Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

“I rebel; therefore I exist.” - Albert Camus

—

Around him, everything is annoyingly bright.

There is the sparkle of a reporter’s bejeweled shoes, the flashes of cameras that Kaiser has long ago learned how to not shy away from, and the gleam of golden stanchions that are a half-assed attempt at controlling the mob of people that made up the press. Most of all, there is the irksome man in front of him—wearing a velvet suit that has been pressed down to the point not a single wrinkle can be detected, his teeth glittering uncannily through the tightened skin of his lips.

Kaiser almost asks if they’re veneers, if only to see the look that would come out of his probe.

“So, Michael.” he says, voice as smooth and rich as the material of his attire. “You just had an absolutely phenomenal debut as Re Al’s starting forward. How do you feel?”

Instead, he opens his mouth to reveal a smile of his own, bright and dazzling like the actor of some B-rate drama. He imagines the camera flashes in front of him reflecting off of his teeth, the light bouncing back into their faces until the light seems to emanate off him. The attention, the pointless-as-shit questions, the titles—anything that is important to other people, Kaiser doesn’t need it. 

Kaiser’s greed belongs to winning alone. 

And maybe that’s the entire flaw of the career he’s assumed, the place he’s climbed too, down to the motto he’s chosen: “be the symbol of impossible,”—that he doesn’t enjoy all of fame’s privileges. 

But flaw or not, it doesn’t matter. Because this restriction, this feeling of pressure that makes everything so finite—it’s where he’s at his best. 

The interviewer asks questions Kaiser’s grown accustomed too—grown to expect:

How did it feel to play with your new team in an official match for the first time?

It was fine. We all trained hard with each other, so I wasn’t worried. 

Do you and Sae Itoshi get along, given your shared moniker as one of the New Generation World 11?

We play as we see fit and work together when our objectives align.

Has it been difficult adjusting to the changes of being in a new club?

For one, small, inconsequential moment—Kaiser doesn’t respond. 

Upon moving to Re Al, he has been forced to undergo a plethora of changes, none that he particularly enjoys, none that he feels are particularly significant. The alarms he’s been forced to change, the sleep schedule he is still adjusting to, the languages he now needs to speak.

And this is fine. 

It’s just another level of restriction Kaiser was constraining himself too. A different formula with an equivalent outcome. 

So in a way, his life really wasn't changing as much as people thought. 

No, it’s going well. 

The interviewer beams, “I’m glad to hear it! Now,” he fishes into a bag hidden by the arms of the cushioned chairs they sit on, before presenting an array of laminated flashcards. With that same unsettling smile, he announces, “the media has been burning with questions ever since you participated in Blue Lock’s ‘Neo-Egoist League’. If you have the time, I’d love to ask you a few.”

Kaiser spreads his face wide enough that he knows he looks grotesque. Instinctually he knows what will be on those cards. Nothing about his plays, his goals—football in general. If people cared about that, he wouldn’t have saved them for last. But even so, “I have time,” he replies—because to everything there is a price, and Kaiser is currently paying the lowest bracket he can be offered.

“Perfect!” The man shuffles through the cards, no doubt looking for whichever response would make the most headlines. “Ah! Here we are.” He clears his throat with an imperceptible theatricness, “A viewer asks, ‘Michael, after teaming up with Yoichi Isagi during the finale of the Neo-Egoist League, do you guys keep in touch as friends?’”

Kaiser bites back a scoff. Barley conceals it with a pair of knuckles obstructing the lower half of his face. Depends on what ‘keeping in touch’ means, is what he wants to say. He hasn’t spoken to Isagi since their last match in the NEL, unsurprising given they never exchanged numbers or any personal socials. 

But Isagi is a public figure, meaning he’s almost too accessible. 

Involuntarily, Kaiser will be bombarded with a slew of notifications dedicated to informing him about Blue Lock’s ace. Whether it be because they share the same sponsor, because Isagi’s latest trash-talk has gone viral, because for whatever reason, the universe is intent on forcing Isagi Yoichi’s presence into Kaiser’s life. 

Kaiser hates him.

He knows this because there’s no other person like Isagi, who can kindle something that blazes and burns from the very depths of his soul, who has him enraged to a point that it borders on ugly, twisted obsession. 

Because nobody else has ever been capable of making Kaiser feel off-kilter, out of depth in the worst ways like Isagi Yoichi has. Does. Will continue to do until Kaiser crushes him.

He wonders briefly what he’d even say to Isagi over text. I fucking hate you, is the first thing that comes to mind. Next time we play against each other, I’m going to beat the shit out of you and your shitty brain—follows in a close second. It’s all so vulgar. Certainly not what the media wants to hear of him outside the field. Though, if people had actually watched their matches, they’d know that this kind of relationship is the only one that will ever work for them. Anything else is just a shallow imitation based on what they perceive his football and Isagi’s football to be. 

A shallow imitation. Isagi would hate to hear that, and Kaiser files the comment in the back of his brain, even though he knows that they won’t see each other for at least another couple of months. 

And maybe that indulgence is the trade off for the cordial response he offers, despite the anger that burns below his chest, behind his head, on the side of his neck. 

“No, we don’t.” 

If the banality of Kaiser’s answer upsets him, the reporter doesn’t show it. “What a shame,” he comments. “Then let’s move onto the next question! Another viewer asks, ‘Michael, what is your ideal type of romantic partner?’”

The reply to this one is easy—has been practically branded into his brain by his manager, publicists, and whoever else is meant to monitor his reputation. “Someone who’s beautiful, smart, and full of love.” It’s simple, vague, engineered for genericity—Kaiser briefly wonders how many people it took to choreograph this one sentence. 

A boisterous chuckle, “Don’t we all? Now, I have one final question before I let you go. A viewer asks, ‘What are your thoughts on the recently trending tag ‘kaisagi’ on Twitter?’”

This time, his response is immediate, “I don’t check my socials often enough to have an opinion.”

It’s also a half-lie.

It’s true that prior to going to Blue Lock, Kaiser had never cared for what others did in their free time off the field. Sponsors, charity events, activism, the occasional shirtless gym selfie that had him reeling in disgust—he truly had no interest in any of it. He once read an article about social media rotting the brain. Scaling scientific, logical results against menial, unnecessary pleasures—Kaiser has never seen the appeal in being into social media in the first place. 

Then came a text. Late at night, because between moving his things and flying to Spain, Kaiser wouldn’t have checked his text messages at any other time. The name Alexis Ness flashed bright against the darkness of his screen;

Alexis Ness: Have you seen this? https://www.instagram.com/isagiYoichi/…

It was late. Kaiser blamed it on that—along with his increasingly erratic sleep schedule caused by stress and travel fatigue—as to why he clicked the link. There was no indication he had interacted with it, no proof of his slip. That was, besides the read at 1:03am that popped up below Alexis’s message. 

There was no proof.

And yet, he could picture Alexis and his angelic smile. The placating nature of his reply, “of course, Kaiser.” 

No, Kaiser catches himself. That’s what the Alexis Ness who played as his midfielder a few months ago would say. The Alexis Ness who played as a midfielder for Bastard might say something different. 

It was infuriating how Kaiser felt as if Alexis could read him to a tee, while after that last play against PXG—he didn’t feel like he could do the same at all. 

The post attached to the messenger was equally infuriating. 

@isagiYoichi: #BLLK reunion in Madrid because Rin’s still too young to travel without a guardian lolol

The post is a collection of images, ranging from candids of Bachira Meguru to miraculously, Rin Itoshi—who Kaiser didn’t know was capable of looking so relaxed. Other players that Kaiser recognizes are Hiori Yo, Kurona Ranze, and many others that Kaiser couldn’t bother to remember the names of. On one slide, he even sees Itoshi Sae. 

@isagiYoichi replied to @isagiYoichi: Sorry, Blue Lock and Sae-san, since he played with us against Spain in the U20’s. 

@itoshisae replied to @isagiYoichi: wow

@isagiYoichi replied to @itoshisae: sorry sae-san!! 😭

@itoshisae replied to @isagiYoichi: ha, you’re fine

@theREAL_bachirameguru: Isagi!!!! This was so fun!! I miss youuu

@isagiYoichi replied to the @theREAL_bachirameguru: miss you too bachira!

@itoshiR: Don't use me as an excuse. You’re the one who wanted to come to Madrid.

@isagiYoichi replied to @itoshiR: snitch…can’t you back me up this once?

@itoshiR replied to @isagiYoichi: No, that’d be lukewarm.

Kaiser quickly closed his screen, scrunching his nose up in disgust. Since when did Sae Itoshi check social media? And why did that fly Meguru Bachira act like some estranged wife? He scrunched up his nose in disgust at the display, his opinion teetering between general repulsion towards the yellow-haired striker, and annoyance towards Isagi for reciprocating the behavior. 

