Chapter Text
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MICHAEL KAISER: PART ONE
people can like things without realizing, you know?
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The most important day of Michael Kaiser’s life is the day Isagi slapped him right across the face.
For the first time.
“What the fuck is your problem?!” Isagi screamed at him, tugging his hands off his jersey collar and slamming him to the lockers.
They were in Blue Lock, in the German stratum, and they had just met for the first time last last week.
“I don’t care who the fuck you think you are, Kaiser. Outside the pitch, leave me the goddamn fuck alone.”
He felt dizzy. It has been a long time since he was hit that hard in the face by someone that isn’t his fuckass father or his mom’s fat ugly kids. That, alongside hearing Isagi growling in what seemed to be a devilish mesh of German and Japanese simultaneously-
Only then he tapped his ear and realized his translator had flown to the ground the moment he was struck—and it lit a match into Kaiser’s mental pool of gasoline.
Finally.
“Didn’t know you’re into things like this, Yoichi,” was the first thing he said. He kept staring at the floor, eyeing the earpiece broken into two. Ego’s gonna give him a mouthful for that, won’t he?
“You’re a real fucking weirdo, you know that?” Isagi spat as he lets go of his collar and slammed his locker shut. “I mean it. Now leave me alone.”
Nobody told him Blue Lock’s Heart was this feisty off camera. Kaiser had to speak before Isagi could reach that door.
“But you got a heavy hand there, Aprilscherz. I think Noa would like to hear about that.”
Success.
When the striker glanced back to glare, his eyes remained dark as if judging Kaiser for all his sins; the opposite of a flow state for it was as if he was blinded by something. Something that told him this wasn’t the Yoichi he normally sees in the pitch with dimples high on his cheeks.
At the excitement promised, of course, Kaiser continued to bite deeper. It was all he had ever known actually: to make things worse.
He takes one step closer.
“The only way we could have scored that goal is by you assisting me, Yoichi. Did you expect me not to call you out on your self-serving no-show bullshit?”
Earlier in a practice-game-gone-wrong, Isagi stole his ball and proceeded to miss the shot. Of course Kaiser’s tormenting followed him to the lockers. Of course he didn’t stop when Isagi slapped him across the face.
“Let me put it this way, airhead.” Kaiser took on a brave face as a twitch found Isagi’s eye, the bag slipping off the latter’s shoulders. “This may be reality TV for you but for the rest of us, this is real. We all signed contracts here. As much as I hated it, Bastard München is still my team and you are actively digging a grave for the rest of us—the rest of us who have real careers. Do you seriously think this is what Noa wants? For you to sabotage his biggest moneymaker and get himself broke again because of- hah- Ego?”
“Shut your fucking mouth.” Isagi shoots forward, forcing Kaiser to slam his head back to the lockers to dodge a blow that never came. Now that flickered something in the depths behind his eyelids. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. You don’t know Ego. You don’t know Noa-”
“Oh, like I’m sure you do?”
Kaiser scoffed, pushing Isagi away as he fixed his last remaining earbud. Something shook from within his chest, a heart awakened by fire, and he clenches his jaw if only that could help bury the memories of fists he’d rather never recall. With that shove, a memory resurfaces. From a past nearly forgotten. A father nearly buried alive.
“Do you want to be deported, you blonde son of a bitch?” Isagi spat, full of hatred. “Want to see how far I’m literally willing to go with you?”
“Is that how you say ‘I’m sorry’ here?” Kaiser laughs before pushing him again, watching Isagi stumble over his own feet for a second. The hand on his collar also finally lets go. “You’re a fucking pussy, Isagi Yoichi. You just can’t understand that this is all bigger than you.”
The other gets his bearings back and wipes a hand over his face quietly.
“Did you know I have worked with a lot of pussies before?” Kaiser reaches forward and cups his cheek to face him. Their eyes met, and he nearly missed the flash of red in those ocean eyes. “You’re the only one who thinks he has a dick-”
That’s when Isagi punches him square in the face.
Kaiser couldn’t remember much of what happened next. He was just a teenager. Nineteen, pissed, shocked, intrigued, hurt, trembling, angry—angered.
All that he could recall after was that he went back to his room with tissues up his nose, a missing earbud, and a brand new bite mark where thorns encircled the expanse of his forearm.
Wouldn’t you look at that: Isagi Yoichi is a biter.
It was honestly the funniest thing that made his week. When Ness first pointed it out in worry, Kaiser couldn’t help but laugh, realizing he didn’t notice when he was bitten and how.
In awe—just pure awe at the audacity—he watched for an entire week as Isagi’s teeth faded into his skin, the fangs the last to disappear. The bite was so round he practically got a mold of Isagi’s mouth embedded on his body, even revealing to him that one slightly crooked incisor he had. Like shit.
Sure, it didn’t draw blood and it didn’t matter in the grand scale of things. Still, it served as a reminder that Isagi Yoichi was the first person in a long while to ever hit him back. Bite him back. Made him flinch at a blow that never came. Matched his insanity with a force just as strong.
A worthy rival that made soccer once again worth playing.
