SCORE (Blue Lock)

61

"I'm sorry that happened," Isagi murmured to me from where he sat across the table. We had found a small and quaint Italian restaurant to eat at following the events at the bar. He gave me a warm smile. "I'm not surprised that you stood up for yourself though. It was pretty brave of you to try and stop that guy."

"I was just trying to do the right thing," I replied quietly, taking a sip from my cup of water. "If someone had stood up and tried to stop the guy who crashed into me and my family, then my life may look very different right now." 

For a second, my thoughts wandered to Blue Lock and then Hikaru. Would my life really be that different, though, right now, if that crash had not happened? My mother would still be alive, which would be an amazing thing. Hikaru would have been on the U-20 team. That means he would have played against Blue Lock and then he still would have been entered into the Neo Egoist League as a player. I frowned. That means I'd still be feeling how I do right now. I'd feel.... unsatisfied when playing soccer, except I'd still be trapped on a school team and no one would no my name.

"That's true," said Isagi as he reached from a piece of the bread we had been served. He picked it up slowly and stared at it as his voice broke me from my thoughts. "I think a lot about what things might look like now if I had done some things differently or if some things had not happened. If I had been a little bolder.... If I had not made mistakes. But then I realized that things happened the way they were supposed to happen. If I had not lost that game to Kira right before Blue Lock, then I may have not survived past the First Selection. Then I would not have anything that I have now. I would not be playing in the World Cup this year for Japan. I would not have met Bachira or Chigiri." My somber expression disappeared as his eyes met mine. "I would not have met you either." I blinked as he looked back down at the bread in his hands. "Life is funny that way."

I nodded slowly and quietly agreed, "Yeah..."

Isagi watched me for a moment as I also picked up some bread before saying, "You seemed to be mad at Rin when I showed up. Did he do something to make you angry?"

"Well, he broke up with me, Isagi," I muttered, looking away and down at the table. "In the worst way possible, he broke my heart and cut me out of his life. Of course, I'm angry. I don't care if was almost two years ago or not. I'm especially angry, because he just showed back up today and acted like none of it happened." My head shook. "I shouldn't be surprised. Rin will never change and I grew tired of having failed expectations for him a long time ago."

The boy sitting across from me nodded slowly. "Rin has not changed since you left. You're right. Not even a little." This statement made me annoyed and I briefly closed my eyes as Isagi continued in a soft tone, "And you should be angry with him for what he did."

"To be honest, I'm tired of being angry about it too. All I want to do is move on. But even though I moved almost 7,000 miles away and across the world to another country, Rin still seems to follow me everywhere, along with the rest of Blue Lock. Everywhere I go I get reminders of what happened from the media and questions about my time playing on Paris X-Gen. And, of course, they ask about him, and you, and anyone else they find interesting or anyone who is also really successful now. Some days it's nice though - on the days where all I do is focus on soccer. Some days I get to just play and not be bombarded about the past. However, even on those days, Sae is around. And even though he's not Rin, he's still a small reminder of it all. And I hate it. I hate the way it makes me feel."