Work Text:
“Michaella! Did you see my jersey?”
Ness was frantically searching through her drawer. She and her roommate had a football match in about fifteen minutes and her jersey was nowhere to be found.
She mentally screamed. She had started packing way too late because Kaiser had a bunch of problems while Ness was packing her bag and if Ness had just simply solved those problems quicker they wouldn't be in this situation! But hey! It wasn't her fault that when Kaiser asked her to help her shorten her new jersey, Ness had an absolute mental breakdown of her life and stood there with the needle like a freaking zombie.
And, it also wasn't her fault because…. Oh well, Ness wasn't an idiot. She knew when Kaiser was making schemes and she had been obviously stalling. Ness' problem was simply that even when she knew she was being manipulated by Kaiser, she would always let herself get played into the palm of her beloved empress' hand.
So, yeah, looking back it maybe was her fault that she was stressing over a lost jersey while rushing to pack her bag.
Kaiser was sitting on her bed on the other side of the room, lazily reading some book about psychology. A philosophical critique on critique about Freud's theory, she had explained earlier during lunch.
"No clue."
Fuck! Was Ness going to have to perform without her jersey? They had a match against a neighbouring school' the coach would never let her enter the field in just her PE shirt.
Suddenly, a jersey flung to her head.
"Here, I found it."
Not having the time to check if it was clean or not, she just put it into her bag and stood up, walking towards the door.
"I'm ready to go then. You?"
"Yup, here we go."
A few minutes later, Ness had gotten dressed in the locker room and entered the field.
Most of the other girls were standing on the field, waiting for the coach to give them the instruction to warm up.
As usual, Ness was walking next to Kaiser as they walked towards little Yoichi.
Kaiser put on a taunting smirk. "Can't wait to devour you this match, Yoichi."
God, Ness hated it when her empress went out of her way to talk to Yoichi, only for it to be responded to with torn and a scoff. The little pest with her stupid little ponytail should dig a hole in the ground and die in it.
After some taunting, Kaiser turned towards Ness and ordered her: "Wait here, Ness. I'm going to talk about the strategy with Noelle."
And with that Ness was left alone with Yoichi and her two friends Ranze and Yo that had flocked to her.
Yo nudged Yoichi and whispered something in her ear, before doing the same to Ranze.
Giggling started to escape Yoichi's mouth, muffled by some useless attempt at covering it with her hand.
"What's so funny?" Ness put on a strained smile. Those kids were amazing at pissing her off.
Ranze, who was the only one who wasn't laughing, responded: "Your jersey- jersey."
She wanted to elaborate, but was quickly stopped by Yo's hand being slapped in front of her mouth to keep quiet.
"What's funny about my jersey?" Ness' voice strained more and more along with her face. She thought she could pop a vein right there and then. Agh, did it have a stain or something? She hadn't checked it before, so…..
As she looked down at her jersey and held it out just so she could see it a bit better and make sure it wasn't a hallucination, she saw what was so funny.
She was wearing kaiser's.
She looked at Kaiser, who was standing at the edge of the field, but she was wearing her own jersey.
That's why Kaiser had bought a new one after she had 'lost' her first one. That's why she was stalling so much in the morning. She knew Ness would panic and not think about what she was putting on.
Ness felt her head spinning and her cheeks heating up to the temperature of the sun.
Kaiser knew her so well! Gosh, doing all that just so that Ness would wear her jersey. She had never ever seen someone do something so romantic!
"Hey, Ness, you good..?.." Don't ruin this moment, Yoichi! Shut up!
Ah, but, they weren't allowed to wear the wrong jersey during a match.. She had to change…
Her sad thoughts quickly got interrupted by a pat on the back from no one less than her empress.
She gave her a smile that reminded Ness of the happy endings of the fairytales she had loved so much as a kid.
"I talked it over with Noelle, she says it's fine if it's for one match." Leave it to her kaiserin to read her mind.
The other three girls —oh yeah, Ness had forgotten about those— made matching disgusted faces.
"What." Kaiser scowled.
