Chapter Text
"Are you sure you really don't want to come with us?" Reo had frowned unhappily, both at the rapid shake of Isagi's head and Nagi's chin that was perpetually stuck and hooked around Isagi's shoulder, "my dad's company manufactures the engines from this aircraft. I have no doubt I can pull some strings—"
"As much as I want to," Isagi did not want to, "I still have paperwork. It's the summer before you guys start your college applications. The principal isn't going to let anyone from the faculty go."
"I'm going to burn the school for you, sensei," Nagi muttered sleepily from his shoulder, and the shiver from Isagi's spine was a resounding signal to get the hell out of there.
"Anyway!" Isagi slithered out of Nagi's grasp, ignoring his pout, "you guys enjoy England, alright? Don't lose your ID cards! I'll be off then!"
"Isagi-sensei—" They both reached out for him, but he had hightailed out of the departure area as if he was chasing a goal. In a way, he was; the goal being to achieve a summer with relaxation and no disruptions, which was mostly caused by his own students, namely a particular trio.
He admired the dedication and the passion his students showed him, during the training sessions and during pep talks and during homeroom when they would suspiciously appear in his 1st year teaching class even though they were starting out as third years now and their assigned rooms were on the other side of the school premises—
(The amount their respective advisers had to chew out Isagi was too many to count, and hey, Barou alone was around 160 pounds—dragging him out the classroom already was a struggle enough without a 6'3 ft Nagi wrapped around his legs.)
—but this wasn't just a break for them, but a break for Isagi, too, who was granted a very, very rare moment where he wasn't in their direct scrutiny.
He couldn't help the ecstatic grin that threatened to stretch his whole face as he all but sprinted from the check-in booths. Finally, he could eat his lunch without someone trying to squabble who got to eat his combini box first. Finally, he could finish his reports in the faculty without someone asking for help with their algebra homework ("I'm a PE teacher... and you're ranked 5th in the entire grade, Reo." "...").
Finally, finally, finally, maybe this time, he could achieve some much-awaited peace and quie—
"Hyoma! Is my passport with you?"
He spoke too soon.
"Yeah, sis," a familiar redhead sighed, waving the booklet around, "you know you wouldn't have forgotten this if you weren't too busy stuffing clothes in your suitcase."
"Well, it's a good thing my baby bro is so reliable," a similarly redheaded girl cooed, throwing an arm over the other's shoulders. Isagi didn't have to wait for her to turn to know that her face was a carbon copy of the other.
"Anyway, are you sure you don't want to come with me to Bali? The villa's under the family name, so there's a high chance that you can get in even if you didn't send a reservation."
"No thanks," Chigiri grunted, trying to pry his sister's arms away from him. He was never the affectionate type; only one had ever been the exception. "I already told you, I'm—" he paused, then twisted his head unexpectedly towards Isagi's direction.
Thank you God for giving me fast reflexes! Isagi thought furiously, heart in his throat as he ducked near an ATM machine.
"Hyoma?" Chigiri's sister blinked, "what's up with you? Did you see someone you know?"
"No... I..." Chigiri shook his head slowly, eyes still trained towards Isagi's direction. He furrowed his brows, contemplating, but it was as if he had quickly made up his mind, and was charging all of a sudden towards him.
No way! Isagi chanted in his head, plastering himself against the ATM machine as if willing it to absorb him. No way, no way, no way—
"Hyoma!" Chigiri's sister shrilled, and it was so loud that even the bystanders paused to give them dirty looks.
"What?" Chigiri froze, turning to her with an ill-contained fervor. His sister could look at him in surprise, thinking, I haven't seen this look on him ever since about three years ago... before shaking her head and gesturing to her hand, palm-up.
"Are you forgetting something? My passport? Hello!"
"Oh," Chigiri muttered, back turning, and Isagi jumped at the chance to escape.
Deciding it was too risky to pass through the local departure drop-offs and exposing himself to Chigiri's sharp instincts, he turned towards the international border instead, passing through bustling groups of tourists and business men until he was sure that he was at least a notable distance away from his ex-student, slumping tiredly on a bench as the day's events had caught up to him.
He had spent his day first thing in the morning trying to persuade a determined Reo and Nagi, who showed up out of the blue in his apartment at 6 o'clock sharp—swallowing the scream in his throat asking how they found his place, and who did all they could to drag him to their trip abroad ("I already booked you a ticket, sensei. Don't you know how expensive it will be if we cancel?" "You out of all people shouldn't be saying that, Reo." "...").
