NIKE -Blue Lock-

Dessert

THIS IS SO BORING I SWEAR, I'M SORRY

Underline means English

"Did you have trouble at Itoshi Sae's house?"

Nicole shrugged her shoulders at Ego's question, responding with a normal, monotone "nothing much happened" before shushing and looking away, totally uninterested.

Ego held back a sigh at the young woman's mindless attitude, almost tempted to tell her to go and take a few more days off.

"Tell me about your wounds. What did the doctor say?" he asked instead, opening a file accessible only to him and Anri and preparing to write down the answer.

Nicole lowered her gaze for a moment to the ring on her fourth finger, gently caressing it.

"It's okay. He said they are healing, surprisingly, very fast and I can resume activities without any problems." the girl replied with a smile, as her deep red eyes met the 30-year-old's black ones.

Ego showed no emotion, but his eyebrows moved slightly in what appeared to be an suspecting expression.

"Is that so..." he only said, as he scanned her face, from which absolutely nothing leaked out but absolute certainty of her own words.

"He also gave me a spray that will shield, more or less, the cuts so as not to infect them." she added a true piece of information, appearing even more sincere than she actually was.

Ego nodded, trusting her words and turning to the screen, typing that information into the computer.

The fake cover smile dissipated from the young woman's red lips as her eyes shifted back to the first and last gift she had been given for her birthday.

She absentmindedly peered at the stone, the color of which could symbolize so many things: pain, blood, evil, hatred, power, aggression, passion, love...

She bit her lip, while in her head the boy's words repeated themselves like an endless echo.

Happy birthday...

"Oh today is your birthday? You sustained one more year. Congrats." said Ego suddenly, almost as if he were reading her mind, after casting a second glance at the girl's personal data.

Nicole did not respond for a moment, nodding slowly at the man's words.

It was kinda better than happy birthday.

"Yeah." she said with the same energy, aiming her gaze at the screen, still not convinced what she should answer in such a case.

Ego raised an eyebrow at the young champion's cold and uncaring response, then decided to let it go. She had probably received so many good wishes that day that she was now tired of hearing them.

"Let's talk about how you're going to move in this selection." he said, causing her to look away from the screens to point her gaze at the 30-year-old.

"I've named it the Neo Egoist League. This second phase will see the program turn into a massive entertainment project with the sole purpose of further training its players for the U-20 World Cup." he began to explain, continuing to move his quick fingers across the keyboard and open screen after screen above the monitor.

Nicole's eyelids tightened imperceptibly as she spotted a seemingly unnecessary detail.

"Entertainment?" she repeated indeed, forcing the man to freeze from typing further and shift his seemingly blank and bored gaze to the younger woman's analytical and extremely attentive one.

"If course a person like you, immersed in the business world for years, would have noticed such a thing so quickly," he commented, swiveling his chair so that he was looking directly at the redhead at his side.