He didn’t even dare to even linger on Rin Itoshi’s comment. Because why would Isagi want to come to Madrid of all places when he has Noa in Germany? Kaiser pushed the thought away as fast it came. 

As he continued to scroll through the comments, another message from Alexis popped up. 

Alexis Ness: Blue Lock might as well be on your doorstep

Alexis Ness was a magician on the field—the public knew this, everyone did. Alexis Ness was fond of magic off the field, truly believed in it—fewer people knew this. Kaiser was one of them. 

He, on the other hand, didn’t believe in any of that. Not the chakras that supposedly aligned in the body, the zodiacs that dictated fate and personality, or the so-called gods who lorded over him from their heavenly thrones. 

But in that rare moment, Kaiser was telepathic—recieved the meaning behind Alexis’s words like he used to do to the passes he made.

Bluck Lock might as well be on your doorstep. 

Isagi Yoichi is in Madrid, with Kaiser.

Equivalent formulas, same outcomes. 

Maybe their conversation had more logic than Kaiser gave it credit for. 

Kaiser only remembered his phone’s tendency to expose him when that familiar read text came up, much too soon after the message was sent. 

He found him between the crossroads of response—the implications, explanations, the possible contradictions that his words might elicit. The limited possibilities, the endless restrictions.

Michael Kaiser: I don’t care

Not even a second later, 

Alexis Ness: I know

Alexis Ness: I just thought it was interesting

And this time Kaiser could most definitely picture it. That smile so like an innocent doll, porcelain skin void of any imperfections—somehow just as disturbing as the painfully wide smiles of sponsors, reporters, or any other suck ups that infected Kaiser’s life. 

But Alexis was no parasite. He was something entirely new, an undiscovered, mutated cell within Kaiser’s genetic makeup who he was unable to chart and analyze. 

Their relationship was at zero. They were at zero. 

Kaiser felt like he was the only one at zero. 

He closed his phone with a click, unwilling to look at the inevitable mark he inevitably left under these messages. 

At this point, he should just go to sleep. 

Go to sleep, wake up in the morning as if nothing happened. Because nothing happened.  

So Kaiser would again blame this on indulgence, on all of the rights he’s claimed after being contained so long. It’s either here, or the football field.

He’d rather die than surrender to freedom again on the pitch. 

One indulgence, Kaiser told himself as he clicked on Isagi’s profile again. His icon was a photo of the back of his jersey. After enlarging it, Kaiser could see the way his back muscles flex, the way his body twisted slightly. The background, for the most part, was blotted out by the accumulation of countless flashing lights—the lights that Isagi had no doubt been running towards when the picture was taken. 

The jersey number was a large eleven, just under Isagi’s own name. The same as his Blue Lock number and his U20 number.

Except, it wasn’t the Blue Lock jersey he was wearing.

It’s Bastard Munchen’s.

The change must’ve been recent, considering the account is at least a year old and the NEL only concluded a few months back. 

Kaiser understood why he did it. If he were Isagi, he’d want to scrub himself clean of any connection to Blue Lock. After all, he’d never be considered best in the world if he was constantly shadowed by Blue Lock’s success. This was something about Isagi that Kaiser could rationalize, understand even.

A simple picture as such a large declaration. He could’ve almost laughed at the absurdity of it all—the absurdity of Kaiser being able to see himself do something similar in another life. If it was to surpass Noa or the other beasts at the top, Kaiser would do it.

He also noted, involuntarily, that Isagi wore the same number Kaiser did when he first started training at Bastard. Then immediately he pushed the thought down, somewhere low and unreachable to avoid the hiss of similarities that rang through his ears. 

Kaiser scrolled through Isagi’s posts. He had more than Kaiser did in general—which considering that Isagi had just started playing in the professional league, almost surprised him. 

The posts Isagi had were much more personal too. At least more than Kaiser’s were.  

His finger moved more than his brain did. There were pictures with friends—mostly people from Blue Lock, a few with some of the New Generation 11—Kaiser swore he tasted bile when he saw a particular post of Isagi throwing up a peace sign next to Don Lorenzo of all people, and the rest were from various charity events and paid sponsorships. 

Though, Kaiser found, Isagi managed to throw himself into some of those too. Blurry pictures no doubt taken by one of Isagi’s hyperactive friends, concise captions like ‘I’m glad to support such an amazing cause!’ as opposed to Kaiser’s paragraph of bullshit his social media team wrote for him, down to the reels where Isagi excitedly opened PR from his various sponsors. 

Kaiser watched as Isagi gently opened  the box with some sports brand logo plastered on the front. The camera zeroed in on his face—cheeks colored cherry in his ecstasy, eyes blown wide as the cleats were gingerly removed from their packaging. He was in a pair of sweats, cross-legged in front of a couch, so different from the studio environment that Kaiser unboxed PR in. Isagi then glanced at the camera, somewhat awkward, before admitting, “This is my first PR package. Sorry if I seem overly excited, you guys.” A sheepish grin colored his features before Isagi moved to try the shoes on, complimenting their quality and rambling on about how excited he was to try them on the pitch.

By then, Kaiser had already swiped open the comments, where people were cooing endlessly at Isagi. In at least four different languages, he saw the words ‘innocent’, ‘passionate’, ‘kid’, and most of all, ‘cute’ thrown around. 

It came to him then, this realization that Isagi’s inability to live with a sense of separation between his professional and personal lif—had made him very likeable online.

This shouldn’t have surprised Kaiser. Isagi Yoichi being well liked shouldn’t have been surprising in the slightest. It shouldn’t have been surprising how differently Isagi was liked by the public than Kaiser was. 

After all, it was in their monikers, their titles, the labels they were given as a consequence for getting this far. At this level, people were eager to individualize star from star.

Japan’s Hero, Young Ace of Blue Lock, The Heart of Blue Lock.

Blue Rose, God’s Chosen Emperor, Germany’s Ace.

There was something inviting about Isagi’s labels and something unreachable about Kaiser’s. Maybe it was because Isagi’s were so humane—heart, young, hero, while Kaiser’s held a sense of abstraction, something divine and untouchable. 

People looked up to Kaiser; they looked at Isagi. 

To be a public figure and maintain that was the ultimate example of humanity, Kaiser thought. Isagi as humanity—his greed, gluttony, desire—it was fitting in a way. 

Kaiser decided he hated the comparison to his core. 

There wasn’t much to see from Isagi’s instagram after that, and a few moments later, Kaiser realized he had made it to the bottom. 

And then Kaiser looked at the post.

Blinked once.

Twice. 

He stared a hole into his screen, dumbly expecting something to change, for the words to fade out of the screen so he could chalk what he was seeing up to lack of sleep or something. 

And yet, a few seconds later, he still found his username tagged under the post. 

The picture attached was a billboard of him and Isagi. The quality was immaculate despite their figures clearly being in motion. Kaiser crouched to the left, and Isagi facing him to the right, mirroring his stance. He’s about to steal the ball from Isagi. He knew that, remembered the exact look on his face when Kaiser was on the verge of crushing him into absolute despair. Text captioned the display, ‘The best match-up and team-up of the Neo-Egoist League!’

Under the post was Isagi’s own caption, which read a simple, ‘Can’t wait to see you in the U-20s. I’ll beat you again then.’

The post was from a while ago, around six months if he’d done the math correctly.

Still, Kaiser had to resist the urge to comment something—a taunt, a probe, anything. 

Because only Isagi Yuchi would do that, make such a bold declaration to him in front of the entire world, and then never mention it again to Kaiser.

He resolved to just look at the comments instead, which didn’t have anything particularly interesting for Kaiser to see. Compliments on Isagi’s plays, claims that he’s going to become the world’s best, and the occasionally three emoji combo that Instagram pre-sets above the comment bar.

Pinched his own eyes closed so hard that stars bursted under their lids and shut off his phone, only for it to detect Kaiser’s face and automatically open again. He peeled open an eye to see his lock screen, which read an incredulous 3:30am. 

He supposed this is what those articles meant by getting sucked into ‘doomscrolling’ or something. Sucked in by what though? 

Kaiser thought back to his father, who would rewatch his mother’s movies with a religious kind of consistency. It was at these moments he knew he was safe—the old man would always ignore him when that woman was on screen, as if doing so would bring him one step closer to how they were before Kaiser’s birth. 

He scratched the side of his neck with his nails.

Obsession was what he’d coined it as. Bitter obsession that was reserved for the lead actress who’d abandoned his father to his own lonesome. Bitter obsession that drove his hands around Kaiser’s neck, squeezing as if the tears that leaked from his eyes could water the long rotten, withering rose that was their past. But even at that age, Kaiser had known—there was no salvation in the past. 

He scratched harder, feeling the skin where his tattoo lies burning in stark contrast to the coolness of his bedsheets.

