NIKE -Blue Lock-

Nicklaus

Blue lock facilities...

"Congratulations you unpolished lumps of talent."

The room was full of heads with different colored hair, filled with confusion, perplexity, curiosity and cynicism.

All under eighteen years of age, all soccer maniacs, all promising athletes, all egotists.

Some more, some less.

Ego searched the long red hair of the person of his interest with his deep pitch-colored eyes, suppressing a grimace at the failed research.

He kept talking, saying all the words that circulated in his head as he searched in the crowd for those blood-colored eyes.

He tried to bring back to his memory every detail of the picture he had seen on the Internet, hoping that at least one of those teenagers would respect the figure's features.

But, among the white, blue, pink, orange and brown hair, he could not locate the one character for whom he had set his sights.

"That concludes my explanation, thank you."

He knew he had not been wrong about her.

So why wasn't she there?

"Um, excuse me. I can't consent to your explanation." a voice rang out in the silence, forcing Ego to distract himself from his thoughts to give attention to the boy who had just spoken.

Ryosuke Kira, number 289.

"Running off to some place that makes no sense... I can't abandon my team to participate in that."

The whispers soon turned into loud statements, all following not a shepherd, but a goat little bigger than themselves.

The man scratched the back of his head, not expecting such an unexpected turn of events. He didn't know what he had said as he was busy looking for the champion with his gaze, but evidently his words had not been convincing enough.

"I see, you're all sick uh..."

Or maybe they were the ones who were not selfish enough.

"Then piss off."

A certain someone's lips lifted in a smug grin as their blood-red eyes, hidden behind the visor of their hat, peered analytically at the man on stage.

They didn't hear a single word he said from then on. They didn't care at all about the motivational speech he was giving.

They did not need it.
And he knew that too.

Because if they were indeed similar, then the unknown one had thought all those words up even before he could express them.

Perhaps even before he could think them.

"The lone hero who will stand atop three hundred corpses."

Hero.
They were not interested in being a hero. Neither a villain.

They wanted to be the protagonist of all those egoists' lives. Destroy their tiny egos to the point of having them suppressed under her figure.

After all, what was better than becoming the sole thought of people who by nature thought only of themselves?

"Rejoice in your own goals over all else and live for nothing but that moment. That's what it means to be a striker."

A boy in the crowd suddenly snapped forward, causing what could be called a chain reaction.

Ego sneered, aware that he had just succeeded.