"Damn it!"
The curse slipped through clenched teeth as Yukimiya sprinted across the pitch, frustration burning beneath his polished exterior.
The match had barely begun, and yet, he already felt it—that cold, suffocating pressure of being irrelevant.
He wasn't playing football. He was chasing shadows. Running aimlessly. Like a headless chicken, caught in a game that was leaving him behind.
And he knew why.
Because once the momentum tipped toward Isagi, there would be no prying it back.
No windows left to wedge yourself into.
No spotlight to steal.
Yukimiya couldn't let that happen.
He refused to be forgotten.
If the ball wasn't going to come to him… then he'd make his own opportunity.
So he stopped chasing the ball.
Instead, his eyes locked onto the source of every meaningful touch Bastard Münchens had produced since kickoff—the one orchestrating the tempo.
Isagi.
At that moment, Isagi had just bulldozed past Reo and flicked the ball clean over Kaiser's attempted interception, accelerating down the center like he owned the pitch.
Agi stepped up to block the path, sprawling his long reach across the space like a moving barricade.
But Yukimiya didn't waver.
He kept running.
He knew how that matchup would end.
And just as expected—Isagi slipped past Agi, no frills, just brutal speed and precision.
Yukimiya, on the lookout for a chance to steal the ball, kept his eye on Isagi, waiting for the perfect moment to strike.
And yet, a doubt whispered in Yukimiya's mind.
Could he really steal the ball?
Could he blindside Isagi—someone with vision that bordered on clairvoyance?
His pace didn't falter, but the uncertainty scratched at his nerves. No one could just sneak up on Isagi. That's not how it worked. You couldn't ambush a player who was always three steps ahead.
Unless...
You used the chaos.
And Kunigami provided just that.
Yukimiya's eyes caught it—a blur of orange sprinting into Isagi's blind spot, going in for the tackle.
And Isagi… didn't slow.
He kept the ball.
'Of course he did.'
But it was enough. That single second of tension—the timing of the tackle, the way Isagi shifted to avoid it—that was the moment Yukimiya had been waiting for.
He cut inward, slicing across the lane from Isagi's left, chest tightening with the weight of everything on the line.
His voice came low, barely above a whisper.
"Sorry, Isagi…"
He surged forward—shoulders low, feet silent, heart pounding.
"…but I'm running out of time."
Kurona, running up ahead, turned his head, his instincts screaming.
He knew Isagi had seen him—of course he had.
Even surrounded, even pressed from both front and back, Isagi always had the field mapped in his mind.
Kurona was in the pocket. The exact zone where Isagi would usually thread a killing pass.
But now… he wasn't so sure.
Because something was off.
Yukimiya had slipped in—too close, too fast—and for a second, Kurona couldn't see Isagi's full face.
Just a sliver through the moving bodies.
But it was enough.
That glimpse.
That expression.
Isagi wasn't bracing. He wasn't panicking.
He was grinning.
It was narrow. Razor-thin.
Predatory.
Kurona's breath hitched, and in that moment, it hit him—
This wasn't a sequence Isagi wanted to escape.
His lips moved, barely audible through the noise of the stadium, the pounding feet, the clash of egos and breathless motion.
"Kill. Kill."
Because that was the only translation of the look on Isagi Yoichi's face.
A trigger pulled in silence.
Kurona didn't need a signal anymore.
He just needed to keep moving.
Isagi had chosen his path.
And someone was about to be devoured.
While Kurona broke forward, trusting the rhythm, Isagi stayed true to his own lawless tempo.
Yukimiya surged in from the left, timing the interception perfectly—eyes locked on the exposed ball near Isagi's right foot.
But Isagi… didn't flinch.
Instead, his foot shifted—quick as a whip—and the ball snapped back in one clean drag.
Yukimiya's lunge missed.
He cut through air, his cleats barely skimming the ground as he overcommitted. Momentum pulled him forward.
In the same breath, Isagi's momentum reversed, dragging him a step back—straight into a wall of muscle.
Kunigami.
