matter how nonexistent his social skills or how petty he was about his own food. Isagi truly liked that bastard, and he had accepted that pitiful confession of love without once considering marriage. But honestly, he could easily see himself marrying Michael Kaiser. Yet Kaiser had managed to toss aside nearly six years of bonds as though they meant nothing, in just fifteen days.
Their relationship had never been built on endurance — it was fleeting, spontaneous, genuine in the moment, burning hot in the fire of competition, of adrenaline. It thrived one step at a time, in provocations, in the unshakable desire to burn until nothing was left. But what happened once the fire went out?
A few months together could never compare to years, and Kaiser didn’t even seem to care. Or… did he?
After all, he kept replaying that song — the same one his midfielder used to love. But was it really Kaiser’s taste? Or was it only a lingering trace of the other boy’s? Or maybe it was Kaiser’s way of leaving a reminder for him? Isagi didn’t know if he could ever hold onto pieces of an ex like that, something as personal as music. When he and Kira had slowly drifted apart through high school, he had never worn that bracelet again. How could anyone hold onto something so intimate from something as painful as a broken relationship? Isagi simply couldn’t understand.
He couldn’t understand what Alexis Ness was. What was the essence of that person? What role did he play, quietly, in his present reality? Isagi didn’t even know how to think about him. A beautiful boy — undeniably beautiful — who carried a long history with his boyfriend. And yet, Ness showed no hostility, revealed no resentment, nor did he seem to want to reclaim anything that was no longer his. There wasn’t a trace of threat in his delicate smile. So why, then, did Isagi feel as though he was being slowly corroded from the inside? Why did that presence, now, feel so oppressively heavy? As if his very existence made Isagi smaller within his own relationship.
Perhaps it was simply because it was Kaiser. Michael Kaiser. Even now, even after days and nights shared together, Isagi didn’t understand him halfway. He thought he did, but faced with Ness, he realized with brutal clarity that he knew nothing at all. Anguish barely described what he felt: it was a suffocating weight, spun from doubts he had never carried before. Were all relationships like this? This unbearable mixture of wanting and not being able, of trust and fear? He wanted to comfort Michael, wanted to believe that simply holding him tightly would be enough to dissolve the insecurity. But… what if it wasn’t? What was he really hoping for? A confirmation? A promise? A declaration that Ness was, and would forever remain, nothing more than a chapter long since closed?
These questions followed him until the day’s end, dragging along like invisible thorns. And when his body could take no more, Isagi drifted into sleep without realizing, exhausted from swallowing nameless bitter feelings. He was beside Kaiser, sharing the same couch, sharing the same silence. Yet that night, for the first time, he felt unbearably distant from the man he loved — as though there was an abyss between them, and that abyss had the magenta-colored, enigmatic eyes of Alexis Ness.