sun compression

Posted originally on the Archive of Our Own at http://archiveofourown.org/works/47091178.

Rating: Mature
Archive Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply
Category: M/M
Fandoms: Blue Lock (Manga), Blue Lock (Anime)
Relationships: Isagi Yoichi/Michael Kaiser, Michael Kaiser & Alexis Ness
Characters: Isagi Yoichi, Michael Kaiser
Additional Tags: Post-Canon, Career Ending Injuries, Aged-Up Character(s), Character
Study, It Gets Worse Before It Gets Better, Bottom Michael Kaiser, Top
Isagi Yoichi, Angst, Love letter to Kaiser
Language: English
Stats: Published: 2023-05-10 Completed: 2023-06-03 Words: 20,286 Chapters:
8/8
 sun compression
by Pistatsia

Summary

Why is it always you, Kaiser thinks bitterly, hugging Isagi tighter. Why is it always you,
who changes me so much without even knowing it yourself?

It's always you, you, you. You make me go forward, you make me fight even when the
only thing I want to do is give up, you make me reevaluate everything I knew, you, who
don't even know how much you have done for me.

It's always Yoichi.

When Kaiser wakes up, it is from a knock on the door.

Notes

The story is finished! Eight chapters, updates every Monday and Saturday.

I thought I'd start posting this one after Kaleidoscope, but I ended up writing it too quickly,
and with a couple more chapters added to Kaleidoscope I see no point in putting it off -
knowing myself if I'd put it away I'll end up with rewriting it five more times or so. If it
bothers you in any way - please feel free to mute me from search results :D I understand how
annoying it can be

Also, yuzi11111 made an amazing fanart for this work, precisely illustrating both the
atmosphere and characters themselves. Be sure to check it out!
 Chapter 1

When Kaiser wakes up, it is from a knock on the door. This is strange at the very least
because it has been raining outside for the second week in a row, a fine drizzle mixing with
the fog covering the forest outside the window and the dampness hanging in the air. No one
would voluntarily go to a place on the edge of Welzergasse in this weather.

Besides, no one knocks on his door these days.

Kaiser turns on his side and, out of a habit he has not yet been able to break, tries to press his
knees against his chest. A flash of sharp pain makes him sob and he reaches for his knee with
his hand, but that only makes it worse.

Kaiser breathes raggedly, his mouth ungracefully open, tears of pain dripping uncomfortably
into it, counting his breaths, waiting for the attack to subside. It only gets worse for his joint.
He needs to take the painkillers, the ointment and the bandage given to him after the
operation, he needs to get up and eat for the first time in three days, he needs to shower, get
dressed and check if the phone he smashed against the wall still works.

These are the things he has to do.

But he doesn't think about them.

He doesn't have the energy to move. He doesn't want to.

His insides are empty.

The endless pounding only gets worse. Along with his knee, his head begins to hurt. Probably
from sleeping during the day - though Kaiser can't tell the difference between day and night
very well now. He sleeps most of the time now, and when you sleep that much, time becomes
an incomprehensible mix of sleep and now-dead dreams.

The knocking sounds like drums. Without thinking, Kaiser gets up, leans on one healthy knee
and almost falls off the couch where he's been sleeping for the past three days - since his last
foray out of the bedroom to get instant soup from a bag. He never made it back, lying first on
the floor and then, at some point, under the covers on the sofa.

Kaiser crawls along the wall to the main entrance, his fingers sliding over the jamb of the
stone archway - it's probably not a living room at all, it's a dining room - over the rough and
aged wallpaper and wood. His knee hurts even more as the carpet tangles under his feet.
Through the glass of the front door, clouded by rain and dirt, a dark figure flashes through,
knocking relentlessly on the door without using the bell.

Kaiser fumbles with his keys for a long time before his muddy brain realizes that the door
would unlock without them. He pulls the wrought-iron handle a few times, only then
realizing that the door opens the other way. He pushes it open and the hinges, corroded by
time, creak loudly amid the soft sound of raindrops hitting the threshold and the ground.
Yoichi, disheveled and drenched, opens his mouth and begins to shout something in Japanese,
almost in irritation. Kaiser doesn't have his headphones on; he can't understand him.

Kaiser closes the door with a light knock, hangs the jingling chain and shuffles towards the
sofa, ignoring the noise. It's eleven meters to the sofa, three steps, groaning parquet flooring
and walls with time-stained oak inlays.

He crawls under the prickly, dusty blanket, stretches out his aching leg, closes his eyes and
falls asleep again to the sound of the pines and the wind from the mountains. The room is
cold and damp. The moist air from the open exit to the terrace makes his throat ache and his
knee cramp, but Kaiser pays no attention.

He feels light, light, light.

When Kaiser wakes for the second time, it is from a cup of water poured over him. He blinks
vaguely, wiping the moisture from his eyelids and looks at Isagi.

Isagi - angry, wet and frightened - looks back at him.

They remain silent, just looking at each other. At the edge of his consciousness, Kaiser
notices that the sound of wind and water has died away. Yoichi has closed the doors to the
terrace.

Water is now dripping from both of them.

"We should go to the bathroom," Isagi says hoarsely in German. He sounds tired. The bags
under his grayed eyes stand out on his pale face. "You need to be dried. You'll catch a cold."

Normally, Kaiser would have grinned and explained to Isagi at length that he had first doused
him with water and made him wrinkle like a soaked cat and now, he was worried about his
health.

They would have joked and cursed and laughed and everything would have been as it should
have been.

Now Kaiser didn't even remember about it. Thoughts are heavy in his head; trying to think
makes him sick. His head feels like it's stuffed with heavy cotton wool, like toys in a museum
outside a casino.

He is so tired.

"Kaiser, please," Isagi asks and sits down on the parquet floor in front of the sofa. Their eyes
are on the same level now. Swallowing, Yoichi reaches forward and gently brushes a wet
strand of hair away from Kaiser's face. "Just come with me."

Kaiser cannot argue with him. It's easier for him to agree.
Holding his arm, Isagi stumbles all over the ground floor, glancing unpleasantly up the oak
staircase to the second floor, when he finally finds the right door. The bathroom, unlike the
rest of the house, is modern and white; the black marble tiles with white streaks gleam under
the light that Isagi turned on, stretched by a dozen bulbs under the ceiling.

Kaiser sits quietly on the edge of the bathroom while Isagi curses as he tries to plug in a
hairdryer and find an outlet, banging his side against the undulating sink in the vanity. His
reflection glides nervously through the glass of the mirror on the wall.

"Okay," Yoichi says at last, looking absently at the hairdryer. "Maybe we should do it the
other way round."

He rummages through the drawers and cupboards, burying himself in the piles of bottles,
sponges, detergents and other necessities that accumulate over time. The grandson of the old
owners had sold the house with all this stuff and Kaiser hadn't had time to sort it out.

Isagi finds the bathtub stopper and a few minutes later, hot water hisses and runs down the
scrubbed white ceramic.

"There are bath bombs in here," Isagi says uncertainly and pulls a plastic basket with small
things out of the cupboard. "You like them. Do you want me to put them in the water? Or
here, look, some salt."

Kaiser covers his eyes, dozing off again and leans against the wall. Isagi holds his shoulders
to prevent him from slipping and hitting his head on the tiles.

As soon as the water fills the tub, Isagi climbs in and pushes Kaiser in after him, sitting down
next to him, skin to skin. They're both still cold - Isagi from the tossing and turning between
the airport, the center of Vienna and the road from the station to this place, and Kaiser from
the lack of heating and the weather. It gets too narrow and cramped; Kaiser bangs his knee
against the hard ceramic and moans hoarsely in pain. Water splashes over the side onto the
tiles.

"Shh, shh, I'm sorry," Isagi hisses awkwardly, straightens up and hugs Kaiser around his
stomach. His chin touches Kaiser's shoulder. The bathroom is quiet, only the splashing of
water between them and the faint sound of the air heater on the wall can be heard. "I didn't
mean to."

"Damn, it's probably too early to get it wet," Isagi remembers and looks strangely at Kaiser's
knee sticking out of the water. It doesn't look good, the stitches cut into the smooth skin, it’s
red and ugly swollen. "You should have told me, Kaiser."

After waiting for an answer, which never comes, Isagi sighs and reaches for some kind of
towel to wrap around his knee and shower gel, bending over Kaiser. He gently washes Kaiser,
rinses off the foam and gently rubs the shampoo on his head. Of course, in this position it is
impossible to wash oneself or another person normally, but they do what they can. This
Isagi's attempt looks pathetic and ridiculous.
They both clumsily climb out of the bathroom, Isagi pulling Kaiser out, this time paying
more attention to his knee. It still hurts, but Kaiser doesn't tell him that.

The water runs down the drain along with the foam and shampoo from Kaiser's hair, which
Isagi carefully rinses out, clutching at the tangled strands with her fingers.

"It's expired," Isagi frowns and shakes the bottle of conditioner he found. "I guess you can
still use it, right? Otherwise, I wouldn't be able to brush your hair."

Kaiser can't remember the last time he brushed his hair, but it must have been before the
operation. Maybe even before the match after which he was taken away. The normally
smooth and even strands faded and tangled into knots.

A minute later, Isagi rinses off the conditioner, too impatient, and begins to dry them
immediately, seating Kaiser back on the edge of the bathtub, forgetting to brush his hair first.

"The pigment has almost faded," Isagi says quietly and absently runs a slightly dried strand
of blond hair between his fingers. It's frizzy - normally, Kaiser would have used a hairspray
or a hairdryer with the right nozzle, but he hadn't remembered about them while he was
escaping here and then laying in an almost comatose state, occasionally filling up with
impotent rage, destroying one of the rooms below and then falling back into a blissful semi-
consciousness. "The ends are almost turquoise now. I can order a new one and dye it for you?