"Please get a room." Yoichi should choke on that tongue.
Yo shoved Yoichi aside and smiled. "No, no, this is getting interesting, ya'll should give an interview to the news paper. Kainess, couple of the year."
Kaiser pinched the bridge of her nose. "Lets go, Ness."
Go, they indeed did. And winning too. After the game Noelle said, with her stoic voice, that she had never seen Ness perform so well before.
Ah, well. The power of love, no?
The purple wasn't exactly her shade, but Ness didn't care all that much. It was pretty. Plus, might as well make use of a gift.
The hours were going slow in her dorm room while she was sick. It was a mild cold, but she had been advised to stay in so she would heal as quickly as possible, as she was an athlete first, student second.
Kaiser had also wanted to stay in the room with her because she wasn't bothered to go to classes without Ness' assistance, but Ness had told her that —no, no way, you really need to go!— because Kaiser's education was important just in case she ever wanted to something other than football and her grades weren't exactly…. The best…
Ness knew she had the potential to do really well if only she tried a little bit harder, but oh well, she probably wasn't able to envision herself doing anything that wasn't football. It was a big headache for Ness, really.
Being away from Kaiser for even a second was pure agony and Ness was someone who liked doing stuff and working, so staying in bed all day was going to eat her alive, so she had decided to sit behind her desk and try out the nail polish she had gotten from Erika.
Finally, the door to their dorm room opened to reveal Kaiser and Ness, like a puppy wagging her tail at her owner coming back, happily greeted her.
"Kaiser! How was school?"
Her question got answered with a loud groan and Kaiser letting herself fall on her bed.
"Terrible," she mumbled into her pillow.
Agh, to be expected….
Kaiser turned her head to take a look at Ness.
"What're you doing?"
"Oh, just painting my nails." She showed her left hand to Kaiser. The other looked unimpressed.
The blonde stood up and walked towards Ness to inspect them from closer up. The sides of Ness' fingers were covered with nail polish because she had tried to paint the corners of her nails too. Embarrassing… Was her empress judging the terrible job she had done?
Kaiser scrunched up her nose, showing visible disgust. Ness suppressed a sigh. If Kaiser didn’t like it, then it was probably better to wash it off; she didn’t want ugly nails.
Kaiser said: “I don’t recognise that colour. When did you buy that?”
"Oh, I didn't buy it. Erika bought it some time ago and it didn't look good on her, so she gave it to me."
Ness didn't get a reaction back, the room remaining quiet and somewhat uncomfortable.
She asked: “Does it look that bad? I’ll just clean it off if it doesn’t suit me.” She was already grabbing the nail polish remover.
"Yeah, do."
Kaiser walked into their bathroom without explanation.
Ness let out the sigh she had been holding. It wasn't her shade, that all but confirmed it.
When she was done with cleaning the second finger, Kaiser came back into the bedroom with a little bottle of nail polish.
Ness recognized it; it was Kaiser's favourite, dark blue nail polish that she had on her nails almost permanently. It was part of her image. They had even gone to Rossmann to buy every bottle of that shade that they had on the day before they flew to Japan. (And had gotten into trouble with the airport security and their supervisor, but that's a different story.)
The blonde grabbed the chair from her own desk and placed it in front of Ness, sitting down with a gruff face.
"Give me your hand." She commanded.
"Oh, no, I couldn't possibly."
"Alexis."
She meekly nodded as she gave her hand to Kaiser.
The other girl started painting the nails a beautiful blue.
First the index finger, then the middle finger, then the ring finger, then the pinky and the thumb she had to do herself. She did it almost flawlessly; putting on a coat that didn't drip, but covered the nail enough and almost without any stains on her finger.
When Michaella finished with the second hand, she held Alexis' hand just a little longer in hers as she looked Alexis in the eyes and said: "There. This suits you better."
Heat rose on Alexis' neck and she felt herself blushing so much she could've sworn she was going to explode any second. She would've blamed it on her illness, but there was nothing she could hide from her kaiserin.
"Thanks."
"No problem."
