Chapter Text
“How was moving from Ehime to Tokyo back then?”
Fudou eyes foccus on the host, leaning back against the couch and crossing his legs. He offers the woman a sly smile because he knows that all this is for the show and the vultures that still feed on drama from a decade ago.
“Complicated.”
“Did you feel unwelcome? Was it hard?”
His eyes narrow. He wouldn’t call it that. “What is the point of that question?”
“Knowing you from the start,” she says, and Fudou takes a deep breath. He reclined against the seat. In front of him the mic buzzed.
Who listened to the radio these days anyway? He could spill all his secrets, and no one would care. There was no way he was listening to him.
He’ll turn the radio off the moment he hears his voice. Fudou was certain of it.
So, he starts to speak.
“Well, I wouldn’t call it hard, more like…” Finding the words to talk about them had always been difficult. “Unexpected.”
Inazuma City, September 2010
When they reunited after the Football Frontier International, even if being members of Inazuma Japan should have smoothed out rough edges between them, they crashed, and it brings a storm down on the team.
Two sharp players with even sharper words ready for each other. They bite and push and throw hands. The team looks at them and wonders when everything changed so much.
From a quiet and collected team to whatever they were now.
Wild and strong and untamed.
Sakuma is their new captain because it couldn’t be any other way; everyone loves them, and everyone trusts Sakuma’s judgment. He’s always been a strong player. Back when Kidou was part of their team, Sakuma had been the one to share the captain's burden with him, the other playmaker, when Kidou couldn’t see through something. Both pawn and knight, and every role they threw at him, Sakuma excelled at it. They are a player like no other, but Fudou’s presence throws him out of balance.
Fudou, who is taking Kidou’s locker and Kidou’s spot at their table and Kidou’s role as playmaker. They butt heads, always at each other's level. Where Fudou sees the secret to a new strategy, Sakuma finds a quirk to fix. When Sakuma has a bad day, Fudou laughs and pushes and bites, telling him to do better if he wants to keep the captain band. Fudou pulls on their hair like a kindergarten kid, and Sakuma’s answer is a kick in the crotch. A bit unbalanced, Fudou says, but he’s having too much fun with it.
He leaves the locker room after their fight, ignoring Sakuma's screams for him to come back, and starts walking toward the building.
Teikoku has a small residence for the students that come from other parts of Japan or need to stay at school grounds for some reason. Fudou is glad about it, because there’s no way his family could afford sending him to Tokyo another way. What he’s not glad about is how some of his teammates are also staying there.
He sees them at class and in training, and then, instead of being left alone, he finds them in the dorms. Henmi, Sakiyama, and Narukami are sitting in the common room when Fudou walks in muttering under his breath.
“Pray for your captain because he’s going to be dead in a ditch by tomorrow night.”
“Here we go again,” Henmi groans. This can’t be happening. “This is bullshit.”
“You’re on his side because they don’t give you half of the shit he gives me,” Fudou points at the three of them. “He’s an asshole and rude and can shove all that pride wherever it fits.”
“You’re so obsessed with Sakuma, man,” Narukami says, adding an absurd amount of o’s to that so. “He’s the only thing you talk about.”
“Maybe because he thinks so highly of himself that I can’t stop thinking about punching the smile out of their face.”
Sakiyama pats his shoulder, eyebrows arched and an amused expression on his face.
“There are so many annoying things about that idiot I don’t even know where to begin.”
“Oh yes?” Henmi, the little shit, dabs at him. “Like what?”
Fudou tries to make a mental list.
Sakuma is as stubborn as a mule and would kick you as hard as one if you mess with him. They’re loud and complain about everything, and they have so much pride that it should make him float away. But instead of that, he stays with his feet on the ground and holds so much presence that it annoys Fudou’s eyes, the way he fills the room with just walking in.
The annoying smirk when he knows that he’s right or when they’re better than Fudou at something. The way everyone on the school grounds loves him and praises him and the way he is a good captain, even if Fudou is waiting for him to fail.
It infuriates him how Sakuma plagues his thoughts.
“I just hate them,” and he ignores the three guys sitting on the couch and starts climbing the stairs. “I just—”
“-hate him,” Sakuma complains, lying on the floor of Genda’s bedroom. “I’m going to throw him out of the bus next time we travel for a game.”
“He’s not that bad; you two are making it bad.”
“I can’t stand him, Genda!”
He loathes Fudou Akio with the burning passion he only has for a few things.
“You were fine during the world tournament,” Genda keeps playing with his cat; he’s not ignoring Sakuma, but he doesn’t plan to indulge in the drama either. “I’ve never seen you like this with anyone.”
They don’t tend to hate people. Sakuma may not be the easiest-going person around; that’s true. Genda is the social butterfly of Teikoku, and his brother is the most outgoing of the family; Sakuma just flows with the people and doesn’t bother to hide it when someone disgusts him. Why should they? If he has a problem with someone, he lets them know.
But Fudou? He gets under his skin and on their nerves in a way no one else could. He’s new levels of annoying.
“He’s a fucking asshole,” Sakuma says behind their hands to muffle a scream. “A fucking asshole too smart to kick him out of the team. He’s the most infuriating, annoying, frustrating person in the whole world.”
“That’s a lot of adjectives.”
“If you have nothing constructive to say, shut up, Genda.”
“I’m just saying that it doesn’t sound like hate to me.”
Traitor.
His best friend was a fucking traitor.
Luckily for Genda, there’s a knock on the door, and Genda’s mom's head appears behind it.
“Jirou dear, are you staying for dinner?”
And like that, the elephant in the room gets ignored again.
“Teikoku was good for me. I still consider those idiots my friends to this day, even if I hope they never know that. They pushed me around, and I pushed back twice as hard. But then I meet a wall I couldn’t push.”
The first time they kiss is during a fight because it couldn’t be any other way.
They’re in the meeting room, staying late to finish making their new strategy against Hakuren. The rest of the team left earlier, tired of sharp knives flying around and their two playmakers writing and erasing each other's ideas from the whiteboard. Genda tried to stay to avoid a possible murder, but in the end he left too.
“Our defense would crumble if we do that,” Fudou says. “They’re getting better at not relying on Fubuki. We can’t risk it.”
“We can stop Fubuki and any other, you know it. He’s a good striker, but not unstoppable. They shared a team; they know how he plays. Even if the rest of Hakuren gets better, they’re not at Teikoku’s level. “Push the attack forward, and they’ll be the one crumbling.”
“And they’ll use the holes in our defense to attack back; they’re ready to being overlooked, and they’ll use it.”
The fight already died; even Fudou’s banter has subdued. They’re lying on the couch, looking at the ceiling. They’ve been in Teikoku for hours, from morning practice to class to training again. It’s already dark outside. Fudou is hungry. Sakuma wants to sleep for a year. There’s not much fire left in them to do more than shoot ideas at each other.
“We won’t lose against a no-name team.”
“Well, you thought that about Raimon last season, and see where it led you.”
“They kicked your ass too.”
“Yes, but that wasn’t’ the Raimon; it was a team full of crazy people. They swept the floor with you with a half-functional team.”
“Shut up, Fudou.”
“Half of them didn’t even have hissatsu’s captain,” he mocks. “And they won, and then you lost again, against a team no one had heard about.”
“Fudou I swear I’m going to kill you.”
“So, if I were you, I’d stop overlooking no-name teams when no-name teams have already beaten your stupid ass twice.”
Before Fudou knows it, there’s a hand gripping tightly on his face. Sakuma pulls him into a sitting position, almost growling, “Listen, you piece of shit,” oh, they’re angry. Angry and tired and pretty. This close, Sakuma’s breath hits his face, and he can see the soft golden that hides between the orange of his eye. “I have no problem snapping your neck and dealing with the consequences.”
“You’re all bark and no bite.” Sakuma’s hand is trembling. His eye narrows into a thin slit of pure fury. Or maybe it's just all the caffeine in his system. “You’re a fancy brat; you’ve never been in a fight. You don’t know how to play this game, captain.”
Fudou has known them for less than a year, but he knows that that’s a lie. He knows that Sakuma has the will to fight, a short fuse, and a hell of a right hook. He saw it only once, sharing a dressing room with a team whose name Fudou didn’t bother to remember. Their captain had snatched Narukami’s hearing aids from the kid, and before anyone else could react, the guy had been on the floor, Sakuma standing in front of him with a smirk and knuckles faintly red.
It had shut the guy’s mouth, sent their team away, and put a strange feeling inside Fudou’s belly. But he also knows that if Sakuma wanted to beat the shit out of him, they’d have to do it way sooner. Maybe when they first meet for the FFI trials.