Kaiser doesn't reply anything.

Isagi sighs and turns off the hairdryer.

By the time he pulls Kaiser out of the bathroom and lets him rinse his mouth with the
mouthwash, the house is already warm; Yoichi should have found the heaters - electric
radiators screwed under the windowsills and overhanging the doorways.

"You have food, don't you?" Isagi asks, settling Kaiser down on the sofa and throwing a
blanket over his lap. When he sees Kaiser's blank look, he sighs. "Fuck, I wanted to get it, but
I didn't have time, it's Sunday and everyone is still crazy on the train from the airport and in
the trams. But you have something, don't you?"

Isagi picks at the discarded bags at the entrance, where Kaiser two weeks ago had piled
everything that required a minimum of cooking effort from the shelves of BILLA; soup out
of the bag, noodles, quick porridge, half-rotten packed salads and lunches that he hadn't taken
to the fridge.

"Is that all you ate? Are you out of your mind?" Isagi says indignantly when he sees it but
cuts himself off. He continues in a much softer voice. "Kaiser, you can't do that, come on..."

Kaiser stares blankly into space.

"I'll buy something normal," Isagi says firmly and goes quickly to the door. He grabs his still-
wet jacket and leaves puddles on the parquet at the entrance.
"Sunday," Kaiser says quietly, covering his eyes and remembering Isagi's words about the
trams. It's the first thing he's said in a little over two weeks. His voice is hoarse and strange. It
would frighten him if he had any strength left. "The shops are closed."

Isagi stops, his hands half buried in his torn jacket.

"Fuck," he says tiredly and starts to take off the jacket. "What, here too?"

Kaiser shrugs barely noticeable. He doesn't have the strength for more.

When Yoichi sees this, he frowns and walks back into the kitchen with a clear step. Kaiser
watches through the openings of the white doors of the corridor as Isagi rummages through
the cupboards, pulling out anything that looks usable - a half-empty package of rice,
buckwheat, a dried fruit mix, five tea bags, salt, flour, a cinnamon sachet, fizzy vitamins in
blisters... Kaiser stops looking and closes his eyes again. The heated air, to which he had
become unused to over the past weeks, warms his skin.

Outside the window, the wind continued to blow in from the mountains of the Wienerwald.
Raindrops slap against the window pane.

"How long has it been since you ate?" Isagi asks, staring suspiciously at the stale wheat
bread. "You probably shouldn't eat much."

"Kaiser?" Isagi repeats insistently.

"I don't remember," Kaiser says quietly, leaning back against the back of the sofa. The
uncomfortable position hurts his neck. A nerve must be pinched. He slept like that most of
the time, hiding from the sparse daylight, too tired to draw the curtains.

"Gosh, you just..." Isagi didn't finish his sentence, exhaling frustratedly and starting to search
for something on his phone, irritatedly brushing drops from his hair from the screen. "It says
that after a hunger strike, you should start with fruits and yogurts, but there's none of that
here. I don't know, you'll eat some rice and water, right? I'll get some proper food in the
morning"

As promised, fifteen minutes later, after Isagi had found a pot and cleaned the stove, he
pushes a few spoonfuls of empty rice into Kaiser's mouth. Kaiser chews it just to get Isagi to
leave him alone. It's hard for him to even pick up the spoon, hard to chew, hard to swallow,
hard to keep his eyes open.

He's so tired.

"Is there a bedroom here?" Isagi asks from behind him and quickly pulls a mobile phone
charger out of his wet suitcase. "You're getting sleepy."

Without waiting for Kaiser to answer, he goes out into the hallway and starts opening the
doors one by one. Fortunately, he doesn't try to drag Kaiser up the oak stairs to the first floor,
where the main bedrooms are. In the guest room - where Kaiser had slept earlier in the week -
he closes the open windows and pushes Kaiser under the heavy blankets and covers, slipping
in himself a few minutes later, placing the charging phone on the notch in the wall above the
bed.

Yoichi hugs him from behind, breathing softly into his neck. The other man's body presses
against Kaiser's, as if to protect him.

Kaiser feels nothing.

 Chapter 2

This time, Kaiser awakes to the harsh ringing of the alarm clock in his ears.

Morning light begins to filter into the room through the open curtains. The sky is still covered
in grey clouds, a solid layer with the sun barely peeking through. It's early morning, and if
you listen closely, you can hear the birds singing in the garden, wet with the first melting
frost on the grass.

"Fuck," Yoichi groans wearily behind him, bending over Kaiser to the phone and sleepily
trying to turn off the alarm. Cold heels press against Kaiser's ankles, intertwining with them
under the blanket. "I forgot to turn it off, sorry, go back to sleep."

Kaiser obediently falls asleep. Half awake, he feels another man's lips pressing quickly and
firmly against his shoulder before Yoichi gets up and walks away.

He wakes again when it's almost dawn outside. The sky is still overcast and the grass is now
completely wet. Kaiser gets up without thinking; also without thinking, he pulls on the
bathrobe that Yoichi has left on his chair in the corner and shuffles into the hallway, first on
the carpet by the bed, then on the dark parquet floor.

Yoichi sits in the kitchen, on the wicker chair he dragged in from the hall.

"Go brush your teeth," Yoichi tells him, chewing. The cheese sandwich in his hand is
dangerously stuffed with tomatoes and other stuff, so that with every movement the filling
threatens to fall out. "Then we'll eat normally."

Kaiser obediently drags himself to the bathroom and even finds the new toothbrush and
toothpaste that Yoichi bought. While Kaiser slept, Isagi went to the store.

When Kaiser returns, Isagi puts him contentedly in a long wooden chair with a backrest in
the dining room. If it is a dining room at all - Kaiser still hasn't found out what this room is,
although he has slept in it for the last few days. It is dusty and neglected, like the rest of the
house, with old-fashioned monochrome grey wallpaper, a cluttered pedestal of figurines and
embroidered napkins, and reproductions of Klimt and Schiele paintings on the walls.

"It's a kiwi," Kaiser says hollowly, looking at the plate of oatmeal and fruit in front of him.
It's ugly and lumpy; Kaiser has no idea how to eat it. Yoichi never learned to cook.

"I know," Yoichi replies, sitting down opposite Kaiser. In the daylight filtering through the
windows, which are barely covered by heavy velvet curtains, he looks younger. What
younger, though - he's twenty-three, he's young.

"I hate kiwis," says Kaiser. It tastes too sour, the seedy veins stick unpleasantly between the
teeth, and the particles of peel tickle the throat.
"Yes," says Yoichi. He stares at Kaiser intently, waiting for a reaction. "I know. That's why I
bought them."

Kaiser's gaze shows no reaction, and Yoichi looks away disappointedly.

"Eat," Isagi says. He picks up a lump of oatmeal with his spoon, and shoves it into his mouth
with barely a crinkle.

Isagi chews demonstratively, looking at Kaiser. "Very tasty, by the way."

In the past, after such banter, Kaiser would have made sure that the bowl of oatmeal would
have landed on Isagi's head. Now Kaiser starts chewing silently. Lumps of porridge stuck in
his throat and Kaiser struggles to swallow them, ignoring the glass of yogurt next to him.

"What did you do?" Isagi asks and puts the dirty dishes away. He looks at the rest of the
oatmeal on Kaiser's plate with displeasure. "Well, you must have done something. Were you
out in the garden? In town?"

Isagi still waits for an answer and tries to nudge Kaiser. But Kaiser does not say anything, he
looks absent-mindedly elsewhere on the desk without raising his head.

"Okay," Isagi sighs tiredly, runs a hand through his hair and pulls himself together. He covers
his eyes and continues patiently. "Alright. Did the hospital give you a list of exercises and
medications? Where did you leave it?"

Kaiser, who wants to get this over with as quickly as possible - even in this state of mind,
knowing that Yoichi won't just let him go - stands up heavily. A chair squeaks on the parquet
floor as he limps over to the abandoned bags, crutch and backpack that were piled heavily in
the hallway upon his arrival. He had stormed out of the hospital as soon as they let him out
and had immediately rushed to the train to Vienna; of course he had no belongings at all, only
what he had taken with him to the game. He always carried the keys to his apartment and
house with him, just in case. He didn't have many of them.

He'd only remembered this house when, in his anger after the surgery, he'd squeezed too hard
and broken Ness's bird pendant on the keys in the hospital. The key had come in handy at the
time, and Kaiser had struggled long and painfully to figure out what it was for in the first
place.

Good thing he remembered. If not even he had realized about the house, then certainly not
the journalists who were now probably besieging his apartments in Munich and other cities
where he played.

"Good," Isagi interrupts his scattered memories and turned the contents of Kaiser's backpack
on the table. Jars with medicine, ointments, food supplements and other trifles banged loudly
against the wood. "Is there a list of how to take them?"

He finally finds the list himself, digging under the charts with the rehabilitation exercises and
the knee brace. Yoichi frowns tensely, looks at it, and then turns his gaze back to the pile of
medicine.
"Take the anticoagulants for now, I'll just find them," Yoichi finds the right package and
squeezes a pill into his palm. "It says to take them in the evening, but you'd better take them
now. What are they for? It's underlined three times, is it important?"

"Thrombosis," Kaiser says quietly, the memory of the conversation with the attending
physician weighing heavily on his mind. He reaches for the pill.

For a moment, Isagi looks like he's going to get sick. But Kaiser doesn't look and Isagi
quickly turns away.

Without thinking, Kaiser tries to swallow the pill and it immediately gets stuck in his throat.
He starts coughing unpleasantly and panting.

"You're so silly," Yoichi sighs and goes to get some water.

