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i.
When Yukimiya opens his eyes to see the wall clock telling him it’s half an hour past their usual wake-up time, he’s a bit surprised. Granted, there was an intense training regimen this week, but they finally have an elusive free time this morning; sleeping in can be normal, but in order to eat breakfast together, they’re usually woken up by…
Yukimiya sits up. Hiori is still asleep, and Isagi is—
There is a child sleeping on Isagi’s bed.
What in the world…?
Yukimiya wears his glasses, but the child, who seems to be around three years old, continues to exist. He takes his glasses off, rubs his eyes, also wipes the frames for good measure, and puts them back on. But nope, the child is still there, hugging a spiny lobster plush that is almost as big as him.
Unequipped to handle things like this in the morning, Yukimiya walks to the bed of the person who can.
“I’m sorry for waking you up,” Yukimiya says at Hiori’s sleepy and confused look. He jabs a thumb over his shoulder, pointing toward Isagi’s bed. “I’m merely curious. Are you seeing the same thing as I am?”
“What do you… huh? Who’s that kid?”
Hiori gets off the bed, and Yukimiya internally lets out a sigh of relief. Okay, it’s not his eyesight.
“I’m not sure,” Yukimiya replies. “Now that I look closer though, doesn’t he remind you of Isagi…?”
As if responding to the name, the child (Isagi?) rouses from sleep. Noticing two pairs of eyes on him, he immediately sits up, gazing at them with wide eyes barely visible over the lobster’s head. He wraps his arms around the plush tighter.
Yukimiya clears his throat, while Hiori mumbles the thought he doesn’t dare say out loud: “Cute.”
“Good morning, morning. Why are you standing around Isagi’s bed— eh?”
Kurona joins them in their confused staring.
A small hand reaches for Kurona, blue eyes sparkling with curiosity and amazement, and the three of them exchange more confused looks. When the child makes a grabby motion with his hands, Kurona sits on the edge of the bed, quietly observing the child as he crawls toward him.
“Isagi?” Kurona blurts out a beat later, as if he’s unable to hold the question in any longer.
The hand about to reach for Kurona’s hair freezes in midair, and Isagi(?)’s expression turns from amazement into horror as his gaze moves down to Kurona’s mouth.
The child bawls.
Kurona blinks.
Once again, Yukimiya is unequipped to handle this, and Hiori seems stunned by the loud cry that it takes him a second longer to respond—but it’s too late. The child has jumped out of bed, bolting out of the room with his plush in hand.
“We gotta go after ‘im,” Hiori says, scrambling to put on his shoes. “Can’t let a kid run ‘round.”
“That was Isagi, right? How? How?”
Yukimiya clasps his hands together. “A miracle.”
Hiori grabs his arm and pulls him along. “And we gotta catch that miracle before somethin’ happens—”
“Wait a moment, let me grab my shoes too—”
“Rush! Rush!”
ii.
Food, food, food…
Bachira skips down the hall towards the cafeteria, humming a tune offkey as he does. Now that he has actual people to play with and talk to, Bachira finds the cafeteria to be a bright, happy place—especially after he works up an appetite practicing his new dribbling style.
Satisfied with what he’s accomplished, Bachira swings the door open and looks around for his fellow player from Blue Lock. He likes Otoya and his interesting way of speaking. He laughs harder with him than anybody else in FC Barcha, too.
Though it makes Bachira miss Team Z… and the egoist…
Aha! There he is!
Bachira finds Otoya at one of the tables. Surprisingly, he’s sitting with a child staring up at him with wonder.
“Ei-chan, who’s this?” Bachira skips over, gazing down at the child, and oh! Would you look at that? Speaking of, it’s—
“Isagi,” Otoya provides. “Not sure how he got here. Or how he got like this, for that matter. Been tryna feed him, but he just keeps starin’ at me instead.”
“Maybe it’s your hair!”
“Doesn’t seem like he’s bothered by yours though.”
Bachira hums, tapping a finger on his chin. The mysteriously tiny Isagi hugs his little lobster plush to his chest, and that is the cutest thing Bachira has ever seen!
With a grin, Bachira claps his hands together. “I think Yocchan”—a cute nickname for a cutie!—“would like a snack! How about a cake?”
Yocchan’s eyes seem to grow bigger at the mention of cake. He nods, the enthusiastic bob of his head making his entire body shake. Bingo!