“Where is all that I was wrong talk now?”
“That was about you being a fucking snake and a traitor,” they snarl. “You’re still annoying as fuck.”
They’re close. Sakuma is hovering over him, long nails digging into his skin and breathing hard. His hair is still wet from the shower, plastered in a messy way around their face.
Sakuma is strong, smart, funny, and sarcastic and so pretty that it should be illegal. He hates them so much for all those reasons and a thousand more. But Fudou doesn’t plan to say any of that out loud. Instead he rests his hand at the back of Sakuma’s neck and pulls them closer.
“Oh, how annoying exactly?”
“Insufferable,” closer, “I don’t know why I deal with you.”
Fudou doesn’t expect the kiss to be soft, with how they’ve been fighting before it, but Sakuma’s hand just loses its grip so it can move and tangle in his hair instead as they pull him closer, humming against his lips. He’s a bit dumbfounded when they part, eyes wide open. Fudou looks at Sakuma, whose frown has changed to an annoying smirk.
“Oh look, he can close his mouth when he wants,” they mock, and Fudou doesn’t have it in him to get mad. He blinks one, two times before figuring out how to speak.
“Well, it won’t work for long.”
“There’s an easy way to fix that.”
And they kiss Fudou again.
Sakuma, who could have anyone he wanted. They don’t talk about what happens outside Teikoku, but Fudou knows that a guy like Sakuma has gone on a few dates. Or at least they’ve been asked out. If Sakuma had or had not accepted, that’s out of his range of knowledge.
They’re attending the best high school in Tokyo. Sakuma got a sharp tongue and even sharper looks; it’s insane how well he’s grown up. They’re pretty, and they know it; there’s a confidence in his step that wasn’t there before.
He has the youngest kids in Teikoku following him like ducklings, offering them to carry his books and bring him his bag and buying him coffee. If Sakuma was a bit crueler, he could have all of them in the palm of his hand with a hair flip and a smile. Instead, he’s gentle and kind and joins the mentoring program to help the kids in other courses study.
Fudou hates him; how is he not supposed to hate someone like that?
“You’re the most annoying person on the planet,” they repeat. “But if this shuts you up, I think I can get used to it.”
“You can’t stand me, I know,” he kisses them again. And again. Because for some stupid reason he can’t find inside himself the will to stop. “I’m annoying and a bastard and intolerable, and what else?”
“You are intolerable,” Sakuma says, their fingers still tangled in Fudou’s hair. It’s faint, but blush spreads across his face. “But for some reason you let me be the one to tolerate you,” and then they kissed him and tasted the mint on his lips.
It keeps happening after that.
The fight that leads to kisses. The angry words thrown at each other evolve into a strange friendship. Everything feels so natural, maybe because it’s the way they’ve always been. The game of pulling and pushing each other in a cat-and-mouse play that has lasted since they met. Being pulled towards Fudou Akio's own gravity field had only turned his life into a mess back then, and now, for some reason, he was the one chasing the mess, craving for their life to turn upside down.
After Shin Teikoku, he promised himself that he would dust his shoulders from the dirt and keep walking away from that magnetism that could only call for disaster. But then he found himself falling time and time again.
And again.
And, at some point, he gave up on getting up.
“We hated each other’s guts, but it seemed impossible for us to stay away. Everything I did to push them back, Sakuma did back to pull me closer away so we could keep fighting.”
With winter break around the corner, their weird relationship takes a wild turn.
There’s a knock on Fudou’s door, and, as soon as he opens it, Sakuma throws him a duffle bag; it hits Fudou on the chest before falling on the floor.
“What is this for?”
“Pack your shit,” Sakuma says. And then, without waiting for Fudou’s opinion, he starts picking up clothes from the ground. “Hurry up, or we’ll miss the bus.”
“Uh?”
“You’re coming with me.” Fudou’s clothes start filling the bag, followed by different books that he has lying around. The ones that he rereads more often are the ones that Sakuma picks, somehow knowing Fudou’s mind better than himself. Even in his anger, Sakuma is careful, as they place each thing in the bottom of the bag like they’re made of glass, instead of being just paper and hardcovers.
“I’m not following.”
“You’re not spending winter break alone in Ehime, Fudou,” they say, like it’s the most normal thing in the world. “Man, when was the last time you washed this thing?”
They’re holding Fudou’s binder between two fingers, a look of utter disgust on his face.
“That’s none of your business!” Heat crawls across Fudou’s face as he grabs the binder and the bag, hiding it behind his back. “I’m not spending the break with you; are you crazy?”
“I don’t give a fuck about what you want, Genda, and I bet on who had you for Christmas, and I lost, so you’re coming with me.”
It sounds like they’re talking about the class pet, not about Fudou, who just stands there, not knowing what to say or what to do now. He’s usually good at improvising and adapting, but this is a bit too much.
“And why should I go?”
“Because I already told my parents you are coming, you either come with me or have them show up at Ehime to pick you up.”
And, if Fudou has learned something after these years, it is when to give up because Sakuma can be twice as stubborn as himself, so Sakuma orders him around and Fudou follows.
From the dorms to the bus stop and to a neighborhood that doesn’t fit what he knows about the Sakuma’s status. They don’t talk during the bus ride or the walk from the bus stop to the front yard of Sakuma’s house. Fudou remains silent, not knowing what to expect next.
The house isn’t what he expected from a rich family who could afford sending their son to Teikoku. They arrive at a normal neighborhood instead of heading to one of the higher-rent ones, and the house in front of him looks pretty normal. Two stories, a small front yard with a few flowerpots, and that’s it. This place is nowhere near Kidou’s mansion.
“You live here?”
“What were you expecting? A palace?”
Fudou knows that Sakuma's parents have big jobs, so yes. A bigger house with a pool and a big garden and money all written over the place. This place doesn’t look bigger than his crappy home back at Ehime.
Sakuma opens the door, sitting in the genkan to take off their shoes, “We’re home!” they scream, “Someone here?”
“Jirou!”
Fudou just stands there, freezing in his spot, bag in hand, as a woman walks out of one of the rooms. It’s so easy to tell that she must be Sakuma’s mother; they look so much alike that for a moment it almost feels uncanny. Same tall and lean constitution, same pale hair and sharp eyes; the woman’s skin is darker and her eyes are black, but standing next to each other, it seems like Sakuma’s father didn’t even try to put his part into it.
“Beta! You bought him!” She sounds so happy, approaching them with quick steps. She gives her son a short hug before turning around to face him. “You must be Fudou,” the woman says, offering him a hand to shake. “Jirou told us about you; welcome home. I’m Ananya; it’s a pleasure to finally meet you.”
“Thank you for having me,” he takes her hand and vows because, even if he doesn’t want to be here, something about the woman stops him from being rude. “The pleasure is all mine.”
“Dad’s home?”
“I sent him to the grocery store.” Ananya then grabs the bag from Fudou’s hands and gives it to her son, “Go upstairs; I’ll call you when the food is ready. Show him around.”
Sakuma rolls his eyes, but he grabs Fudou’s arm and starts dragging him upstairs.
The house is warm and cozy, walls covered in paintings and family pictures. Christmas decorations hang from the wall, and the smell of homemade food fills the air.
“Here,” Sakuma opens a door covered in stickers and band posters, and suddenly Fudou is hit in the face with the fact that, when Sakuma is not being a fancy idiot at Teikoku, they’re quite similar. “Throw your shit wherever you want.”
Fudou does as told; he lets the bag fall, but then he leans against the door, arms crossed over his chest.
“How did you know?”
“Uh?”
“That I would be alone in Ehime,” Fudou tries to pretend like he doesn’t care, that talking about home doesn’t make his stomach flinch. “I didn’t tell anyone.”
Fudou feels like he won’t like the answer, and the way Sakuma stops searching for something in the closet and turns around to face him tells him that he’s right. It wasn’t gut feeling that made Sakuma drag him here.
He knew something.
“Don’t get mad, okay?” Fudou wants to reply, but Sakuma shuts him up with a gesture. “Henmi told me.”
“I didn’t tell Henmi shit.”
“But he heard you talking on the phone,” Sakuma looks almost shy as he admits it. “And he came to me because he knew that I was the only one who could get through that thick skull of yours.”
“So you’re all a bunch of gossips?” He wants to be mad at them. Mad for getting involved in something they should stay away from. “That’s why I’m here." Because you are all a bunch of gossips that took pity on me?”
He doesn’t know how much Henmi knows, how much Sakuma knows. What part of the whole screaming match that was the call he heard? It was enough for him to know that Fudou’s mom would be at the hospital again, and Fudou doesn’t know how to feel about it.