The orange-haired powerhouse had charged in with the intent to steal, muscles coiled like springs ready to explode, expecting to meet the ball or force a turnover. But what he got instead was Isagi crashing into him, body-first.
Kunigami's eyes widened, taken off guard. He'd expected Isagi to dodge—not to challenge him head-on in a physical clash.
But Isagi didn't shy away.
He invited it.
Using his own weight, he slammed into Kunigami with brutal timing—not to overpower him entirely, but to disrupt him. And that was enough. The slight stagger in Kunigami's footing gave Isagi just enough control to retain possession while also maintaining his own balance.
Kunigami cursed under his breath, frustrated. He'd failed to steal it.
And now he was part of the trap instead.
Ahead of Isagi, Yukimiya was still upright, still moving. Despite the failed tackle, he stayed on his toes, circling like a hawk, eyes locked onto the ball. He was going to steal it. He had to. The timing had been perfect.
But Isagi wasn't done.
He was dancing.
In one fluid motion, the ball shifted again—this time from Isagi's right to his left. A seamless transfer, the touch soft and lethal. His body leaned, legs coiling, and his center of gravity dropped. It looked like he was about to explode through the left.
Yukimiya reacted instantly.
His core tightened, legs pivoting—shifting his balance left to block that exact lane, to shut the door.
But the second he moved…
Isagi struck.
With his left foot, he dipped under the ball and scooped it up—not with force, but finesse. A soft flick. The kind that floated. The ball arced just high enough to sail over Yukimiya's shoulder—slow, deliberate, humiliating.
Yukimiya's balance wavered.
He reached—but he was half a beat too late.
And Isagi?
He didn't go left.
He went right.
Right through the sliver of space between Yukimiya and Kunigami.
The very two players who had tried to corner him—who had surrounded him with the intent to snuff him out—had, without realizing it, become the very architecture of their own downfall.
They had unintentionally formed a box around him.
And Isagi shattered it.
One was outmuscled. The other outplayed.
Kunigami growled under his breath, frustrated.
Yukimiya's jaw clenched, shoulders tense.
Their weapons—Kunigami's physicality and Yukimiya's dribbling—were used against them.
As Isagi slipped through the gap, his arms extended outward—like wings unfolding mid-flight. And in one fluid, almost mocking gesture, he patted both of them on the back. One slap each. Not hard. Just enough to sting their pride.
"Nice try, interns."
His voice was low, but clear.
And then he was gone.
Breaking forward.
The predator moved on.
Both Yukimiya and Kunigami turned—silent, breath catching in their chests—as they watched Isagi's back disappear into the open space ahead.
The moment had passed.
And it wasn't just a failed tackle or a missed chance.
They had each come into this match with their own quiet desperation—to matter, to survive, to carve out a moment of brilliance that would cement their place on this battlefield. Maybe a goal. Maybe a single play that shifted the tide.
But Isagi had taken that.
No—he crushed that.
They saw it now, in hindsight. The way he moved, the timing, the ease. He hadn't escaped them. He hadn't barely made it through.
He'd played with them.
Kunigami, the relentless powerhouse, had been met head-on and shoved aside. Outmuscled at his own game.
Yukimiya, the agile technician, whose dribbling was his pride, was undone with dribbles more precise than his own.
And that's what made it unbearable.
It wasn't a lucky sequence.
It was premeditated.
Isagi had decided how he would dismantle them. There were other options he could've taken, safer or simpler paths. But he chose this one. Chose them.
To humiliate. To remind.
That gap they had once imagined was closing.
It hadn't budged.
If anything, it had widened.
And as they stared at his back, shrinking with distance but never with presence, the truth settled like a weight in their chests.
Isagi Yoichi was still far, far beyond their reach.
But the game didn't stop to let that realization breathe.
Isagi met the ball with a feather-light touch, preparing to advance again—when a voice cracked through the air like a shot.
"I'm not done yet, Isagi!"
From the right, Kaiser burst in with renewed ferocity. The earlier humiliation—the flick, the fake, the way Isagi had danced past him—still burned beneath his skin. He had been waiting around like a predator, and now he lunged in for the kill.