It was already late at night and their teacher had instructed them to turn off the lights ages ago, but for some reason, Ness was still staring at her phone.
Kaiser stared at the other side of the room where Ness' bed was. The girl was smiling and every once in a while bit down on her lips to suppress a giggle. The blue light that illuminated Ness' face started to irk Kaiser, her headache growing more and more.
"'Lexis. What are you looking at?"
The other jumped up in surprise.
"Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't know you were still awake, I'll-" Ness already turned her phone off and moved to put it away.
"What are you looking at?" Kaiser's voice got sterner.
"Just a video Ranze sent in the groupchat." She turned her phone on again and showed it to Kaiser.
She couldn't really make out most of it because of the dark and distance, but it looked like a video about D&D.
Right, Ness had been befriending the other girls lately. When they had first moved to Japan and transferred to this school, Ness and Kaiser mostly ignored others, too busy with each other. Only Kaiser had really interacted with someone; Yoichi, because they were both on the football team and she was quite interesting. Their rivalry resulted in Ness getting jealous and sometimes taunting Yoichi, but other than that she never talked to anyone else. (Like a good dog should.)
In the last few months, though, Ness had started to talk more with their teammates and had even been put in the stupid groupchat where they switched to speaking English instead of Japanese just for her. It was irritating.
Because Ness was hers, not public property. Kaiser should be the only one who could make Ness stay up late at night.
She sighed. "Alexis."
The other hummed.
"Come over here."
Ness turned off her phone and put it on her bedside drawer, before making her way over to Kaiser's bed.
Kaiser sat up right and patted the space next to her, signaling to Ness to sit down next to her.
After Ness sat down, with her legs over the edge of the bed, Kaiser tapped on Ness' thigh and the purple haired girl got the sign to put her feet on the bed too. The two shuffled backwards till they were sitting with their backs against the wall.
"You've been getting friendly with the blue lockers lately, haven't you?"
"Eh? Well, I guess."
Kaiser put her leg over Alexis' and placed herself in her lap. Alexis' face turned a crimson red from embarrassment.
"Why?"
"They're friendly…. Do you want me to stop?" Her voice was careful, though she forced herself to look into Kaiser's eyes, as she had experienced many times what would happen if she looked away.
"It's fine, it's fine…." She answered absentmindedly. Her gaze was fixed on Alexis' collarbone as she played with the collar of Alexis' sleeping shirt. It was a stupid 'The notebook' shirt that Kaiser had given her years ago, but that Alexis had never thrown away even after it had discoloured horribly.
She continued: "I just think you should be reminded from time to time who you belong to."
She pulled the collar over Alexis' shoulder and bit down into Alexis' skin. Alexis shivered for a moment, before melting into the touch and sitting perfectly still like a doll.
When she finished and pulled up, Kaiser saw a wound on Alexis' pale skin that would surely cause a good bruise. A good reminder to the other teammates and to Alexis when she got changed too.
"Good night."
Kaiser didn't bother explaining any further and just lay down on her bed, ready to fall asleep. Whatever Ness would do after that didn't concern Kaiser.
Kaiser had, admittedly, a lot of things that could get under her skin.
Like a failed play, her father, herself, Ness, enough for those Blue Lock brats to have curated a list when they were bored. The top five was just complete bullshit that they had made up, though the number one on that list, though it wasn't number one on Kaiser's, really did indeed irritate her.
Yoichi fucking Isagi.
Kaiser transferred, saw someone interesting, rage baited her into becoming her rival, would crush her and then see something else that made her feel good about herself. It was that simple. Just that.
Then why the FUCK did Kaiser have to actively hold back in order to not jump onto Isagi and strangle her right then and there after the noirette had stolen Kaiser's winning goal?
"What. You were just too slow." Yoichi simply shrugged. Kaiser had dragged her into the locker room as soon as the match had ended to chew her out.
"Now, now, Yoichi. You know I don't like it when people steal my stuff."
"That goal didn't 'belong' to you. I made it fair and square, you fallen queen."
Kaiser pushed Yoichi against the locker.