It’s his life, his private and shitty life. They don’t have the right to interfere with it, and, at the same time, Fudou doesn’t want to think about what he would be doing if he were in Ehime right now.
“No!”
“Why then?” he screams. Why is he here? He should be alone and freezing in Ehime, not here; he doesn’t belong here. “Why drag me with you then?”
“Because we are your friends! We care about you,” Sakuma grabs him from the front of his uniform jacket. “You’re a fucking moron, Fudou; we care about you being okay; we want you to be okay.”
They slap Fudou’s forehead, angry and red dusted over his face.
“We care about you; I care about you,” for some damn reason he does. “Isn’t that enough?”
“Why should it be?” he whispers in the small space between them. “Why should I believe you care?”
It ends up like all the other times: when Fudou gets tired of the fight, he goes for the kiss. He holds Sakuma’s face with his hands and kisses them, swallowing whatever he was about to say. The movement is so sudden that Sakuma loses his balance and they fall to the floor. He laughs, lips still pressed against Fudou's, and Fudou’s hands move from their face to his hair, and Sakuma feels in a cloud.
“You can’t avoid all our talks like this,” he tries to say, but Fudou kisses them again, and he forgets about it.
And then the door flies open. “Jirou! Amma wants to—,” and Sakuma jumps away from Fudou, feeling the heat rise to his face. “Whoa.”
“Amine!” a shoe, or what Fudou thinks is a shoe, flies across the room, and the guy standing there just grabs it. Before Fudou can know what’s going on, Sakuma is on his feet, pulling the man inside the room and closing the door behind them. “One of these days I’m going to become an only child, I swear.”
“I was just here to ask what you wanted for dinner,” the man says. He looks behind Sakuma and waves at Fudou. “But I see you were already eating something else.”
“Amine, I swear—”
“Come on, aren’t you going to tell me who the guy is?” He pushes Sakuma away and walks to Fudou, who is still sitting on the floor looking like an idiot. “Hi there, I’m Amine; you were sucking face with my brother a second ago.”
What Fudou says next is not one of his smartest moments; he takes the man’s hand and accepts his help to get up. “I didn’t know you had a brother.”See AlsoPlease welcome to the world … Horror of Life – The Suicide Letters of Charles Baudelaire, edited, translated, and with an Introduction by Eugene Thacker (Infinity Land Press)Sivananda Practice of Ayurveda - PDFCOFFEE.COM
“So you don’t brag about me?”
“Why would I brag about a fucking moron!” Sakuma kicks his supposed brother in the leg and pushes him away from Fudou. “What are you doing here? I thought you were in Sendai.”
“Can’t I visit my family from time to time?” He drapes an arm around Sakuma’s shoulders, pulling him into a hug. Now that he sees them together, Fudou starts to see the similarities. Sakuma looks more like their mom than his brother does, so looking at him it’s not as uncanny, but they do look like family. Amine is taller and broader, but maybe that’s just because he’s older. His hair is a darker shade of blue, instead of Sakuma’s pale one, and he got their mother’s black eyes. “I’m staying for a few days. Any problem with that?”
“Yes,” Sakuma pushes him away with a scoff, but Fudou can see that he’s smiling, so maybe they’re not that annoyed. “This idiot was supposed to use your room.”
“Well then you’re welcome; you can sleep with your boyfriend.”
That makes the smile go away.
Fudou feels his cheeks getting warm as Sakuma tries to kick his brother.
“He’s not my boyfriend,” they say at the same time.
“So you’re not dating?”
Sakuma looks at him over his shoulder.
That’s a pretty good question, because they haven’t even talked about it. Why should they? They are friends, and that’s just when they get along. They kiss sometimes because it would be stupid not to kiss Sakuma.
So what are they?
“No,” they say at the same time.
“It’s nothing serious,” Sakuma adds. “So don’t tell Amma; she would go crazy.”
“She’ll be cool with it,” Amine says. He looks like a cool guy; he ruffles Sakuma’s hair, even if they try to slap his hands away. “Nothing you can do is going to be worse than anything I did before Jirou, but I’ll keep your little secret. Take it as my Christmas gift, okay?”
“You used to hide your cigarettes between my toys, Amine; you owe me one, not the other way around.”
“That was forever ago,” he rolls his eyes and finally steps away from his brother. “See you, Fudou! Have fun!”
Sakuma has to shove him through the door for him to leave. He walks to his wardrobe and starts to take off their Teikoku uniform, folding it neatly back in place.
“So… your brother,” Fudou says, still a bit surprised. “Is he in college or something?”
“He’s ten years older than me,” Sakuma explains. Fudou turns around when Sakuma sends his dress shirt flying into the hamper. They share a changing room, but this feels different. He gives Sakuma his back, and he hears him struggling with their binder. There’s a chain of curses and then the sound of heavy fabric falling to the floor. “So we don’t have a lot in common; he was out for college before I was in middle school.”
“He seems cool,” the reckless and messy brother, kind of cool. Fudou finally turns around. Sakuma has changed into more comfortable clothes, and he doesn’t want to think about wearing a shirt with the logo of his favorite band. Because, even now, Fudou doesn’t want to admit that they’re a good match.
“Amine is a fucking idiot,” Sakuma plops in the bed, sprawled like a starfish. “I don’t know how Wakaba deals with him.”
“He got a girlfriend?”
“He got a wife,” okay. That’s a bit more surprising because, even if he’s a lot older than Sakuma, Fudou can’t picture himself or any of the people he knows marrying before thirty. “And a kid.”
That’s the nail in the coffin.
Fudou chokes on his breath, looking at Sakuma like he’s seen a ghost.
“You have a nephew?”
“Norihito, he’s five, I think? He loves soccer, and Amine is so mad because he wanted the brat to play volleyball like him.”
“He plays?”
“First Division.”
And with that, Fudou stops asking questions before he suffers a stroke.
“Amine Kurama, player from Japan's V.League. Ananya Sakuma, owner of the biggest law firm in Tokyo. Takeru Sakuma, teacher at Tokyo Institute of Technology. I had, somehow, found a place among one of the most powerful and cool families in Japan. And for that reason, said family accepted them as if I was their son.”
Fudou's first meeting with Sakuma’s family is strange, but he survives dinner and questions and sleeping in a futon next to Sakuma’s bed.
Fudou stays, Amine goes, and Christmas morning has the family sitting around the living room ready to gift each other their presents.
Fudou thinks of hiding in the bathroom to be out of the way for the moment that should belong to the family, but then Sakuma drags him downstairs, and it seems like he can’t say no.
So Fudou sits there, next to Sakuma, and for some reason he’s handed a present.
“What?”
“You really thought we’d let you sit here without a Christmas present?” Sakuma has the nerve to slap the back of Fudou’s neck, and his mom laughs, and his dad scolds him for being rude. “Merry Christmas, Fudou. Open the damn thing; there’s more coming.”
The box Sakuma’s parents gifted him contains a book collection he’s been craving to read for months. There’s a smaller package that has Amine's name written in it and contains brand new shin guards.
There’s no way these people could know about his book taste or him needing new guards without Sakuma spilling it. They’ve only known him for less than two weeks, and for some reason they’re being nice and welcoming, and it feels so strange that it is almost overwhelming.
And then, because it seems like Fudou hasn’t already been humiliated enough, Sakuma hands him a third, smaller gift.
Fudou discovers a copy of Danger Days under the shiny wrapping paper and, for the first time in his life, he’s out of words.
“I don’t,” he manages to say. “I don’t have anything for you.”
Not even for Sakuma, because they’re close but not that close, and he didn’t know if you were supposed to gift something to your not-boyfriend. And it’s not like Fudou could afford more than a manga or some stuffed animal from a Don Quijote store.
“I don’t like saying sappy things, but it’s the first sappy Christmas I remember. And I think after that we stopped pushing each other's buttons so hard; we grew closer, even if neither of us admitted it.”
“I don’t get it,” Fudou says once they’re back in the room after dinner. “They care so much about you,” Fudou says. “They seem so nice and wholesome, so…”
“So what?” Sakuma slaps his forehead with a laugh. It seems like it’s their favorite way to annoy Fudou. “Use your words.”
“Why don’t they hate me?” They look at Fudou. “Why are your parents allowing me to stay here? Why are they gifting me shit?”
“What are you saying? Did you hit your head or something?”
“You didn’t tell your parents about my part in Shin Teikoku, did you?”
“My mother is a lawyer, Fudou; of course she knows.”
She had been one of the people trying to drag Kegeyama and Kira to the ground. His parents knew everything that had gone down in Sakuma’s life since the day they were called into the hospital after the Zeus match.