Ten minutes later, they are sitting side by side on the sofa. Kaiser is still in a semi-drowsy
state - that disgusting state where your eyes are slimy and everything inside is frozen, but you
can't sleep. If Kaiser could, he would sleep all the time - that would be so good.

Isagi strokes Kaiser's head absent-mindedly, as if he's fending off thoughts he's not aware of,
frowning at the exercise sheets. "Don't you want to give me the number of your doctor? It's
all clear there, but for the last two weeks you've had to take medication and work on your
knee, now I don't know if you can do anything with it. "

Kaiser sees no need to answer him. Yoichi sighs helplessly and puts the papers aside.
Suddenly, he bends down and rubs his face violently.

He straightens and smiles uncertainly at Kaiser. His smile trembles slightly - something is
wrong with it, Kaiser doesn't like it. He may wish he could fix it, but he can't. This wish,
barely flickering, dies quietly after a few seconds.

"I'll think of something," Yoichi says, even though he knows that Kaiser is barely listening to
him. "I promise."

But day after day, nothing changes. With each passing day, Isagi looks more emaciated and
lost. Something in Kaiser reacts to that, to every sigh and every tired wrinkle on his forehead,
something sick and slightly guilty - but too weak and barely alive, it dies before it has time to
form.

He doesn't have the strength to reach out to Isagi even when they cuddle together before
falling asleep.

It's the fifth day since Yoichi's arrival when he finally breaks, exhausted and human, crushed
by the constant silence, the endless rain and the twilight of the hidden sun.

"I think I'm doing it wrong," Isagi admits quietly. His back is ungraciously bent. "You
probably don't need all this. You always hated it when I was pestering to you like this."

It wasn't that he hated it - they just never had time for it, Kaiser thinks absently. It's physically
difficult to think and speak. He wants to disagree with Isagi, to correct him somehow, but as
soon as he finds the words, Isagi stands up.

"It's just that you," he swallows. If Kaiser could think now, he would hear the barely
concealed fear in his voice. "You will never get better like this. You'll never get back into the
sport like this, do you understand?"

As if he could ever return to the sport, Kaiser suddenly thinks angrily and stops to listen to
Isagi's words, which are lost in the background noise. As if he would wallow here if he had
even the slightest chance. But his emotions are still muted and behind the endless tiredness,
he can barely feel this anger. Yoichi is an idiot if he believes that after going through all of
Kaiser's files. This is strange for a man as logical and rational as he is, but Kaiser - although
he would normally like to cling to Yoichi's mistake and unravel it to the end - is incapable of
thinking about it any further.

Only when Yoichi stands in front of him and watches him, Kaiser comes to his senses. Isagi
looks up at Kaiser, taking in the flaky skin of his poor grooming, the lack of the usual sharp
red eyeliner, the graying of his eyes. Kaiser doesn't know what Isagi sees in his face, but it
only makes something sickening seep over his face.

Lazy thoughts roll around in his head with heavy stones.

"I'll be right back," Isagi promises out loud for some reason. "I..."

He hesitates. "I... maybe this will help you. I don't know what else I can do."

Isagi adds a bit bitterly with a sigh. "It always pushed you forward more than I ever could."

Suddenly, he stands up and rushes out of the living room as if he's afraid to change his mind.
His loud, clear footsteps echo off the old walls for a moment before disappearing into one of
the rooms.

Kaiser leans back. He covers his eyes again. A familiar sleepiness envelops him, almost
suffocating him.

He is pulled out of his slumber - too short, no more than five minutes have passed - by
Yoichi, who has returned to the room. He sets his laptop down on the table in front of Kaiser
with a loud thud, taps into the Internet streaming from his phone, and opens YouTube.

"Look at the screen," Yoichi almost commands Kaiser, quickly typing the name of the video
into the search bar. His usually bright eyes have darkened and are now covered with a kind of
crust of embittered morbidity and anger at himself. He steps back behind the sofa and stands
behind Kaiser. If Kaiser lifts his head, he will feel his warm breath.

Kaiser obediently turns his gaze to where he is told. For some reason, Yoichi seems to be
upset about this.

Kaiser stares at the laptop - his eyes, tired from the artificial light of the monitor, hurt, and he
has to concentrate before his vision can focus. He and Yoichi often watched this kind of
thing, footage of missed games, some nature documentaries when they were too tired, just
some silly videos - in between seasons when they could see each other, in short meetings
between games.

Only this time Yoichi is doing something wrong. Something is breaking through from under
the cloudy shroud in Kaiser's mind that prevents him from thinking clearly as usual.

Something is wrong.

"Stop it," Kaiser says quietly, staring at the footage of the running video. Consciousness
moves lazily and heavily within him. It burns under his skin, tightens his throat like a vice.
"Why would you..."

The gaze glides blankly over the "Highlights," "Super Cup," "Star Striker" drawn on the
screen.

Desi goes around Bernard and sends the ball towards the goal, but it is knocked out by the
opposing defender.

"No," Isagi says sharply, digging his fingers into Kaiser's shoulders. His eyes are fixed on a
point on the screen - he doesn't look at Kaiser.

"Watch."

Sae intercepts his opponent's ball and sends a cross to Ha Jun. They're in the penalty area.

"I said stop," Kaiser repeats louder, feeling himself start to tremble with each new second of
the video. His throat tightens into a knot. The air he breathes gets stuck in his throat.

On the screen, Ambala - with Kaiser's ten on his back, now in his place as the only 4-4-1-1
striker - takes a pass and scores a goal. The team rushes to him, as they should have to Kaiser,
who was carted off the field after a bad foul just a game ago.

"No," he pleads weakly, almost sobbing.

"I won't stop!" Isagi almost screams, not paying attention to the way Kaiser is shaking and
digging his hands into his knees. Isagi looks desperate - and he is shaking himself, only now
Kaiser notices it. He is almost begging. "Look to the end and do something! They live their
lives peacefully while you..."

On the screen, along with the end of the video, 3:0 is reflected.

Something inside Kaiser bursts and he can no longer hear Isagi.

The laptop, along with the desk lamp, the pills, the papers, the fruit bowl and the silver cup
holder fly to the floor, following the sharp blow of his hand.

Kaiser finally feels something for the first time in almost a month.

It's not gratitude for Yoichi, it's not warmth at the thought of Ness who must be scouring
Europe right now in search of Kaiser, it's not pain at the loss of everything he had.
It's fury.
 Chapter 3

Kaiser faintly remembers what exactly he is screaming wildly in Isagi's face, grabbing him
by the collar of his sweatshirt. All the putrefaction and seething malice that has been brewing
inside him since the day he was told that the operation had failed - when the last pathetic and
disgusting hope he'd ever allowed himself to feel had finally smoldered to ashes inside him -
is being squeezed out of him. His knee suddenly buckles in terrible pain and Kaiser almost
falls, but at the last moment, he grabs the back of the couch.

And Isagi, who is used to always snapping at Kaiser in response, screams at first desperately,
scared and tired, not knowing what to do. Then he looks into Kaiser's face, sees the wrinkles
in his forehead and the tears that have come out and shuts up immediately, cutting himself
off.

How dare he hold back, how dare he feel sorry for him, how dare he be so gentle and subtle,
the angry and cruel thoughts that had finally awakened beneath his skin beat out. Kaiser's
rage shakes him so violently that he is afraid of falling.

This useless and disgusting pity makes Kaiser angrier than anything Yoichi could ever do.

He spends the rest of the day sleeping or crawling out on the terrace above the garden, to the
damp smell of the earth and the very faint and sour smell of sprouting buds. It's still brown
from the dried grass and bare leaves under the melted snow. Yoichi, either frustrated or
ashamed, leaves Kaiser an under-salted jar of vegetable soup and a pile of pills on the table
without speaking to him and goes upstairs. Kaiser has no idea what's up there, so he has no
idea what Yoichi might be doing.

The next day, Kaiser wakes up alone - he remembers Yoichi crawling into him at night,
snuggling up too warmly, and leaving in the morning, waking Kaiser as he tried to get out of
the twisted blankets between them.

The first thing Kaiser feels is disgust. It rises in his throat in a viscous lump that prevents him
from breathing, almost to the point of vomiting; he inhales and exhales several times, hoping
to quell it, but it still shakes under his skin. He feels terribly sick. He's suddenly aware of the
stubble, the tight skin, the chapped lips, the unsightly sunken cheeks, the bags under his eyes,
the greasy, disheveled hair that has become stiff without proper care. The broken ends, faded
to a dirty blue, are scratching the skin roughly.

The second thing he feels is the realization that the blissful and simple fog in his head is
almost gone. He still finds it hard to think, the thoughts rolling lazily around in his head. But,
forcibly torn from his carefully constructed world hidden from other people by Yoichi, torn
from it in the worst and most painful - and fastest and most workable - way, he can no longer
contain the avalanche of memories and thoughts. An unrealistically bruised knee flashes
before his eyes, a crack in the ceiling of the operating room where he woke up too early from
the anesthesia, Sae's firm grip on his shoulder, the screams of the fans celebrating another
midfielder's goal - while Kaiser lies on the field three meters from the goal, on the verge of a
painful shock.

For about ten minutes he doesn't move, he doesn't feel the strength to get up. If he gets up,
he'll have to... move somewhere. To do something. To decide something.

He doesn't know exactly what.

He - the usual "he" that he has so carefully constructed - doesn't even exist anymore.

And as much as he would like to go back to sleep, as much as he would like to stop thinking,
he cannot. His waking consciousness begins to think, to remember, to habitually analyze
himself, the circumstances, and what he should do - and he doesn't like it. It hurts and tears
him apart in ways Kaiser couldn't have imagined before.