Yoichi got a bit shocked from the force, but as soon as she had realised what had happened, a cocky smirk played on her face.
"Are you jealous? Afraid I'll be the best player on the team?"
And the worst thing wasn't even that Yoichi had scored that goal, it was that-
"Afraid I might just take your bitch and make her mine?"
That she had done it using Ness' assist.
Kaiser snapped and raised her fist to give Yoichi the punch of her life.
Sadly, she was stopped by the figure appearing in the doorway; their coach, Noelle Noa.
"You stop there, young lady. We can't use an injured player on this team."
Kaiser scoffed and let go off Yoichi. Fine, the noirette had won this time. But Kaiser would win all the other matches and Yoichi would never ever take Ness from her. Not for as long as the blonde lived.
The rest of the team, that had apparently been anxiously waiting by the door for the two to finish, came into the room to get dressed. Ness was quiet and looked away from Kaiser the whole time.
After getting dressed, everyone made their way to their dorm to enjoy the rest of the weekend and honestly Ness was sweating so hard she thought she would die from dehydration.
Because of course she just had to pass to Yoichi at the last minute, letting her score the last goal. And it wasn't really her fault, because she thought that it would be Kaiser running there, but it didn't make her any less guilty.
So when the door to the locker room got opened by Noa to reveal Kaiser pressing Yoichi against the locker, even though they hadn't heard what the two had said to each other, it sure made Ness anxious. Because she had to sleep in the same room as the woman she had wronged just a few minutes ago.
The walk back to their dorm room with Kaiser was awkward and silent. Neither of them knew what to say. Once inside, Ness tossed away her bag and decided to apologise as soon as possible before the nerves took her out.
"Michaella, I'm sorry I-"
"It doesn't matter."
"……You sure?"
"Yeah, sure."
Kaiser tossed aside her bag too and made her way into the bathroom, leaving Ness stunned and confused. Had she said something wrong? Did Kaiser just truly not care at all?
"Ness!" Kaiser yelled out from the bathroom. "Where did you put the dye?"
Ness needed to get out of her thoughts and respond. Uhhh, uhhh. "In the lower left drawer!"
She heard the drawer open and shut and Kaiser stepped out with the box of blue hair dye in her hand. They dyed their hair every month or so and kept spare boxes of blue and purple in their bathroom so they wouldn't have to go to the hairdresser and have some stranger do it. Especially Kaiser was against the idea.
"Come here."
"Oh, do you want me to dye your hair?"
Kaiser shook her head. "I'm going to dye yours." …At this point it was better for Ness not to ask any questions.
She stepped into the bathroom and was promptly sat down on the stool by Kaiser. Looking into the mirror above the sink, she saw that her purple had faded somewhat; it was probably time for another dye job anyway. But she had never dyed it blue; that was Kaiser's colour. She had started dyeing it to match with Kaiser, which was fine, but blue —Kaiser's royal blue— was always off limits.
Kaiser grabbed some gloves from the lowest cabinet, along with the rest of supplies and put some dye in the little plastic bowl they use for dye.
"Michaella?"
Kaiser absent-mindedly hummed.
"Why… Blue?"
Kaiser grabbed one of Ness' locks and held it in her hand, pausing for just a moment to look at it.
"I want people to think of me whenever they look at your hair. Show them you're my property."
The last sentence sent a shudder down Ness' back. The bruise near her neck that Kaiser had left without explanation started aching.
She swallowed the lump in her throat and meekly nodded.
"What," Kaiser's voice sounded stern, "Don't like it?"
"No, no, I'm just a bit surprised. I don't know what to say."
"Maybe thank me?"
Yes, Ness was already thanking the stars and the gods above. She got to wear her empress' colour.
They might as well have gifted her the Kaiserin's most beautiful jewelery and her crown as well, because, really, it was never going to get better than this. Would she be allowed to dye it blue again after the colour had faded out? Would Kaiser regret it the next day and force her to dye it back to purple? No, such thoughts were….. Even one second would be enough. Even the normal stank of hair dye was pleasant when it was royal blue.