The past. His father. Kaiser wanted to say that they’re so intrinsically tied that throwing away one rid him just as easily of the other. 

He lifted his hand as he felt something wet leak from his nape, raised it just to see crimson coating the pads of his fingers, running through the crevices of his nails.

Blood. DNA. Genetics. All a single-sided, watered-down way of telling Kaiser the shitty piece of work human he stemmed from, was supposed to grow into. And he did, somewhat. 

Kaiser thought, if he didn’t have that football ball, didn’t have the ability to impale his opponents with that crushing despair his father had so eagerly pounded into him as a child—that he would’ve been the same. Hands constantly wringing someone’s neck—his neck—destroying in order to prove his own existence, cutting and bruising just to solidify his own humanity.

So maybe there was some weight in blood, in whatever chemical, genetic ties that he would’ve maybe learned about at the school he never attended. Because just like his own dead beat father, here he was, gashing into something just to feel alive, rifling through footage and photos of the single most confusing, enraging person he’d ever met. 

Left only with a blue rose, as he observed the real thing flit across his screen. So deep, so infinite, just like the possibilities Isagi loved so much. So different from how Kaiser lives, whether it be when he was chained to that piss-smelling shack, or when he forced himself to pierce his own conviction in permanent ink. Unwavering, grounding in the sense that Kaiser cannot back out of it—himself, cannot back into the mentally weak person he once was.

He dropped his phone onto the nightstand with a louder-than-necessary thump, braced himself for the belated fatigue that would reveal itself later today. There was a spot of blood soiling his pillow, and Kaiser ended up falling asleep to the steady blend of maroon into cloth.

That night, not for the first time, Kaiser dreamt of a floor covered in beer bottles and movie discs, of store windows boasting colored lights and Christmas bliss, 

of an old ball.

It always bounced back.

—

And that night, not for the first time, Kaiser woke in the middle of the night, hands clenching around his nape in the place of another’s. Blood flowed freely between his fingers from his earlier wound, mixing with cold sweat like some bodily-fluid experiment. 

Kaiser let out a breathy, humorless laugh.

Then, he squeezed harder.

__

The interview ends soon enough, and Kaiser is left to join the masses. Trudges his way through the earnest sponsors armed with an infinite supply of business cards, the newbies with a mountain of unwanted questions for him, and the players he doesn’t like but is forced to exchange pleasantries with for the sake of image alone.

It’s all so redundant, is what Kaiser thinks as he’s pulled along by the currents of socialization. He tries his best to avoid bumping shoulders with anyone, lest they end up being someone he knows. A flute of champagne sits between his fingers, and Kaiser admires the way it glitters gold whenever it comes in contact with the fluorescent-lit chandeliers. Enjoys the way it burns as it goes down the throat—and for the night, serves as a sufficient substitute for his preferred soda, which he’s been recently forced to cut his intake on due to Re Al’s policies.

Kaiser studies the drink with a critical eye. Alcohol too, he’s been warned to be very vigilant about. What is this, his second glass? 

He finds that he can’t remember, and resolves to ditch the glass entirely, if only so that Kaiser’s trainer doesn’t give him an earful about the entire thing. 

There’s a buffet table nearby serving some asian fusion style cuisine,

and Kaiser hands the flute to one of the waiters on stand-by as he feigns interest in the various labels. He spots a few dishes he vaguely recognizes—some blends between Thai curry and Italian pasta, French croissants and Korean marinated meat,  a couple other variations too. Kaiser doesn’t fail to notice that the vast majority of foods are Japanese in some part, which he’s sure is to cater to the new rookie stars who are probably busy stuffing their faces in some other part of the venue. 

Kaiser’s gaze falls on one of the more eccentric combos, an Italian-Japanese combo combining sweet potato, Italian mascarpone—which according to the blurb on the namecard, is just a fancy term for some cream cheese variant, and kintsuba, a red-bean based Japanese dessert. Kaiser has never tried anything red-bean flavored, and still cannot imagine this tasting any good. He’s almost tempted to lift the lid off the chafing dish, just to see if anyone’s tried it. 

Finds he doesn’t even have to, because in that moment, someone does it for him. Kaiser looks up, just barely keeps his face impassive. His vision is consumed in blue—raven blue hair, oceanic eyes that swallow him the longer he stares—and he feels himself being swept by a different current, pushed haphazardly like he’s a pile of sand that’s forgotten what it means to exist during high tide. 

In front of him, Isagi Yoichi stands—eyes widened and lips slightly parted in surprise. Kaiser traces his eyes across his figure—stares at the skin exposed on his forehead, at the sprouted bit of hair on the top of his head, at the midnight suit that Isagi’s trademarked as his own since Blue Lock. There’s a crumb dotting the side of his lip like a pastry-made mole, and Kaiser wants to press his finger into it, if only to create a divot in Isagi’s pale, doughy skin. 

“Kaiser! It’s been a while.” Isagi greets, and Kaiser almost lifts a hand to his ear, even though he knows for a fact that he hasn’t used Blue Lock’s translation devices since he left Japan. He pauses to stare at Isagi’s lips, and watches as familiar syllables spill out, so unlike what he’s used to—when the shape of Isagi’s mouth and the sounds it vocalized were so very different. It’s strange too, Kaiser thinks, how different he sounds without the automated translation guessing what Isagi’s voice would sound like speaking a different language. He finds it’s softer, has a less metallic, harsh tone.

 Isagi continues exchanging one sided pleasantries—asks him about Re Al, Spain, the Itoshis’ are thrown in there somewhere too. His German is clumsy. Isagi speaks slower than he usually does, more careful too, meticulously monitoring the dictation and tone of his voice, the pronunciation of every word he speaks. His eyebrows furrow in clear concentration.

Isagi always wears his struggle so clearly, so unafraid to reveal the hardships that lead to whatever result he climbs for. Nothing is ever effortless for him, perhaps because Isagi always pours every piece of himself into whatever he endeavors to do—pours it out, lets the pieces shatter from the fall, then puts it all back together until it is something new and evolved.

“Kaiser? Are you ok?” He blinks, and Isagi is looking at him with a curious expression, eyes closing in on his own, and Kaiser can almost hear Isagi analyzing him, reading him, deciphering and cataloguing his behavior. He hates it, feels unacceptably exposed under his gaze. 

So he diverts to familiarity, “Was that supposed to be German?” he drawls. “Your pronunciation is so bad I could die.”

Isagi shoots him a glare, but unlike the almost murderous ones that Kaiser’s grown accustomed to seeing on the pitch, he finds that the expression more resembles those Japanese chibi characters that Kaiser saw plastered across the Tokyo airport. “You’re so dramatic. My pronunciation is fine!”

“Arguing with the native speaker? So arrogant of you.”

Isagi rolls his eyes, but Kaiser detects no real annoyance from the gesture, “Fine, since you’re such a harsh critic on my language learning skills, I’ll bring Sae-san over and you can demonstrate how good your Spanish is.”

“He’s not a native speaker either.” 

“Yeah, but he’s lived there like half his life. He might as well be.”

“That’s not even close to how it works.”

“Do you have to be so patronizing?” Isagi complains, shoving one of the cheese kintsuba’s into his mouth. He hums happily as he chews, a content smile curving onto his lips while his cheeks bulge with sweet filling and batter, “you should try one, they’re good.”

Kaiser eyes it warily, “I’ll pass.” He glances at Isagi’s plate, “What kind of professional athlete eats this many sweets at once?” 

Isagi scrunches up this nose—the exaggerated expression once again brings him back to those cartoon characters, “I’m being put on all sorts of diets and nutrition plans these days. And it’s fine ‘cause I know it’s meant to make me better, but I genuinely might go crazy if I can’t have a source of sugar that isn’t bananas or sports drinks.” He pauses to chew another bite of cake, “It’s miles better than what Ego-san had us doing though. The entire rank-based meal system was torture. I lived off of natto for like a month straight.” Isagi shivered after saying the last bit. 

Kaiser briefly recalled the conditions of Blue Lock’s living accommodations based on a few later behind-the-scenes interviews that some of the now-professional players did. Something about how participants slept on the floor together, trained barefoot, and a whole lot of other things Kaiser most definitely wouldn’t have put up with. It’s a miracle the JFA hasn’t been sued over it. 

“What the hell is natto?”

“It’s like sticky fermented soy beans,” Isagi explains, then pulls up a picture on his phone to show Kaiser. “It’s actually not bad if you don’t have to eat it three meals a day.”

Kaiser squints at the image, “They had you surviving on beans for a month? No wonder you’re so short and delicate looking,” he taunts. 

