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She’d bowed, that first time. Ego isn’t quite sure why he remembers it, especially as clearly as he does. It shouldn’t matter, after all.
“I’m Teieri Anri,” she’d said, leaving him to glance at the top of her head, staying down there for an amount of time he remembers thinking of as impressive, “I’m honored to be working with you, Ego-san.”
.
Technically, it hadn’t been the first time. But the first time is a blur of furious rapid-fire speech while she’d been trying to keep him from slamming the door in her face and mountains of paper work, so it might as well be, because in the end, Ego doesn’t care enough to make a distinction. Because it sticks, unlike the actual first time.
“Ego-san,” she complains, somewhere in the background, as he stares at the screens in front of them. “I got the paperwork you asked for.” A pause, then: “You could at least do your own laundry.”
Ego doesn’t care about this, either. She shouldn’t care, either, either, either, he thinks; remembers the glint in her eyes that first time. She shouldn’t care, either. Should know that there are more important things.
“Anri-chan,” he says, slowly—there’s an indignant noise from the back of her throat at the manner of address, just like every time—rewinding the same shot of one of the young strikers Anri recorded for him, Isagi Yoichi, he’s pretty sure, again and again and again. “Do you believe in destiny?”
She’s staring at him blankly, he can tell, even when she’s standing behind him outside of view. I’m Teieri Anri, echoes in his head. I’m honored to be working with you, Ego-san.
.
Here are the facts about the JFU intern—which he’d found out only after she’d made her proposal, but even there she made the right call, because it’s not like he’s ever cared much about pointless things like hierarchy—called Teieri Anri: she’s twenty-two years old, which is rather young for ambition like hers, but they are in the football sphere where it is almost a little old already, so it’s not like it matters. She went to a prestigious university. She plays football herself, and has for years, even when it’s now petered out into somewhat of a hobby. She’s kind of intense about collecting information and sorting it into spreadsheets that are exactly what he needs. She’s quick, and efficient, and has a glint in her eyes that he thinks would scare a lesser man; one that doesn’t understand it. She dreams big and reaches far, and that’s exactly what he needs in a partner for this project, as well. Also, she has rather big boobs.
And she’s kind of stupid.
“No,” Ego says, “not like that.”
Anri throws him a sharp glare, nose wrinkled with it. That’s a thing about her, too: when impassioned, Teieri Anri is more animal than woman. Ego thinks he quite likes that about her. Not many people like this out there. People who know how to bite. It’s one of the most important things one can know how to do, he thinks.
“Will you let me figure it out?” she hisses through her teeth. He rolls his eyes, scratches at his ear. Yes, okay. That’ll just take ten years longer, but why not. Then she adds, more polite all of a sudden: “Ego-san.”
She’s constantly reading. Studying, more likely, because these things—football, yes (though he supposes she does know a lot more about that than normal people would, but Ego doesn’t have any patience for normal people and never did), but more importantly the strategies involved in mining and polishing, though he supposes that is, of course, what she hired him for, in the end—don’t come to her instinctively, and she doesn’t really understand them when Ego explains them, either, it seems. So she reads: strategy and guides, books piled around the room while she’s doing other things such as cleaning or sorting through paperwork or staring at the screens together with Ego, standing beside him with a clipboard pressed to her chest.
She reads a lot. It takes him a while to notice—there are other things more important than one beautiful and stupid woman, after all—but she goes through these books quickly. One time, when he watches her out of the corner of his eyes, he catches the speed she’s flipping pages at. It makes him pause for a moment.
That is what is hers, he surmises. This right here. Which suits him perfectly, really.
She taps on a passage, right now, in the present. “This is what you meant, yes, Ego-san?”
Ego stares. Then nods. Anri makes some half-muffled noise of giddy excitement at getting it right, then turns to mask it with a cough, tilting her face away from him. It makes him roll his eyes.
Stupid, yes. But that’s okay: still useful.