“Yo, I offered him that.”
Bachira sticks his tongue out and winks at his teammate before squatting down in front of Yocchan. There’s no point in questioning things like how or why Isagi’s like this; everything happens for a reason, just like how he suddenly woke up one day and have the monster play with him. He likes to tackle situations like this with his go-with-the-flow style.
“Well, how about we get some cake, and then we can color and play some games!” Bachira beams. “Do you like football, Yocchan?”
“Foot… ball?”
Oh, he hasn’t learned to play yet? Bachira can teach him so much!
“Yup, football! I’m sure you’ll love it! Let’s gooooo!”
Without waiting for Yocchan’s reply, because he knows the answer will be yes to football, Bachira swings the kid up into his arms. Yocchan seems to enjoy it, even letting out a giggle, and Bachira knows exactly what to do to make him laugh some more.
He tosses Yocchan up in the air.
Adults do it with toddlers in movies, and his mother used to do it, too. Bachira remembers it being the best thing ever. The sense of weightlessness, a rush of excitement, a brief moment where you believe you can fly-day~!
“We’re gonna have a blast, Yocchan!” Bachira exclaims, preparing to raise him up in the air again.
Otoya raises a hand. “Uh, dude. Wait.”
“Mhm?”
“You might wanna—”
“Uwaaaaa!”
Yocchan’s cry makes Bachira freeze, and he’s kicking his tiny legs so wildly that Bachira has no choice but to let go. He drops him to the floor, not too hard of course, and Yocchan sprints into the unknown halls of the Spain stratum.
“I don’t think he liked that very much,” Otoya says, pulling out his phone to presumably return to what he’d been doing prior, which is no good!
“Ei-chan, we can’t just let him leave!”
“Eh, how troublesome. You’re the one who—”
“Come on, let’s go! Upsy-daisy!”
After much tugging, Bachira is able to drag Otoya onto his feet and out of the cafeteria.
iii.
The view of Chigiri sitting on the training room floor, smiling as he plays with a kid, is a pleasant one—quite picturesque, even; something Reo can see being filmed for a commercial. It’s aesthetically pleasing, a heartwarming scene, that it takes him a moment to realize something important:
There shouldn’t be a kid here at all.
“What the hell, Chigiri? Who’s that?”
“Oh, hey!” Chigiri looks up and waves him over. “Come here.” To the kid, he says, “Can I introduce a new friend to you?”
When Reo moves closer and gets a better look at the kid, he splutters.
Those eyes might be doing the opposite of the intense staring they usually do, but they’re the same bright blues nonetheless.
“Is that Isagi?”
“Yeah,” Chigiri answers with no hesitation, like Reo just asked him if the sky is blue and not is that Isagi. “He likes to be called Yocchan though. Right, Yocchan?”
At the kid’s, Yocchan’s, bashful nod, Reo’s jaw drops to the floor.
Why is that so damn cute?
Instead of asking several, more important questions, Reo sits down and decides to just follow in his teammate’s footsteps since Chigiri always somehow gets his shit together more when he takes things in stride. He whips his phone out to text his attendants, the ones he knows are just waiting outside Blue Lock even though he told them not to, and tells them to bring more animal plushes ASAP.
In the middle of a clapping game as they wait for Yocchan’s new plush friends, a huge shadow looms over them. Reo lifts his head to see Nagi towering over them, dark eyes unblinking.
“Why is Isagi small?” is what Nagi asks after a good full minute of staring, which is followed by sniffing noises.
Wait, sniffing noises?
Whipping his head back to Yocchan, Reo watches the kid’s eyes turn glassy, tears beginning to well up.
“Scary big man!” Yocchan cries out as he scrambles to stand up. Reo and Chigiri both reach for him, but Yocchan evades their hands with a surprising show of reflex, darting in between Nagi’s legs before rushing into the hallway.
Nagi bends forward to stare at the space between his legs before straightening up, looking over his shoulder to stare at the exit. “Eh?”
Reo stands up and turns to Chigiri, who looks dazed for some reason. “Hey, Chigiri. He might get lost. You’re the fastest here and— oi, are you listening?”