The sense of loss and familiar helplessness becomes unbearable, and he pushes it in, pushes it
deeper, and gets up, wobbly.

Kaiser finds his slippers and waddles to the bathroom, the sound of raindrops hitting the glass
windows. His disgustingly swollen knee aches terribly.

When he reaches the bathroom, he closes his eyes for a moment, holds his breath, and looks
at himself in the mirror for the first time in almost three weeks.

He sees himself and immediately turns away in horror, twisting his knee awkwardly. And he
falls, hitting the sink with his elbow.

With a rumbling fall, he lies motionless in pain, breathing heavily, stifling panic at the
flaring, anxious thoughts of the doctors' threats of inability to walk after another injury, until
almost immediately he hears a loud stomping and the sharp sound of the edge of the door
hitting the wall.

"Can I even leave you alone just for five minutes?" Isagi asks loudly and almost falls down
on the hard floor next to Kaiser. As much as he curses and gets angry with Kaiser, his face is
crossed with fear as he frantically but surprisingly carefully searches for Kaiser himself and
then for his knee. Luckily, Kaiser has always known how to fall properly, which is what
football is all about, and manages to twist himself out of the way by getting his hands
underneath him. He's not even scratched, only his sides and arms are starting to hurt,
threatening to bruise.

"Be careful how you walk," Yoichi lets out a small breath of relief, shakes himself off, and
stands up. "How did you fall like that anyway? I'll get you a crut..."

Yoichi immediately bites his tongue and deliberately looks somewhere in the wall. The
memory of the crutch makes Kaiser so angry that he feels like tearing the bathroom apart, but
he pushes this desire deeper into himself, to the rest.

"Is there shaving cream in here?" Kaiser simply asks. It's probably not the best conversation
starter after their first meeting since the summer and after last night's scene. But what can he
do?

Luckily, the shaving machine itself is here - a horribly noisy and old-fashioned Panasonic
model that Yoichi bought about three years ago and never changed.

"Shave with soap," Yoichi grimaces as he helps him stand up. Kaiser sees a flicker of relief in
his eyes that Kaiser is talking to him, that Kaiser is talking at all. "You're such a sissy."

"It dries the skin," Kaiser insists, purposefully ignoring the way Yoichi's eye starts to twitch.

"Okay," Yoichi replies humbly. "I will buy. Is there anything else, Your Majesty?"

Kaiser tells him that he will think about it and Yoichi, rolling his eyes one last time, finally
leaves him alone.

Maybe yesterday's quarrel really did prove to him that the last few days of staying close to
Kaiser were completely pointless, Kaiser thinks reluctantly as he turns on the shaving
machine. That it wasn't what Kaiser needed at all.

Or maybe he just took a good look at it, finally figured it out, and he doesn't care about this
you, a small voice whispers inside.

Kaiser grimaces and reaches for the soap, trying to concentrate only on his chin, not to look
at the faded and unsightly dirty color of his eyes, at the flaky and hard skin with the healed
scratch from the match on his forehead, at the brittle strands sticking out in all directions.

When he comes out into the kitchen, he feels a little better. At least his skin is flushed from
the wash, his hair, though still tousled, is squeaky clean, and his face is smooth. It's still a
state that Kaiser hates - because it's not perfect, never perfect - but it's a step forward.

Yoichi, who looks around - even though he surely heard Kaiser coming out of the bathroom -
goes back to the microwave and takes a bowl out of it, placing it on the table in front of
Kaiser. The porridge this time is rice, with honey - that's what Kaiser likes, unlike the horror
earlier this week. Even if it's a little mashed and too tasteless, it's... okay.

It's an awkward offer of peace - they rarely apologized aloud to each other.

Yoichi probably hadn't expected such an outburst from himself yesterday. Kaiser couldn't
blame him, even if he himself wouldn't have felt pathetic gratitude for Yoichi pulling him out
of that hole. He would have done much worse to himself if he'd seen himself in that state, and
he certainly wouldn't have been gentle at first.

And Kaiser could sulk as much as he wanted, but Yoichi took care of him these days as much
as he could.

"Thank you," Kaiser replies after a short pause, picking up the porridge with his spoon from
the edge of the bowl - where it wasn't so hot. In that "thank you" - two words, a few sounds
and movements - is both gratitude for the last few days and for trying to help, and a silent
agreement to accept that help. Even if Kaiser refuses to acknowledge it.
Isagi's whole face lights up immediately, illuminated by an uncertain hope and he, of course,
understanding what Kaiser means by this word, stands up vigorously and hurries to the newly
collected papers after yesterday's day.

"Look, I made a chart for the pills - which ones to take and how long to take them, now this
one from yesterday for thrombosis, for the joints, and an analgesic," he piles the whole pile
on the table, on a yellowish tablecloth with flowers woven into it out. The dust immediately
rises and Isagi crinkles up, trying not to sneeze. Blinking, he goes through the papers, pulls
one out in front of Kaiser and starts to speak excitedly, too fast and too much, as he always
did, worried. "I prescribed the exercises and called my physiotherapist, she's good at this sort
of thing, and she said that after your break you can still do the schedule you were given,
although the joint won't be as mobile. And I also looked at the spa hotel on the way to the
shop - they said they have a program of physiotherapy after the knee operation, they need
your doctor's number to pick up the treatments, you tell me I'll send them, because why
should you travel back and forth to Vienna, it's better here, since they have good reviews... "

Kaiser, lost in his rapid speech - he can't concentrate, his thoughts are blurring together with
his vision and his head is splitting - thinks for a moment that Isagi shouldn't be so
enthusiastic. Why would he? He has to realize that this is the end for Kaiser. But the peace
between them is so fragile, it almost rings in the air, resonates with the soft patter of the rain
on the terrace tree and Kaiser hesitates to ask out loud.

Isagi finally falls awkwardly silent, realizing that Kaiser cannot keep up with him and sighs.

"Never mind," he shrugs. "Take the pills first and then we'll try the exercises. I'll help you
with them."

Isagi fumbles through the boxes and plates of pills, pushing them one by one into the palm of
his hand. The white rounds and capsules mix with each other and the sight of them makes
Kaiser sick.

"You trust me?" Isagi asks suddenly, smiling and offering the palm with the pills to Kaiser.
His smile is reflected in his eyes.

"Don't be a fool," Kaiser says simply and takes the first pill with his lips. For Kaiser, Yoichi's
skin still feels soft, even though it is rough from the constant training. Isagi, still smiling, puts
the rest of the pills on a nearby plate.

If Yoichi enjoys this game of nursemaid, who is Kaiser to refuse him? He feels very little
now except disgust for himself - at least he can do something for Isagi, the man who once
carved out a special place for himself in Kaiser's heart.

As long as Yoichi still cares for him...

Kaiser is sickened by his own thoughts - it's pathetic and disgusting - and he hides them as far
away as possible.

In the afternoon, when the fog has lifted a bit and the lawn is a little drier, Isagi, after
searching the whole garden, finds a corner of soft, rain-soaked ground, covered with dry
leaves and some sprouted grass, without stones or roots, and spreads a thick yoga mat on it.
Again, Kaiser doesn't know if he dug it up yesterday during his travels on the second floor, or
if he bought it during a trip into town. The sky is still covered in gray-white clouds,
obscuring the sun and giving him shivers just looking at it.

And while Kaiser lies on his back and tries to lift his leg, Isagi helps him by absently bending
and unbending his knee.

"I ordered the eyeliner as well," Isagi says and continues their lazy conversation about
shopping. The fresh wind from the mountains ruffles his hair. "They didn't have your usual,
but I got the same brand. Red and blue - which do you want more?"

"Red," Kaiser answers absently, trying not to scream in pain. His muscles cut hard as he
kneads them, stiff after a month of inactivity.

Isagi bends his knee again and hisses sympathetically when Kaiser winces in pain.

"Look..." he turns to look at his watch. His fringe falls from his forehead and he wrinkles it,
trying to blow it away. "Five more minutes, then we're done. We'll put some ointment on it
and it won't hurt so much."

"It stings," Kaiser says, covering his eyes in annoyance. "It makes no difference."

Isagi, who no longer knows how to calm him down, strokes his knee lightly before
straightening it again.

"And I also ordered some hair dye, the courier will bring it tomorrow," Isagi starts the
conversation again. "Your shade wasn't there, I got a darker one."

Kaiser flinches as another sharp sting of pain pierces his leg along the joint line. "And the
toner?"

Isagi looks at him confused - right, he doesn't know anything about that, good thing he was
able to buy the dye himself - along with the hair oil, the micellar, the cotton swabs and a
bunch of other little things Kaiser asked for after breakfast. He had forgotten the toner and
Isagi hadn't reminded him.

"You're useless," Kaiser says hollowly, without the usual mockery in his voice - he doesn't
have the energy to squeeze it out right now. Of course, he doesn't mean it. Isagi still rolls his
eyes in amusement and presses his knee again.

Isagi may wrinkle and crease - but he understands better than anyone else how important it is
for Kaiser to appear. Especially now that he...

"Don't you want to go for a walk?" Isagi finally suggests nervously. Fear wrinkles his
forehead. Noticing Kaiser's look, he continues uneasily. "Not to the city, of course, and not to
Vienna, but there is an exit to the mountains across the street? We'll hike for a while and
come back."

Kaiser actually is dangerously close to looking Isagi in the face for the first time in days.
He is afraid of what he might see.

"...we can do it tomorrow," Kaiser says. Inside, he feels a terrible fear - that he will have to
leave the house, that people will look at him with pity or mockery, that he will have to walk
through the streets where he used to run in the mornings but now he can barely walk without
limping. But this - this is cowardly and abominable, and Kaiser clenches his teeth at another
round of training.