Kaiser painted two strands —one on the right side and one on the left— and wrapped them in foil.
Then, she cleaned everything up and threw away the gloves. Ness didn't have to move even a finger and was simply left stunned on the stool. It felt oddly nice; being pampered like this; not having to clean up for once.
After she was done, the blonde grabbed her phone and leaned against the wall, waiting together with Ness for the hairdye to be absorbed into the hair.
After some minutes, Ness decided to take the foil out.
It looked beautiful.
The blue in her hair was a bit darker because of her dirty blonde hair and faded into dark blue where her hair was previously purple, but it was unmistakably Kaiser's colour.
Kaiser pocketed her phone and stepped behind Ness. She leaned down and slid her arms over Ness' shoulders, crossing her arms and loosely locking Ness in place.
"Do you like it?"
Ness nodded, swallowing a lump that was stuck in her throat.
"I love it."
5.
It was almost the end of the school year, which meant every class was incredibly boring.
The last weeks were just cramming for exams and it was obvious that teachers didn't know what they wanted to do during the lessons.
So, Kaiser was thinking about just about everything but the 'study tips' from mister Matsuzaki.
She glanced at Ness, who was clearly doing work for a different subject in her notebook, hidden behind her giant biology book so their teacher wouldn't see.
Kaiser sighed and resisted the urge to take a nap.
This school was pretty alright when it came to football, which challenged them enough, and the dorms, which were pretty luxurious, but the classes were… boring. Why was she even there? She didn't go to school for most of her youth and she's still alive.
Finally, the bell rang, signaling it was break time.
Ness closed her books and put them in her drawer
"Ness."
"Hm?"
"Let's get some food. I'm bored."
"Ah, actually, I'm going to the rooftop."
Kaiser raised an eyebrow. Did she make other plans? With who? why?
Ness handed her a letter as an explanation. It smelled like a terribly sweet perfume, one that irritated Kaiser in a familiar way that she just couldn't place.
'Meet me on the rooftop during break
- Your admirer anonymous,'
it read.
The words 'your admirer' were heavily scribbled over, but they were still clearly there.
Kaiser clicked her tongue in annoyance.
"Fine. I'm coming with you." That went without question. She needed to…. Keep her dog in check, or whatever. Anyways, it was without saying that Ness couldn't just go there without Kaiser.
Ness didn't protest and the two made their way to the rooftop.
And, honestly, she should have guessed who would stand there.
Yoichi Isagi.
Kaiser was the one supposed to get into Isagi's head, so why was the little insect everywhere?
"Ness…" She started. She looked confused at seeing Kaiser there too. "..And Kaiser? I'm sorry, could you… Give us some privacy?"
"No can do, Yoichi," Ness said with a plastered on smile.
The other quickly gave up and sighed.
"Ness…. I called you to the rooftop to tell you something important…" She gave a side eye to Kaiser.
She continued: "My friends at first adviced against this, because they said that it wouldn't be smart, but I just couldn't lose the feeling… I just had to tell you. Ness, I like you. Like, like like you."
It stayed quiet for a little while, the only thing they could hear being the wind blowing and annoying teens yelling at each other on the first floor outside. The suspense was killing.
"Oh, Yoichi… No."
"No?"
"No."
Ness explained: "I don't like you back. I already… love someone else.." She averted her gaze with a red face.
Kaiser sighed.
Of course, she had always known about Ness' feelings, that's why she was so easy to manipulate. She never thought once that her 'beloved' would be using her. Still, they had never really addressed it, so they were technically not together, but….
C'mon. Even a donkey could see that no one except Kaiser had a chance with Ness.
As soon as the words left Ness' mouth, Yoichi glared at Kaiser like it was her problem. Kaiser crossed her arms, growing agitated.
"Oh. Well, I see how it is. That's fine, I guess. I still got you this.." She grabbed a little box out of her pocket, which was clearly hand made and probably contained some other handmade gift. Kaiser stepped closer.
Gifts for Ness had to come through Kaiser first and Erika's nail polish, she could somewhat tolerate, but a handmade gift as a confession was where the line really was.