Besides, to see that it was Isagi Yoichi of all people, who he previously deemed the paragon of innocence with that virgin look on his face—it awakened something within Kaiser. He just didn’t know what to call it yet.
The conclusion he settled for is that the Aprilscherz was just different. He was insane. Nothing new of course—all his rivals were—but still.
If anything, he even found it a little amusing.
Back when Ness found out about the bite, he was so infuriated he angrily likened the striker to a rabid dog. It made Kaiser laugh so hard he nearly snorted his bloody tissue up his lungs and launched a nurse nearby to a heart attack.
Look, Yoichi, he started taunting him ever since, shoving that arm to his face during practice, look what you did to me, you bad, bad dog.
(The funniest part was that the taunting must have worked because he actually apologized to him the following Monday.)
(That is, six whole days later.)
“Uh- what the hell?” Ness unintentionally interrupts him, staring at something behind him. Annoyed, Kaiser turns his head around except what he saw was a constipated expression that befell Isagi Yoichi’s face.
What the hell indeed.
On the sixth day, the egoist approached him at the cafeteria and wordlessly slid him a miserable-looking apple straight from his tray—a horrible attempt at an apology that even Kaiser had to ridicule.
He figured this was an old school peace offering that the Japanese had a thing about. Fruit was apparently expensive here and thus was used as a symbol of courtesy—but any sane person would know that “Isagi”, “courtesy” and “towards Kaiser” don’t go in the same sentence, ever.
“Ooh, what’s this?” Kaiser pressed a finger on the apple stem and rolled it around. “Are you flirting with me?”
“The fuck?” the other striker grimaced, and Kaiser nearly decided not to eat if it meant he could annoy him for the rest of free time. “Just take it…?”
Isagi proceeds to turn on his heel before Kaiser grabbed his shoulder and forcibly sat him down. The former groaned at his maneuvering but didn’t fight back, and so Kaiser wasted no time leaning towards his ear to whisper right by his ear.
“Apples mean a lot different in Europe, you know.”
“And?”
So he added, the tip of his nose intimately brushing against Isagi’s earlobe, “In Greek mythology, apples are a symbol of love-”
“Oookay, get off me, what the fuck.”
His smirk grew wider when Isagi cringed.
“Don’t you dare make this weird, Kaiser. You know they just made me do this.”
Hah. They both know full well “they” don’t exist. Nobody in this entire facility could ever convince him to apologize to Kaiser, not Noa, not Ego, and they both know it.
“Me? You made this weird.”
Kaiser then looks at Ness with an expectant expression and even the midfielder agrees, technically only shrugging but very obviously antagonizing, murdering, and burying Isagi in his mind.
“See? We were just trying to eat our food. You’re the one who walked over and made things weird.”
“Ugh!” Isagi groaned and dragged a hand all over his frustrated face. Kaiser notices the tips of his ears glow red past his dark hair, and snorted at the sight. “Look, I don’t like apples and the lunchbot sanctions wasted food. If you don’t want it, just give it to your walking trashcan of a bestfriend over here-”
Ness gasps, “Excuse me?”
“Woah, pause it. I thought you had manners?” Kaiser holds Ness down and quickly separated the two. It was not lost to him that outside of himself, Ness was the one who made sure Isagi gets a bad day most days. Though it’s also not that he wanted Ness to get the shock.
Which is exactly why Isagi ignores him and just glares at the midfielder, who’s also more than ready to poke his eye out with a fork.
“Why don’t you tell your lapdog that?”
As the two glared at each other and started fighting Kaiser’s hold, he pushed them apart with finality. “Alright, that’s enough.”
Crunch. Both Ness and Isagi flinched when Kaiser took his fork and slammed it right at the apple.
The rest of Bastard München now turned to look if they weren’t already, and it’s only a matter of time until Ego turns on that stupid microphone and tells Noa or some guards to check things out.
He then plasters on a fake smile, digging the fork deeper on the fruit, an eye twitching.
“Is it really that hard to say sorry, Isagi Yoichi? Hm?”
The striker looks at the apple, back at him, then back to his own tray as if getting ready to leave.
“Is that that fucking hard to take an apple?” he mocked.
“You bit me, you know,” he reminded darkly. “It was so deep Anri had to call me to the clinic just to make sure I didn't get sick. That’s assault, legally defined. Again, is it that hard to just own up to your rabid bullshit and say sorry?”
He watched as a light pink tint flushed Isagi’s already red ears, and he couldn’t help a pleased angry grin spreading all over his face when a visible shiver ran through Isagi’s arms.
“Who on Earth told you I’m saying sorry?”
It was at this moment Kaiser decided to take it even further.
Lunch be damned.
Kaiser tilts his head, eyes bearing on the smallest unnoticed features he spots on Isagi’s face. Out of pride, Isagi didn’t flinch nor move away.
“I understand it must’ve been difficult for you to express yourself to people…Yochan.”
The conflict on Isagi’s face goes from annoyance, to surprise, to confusion, to suspicion. The shorter striker grasps around for a word now, panicking upon hearing the nickname and tossing Kaiser off his face haphazardly.