Isagi hadn't seen him coming.
But he didn't panic.
Because even as Kaiser descended with all his fury—
There was still more to come.
"Don't forget about me, Isagi…"
And just as Kaiser closed in from the right—another voice joined the chaos.
"It's time for my debut."
Nagi.
Effortless as ever, Nagi swept in from Isagi's left. And suddenly, Isagi was boxed again, with one elite striker on either side.
Kaiser snarled under his breath the second he saw Nagi.
This wasn't what he wanted.
It was already hard enough to isolate and beat someone like Isagi one-on-one. Now there was no isolation, no space, just tangled chaos. Nagi's presence didn't help Kaiser—it suffocated him.
But Isagi didn't seem troubled.
Isagi saw them both.
And he smiled.
Without hesitation, he shifted right—straight toward Kaiser, as if inviting the clash.
Kaiser's eyes narrowed.
'What the hell…?'
That wasn't evasion.
That was a challenge.
Isagi came face to face with him, mere inches between their boots, and for a second—time bent. Muscles coiled. Breath hitched. A fraction of space, a fraction of time—one misstep and it would collapse.
Nagi, sensing the tempo shift, mirrored Isagi's motion. He swept in from the left, cutting the angle, feet silent but precise.
They had him now.
"Not really, Nagi..."
Isagi muttered, almost as if musing to himself.
And then—he stopped.
Like a slammed brake in a moving train.
The sudden halt shattered the rhythm. Nagi, caught mid-step, staggered half a pace forward, just enough to throw off his balance. Kaiser twitched, his body screaming now, but something—some instinct—made him hesitate...
While Isagi had already turned—spinning toward Nagi's side.
But his eyes…
They weren't on either of them.
They were focused past the pressure, beyond the duel, locked onto a corridor no one else had even noticed.
"It's a grand debut,"
He said, his grin sharpening.
"For someone else."
And with that, his right leg swung out.
A Travela.
The outside of his foot curled perfectly beneath the ball, sending it sailing in a sharp, curving the trajectory sharply as the ball rocketed leftward.
The exact side Nagi had just vacated.
The ball ripped past Nagi's head with a hiss, close enough to ruffle his hair.
His eyes widened. His balance teetered.
It had come out of nowhere.
While everyone else had been reacting to pressure, fighting tooth and nail in a shrinking pocket of chaos.
Isagi Yoichi had already moved on. Played past them. Read the future and wrote his answer into the sky.
And now that answer was falling.
Manshine City's backline saw it immediately—and froze.
A collective gasp beneath their disciplined exteriors. Because the ball wasn't just moving with pace. It was glitching through their vision—bending like a weapon, uncatchable by prediction, too sudden to react to.
Their current formation, a deep defensive shell, had been reinforced for just this reason. Three center-backs, flanked by two defensive midfielders, with wide mids trailing behind the halfway line—seven bodies arranged like a wall across the field's middle third.
A bunker built to survive Bastard München's forward blitz.
But for that one, perfect second—
Every one of them looked up.
All seven, eyes tracking the same ball. All of them focused on the same question.
Who is it for?
Because there was no one in the box.
None of Bastard München's forwards had been in position.
Kunigami was still trailing, breath short and jaw clenched, recovering from the interception he had performed on Isagi.
Yukimiya too—his legs moving on instinct now, but his mind still caught in that single second of failure.
Kaiser stood nearest to Isagi, close enough to reach out and grab him by the collar—yet miles away in relevance. His tongue clicked against his teeth in raw irritation.
None of them were available.
And yet the ball kept flying.
An unnatural, spiraling arc that defied every defensive calculation.
The violent Travela didn't drop with grace—it sliced through the air, dragging the laws of physics behind it. Every spin exaggerated its curve, like the ball had a mind of its own and it was hellbent on chaos.
Busby—Manshine City's towering center-back—was the first to react.
He'd held his line. He'd watched the space.
And now he ran.
He was closest. He had to be the one to reach it.
But just as he began to commit—his eyes caught motion on the flank.
A blur.
Lean frame. Controlled pace.
Kurona.