“Yeah? Well this ‘delicate looking’ player beat you the last time we played each other,” Isagi shoots back, “and will do so again the next time we’re on the same field.” Kaiser looks up to find Isagi’s eyes blazing—not with hatred or anger, but with that familiar expression of excitement. Kaiser knows this face well. It’s the same face he saw every time he uprooted Isagi’s plays, the face that has become seared into his memory—a look so dissimilar to the ones of despair and hopeless Kaiser had grown to expect. He wants nothing more than to devour it, to reduce it until Isagi’s forced to break apart and evolve once more, only so  that Kaiser can crush that version of him too. Every piece of him, Kaiser will shatter it under the studs of his cleats until Isagi has to start again from zero, build himself completely dedicated to beating Kaiser. 

“Bold words for the ace of the team who didn’t even make it far enough to get into the same bracket as us in the U-20.” Kaiser feels more on his axis now, finds himself falling back into the usual cadence that is their relationship. He waits for the reaction, for the curse or threat that is no doubt bubbling in the back of Isagi’s throat—

“Yeah,” Isagi agrees, says it in a tone that can only be described as admiring, a smile on his face as he speaks, “Everyone there was amazing. But next time,” he looks at him, and Kaiser can practically see the flames licking the outskirts of Isagi’s irises—still hungry, still determined. “we’ll win. Against Germany, and against every other team that stands between us and first place. Then I’ll come beat you too, so just wait at the top for me, Shitty Emperor.”

Kaiser wonders then how it’s possible for a person to say something so typical in such an unusual way. Shitty Emperor—he’s heard Isagi spit the title at his feet, scream it from the top of his lungs out of anger, say it like a taunt that raised Kaiser’s blood pressure more than any goal ever could. Never like this though—still goading, it always is after all—but tinged with something else. Something more earnest, more open. Something that is unfamiliar territory. 

And something Kaiser is unwilling to dwell on, “As if I’d ever wait for you. Keep chasing me forever if that’s what you want.” 

Isagi slips another one of those disgustingly decadent kintsuba’s into his mouth and declares between bites of cheese and sweet potato, “I’ll catch up, just watch me.” His voice is slightly muffled by the food in his mouth, even as he maintains a dead serious expression. 

And Kaiser finds, “I can’t take you seriously while you’re stuffing yourself like a pig.” 

This prompts another glare from Isagi, “Stop acting like your body is a temple. Ness told me you have a crippling soda addiction.” 

Apparently, Alexis has absolutely no respect for past loyalties, even at a personal level. “Alexis exaggerates. You don’t see me having conversations while spewing food into the air. That’s probably only something your friends tolerate because they’re just as ill-mannered as you.” Kaiser pauses, “Where are they anyway? Aren’t you all conjoined to the hip or something? I thought you’d be keen to spend any moment you can with them.” 

Isagi just shrugs, “They’re probably exploring the venue on their own. We all met up recently, so there isn’t much for us to catch up on anyway. We actually had the reunion in Madrid—I’m surprised we never ran into each other. Rin and Sae even gave us a tour of Re Al’s campus.” 

“Bad timing I guess,” is all Kaiser offers, because it’s better than the alternative. Because the alternative is telling Isagi that he did know about their reunion, that he’d gone to extensive measures just to make sure he didn’t see Isagi, that he’d practically quarantined himself in Re Al’s training facilities once he’d figured out Isagi would be visiting. 

Screens, socials, game livestreams, news articles, magazines—all of that can be written off as indulgence. But Kaiser can’t—no refuses—to let Isagi take anything else from him. He refuses to be distracted, to give in to Isagi’s greedy humanity that manages to latch onto him miles of ocean away. There is indulgence and then there is desire and then there is obsession. 

And Kaiser knows that these aren’t equivalent expressions as much as they are ones that are a result of adding. 

Knows that he’s slowly begun wading deeper and deeper towards murkier territory.

If his behavior the last few months had been adding, avoiding Isagi was subtracting. Chipping away at bad habits, taking and taking until he was back at zero. 

And maybe that would’ve done something in the long run for Kaiser, had he just continued.

But the moment Isagi had seen him that night, the moment he’d greeted Kaiser with crumbs on his cheek like some oblivious child—he knew that any semblance of progress he’d once developed was now null and void. 

Infuriating.

Rage-inducing.

He hates Isagi Yoichi.

But when they'd been on the field, moving in an uncanny pace of telepathic sync, he could at least understand him, rationalize that hungry nature of his. 

Kaiser can’t even begin to comprehend  this version of Isagi. 

Even after seeing the photos, videos, posts where Isagi acts this way—kind, warm, excitable—still cannot grasp his nature. 

On the field, Isagi is as bright as a star. He knows that for a fact, because in every match they play, people flock him like moths drifting towards an open flame. He’s seen it in that red-stripe haired guy on Ubers, in Rin Itoshi, in the entirety of Bastard Munchen’s Blue Lock lineup and beyond. That human desire to chase for light—the one Isagi himself has—causes others to follow him. 

On the field, Kaiser burns as hot as a star. He leaves smoke in his path—lets others take the embers he leaves behind, gives them the light he cares so little for. And when he and Isagi crash, they explode, die, are reborn again evolving, hotter, brighter, and that makes sense. It makes sense to Kaiser when they’re on the field, fighting against each other like putting the ball into the net is a life-or-death situation. On the field.

Off the field, Isagi is still bright—not to the level of a star—more like a candle. This version of Isagi unboxes cleats like a child having their first Christmas, greets Kaiser like an old friend, and is so unlike the side of him that is directly tied to football yet still has the sport so deeply interwoven into himself. Because even right now, Isagi is chatting about a recent match he watched—picking apart the plays to a degree that suggests he has the entire match memorized down to a tee. 

Off the field, Kaiser still burns—constantly feels the magma of his own hatred leak into the crevices of his soul, filling in and hardening the gaps of his piece of shit person to the point he could subsist off of that single emotion. 

And with Isagi on the field, Kaiser was always unafraid to show that. To crash into him headfirst, exposing every ounce of disgust and rage he had to offer, because there was a level of assurance that Isagi would match it and rebound—that he’d take and take, and that Kaiser would take and take back. 

He’s not so sure about this side of Isagi—whether he’d be the same, different, something else entirely. 

Isagi stops midway through his analysis of Lavinho’s most recent headlining play when a hand waves him over from across the room. It belongs to some old fart that Kaiser doesn’t recognize as anyone important, but Isagi is quick to gesture that he’ll be over soon, a smile plastered across his face. A sponsor, Kaiser assumes. 

Isagi turns back to him with a sigh, the expression drawing a snicker out of him, “What? Not enjoying all the attention you get from being famous?”

“I think it's my least favorite part of the job,” he replies dryly. 

“Your ‘least favorite part of the job’ happens to be half of the industry’s reason for choosing their careers.” 

Isagi hums, “I guess I can see why. I love my fans, their kindness and support means everything to me. But I didn’t join for the support.” Kaiser sees it then, that flicker of something blazing behind gentle pools of azure, “I’m going to be the best in the world—my ego belongs to winning alone.”

Then, he lifts his fork accusatorily at Kaiser, “You’re the same as me anyway. I know for a fact you care more about being number one than any amount of money or publicity.”

“What are you talking about, Yoichi? I adore my fans.”

“I- when did I say you didn’t? I do too.” Isagi sputters. “And don’t say it like that, it sounds like you’re fanservicing me. Gross,” he scrunches his face up in disgust. “I just mean that, I think out of all people, I think you’d be the least likely to need that kind of thing? I mean, I feel like attention and awards are a great source of motivation. But,” Isagi looks at him—earnestly, seriously, sincerely, “if the entire world burned down tomorrow, and all that was left was you, God, and a football pitch, you’d still be fighting for number one. That’s just who you are.”

That’s just who you are.

The statement makes something ugly claw its way into Kaiser’s chest—doesn’t know how to feel about it, the way Isagi Yoichi perceives him.

Isagi hands off his half-eaten plate to a waiter, and before he passes Kaiser, says, “I’ll be visiting Madrid again during the off-season this winter. We should get lunch or something, my treat as long as you pick the spot.” 

“Do you only think about food?” Kaiser deadpans.

“If it’ll make the company more bearable,” Isagi quips back, before turning around to hurry over to the sponsor who's been waiting for him for an upwards of five minutes now. 

Kaiser watches as he’s swallowed up by the crowd, notices that despite Isagi’s stature, he can easily pick him apart from the sea of heads. It doesn’t take long before he’s reached the other side of the room, and Kaiser catches a glimpse of Isagi’s smile as he greets the man. Watches as his sheepish apologies are quickly waved off—and thinks that even doing something he feels is a bother, Isagi looks hopelessly sincere. 

Just then, something buzzes in his pocket. Kaiser pulls his phone out, checking to make sure the alert isn’t anything he’d get an earful for not looking at,

ReAlFitness: The day’s nearly up! 