“What the fuck did you just-?”
“Yochan,” he repeats again. He may or may not have overheard from Isagi’s weekly phone call that that’s what his parents call him at home. “If it were up to me, I’d get you kicked out of your own show for biting one of your friends, but then, I’m also kind of forgiving. Just apologize! That’s it.”
“You know what-!?”
Whatever embarrassed expression on Isagi’s face prior reduced to anger immediately. He slammed his hands on Kaiser’s chest, the rest of Isagi’s musketeer of friends now standing up-
“Woah, woah, woah, I don’t think you want to do that.” Kaiser quickly points one finger up to the blinking surveillance camera—before surprising everyone by grabbing the fork.
When he saw that the plush red fruit was good for forgiveness and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining power, Michael Kaiser took the apple and ate it.
The crunch echoed all over the dead silent cafeteria as loud as a gunshot would go, and he made them all watch as he gently put the bitten apple back on Isagi’s metal tray. The rest of München uneasily exchanged looks and mouthed careful spoonfuls. Isagi’s musketeer of friends also sat back down.
“Apology accepted!”
Kaiser clapped his hands together to close the order of business, chewing and swallowing.
“See? I’m not that bad. I told you I’m quite the forgiving person.”
Now, on Isagi’s tray, was an apple that just signed them on the deal of a lifetime.
In front of him, Isagi was frozen, glaring in disbelief at what he just did, but also in that moment, something—a spark, a depth—was at least unearthed. Irrespective of the fact they were being watched by the world, it was a memory Kaiser considered was reserved only for them.
He would later know this was called a challenge, a glint in their eyes that was only discernible to each other. Little did everyone know, it was never forgiveness. Him biting into the apple was a promise. An innuendo, if you will.
Kaiser soon realizes that what he’s looking for was a wake-up call. He wanted another hit (but not to the face, goddamn) that brings him back to his original point of misery. Anything sharp that pops his veins open and cracks his ribs apart. A broken bottle, some hands around his neck, the feeling of hunger that he will sleep off again.
On the other hand, all Isagi was looking for is a release. (He never told him, of course, Kaiser just knew.) Isagi Yoichi never cried or ever raised his voice to anyone in his everyday mundane life, and soccer is the one thing that cracks his dam of pent-up emotions open and releases all of it in one go—but even then, there was a residue of unreleased urges that the pitch would never humanely allow. Luckily for him, Michael Kaiser arrived in Blue Lock. It was almost a direct answer to his prayers asking the gods for a punching bag.
Alas, at 19 and 17, they found each other to be their magnet—a polar opposite cut from the same stone, bound to crash into each other, two sides of the same coin, the black and red jokers. Magnets.
The day eventually arrived for their first official match—Bastard München versus Barcha. By that point, they already came to cherish this; the fact that they found each other. Because if Kaiser needed someone to hurt other than himself, Isagi’s there. If Isagi needed to take it all out on something, Kaiser’s there. Somehow, their system worked.
In fact, it worked a little too well.
Even for sad, sad things.
“Goddamn, Yoichi, can you not give the enemy every single fucking foul in the book? What are you, twelve?!”
One shower was still turned on behind them, washing no one, right next to their wrestling bodies on the wet bathroom floor. As two impulsive teenagers, they both decided to fight the post-match frustrations out now instead of doing it in the morning.
Of course.
“Me-? What the hell have you been doing?” Isagi kept digging his grave in return, even with a lip already cut open and his bathrobe drenched. “Dawdling? Posing? Skipping around? Isn’t it your one damn job to kick the ball to the net?!”
“You want to try doing what I do?” Kaiser immediately shuts Isagi by grabbing him by the face. It’s not like they ever respected each other’s belts by never going lower, anyway. “This behavior, Yochan, is why Noa doesn’t make you a starter even with all the dickriding you do-”
“Get his name out of your fucking mouth!” Isagi suddenly grabbed Kaiser’s face by the chin, flipped them over, and slammed his shoulders down.
The world stops for a second when his head hits the tile.
“Stop it with this high and mighty bullshit, Kaiser, because I’m not buying it,” he chokes out in frustration. “You have no right to insult Noa because he is everything you will never fucking be.”
But under him, Kaiser was already choking on something. A memory. A ghostly flicker. Images of a father whose hands pressed him to the floor and ought to choke him until he dies. But right here, Isagi’s breath felt hot, tickling his lips, his weight suffocating, and his voice chilling. Kaiser could feel his airways tightening and the best he could do was push his palms up on Isagi’s chest.
It was a little late when he realized he’s already shaking.
Not the floor. God, not the floor.
“…Funny, Yochan, now get off!” he screams, the world’s fakest laugh escaping through. “One more second on top and I might actually think you like-”
He was panting, his voice was shaking, about to cry-
“What?” Isagi’s voice, still full of anger, snapped. “I might actually like what?”
Despite the venom in his voice, his confusion spiked when Kaiser did not respond. Rough calloused hands then reached down and cupped his face cautiously, as if Kaiser was a rabid cat crying for help, notorious for biting the hand that feeds him.