.
“Here’s today’s report card.”
Ego hums, stares at the screens unblinking. The shot spins into the net, and it lurches somewhere in the pit of his stomach, ever so faintly. He pushes his fingertips together until he feels it in his knuckles, then lets up again.
“Ego-san.”
The click of heels behind him. A presence beside him. The next kick misses the goal, and Ego huffs a breath through his nose. Vaguely registers how Anri puts down her clipboard on the desk, then something else, too. His eyes flicker to one of the other screens, where a shot hits dead on. Hmm, passable.
“Ego-san.”
“I heard you,” he replies.
She’s silent for a moment. This, too, he doesn’t really register: eyes flickering across the screens, sucking at his teeth. There is a lot of work to do.
With a huff, Anri turns on her heel and click, click, clicks away, and it almost but not quite makes Ego jump, who forgot she was right there. The sliding door closes behind her. She left her clipboard behind, he thinks, instead of just the report. Stupid girl. Then he doesn’t think much at all, because all of his focus is pulled back into the screens, flicking back and forth between the different strata full of diamonds in the rough as they all practice, and he stays exactly like this until practice winds down and they all move to hit the showers and then go to bed.
When he turns, Anri’s clipboard is still right there, just as he thought, and so is a mug of now-cold coffee, sitting next to it. Ego blinks. Stares. Shrugs, eventually.
Well, if she forgot this here, too, then it’ll be alright if he takes it; it’s cold already, after all.
It’s a lot bitterer than he’d thought she’d think hers, though. It wouldn’t be the first time she surprises him, however, he thinks, cradling the mouthful of coffee in his mouth. Then he goes back to work.
.
Ego doesn’t exist to be liked—it has always been at the very bottom of his priorities, actually—so he doesn’t mind at all that Teieri Anri doesn’t seem to like him much, either. Nobody really does; he’s been told he’s abrasive and unnecessarily nasty and quite rude, actually. Anri hasn’t said any of those things to his face: she’s polite and mostly manages to keep it behind grit teeth, but she does press her lips together tight and scrunches her brows and grabs her clipboard too tightly.
In short, it seems that Ego is pissing her off, but that, too, he is used to.
What he isn’t used to is the way she’s currently pressing her boobs into his shoulder with how she’s leaning over him. It seems incongruous with all the rest, after all.
Not that she’s doing this because she likes him or any other such juvenile context; she’s simply leaning into him, clutching his other shoulder and his arm quite hard, because she’s glued to the screen, mouth open in wonder.
“Wow!” she breathes-squeals. “Ego-san, did you see that? Wow! That was so cool! Wow!”
Stupid girl, Ego thinks. And then, when she’s using her grip on him to shake him a little, right into the softness of her chest: How are you this careless? She’s young, yes, but he’d thought her more prudent than that. A little bit, at least.
No, Teieri Anri doesn’t like him, but apparently that doesn’t make her mindful enough not to press her breasts against him. What are they so big for, anyway?
“Anri-chan,” he says, slowly—which in her elation doesn’t even make her scoff in indignation anymore, but it doesn’t do that anymore, in general, now that he thinks about it—causing her grip to twitch. “Control your boobs.”
Here, she reels back. Makes a series of high-pitched, indignant-after-all noises, but he doesn’t look back at her to look at the expression accompanying them.
“Wha—You—You—That’s—!”
Ego rolls his eyes. What a fuss, he thinks, but it stops right there, instead of breaking like a storm like he thought it would. Anri’s jaw clicks shut audibly, and he can hear her breathe, once, twice, three times, until it fades back into background noise. She doesn’t even throw anything at him this time, which is nice, as well, he supposes.
Finally, once the hubbub on the screen has faded, too—it was a very good goal after a very good pass, he has to admit that, too—there’s a flash of reddish hair in his periphery, and when he looks, Teieri Anri is bowing again.