With a jolt, Chigiri stands up and shakes his head. “Sorry, I just couldn’t believe we saw Isagi cry. I mean, it’s a kid version of him, but—”
“It is because he’s a kid,” Reo replies, giving the answer he knows logically but doesn’t understand emotionally. He wasn’t the type to cry even as a kid, able to get whatever he wants.
Anyway. Not important. What’s more crucial right now is, “We have to catch him. Red Panther, you go right. I’ll go left.”
After a curt nod, Chigiri speeds out of the room.
“You can just stay here, Nagi. We’ll handle it,” Reo says. “It’s troublesome anyway, right?” Not to mention, Yocchan’s scared of him; Reo’s pretty tall as well, but the pleasant aura he has trained to exude must’ve been an advantage here.
Nagi purses his lips. “No. I’m going. I want to see Isagi, too.”
And he’s out of the door before Reo can form a reply.
With a sigh, Reo heads to the hallway and turns left, the opposite of the direction Nagi took. They’ll all surely see each other later anyway, at wherever Yocchan—wherever Isagi—is.
Reo just hopes Yocchan doesn’t bump into more… difficulties.
Difficult people, in particular. He seems easily spooked.
iv.
There’s a kid in the movie theater.
Now. Barou has seen some shit since coming to Blue Lock and to the Ubers. He’s dealt with a lot of annoying people and circumstances, not just here but his whole life.
But this? This has Barou reconsidering the whole Blue Lock stuff, even with all the potential money he could be making.
The kid is crying. It’s a headache and a half, but Barou can deal with kids relatively well. With two little sisters that never leave him alone and consistently destroy his room, he thinks he can handle a crying kid. However the fuck he got there in the first place.
“What the fuck,” he mutters under his breath.
He makes his way toward the kid, and the closer he gets, the more he realizes this kid looks eerily similar to that egoist—identical, actually.
Again, what the fuck.
“Oi, kid,” Barou calls out. “How did you even get in here?”
The crying immediately stops, and Barou goes rigid at the watery blue eyes staring wide open at him. Maybe he shouldn’t make any sudden movements.
They stare at each other, the silence so loud one could hear a pin drop, but it doesn’t take long for the wailing to start up again. Even louder, the kid sprints out of the movie theater before Barou can even react.
“Hey! Come back here!”
Barou chases after him because he can’t have a kid running loose in the Italy stratum. How would he even explain that? How did this kid even get in here?
And why is he damn faster than he looks?
It takes longer than Barou would’ve liked to corner the kid, but just before he catches him, the kid is snatched up into the arms of another player.
“Barou-chan, it’s not nice to chase after children,” Aiku says in a mock scolding tone while Barou doubles over to catch his breath, digging his fingers into his thighs as he pants. This is fucking ridiculous.
“Where’d you even get him?” The kid with the bangs—Niko, if Barou stopped to think for a second—appears from behind Aiku to poke at the kid’s cheek. The crying has subsided once more, likely because of the new faces.
“He was in the movie theater.” Barou scowls. “You think I stole a kid?”
Aiku only shrugs while bouncing the kid in his arms.
“He looks like Isagi-kun,” Niko points out.
The kid whips his head toward him and mumbles, “N-No eyes…”
Barou notices the kid’s bottom lip wobble, but Aiku continues on. “That’s not possible, right?”
“Who the fuck knows?” Sighing, Barou throws his hands up. “Just get him outta here.”
While Aiku and Niko begin discussing what to do with the Isagi lookalike, Barou starts heading back to the gym—
The kid’s crying again.
“Loch Ness monster!” the kid shouts, wiggling as he frees himself from Aiku’s arms.
Aryu. The bastard spooked him when he appeared behind Niko.
Between the ‘no eyes’ and the supposed mythical creature, the kid had finally had enough. Can’t even blame him, Barou thinks as he watches the kid run out of their facility.
With a shrug, Barou resumes his walk. Not his problem anymore.
“Oh no you don’t, Barou-chan,” Aiku says, looping an arm through his and yanking him back. “You got us into this mess, so now you have to help us go after him.”
Barou snarls over his shoulder, but Aiku shows off his annoying strength as he all but drags him from their building to search for the now-missing kid. Why the fuck should he have to deal with this?
v.
Just a few more weeks left, Tabito. You’ll be free of ‘em and makin’ the big bucks soon!