“You’re going to cry? What are you, twelve?” Isagi repeated back to him but this time in confusion and disbelief. Under him, Kaiser could no longer let out a protest in return.
He knew he was mumbling things but for some reason, he couldn’t hear himself. All he knew is that Isagi suddenly restrained the hands scratching his neck—when was he scratching his own neck? —by pinning him down by the wrist. He was surely not breathing properly by now. Someone was wheezing. Someone was sniffing wet tears.
“Fucking hell- I don’t know what the fuck’s going on but I want you to consider the possibility that God never actually chose you.”
There was a familiar voice hissed amidst the fog in his mind, and he deduced that was Isagi, continuing right where he left off…except something in his tone changed.
He sounded way calmer and colder, but very much near and very much here.
“You’re grounded, Kaiser. You’re on the bathroom floor with me in the world’s most sadistic facility, and this is not where we’re going to end this. Whoever told you that you can do anything you want in my show is a cocksucker and a fucking liar, ‘cause guess what? You’re going through me.”
The moment he was about to get lost in a deep dark memory again, Isagi quickly shakes him back. There was hair in his mouth now but he didn’t care. Someone was holding him. Someone’s holding his head. Someone was gently getting off his chest.
“You hear that, Kaiser? Me. You’re going through me. I’m the one who’s here in front of you and you’re going. Through. Me. Do you understand?”
The moment Kaiser sniffed was the moment he realized he was crying, bleeding in places for he saw red in his own fingers, but he couldn’t tell how anymore. Everything was blurry. Everything was frozen and speeding up at the same time.
Atop him, Isagi was a literal meteor about to crash on his head and kill him in an instant.
Was he comforting him? Was he fighting him? Kaiser couldn’t tell.
“Don’t you dare space out when you’re going, through, me. I’m the one you’re fighting so look at me.” He slowly lets go of his wrists now, and Kaiser realized he was actually following the patterns of his breathing. He felt like he was just pulled up to the surface after jumping off a cliff onto the sea, holding onto the nearest thing that floats and holding onto dear life.
“You want to hurt something, Kaiser? Does your hand want to do something bad?”
He was holding—clawing—into Isagi’s shoulders for dear life now.
“Yeah? Really?”
He whispered as Kaiser closed his eyes and fell onto him.
The next time he opens his eyes, he goes face to face with a mass of shiny dark blue hair. Since when was he sitting up and leant against a bench? Since when was he in the locker area, off the shower floor? Since when was there a warm dry towel over his shoulders wrapping around him like a blanket?
Silence followed as his tears finally stopped, and when he eventually pulled away from Isagi’s chest and opened his eyes, the striker who he swore to kill just seconds ago was still holding him up.
“Let me go,” Kaiser manages to choke out once his lungs feel whole again, and Isagi nods.
He tried not to dwell on the realization later that Isagi Yoichi understood him, even though he does not have any of his earbuds on the entire time.
That day ended strangely. Neither of them knew how to explain that to anyone. Not to Ness. Not to anyone who’d ask. Not even to themselves.
(Isagi never pinned Kaiser to the floor again either—not that he ever had an episode like that in front of him again, anyway.)
However, ever since is not that rigid of a time frame, it turns out. Someone’s birthday from Blue Lock arrived; that Aomori’s Messi kid everyone’s been talking about. Ego decided to give everyone a free day, which meant that everyone would have their phones back for a whole day plus the cameras were to be off. Everyone had a blast except them. Not him. Not Isagi Yoichi.
“Wha- Kaiser?”
A voice called out from the doorway, and he didn’t need to look up from his book to know who it was. He felt him lingering there for way longer, and he bet his life savings that the boy was just as appalled about seeing him as he was about the floor to ceiling windows in the room.
“Whaaaat the fuck?”
See.
He then heard him step in hesitantly. The room was an office with a long conference table in the middle, as well as some bookshelves, a projector, and file cabinets. On one end, where Kaiser was seated on an office chair, was an entire wall of slightly tinted windows facing the mountains of Saitama—and of course the sun. Oh, God, the sun.
This was one of Blue Lock’s numerous corporate spaces, and his short meeting with Ego and Anri had to be cut short when a fight broke out in the France stratum. He heard that PXG was doing well in the league so far so he wondered what the fight was about. Julian and his band of pretty boys all seemed to be well behaved.
(That was sarcasm.)
“What are you doing here?”
Finally, after a minute of looking around, Isagi approached and placed a palm on the windows like he couldn’t believe it either.
“Oh my God, this isn’t a screen-”
“Get out.” Kaiser turns to the next page of his book while watching Yoichi out of the corner of his eye. His brain effectively stopped reading the moment he was disturbed, but it’s not like he’ll ever say that. “Are you even supposed to be here?”
“Are you?”
“As a matter of fact, yes.”
Kaiser finally looks up only to fall right into the striker’s waiting gaze. The moment their eyes met, Yoichi stills, body frozen in place as his eyes roamed Kaiser’s face down to his body.
Frankly, they’ve never looked at each other that much since the bathroom incident. Their rocky relationship as teammates never changed and they still found each other deeply annoying, but it was not unnoticeable for him that they’ve been having less off-pitch fights nowadays.