“My apologies,” she says, through what sounds like grit teeth. “I will be more careful.”
Ego hums. Stares, even as she straightens out and stomps out of the room again. One of these days, she’s going to break one of her heels, he thinks. Stupid girl, he thinks.
.
She cooks for him only one time. Learns her lesson when he drenches the food in sauces—though it does turn out to be very delicious, actually, and she should already know him well enough for this, too—and goes back to preparing hot water for him for every meal, but she does it that one time. Apron and all, he saw it when he was going to the bathroom.
She cooks for him only one time, but she makes him countless of coffees every day, mugs littering the place until she comes to collect them all. They only become visible to him again in their absence.
This one doesn’t. He places it atop the table she’s sitting at, pillow halfway under her ass and halfway somewhere else entirely, and Anri, as sunken into her reading as she seemed to be a moment ago, jumps, anyway. Looks at him with wide, startled eyes, hair a mess, table littered with papers and a few books and her laptop. Did she fall asleep here earlier?
“Ah!” she squeals. “Ego-san!”
Then she glances at the mug, peering into it, blinking in apparent surprise at the fact that it is both full and also steaming. Stupid girl.
“Um, is this…?”
He leaves. If she can’t figure this one out, then she really is stupid, and there’s nothing he can do about that.
.
Her nape cracks when she tilts her head this way and that, cradling her neck, brows furrowed. Instinctively, Ego cracks the knuckles of his hand, too, ignores the glare she shoots his way.
She works too much, he thinks. Has said it out loud, the one time: If you need a break, then take one. She hadn’t taken that very well, but then again, she doesn’t take anything he does or says well, so there’s that. It’s par for the course by now. Part of what he’s started considering a bit of a game, but only when he’s very bored and she’s very annoyed. Which doesn’t happen all that often, anymore, but hey.
Aren’t you a bit hypocritical, Ego-san? she’d said, tightly, a smile plastered on her face. You never take a break, either.
And perhaps he objectively works too much, as well, but it doesn’t wear on him like it does her, so there’s a difference. She’s still a woman in the end, after all. More delicate. She’s also more normal than him just in general, as well.
And more normal does not equal normal in this equation, because she’s still at it despite it all, with determined eyes and a set jaw and a sore neck, it seems. Stupid girl, he thinks, then he flicks his gaze back to the screens. If she doesn’t want to take a break, he won’t force her. After all, this whole ordeal would slow down quite a lot without her here.
Hm. He doesn’t think he likes that. But whatever, it is what it is. He will survive, and so will Blue Lock. There’s something weird inside of his chest—something buoyant, bobbing underwater only to sink—for a fraction of a second here. Blue Lock will survive.
“Ego-san,” Anri says, hotly. It bristles over his arms, for some reason, just a little bit. “We can really do it, right?”
An ultimatum lies ahead of them on the road, on the path Anri and him have beaten so very carefully. When he glances at her, she’s staring back at him, eyes wild, hair wilder. Blue Lock will survive, Ego thinks. It’s not in his hands, though, nor is it in hers: it’s in their diamonds’ hands, of course. But they’re still going to do all they can.
“Blue Lock will survive,” he says, out loud. Anri’s eyes crinkle with something.
It’s quiet for a long moment. He’s just about to look back at the screens—she’s long since turned away, back to flipping through myriads of papers: planning and strategy and team formations, brainstorming they scribbled into the margins there together, her in pencil and him in ballpoint, him concise, her in many words, thoughts and tips scrawled right there in her sharp handwriting—when she says: “Maybe you can take a bit of a break after, too.”
He almost laughs at that. Doesn’t, in the end, for some reason.
.
When they do end up winning the U20 match—the players, that is, of course; Ego hardly did anything during the actual match to take credit for, and though she paced the sidelines and cheered like a madwoman, neither did she, and there’s the buoyant feeling again, for just a moment—Anri brings him an expensive looking bottle of liquor. Tall, the glass green, the label ornamented. He’s never even seen this brand in his life before.