Karasu reminds himself of this at least once a day, and yet, it never seems to be enough. A man can only stand so much, and being the only one brave enough to break up the fights is starting to wear on him.
The fighting can happen anywhere and at any time, echoing all throughout the PXG’s facility. This time, they even picked the weight room… which means there are weapons at play.
Just once. Karasu wishes Loki would come in and stop them just once. He knows their Master Striker has more important things to deal with, but Karasu can only do so much by himself.
There are weapons here.
Erring on the side of caution, Karasu slowly opens the door to find Rin and Shidou huddled together. Insults shoot left and right before, but Karasu walks into the sight of serenity. There are no arguments, no blood, no punches. Just two football players and a kid.
Wait, what?
“I think we should take him out, get rid of the competition now before he turns back,” Shidou mumbles to Rin, the latter nodding along with his usual serious expression. Karasu doesn’t want to know what “taking him out” entails, but he can guess. There are weapons—
“What’re ya guys doing?” Karasu asks in a valiant attempt to spare lives.
“Rinrin and I are trying to figure out what to do with Isagi-chan here,” Shidou explains like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “What do you think? We take him out, or we raise him as our own?”
Crazy as usual.
Karasu stands next to them and assesses the kid. Huh. It’s Isagi, all right, and he looks petrified—an expression Karasu is quite used to; he sees it on Nanase all the time when the fists start to fly.
He has to de-escalate the situation before these two do something drastic.
“Hey, lil’ guy.” Karasu crouches down in front of Isagi, who clutches his lobster plush tighter. “Why don’t we get outta here and away from these big scary guys?”
He doesn’t know where to bring him exactly, but anywhere not in the France stratum felt like a better option.
Okay, maybe not in the France and Italy strata. There are too many personalities in Ubers, and they even got some zombie dude.
Isagi blinks at him, his gaze traveling up toward the two before he turns to Karasu. They lock eyes for a moment before Isagi glances down… at Karasu’s mouth?
Before Karasu can even fathom Isagi’s interest in the lower half of his face, the kid lets out a wail, big fat tears streaming down his cheeks.
“Don’t eat me!” Isagi shouts before high-tailing it out of the room.
Shidou lets out a raucous laugh, doubling over in hysterics.
Karasu stands up, swallowing down his pride and embarrassment. He doesn’t even know what to say to that. How is it that the two scariest guys are right behind him, and it’s his own mouth that terrifies Isagi?
“I’m going after him,” Rin says as he pushes past them and exits in a sprint.
“Wha— Hey! The kid’s mine to deal with!” Shidou yells and chases after him, laughter long gone.
Karasu throws his hands up and trails behind them, groaning at the flash of red whirring past that he can’t quite make out. Yet another thing that Karasu has to endure, apparently. “Oh, for fuck’s sake.”
Just a few more weeks, Tabito.
+i.
Kaiser lets out a long exhale through his mouth, watching the spinning ball collide with the netting. Speed, accuracy—everything about his shot is perfect, of course.
Yet in order to completely crush that stupid clown, he still needs more.
As the ball hits the ground and rolls, Kaiser turns around to prepare for another shoot.
He pauses.
“Wow,” a kid breathes out before proceeding to gape at him.
Kaiser’s first instinct is to stare at the ceiling where he knows a camera is installed and say, “There’s a lost kid here.”
For whatever fucking reason.
Well, there we go. He already did his part; it’s up to that creepy fucker now to handle this.
He makes his way to the side of the field and sighs when the kid follows. Unintentionally placing himself in between Kaiser and the ball, the kid lowers his lobster-shaped soft toy to stare up at him…
Oh?
It’s a familiar face, one that he was watching just a few minutes ago on multiple screens. Kaiser finds himself crouching in front of the kid whose features bear an uncanny resemblance to— “Yoichi?”
The kid beams, his eyes shining with an emotion he’s never seen directed at Kaiser by his older counterpart before. “What was that?”
“Football,” Kaiser replies, barely stopping himself from adding a ‘duh?’ at the end.
“Is that… um… football? It was so cool! Do it again!”
“I just said that. And why should I?”
Despite Kaiser’s mocking tone, the kid isn’t fazed—or, the most likely reason, little Yoichi doesn’t understand him. He doesn’t have his earbuds. But of course, he has his toy. The fuck even is this situation.