So, when Yoichi stared at him now like he’d never seen him in ages, Kaiser couldn’t help a shiver down his spine.
“…What are you looking at?”
Yoichi was only frozen in place stupidly as his glimpse turned to downright gawking. Looking down at himself, Kaiser saw that all he had on was an old grandma-esque cardigan over some blue and black plaid pajamas, a half bun, some specs—but then, maybe that’s it. It must have been a drastic difference from the sharp polished “Michael Kaiser” that he was used to.
“Take a picture, it’d last longer-”
“You wear glasses?”
“What?” Kaiser gasped out a chuckle at the sudden stupid look on the other’s face. Isagi was absentmindedly grabbing a nearby office chair whilst he relished at the unexpected turn of events.
He was put off by his glasses, of all things?
“Yes, Yochan, I wear glasses. What are you going to do about it?” Kaiser smirked.
The younger striker scoffed, realizing he had been staring for far too long, and finally looking away.
“Nothing.”
Then, not so strangely, he did not leave. Isagi proceeds to sit there and face the view of the mountains with the tips of his ears glowing red—perhaps from the cold, or the light of the sun passing through thin skin. With that, no offensive banter escaped Isagi’s mouth as he did so. As they did so.
“I told you to get out, didn’t I?” he reminded him weakly, looking back down on his book, and it did not surprise him that the striker remained stubborn.
“You can’t kick me out, I don’t see your name anywhere on this chair.”
And point taken, but Kaiser wasn’t going to complain nor leave either way. There is no way in hell that he is leaving just because Isagi decided he’ll stay. After all, the warmth of the sun soothed his skin in a way that was so refreshing, especially after weeks of not seeing the outside world. Surely, Isagi felt the same.
With that, Kaiser decided to leave it be. This is not the day for a fight, or insults, or even provocation. He’s wearing glasses, for fuck’s sake. He’s not the usual Michael Kaiser who always thought too hard about everything.
And so, the two of them sat there in complete silence doing nothing for three whole minutes, a feat never before seen in the Blue Lock TV. Kaiser didn’t even realize minutes had gone by until the other striker shifted in his seat and he remembered that he was, in fact, still there.
Turning his book to the next page, he started to wonder if there was a catch-
“Did you hurt your head that bad?”
There it is.
“In the bathroom,” Yoichi continued. “When you were trying to kill me and then you cried.”
The book pages crunched underneath his hold.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Fucking hell.
Kaiser could only pretend to focus on the next page of his book as a frail attempt to keep the vulnerability at bay. This is definitely not a conversation he wanted to have on his free day while wearing glasses.
“I mean…” Yoichi then started swaying on his chair, like a kid who sat on an office chair for the first time. “If you had a head injury because of me, I’d…”
Kaiser glances up at him, knowing full well how that sentence would end.
…feel bad.
It’s his turn to look down, letting out a vulnerable sigh—a first since he came here. “Are you scared you’re going to get sued?”
“Are you going to sue me, Mihya?” Checkmate. It seemed Isagi Yoichi had since retaliated for the Yochan thing by discovering his nickname in return. (Ness may not have cracked, but Sachs and Gesner just had to have big fucking mouths.)
He rolled his eyes, shaking his head. “Maybe. I mean, I could, but will you be able to make the fine?”
“Wooow, are you saying I’m broke?” The other straightened on his chair, eyes shut as he relished the afternoon sun like a melting plant. Yoichi’s speaking to the ceiling now. “But seriously. Did you?”
“Why on Earth do you even want to know?”
“Wha- you were freaking out! You were having a full blown panic attack on me and I didn’t know what to do. I’m just asking what the fuck’s up with that because it’s actually very terrifying, thank you very much.”
“You’re asking so you can tell your musketeers and make fun of me?” Kaiser snorted out of his compulsive tendency for misplaced humor, only half joking, except Isagi diligently shook his head.
“Hey.”
“Jesus- What.”
“You know I don’t do shit like that.”
There was no sign of defensiveness in his tone, just sincerity. Now, it was his turn to look at him in genuine surprise.
“Oh, so you’re just curious?”
“Why else would I ask if I’m not curious? Dumbass.”
It’s useless to pretend he’s still reading by that point, and so, they both settled on staring at the mountains and the gentle waving of the trees outside.
What Isagi said was true. In the few months they had been having a fight club in the lockers, no one outside maybe Ness knew what was even happening. Isagi never snitched on him and neither did he.
(Even if the both of them had enough reasons to tell Ego and have the other kicked out of Blue Lock for good.)
In there by the locker room born this some sort of…mutual understanding.
“So…” the other striker started again, albeit a little awkwardly. Isagi scooted his chair closer to the window to tap a foot on the glass, but Kaiser knew that was only to lighten up what seemed to be a conversation that could quickly grow dark. “Wanna talk about it?”
At the incessance, Kaiser just glared lasers at the back of Yoichi’s head. “You don’t know much about me, do you?”
