Chapter Text
blonde hair sticked to his temple as he leaned into the mic like it was the only thing tethering him to earth. His voice cut through the night raw and unpolished, bending the crowd’s attention toward him the way a black hole bends light.
Above, the stars glittered like they were holding their breath. Below, Alexis followed every note Michael dragged out, his fingers desperate against the strings, orbiting him without hesitation. The bassist faltered, the drummer stalled, but Alexis never did. It was as if the two of them were caught in their own gravity, the world outside the dome slipping away.
When Michael finally glanced sideways, even just for a second, Alexis thought he might collapse under the weight of it.
And once the show ended, Yoichi pushed past the amps, set his bass guitar down, and then proceeded to yell at Michael.
“What’s your problem, seriously! We weren’t supposed to sing that. You can’t just do things because you wanna do them, asshole! You’re so inconsiderate—“
“Yoichi, please, calm down..” Alexis spoke up, a whine in his voice. “Yelling won’t solve anything! And, think about the bright side, the crowd loved it. They were chanting his name—“
Yoichi cut him off before he could speak anymore.
“Alexis, that’s great and all, but we’re a band. Us. They were chanting his name, sure, but what about me? Kunigami? What about you?” There was a hint of vulnerability in the way he spoke. Like he hoped he wasn’t the only one who felt this way.
“Yoichi, you’re pathetic.” Michael abruptly spoke, earning a scoff from Isagi.
“Both of you are childish.” Kunigami, a man of few words.
Yoichi’s face flushed red, veins standing out at his temple as he stepped closer. “Pathetic? You think I’m pathetic because I care about this band? Because I don’t want us to turn into The Michael Show?” His voice cracked, betraying the sharp edge he was reaching for.
Michael tilted his head, a lazy smirk playing on his lips as if Yoichi’s anger were nothing more than background noise. He wiped sweat from his brow with the back of his hand, still buzzing from the stage. “You care about the band, huh? Funny way of showing it—crying because no one screamed your name.”
“Michael—” Alexis started, but his voice caught. He reached out as if to touch Michael’s shoulder, but his fingers hovered inches from the fabric of his sweat-drenched shirt, then dropped.
Yoichi barked a humorless laugh, pushing past Alexis’s hesitation. “You think you’re some kind of star? Without us, you’re nothing. Without me—”
“Then walk,” Michael cut him off, eyes narrowing. His words landed like stones. “You’re free to leave anytime you want. No one’s chaining you here.”
The silence after that was heavy, suffocating.
Alexis’s throat tightened. “Michael, stop—don’t say that. He doesn’t mean it, Yoichi. He’s just—”
“I mean it.” Michael’s gaze didn’t waver.
Yoichi flinched, shoulders stiff, his hands curling into fists at his sides. For a split second, Alexis swore he saw something fragile break behind his eyes.
Kunigami, leaning against an amp with arms crossed, finally spoke. His voice rumbled low, steady, unshaken. “Enough.” The word cut through the room, more final than any yell. “We can’t afford this shit before tour. We’re supposed to be a band. Either figure out how to act like one, or we walk away now.”
The air grew colder, each of them frozen in their own orbit of frustration.
Yoichi’s chest rose and fell in shallow bursts, his jaw working as if he wanted to bite back but couldn’t find the right words. He looked at Kunigami, searching for something—an ally, a shield, maybe even a lifeline—but Kunigami’s steady stare offered no escape.
Michael was the first to move. He grabbed a half-empty water bottle from the amp, twisted the cap off, and downed it in one long gulp. The careless way he crushed the plastic afterward, tossing it to the floor, only made the silence more unbearable.
Alexis’s throat bobbed as he tried again, softer this time. “We… we can fix this, right? We’re not going to fall apart over one set.”
Yoichi let out a bitter scoff, running both hands through his sweat-damp hair. “It’s not just one set, Alexis. It’s every time. Every time he decides the rules don’t apply to him. And we’re left cleaning it up.” His eyes darted to Michael, sharp and accusing.
Michael met his gaze head-on, unflinching. “Maybe the rules are the problem.”