Nagi, on the other hand, had made a huge mess out of the clothes from his own closet, ramming them in his own duffel bag, and when Isagi barely made his point that he would be staying and attempted to take back his own clothes, Nagi had dodged his hands like a player in defense, hugging the bag protectively.
"Nagi! I already told you I'm not going. Give me back my clothes. You don't have to bring them with you anymore."
"Huh? Who says they're for you? I'm bringing them for me."
"...you're bringing my clothes for you?"
"Mhmm."
"Nagi, what on earth are you saying? They're not going to fit you—hey! Is that my underwear?"
He had used up all his strength to haul Nagi and Reo to a taxi with the promise that he would stay with them until they left, and most importantly, after that, he almost had an encounter with his old student.
He felt the telltale signs of wistfulness creep into him, and Isagi couldn't help but reminisce his moments when he was a teacher in his previous school. Bachira, Kunigami, and Chigiri were the first students he had ever grown close to, after all. It was true that he had left with scarcely a goodbye, but he wasn't as heartless as to forget all the times they shared.
"I'm getting too soft for my own good," he sighed, leaning down tiredly. As he did, a soccer ball that was on the seat next to him jostled and fell to the floor, rolling away, and Isagi stood up to quickly chase after it.
"Shoot. I'm so sorry," he apologized right away once he caught it, returning it to the stranger sitting next to him who was most probably the owner, "I didn't mean to—oh. Uh..."
It was Rin Itoshi. The Rin Itoshi. Isagi had watched him and his plays enough that he could recognize him anywhere, but perhaps it might have been because Nagi and Reo had put him through a lot earlier than per usual or the fact he almost met Chigiri, but he hadn't realized he had accidentally sat beside Rin at all.
It could also be most likely due to the fact that this person in front of him, despite having Rin's eyes and Rin's face and Rin's dominating figure, had looked like he had his whole world taken away from him, which was baffling for the simple-minded Isagi, because Rin had a kick accuracy to die for.
Which he said as much. "Why are you crying? You have a perfect kick accuracy."
"Fuck off," Rin snarled, eyes narrowing. “Not everything is about—about… Fuck! Fuck you! And fuck soccer too!”
As he said this, Rin stood up, wobbling, before snatching the ball from Isagi’s flabbergasted grasp and hurling it away.
It hit someone squarely in the head. Some teenager with weirdly dyed hair that was an electric clash of blue and blond.
“See what I mean? Perfect kick accuracy! Why are you—oh god, he’s coming this way. C’mon—”
“Well fuck him too—” Rin sneered, squaring his shoulders in preparation to face off the stranger who was striding quickly before them, followed by another individual who was trying to calm the other down.
Isagi didn’t let him. He immediately dragged Rin by the collar, ducking from one entryway to the other and deliberately passing through hoards of tourists until he was certain that they reached a safe distance away.
Rin thrashed in his hold before Isagi abruptly let go—watching him flail from the sudden loss of support before he whipped his head to glower furiously at Isagi's way. If he were a lesser man, Isagi would have no doubt felt intimidated by the force of Rin's glare, amplified by the eerie glow of his eyes, but as it was, Isagi was Isagi, who could only quirk his lips in wry amusement.
"Sorry, I just didn't think you looked like you were in the right state of mind right to pick fights right now."
"Who the hell are you to decide that."
"A trusted grown-up, for one."
"On what basis?" Rin spat out venomously, and Isagi's mouth dipped low into a frown, the telltale signs of annoyance thrumming in his veins, "if it's on the basis of football which you so pathetically love so much, let me remind you that I crushed you and your sorry excuse of a team, and I will continue to do so until I pulverize every hope and dream you hold so dearly."
How dramatic even for a teenager, Isagi thought, but what came out of his mouth instead was:
"You really love soccer too, huh?"
Rin recoiled as if he had physically violated him, and that had seemed to be the final straw for him before he exploded.
"I couldn't fucking care less about that stupid fucking sport!" he spat, "Love? Love? You're all so goddamn pitiful. For all your mindless devotion to the ball, you sure are completely useless at it."
Rin pressed closer to Isagi until the other could see the specks of light playing in Rin's viridescent, cruel gaze.
"Those players you have under you are weak. All of them are nothing but ants beneath my goddamn cleats. They will never amount to anything worthy. In fact, they would most probably end up like you—wasting away with nothing but their feeble so-called adoration for soccer left and none of the skills to prove it. Putrid, still, lukewarm water."