He's never allowed himself to be cowardly or afraid, no matter how much he'd like to be -
and especially not of a future that hasn't happened yet.

It's just that Kaiser...

Kaiser no longer knows if there is a place for him in that future.

 Chapter 4
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes

The next day they don't go to the mountains - the rain continues to drizzle all day, and
Kaiser's knee, which was also shaky after the exercise, won't let him get out of bed.

They spend the next two days in the house like this - Kaiser, lying down most of the time,
endlessly going through possibilities, options, outcomes, his thoughts and doubts going in the
same cycle, repeating themselves - and Isagi, locked in four walls with him, too actively
cheerful for a man whose... someone had just become an invalid. With every day that passes,
Kaiser becomes more and more annoyed with him. The exercises, as much as Kaiser hates
them, and as painful as they are, are actually helping; the muscles are bending and moving a
little more willingly, and their nasty creaking that Kaiser imagines is fading a little.

Only his knee still hurts and seems to tear more and more from the pain every day.

"Kaiser," Isagi asks worriedly around a week that had passed since his arrival. "What exactly
do you think you are doing?"

Isagi leans against the sliding glass door without leaving the covered wooden terrace and
looks intently at Kaiser. The rain still hasn't stopped and the sky is still the same gray, but
today, there is only a light drizzle and it is hardly noticeable.

Isagi's concern is understandable - he must have thought that Kaiser had gone completely
mad.

Wearing only his pajamas pants and barefoot, Kaiser continues to move strangely and
chaotically through the garden, mostly around the alpine hill, still brown after winter and
autumn, and around the corners, closer to the exit to the forest, to the pines and blue spruces.
He crumples a worn piece of paper in his hand, looks at it reluctantly, scrutinizes it, then
looks at the ground and mumbles something to himself.

"I'm looking for some herbs," Kaiser answers absent-mindedly and tries to bend down with
his sore knee so that he doesn't faint from the painful shock and break his joints completely.
Isagi comes closer and helps him. "It's marked with what and where it grows in the garden."

The previous owner had left Kaiser the map with sharp, clear descriptions under the
schematic pictures of parts of the garden and had mentioned that his grandparents, who loved
the whole thing very much, had planted it. According to the map, by spring there should be
an alpine hill of anemones, irises, daffodils, and tulips, and those were just the flowers whose
names Kaiser could identify on a frayed piece of paper he'd dug out of the deed lists just
yesterday. He was more interested in the mint, thyme, and lemon balm that should have been
growing in the corner, under the sun-drenched pines, but which Kaiser had never seen. Ness,
who had become addicted to tea while playing in England, liked to add all sorts of nasty
things to it. If he ever came here, Kaiser might...
"With your knee?" Isagi asks very politely, distracting Kaiser from his thoughts. "Stop
fooling around and let's eat."

"And these aren't marked, but they're growing anyway," Kaiser nods angrily at the blue
sprouts and white-purple crocuses sprouting in the corners of the garden, still very pale and
unopened.

"I think you just don't know what to do with yourself," Yoichi snorts, looking at the flowers
peeking through the dry leaves. "You'd better do something useful - let's make an
appointment for electrostimulation."

Ah, here they are again, Kaiser thinks reluctantly. Over the past three days, with every hour
that Kaiser has slowly filled up with energetic anger at the world and the desire to show
everyone that such a small thing as losing football won't break him, this lively activity of
Yoichi has annoyed him more and more. Yoichi is either foolishly convinced that Kaiser's
knee will magically get better after a few electric shocks, or, more likely, he is not ready to
accept that Kaiser can no longer play - not ready to accept what Kaiser has become.

After all, they met when Kaiser was on top, and honestly? Kaiser would have thrown himself
away now if he could. People have always done that. Yoichi, unlike the others, at least tries to
do something to bring back the usual order of their lives.

Kaiser might not have minded playing along, except that "inoperable," "displaced," and
"banned from professional sports" are now forever etched in his memory.

He never gave up - but there are times when it is pointless and ridiculous to keep fighting.

"Here, look, it says 'mint', do you see a mint?" Kaiser decides to ignore Isagi and stares at the
paper again.

"I don't see it," Isagi sighs. "Because it is the end of February. The mint is asleep. Let's go
inside.

He doesn't appreciate Kaiser's attempts to get out of the cold swamp his life has become,
Kaiser thinks.

"Spring will come soon, and we'll find cumin and paprika and mint and whatever else you
want," Yoichi adds reassuringly for some reason, helping Kaiser up the stairs.

Kaiser himself doesn't feel that spring is coming. It seems to him that he will remain frozen in
this last season of his football career - when winter is over and nature is still dead, and he
himself is dead, breathing only with pure anger.

After they have eaten and Kaiser has taken all the necessary pills under Isagi's watchful eye,
Isagi finally takes out the tubes of pigment that were delivered yesterday (albeit with a delay)
and hands them to Kaiser. The company was unfamiliar and probably of lower quality than
Herman's Amazing, which had been carefully selected by trial and error, but there was no
other in the store. It's a good thing they had one - Kaiser usually ordered his from the
Netherlands a few weeks in advance, because it was impossible to find it in Munich or other
cities where he played.

Of course, the color isn't what it used to be - too dark, almost blueberry - and doesn't really
go with the blonde, but Kaiser is willing to accept that. At least after washing off the dye,
after what seems like an eternity, he's starting to look a little bit like himself. The proper
himself. He still needs a haircut, of course, and his hair won't get healthy again or fall into a
perfect style all by itself, but it's a start.

The thing is... with a thoughtful frown, Kaiser wipes his head with the towel that Isagi holds
out to him. That he has dug himself into a rotten, useless and disgusting pit of pity. It disgusts
him so much that his stomach turns.

Pity is useless. It won't feed you when your stomach vomits with hunger, it won't give you
water that isn't dirty from the river, it won't help you shoot faster and pass more accurately, it
won't get you a better contract with the club. Kaiser always despised weaklings who felt that
way.

And of course, the fact that he has now stooped to not only pity but self-pity...

Kaiser snorts, wiping his face with a terry cloth towel, scratching his skin violently, almost to
the point of pain and redness.

It is disgusting. This... the creature who cried and whined around the house instead of getting
up and putting his life back together, then sneering and grinning at reporters, teammates, and
spectators - this isn't really him at all. Or rather, this is the Kaiser he used to be, before
Bastard, before Blue Lock, and before Yoichi - and who Kaiser made sure to bury as deep as
possible and who still managed to creep out from time to time.

Well, Kaiser will make sure that now that he has been robbed of what he has invested his
whole life in, this Kaiser will be buried forever.

He reaches for the hair dryer.

At noon, the rain finally stops and Kaiser, his crutch caught in disgust, leaves the house with
Isagi.

He is ready, of course, and has spent the last hour tidying himself up, despite Isagi's soft
chuckles. Sure, not all of his clothes are here and with his unkempt hairstyle, he can't look
dignified no matter how hard he tries (not to mention the crutch under his armpit). But his
coat - gray cashmere, Kaiser loved it - is washed and ironed, thoroughly dusted and cleaned,
his sponge-polished boots squeak as he treads the path to the gate, and his neatly painted
fringe falls to his face, covering the scratch on his forehead.

Isagi, of course, was not trying so hard and stood there in his cheap down jacket, bought at a
sale a hundred years ago, disheveled, sleepless, and looking like a resentful teenager being
dragged through the shops by his mother.
Past dense bushes and small firs, and wading through budding shrubs, they descend the
cracked stone steps to the Welzergasse. Kaiser struggles to open the rusted lock of the gate
and wonders how Yoichi managed to get to his house at all that first day - the exit from the
street was blocked by a chain-link fence, an ugly thing that will have to be changed, of
course. He probably hadn't climbed up onto the garage roof in a heavy downpour, didn't he?

The cobblestone street is shaded by the crowns of pine trees from the forest. Both he and
Yoichi walk slowly down towards the town above, trying to find a way into the Kurpark
itself. Fortunately, the path leading there is quite close, a few houses down. The asphalt turns
imperceptibly into a threadlike mixture of earth and sand, dusted with leaves from the
autumn.

Kaiser steps into the opening first, cautiously making his way forward, using his crutch
awkwardly. Each step is met with a jolt of pain. His nose is immediately clogged with the
heavy smell of earth, wet from rain, fog, and the end of winter.

He is scared to the point of shaking, but without showing it to Isagi - although he can see it,
of course - he goes on, biting his lip forcefully. The tree trunks melt into one, Kaiser sees
nothing behind the endless dried bark as he moves forward.

Fear is the venom that poisons life, past, present, and future, all at once. It chokes you and
prevents you from thinking, it shackles you hand and foot, until you become a dead man in
life, frightened beyond repair, wary of every rustle and decision.

And worst of all, fear is always a loss. Kaiser may have lost at football, his life's work, but he
won't lose himself. He would rather cut off everything he fears than live in endless doubt.

Kaiser would rather die instantly than live like this.

But he refuses to die, and he refuses to live that way.

Yoichi, who feels and understands Kaiser - as he has always felt and understood - is silent,
saying nothing. And so they walk along the paths - his knee hurting more and more, and
Kaiser tries not to put his weight on it, limping ungraciously.

Luckily, they don't meet anyone on the way, although Kaiser would have been prepared for
that as well. But today seems to be a weekday, and the weather, like the last three weeks, is
disgusting, and it seems as if only he and Yoichi are walking in the park on the mountain,
almost in the forest, and the sound of their footsteps is interrupted only by the rare clatter of
drops falling from the trees after the rain, and the clear chirping of birds.

A few minutes later, finally accustomed to both the chafing crutch and the uneven path, and
the first time he's been outside in days, Kaiser cautiously begins a conversation. "I was
wondering what to do next."