“My parents always wanted the best for me and my brother; that’s why they sent us to Teikoku,” he sits on the floor next to Fudou and offers him a framed photo. It’s a family picture. Sakuma can’t be more than a toddler, held in his mother’s arms. Next to them, their father’s hands rest over Amine’s shoulders. Sakuma’s brother is wearing Teikoku’s uniform; they stand in front of the school grounds, and the four of them look happy. “Best school in Tokyo for their kids, they said…” Sakuma smiles, looking sad as he stares at the picture, and Fudou isn’t really feeling like himself, so he doesn’t bother to laugh at Sakuma’s baby pic. “Well, they didn’t know about Kageyama and all that we had to do in the team until Zeus.”
It’s not something Sakuma likes to talk about; no one at Teikoku really does. The manipulation, the way they were used, the stupid things they did for power and for being seen by a man that didn’t deserve even one ounce of their attention.
“They were so worried; they felt so bad about having sent me to Teikoku, and then I went back to Kageyama behind their backs, and, well,” he gestures towards his leg. The pale scar from the surgery they had to perform to put his bones back together is still there somewhere, under the fluffy warm pajama pants. “I told them about you; of course I did, Fudou. I was angry and frustrated and in pain. I blamed it on you.”
“But then you forgave me,” for some stupid reason they did. “Why?”
“Because my parents made me see how you were just another victim of Kageyama,” Sakuma says. “I was so angry that I didn’t stop to think how he had used you too. You were just another one of his pawns. My parents don’t hate you, Fudou; they don’t blame you. They blame themselves for allowing me to go to Teikoku, for sending their kid with a man who abused teens for a stupid revenge.”
Fudou looks at them, trying to figure out what to say next.
“When we found him again at Liocott, I meant why I told you,” the way he looks at Fudou makes him want to crawl under the bed and disappear. He doesn’t want to be seen like that. “I knew you were just another of his victims, but I only started to see that after my parents told me. Call me stupid or selfish, but I refused to think of you as something less than a villain until then.”
“I almost get you killed.”
Sakuma rolls his eyes; it hadn’t been that bad. “You were being used as much as any of us, maybe more.”
Sakuma had his parents. He had his brother and his friends and everything he could want after the fall. They had the best doctors attending him because his parents could afford it; they had caught him.
But Fudou had no one.
With his father gone and his mother being more trouble than help, he had been so easy to manipulate, just clay under Kageyama’s hands. And then he had nowhere to return. At least he had Teikoku now. A fresh start.
“So, if they have the chance to help you, they’ll do it,” Sakuma bumps his shoulder against Fudou, trying to go back to the usual banter and a more relaxed atmosphere.
He doesn’t like talking about heavy stuff, but something within him needs Fudou to know that he’s welcomed here.
Fudou looks at the gifts he received today and then at Sakuma, who is telling him that he belongs here like it’s not something big to say.
“Everything okay up here?” they ask, stabbing a sharp nail in the middle of Fudou’s forehead. “Hello?”
The next thing Fudou knows is that he’s pulling Sakuma into a kiss.
.
.
.
“So, the rumors are true; you’ve been together for almost a decade?”
“I wouldn’t call what we had being together,” Fudou says, looking at the ceiling. “We worked well as a team; there was something about it that felt natural, but we never wanted to give it a name back then.”
“And now?”
“I thought we were retelling the story from the beginning.”
“Go on then,” she rests her hands over the table and gestures toward him. “What happens next?”
Inazuma City, July 2011
Sakuma’s desk is covered in pamphlets and letters from different universities, and on top of them sits the blank sheet that they’re supposed to give back to his teachers in a few days when summer break is over. But, truth be told, Sakuma has no idea what he is going to do in life.
He should be making up his mind already. Instead, when they think about the future, the only thing he finds is a vast and empty nothingness.
There’s nothing they like enough to pursue a career in it. Sakuma is smart; they had no trouble going through high school, and his grades are a little better than average, but that’s all. He’s not particularly bad at something, but neither good, so there’s not an immediate call to follow or a lead to use in his search for a future.
Right now most of his friends have already made their minds.
Oono and Gojou are skipping university and going to training college instead. Jimon is taking a year for himself. Sakiyama and Henmi have their list of colleges of choice ready, and they’re already apartment hunting near their campus of choice. Genda wants to go into sports medicine, so these days he’s always busy with his nose buried inside some book.
He’s attending cram school with Kidou and Fudou, an option that Sakuma decided to skip because there was no point in getting ready for an exam he didn’t even care about.
They lie in his bed, arm draped over his eyes, trying to make order of the mess that are his thoughts when the door flies open.
“Hi,” they can hear the sound of Fudou’s bag against the floor and then, the sound of his body plopping down in Sakuma’s chair. “I can hear your head fuming from here.”
Fudou is spending summer break with them.
He always spends breaks and most weekends with them since that first Christmas, so he even has a copy of the keys now. Most people are a bit confused about the arrangement, but Sakuma doesn’t care about others’ opinions. Not anymore. It works for them, and Amine’s old bedroom has turned into Fudou’s one, even if when he stays here, he tends to sleep in a futon next to Sakuma’s bed.
Or in Sakuma’s bed next to them.
They hear the rustle of paper being moved around, and they know Fudou is looking at the pamphlets spread over their desk.
“Your list is still blank,” Fudou points out like it isn’t obvious. “Penny for your thoughts?”
“If I had any thoughts, that sheet wouldn’t be blank.”
“Dramatic as ever,” he says. Fudou moves from the chair to the bed; he sits next to Sakuma, not touching him yet. “What about a gap year?”
“So I can fall behind everyone else?”
“Jimon takes a gap year, and it’s good and cold. You do it, and he is falling behind.”
“Jimon knows what he wants to do after his gap year is over.” Sakuma closes his eyes, and they can feel the bed shifting when Fudou moves to lie next to him. “I don’t, and I doubt I would figure it out during that year.”
Fudou doesn’t say anything; he just grabs Sakuma’s hand and starts playing with his fingers. He finds a hangnail in one of their fingers and starts moving it around.
He tends to do that when he’s thinking, and he no longer bothers to hide it. He just holds Sakuma’s hand during team meetings as they talk strategy and ignores the weird looks the team gives them.
“You can always find a job,” he says after a while. “It will still be a gap year, but if you’re working, it doesn’t count as falling behind.”
“And who would ever hire me? All I know how to do is kick a ball around a grass field.”
That’s a lie, Fudou thinks.
And it is not like being a cashier at your local supermarket has lots of requirements. But Fudou knows that this conversation isn’t going anywhere, so he doesn’t talk after that. He gets up from the bed instead and starts walking towards the door.
“Where are you going?”
“To raid your parents liquor cabinet.”
“I’m not good at giving advice. Never was, never will be. But I’m incredible at making people make bad decisions. I got my ears pierced that night.”
They had been professional enough to buy some catheters, gloves, and antiseptic cream, but not enough to go to an actual parlor. It had been an out-of-the-blue decision, born from too much sake and a fear for the future.
Fudou remembers walking into the bathroom and being pushed to the floor. The rest of the night is a blur. Fudou knows that they were seventeen and sake drunk at the time.
He remembers small things about that night. The bowl of ice next to them, the texture of latex against his skin, the pressure of someone straddling his lap. They were laughing, whispering, and shushing each other like they weren’t home alone; no one was going to burst open the door and sneak on them.
Fudou’s hand was still around the bottle, taking another sip as Sakuma’s hands tilted his head to the side. Something cold pressing against his ear, then the sound of plastic being torn and, above all, the white sound, Sakuma’s voice breaking the silence, “Take a deep breath,” they said. “Come on, Akio.”
He had called him Akio instead of Fudou, and, for some reason, he had listened.
“One, two, three…” and pain. A flash of pain that was gone as soon as it came.
He drank again, and Sakuma’s hands went to grab his wrist, taking the bottle from him. Smooth latex against clammy skin. He was tired and dizzy; he knew that regret would arrive and that next morning they would wake up to hell.
But in that moment what mattered was the sound of the bottle falling to the floor. It was Sakuma’s hands holding his face and their eyes shining under the white lights of the bathroom. Fudou’s own hands were limp at his side, not knowing if he was allowed to touch his more-than-friend less-than-something.
They hadn’t given it a name yet.
Not like they needed it, Sakuma used to say.
That night, that moment, was blurry like a dream in Fudou’s mind, but then a flash came, and he remembered vividly the way Sakuma’s voice drooped when he asked that question.
“You’re going to leave me behind, aren’t you?”