Kunigami pushed off the amp then, the weight of his presence filling the small backstage space. “Enough,” he repeated, quieter but heavier. His eyes flicked from Michael to Yoichi. “We’ve got two choices. We can either keep tearing each other apart until there’s nothing left, or we can get our shit together and make this tour work.”
No one answered.
The muffled roar of the crowd still lingered beyond the walls of the dome, chanting, laughing, waiting for the high to carry them into the night. Inside, though, it felt like the oxygen had been sucked out.
Yoichi finally grabbed his bass case, snapping the latches shut louder than necessary. “Fine. I’ll play the tour. But don’t expect me to sit back while he turns us into background noise.” He slung the case over his shoulder and brushed past Alexis, not sparing Michael a glance.
Michael didn’t stop him. Didn’t say a word.
Alexis watched Yoichi disappear down the corridor, then turned back to Michael, his voice trembling. “You didn’t have to go that far…”
Michael just wiped his face with the edge of his shirt, his expression unreadable.
Kunigami stood between them, silent, arms folded again. The fracture had been drawn.
Alexis wondered if even music could hold them together anymore. Because when they first started out? It was all shaky fingers and wrong notes. He almost chuckled at the memory, gaining a glare from Michael.
“Something funny?” His voice sounded accusing; like he wasn’t asking, but instead demanding an answer.
“N-no, sorry. I was just.. remember when we did our first few practices? I think it was in Yoichi’s basement.”
“Tch.”
Isagi, on the other hand, wasn’t coping so well.
He had drove back home, and walked past the warm meal his mother made for him, and slammed his door.
He pulled at his hair, cussing Michael under his breath.
“Stupid, stupid..! God, I can’t do this anymore!”
His fingers gripped at the top of his smooth desk’s surface, the monitor turning on doing so.
The wallpaper was of him. Michael, Alexis, Kunigami. During their first gig. He was sure his mom took this photo, considering they weren’t as big as they are now.
Tears threatened to spill over, but like a kettle reaching its boiling point, they came out with no mercy.
Isagi sat on his bed, sighing. Would it stay like this forever?
Alexis’s smile faltered when Michael didn’t bite. He had hoped the memory might soften the sharp edges lingering in the room, but instead Michael’s stare only deepened, dark and unreadable.
“You think this is a joke?” Michael asked, voice low now, stripped of the stage bravado. His hand flexed at his side, restless, as if he didn’t know where else to put the storm he carried.
Alexis shook his head quickly. “No—no, I just… I thought maybe remembering where we started would…” He trailed off, biting his lip. He didn’t know what he expected. That Michael would laugh with him? That he’d drop the armor, just for a second, and admit the band meant as much to him as it did to the rest of them?
Michael scoffed and turned away, grabbing a towel from a road case. “That basement was a dump.” He dragged the fabric over his face, muffling the words, but Alexis caught them anyway. “We’re not those kids anymore.”
Alexis’s chest ached. “We’re still us, though. Right?”
Michael froze for half a beat, the towel hanging limp in his hand. He didn’t answer.
The silence crawled between them, thick and heavy, until Kunigami shifted where he leaned against the wall. His deep voice cut through again, calm but weighted. “Enough nostalgia. We’ve got rehearsal tomorrow. Don’t be late.”
He pushed off the wall and left, his footsteps echoing down the narrow hallway until they disappeared.
Now it was just the two of them.
Alexis swallowed hard, his fingers fidgeting at the hem of his shirt. “Michael… you didn’t mean it, right? Telling Yoichi to walk?”
Michael finally looked at him then. His eyes were tired, darker than the stage lights had let on, and when he spoke it wasn’t cruel—but it wasn’t comforting either.
“I meant every word.”
Alexis’s breath hitched. He didn’t know what scared him more—the idea that Michael wanted Yoichi gone, or the possibility that he didn’t care if Alexis followed.
Kunigami lit a cigarette, leaning against the cold brick wall whilst waiting for someone. The night was clear still, the stars shining like nobody but him was meant to see them.
A car pulled up. A sleek black McLaren.
“This is what you use my money for?”
The person that came out of the driver’s seat was no other than Chigiri Hyoma. His girlfriend’s brother.
“You said buy whatever, so I bought whatever.” Hyoma spoke like he had every right to buy an expensive car for no good reason besides the fact “it looks nice”.