He doesn't mean that, of course.

What he is doing is kicking the tires.

He bites his lip but still manages to get the words out, very carefully, testing Yoichi's reaction
with a attentive look. He himself doesn't know what he expects.

"I definitely don't want to be a coach," Kaiser says. "I'm not going to be better than Snuffy, or
at least as good as him, and I don't want to be like your Ego maniac, and even less like Noah.
But I thought..."

Kaiser swallows, exhaling shallowly. “I think I'll try to look for something. You know, maybe
something beautiful.”

Beautiful - how terribly beautiful his football was to him.

Of course, it's all nonsense - Kaiser doesn't really want to go anywhere except the football
field in Munich, where both he and Ness almost grew up together.

Instead of saying something, Yoichi just keeps quiet. And it's not the brooding, absent-
minded silence Kaiser is used to these days, it's... it's just different. It's strained and somehow
fragile.

Kaiser waits tensely, and it's as if everything inside him is ringing.

“You..." Yoichi swallows uncomfortably. “Don't you think it's too early for that?”

Which was to be proved, Kaiser thinks tiredly. In the end, everything in their lives always
comes back to football.

He wishes he was wrong.

"Excuse me?!" Kaiser asks aggressively, stopping abruptly. Everything in him tenses.

"I mean," Isagi answers, obviously angry. Kaiser doesn't turn to him but he hears his voice
trembling. "You didn't even try to get back into sports. I know what the doctors told you, but
you can try - I've read that some players have rehabbed from injuries like this and safely
played another three or four seasons."

He wrinkles his nose. "You just give up instead of fighting for every chance like you usually
do. I don't understand you.

And he adds, exhaling anxiously. "I don't understand how you can throw football away so
easily."

And - here, okay - Kaiser has had enough. He's had enough without snapping and saying
anything, but that's just the limit. To accuse him of throwing away football - has Yoichi lost
his mind?! Really, how much longer can they do this?!

"Because this is the end!" Kaiser shouts at him in a loud voice, stumbling from a sudden
movement. His knee immediately reacts with a sharp flash of pain. How can he not
understand? "Don't you understand?! A failed operation is a fucking dead end, Yoichi, it's a
fucking..."
His breath comes out of his throat, halfway through his wheezing. He chokes on fresh air.

“It's a fucking dead end," Kaiser continues more calmly, glaring at Yoichi, catching the look
in his stubbornly clenched eyebrows, the anger in his eyes, the stiffened posture.

"This is no dead end!" Isagi shouts at him angrily. He sounds almost desperate. "I really don't
understand what is going on with you and why you are acting like this! I've never seen you
give up so easily. I... I just don't recognize you anymore!"

Well, the pieces of the puzzle didn't fit together, Kaiser thinks angrily.

Yoichi could be so cruel sometimes, really. Worse than Luna, worse than Noah, worse than
all the people Kaiser met and hated in this life. How on earth did he always, even
unintentionally (especially unintentionally) managed to stab at the sore spot?

“So what are you saying - that if I don't try to get back into the sport, you have no use for
me?” Kaiser drops abruptly, clawing his gaze angrily at Isagi.

Yoichi freezes, stopping in half-steps, his sneakers slipping on the sand of the path. His body
language immediately becomes stiffer, and his gaze is full of some new feeling. It is deep and
desperate, painful and bitter.

Kaiser knows this feeling.

It's fear.

And something inside him freezes with a crunch. It's hard for Kaiser to breathe.

“Oh," Kaiser breathes out softly, understanding.

Of course, it's just as he thought.

It's...

Suddenly, a sharp pain cuts through him - no longer in his knee, but in his chest itself.

It really hurts. Kaiser didn't think that anything could hurt him more than this fall from a
rough foul, more painful than the words "the operation went wrong", more painful than the
past he had carved out for himself, more painful than the realization that he would never
again be able to step onto the field and touch the ball while scoring a goal - but, here it
comes.

Yoichi, as always, exceeded his expectations.

But it is a legitimate result, isn't it? Kaiser knew from the moment Yoichi arrived that it
would end like this.

Isagi winces and bites his lip nervously. "Of course not, what are you talking about? It's
just..."
 He hurries up, stammering. "It's just, it's always been about football, hasn't it? We started all
this because of football. It just makes sense that I don't know what would change if..."

Kaiser, frankly, does not hear what Yoichi says next. He can try to gloss over the truth with
whatever words he wants, but Kaiser knows better than anyone that words cannot hide an
ugly reality.

No one has ever hurt Kaiser as much as Yoichi.

"It's okay," Kaiser says with a voice foreign to his own, stepping closer, interrupting the flow
of another man's words and fixing Isagi's grown out fringe. Yoichi looks at him almost as if
Kaiser had hit him. "It's okay. This is nothing."

Kaiser sighs and removes his hand. "I understand."

And the worst part is, he really does understand.

Kaiser has never been needed by anyone outside of football. He got used to that a long time
ago.

"You can't seriously think like that," Isagi says nervously. He looks so lost. Kaiser misses the
hurt resentment in his look. "Are you joking or something?"

"If I'm wrong, then tell me right now," Kaiser says and looks directly at Isagi. "That it doesn't
matter to you that I can't play anymore."

Isagi is silent.

Kaiser could have said something sharp and hurtful like "I thought so" or "What else can I
expect from you?".

But he is so terribly tired. Suddenly, he is pushed to the ground with such force that Kaiser
himself doesn't understand how he can stand.

Kaiser turns away and walks back to the house, limping and stumbling over clumps of wet
sand.

Yoichi does not follow him.

Chapter End Notes

Unfortunately the time for my university exams had come, so I'm not sure if I'll be able
to post anything in the next two weeks since probably I just won't be able to reread
ready chapters for typos and bad sentences structure. So if one day update won't be here,
just know that everything is okay, I'll be back :D
 Chapter 5

Time is a fly in amber, a dry leaf on a tree before the end of fall, the clinking of glass before
it breaks.

But it goes on anyway.

What's the point of being angry? If he were Yoichi, he wouldn't be able to love himself too
now, Kaiser thinks wearily in the morning, sitting on the steps of the terrace, where he is
driven away by Yoichi's oblique glances and the unfamiliar silence between them. If he knew
how to smoke and had cigarettes, now would be a good time - it's damp outside, the fog
seems to wet even his bones, and the fresh air, too harsh after the frozen smell of the old
house, gives him a headache. Even the thujas are lost in the fog, which is unusually dense and
thick. Kaiser could not even see the exit to the forest, it is blocked by a thick and damp veil.

He also cannot be angry now that he is so deadly tired. Because of the pills to which his body
is not yet accustomed, his head is almost always cloudy, and only on rare days does it not
hurt. He is drawn to sleep and has almost no energy.

A month ago, he had the title of one of the best strikers in the world, two weeks ago he had
Yoichi. When Kaiser will wake up tomorrow, he'll probably lose Ness as well, and then he'll
have nothing.

It doesn't matter. He doesn't really need anyone, right?

Better to cut it off himself while Kaiser can still manage it than to be left behind by another
man.

Kaiser sighs, leans carefully on his good leg as he stands up and returns to the house.

By noon, the sun that had peeked out from behind the clouds in the morning had disappeared.
After five minutes, the sky darkens, and the rain begins to beat on the windows, first slowly,
then more and more violently. Kaiser retreats to the terrace exit and swings open the sliding
doors to ventilate the stuffy kitchen. Immediately, it is filled with the precise clatter of drops
hitting the wood of the terrace and the ground.

Isagi sits quietly at the table, frowning and typing something into his laptop. Maybe he was
talking to the manager or maybe he was writing a letter to his parents.

Kaiser doesn't really care.

"Don't you want to watch a movie?" Isagi's voice - unusually insecure - cuts through the
frozen air of the room and the sound of rain, the sound of pines bending in the wind.
"I don't," Kaiser answers sharply and tosses the cut egg into the salad. He tries not to look at
Yoichi, but he still catches a glimpse of him from time to time.

Kaiser is so angry right now.

Because what right does Yoichi have to look so miserable if he's the reason why Kaiser is
choking and gasping in hate again, when this abandoned and unwanted Kaiser from the past
comes back inside? When is it Yoichi himself, as always, who decided for both of them at the
same time?

"Better tell me when you're leaving," Kaiser says irritably, unable to stand it any longer. What
does Yoichi expect from him? Kaiser isn't going to be a "good ex" and "stay friends" and all
that. So Yoichi should clean up his own mess; Kaiser won't make it any easier for him.

And he has a right to be angry, right? How easily good boy Yoichi had admitted that Kaiser is
a total nothing without football, revealed all the fears and doubts Kaiser had carefully buried
inside himself all these years. And in the end, along with the pain of the injury, the pain of
being disgusted by the man who had meant so much to him, he suffocated with the thought
that he was nothing, that he was still the worthless nobody that he had been, that he was not
enough.

It's the realization that Kaiser was right all along. That no matter how much the people
around you say that you're a person first and a player second, they're all lying in the end.

There is no other person that Kaiser cares about as much as he does about Isagi; just as there
is no one that he hates with the same intensity.

"Leaving...?" Yoichi asks, confused but Kaiser does not have the strength to speak to him in a
polite way.

"To a wonderful, normal world," Kaiser abruptly throws the broken egg crusts into the trash.
And adds contemptuously. "To football."

Isagi frowns. "I'm not going anywhere. And I can't just leave you here."

"Stop it," Kaiser hisses and dumps unevenly diced potatoes into a bowl. "You can do it just
fine."

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Yoichi flinch.

Good, Kaiser thinks angrily. Let him get hurt.

The alarm clock on Isagi's phone starts to beep just in time and Kaiser grimaces and reaches
for the pills and the pitcher with boiling water.