Because everyone had a future planned, some idea of what awaited them. Everyone would pack their things and leave. They would disappear, leaving Sakuma alone and behind in his small piece of land, because he had no idea about how or when to step out of it. What direction they should take.
“You’ll leave,” and after all these years it feels like stealing a part of himself. Like they’re taking away one of his limbs, Fudou has been attached to him for years. “Everyone leaves.”
There was something in Sakuma’s voice. Sad under the way it dragged after all the sake. He looked gloomy in a way Fudou had never seen. His head drops against Fudou’s shoulders, and his hair tickles his nose.
And, for the first time in his life, Fudou had been the one offering someone his hand.
“Come with me then.”
“To where?”
“To college, you don’t need to attend,” he combs a long strand of hair behind Sakuma’s ear. He cups his face with rough hands and stares at them. “You come with me, and we’ll figure out the rest later.”
And, for some reason, Sakuma had followed. It was nothing serious, just two friends sharing rent in a small apartment in Tokyo. They weren’t moving in together as the next step in their years-long relationship because there wasn’t a years-long relationship to start with. It was just convenience.
That’s what they told everyone when they asked about it.
If he felt butterflies in his stomach seeing a matching set of keys hanging by the door, no one needed to know.
.
.
.
“You went into social studies, right?”
“Yes, but I didn’t last long,” Fudou says. At eighteen, he hadn’t been ready for college, and the little preparation he had flew out the window when everything started to crumble under his feet. “I didn’t even finish the first year.”
“Because someone important called?”
“I received two calls that changed everything.”
Tokyo, November 2012.
Fudou had been MIA for two weeks already; what has Sakuma start to worry? It wasn’t unusual for him to leave, but he never did for so long, not without a warning. Fudou, much like a stray cat, came and went as he pleased. From time to time he needed time alone, and Sakuma was fine with it as long as he left a note or a call in the voice mail so he could know that he was alive somewhere.
That was until, at 4 am on a Thursday, Sakuma got a phone call. They wake up, reach for his phone, and don’t even bother to check who is calling before pressing the green icon.
“Uh?”
“I’m in front of the building,” Fudou’s voice says at the other side of the line. “Making a stop before going away for a while.”
You’ve already been away for a while, Sakuma thinks, but they’re not awake enough to make any coherent words leave his lips.
“I’m going on a small road trip; I passed by to say goodbye.”
Sakuma starts to awaken, then he sits in the bed and rubs the sleep from his eyes. They check the phone, and it is indeed too early for this. But he’s also not dreaming; he knows it. And Fudou is finally calling, so he’s not going to miss this opportunity.
“Jirou?”
And if Fudou is calling him Jirou, it’s something serious. Whatever made him disappear and do whatever he’s trying to do is bad.
“I’m waiting here if you want to say goodbye,” Fudou says. “I’ll be away for a month or so, I think.” There’s silence from the other side, and, even if it’s just autumn, Fudou shivers inside his jacket. “Jirou?”
There’s a rustle of clothes at the other side of the line, and Fudou thinks that maybe Sakuma is there, grabbing a jacket and a pair of shoes to go out and kick Fudou’s ass before he can leave. He deserves it, to be honest.
Instead of that, Sakuma walks out of the building three minutes later carrying a backpack and a duffle bag. They walk past Fudou without a word, open the door to throw his things inside the car before walking to the front and sitting in the copilot spot.
“What are you doing?”
Sakuma sits in the front, untying his shoes before resting their legs across the dashboard.
“4 am unplanned road trip?” they ask, finally talking to him. “I’m in.”
Fudou stares at Sakuma, at his things in the backseat, next to Fudou’s own bags, and how he’s already closing his eyes to go back to sleep inside Fudou’s shitty car.
“It won’t be one weekend.”
“I know.”
“I don’t know where we’re going.”
“Sounds like a plan.”
“They just threw my whole lone wolf plan out of the window, and I couldn’t refuse. He had a job at a record store, sent them a message to quit, and went back to sleep as I drove us out of the city in my old Seat Panda.”
They take turns driving, not really knowing where they’re going.
When they’re both awake, they take turns deciding what turn to take, and when one of them falls asleep, the other drives wherever they want. There’s no big destination, no big plans; they ditch their phones and ask strangers for directions. They get lost, drive through the same spots countless times, and stop in lots of interesting places.
The first week they sleep in the car and small inns. One of them has the best thermal waters Fudou has even been to.
They stay there for four days, lazy and cozy in bed. Walking around the village.
The second week they keep going north, and they start to shiver even inside the car.
They don’t talk about why they’re here.
Sakuma slaps his hand away from the radio and turns off his phone when Kidou calls, and they ignore the film from the drive-in cinema to make out in the back of the car. It was a boring film either way.
“We were in a limbo. We always were, when we were left alone. But that was different; it felt like one of those coming-of-age European movies. It felt like we were different people. We had fun and ignored that we were supposed to be entering adulthood. We swam on empty rivers and discovered ghost cities, and nothing mattered but us.”
By the third week they’re up north, and the old car with too many miles finally gives up. They’re in the middle of the road, and when they get down to start searching for help, it begins to snow.
Sakuma’s ears are lined with rows of golden jewelry that tinkle when he shakes his head. Right now, under the sun, the golden rings catch the light when Sakuma tilts his head.
Fudou, without thinking much about it, reaches for them and flicks one of the bigger rings. It makes a small clank sound, and Sakuma retreats, scoffing like he’s offended.
“I'm freezing,” they complain, burying their face in the scarf they had to buy in a small shop in the middle of nowhere when the temperature started to drop. “Why did you drag me to Hokkaido?”
Sakuma’s nose is red from the cold. He’s trembling, and Fudou wants to laugh, but instead he blows warm air into his hands and then covers Sakuma’s ears with them. He can feel how cold the metal is under his hands; the line of rings that cover Sakuma’s ears is freezing, the skin around them starting to get red.
“You were the one who joined this trip without preparation,” when Fudou shifts his hand Sakuma tries to move away with a small yelp, and he looks under his hand. “Those two are new.”
There are two rings that weren’t there when Fudou left, so they may be really recent.
“I don’t want the opinion of the guy whose arms look like he belongs in the yakuza.”
“I’m not complaining,” he always liked how the jewelry looks on Sakuma; it fits him so well. “But maybe you should take them off before they get infected.”
Fudou’s own earrings, even if they’re just two small studs, are starting to hurt.
“Let’s search somewhere to stay until they can fix that thing,” Sakuma says, pointing to the car. “Somewhere with a fireplace, preferably.”
“Whatever the princess says,” Sakuma kicks him, and Fudou loses his balance and face plants into the snow.
Sakuma laughs, and he can’t even get mad.
“We found a small inn. By then it had almost been a month since we left, and my time was running out. I had to make a decision, and I couldn’t think of someone more fitting than Sakuma, who had followed me into that mess, to help me with it.”
They sit in front of the fireplace. It’s a gas one, small and cozy like the rest of the room. Their hair is damp from the snow, and with the humidity in this place, it won’t dry, and they will probably wake up tomorrow with a cold because neither of them packed a hairdryer.
Silly them.
Sakuma has never had this much fun; he leans his head against Fudou’s shoulder and takes a sip from his boiling cup of tea. The cold makes his leg hurt, so he has it draped over Fudou’s lap.
Something in the air tells him that Fudou is ready for the talk they’ve been avoiding for weeks and that this time it won’t be silenced by a kiss when Sakuma asks, “What is all this about Akio?”
“My father is getting out of prison, and Mom is allowing him to go back home.”
“My father had the wrong friends. Made the wrong decisions. He dragged my mother and me to the ground with him. I haven’t missed him a single day of my life, and Sakuma knew that. My parents never really got divorced, so the old man going back home wasn’t that weird. But my mother taking him back? It sent me into a quarter-life crisis.”
“Okay.”
“I don’t want to see him.”
“Then don’t go see him; you don’t owe him shit.”
He knows that, and, at the same time, Fudou knows that if his mother calls him to go back home, he’ll obey.
Because the woman hurt him in ways that still sting, but she’s his mother.
“I’m an adult now, Jirou; I shouldn’t be scared of him coming back,” Fudou’s head rests against theirs. He holds his hand and starts playing with his fingers. “But I think about him, and I just want to hide in my room.”
“You know what I think about your parents, Akio.”
That they don’t deserve him.
That they don’t have the right to step into his life.
Fudou has all he could want and need; he doesn’t need the ghosts of his past.
“That’s one call. What about the other?”
“We’re getting there, but I think we both know what the other call was about.”
“That’s all?”
“A team wants me.”
“And why is that bad?”
