Chapter Text
The taste of defeat was like ash on Anri Teieri's tongue. It wasn't hers, but she felt it as if it were. The Japanese Women's National Football Team's elimination from the World Cup had been more than just a sporting setback; it had been a national humiliation, a resounding failure that echoed in every corner of the country and, for Anri, in every corridor of the Japan Football Association (JFA). In that environment dominated by middle-aged men with archaic mindsets, she, a young and ambitious woman, was the perfect scapegoat. Her proposals, her reports, and her vision for the future of Japanese football had been dismissed with a condescending laugh, treating her as if her ambitions were little more than a youthful whim.
The Tokyo rain was nothing more than an echo of her frustration. Cold drops struck the taxi window as it moved along the wet streets, reflecting the glare of the neon lights in a blurry display of colors.
Anri closed her eyes and leaned back in her seat. The mental exhaustion was deeper than the physical. The words of the managers kept drilling into her head: "Football isn't for young girls, Teieri-san," "We don't need new ideas, we need discipline," "Stop wasting time with fantasy analyses and attend to your assigned tasks." Each sentence was a dart to her pride, a confirmation that she was in the wrong place.
She arrived at her apartment, a small refuge she shared with her younger sister, and collapsed onto the sofa, without even taking off her coat. She sat in silence, staring blankly at a fixed point, while the sound of incessant typing filled the room. It was the familiar sound of her sister's life.
In a corner of the living room, under the dim light of a desk lamp, her sister, Saori Teieri, was immersed in her own world. At twelve years old, her workspace resembled a miniature control room. Two monitors flickered with lines of code and data that would have made a seasoned programmer weep. Saori was a petite, quiet girl with her hair pulled back in a ponytail and large glasses perched on the bridge of her nose. Her agile, precise fingers moved across the keyboard in a kind of rhythmic dance. Her body swayed to a melody only she could hear, an invisible choreography that united the language of code with the language of movement. Her passion for dance was the only escape from her hyperactive mind, but she had integrated it so seamlessly into her other activities that it was impossible to separate them.
"Did the meeting go badly?" Saori asked, without taking her eyes off her screens. Even though she wasn't interested in soccer, she was more than capable of reading her sister's emotions. She had learned to decipher Anri's expressions with the same ease with which she deciphered an encrypted code.
Anri simply nodded, her throat too tight to speak. She stood up and went to the kitchen. She poured herself a glass of water and, upon returning, saw on one of Saori's screens a detailed report on the performance of the Italian national team, complete with tactical analyses, player contracts, and even behavior reports. It was a hack, and Anri knew it. It wasn't the first time Saori had broken into football club databases. Anri knew perfectly well that she did it out of simple curiosity and for fun.
This pastime had begun years ago, when Anri had moved to Tokyo and risen through the ranks of the JFA. Saori, a lonely girl in a new city, had sought a way to connect with her sister and had discovered a fascination with the statistics of the players Anri liked. Soon, her brilliant mind and thirst for knowledge led her to seek information beyond what was publicly available. Hacking became a game, a challenge to see how far she could go. Anri had discovered her sister's activity by accident a couple of years earlier, seeing something on her screen that shouldn't have been there. Instead of scolding her, her first reaction had been astonishment, and after a long conversation, she decided to turn a blind eye. The pact of silence and trust they shared regarding that secret had strengthened their bond more than anything else could have.
"AC Milan?" Anri asked.
Saori let out a small giggle, without looking at her.
"I thought they were better at protecting their data."
Anri smiled. That was her sister: a girl with the gift of deciphering anything that stood in her way. In the past, Anri had warned Saori to stop, but seeing the skill with which her sister worked and how much fun she was having, she realized she couldn't stop her, and decided it was best to turn a blind eye.
Anri approached Saori's chair.Anri, with a hand on her shoulder, said, "I need your help with something. And not as my sister. As the hacker you are."
Saori stopped her finger-tapping. She turned off one of the screens and swiveled in her chair, looking at her. The gleam in her eyes wasn't just from the screens; it was curiosity.
"What do you need?" Saori asked.
Anri took a breath. The rejection, the frustration, the humiliation—all of it became a fire burning inside her. She knew her idea was crazy, but she also knew it was her only chance.
"I need a gun," she whispered to herself, as if it were some kind of revelation, something her mind had been mulling over for a while, but hadn't dared to voice.
***
"I need a gun," she repeated, her voice firmer. She leaned across the desk and pointed at one of Saori's screens. On it, a report detailed the poor performance of a Japanese striker in a friendly match. The data column was filled with mediocre numbers.
"The managers don't understand that this is a disease," Anri continued, speaking more to herself than to Saori. "They say the players aren't strong enough, that they lack discipline. They're blind! What they're missing is a trigger." Something to change their mindset, to destroy this absurdity of playing for the team and sacrificing themselves for the common good. Football is a sport of strikers, of goals. But here in Japan, selfishness is taboo.
As Anri spoke, Saori's mind raced. Her sister's words echoed in her head, resonating with the information she had accumulated during her years of "fun" with sports databases. Her twelve-year-old brain worked at an astonishing speed, connecting dots Anri hadn't even considered. A name, a face in the archive photos, came to mind.
"Something like Noel Noa?" Saori asked. The mention of the French striker, one of the few names Anri had taught her, was almost a whisper.
"Exactly. A striker who only cares about himself." Anri nodded fervently. "Someone who understands that scoring is everything." That selfishness is the only way to be the best. We don't need a coach. We need a monster.
Saori stopped completely. She turned her chair and looked at her sister, not with the innocence of a child, but with the seriousness of a genius who has found a solution to a problem.
"You don't need a monster," she said, her voice as flat as the data on her screen. "You need the man who created one."
Anri frowned, confused.
Saori typed a few lines of code. The screens flickered, and on one of them, a photograph appeared. It was a man with glasses, a stern face, and an air of arrogance that was almost palpable through the image. Next to his photo, a name: Jinpachi Ego.
"This man was Noel Noa's rival abroad. A genius, but no one knew him here."
He retired due to an injury, about which there is no public information, and became an analyst—Saori explained, her eyes fixed on the image. There was no emotion in her voice, only facts and figures. “I read his analyses. His philosophy is pure selfishness. He's not interested in teamwork, only victory at any cost. He's a perfect 'weapon'.”
Anri was speechless. The answer she had desperately sought wasn't in the Football Association, but in the prodigious mind of her younger sister. And the solution, the name of the man who could change Japanese football forever, had long been known to Saori.