“I understand that you want me to leave," Yoichi says flatly. “But you're in no condition to be
alone.”

Kaiser's eyes darken with anger. What's he trying to do here - play the respectable partner,
comfort a moody girl? His tone is soothing, deliberately reasonable, as if Kaiser were
hysterical.

“You're going to leave, whether I want you to or not," Kaiser barked, shoving the pills down
his throat. “And it doesn't matter if I'm here alone or not.”

He has already let himself get obscenely naked in front of Yoichi, so he doesn't feel the need
to control himself in any way. It doesn't even matter what he says now - there's no point in
saving face and pretending he doesn't care when Yoichi has already had time to dissect and
see his most vulnerable parts.

Kaiser is in front of him, sick, maimed, and miserable. The way he always was. The way he
is not needed.

Yoichi remains silent and Kaiser shakes even more.

He sighs and offers deliberately calmly. "You can see for yourself that I have come to my
senses. Thanks to your shock therapy, I'm fine now."

"Okay," Kaiser sighs again patiently when he still doesn't hear the answer. "Since you're so
worried about me for some reason, we're going to that rehab center tomorrow. They'll take
care of me, if that's what you want.

"Of course, I am worried about you!" Isagi shakes and straightens his shoulders. "Stop
picking on me - it's not fair. You know that I care about you, I wouldn't have rushed in the
middle of nowhere just before the start of the season if I didn't."

"Rushed out in the middle of nowhere just before the start of the season," just look at him,
Kaiser thinks with disgust. What does Yoichi think of himself - that he made such sacrifices
for some weakling and now Kaiser should be grateful for the rest of his life? That he
shouldn't - what, that he shouldn't realize that he has become nothing more than garbage to
him?

"Well, maybe we shouldn't have started all this in the first place then," Kaiser says angrily,
frustrated by these thoughts, and throws the empty pill blister onto the table. It slides across
the surface, hovering at the edge. "You wouldn't have to come here and interfere with your
career of a wonder boy, and you wouldn't have to deal with an invalid now, would you?
Nothing but advantages."

Yoichi freezes at his words, his fingers stiffening on the keyboard. Kaiser doesn't look at him.

It had always been like this - whenever Kaiser let someone get too close to him - football,
Yoichi, Munich - it ended in nothing but endless losses and unnecessary doubts. It had always
been so easy for him to be alone - why had he decided to start with Isagi?

It would have been better if they had never met.

Sometimes, the thing Kaiser regrets the most is that after watching the U-20 game, he called
the club's board to ask them to play with Isagi.
"I can't take it anymore!" Yoichi stands up abruptly, awkwardly pushing away a chair that
squeaks horribly on the parquet floor. His navy eyes reflect angrily in Kaiser's blue ones.
"You keep twisting my words! I told you, it's not that I don't want you, I just don't understand
what's happening now that it's like this. And you're acting all..."

"And yet," Kaiser interrupted him mid-sentence, glancing quickly at Isagi's laptop screen. "If
you want to make it in time for the start of the season, we have to book you tickets."

If Yoichi leaves, then at least he'll leave on Kaiser's terms and all these days, until the end,
he'll have to put up with this Kaiser - the one he despises so much. Let him reap what he
sows, Kaiser thinks angrily.

Yoichi looks like he's in a lot of pain.

It's a good thing Kaiser doesn't care anymore.

(he wishes he could believe that himself)

The first time Kaiser sees Baden normally is when he and Yoichi take a taxi to the
rehabilitation center. It's exactly what you'd expect from a classic Austrian town; smooth
asphalt and sidewalks, straight streets, trees bare for now, neat old houses in the center,
carefully repaired and maintained, pale and classic to the height of the walls and reliefs.
People's lives here seem to be frozen; they move too slowly, don't hurry anywhere, stop now
and then - and this is so different from the usual noise and hustle and bustle of Madrid,
Munich and Rome, where everyone is in a hurry, not even out of business, but out of habit.

In general, Kaiser is sure that if he had not made such a stupid mistake in the conversation
with his agent and had bought a house not here but in Baden-Baden (yes, now he knows that
there are two identical Badens with the same mountains, resorts and casinos - German and
Austrian), then everything would have been exactly the same.

The house he lives in isn't that bad, though. The only pity is that Kaiser is already imagining
how, after a few months, instead of dusty, creaky old furniture-filled rooms, he will only see
endless ghosts of his desolation, his mistakes, and Yoichi's departure.

There was a reason why Kaiser had been running all his life. Memories always cut too deeply
into him, and in familiar places it becomes utterly unbearable.

The rehab center itself - or rather, the spa, rehab center, pool, and hotel all in one - doesn't
look as bad as Kaiser feared; if it had looked like the hospital where he had been operated, he
would have turned around and walked all the way home. But this center looks much nicer
than the hospital, elongated and deathly white, slit with narrow windows. The center itself,
almost solid glass with a pool peeking through and surrounded by fountains, is an addition to
an old building, carefully whitewashed, with dark arched carved glass doors.

The young woman at the dimly lit reception desk, the pleasant brick arches covering the
entrance and exit turnstiles, smiles graciously when she sees them. The sincerity of that smile
shines in her bright eyes, mixed with recognition.

"Herr Kaiser," her German, like most Austrians, sounds a bit more melodious and softer than
his own. "You arrived early, you will have to wait a little longer."

And Kaiser responds as usual, making small talk, exchanging folders of his knee history and
treaties.

For some reason, he doesn't feel like the usual himself - when he always feels like he's
playing the right role. Something's wrong, Kaiser thinks, frowning, and absently signs the
papers.

For some reason he feels different. Something is shifting inside him, just a few steps away.
It's just - she knows him. She knows who he was and who he is no longer. Something should
have changed in the look of these people, in their look - it should have been the same as other
people back then, when Kaiser was smaller, weaker, stupider, and...

And instead, they talk like old acquaintances, used to each other and attached.

And more importantly, Kaiser responds to her, just as he does now. He doesn't know what
should change - but something should, right? If he's not himself anymore, then of course.

The thought escapes him, and the fear - crushing and humiliating - in his chest begins to
dissipate on its own. Kaiser makes no attempt to cling to it. And somehow it seems to Kaiser
that nothing has changed - he is around people who recognize him, who know what happened
to him, he speaks, and despite the trauma, despite everything, he is still himself.

(he is still himself)

 Chapter 6
Chapter Notes

Amazing yuzi11111 made a fascinating fanart for this work - in the most painful way of
portraying this work's kaisagi dynamic. Be sure to check it out!

"What did they say?" Isagi asks uncertainly when Kaiser comes out of the physiotherapist's
appointment and procedures unusually quiet. "I asked them about the results and they said
that they can only give that information to family members."

Yoichi seems genuinely offended.

Kaiser almost jokes about how easy it would be to fix this, two rings, a registry office, all
legal in Austria. But then he remembers and bites his tongue.

"It doesn't matter," he answers instead and walks past Yoichi, who seems disappointed by the
answer.

Kaiser gets into the taxi, carefully adjusting his relieved knee so that he won't hit it if the car
brakes suddenly. The conversation with the doctor is still swirling around in his head.

It's just... what he says is good. After everything that happened - with the injury and Yoichi -
Kaiser thought he would have to deal with not being able to walk or needing some kind of
prosthesis. But it's... not that bad. Remarkable, as the doctor said, considering all the
circumstances.

Miracles don't happen, of course, and all this talk means is that the chronic pain will be less
severe, not that he'll be able to win the Munich Marathon. The ligaments gradually heal and
the joints become stronger, and although Kaiser spent two weeks limping around the house
instead of properly treating his knee, there won't be any long-term consequences.

If he's lucky, Kaiser remembers the doctor's words, he might even be able to run again. And
he'll definitely be lucky, because he's Kaiser, and nothing is impossible for him.

For the first time this month, Kaiser dares to really trust these words that he has been
repeating to himself all his life.

That's when Yoichi suddenly speaks.

"I have a ticket for tomorrow," he crumples, looking at Kaiser, fragile and so attentive, as if
waiting for something. "I'm leaving tonight."
The reality of the two short sentences and the end suddenly presses Kaiser to the ground,
almost pushing him out of this fragile state of peace, but he doesn't let himself feel the pain
again - just anger, which is easier to concentrate on, and the familiar sneer, behind which it
will be a little easier to be himself.

That's enough for him. Yes, he will never be able to forget Yoichi, yes, there will never be
anyone like him in his life again, yes, Kaiser already knows that it will hurt for a year, two
years, and ten years - so what?

To hell with Yoichi and the fucking trauma - he'll just rebuild himself like he did the last
time, the time before that, and his whole life. He'll think of something else, and he'll climb
back up again.

And maybe... he thinks of it in passing, almost immediately dismissing the thought nastily,
and it's still stuck somewhere in his sub-cortex, but maybe - maybe this time he doesn't need
to create himself by killing his past self. He did it once, twice - and how did it end? In the
end, with football taken away, he's back to the same person he was. The same nothing, not
needed by Yoichi or anyone else. What's the point of endlessly hitting the same wall if there's
no result?

Maybe if he did it differently this time, if he built something not from scratch but on a
foundation, something would change. He lost football, he lost Yoichi, he was thrown off the
pedestal, so what? He just ended up back where he started.

He'll just find a new pedestal, he'll create a new scene out of nothing, just like he did with
football.

And if anyone would even think that he's worthless now, he'll make them look at him. He'll
make them look at this, at himself, at his ugly and disgusting gut, at his essence, like the girl
in rehab - so that they can never look away, no matter how much they want to.

Let them stare, Kaiser thinks, filled to the brim with rage. Let them watch and see and not be
able to look away.