Yoichi wanted to hand it to Ness, but the girl held her hands next to her side, refusing it.
Kaiser stepped closer again. Yoichi scoffed, looking at her.
"And what's your problem? Do you have to stand here?"
"Where Ness goes, I go."
"Oh, stop it with that cheesy stuff. Ness, I don't want to be mean, but can't you see? She isn't good for you."
Ness bit on her lip and her eyebrows furrowed in frustration. She looked like she could pop a vein and Kaiser was on the same level.
she bawled her fists and retorted against Yoichi: "That doesn't have anything to do with you. You won't come between us."
Yoichi ignored her, instead speaking to Ness: "What about that last goal, Ness? You assisted me. I thought-"
"You thought wrong!" Ness screamed back.
The other two froze for a second, not having expected her to suddenly lash out.
Then, Yoichi crushed the little box in her hand and as if on que, Kaiser's fists flew her way, landing right in the face.
It felt so satisfying to finally beat that frustrating face up.
She tried to give another punch, but as soon as Yoichi's shock had subsided, Kaiser received a punch to the gut.
"Step away for just one fucking second!" Yoichi yelled.
"Shut up!" Kaiser yelled back.
She grabbed the noirette by the shoulders and pushed her to the ground. The other struggled against her, trying to push her off and hit her in the face as she wildly swung around her fists.
Kaiser quickly released one shoulder and gave her another punch to the face. She spit on it, Yoichi closing her eyes so the spit wouldn't get in it.
"Alexis is mine! Don't touch what is mine!"
Yoichi glanced at Ness, hoping for something, but she simply stood still, wearing an expression that was a mix between shock and amusement. (....Kaiser may need to have a conversation with her about that later.)
Yoichi pushed Kaiser off and, in the process, kicked her in the stomach with her knee.
Kaiser stood up, coughing.
She kicked at Yoichi, which unsurprisingly didn't do all that much damage.
They heard the creaking of the door to the staircase.
"Are you sure it's empty-"
Coming through the door were their coach, Noelle and the headmaster of their school and a few in the region, Jinpachi Ego, both frozen from where they stood.
Noelle's face quickly grew more serious as she stepped in between the two fighting girls.
"Cut it out you two!"
Kaiser grit her teeth. She wanted to beat up Yoichi some more. After all, she had gotten her blood boiling like never before and finally all those times of irritation had added up till it was boiling out of the pan.
Both girls looked at each other with matching anger.
Noelle sighed. "Who started this."
Ness pointed at Yoichi. "She did, miss."
Yoichi looked baffled. Serves her right.
Noelle sighed again. "Thank you for your testimony, Ness, but I don't exactly trust you not to be biased…."
Luckily, they didn't have to go to the principal's office, as she was already there, so they both got a punishment of having to sit out the next match and having to clean the halls for two weeks, before they were ordered to go to their dorms.
Kaiser was then supported to the dorm by Ness, even though it wasn't needed. (Ness worried too much.) It felt nice.
It was quiet.
Once inside, Ness sat Kaiser down on the stool in the bathroom and tended to her wounds, once again in silence.
Though, when Ness had cleaned and patched up the bruise on Kaiser's cheek, she pressed the bandage against the skin with her thumb, resting her hand on the face and then pressed a soft kiss to it.
Kaiser looked up, surprised.
Ness was looking her right in the eyes with a faint blush and after a second of eye contact, averted her gaze, her hand lingering on her cheek.
Kaiser's lips curled up into a smile. Right. Ness loved her.
She could feel the quiet 'thank you' that Ness wanted to say, but didn't know how. They were like that.
They… somehow just knew what the other wanted when it mattered most. Did they know what the other was thinking? No, because even if Kaiser could manipulate Ness well, she was still somewhat a riddle to her and it was once again a riddle why Ness felt the need to thank Kaiser for her selfishly attacking someone who tried to take her servant.
Kaiser took the hand on her face in her own and pressed a soft, matching kiss against it.
"You're mine. Of course I had to defend you from the thief."