“Because I either stay and face the man who ruined my life or go so it looks like I’m running away from the monsters under my bed,” like he did when he was a kid. And Fudou doesn’t want to feel like a kid again. “I don’t know what to do, Jirou.”
“I don’t understand why you are questioning it, Fudou,” he says. “Go,” Sakuma holds his face, fire burning in his eyes. “Don’t mess this opportunity up, Akio; you earned it.”
“But—”
“No one that matters will think of you as a coward,” they say. “What that man thinks of you doesn’t hold more value than the dirt under your shoes.”
“They were always like that. Claiming to hate me while we kissed. Saying that I was the worst while hating the people I couldn’t find the will to hate. How could I not be head over heels for someone like that?”
“I’ll have to leave.”
“I know.”
“For Europe Jirou, I won’t be at a short train ride away.”
“I can’t follow you there.”
“I know.”
“But you’re not going to stop your life for me, because you know I won’t allow it, don’t you?”
“I know.”
“Then it’s settled.” Jirou moves to sit on his lap, hands still holding his face. “When do you leave?”
“If I say yes, in a month.”
“Then let’s enjoy the time we have left.”
And they kiss him goodbye.
.
.
.
“You played in Italy for two seasons before coming back. Why?”
“It felt wrong. I missed my people, I missed the food and the weather and being able to speak in my own language,” Fudou says; it sounds more sincere than he pretends. “So I went back home right in time for everything to turn into a mess.”
“Fifth Sector?”
“Not yet, but we’re getting there.”
Inazuma City, 2014
Fudou does miss Teikoku sometimes.
He can play pretend all he wants, posing as the bad and cold guy, but at the end of the day, this place brings back memories of a time when he thought he could have it all. A scholarship in the best school in Tokyo, a team who trusted him, even friends.
Teikoku had been some of the best years of his life, even if he was too proud to admit it out loud.
Walking down the halls of his old school, Fudou feels a few years younger. But he’s also scared about who he is going to face here. At twenty, after two seasons playing for an Italian team, Fudou Akio makes his way back home, and for some reason home means this place instead of Ehime.
Some kids walk past him, whispering between them, and Fudou wonders if they recognize him as a member of Inazuma Japan or if they’re just judging his looks. Maybe the hype about Inazuma Japan died already; Fudou doesn’t really know or care.
The walk to the main training field takes less than five minutes. Kidou is watching the team from the sidelines, taking notes on his tablet, and being a lazy bastard who leaves all the work on his assistant's shoulders. Or at least that’s what Fudou thinks. He’s taller now, his hair longer. Everyone seems to have grown up since Fudou left.
“Coaching a bunch of brats in a three-piece’ suit should be illegal.”
“So you’re back,” Kidou doesn’t even look at him; he keeps writing. “That’s why I started to hear thunder and babies crying.”
“Yes, now the sky will turn red, and your eyes will burst out of their sockets.”
Kidou doesn’t laugh, but he can see a small, very small, twitch in the corner of his mouth.
He wouldn’t call them friends.
Kidou is not his friend; they’re too similar and too different at the same time for them to work as friends. They know each other; they can stand each other; that’s all. So Kidou knows that Fudou is not here for him; it’s so bluntly obvious it should be offensive.
“What is he doing?” he asks, because if he’s going to dig his own grave, he’d better do it in one go. “I thought he was still recovering.”
“Sakuma had been injured during the Aliea incidents, hadn’t he?”
“Yes, and he carries the consequences even to these days. Back then, none of us knew how bad it was going to be.”
In the field, yelling at kids and moving around in a way that doesn’t seem fitted for someone who just walked out of surgery, Sakuma is doing an amazing job of scaring the shit out of a bunch of brats.
He moves with the easiness of someone who has been in and out of a wheelchair since he was fourteen. They rush to the field, grinning like a maniac, and Fudou knows that he’s seen something, that he found the missing piece in the game or something to fix or make better.
“His doctor is going to kill him one day.”
“Maybe you should send home Mister Commander?”
“Because Sakuma will listen, of course,” Kidou scoffs, looking at his friend talking with the team. “I tried, but he almost kills me with a crutch.”
“I hate that idiot.”
“Try again without the lovestruck smile.”
“I’m not—” God, why is everyone so obsessed with them? He just landed back in the country. People should at least give him a week before accusing him of being in love with his best friend. “We’re not… It’s not like that.”
They’re friends, Sakuma and him.
That’s all.
He’s here to visit his friend after the year he spent away from Japan; there’s nothing bad about it.
Sakuma, who is recovering from a new surgery after the wires holding his knee together gave up or something like that, a small touch up they had said. So it’s perfectly normal that he wants to check on them.
What Kidou doesn’t need to know is how, before coming to Teikoku, Fudou had rushed to the hospital. For some reason, Sakuma had been the first person Fudou thought about when his plane landed back in Japan, and the worst thing was that it didn’t even anger him.
Fuyuka, bless her soul, had spotted him the moment he stepped into the hallway. Having a nursery student between your group of friends could be useful sometimes, like when your friend—situationship everyone else calls it—needs to get surgery. Or when said friend leaves the hospital and she tells you they’re already back to work, so you don’t have to embarrass yourself any further by asking in the front door.
“I need to talk to the team,” Kidou says. “Care to keep an eye on Sakuma while I’m at it?”
It’s a subtle way of leaving them alone to catch up. Or talk. Or whatever Fudou plans on doing now that he’s back. Kidou doesn’t plan to be the witness of it; he doesn’t mind if it’s a murder or some lovers bullshit; he’s fine ignoring his friend’s drama.
He calls the team, and he leaves for the meeting room as Fudou walks into the field where Sakuma is waiting, uncovered eye shining with something Fudou can’t quite tell.
“Hi.”
“So you’re back,” they push the chair towards Fudou, and even when he needs to look up at him, Sakuma’s presence feels bigger than he remembers it being. “I knew I felt something strange in the air.”
“That’s Kidou’s shitty aptitude,” Fudou says. He doesn’t know what to do with his hands. If he should reach to touch Sakuma, or that’s out of limits after a year, so he shoves his hands inside his pockets. “He told me to keep an eye on you, so what about going home? I still have to unpack.”
“Home?”
“Well, I still have the keys to our apartment; one room is still mine, isn’t it?”
“Our apartment? Your room?” they ask, eyebrow arching. “What makes you think I’ll allow you in?”
“You’re going to leave me couch surfing?”
“I could,” Sakuma is smiling. Wide and happy and brilliant. It shouldn’t make Fudou’s stomach sink the way it does. “Maybe I don’t want you back.”
That’s right.
Maybe he’s found someone else.
Better for them, a better match for someone like Sakuma.
“What is the price for going back then?” Fudou asks, ignoring the urge to call any of their friends and check if there’s someone else in Sakuma’s life. “Doing the dishes?”
“No,” they start kicking the ball with his left foot, a shit-eating grin on his face. “One on one, if you mark, you can come back.”
“Stop.”
“What? Scared I can kick your lame ass from here?” Sakuma says, voice bubbly and happy. “One goal and I allow you into the apartment and make biryani for dinner.”
“You’re going to regret it tomorrow, Sakuma.” Despite the double offer, Fudou knows that this is a bad idea. He can see the bandages peeking from Sakuma’s pants. “What about rock, paper, scissors?”
Fudou follows him across the field as Sakuma wheels blackguards, smiling like the idiot he is.
“Boring,” Sakuma spins in the chair, making it stand on two wheels. “You got half of your tattoos while drunk; don’t talk to me about regret.”
He taps the ball a few times more, maneuvering so he can give it a little push with his knee, and then they kick the ball towards Fudou. The way Sakuma rolls his eye when he catches it with his hands, instead of kicking back, almost makes him laugh.
Brat.
“Boring.”
“They removed six screws from your femur, Jirou. I’m not playing this game.” They tilt his head, and his eyes narrow into a thin line. “I know you can, but we know you shouldn’t.”
“Since when are you worried about me?”
It’s been years, and, even now, looking down to face Sakuma feels strange. He’s always been the taller one between the two of them; he still is when they stand, and even from the chair, his presence feels big.
“If something happened to you, a bunch of teens would hang me from the tower.”
Because he’s stupid, the team loves him, and all their friends have Fudou under a microscope since they first met, and if he messes with Sakuma again, he’s dead for real, even if their fighting has always been two-sided.
Sakuma wheels to him, taking the ball from his hands. They throw it into the goal and win.
“I need to start calling our friends then?”
“No,” Sakuma says. “But you’re making dinner.”
“It was easy as that. Finding myself back at the small apartment we rented together at eighteen. Going back to our usual pace was so easy because before the apartment it was Sakuma’s house or Teikoku’s corridors. Moving around each other has always been easy.”
