𝗰𝗵𝗮𝗽𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝗲𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁𝗲𝗲𝗻

"An offer."

As soon as those two words left Ego's speaker (?), you picked up your pace toward his dreaded office. As much as you did not want to be in there, you really couldn't help but be curious as to what he was talking about. What could your coach possibly want to give you?

What if I'm getting laid off? Oh my god. I have a wife and kids at home! How am I supposed to support them now? The mortgage!

Nah. Luckily, you had not hit your midlife crisis—yet. If anything, you could just leech off Ego. You deserve some sort of payment for doing this shit, anyway.

You creaked open his door, proceeding to slam it shut behind you. He turned around in his godawful chair and flung your phone toward you without a second thought. 

"Hey!" you yelled as you scrambled to catch it, clutching it close to your chest once you did. Who the fuck just throws around someone else's phone?! It was the first time you'd seen it in weeks, a connection to the outside world, and yet it's safety was already being risked. 

He raised his eyebrow in disapproval, "Go outside and call him. He has not stopped ringing that goddamn thing all morning."

"Alright..." you replied skeptically, turning on your heel to shut the door behind you. You weren't sure why your coach would be this eager about something. He'd said before he had something to tell you, but he'd been quite nonchalant. A bit weird.

You held the phone up toward your face so it could scan it, but the lock symbol just shook instead of opening the device. With a sigh, you pulled it down for a second before placing it back in front of your face, features on full display once again. Again, the phone didn't unlock and you had to but down so hard on your bottom lip you could almost taste the metallic tinge of blood.

Goddamn this stupid technology. What happened to the days people used pay-phones? Damn phones, they were most definitely why you hadn't been outside in weeks and were severely deficient in vitamin D.

I really do sound like a have a fucking mortgage.

After a moment to collect yourself and manage not to fling your phone against the wall, you relaxed and let it scan your profile once more. By the grace of everything good in the world (Anri), the phone unlocked and you were able to see the fifteen missed calls from your coach. The old man was desperate at this point.

You rung his number, barely having to wait two seconds before it picked up.

"Hello, [Surname]," he greeted stiffly.

Oh god. You couldn't tell if he was pissed or excited, meaning this conversation could either go great or very, very south. "Heeeeeeeeey. Why'd you need to call me so bad?" you asked carefully.

He sighed heavily on the other side of the line, his new tone of voice much lighter than before, "Ah! How come it took so many tries for you to answer, kiddo?"

The floor almost caved in with the amount of tension that was released from your body in that moment. So he didn't call to 'offer' me punishment for doing something stupid. You patted your back lightly for that one. One jail free card for [Name]. 

You laughed softly, "Ego doesn't let me have my phone. All my adoring fans must miss my social media presence so much."

"They don't," he answered flatly.

"Oh."

"No, they're just confused as to why that don't see stupid things like 'why do people talk about watching paint dry like it's a bad thing?' on their timelines anymore."

You frowned, "They should miss that. Unappreciative fucks. Do they not understand the intelligence that the complexity of that questi-"

"Shut up," he cut you off, "There is in fact something really important I need to tell you. I thought it could wait until you were finished with that whole Blue Lock thing, but they've gotten impatient."

You waited a beat, expecting him to continue. But, no. It was just dead silent on the other end. "Well? What is it, dude?"

"First of all, I am not 'dude' to you."

You shamefully sputtered out a small "sorry," before he continued, "And the reason I needed to talk to you was because-"

The rest of his sentence gotten drowned out by the obnoxious shouts down the hallway, the sound of Bachira's yells reverberating off the blank walls. Your brain went into to overdrive once you could hear his footfalls about to round the corner. You disregarded caution and threw the phone under the door to Ego's office, concealing it before he emerged down the hall.

"Kazuma!" he called out to you. "They're rolling again, you gotta come see if you get picked!"

Okay. Sure, it was nice of him to come get you. His timing, however, sucked ass. That call was probably important. Was it kinda your coach's fault for taking too long to get to the point? Yeah. But, Bachira could have waited like ten seconds. 

You didn't have much time to weight the possibilities of what you were about to hear before Bachira interrupted, as he rushed to close the distance between the two of you, grabbing your arm to drag you back to the joint room.

"Hey," you swatted off his grip, stepping into pace with him. "You really didn't have to come get me..." you grumbled.

"Aw, don't be like that," he smiled. "Plus, I wouldn't want you missing your placement. That'd pretty bad."

"Yeaaaaaah, terrible."

"Hahaha! What fucking dumbasses!"

You couldn't contain the utter amusement you were getting out of watching Rin and Shidou try and bitch slap each other on the field. Your game for the tryouts had concluded a little while ago, not that it was very eventful. Now, everyone excluded from the fifth match was gathered in the monitoring room, watching it all go down. Rin and Shidou were fighting about the final goal, which wasn't surprising.

"They cannot get along for the goddamn life of them," Chigiri sighed from beside you.

"I know right!" Isagi cut in. "Imagine the team they'd make if they weren't trying to rip out each other's throats all the time."

You cringed as you watched Shidou get fucking shocked by Ego's 'Anti Riot' precaution. "Did he just kill him?"

"No, moron," Chigiri chided. "Probably hurt like hell, though."

"It's kinda scary Ego can even do that. You think it's even legal?"

Isagi shook his head, "Definitely not."

The Japanese Football Association really should investigate into this place. It would probably be for the better of everyone. Blue Lock kinda resembled a prison. "Anyway," you started boredly, trying to continue the conversation to somewhere less conspiratorial, "How do you guys think you did in the tryouts?"

"Good," Isagi and Chigiri responded at the same time.

"Alright...some people are confident."

"I think Isagi has every right to be confident! He did really well today!" a kid with dark hair and a headband wrapped around his forehead exclaimed, jumping into your conversation with excited eyes.

You raised an eyebrow, you could vaguely recall him being called onto Isagi's team from before. His name, on the other hand? No files located. "Hi?"

He looked over to you with a big smile, "Hi! We haven't met yet! I'm a first year, Nanase Nijiro! What's your name?"

You returned his gesture with a more devilish expression, "Kazuma Kenji. Second year," you chuckled lowly.

Both Chigiri and Isagi let out a sigh at the scene, probably assuming where this would be going. "Leave the kid alone, Kazuma," Chigiri scolded.

"For real. Don't take advantage of his respect, please," Isagi agreed with an exasperated shake of the head.

You painted on an offended look to your face, accusing them with waving a finger between you. "What do you mean? I'm simply a strong believer in seniority! Nothing more to it. Anyway," you smiled sweetly to Nanase, "I'm quite parched."

And that's how you ended up relaxing in the monitoring room with a cool glass of water in your palm, easily ignoring the disapproving looks from your friends.

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