Isagi had completely forgotten what happened after that.
"Sorry," Isagi says in the present, trapped in the dark as he tries to make out the dim outline of Rin's frame, "I honestly don't remember what happened after that. I just remember being so angry that I think I blacked out for a bit, and—oh god. Did I kill you with my bare hands? I honestly was thinking about that at that time."
"If you killed me, I wouldn't have been here right now, idiot," Rin snorts, "you almost beat the shit out of me though."
Isagi flushes.
"Can you blame me? You were such an ass!"
"Am I not one now?" he asks. The Rin in the past would have said it so ruthlessly, venom dripping in his voice like the tears he had in his lashes the day at the airport, but...
But this Rin right now, a lot taller, broader, so obviously grown up from the hot-blooded teenager from years ago, had considerably changed. This person in front of him, despite having Rin's eyes and Rin's face and Rin's dominating figure, looked like he had his whole world—right... in front of him—
Not that Isagi had ever been spot-on with reading people, of course!
"Lukewarm, you..."
"That's not how to talk to your elders, kid," Isagi scolds out of habit, lightly punching him in the chest.
Before he can pull away, Rin covers Isagi's hand with his own; larger and warmer, scalding in a way that makes Isagi sweat.
Isagi laughs nervously, trying to discretely tug his hand back from its place on Rin's chest before things get even more awkward, and Rin tilts his head back, eyes luminescent and unnerving, watching him coolly.
"Do you feel that?"
He doesn't have to ask what Rin is referring to; not when it's reverberating against his own palm, thumping loud and deep and fast like Isagi's own earlier had in the field.
"Woah, did you just get back from practice? That's kinda weird. You don't really look like you just got back from a game though—"
Isagi looks up as he says this, jolting in surprise at how close the proximity was between Rin and his face.
"You're an idiot," Rin mutters, but there's no real bite in his tone. They're close enough that Isagi can feel his breath against his cheek, and they would have even been closer if not for the sudden resounding clang from somewhere outside.
"What was that?" Isagi jumps, twisting around and unconsciously trying to shield Rin. He doesn't see the look the other sends him.
"It looks like it came from the hallway I just came from," Isagi whispers, glancing warily at where he assumed the door was. Before he can take even a couple of steps towards it, Rin roughly grabs his shoulders at the same time a series of enraged knocks resonate from the door, no doubt enough to tear the hinges off if it was your standard door and not a state-of-the-art one crafted by Ego's tyrannical meticulousness.
"Isagi-sensei," Rin calls, and that immediately snaps Isagi's attention to him. Rin rarely ever calls him that. Twice, if he remembers correctly. Once, after their argument at the airport when Isagi caught him crying, discovering years later that it was because of Sae, and the second and last time, in that practice match before Rin graduated, when Isagi had refused to be his exclusive coach.
Isagi never wanted to be tied down. Rin neither. He thought they understood each other in that regard. He couldn't have been more wrong.
"Isagi-sensei," Rin calls him again. Four times. The situation must be dire then. "There's an exit to the left if you go straight from here. I want you to go on without me."
"Um." Isagi starts, pointedly looking at the door currently withstanding another series of poundings. He tries his very best not to think about what's on the other side and to ignore the suspecting voice inside him that actually knows otherwise.
"But what about you, Rin?"
"I can handle them all," Rin drawls, rolling one shoulder.
What do you mean 'all'? Isagi wants to scream.
Rin starts walking towards the door when he stops and then looks over his shoulder to give Isagi the same long beseeching stare he had given him earlier.
"But remember this. You owe me, sensei."
Isagi shivers, and without anymore further prompting, blindly runs towards the other exit Rin told him about.
He can't recall exactly how he gets into his assigned room. Call it good luck or the god of Izumo-Taisha finally bestowing mercy on him, he really doesn't know.
But what he does know—when he's freshly showered and tucked in his bed, trying to smother his head in the pillows to cover the echoing screams from the hallways outside—is that no matter what he can do or where he can run to, he had to decide right there and then for a game plan tomorrow.
Oh my god, Isagi groans, turning in his duvet to glare balefully at the tablet on the nightstand and the schedule Ego had just sent him early in the evening, what am I going to do about tomorrow?
As much as he wants to mull over his thoughts more in order to put together at least a defense for himself for the practice match, Isagi hasn't exerted that much physical effort in a long, long while, and before long, with his mind wandering from listless thoughts of glowing eyes and greedy hands and lush high school soccer fields, he completely knocks out.