This is your reminder to log your sleep diary before midnight.

__

Kaiser had known for years that he’d be transferring to Re Al. He knew that he’d be parting from Bastard the moment he decided he was going to crush Noa, and that if Kaiser was going to surpass him, there was no place more fitting than the world’s most renowned club. It was the reason he’d come to Blue Lock at all. 

He’d been prepared for whatever arbitrary challenges it’d entail—a different country, a different club, a different him. 

That’s why he tolerates it all. 

Allows the trainers to strap all sorts of gadgets on him while he trains, buys food for the hyper-specific meal plans they force Kaiser to abide by, lets them fuck with his training regime and nap schedule, buys the mattress they insisted was necessary for optimal rest. He did it solely for the sake of getting better. Bit his tongue instead of saying that a thicker mattress does fuck-all—that he spent his entire childhood sleeping on pavement and straw. 

“You said you get a total of eight hours of sleep, correct?” Kaiser nods, and watches as the man scrawls something onto his clipboard. Alejandro Torres—his appointed sleep coach, apparently. A mousy looking man with thick-rimmed glasses, whose nasally voice grated against Kaiser’s ears. He’d been briefed that it was required of all players to have a sleep consultation at least once a month for performance data, and that considering this was Kaiser’s first one, it’d be a bit longer. 

“It’s most optimal for athletes to get an upwards of ten hours of sleep when possible. Since you already take a nap routinely, we’ll simply increase your sleep duration by another two hours. If that means turning in earlier than you usually would or adjusting your alarms accordingly will be up to your own discretion.” Torres pushes up the bridge of his glasses, and looks up at Kaiser for affirmation. He just nods again, and thinks that this entire meeting could’ve been forwarded to him by email. Instead, he’s forced to take time off of training to listen to Torres drone on about the nuances of chronotypes and circadian rhythms. 

“If you have trouble adjusting to the extra hours, I can provide you with something over-the-counter.” He continues, “But given your status as an athlete, I’d rather not. Instead, I suggest keeping your phone away from you during the later hours of night, or maybe drinking a glass of milk before you go to sleep.” Kaiser can feel his face souring, and he stifles it as much as he cares to.

Torres thumbs the pages of his notes, muttering to himself as he crosses out and adds details with a bright red pen. Kaiser doesn’t read any of what he makes changes to. “Ah! Alright one last thing before I let you go.” He reaches into one of the large pockets of his coat, and fishes out a smartwatch. “I’m going to forward you an app to download that we’ll use to track your sleep. It’s state of the art technology, almost unbelievable to be honest. It can track your temperature, heart-rate, movement, respiration, sleep stages. It even records if you sleep-talk and can deduce the quality of your dreams based on bodily statistics—”

“No,” Kaiser cuts in sharply, “I won’t be doing that.” Because it was one thing to manage Kaiser’s diet and training, one thing to edit his already well-habited sleep schedule, one thing to tell Kaiser what to do—

—and another to do this. And somewhere deep inside, Kaiser knows it's irrational. That the chances he says something in his sleep are low—but it’s not like someone has ever been around while Kaiser slept, so how the fuck would he know? The thought of someone archiving the ugly aftershocks of his dreams, tucking them away for Torres to scratch out or analyze with his shitty red pen—it makes him sick. And dream quality? What does that even mean? What is he supposed to do if he’s diagnosed with poor dream quality? Waltz over to the physiologist who he’s seen less than a glimpse of since he got here but apparently exists, and pour his heart out to them? 

They can all eat shit.

“I was recruited for this club because my performance is already exceptional as is. Raise the temperature of my room, change the lighting quality, swap out all of my furniture and see if I care.” Kaiser rises from his chair, pushes it right back into the table he’d spent far too long sitting at. “But I don’t need any of this. I’ll play and score better than anyone here running on zero hours of sleep if I have to.”

“So don’t overstep.”

__

Kaiser calculates it all—the angle of his cleat against the ball, the arc in which it's going to fly, the spot in the net it’ll land, down to the centimeter. And as his leg winds up to kick, he knows the shot’s going in. Can see Sae flanking his right, calf still raised from the assist he just fed him. Can feel Luna gaining on him from behind too, but it’s too late. 

Kaiser Impact is faster than anyone on this team.

The ball makes contact, and Kaiser feels the crack of energy that courses through the shoot. It soars impossibly fast, spiraling brilliantly into the top-left corner of the net—treats the swish of the net as the upheaval of an exploding star. 

A harsh whistle blows from the sidelines, “Water break!” the coach calls.

Kaiser jogs over, and scoops his water bottle off the bench. He slumps down onto one of the unoccupied benches, relishing the feeling of cool water being pumped into his adrenaline-worn system. For a moment, he closes his eyes, allows himself to take in the details of the scrimmages, compute his own performance and compare it to others. Kaiser may be a recruit from Blue Lock’s bidding system, but it doesn’t mean his position as a starting player was assured. He needs to play better than anyone—needs to make his spot fact not preference.

Suddenly, Kaiser feels a shadow loom over him, and opens his eyes, only to see Sae Itoshi, towel around his neck and wearing that impossibly blank expression, standing in front of him. He then proceeds to sit right next to him.

 “The fuck?” Kaiser asks, annoyed. “There’s plenty of space on the other benches, why are you here?”

“You don’t own the bench.” He replies, taking a sip from his own water. “I heard coach gave you an earful about Torres. You should’ve just done it instead of being so difficult. It’s really not that hard.”

“If you’re here to lecture me, piss off.”

Sae just shrugs noncommittally in that infuriating way he does just about anything else, “Call it practical advice from a veteran.” 

Kaiser rises from his seat, “not interested,” and turns to go back towards the pitch.

From behind him, “How come you didn’t see Isagi while he was in Madrid?”

He stills, thinks what would be the most appeasing answer for the midfielder, “Didn’t realize he was here till he was gone. I wouldn’t even if I did.”

Skepticism dances in Sae’s turquoise irises as he leans on the arm resting atop his knee. “You saw me talk to the coaches about my reason for leaving practice early.” He doesn’t say it, but that’s the thing about Sae Itoshi. He passes you the words, imparts his true meaning into whatever vague phrases he strings together—and then forces you to shoot. 

“You’re full of yourself if you think I pay that much attention to what you do.” 

To this, Sae doesn’t even deign him with a reply, just pushes right forward with whatever agenda he seems to be aiming toward in this conversation with Kaiser, “He’ll be circling back to Madrid sometime next month, hasn’t given me a specific date, but you should take advantage. It’s not often professional players on different teams see each other outside of games.”

Kaiser scowled, “Since when were you the overbearing mom type? Can we go back to the robot version? This conversation is making me want to puke onto your shoes.”

“Whatever,” Sae mutters, face screwed up to equal degrees of annoyance, “I’m not doing this for your sake anyway.” He pops the cap back on his water bottle, and jogs back towards the center of the pitch. 

Kaiser stands there, frozen in the wake of his words.

I’m not doing this for your sake anyway.

Then whose?

Kaiser doesn’t dare to dwell on that question for more than a moment.

Doesn’t let himself unnecessarily read into messages that aren’t there.

__

Alexis calls in the evening, which Kaiser has finally come to accept as a weekly to bi-weekly occurrence depending on their schedules.

He wonders if it is more of a blessing or a curse that Munich and Madrid operate in the same timezone.

Alexis talks at him from the other end of the line—stupid things the team has gotten up to, details about practice, updates on the nature of Gesner’s most recent girl. Kaiser contributes little to the conversation, which they have both long accepted as commonplace as well. 

It’s not exactly a spiteful response—though he wouldn’t say he acts with the intention of benignity—more-so that he just doesn’t know what to say. He could talk about the terrible attitude of Sae Itoshi, or how infuriating Luna is every waking moment Kaiser has to be less than five miles apart from him, but he doesn’t see a reason why he should volunteer that kind of information.

His life was routine, and though that was enough for Kaiser, he doubts it would make sufficient small talk.

Kaiser was past pleasantries and charm with Alexis anyway.

Eventually, the conversation lulls as Alexis finishes recounting the more interesting parts of the week. For a moment, it’s completely silent, and Kaiser thinks he can sense it—that telling tension in the air when Alexis wants to say something he doesn’t think Kaiser will approve of. Because some things about Alexis haven’t changed, and this notion somewhat relieves him.

Kaiser doesn’t press on it though, doesn’t coax or assure Alexis into speaking his mind. He doesn’t need to, doesn’t want to.

“Speaking of which,” he starts slowly, and Kaiser can hear the caution curving around the syllables of his words as he speaks, “Did you end up seeing Yoichi while he was in Madrid?”