Inside the house, Sakuma ditches the chair for his old, trustworthy crutches, moving around with an easiness Fudou knows he learnt with hard work and sweat. His three suitcases are unpacked and back to his wardrobe in less than two hours, and there are no signs of someone else having been around the house during his year overseas.
It’s not like Fudou would mind, because they’re still nothing.
Friends. Roommates. Whatever they call it these days.
Sakuma pulls out a bottle of wine to celebrate his comeback, and they drink straight from it, sitting on their ugly couch while a bad movie plays in the background.
If Sakuma kisses him, Fudou just takes it and follows, because he’s not saying no to a welcome home kiss. So Sakuma kisses him, and Fudou leans into it, careful of Sakuma’s leg. He cups their face, and they both pretend that this wasn’t already planned.
“I had been away for two years, and, during those two years, Sakuma has kept the apartment we first moved into. They never rented the other room, but neither said they were keeping it for me. We never said that kind of thing to each other. We just went back to the way everything was before I left.”
A week later, Fudou arrives at the hospital to pick Sakuma up from his appointment. They’re just removing the stitches, and Sakuma still needs to rely on the crutches for a few weeks, but it seems like everything went well, and they could be back in the field in two or three months.
When Fudou finds him, Sakuma is in the hospital’s garden, and he’s not alone. They’re wearing an oversized hoodie and baggy jeans, and his hair is tied in a messy bun, and he’s stupidly pretty as he laughs and spins on his chair. He shouldn’t look that pretty, but Fudou is already used to feeling that way towards Sakuma.
“Again!” the kid next to him says. He looks young, maybe twelve or eleven. He wears hospital pajamas, and he’s sitting in an ambulatory chair, way bigger and bulkier than Sakuma’s one. “Please!”
“Pay attention, okay?”
The chair rests on the back legs, and Sakuma makes it spin in quick circles like it’s easy. And maybe it is; he moves with the easiness of someone who has been condemned to that chair a few times already between recoveries and touch-up surgeries.
“Push yourself back,” Sakuma leans back, and for a moment, Fudou’s legs itch for taking a leap forward and holding him before he can fall. “But keep your body leaned forward and spin!”
They laugh, and the kid tries, and fails, again at performing a wheelie. Sakuma pats his head and then turns around when the kid points at Fudou.
“I thought Genda was the one in charge of me today.”
“He called and said something about an assignment, so here I am.” Fudou approaches and tries to ignore the way the kids look at him. “Disappointed?”
“You don’t know how much,” they say, taking a hand to his chest with an offended gasp. “How dare he?”
“I’m terrible company, I know.” Sakuma smiles, and god, he wants to kiss him so badly.
But they don’t kiss in public.
They’re nothing once they step out of the four walls of a refuge that is their home.
One of the kids pulls Sakuma’s hoodie, so he turns around, and their banter dies. Sakuma focuses on the younger kid; he must be the older brother; they look so much alike.
He whispers in their ear in that way kids do, not whispering at all, “That’s Fudou Akio?”
“I don’t know. Why don’t we ask him?” Sakuma asks. He is gentle when they grab the kid’s hand, approaching Fudou. “Hey, are you Fudou Akio from Inazuma Japan?”
“He also plays in Italy,” the kid whispers again. “In Neples!”
“Naples,” Sakuma whispers back, correcting the kid. “Is he cool then?”
The kid nods and hides behind Sakuma’s chair. “Hi, I’m Kyosuke; I play football too.”
“Hello, Kyosuke,” Fudou crouches down in front of them, offering his hand to the kid. “I’m Fudou, but you already knew that.”
“You are cool,” the kid is shy, still half hidden behind Sakuma. “I like seeing you play.”
“And I love meeting fans,” Sakuma laughs, pushing Fudou back so he falls on his butt.
“Don’t make his ego any bigger. Kyosuke, his head would get so big he’d fly away.”
“You’re just jealous I’m so cool that I have fans!”
“Jirou is cool too!” the kid says, coming out from his hiding spot. “Forwards are cooler.” Fudou lets out an offended gasp as he stands, looking at his friend. How dare they. “And he knows how to do cool things with the chair! He’s teaching my brother!”
Behind them, the other kid is still attempting the stupid trick Sakuma did earlier.
“Kyousuke. Like in Kyousuke Tsurugi from Raimon?”
“Yes, Sakuma had befriended the Tsurugi brothers during his time at the hospital. He has always been good with kids, so they loved him. Like everyone did.”
“I could do that too,” Fudou complains. “Jirou is not that cool.”
“Yes?” It takes a second for Sakuma to grab his crutches and stand. Something that maybe he shouldn’t be doing, but he’s not going to tell him that. “There,” he shoves the chair towards Fudou. “If it’s that easy, show the kid how it’s done.”
“You should be seating—”
“They’re just removing the stitches, Fudou. I’m fine,” and they point to the chair. “Come on, teach us how it’s done.”
Sakuma’s chair is a weird thing.
It doesn’t look like the ones Fudou is more used to seeing in movies or in the streets, even in hospitals. It’s small; the backrest is so low that it shouldn’t be called a backrest, and it doesn’t even have handles, so no one can really push Sakuma around.
So, the moment Fudou sits down and tries to move, he loses his balance and makes the chair tilt back.
Sakuma laughs at him and lowers himself to the ground.
“Easy, right?”
They look so pretty, sun shining behind his back, leaves casting shadows over his face. He looks happy and relaxed, and Fudou grabs his arms and pulls Sakuma against his chest.
“Hey! What are you doing?”
Fudou looks at them and holds his face, tilting it so he can pull them closer, “Stopping you from messing with me.”
And he kisses him.
Because they don’t kiss in front of people, but right now, Fudou doesn’t care.
.
.
.
“So, you were back; everything went back to normal.”
“More or less, yes,” they had fallen back into their usual dynamic so easily, like he had never left. “Sakuma was Teikoku's coach. I worked wherever I could. It was a few fun years; we had nothing to worry about.”
“How did people not know about you after that?”
“Kids are really easy to bribe, so it only took a few autographs for them to not say a thing. And most of the people didn’t even know who we were; outside of sport fanatic spaces, we were just two guys kissing.”
Everything had been going well, but nothing lasts forever.
“And then?”
“Well, I think you already know.”
Inazuma City, 2016.
Fudou met Sakuma’s famous nephew during one of his multiple stays at the family’s home. Amine, his wife, and the kid were passing by, and Fudou had been spending the weekend there at the time.
He had been perched over the desk, Sakuma lying on the floor next to him. They had been studying for a science test when they heard the doorbell ringing and Ananya’s voice coming from the open window.
“Jirou and Akio are in their room,” they heard the woman saying, and the next thing Fudou knew was that a familiar voice was screaming his name.
“Akio!” Amine. “Come here! Jirou, you can stay there if you want!”
“Again, why do they like you better?” Jirou asked, getting up from the floor and walking to the door. “You’re not even that nice.”
Truth be told, Fudou was equally confused about how well integrated he was in Sakuma’s family. They had walked down stairs together, and then Fudou had seen that Amine wasn’t alone. Sakuma had laughed at his failed attempt to run away and go back to Teikoku’s dorm, and, instead, he had dragged him to the entry hallway.
“So this is the famous Akio?” the woman said. “Amine told us about you.”
“Fudou! He’s Fudou from Inazuma, Japan!” There was a small kid hiding behind the woman’s legs. “Jirou, you brought him!”
Suddenly, the kid had thrown himself at Sakuma’s leg, hugging him as his friend laughed. From one second to another, Fudou had a brat looking at him like he had hung the stars from the sky, rambling about Teikoku and Raimon and football.
“All the kids that grew up seeing us play seemed to idolize us. A shame that that died when they grew older.”
After a few years living in Sendai, the family has moved back to Inazuma so the kid can attend Raimon, and that means that Sakuma spends more time looking after his nephew. From time to time, the guest room in their apartment is occupied by the kid when they play babysitter.
None of them like it because, even if Sakuma loves him and Fudou finds him tolerable for a kid, having Kurama over so often means that most people know that the two rooms thing is bullshit and that they’ve been sharing a bed since day one of moving in together.
The two-bedroom apartment they rented at eighteen has been a main bedroom and a guestroom apartment for years, since their friends decided that if Fudou and Sakuma were in denial, that didn’t mean they had to be in denial too. What doesn’t help is them telling everyone that they’re not dating.
That morning, as the sun starts to rise, Kurama probes Fudou once again that kids are annoying as fuck.
“Jirou!” The banging on the door persists, and Fudou buries his head in the pillow. “Jirou! Uncle Jirou, open the door!”