—
"Nijiro Nanase, your tour guide, reportin' for duty!" A young man with a headband greets cheerfully at the table where Isagi is eating.
Isagi uses the end of his chopstick to point a tamagoyaki in his direction. "Is this a trap? You know I remember you, Nanase."
"I sure am honored, sensei!" Nanasa cries happily, trailing after Isagi, who has lost his appetite and is standing up to deposit his tray. "I guess you remember me as Rin's teammate. That's an achievement in itself, y'know. Even our own coach didn't get our names and only got Rin's until, like, two interhigh matches later. He actually called me Headband up until my senior year. I can't help it! My forehead gets real sweaty!"
Isagi stops to give him a bewildered look as if he had said something offensive.
"Nanase, what on earth are you on about? You're Rin's teammate, yeah, but I haven't forgotten you or your ambidexterity ability. You gave Kunigami a hell of a time during the games because of that."
Isagi walks ahead, unaware of the shock on Nanase's features, before they gradually soften into a small sincere smile. The younger speeds to catch up, hands clasped behind his back.
"It really is an honor, Isagi-sensei," Nanase confesses, "unfortunately, I haven't gotten the chance to be taught by you in highschool, but I've heard so many amazing things! And now you get to coach us with Ego!"
"Listen Nanase, you're a really nice kid. But while I'm flattered by all the praise you must have heard about me in the past, I'm afraid that the current me can't really live up to your expectations."
"I wouldn't say that, sensei," the other hums thoughtfully, "after all, we all saw you in the practice field and how you scored that goal."
"Oh, that?" Isagi's head immediately conjures images of yesterday; of kicking the ball over and over again until it went past the net, and the stampede of his ex-students arising from the audience seats to almost trigger him into cardiac arrest.
"Everything here sure is high-tech. Even that hologram goalkeeper of yours felt like the real thing," now he feels embarrassed, remembering the number of times it must have taken for him to score that one measly goal. "And hey, in my defense, I haven't played soccer for years, alright? Don't give me a hard time now that I've only scored one point."
Now it's Nanase's turn to give him a bewildered look.
"Sensei, the fact that you scored at all is even more than amazing.”
"Are you being sarcastic right now?"
"What? No!" Nanase shakes his head frantically, "it's holographic and all that jazz, right? So it's operatin' on tech and stuff. Actually, basically everythin' in the facility is. The practice matches we have on the field are prep for when we play in actual games, and y'know, since it's Ego, he programs it to a level where all us players can improve more."
Nanase mistakes Isagi's blank look as a confused one, so he tries to elaborate more.
"Let's say it's like a literal game, right? And they all have, um, levels. Yeah. So every time we practice, Ego makes sure he operates the field at a higher level than where we're at until we become even better. Sometimes he'll be modifyin' the grandstands to have a bunch of hologram bystanders to distract us like the Bombonera pitch, and sometimes he'll even change the weather conditions. On one level, he made it rain so hard that Yukimiya's sports frames almost hit Gagamaru in the eye!"
Isagi can't help how loud his heart is beating, almost deafening in his ears. Stupid, he scolds himself harshly in his mind, unable to grasp what Nanase is saying but hanging to his every word at the same time, stupid. Idiot. Stupid. Stupid! You gave up playing a long time ago. You were never good enough. You were never like them—
"He modifies the difficulty of the holographic players too," Nanase says gratuitously, "and up until recently, no one had beat that goalkeeper at that specific level on a one-on-one.
Until you came and did, sensei."
"Isagi! Nanase!" a voice calls out, and Isagi slowly turns his dumbfounded head to its direction to see Anri marching their way to them, still trying to process what Nanasa had just told him.
"Miss Anri!" Nanase yelps, standing to attention, "oh no, are we late? I'm so sorry, we got carried away just chattin' about a lot of things, and—"
"No, neither of you is late," Anri reassures him, but even as she says this, she's using her hands to hurriedly usher them in a one direction, heels clacking quick against the stainless flooring, Isagi and Nanase having no choice but to let the small but surprisingly strong woman drag them.
"Why do you seem in a hurry then? It's still 7:32. I thought practice started at 8?" Isagi asks, finally snapping out of his reverie.
"We decided to start early," she hauls them into the elevators as they pinged open, pressing a button that led them underground, "especially since the others are already there."
Nanase's eyes almost bulge out of their sockets at the information.
"What!? You're kiddin'. They're never on time!"