Ness smiled and her breath hitched.
"I wasn't going to accept the confession."
"I know."
"….You're welcome." Kaiser whispered.
+1
Somehow, there had lately been some dating rumours about Kaiser and Isagi.
Ness didn't know which people actually thought it and which were just messing around, but it had started to grate on her nerves.
The straw that broke the camel's back?
That was when Kaiser and Ness were eating lunch together in the cafeteria and Ness fed her empress a spoon of her food and a girl who was coincidentally nearby had made a disgusted face and said:
'You're doing that with a taken woman?'
Safe to say, Ness had given her the slap of her life and gotten into detention, but it wasn't enough to dispell all the rumours.
On one hand she understood where they came from: the fighting and intimidation they often did on the field, their sudden cooperation on the field and, the thing that had practically launched the rumours, the time when Kaiser and Isagi had gotten into a fight, had become the talk of the school.
And on the other hand it was really fucking stupid, because Yoichi had confessed to HER and Kaiser was very obviously Ness'!
Yoichi and her little friends, and that stupid little girlfriend of hers, seemed to not really be affected by it, but of course Alexis had to get the full load from everyone.
Kaiser's thumb touched her forehead, smoothing out her frown.
She was a tad caught off guard and stared at her empress like a confused puppy.
"Something is on your mind," Kaiser said.
"Is it..?" Now it was kaiser's turn to frown. Ever since the confession, she seemed to dislike it when Yochi crossed Ness' mind, so she had tried to refrain from thinking about it.
She shook her head and let out a deep sigh.
She explained: "I just don't like how no one sees that…" She averted her gaze. Ah, she couldn't say that Kaiser belonged to her.
She continued: "That I'm the one at your side, instead of y'know..."
"Well, let them be foolish."
Sure, let them be foolish.
Well the next day Alexis was the one who was foolish.
They had a practice match against Barcha, a neighbouring school. They weren't all that special, so she was supposed be totally relaxed, but in reality her nerves were high strung.
Even in the goddamn changing room her teammates couldn't leave the 'kaisagi' thing alone. It was just the rumour of the week. They would soon forget. Breathe in. Breathe out.
Oh god her kaiserin was gorgeous
She was going to kill someone.
Luckily, they shut up when the bumblebee that was always around Yoichi for some reason showed up in the room.
She was pretty annoying, but she seemed to keep Yoichi busy, which was nice, and she had been showing up at their business so much, that she had learned to not care about it.
……….And the jokes she made were admittedly funny.
So she allowed herself to be distracted from the game for a little as she listened to the silly jokes.
And of course Ness had forgotten her cleats.
She searched through her bag one time, two times, nothing. She asked Kaiser, but she didn't know anything about it either. (No matter how fun the jersey swap was, it wasn't really possible to switch shoes for them.)
She sighed. She deduced that she had probably forgotten to pack them in all the rage, meaning that she had to go to her room to grab them.
She explained herself to the coach, to which the woman said: "Fine. But be quick."
And then she quickly ran towards her dorm room to get them and she would return before warm ups were over.
Atleast, that was the plan.
She was stopped by the blueberry fucker in the hallway.
"Ness."
"Yoichi."
"I….. have something to tell you."
She already knew about her feelings. She needed to get her cleats or else her empress would have to play without her midfielder and that just wasn't possible.
She tried to walk past the girl, but she blocked the way. Fine, tell your story.
Annoyed, she chewed on the inside of her mouth.
Isagi said: "I wanted to talk to you without Kaiser."
She raised an eyebrow. She didn't like where this was going.
"Why?"
"She's not good for you."
"Well I suppose I can decide that on my own, no?"
The other girl sighed. "Ness, I- I know you're a good person. You get along well with the others in the groupchat, you're nice when you get the opportunity to be and you're really good at football."
"And you think Kaiser is bad for me?"
"Well, not like that, but, yes. She's manipulating you. Don't you see? She controls every single aspect of your life."
…….Woooooow.
You see, according to the population of their school the love triangle looked something like this:
Ness → Kaiser → ← Isagi.