“A present from the JFU,” she says, tightly, barely hiding her distaste, her indignation. It flushes her cheeks even under her makeup, he thinks. She cares too much about these things, he thinks. “As, ah, congratulation, Ego-san. For our win.”
So the fat tanuki is trying to get back into his good graces, Ego thinks; or at least something resembling that. Our, he thinks too, contemplating it for a moment.
A little while later, he’s holding Anri’s hair back, crouched on the bathroom floor right next to her. It’s soft, he thinks. All of her must be. It’s awkward to fold his limbs in in the tight space like this. She retches.
“I’m really—really sorry, Ego-san,” she says, wetly. Her face is as white as the tile wall. She’s crying, he thinks. Stupid girl. It’d be easier if she stopped that.
“It’s okay,” he finds himself saying. Finds himself meaning it, too.
Anri-chan is Anri-chan, and she’s a part of Blue Lock, too.
.
“You!” she hisses, voice raising until it is a yell. He catches the duster she throws at him out of the air. “You…!”
The rag she’d been holding gets thrown at his head, too. “Anri-chan,” he says, “stop throwing things at me.”
Which doesn’t exactly have the desired effect: she stomps her foot once, twice, her face entirely red by now. It bleeds down her throat and into the white of her blouse. But she’s also not holding anything anymore, and there’s nothing really—especially anything hard or sharp-edged—in her vicinity, so he’s safe for now. For now, because she’s still very much fuming.
To be entirely honest, he doesn’t quite remember what it is he said. Something off-hand, something colored entirely like the things he usually says, so he’s also not sure why she’s so mad. Hasn’t she gotten used to this by now? Stupid girl.
“You insensitive—”
“Anri-chan,” he says again, this time aiming to destabilize. Hey, nobody can tell him he’s not educated in the acts of warfare. “You’re cute when you’re angry.”
This, on the other hand, has the exact desired effect. Anri’s jaw drops quite comically, her eyes going round, her chest still heaving from her yelling rev-up. She gapes for a few heartbeats, completely stunned into silence, and he stares right back, unblinking. It’s almost funny, actually. A little bit.
“I—what?”
Ego doesn’t blink here, either. “I know you have functioning ears, woman.”
A myriad of emotions flicker over her—admittedly cute—face right here, right now. The surprise, naturally, some indignation, the anger flickering out slowly but surely, vague irritation, more pure shock, and…
She’s flattered, he thinks, at least a little bit. Her brows draw together with it, her lips pressing to a line, her lashes twitching. Huh.
“Um,” she says, pauses. Breathes. He folds his hands in his lap over the duster and the rag, keeps looking directly at her until her gaze flickers away. It returns moments after, though. Huh. “Thank you?”
He nods and spins around in his chair again to face the screens, staring at them much the same way. It takes a long while until Anri twitches back into movement behind him, and when she walks up to him, he hands her her weapons back wordlessly, without looking at her, and she takes them, too. Huh, huh, huh.
He’s not really watching the screens, but he pretends so, anyway. In the corner of his vision, Anri tucks some of her hair behind her ear, cheek twitching, then twists her face out of view, the light catching on to her earring.
Stupid girl.
.
Once all the letters are complete and stacked for her to send out in the morning, he returns to her to give her hers, but she’s right there at the low table, fallen asleep. Her hair is still up, too. She’s drooling, he thinks.
For a moment, he stands right there, rooted into place in the doorway. Then he moves, creaking, closer. Stares down at her, watches how the light catches at the top of her head, in her hair. Wonders if he should wake her. There’s still some work to be done, after all. She’s going to fuck her back up even more like this, too, and she’d already been complaining about back pain.
She looks peaceful, he thinks. So he puts the letter in front of her on the table and comes back with a blanket to drape over her. Stupid girl, he thinks, patting her head just the once.
Then he goes back to work.