"They never are, seeing as today some of them flocked to the practice field at 4 in the morning."
"4 in the—Is there some kind of new fancy exercise protocol I ain't aware of?"
"No. They all just wanted to take their time to try the level Ego set up yesterday," Isagi's eyes meet Anri's in the glass reflection of the elevator panels, her gaze sharp and knowing, "I guess something... or someone motivated them."
The elevators open.
Anri leads them to a suite with large screens plastered on the side and a gigantic window right in the middle overseeing a complete view of the field. Ego is slouching on the seat in front of it, lips pressed to his intertwined fingers in deep thought.
Isagi doesn't know where to look; his eyes dart from one screen to the other, showcasing everything, from the HD view of Bachira's bangs sticking to his forehead with sweat to the powerful maneuver of Hiori’s legs as he kicks the ball.
"Oh my god. Even Nagi out of all people is there." Nanasa whispers in awe, "And the earliest he comes in is after lunch, mind you."
"It seems like the new addition to our team is even more useful than I have anticipated," Ego wonders aloud, swiveling in his chair to peer at Isagi over his glasses, "congrats, Mr. Assistant Coach. Your first day hasn't even begun and yet you have already become quite the influence."
Isagi has the gall to look flustered.
"Oh, well, I guess it's all because of the bond we had in highschool..."
"But that's not enough," Ego cuts him off ruthlessly, an ugly twist in his mouth that makes Isagi remember exactly what type of person Ego was.
"I have no need for players who function on the ideal of influence alone. How they behaved, what they liked or disliked, their past background, or be it if they have crime records or not—those are absolutely irrelevant to me and to project Blue Lock."
"What matters the most is the creation of strikers not bound by meager ties of... adolescent affection or whatsoever," he rises up from his chair to tower over Isagi, imposing in a way that makes the stubborn-hearted Isagi want to face head-on to whatever challenge Ego wants to give him, "but strikers who are driven by ambition and greed. And as such, I will not tolerate any sort of weakness to hinder my players from maximizing their true egos... No matter how vital a role you served in their early developments."
"Let me remind you that you're the one who hired me, you know." Isagi glares up at him.
"Which is precisely why you must prove to me why you're worthy of staying," Ego states coldly, and with a wave of his wrist, a door appears from the left expanse of the room, sliding and blending in the rest of the cutting-edge interior.
"Well? What are you waiting for? Time for another reunion with your old students," the bespectacled man jeers, and Isagi tenses his shoulders, deciding to get this over with, before shouldering past him and disappearing through the door.
When the doors slide shut, Ego's eyes immediately zero back to the screens, caught in another contemplation.
"Honestly. I am able to discern if it was any other factor to have made these wayward pests the way they are now, but I cannot for the life of me fathom how one presumedly bland man is able to have such deep connections to majority, if not all, of the players we have in the league."
"He is really good at soccer. Did you not see the footage I sent you yesterday? He scored the goal against that level 80 goalkeeper of yours," Anri tells him.
Ego rolls his eyes. "So is that it? His unpolished soccer abilities is what attracted them all to him? He would have been of interest if he were at least ten years younger, but not anymore."
"It's his character, too!" Nanase bursts out, unable to contain himself, and Ego and Anri turn to him, surprised to still find him in the room, "you wouldn't find someone like Isagi-sensei anywhere else in the world! He—he believed in all of them, and even me, and was with the others during the darkest points of their lives. And during every practice—"
"Ha!" Ego barks out a mocking laugh, "I see how it is. Those animals have never felt any semblance of human kindness when they were young, and once they have received that from that naive sensei, they immediately attached to it, and thus, to him, hm?" Ego tsks, shifting his vision away from the screen, suddenly uninterested, "what a typical plot. This means Isagi Yoichi will only pose himself as a weakness instead of—"
Ego can only count in one hand the number of times he has ever been caught off-guard his whole life. When both Anri and Nanase burst out laughing all of a sudden, Ego raises his brows, unable to contain his expression just in time.
"Isagi-sensei is nice and all, but," Nanase pauses, unable to stop a giggle or two from escaping, "what kindness?"
"Ego," Anri smiles, and it's offputting in a way that tells him that she knows something he doesn't, and she is very pleased of the knowledge, "I think... it's better if you just see for yourself."
She gestures towards the screen, and Ego looks up just in time the speakers surrounding them play the live feedback in the field, the same voice that belonged to the man who was just with them not even five minutes ago blaring in the silence—
"Are you mentally challenged, you goddamn monkey?"