“Who knows. Like I said, I don’t care who the fuck you think you are.” Meanwhile, Isagi remained swaying on his chair, one foot up with the other anchored on the floor. Then, he slows down, staring at the side of his head. “But…”
He blinked.
“But what about you, you know?” Yoichi looks at his eyes for a quick second before shrugging, eyes back to the mountains outside. “I just want to know more about you.”
Suddenly, Kaiser’s chest ached, his breath skipping a second that left him inhaling sharply for air. The sentence lingered on him, like a touch of a ghost on abandoned sheets.
“Just why does it even matter to you?” Kaiser surrenders now, completely lost in confusion. “Knowing literally won’t affect you either way.”
“Wouldn’t it now?” Isagi wondered, out loud. “It’s not for you to decide.”
Suddenly, it felt like they were no longer in Blue Lock. They were in their tiny little bubble. Just them, in the conference room, sunbathing in the cool 2pm sun.
“I-”
Suddenly, a voice cuts him off. Really? You’re spilling? Are you cosplaying a broken dam? And if he stabs you in the back, what then?
He quickly shuts his eyes closed. Instead, what came out was:
“I know what you’re doing, Aprilscherz. You want to know your rivals so you know how to surpass them. It’s just that—I don’t know if you ever heard of this—but that doesn’t mean you can just go up to them and ask. I fear that’s common sense.” He had to segue, catching himself about to say some things to Isagi that might be a little too real.
Real like his father, who made sure to remind him what a privilege it was to breathe.
Real like his mother, who only called him hers the moment he secured his first paycheck on his own.
Real things.
“Dude, I only asked because I don’t want to feel like I’m intruding on people's personal lives like a- like a ghost all the time. Do you think I’m not already doing that before I asked?” Yoichi stops swaying, scoffing and huffing down his seat. “I just want to hear things straight from you if you ever wanted to…you know, open up.”
“Oh, really? What things?” he challenged, crossing his arms. “My past? My playstyle? My posse of dead idols? Last time I checked, you still haven’t done anything of note to match my feats. I still scored 5 goals more than you so far. What else do you need to know aside from that?”
And why would he tell him?
“Man. Does your definition of knowing only include strengths and weaknesses? Do you SWOT analyze every single opponent you have?” Isagi snorts out of nowhere, glancing at him in genuine amusement. “Wait, did you SWOT analyze me? That’d be fun.”
Kaiser knew that Isagi is making fun of him now, but he couldn’t feel that he’s actually hitting the nerve he usually does when they fight. Now it all seemed like friendly banters, because for one, he is not offended. It’s…not exactly that he hated this.
“Then what do you do with players you hate? Don’t you want to know everything about them so you can defeat them eventually?”
“Actually, Mihya, I don’t have any players I hate.”
He looked at him fully expecting a joke, but the man once again looked honest.
Oh- he was serious?
“Yup, believe it.”
Then what about me?
“Don’t look at me like that.” There, Yoichi shies past a handsome smile, something in Kaiser’s chest skipping a beat. “I know what you’re thinking: Yes, Mihya, I don’t hate you. Actually, don’t imagine that I am at all interested in you even.”
Now that just snapped him out of his thoughts. Wait, what?
“But, on that note, I don't think that I am at all not interested in you either,” Yoichi backtracks on his own logic, lost in his own narrative now that he didn’t notice Kaiser incredulously staring at his face. “I just believe people have to really…love or fixate on something before they can hate it, you know? So, like, I don’t think I hate hate you. I just feel the normal amount of hate. Like a rival. A normal amount for rivals.”
Before Kaiser could reply, his lips already parting for one hell of a reply, the shorter striker continued, cheeks overwhelmingly red he looked like he’s about to burst.
“Which supports my point actually that it’s not like I want you to die—so can you please just tell me if you hit your head too hard on the floor before you randomly die of a concussion on me or something?”
Kaiser couldn’t believe this entire conversation now. He surely is about to have lots of fun debriefing all this to Ness later…but on the other hand, maybe he should keep this to himself. Ness just recently learned where the cafeteria keeps the butter knife.
Beside him, Yoichi sucks in a deep ashamed inhale as he raises both knees to his chest.
With that, Kaiser quietly looks back down on his closed book, now wondering if he could just reason he wanted to keep reading if it meant Isagi would leave.
“If you’re saying all that just so I’d feel guilty of hating you, you’re poking a dead animal. I still hate you to death,” he replied, caressing the spine of his book. “There’s nothing to know about me, Yochan. Nothing that could possibly help you defeat me more than what I show you on the field. What I show on the field is everything that I am.” A lie. “If you want to devour me like I know you fucking do, then just watch me play. That’s all.”
With that, he expected the conversation to be over but the shorter striker hummed, a bad smirk on his lips. That can’t be good.
“Oh my God, what?” He rolled his eyes. “What did I say?”
Alas, there the Aprilscherz was, grinning, laying there with a brow raised attractively and with one leg raised. Kaiser almost wished he didn’t look. Almost.
“Aw, you do? You hate me to death?”