And they are so different, Alexis and Sae Itoshi. Because if Sae has a tendency to speak his passes in vague gestures and invisible wisps of prose, Alexis speaks his assists directly, like an otherworldly force bestows the very essence of his play onto the player. As long as you can catch the coat tails of his magic, Alexis’s plays ring clear as a bell. 

They are almost polar opposites, and yet, Kaiser finds a familiar wave of irritation crashing onto him from his earlier conversation with the Japanese midfielder. 

“No,” he replies, short and clipped. 

Alexis says nothing for a moment, and Kaiser swallows, feeling strangely as if he was left hanging midair. “Oh,” he says in that same, infuriating tone—like Kaiser is some bomb that’s on the verge of being set off, “I have to say, I’m…surprised.”

And maybe Kaiser is a bomb, because as he sits in his apartment, everything feels quiet enough that he entertains smashing something into the wall—just so he can feel like he exists. “You shouldn’t be,” is all he responds with, keeping his voice cool and level. It feels incredibly stark to the burning rage that erupts within his body.

Alexis hums from the other side of the line, “You’re right. I guess I shouldn’t be.” 

Kaiser, against all odds, finds himself even more infuriated at the smooth agreement Alexis meets him with, as opposed to the half-expected push back. He clicks his tongue, “I’m hanging up.”

Alexis doesn’t miss a beat, “Alright, goodnight Michael.”

—

Time moves like water sprouting from a tap. Impossibly still in its rapid movements. 

Kaiser turns off the sink with a squeak, hearing the soft cadence of residue droplets falling onto the metal drain. Moonlight spills into the room, basking the room in a milky hue. Kaiser stares into the mirror, takes in himself. The jagged thorns that wrap around his arms, the impossibly blue rose that sprouts from them, the three stars bordering an inked crown on his knuckles. 

It’s eerily silent in the late hours of the night.

Kaiser thinks of nights like this, when he’d climb out of his bed—stumble as he recalled the shattered fragments of whatever his mind had dreamt up in his sleep. He’d throw on a mask and step outside, then drive an hour-long trip—until he found himself on the outskirts of his own past.

There is no salvation in the past, that’s what he comes to remind himself of. 

Reminds himself as he buys a warm loaf of bread from the bakery he used to steal from—tips extra just because he can now. Would walk down the streets with his feet covered and face clean until he makes it to the playground he used to frequent and just sits. There’s a mural he used to kick his ball into—and Kaiser will sit there for perspectives sake. To remind himself of how small he’d been, of how weak and pathetic that version of him was. 

He’s yet to go any further though, doesn't want to have to go through the trouble of running into that dead beat he called a father. Kaiser, briefly once, wondered if he’d ever seen him play a game on television. If he scorned Kaiser the same way he’d done so many times to his mother. 

The past—there is nothing he wanted to take from there to the present.

But now, hundreds of miles away in Madrid, Kaiser can no longer just drive over to those places. The only proof of his origins, of the hellish nightmare he lived, was himself. The result of his shitty upbringing—the scrawny kid that was beaten and bruised and tossed around like some pathetic rag-doll. 

Kaiser lifts up his hair to reveal the sliver of pink beneath his hairline—a scar healed from when his father had scraped him with a bear bottle during that police encounter. Isn’t sure, even now, what he’s supposed to think of it. A metal, a memory, a sick souvenir?

Kaiser glanced up at the clock located above his door frame—he hasn’t been awake so late so often in a long time. He runs a tattooed hand over his face, can feel the sunken, purpled holes of his undereyes, and knows that he’s going to have to apply a thicker coat of eye liner just to get Torres off his back. 

It’s all because of Isagi. 

He’d been so adept at ignoring his shitty past, hardly ever thought of his father, almost never thought of his mother. 

And yet.

These days, that small, broken little boy has been crawling out of the space Kaiser pushed him into more and more. 

It’s all because of Isagi. 

Isagi, who forced him to confront his past to get better, to take his shittiest parts and open that pandora's box for the sake of a goal. With his prying, omniscient eyes, disarmed Kaiser into surrendering his most vulnerable parts to aid their win. 

And maybe that's his fault. His fault for pushing it down instead of going out of his way to properly heal, for not having a therapist or admitting himself into a mental institution. Kaiser doesn’t care, because he was fine. 

Before all this, he was doing fine, before Isagi, he was doing fine. 

Now? 

Now this unloveable boy has become greedy, so ready to forcefully splinter the framework Kaiser’s built his entire life on. All for the sake of a kind of love that is unattainable for them two. 

The clock ticks by, and Kaiser finds time, despite the circumstances, moves. Finds that he can’t stand it, how everything was so willing to move forward while he was still here, wading through these deep waters. 

The moon sparkles the way he is sure temptation must wink, and the cool breeze brushes against his shirtless chest. He walks out of the bathroom, and peaks out the balcony. There’s a scarce amount of people wandering the streets below—occasionally highlighted in the street lamp’s ambient spotlight. 

He pulls a sweatshirt over his head, and shuffles on a pair of sneakers. A hair tie sits in his mouth as he pulls his hair into a bun, before being traded for a disposable mask. Kaiser pulls the hood up as far as it’ll go before he walks out the door. 

In Madrid, the streets are almost always bustling with life, he finds that outside the small strip of street Kaiser’s balcony has a view of, it is no different in the night. There are night clubs blasting rambunctious music, and street musicians who strum guitars and beat drums in tandem with the sway of their audience. All the sounds mingle together, blended by the chatter and laughter of sleepless tourists and long-adjusted residents. In the air, Kaiser can smell spice and citrus—particularly when he passes night markets, stocked to the brim with food stalls and sweet shops. 

The atmosphere contrasts the November chill in the air, which has snuck up on Kaiser, much to his chagrin. He walks past the windows of department stores, many of them already gearing up for the consumerism culture that is the holiday season. 

He walks for a little longer, enjoys the way the cold cuts across his face, oddly. It’s the part of the approaching winter that seems even a bit lonely. In Munich, winters are cold and grey, which Kaiser likes, appreciates even. 

Here, even the turmoil of below freezing temperatures seems lively.

There are little children scurrying down the streets, bundled up in layers of sweaters and knit scarves. Kaiser hears the chuckle of parents following close behind, the coos of grandmas and aunts as they spur along their merry way.

Kaiser stops in front of the window. The shop is one of those rip off tourist ones—even as a foreigner himself, Kaiser can tell. But there’s a football sitting in the window, so familiar to the ragged one he keeps in his own home, tucked somewhere in the back of his closet. 

Then he stills. 

Freezes, when he realizes that in slightly worn down lamination, leg pulled back into the beginning of a kick, is himself in that same window. That alongside the ridiculous mannequins wearing tacky santa hats and the Christmas reefs that obscure half of the merchandise, he is there. 

And maybe that’s what spurs Kaiser on himself, to go inside, to look in hopes of satiating his own morbid, memory-originating curiosity. 

He thinks this is the closest he’s ever gotten to nostalgia. 

The store itself is homey, at least Kaiser would guess that’s how someone would describe it. A charming bell dings as he steps in, the small chime somehow penetrating the noise of the roaring radiator above the cash register. The room is filled with a miscellaneous collection of items—children’s toys, cleats, football balls, a few books too. Kaiser spends some time milling around alongside the few other people who’re exploring the shop's options. 

His fingers run against the spines of the various books. Kaiser didn’t have much interest in many of the subjects, but it could be good to brush up on his Spanish by reading a bit more. 

Then, he sees one that catches his eye, 

The Book of Spanish Swears & Curse Words

Kaiser, absentmindedly, hooks his finger onto the top of it, and pulls it out of the shelf. He flips through a few pages, let’s out a breathy scoff at some of the more obscene terms. 

He wonders how much Spanish Isagi knows.

—

Kaiser comes back to his apartment—a paper bag in tow—just as day breaks. 

__

Kaiser likes to think that the human mind is just a great collection of patterns, like the binary code that computers are built off of. There is a code written within a person, detailing the nuances that are their likes, dislikes, ticks, triggers—ultimate truths that Kaiser can masterfully dig into and wrench up like the roots of a weed. 

Patterns are how human behavior can be rationalized, why people can develop concepts of understanding, empathy, and whatever else that makes up the foundation that is connection.

And from patterns stems habit, and from habit stems routine. 

Kaiser’s routine is like so: 

He wakes up, reaches for his phone to check his pulse. Occasionally, he holds his breath for a moment, just to watch it go up. Just to assure himself that this heartbeat is his.

He stares into the bathroom mirror, naked, and cracks the window open so he can hear the bustle of city life that exists outside himself. He talks to himself—or sometimes, to the young boy that lurks on the other side of the reflective glass—reminds him, reminds himself, that nothing is impossible. 

Looks once more, and thinks, this is me. 

He combs down his bed head with arduous precision, harshly pulling the knots out his hair, uncaring for the loose strands that detach themselves from his scalp.