In reality, it was:
Isagi → Ness →← Kaiser.
Which was already annoying but y'know she could handle a stupid confession and whatnot and could even survive the god awful rumours, but someone insulting Kaiser so blatantly? While pretending to care about her?
She tried to suppress the urge to slap her across the face or to do even worse. She couldn't be banned from playing for attacking someone. She had to assist Kaiser.
Her veins were about to explode.
"Don't you EVER talk about her like that."
Isagi took a step back like she hadn't expected that response. Idiot.
Ness continued: "Michaella is the best thing that has ever happened to me and don't you dare try to act like you even deserve to say her name." She pointed a finger at her.
Everything was pissing her off. Everything was wrong. Nothing went like it was supposed to go; she felt like a machine that had been dropped into the water and was short circuiting. She just wanted to be Kaiser's and for kaiser to be hers.
That's when she had a genius idea.
How was she ever going to not only dispell the rumours but also immediately make sure that everyone knew the truth?
She didn't bother finishing the conversation and quickly ran away. She knew exactly where to go.
The halls were almost fully empty. Everyone in the school was either at their club doing activities or cleaning. A lot were already home, but everyone who needed to know it was at school.
She finally reached the door to the room with the school intercom.
There wasn't anyone inside. She had free game.
She had learnt once a few months ago how these things worked. Only vaguely and only the bare minimum. Kaiser was interested in doing the morning announcements, since it would give her some status, but didn't continue with it when she found out that the effort wasn't proportional to the status.
She made sure everything was ready to go and then pressed on the button, activating the system.
She leaned into the microphone.
"Test, test." The screeching sound let her know she was too close.
She backed off a little and started her speech:
"Let it be known that Alexis Ness is Michaella Kaiser's property and that both of them have no, zero, absolutely nada interest in anyone else!"
When she turned the system off, a teacher came storming in, but it was already too late.
She had succeeded. She was honestly pretty satisfied with herself.
She was brought to the principal's office with a smile on her face and with the eyes of tens of teens in the classrooms following her.
Safe to say she got quite a heavy sentence: Suspension —including football— for two weeks and she had to clean trash from the school garden.
As expected, Michaella only came to their dorm room after the practice match was over.
Alexis was sitting on her bed, reading through a recipe book so she'd have something to do during the suspension.
"Ah, Micha, you're back." Her heart fluttered a little when she said the nickname. Was she still high on endorphins from the announcement? Gosh, such a stunt.
Michaella had an expression that Ness couldn't quite discern. Her eyebrow was twitching and her face was stressed. Hm, was she unhappy?
"Alexis….."
Alexis shifted on her bed to make room and Michaella sat down next to her.
Alexis discarded the book on her bedside table.
Michaella said: "You're fucking crazy….."
…Well that makes two of them. Alexis resisted the urge to say it.
She shifted a little further away, because Michaella didn't like being touched when she was stressed.
However, she was immediately pulled back as Michaella gave her a kiss.
Alexis murmured something into the kiss, but didn't even know herself what she was saying.
When the shock had faded a little, Michaella pulled away.
She was wearing a giant grin reminiscent of the ones she'd have one after scoring a genius goal or after crushing a sturdy player. It was a grin she didn't see often, but which made Alexis' heart swell up with so much love.
She assumed that that meant that she didn't mind her stunt.
She tested the waters.
"You really don't mind? I got suspended for two weeks- I won't be able to practice with you."
Michaella absentmindedly waved it away. "It'll be fine. You can train on your own and we don't have any matches this year anymore anyway."
Alexis sighed in relief. All was good and well and they lived happily ever after.
Michaella suddenly dug her nails into Alexis' arm.
"Do something reckless like that again, though, and I'll have to punish you."
She wasn't even looking at her as her eyes filled with temporary rage, before it smoothed over into the neutral state her face normally found itself in.
Alexis gulped. She had gotten so hot and red she felt like she was going to explode any moment.
"Y- yes. Of course." She nodded.
Yup, they lived happily ever after.