Cutting in from the right.
Kurona was being chased by Driver and Arthur, but his quick feet continued to increase the distance between them.
Busby's gut twisted. He recalculated.
Kurona was the only player remotely in a position to receive the ball. The rest were ghosts.
But then, something eased in his chest.
The ball—despite its venomous spin—looked like it would fall short. He would get there first. The curl wasn't sharp enough.
Relief whispered at the edges of his mind.
Until—
The curve bit harder.
Like the ball had teeth.
The spin kicked again mid-air, sudden and vicious. A twist so violent it looked like the ball had rebounded off the wind itself.
Busby's eyes went wide.
It shouldn't have done that.
It shouldn't have bent that much.
But it did.
It was no longer headed for the neutral space.
It was carving a new destination—the far right edge of the penalty box.
Kurona reached it in a full sprint, skimming the paint of the boundary line, perfectly in sync with the tail-end of that impossible pass.
He didn't slow down.
Didn't hesitate.
He let the ball drop once—just once—and killed its momentum with a subtle flick of his boot.
"Great pass, Egoist!"
Then—bang—his left leg swung through like a whip, striking the ball clean.
A rocket to the bottom-left corner.
The goalkeeper flinched, legs twitching, but didn't even dive.
Because in that instant, it looked unstoppable.
But the ball never reached the net.
Because it met a wall.
A red blur shot across the box like a streak of flame.
And then a boot met ball in a perfectly timed sliding clearance.
Chigiri.
Body parallel to the turf. One leg extended.
Hair flying like a war banner.
Kurona's eyes went wide, frozen mid-step.
Even the goalkeeper turned, stunned that someone had actually made it.
The ball was gone—blasted out of bounds like a cannon off Chigiri's sliding foot.
And as the momentum carried him through the grass, Chigiri twisted slightly, propping himself up on one arm, turf stains on his elbow, breath sharp in his chest. A cocky grin cutting across his face.
He turned his head back toward Kurona and spoke.
"Hey, twerp… that's as far as your luck goes."
Kurona's expression didn't move.
But behind those dark eyes, something snapped.
The tension in the air didn't get a chance to settle—because the roar of the commentators filled the stadium feed, voices cracking with adrenaline.
"WHAT A SAVE! An absolute missile from Kurona, shut down at the last possible second!"
"That's Chigiri Hyoma! The Crimson Flash does it again—he slices through the chaos!"
"This match had no brakes—and now, finally, it screeches to a halt! That sequence had it all: precision, madness, ego—and Chigiri shuts it down with a cold-blooded interception!"
"Another goal-scoring opportunity ripped away from Bastard München."
The camera panned in tight on Chigiri as he rose to his feet, brushing the dirt from his knee with deliberate slowness—his smirk still there, still sharp.
Further up the pitch, near the center circle, Isagi stood still.
Eyes locked ahead.
Kurona jogged back, chest rising and falling, jaw clenched in frustration. The near-miss still echoed in his mind—the perfect pass, the perfect shot, and... the perfect denial.
"Sorry…"
He muttered as he neared Isagi, locking eyes with him.
"I thought I had it."
Isagi's expression didn't twist with anger or disappointment.
Instead, a smile tugged at his lips—crooked, confident, unshaken.
"You'll get the next one."
He said simply.
But behind the calm, something darker stirred.
Kurona knew that smile. Knew that edge in Isagi's voice.
It wasn't false comfort.
It was a promise.
Because Isagi only thrived when someone was in his way.
Only felt alive when there was a wall to break.
A mark to beat.
A throne to steal.
And Kurona… he matched that tempo of Isagi.
His own smirk returned, tired but sharp, and without another word, he turned to face Manshine's half again.
Two minds—bound by understanding.
One burning bright enough to command the spotlight.
The other—sharp and silent in the shadows, the blade beneath the glint.
The duo who had just torn open a seven-man defense stood shoulder to shoulder, ready to strike again.
The scoreboard hadn't changed.
But the pressure had.
And this war?
It wasn't cooling off.
It was about to ignite.
.
.
.
.
.
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