He changes into athletic wear, which usually happens to be whatever brand his manager forces him to wear for the sake of marketing, and goes to practice. 

He stays late afterwards, drills until the soles of his feet ache and his calves scream at him to rest. 

He comes home, attempts to take his usual one hour nap. Fails more often than not for no explicable reason. 

He eats whatever meal he’s told is acceptable for his diet, and logs it for his nutritionist while he rewatches game footage. 

He reads a book in bed of whatever philosopher piques his interest for that moment. 

He does not sleep the nine hours required of him, does not even achieve his usual seven. 

He wakes up in the middle of the night covered in sweat, sporting lungs that feel much too small for the size of his pulsating heart. 

He logs his sleep diary in the morning, ten hours on the dot. 

Habits, and the routines they make up are human, Kaiser thinks, even if they are objectively bad habits, and poor routines. 

—

The lack of sleep shows in practice. Kaiser should not be surprised by this fact, and a part of him is not, certainly wouldn’t be if it were someone else in his shoes. 

But it grates on his nerves when he hits the ground on a fake that he saw coming from a mile away. 

Grates on his nerves when Sae Itoshi resolutely refuses to pass to Kaiser the entire game, forces him to steal or intercept every single pass he sends one of the other shitheads on the team. 

It grates on him like steel being run on torn flesh. 

And he uses that, takes the ball from right under his teammates’ noses and plows forward despite their protests. He sees it all, every player, their position, down to the glands of sweat that run down their faces. Kaiser can see absolutely everything. 

He uses that too, weaves through defensive lines, dodges offensive ones that try to barrel straight into him. Because even now, not at his full strength, Kaiser is stronger than any of them. It’s been pounded, built into his system with every glass shard and flesh fist that slapped and beat him. He uses his fatigue the way a rabid dog uses its hunger—desperation as fire, as blaze.

The goal is close, can feel it innately as he pushes his way forward. So close. Just right outside of his shooting range, and he’s zeroed into it. This exact position, at this exact angle. And he’s pulling his leg back, ready to release it like some unholy fire cracker, it pulsates through his veins and he’s there it’s going in he has it right where it needs to be—

The ball is kicked from under his feet, and Kaiser loses his balance, finds himself hitting the floor again. 

Luna stands over him, looking wholly unimpressed, “I’m disappointed Kaiser. That shot was painfully obvious, and you didn’t guard your sides at all.”

Kaiser grits his teeth and stands, “Fuck off.”

“It’s been like this for a while. Coach is going to bench you if you don’t get your act together.” Sae walks up to them, hand poised on his hip. “If you’re going to be useless, just get off the pitch. I’m not passing to anyone who isn’t essential to winning. Right now,” and how Kaiser hates those goddamn eyes, “you’re dead weight.”

He supposes that this was Sae’s twisted way of extending his good will. 

But Kaiser doesn’t want it. He wants to rip his face off. Him, Luna, Torres, the coaches, everyone. His fists balled up at his sides, waiting habitually in anticipation of an outburst. 

A hand settles on his shoulder, and Kaiser stills uncomfortably under the touch. “Sae’s right.” Their coach steps to Kaiser’s side, looks at him in that slightly concerned but mostly pitying manner. “You haven’t been yourself. Go home and rest.”

Kaiser rips his hand off his shoulder, thankful to rid himself of the feeling. “Like hell I’m going to go home—”

“Michael,” he cuts in—sharp and decisive, “You aren’t the player we need right now. Either come back when you are, or don’t come back at all. I won’t say it again.”

His coach walks off the pitch before Kaiser can protest, leaving him standing there in a mix of humiliation and boiling anger. 

Luna passes him on his way back to center field, murmurs, “Feel better, even the bench warmers can see your eyebags.” 

It takes all of Kaiser’s strength not to punch his lights out.

—

Kaiser has never taken paid leave, not really anyway. 

He doesn’t get sick very easily, which he guesses he owes to the disgusting environment his father lived in while raising him.

And he’s also never had a reason to.

There has never been any family who's come visit him or that he’s visited, his only friend is really Ness—who he didn’t need time off to talk to, and he had no anniversaries or birthdays to celebrate outside of the people on this team.

Kaiser lays in bed, face up towards the ceiling as the agonizingly redundant sound of the clock resounds in the background of his mindscape. A book sits forgotten in his hand, some classic written by Kantian that he’s yet to get more than a few pages into. 

Outside, it snows. December has crawled up behind Kaiser like an old, bitter acquaintance. He finds that he doesn’t mind, watching as the flurries of white coat his balcony in powdered cold. The sky is slightly cloudy, creating an overcast of grey that leaves the world looking uncharacteristically dull. It’s unlike the lively vibrancy that Madrid proudly displays.

It almost feels like Germany.

Almost. 

And Kaiser feels ridiculous as the thought tugs something in his chest, because Germany had never felt like home to him, never raised him as the title ‘mother country’ would allude to. Germany had chewed him out, grinded him until he was more bone than flesh, and then spat him out onto the football pitch, demanding he score for his country’s sake. 

Kaiser didn’t score for them, doesn’t score for Madrid now. He’s self earning, not nearly patriotic nor sentimental enough to dedicate victories to a faceless mass of people. 

But a small part of him, a miniscule piece of him that he has locked in a faraway pocket of time, sometimes craves the German takeout places that Madrid’s cannot quite replicate. A small, shameful part of him thinks of eating bread rusks in this penthouse of an apartment, clean and warm, with a job that could theoretically afford him Michelin star meals every day. 

He never gives in, because there are meal plans and calorie goals and other responsibilities that don’t entail empty carbs soaked in garlic and sugar. 

And then there’s also his own pride, this nagging voice in his brain that keeps him from returning there, to his past. Kaiser has long separated himself from that boy. He does not need or want bread rusks, a mere struggle meal of a poor kid’s youth. 

He is Michael Kaiser, a celebrity that can afford to eat whatever he wants whenever he wants. That freedom is enough to satiate his greed—should be enough. 

Kaiser cracks open his bedroom window, and immediately feels the heat get sucked up like a vacuum, replaced with a chill that’s bound to make his bones ache. The snow stabs at his bare chest like icicles crashing onto pavement. It melts into him, and Kaiser listens for the sound of children laughing, of adults prattling on about holiday shopping, of shopkeepers haggling the passerby with promises of hot food and even hotter prices. 

He takes it all in as white noise, pleasantly surprised with how lively it is, even in the midst of the biting cold. 

Kaiser’s favorite season is winter, for its loneliness, for the desolate feeling it pulls from him—with its greying branches and browning sludge. The season feels like a companion, another entity that Kaiser can, in a way, relate to. 

But right now, Kaiser doesn’t want to relate, doesn’t want this companion. Loneliness feels far too familiar to handle in this country where everything is so foreign. 

Eventually, he falls asleep, lulled by the sound of a child’s distant laughter.

—

The next time he wakes up, Kaiser is hot, as if someone has lit a fire deep in his body, and plans to use his skin as a stovetop. It is scorching and dizzying in a way that makes Kaiser want to tear the seams of his own flesh off. His bones ache with a chill that leaves him rattling to a point it can be considered convulsive, and Kaiser cannot fathom how he is freezing and burning at the same time. 

He raises his head—finds that the gesture is incredibly dizzying—and gazes at the window, still open. Morning light pours in, and Kaiser stares at the rays of sunlight that streak across his floorboards. He had to have slept at least twelve hours to drift off in the evening and wake in the morning. His coaches will be thrilled when he logs this tonight. 

Cold air blows in, causing the curtains to shudder and lift with the wind. Kaiser thinks his saving grace must be the netted screen that sits between the window frame and the outside, because only a small pile of snow has formed on his desk in the time he’s slept.

He blinks, eyelashes covered in what he suspects to be frost. And it must say a lot about his priorities, that the first thing Kaiser thinks is that Torres will surely murder him if he finds out Kaiser has messed with the “golden-ratio” of temperature he had forced him to switch to. 

Reluctantly, Kaiser ambles over to close the window, only stumbling once when his vision begins to swim, and shuts it with two hands. He eyes the hill of snow in front of him, which will no doubt begin seeping into the sleek, wooden material of his desk. With a sigh, he roams over to the bathroom for a towel, and shoves it into his desk until most of the snow has been absorbed into the fabric. 

Kaiser slumps back into bed, irritated with how exhausted he feels after standing up for a mere two minutes. His mind feels awfully hazy, but Kaiser still finds the sense to pick up his phone, if only to inform his coach that he won’t be at practice today. According to the time, he has approximately half an hour if he really wanted to make it, but Kaiser isn't confident that he wouldn’t collapse on his way to the facilities. 

He wonders if this life of luxury has worn down his senses, because Kaiser can hardly remember a time where he’s felt so pitifully weak. 