“I hate your nephew.” Why are they playing the babysitters again? Fudou just wants to sleep. He opens his eyes, still buried in the comfy and fluffy pillows, and looks at his partner. Sakuma’s own eyes are drowsy with sleep as he tries to rub it away. “What does he want now?”
“I promised him I’d be training with him today,” they say, covering their face. “I’m coming!” They’re not even moving. They move closer to Fudou; instead, he buries his head against his shoulder and lets out a groan. “Do you think that he will disappear if we ignore him?”
“I think that I’m never having kids,” Fudou pushes Sakuma away from him, rolling onto his back because somehow, this ended up being his problem too. Because if Sakuma has to take the brat somewhere, Fudou needs to drive them to that somewhere. Sakuma’s leg has been getting worse lately, and he doesn’t trust himself with driving; he prefers to play it safe.
“Don’t worry; I’m planning on breaking the family tradition of having parents at an insanely young age,” he props himself out of bed with a groan, reaching for his phone to check the time.
8 am on a Saturday, he’s no longer so sure about the love he holds for his nephew.
“Or at any age.”
He loves his nephew and his team, but kids are too much work and dedication.
“Jirou!”
They open the door, and the kid almost falls face first inside the room.
“We’re not going anywhere until I have my coffee,” they say, walking past his nephew. “And then, we can play.”
Norihito takes after Sakuma’s mother’s side of the family. Pale blue hair, dark skin, a short fuse, and a dry sense of humor. He’s Sakuma’s pride and joy, even if he doesn’t say it out loud. They love his nephew, and he’s always bragging about him.
Even after making him rise at dawn, he’s happy about training with the kid, getting him ready for his future high school football. It’s not a surprise when Kurama asks Sakuma to help him prepare for the team tryouts, and Sakuma says yes.
What leads them to a small park near the river and to a very impatient Kurama wanting to jump on his feet and train.
“Kurama is currently a player at Raimon, isn’t he?”
“Yes, a forward, just like his uncle. Also quite talented, he always gives my brats some trouble when we play against them.”
“So, Teikoku’s coach was training one of Raimon’s strongest players?”
“He wasn’t a Raimon player back then, but, yes, Sakuma was the one who got him ready for Raimon.”
“Why are you giving me these?” The kid sits in front of Sakuma, going through the notebook with a strange fascination. “I’m not going to Teikoku.”
“I know,” Sakuma rolls his eyes and flicks the kid’s forehead. “Raimon is going to be so lucky with you on the team.”
“I don’t get it,” his uncle coaches Teikoku. In a few months he’s going to be playing against him instead of by his side. “You could give them to your team.”
Sakuma laughs, taking the notebook from him and flipping to one of the pages. A shuhatsu is written down in their neat handwriting, but there are notes in a messier one around the page.
“If our rivals are strong, if my team needs to face strong opponents, they’ll grow stronger. It’s funnier if we find a challenge; I don’t want my team to have it easy.”
“You’re fucking insane,” Fudou joins the conversation, finally standing from the place he had plopped under a tree to take a nap. “Always so competitive.”
“It runs in the family.”
Fudou walks to the pair and moves the notebook with his foot to look at it from a better angle, “Sidewinder? For the brat?”
“Hey!”
“He has the athletics to pull it,” Sakuma says; he taps over the messier kanjis. “Flexibility and speed are the trick; you said it.”
“But it never worked.”
“Yes, because you’re stiff as a rock, and I spent the season with only one working ankle,” they gave the notebook around, using Kurama’s head to stand again. “I think he has what it takes.”
“Can someone explain what you are talking about?”
It was always the same with those two.
Looks and side eyes and silent communication.
He hated it.
“I’m giving you one of the hissatsu Fudou and I created for Teikoku; it never fully worked for us. But I think it will for you.”
“If you arrive at the trials with a shoot like this one, you’ll make it to the main team for sure. Directly into the field, they won’t sit you on the bench; they won’t give a shit about you being a first year.”
“Sakuma's leg was starting to give him problems for some reason. Doctors said that nothing was wrong, but it was getting worse each day, I could tell.”
“You shouldn’t be doing that.” If Sakuma’s leg is hurting him enough to keep him from driving, Fudou can’t see how this is a good idea. “I’m not carrying you home if you hurt yourself.”
“Bullshit,” the kid says. “You totally are carrying him home,” at the same time that Sakuma goes, “I’m perfectly fine.”
Sakuma makes the ball rest in the arch of his foot and leans back; he moves like a whip, jumping and kicking it at the same time. The ball gets an insane height, and Kurama’s mouth hangs wide open as his uncle just goes back to standing straight like he didn’t just perform an acrobatic backflip in the middle of a park.
“He’s still insanely good,” Fudou says, and then his hand hits Kurama’s chin. “You’ll catch a fly brat.”
The hissatsu is not complete, and even like that, it had the strength of some shoots he has seen on TV. If this is what an incomplete technique can do, he can’t imagine how unstoppable it can be once the quirks are polished.
“What I get from this is that my uncle is better than you,” because he can’t allow Fudou to catch him with his walls down. That’s a thing that also runs in the Sakuma family. He’s no longer a kid running behind his uncle and his super cool friends shadow. “He can pull shit you can’t.”
Fudou thinks about a reply, but instead of that, he looks at Sakuma. At the way they turn around to wave at Kurama to get closer. At the way he smiles and looks so happy with himself after performing the stupid trick.
“Don’t tell Sakuma this, but,” Fudou sighs, allowing his body to fall back on the grass. “You’re right, they’re a better player than me.”
Always been.
Always would be.
Fudou may have the brains and the dirty tricks, but Sakuma’s game is more complete and balanced. If it weren’t for his injuries, they could have gone pro.
“Whatever,” and Kurama runs away to join his uncle. He has grown used to his uncle and their weird not-boyfriend drama since he was seven, so this is nothing new.
He leaves, and Fudou sits in the grass, looking at Sakuma and their nephew performing acrobatic tricks in the middle of the park because it seems like being a show-off runs in the family too. They’re patient and gentle, helping the kid to learn the mechanics of the movement first, a hand always there in case Karuma falls in the middle of the backflip.
For someone with a fuse as short as Sakuma’s, he’s patient and surprisingly good with kids. Seeing this small moment, Fudou can see why, between all their old Teikoku team, Sakuma was the one Kidou called when he needed a hand with the team.
Fudou ends up carrying Sakuma back home because after hours of practice, their leg gives up and refuses to work. Sakuma climbs into his back, and Kurama goes to have dinner with some friends, which leaves them alone on their way back home.
“I’m dropping your lanky ass if you don’t stop squirming,” Fudou complains. Sakuma is not heavy, but he’s tall and lanky, and their bones stab Fudou in all the wrong places. “You are stupid.”
“Said the pot to the kettle.”
Back at home, Fudou has to heat some water bags and cover Sakuma’s leg in the ointment he uses when his leg hurts.
Eyes fixed on the jagged scars, he speaks.
“Teikoku would never be back to those days,” Sakuma says, tracing the scars with his nails. “If I can do the bare minimum for those kids, I’ll do it.”
“Teikoku had been still healing. But the kids in the team were happy and healthy, and everything was working out.”
In the two years he’s been working at Teikoku, Sakuma has been nothing but an excellent coach. The kids love him and go to him for advice and any kind of help they may need.
He makes them work hard for results, but he is the best thing that could happen to Teikoku.
Under his and Kidou’s supervision, Fudou really thinks that the team can heal and can go back to their old victory track without the dirty game.
“I never doubted it,” Fudo says, cleaning his hand with a damp cloth. “You are Teikoku, but you are not Kageyama.”
“I really hope so.”
Sakuma looks at him, and Fudou holds his face between his hands, like so many times before.
He holds him with care and slips his thumb under the fabric of Sakuma’s eyepatch to remove it.
“What are you thinking?” they ask when Fudou’s thumb traces circles under his blind eye. “I can see the fumes coming out your ears.”
About the years shared.
About the way Sakuma’s eyes shine
About everything and nothing.
“About making it official.”
“Uh?”
“Are you deaf?” Fudou asks. “Let’s stop pretending for the sake of pretending.”
Because, if they’re not together, what is this?
“Are you asking me to go on a date with you, Fudou Akio?”
“Well, you said it once: Who else would tolerate me?”
.
.
.
“When was that?”
“Two years ago.”
“There was never an official relationship declaration from any of you; why was it?”
“Well, we were happy. Everything seemed to be fine, so we could finally stop being stupid about it. And then…”
“And then?”
“And then, the Fifth Sector happened.”