“Right..” a hand slipped around Chigiri’s waist. Big, warm, and certainly rough from gripping sticks all day. “You look pretty.”
“You’re touching my hair,”
“Your hair is fine. It’s wash day anyways, ain’t it?” kunigami retorted, chuckling with a hint of exhaustion.
“You also smell like cigarettes. Shame on you.”
That earned an eye roll from kunigami. “I’ll drive. Get in the passenger seat, red head.”
Hyoma slid into the car with a roll of his eyes, the faintest smirk tugging at his mouth. “Passenger seat. Like some housewife.”
Kunigami rounded the hood, flicking the dying cigarette onto the pavement. “Don’t complain. You’ll survive one ride without being the center of attention.”
“Funny, coming from the guy in a band,” Hyoma teased, running a hand through his long hair as Kunigami settled into the driver’s seat. The car purred to life under his hands, smooth and powerful.
Kunigami’s jaw ticked, but his lips curved just slightly. “Band’s falling apart.”
That made Hyoma glance at him sideways, his smirk fading into something softer. “And you’re holding it together, like always.”
Kunigami didn’t answer. His hands tightened around the wheel as he pulled out onto the empty street, the city lights blurring past.
For a while, the only sound was the hum of the engine and Hyoma’s steady breathing beside him. It should’ve been peaceful, but all Kunigami could hear were Yoichi’s cracked words echoing in his head: What about me? What about you?
Hyoma shifted, brushing Kunigami’s arm with his fingers. “You’ll figure it out. You always do.”
Kunigami let out a low hum, half agreement, half exhaustion. The road stretched ahead, dark and endless, and for once he wished it could stay that way—just him, the car, and the warmth of someone who didn’t expect him to keep the whole world from splitting apart.
The band itself was called “blue lock”, and as you can guess, it’s pretty blue. It’s their colour. It definitely wasn’t always that way, though.
They started out in Isagi’s garage, a jumbled mess of amp wires and hand-me down guitars. Besides the brand new drum set, everything was borrowed. Actually, the drum set is what brought them to use the colour blue for not only their name, but their theme!
The blue was electric, with lighter lines that tapered into sharp edges. They all thought it was insanely cool, and Kunigami cherished it in his own weird way.
They started small—bars that they got drinks from (illegally), birthday parties, small gigs here and there. They mostly performed songs that were popular, since nobody wanted to hear what they had to offer. They didn’t blame anybody, their first few songs were pretty ass.
But people loved their covers! Kaiser, the main vocalist, pulled people in with his velvety and strong voice. Isagi song along with him sometimes; but never ness. He was far too shy to sing in front of crowds, big or small. It was a miracle in in itself that he could play guitar.
Kaiser was the star, and everyone knew it. His voice had the kind of pull that made strangers stop mid-conversation, their drinks halfway to their lips, just to see who was on stage. He lived for it, thrived on the spotlight like it had been waiting for him all along.
But it wasn’t just him. Kunigami’s steady rhythm gave the songs their backbone, Alexis’s guitar wrapped itself around Kaiser’s voice like it had been designed for it, and Isagi—hesitant as he was—always managed to pour something honest into his playing. Together, they were rough, imperfect, but alive.
Word spread fast. What started as neighborhood gigs turned into opening slots at local festivals, then into clubs that actually paid them enough to split gas money and a round of food after. They were reckless with it, drunk on the idea that maybe they were more than just kids in a garage.
Still, nothing about it was smooth. There were fights, of course—arguments over setlists, over who got the mic, over whether or not they should risk playing originals. Michael had joined in those early years, his presence both electric and volatile, and suddenly the balance they’d found felt less certain. Some nights he carried them higher than they’d ever been; other nights, he left them wondering if they were about to collapse on stage.
But that was the thing about Blue Lock. They weren’t polished. They weren’t perfect. They were a storm in the making, and for a while, people loved them all the more for it.
The bigger they got, though, the more the storm grew too. Pressure seeped in—management offers, set expectations, the never-ending hunger to stay relevant. And what had once been shaky fingers and wrong notes turned into clenched jaws and whispered doubts.
Because the higher they climbed, the further away those nights in Isagi’s garage seemed.