As he’s about to shut off his phone for good—the light beginning to sting behind his eyes—his phone buzzes. 

Alexis Ness: Yoichi is arriving in Madrid tomorrow morning.

Kaiser stares at the message, restrains a scoff. Any sensible person would’ve called off their trip considering the weather. He knows Isagi is methodical, has watched him go through his things—always with an extra water bottle, extra pair of cleats, extra jersey, and god Kaiser is sure that Isagi would carry an extra everything if it could fit in that duffel bag of his. He remembers taunting him for it, Yoichi, you know that carrying Blue Lock’s entire merchandise line isn’t going to actually help you beat me?

Isagi had rolled his eyes, probably told Kaiser to go fuck himself, he couldn’t exactly remember at the moment. 

Either way, he is sure Isagi has been checking the weather religiously, so he could pack all of his useless little trinkets and gadgets. He probably has a backup jacket for his backup jacket, or something. The thought nearly pulled a breath of laughter from him, and fuck maybe Kaiser was losing it. 

Before he can weigh the pros and cons of responding, another message pops up. 

Alexis Ness: He asked for hotel recommendations.

Alexis Ness: I told him he could just stay at yours. 

Kaiser blinks, and for a moment, just stares.

And then he’s shooting up from his slouched position on the bed, ruffling the sheets in the process. His fingers jam the letters on his keyboard. 

Michael Kaiser: what the fuck no he cannot

Michael Kaiser: why the fuck would you tell him that 

Michael Kaiser: alexis. 

Michael Kaiser: pick up the phone.

As he’s sent to voicemail for the third time, Kaiser barely resists hurling his phone at the opposite wall. He has no clue what the fuck Alexis is thinking right now, and moreover, when he’d begun considering Kaiser’s apartment as a hostel for wayfaring football players. He swipes his finger up to back at their text messages, finding that Alexis has left him on read.

Kaiser grits his teeth, then flops back down onto the bed. He runs a hand down his face.

There is an easy way out of this. 

Kaiser can just tell Alexis he is—probably—ill and that he is not going to house Isagi fucking Yoichi while his head already feels like someone had filled it up with wet cement. 

But that’s dangerous, different from telling his coaches—an exchange that borders on clinical. 

Because Alexis cares. Because Alexis will worry, and Kaiser thinks that sentiment alone will eat him out from the inside. 

Their relationship, even before Blue Lock—no, even before they’d been signed onto Bastard as official members—was never like that. There were the occasional parts of himself that Kaiser alluded to, because he needed Ness to believe they were close, that they were comrades, and that required Kaiser to give up some parts of himself, if only the surface scraps of his past. 

But that was a one time pill he had to swallow, because Kaiser never offered anything else again. Not to Alexis, not to anyone else. 

So it is unsettling, the thought of casually outlining this weakness to him. An admittance that feels like the equivalent of yielding to an ugly form of humanity. The part of humanity he avoided, the part that is weakness and fragility. 

So Kaiser opts for the safer option, which is simply not opening the door for Isagi if he knocks. Isagi can wait outside his doorstep, kill time in the snow until his stupid sprout turns into one of those two-sticked popsicles, and eventually, if he has any sense, Isagi will leave. 

Kaiser will not open any doors he doesn’t need to. 

He opens his phone to Instagram, because even though he has a pounding head ache, he’d rather endure the brightness of a screen than his own thoughts. Kaiser scrolls aimlessly through a few reels—mostly on football, a few on Spanish linguistics, and even fewer on random foreign advertisements he doesn’t care for. 

Ever since he’s been forced to move around—first for Blue Lock, then for Re Al—his phone has been flitting between Japanese KFC commercials, Spanish Black Friday deals, and German football ads. Disturbingly enough, a lot of those ads feature him. 

His eyes land on a Japanese advertisement, and Kaiser recognizes the characters again from the Tokyo airport all those months ago—or from Isagi, if that’s even countable. Sanrio—the company reads, a blue verified checkmark legitimizing the name. On the video bounces a white, blue-eyed bunny with a stupid face and an even more stupid dance. 

Unwillingly, he finds himself thinking that it sort of resembles Isagi. 

Kaiser opens the comments to see people fawning over the cartoon—apparently named Cinnamoroll—and thinks, once again unwillingly, that the comments are awfully similar to the ones on Isagi’s own reels. 

He clicks on the blue Cinnamoroll that sits above the comment section, functioning as a link that leads Kaiser to a plethora of other videos.

He learns within the next fifteen minutes that Cinnamoroll is apparently a dog, not a bunny, and of his alleged backstory. Apparently, the created narrative is that he fell from heaven onto earth, then became so enamoured by the sweets at a cafe that he decided to stay and become their mascot. 

Kaiser must be delirious, because he thinks that this thing sounds entirely like Isagi. It startles a bark of laughter from him that he’s glad no one else is around to witness. 

Yes, he’s definitely delirious. 

Soon enough, Kaiser’s headache and exhaustion becomes prevalent enough that he doesn’t even have to worry about his capacity to think. He tosses his phone onto the nightstand, and flings the covers over his body. The incessant sound of the clock ticks somewhere near him, and Kaiser almost re-opens the window, if only to drown out the constant reminder of the time that passes while he does nothing but laze around. 

But now that the burn has slightly lifted, the cold ache of sickness has settled deep into his bones, and Kaiser drifts off with the final, absurd notion that perhaps he’ll be the one to freeze before Isagi. 

—

The next time he rouses, Kaiser feels impossibly, remarkably worse. 

He wakes covered in sweet, and shivering violently to a point that it’s painful. His teeth practically grind with how much they chatter, and somehow, his muscles tense, ache and burn all at once. Kaiser notices the pit of nausea that has settled into his stomach, which only worsens as he attempts to sit up, triggering a wave of vertigo that causes him to suck in a sharp, involuntary breath. 

Kaiser settles against the headboard, cursing whatever woke him to the hell his body was currently putting him through. He closes his eyes, and lets out an imperceptible sigh. 

For a moment, it is blissfully silent, and Kaiser will credit the absence of the clock’s tick to the cotton that has apparently been stuffed in his ears. 

And then he does hear something, but it isn’t the clock, or the window, or even the shrieks of children from below his complex. 

The creak of wood resounds from somewhere outside his door.

Kaiser straightens immediately, ignoring the stab of pain that shoots through his skull at the sudden movement. He squints at the light that peaks from under his door, and watches as a black shadow passes through the crack. The sound of footsteps barely trails after the shadow, and Kaiser registers it as a shoddy attempt at being discreet. 

There is someone in his house—the realization comes late to his probably-fever-addled mind—and he has no clue who the fuck it is. 

Though his body protests heavily to the movement, Kaiser sits up, and then quietly sides off of his bed. He blinks off the dizzy spell that hits him as quickly as possible, quietly padding towards the entrance to his room. 

He notices that the black shadow lingers at the edges of his room, and Kaiser prepares himself to fight. Whatever crazy fan or stalker is outside doesn’t know of his record, that he fought seven police officers with his hands behind his back, that as a scrawny kid, he managed to knock out fully grown men. It doesn’t matter if he has the common cold or if he’s on his deathbed, Kaiser will beat the shit out of them.

His vision blurs slightly as he walks, and Kaiser hisses as he’s forced to stumble into the wall to regain his balance. There is a resounding thump as he hits the plaster, and Kaiser watches the black shadow relocate themself right in front of his door. 

And Kaiser, not wanting to let the rando make the first move, staggers over to throw it open, already gearing up to kick someone in the face. 

“Woah,” someone yelps as he practically breaks down the door, and Kaiser pauses, barely steadying himself with his arms against the doorframe. Because he recognizes this voice. It’s the same grating, infuriating voice that plays in his mind like a broken record every single day. 

He looks up to meet Isagi’s eyes, as blue and vibrant as ever—and Kaiser thinks that they should be making his head ache worse with how stubbornly bright they are, but they aren’t, and Kaiser refuses to give Isagi the satisfaction of turning away first. He’s fixing Kaiser with a half concerned, half relieved smile that is all too open for him to handle, that is all too stark to the darkness that emits from his bedroom. Bright, bright, bright, Isagi’s light bursts from his seams. 

Isagi opens his mouth to speak—he does kind of resemble some blue, cross eyed puppy, Kaiser distantly muses—and he’s still thinking about ridiculous things like dogs and cinnamon rolls when Isagi opens his mouth to speak—direct and matter-of-fact, but he’s always like that. So transparent, so unguarded. 

His eyes crinkle at the edges, and Kaiser thinks Isagi may be gearing up to laugh, but he doesn’t. “Wow,” he says instead, “you look like shit.” 

That’s the last thing he says before Kaiser’s knees finally buckle, and his vision blacks out.