Kaiser genuinely couldn’t figure out what he’s asking, or why he’s there smiling like he just slipped up. Did they just get lost in translation or something? Is there a language-based pun he’s not getting?
“I just said I did, didn’t I?” He settles on kicking Isagi’s chair away, watching him roll away as he laughs before spinning to face Kaiser again.
Fine. He’ll answer his question. Maybe that’d get him to shut up and leave.
“Look, my head is fine,” he finally admits, telling the carpeted floor as Isagi rolled away. “It’s not like I got brain damage over something that moronic. Now, can you leave or are you still desperate for my attention?”
“Have you always been this much of a prick?”
Sadly for him, it looks like Yoichi is not leaving that chair anytime soon. He took his rolling chair and scooted back into place.
“Is that your secret talent, Mr. Emperor? To piss people off?”
“It’s a pleasure to piss you off, for sure.” Kaiser rolled his eyes, shaking his head. “What about you? Any talent you can share with the class, aside from clownery?”
He meant the question as an insult and a conversation-ender, but Isagi somehow must have interpreted it as just another question to answer. Of course he would.
“My secret talent?” Yoichi started spinning on his chair as he thought. Then he slows down, laughing to himself as he gets dizzy. The moron. “Haha, I don’t know! My skillset ends at soccer and riding a bike. I mean, I can cook, but…”
Kaiser kept staring at the mountains, jaw wired shut. Bikes, huh—a ghastly invention. He used to get envious of the playground kids who had a bike. He couldn’t even ride a bike. He never learned how to. He never had one to try. (Ness can though, and that’s all the bike skills he needed to survive football academy.)
“Oh wait, actually I had one-” Isagi said upon stopping, now curled into a ball as he laid his dizzy head on his knees and laughed at his own tomfoolery. “Aaaah, give me a minute! Aaaa....”
“Stop playing with the damn chair, fool,” Kaiser said, extending a foot to steady the other striker’s spinning. As it stills and Isagi gets his bearings back, the latter peeks one eye through his chuckles. “What is this glorious talent you speak of?”
Isagi was still laughing to himself, a little dizzy. “I can tell what people’s favorite colors are without asking.”
“Oh yeah?” he deadpans. “What’s my favorite color?”
Isagi closes his eyes, still regaining his bearings.
“Blue.”
Okay, not a good example. “What’s Noa’s favorite color?”
That’s what made the striker quirk his still-dizzy head up fully in interest, eyes sparkling for a quick moment before narrowing his eyes.
“Trick question.”
Kaiser snorts. “Trick question?”
“Because he doesn’t have one,” Isagi said quite confidently, but not without a slight glare towards him in suspicion. It wasn’t in vain, for a devilish smile found Kaiser’s lips.
“Oh, you naive fucker. He does.”
“You’re just fucking with me.”
“You tend to forget I played with that man most of my career.” Kaiser grinned sadistically now, his turn to tilt his head in challenge. “I knew him. At least more than you do. People can like things without realizing, you know? Favorite things don’t have to be deliberately picked. Sometimes it just happens on the subconscious plane.”
That’s when Yoichi stared at Kaiser skeptically as if he’s gauging the question. Just to drive the knife even deeper, he shrugs and licks his lips.
“You know what? Why don’t you make a guess?” he offered smugly, like a candlelight to a moth. “In fact, I’ll wager you an entire week of peace if you’re right. Isn’t that tempting? You won't have to deal with me for seven solid days.”
Yoichi blinked, now alert with a light pink dust feathered across his cheeks. Of course he’d bite.
“Well, how many guesses do I have?”
Kaiser only pretended to think for a second, a finger to his chin: “One.”
“Wha- Only one?! Fine! Fine.” Isagi proceeds to blink up at the ceiling deep in thought. After a few seconds, he inhales sharply and looks straight to Kaiser's eyes. “Okay. Is it-”
“It’s yellow.”
“Motherf- I didn’t get to guess yet!”
Kaiser grinned sadistically as Isagi lets out the world’s most offended gasp.
“You’re never going to be right anyway,” he snickers out of genuine amusement now, relishing that flushed, betrayed look. For some reason, he liked seeing Yoichi like this and only like this, with his guard down and huffing up like a moody girlfriend. Something in the air felt nostalgic, and Kaiser could only sigh after laughing, eyes back to the mountains outside. “Your talent is fucking stupid too.”
“Actually, fuck you, I do have a real secret talent,” Yoichi suddenly reveals, severely offended. Boastfully, he turned up his nose as he looked to the window as well, determination and utmost seriousness now filling the void behind his eyes.
“Impress me.”
“I can learn anything super fast.”
“So can anyone if they’re pressured enough-”
“Not like that,” the striker insisted, and Kaiser found himself genuinely intrigued then. “When I was a kid, I learned how to read ages before my classmates did. I was also the first to get my training wheels out of my bike. I can basically learn anything 50%, maybe 75%, faster. The only catch is that I need to really want to learn.”
Kaiser paused for a moment, waiting for a punchline that never came, before scoffing.
“So you’re a gifted kid, congrats—not. a. talent.”