“Fine,” Kaiser says. He is about to do it again anyway, and it’s not bad to have the younger, more honest Yoichi appreciate his greatness, as he should’ve been doing all this time.
Before he can get the ball, the door slams open, a blur of pink and blue whizzing past it and honing in on Yoichi.
“Yocchan, are you okay?” The redhead from Manshine City scoops Yoichi into his arm, patting the kid on the head. “This big, bad man didn’t do anything to you, did he?”
Kaiser recoils. “Ex-fucking-cuse me?”
“Language,” the guy with heterochromatic eyes from Ubers says, pulling along an irritated-looking teammate.
More circus animals enter the field after them, some running, some being dragged by those running. It’s the fucking zoo now.
Kaiser clicks his tongue as they crowd the kid. He has the most rights to the field, whether or not these stupid Blue Lock players even asked for permission before barging into this stratum, but he’s not interested in taking part in this little play.
He leaves.
Or, at least, it was the plan.
Yoichi’s spatial awareness seems to be outstanding even as a child, his head whipping toward Kaiser as he makes his way to the exit. Somehow managing to break free from the redhead’s hold, little Yoichi dodges all the hands after him and runs in front of Kaiser. He holds a hand out to stop him from his tracks, the other still clutching his plush.
“Please teach me football!”
Kaiser can only bask in the silence for a second before it’s broken by the bumblebee from FC Barcha. “What? No! The best friend, me, should teach!”
“Lukewarm. Only the best player should be qualified to teach.”
“Sorry not sorry, but explosive little chibi’s mine.”
“Isagi won’t learn anything when you’re too fucking scary, you donkey.”
“Uh, you’re not really one to talk—”
“Hey, bro. ‘Sup. You got dragged here too?”
“Nah, bro. Was gonna leave ‘em alone, but thought my conscience wouldn’t let me sleep if either of those two got to Mr. Ordinary first and—oh, hey, what happened?”
“Isagi-kun was already like that when we woke up—”
“What is Ego doing—”
Kaiser feels the anxiety radiating off the kid before he even sees him flinch, clinging to his soft toy as he buries his face in it. Considering how Yoichi can keep up with Kaiser, it won’t be surprising if little Yoichi has heightened senses—and if everyone is already annoyingly loud to Kaiser as it is…
“All of you,” Kaiser says. “Shut the fuck up.”
He pointedly ignores the Ubers guy shouting “Language!”—little Yoichi won’t understand it anyway—and picks up the kid, who lets himself be carried without any complaints. If only Yoichi is this amenable… but where’s the fun in that, huh?
Ugh. He’ll just bring the kid to Noa. That should solve a lot of things.
Before Kaiser can take another step, Yoichi grabs a fistful of Kaiser’s hair left in front of his shoulders. He gives it a soft tug before staring up at Kaiser with a wide smile. “Pretty hair!”
Kaiser blinks. “The fuck?”
“Language.”
“Oh, shut it—”
The baby chick hums. “So that’s how Isagi chooses favorites.”
“No fair. No fair.”
“I think you’re almost a favorite too, but Isagi-kun got terrified after seein’ your teeth—”
“Dude, I felt that.”
“If it’s about hair, then it is only stylish to—”
Everybody quiets down at the static noises from the announcement system, followed by a female voice filtering through the speakers. “Hey, guys? Who had plushes delivered here?”
“Ah, it’s me. Those are—”
Kaiser lets go of the sudden unbearable weight on his arms.
“…not needed anymore, apparently,” purple hair finishes, his shoulders drooping.
Kaiser winces as his back hits the ground, but it’s easy to ignore the pressure on his stomach as he watches the expressions on Yoichi’s not-so-little-anymore face change in rapid succession. With the same, sharp vision he uses on the field, Kaiser pinpoints the exact moment Yoichi realizes he’s sitting on top of him, and he grins as Yoichi jumps off him as if burned.
Yoichi’s flushed. How cu— amusing. Just amusing.
“What just happened?” Yoichi mumbles, turning his head away to avoid Kaiser’s gaze, only to reel back when he sees multiple pairs of eyes staring back at him. “Wait, why are you guys here?”
A good fucking question, really.
In the crowd, the glasses guy Yoichi passed to (that Kaiser didn’t foresee—) clasps his hands together. Wait, is he barefoot?
“Miracles,” he says, closing his eyes.