Yoichi suddenly spins his chair to face Kaiser, and he raises a socked foot to also turn Kaiser’s chair to face him. “Ah. I see. So that’s it. The Emperor wants a demonstration.”
Why is his foot on his- “Get your nasty foot off my chair!”
That’s when Yoichi launches himself up and pins Kaiser down on his chair, one hand on each of the arm rests as he meets him on his eye level.
Deep ocean eyes devoured his soul through his eye sockets once again, and even if it wasn’t the physical restriction, Kaiser would feel cornered just by his gaze alone.
“You’re an only child, you cut your own hair, you shower facing away from the shower head like a psychopath, and your favorite planet is Neptune because it’s blue.”
What the fuck.
What. The. Fuck.
“Now, don’t look so surprised. Am I wrong?” Yoichi smiles devilishly, as if it was a prank gone right, and it’s Kaiser’s turn to kick his chair away from him. The egoist only rolled away unfazed, laughing as he scooted himself back to position.
“Uh- Yes?” Kaiser accuses, heavily disturbed. “I don’t have a favorite fucking planet.”
He would know, right? He’d know himself.
But then Yoichi meets his eyes in an accusatory way, lips downturned into a smile.
“But I thought people can like things without realizing?”
Son of a bitch.
“Anyway!” Yoichi laughs as Kaiser widens his eyes as if he would punch his face in at that very second. “Anyone who watches you closely would know. Like I said, I’m already trying to learn everything about the people around me…even if sometimes I didn’t choose to know the things I end up knowing. I just notice things by default, but then it helps me more than it bothers me so it’s okay. Like, here in Blue Lock, it's surprisingly easy to build or destroy a person. Sometimes, you just have to know them and then you’d eventually figure out what makes them tick.”
Ah, so that makes two of them.
Okay, Yochan, Kaiser internally beckons as he crossed his arms again, do you think you can destroy me now with everything you learned? By knowing I don’t face the showerhead or that I apparently like Neptune because it’s blue?
“But right now, I just want to know you, Kaiser.” Yoichi unravels, relaxing in his presence with their playfulness back to a still. “That’s real.”
Everything stills.
He couldn’t figure out what on Earth to reply to that. Even his therapist’s voice in his head remained quiet now that he needed her. All he knew is that his chest felt hotter and his nails are digging on the armrest again. He suddenly wanted to eat himself if it meant he could hide inside himself, never to be seen by any living creature ever again.
“I mean…” To the air, Yoichi continued, “A person seriously can’t be this fucked up without something questionable happening in their life...so.”
Slowly, his daze with the mountains outside breaks and he returns to reality. Their chairs bump to each other slightly as their chairs rolled close like there were magnets between them.
In that moment, the Isagi Yoichi he knew suddenly grew solicitous in his eyes. Heartening. Tender. Caring. Isagi Yoichi suddenly looked like he would understand.
So Kaiser looked away while he still could.
“You think you’re better than me now because you have a secret talent?” Of course, the easiest thing to do is to go back to mocking, him reverting his gaze back to the windows.
“Hah.”
“Did you know I can recall numbers really well?” he shared instead, now that they’re on the topic anyway. “That I can memorize shit like phone numbers just by looking at it once? Match that. And that's real.”
With that, the other striker settled on smiling at Kaiser knowingly. After a quick second, he looked away, back to the mountains which never did them any wrong.
“Cap. I know mine’s a little hard to believe but no fucking way,” Yoichi starts, shaking his head and chucking. When he remained silent, the other striker froze and backtracked. “-Wait, no way.”
“Yes way.” Kaiser shrugged, choosing to shoot him with his own bullet: “Believe it.”
“You have photographic memory?”
“Of numbers,” he clarifies before the guy says something he didn't have a comeback to. “For some reason, it’s only numbers.”
Yoichi laughs. “Hah. Yeah, no, prove it. What’s Noa’s phone number?”
That day, he proceeded to recite Noa’s phone number from memory, but it was too late when he realized it was just the psychopath taking advantage of him. Sure, his talent wasn’t exactly impressive, and yes anyone could easily fake it, but at least it was real.
“And Kaiser…”
Before Ego and Anri returned, not too long after their talent sharing, Yoichi finally stood up and left. However, at the literal doorway, he admitted that he just made up all his “Kaiser fun facts”. Shoes were thrown, shouts were heard, but the rendezvous ended with laughing and raised heartbeats.
Isagi still insisted that his secret talent was real, just that the shower thing and the Neptune thing specifically were just purehearted guesses on his end. (Implying that it was only a coincidence he was right with the rest.) Kaiser never thought much about that conversation after that after the initial high…except later that week, when something crucial finally kicked in.
“Oh, really?” Ness asked while folding their clothes by his bed. He had just seen one of Kaiser’s post-match interviews that Ego had them do. “Since when did you like Neptune? It’s like the most boring planet out there, like Yochan.”
“Don’t even start, Ness,” he scolded, shifting to face the wall on his side of the room. “Neptune is just the first that came to mind.”
“But you never told me you have a favorite.”
“Do you think I knew?” he scoffed. “People can like things without realizing, you know?”
Then he paused.
Oh.