Not that he has anything to lose. He has nothing and no one left.

He still doesn't look at Yoichi but lets the line fall casually and cheerfully. "Then we have to
give you a proper send-off, huh?"

Yoichi, still waiting for who knows what, looks at him frustrated. Kaiser misses the painful
flash in his eyes.

Kaiser smiles predatorily and reaches for the taxi driver. "Excuse me, would you mind
dropping us off at that store?"

Baden's casino is rather primitive, but Kaiser still likes it. All the glass and wide panels, the
old-fashioned lobby and building itself, the warm glow of the dim lights, and the beautifully
dressed and happy people bring a smile to his face. It tugs at his lips in an almost unfamiliar
way, but Kaiser doesn't care.

The eyeliner, applied by Yoichi because Kaiser's hands were shaking from the medicine,
presses against his under-eyes with familiar sharp strokes. The haircut from the local salon,
though not quite up to the standards of his own hairstylist's efforts, is still decent enough,
tickling his skin as it covers the tattoo. The suit, purchased from a shop near the Plague
Column, is not of the quality Kaiser is accustomed to, and the tie is uncomfortably tight
around his neck.

But Kaiser is satisfied. Suddenly he feels like a fish in the water among the excited and noisy
people, familiar and in his place, despite the miserable bunch he was a few days ago. He
laughs and smiles pointedly and jokes, and just as he wanted, people look at him, and no one,
no one can turn away.

Never again will Kaiser allow anyone to look at him with a blank stare, distracted and
unclenched.

Never again, and especially not now.

Yoichi, on the other hand, for whom Kaiser also generously bought a suit, doesn't look happy
at all.

"You've never been to a casino," Kaiser says, accepting the chips offered. "Do you have any
idea?"

Actually, of course, he knows for a fact that Yoichi has never been to one. Once, Isagi had
mentioned to him that he'd like to try it. At the time, Kaiser was looking for a place to invest
his money, and he thought that Yoichi, who preferred peace and privacy over noise and fun,
would fit better in Baden than in Monaco.

So he bought the house - although he ended up mixing up the country.

"Slot machines...?" Yoichi says uncertainly, looking around, and Kaiser, listening to his
memories of Japanese pachinkos, puts his arm around him and pulls him toward the rows
lined up against the wall.

Yoichi obviously doesn't like it very much, but instead of objecting as usual, he just sighs
obediently and reaches for the chips in Kaiser's hands. Kaiser gently places them in his palm,
their fingers touching in a familiar way, and it's all so ordinary and easy.

No matter how hard he tries, he will never be able to tear Yoichi out of himself - the man who
made his life and football what they were.

So he will squeeze as much as he can out of this end. Turning a loss into a fortune is also
considered impossible, right?

Yoichi, frowning, carefully throws chips into a machine with grinning lemons and oranges
painted on the active line and presses the button. Kaiser hugs him from behind, head on his
shoulder, hands on his stomach.

Yoichi tentatively reaches out to stroke Kaiser's palm, but the machine spits out a
combination with a crack and Kaiser reaches forward to let Isagi out.

"You're not very good at this, 'the hope of Japan,'" Kaiser laughs, seeing the lemon and two
oranges thrown out in a row, which of course don't match and for which no points are given.

Yoichi, as always fired up next to Kaiser - someone he's used to fighting, resisting, and
winning against - reaches for the button again, an insulted look on his face.

And then, frowning more and more, he presses it again, and again, and again.

"And they say beginners are lucky," Kaiser whistles mockingly as Yoichi loses his last
attempt, throwing combinations that are as far from winning as possible. "What's the matter,
where has all your luck gone?"

"As if it's your first time in a casino," Yoichi scowls. It's so much like their usual bickering
and outings as if nothing has changed and there are thousands more encounters on and off the
football field to come.

Kaiser's chest hurts.

"Of course," Kaiser lies to him shamelessly, knowing that Yoichi knows when he's lying and
when he's not. "I broke the bank."

In fact, he and Lorenzo won barely a hundred euros together, which made both of them
terribly insulted by Sae, who had hit the jackpot. Sae himself, however, was heartbroken for
some reason and kept muttering about wasted luck. But he was always strange.

Yoichi laughed habitually, squinting his eyes and bowing his head, and only then did he cut
himself off. Kaiser, who is in a complacent mood for the first time in a month, ignores the
way his gaze becomes heavier and more painful when Yoichi remembers that things aren't
going well for them right now.

"Now to the roulette table," Kaiser hurries him and drags him along. "Come on, let's try your
luck, maybe it will work there."

His voice is a little hoarse, and his heart clenches with pain.

But that's okay.

At least he can get something good for himself one last time - even if it's just a memory.

You can't run away from yourself, Kaiser realizes bitterly, after all these years.

"Leave it on the nine," Kaiser advises quietly, almost snuggling up to Isagi. "It's the seventh
time, it could come out soon."
"Uh-huh," Isagi mumbles back tensely, not taking his eyes off the roulette wheel and the
number in the circle.

"Nine," the croupier announces. "One hundred euros."

By the end of the evening, Kaiser felt so sorry for Isagi that he almost played through him.
Still, at least they had won back what they'd lost before. Although Kaiser honestly didn't care.

"Take it, take it," Kaiser grins predatorily and nudges Isagi, who was dazed by his last
winnings. Awakened, Isagi immediately grabs the tokens.

When they finally catch sight of the waitress, who finally reaches them with the ordered
champagne glasses, they step out onto the square in front of the casino. In the lights of the
casino and the twilight, fresh and cold from the recent rain, the town spreads out before them,
small and quiet.

Kaiser drinks quietly from his glass, crouching on the corner of the fountain. The moisture
from the drops barely reaches him, shallow and cool.

"Ness would like it here," Isagi says thoughtfully. The light breeze ruffles his hair. "He likes
places like this."

"Yes, he does," Kaiser sighs, remembering that at the time when he was in the casino with
Lorenzo and Sae, Ness was sick with angina he'd caught somewhere and was staying in
Munich. "He hasn't answered you yet?"

"What do you mean?" Isagi asks confused.

Kaiser feels his breath being taken away. The realization is slowly coming to him, but Kaiser
refuses to believe it. "You mean you didn't text him that you found me?"

Indignation creeps into his voice.

"Why should I write him about you?" Yoichi asks with a frown. "If you already..."

Something breaks inside Kaiser and he carefully sets the glass down on the marble of the
fountain. The glass rattles slightly.

An equally terrifying realization grows in Yoichi's eyes. "Don't tell me you..."

"I broke the phone," Kaiser says deadpan. Not really broke it, he actually threw it against the
wall when he first got here, but those are details. "How could I have called him?"

Isagi frantically pulls out his cell phone and starts to call.

"He doesn't answer," Isagi says in horror. He looks like he is going to faint. Isagi continues
hastily, swallowing noisily. "I have a spare phone, you can put a SIM card in it and call him.
It will fix everything, I am sure."

"Nothing will help you anymore," Kaiser says, and he's not even exaggerating.
"He will kill me," Isagi agrees.

"Oh, no," Kaiser replies languidly, finishing his champagne in one gulp. Setting his empty
glass aside, he adds. "Killing's too easy for Ness. He's more likely to banish you to a
basement somewhere, and then for a long, long time..."

Kaiser pauses dramatically and adds mundanely. "Lecture you."

The next moment they are both laughing at the top of their voices, as they have always
laughed together. The sounds are sharp and high, as they are when close people laugh
together when there is no point in covering one's mouth and looking pretty. Kaiser's
cheekbones start to hurt, and Yoichi starts to wheeze more.

Before they finally leave, Kaiser puts their glasses on the tray of a passing waiter and
exchanges their chips for money, which he slips into Yoichi's jacket pocket.

They walk back out onto the street while Yoichi hesitantly talks to him. He walks a little
behind to keep up with Kaiser's slow pace. "Did you like it there?"

"No, not really," Kaiser hums. "It's small, not much dress code, not much fun either. But it's
okay for once."

"It's just... you looked happy," Isagi says in an indistinguishable tone as if he can't figure it
out himself.

Kaiser hums back, not knowing what to say.

This has nothing to do with the casino.

"You looked like yourself," Yoichi says very quietly to his back. Kaiser almost misses his soft
words over the clinking of glasses, chips falling from the machine behind the open doors and
people laughing.

Yourself.

Kaiser turns around and smiles at Yoichi. No matter how hard he tries, the fragile tenderness
that only a couple of people have ever seen, of which Yoichi the most, still seeps into his
smile. Yoichi looks back at him, mesmerized, the brightness of the casino lights shimmering
in his eyes.

“What makes me "Kaiser" to you?” Kaiser asks brutally in his softness, tilting his head
slightly towards Yoichi. "The fact that I am your rival? The fact that I am your lover?"

"After all, I am only human, Yoichi," Kaiser exhales into his ear without waiting for an
answer and hugs him lightly. Yoichi's back, covered by the silk of his suit, rises under his
arms from his frequent breathing, as if he is trying not to cry. But of course, it can't be that. "I
am always "Kaiser".

And it is in this moment, when he shares this with Yoichi, when he says it out loud, that
Kaiser himself realizes this to the fullest. It's not something concrete, of course, it's just the
beginning of awareness, but it's already more than he's ever had in his life.

He's at the bottom of the world again, thrown off the top, and he has nothing left, he's back to
the same worthless nothingness he started as, but this time he seems to understand.

Why is it always you, Kaiser thinks bitterly, hugging Isagi tighter. Why is it always you, who
changes me so much without even knowing it yourself?

It's always you, you, you. You make me go forward, you make me fight even when the only
thing I want to do is give up, you make me reevaluate everything I knew, you, who don't even
know how much you have done for me.

It's always Yoichi.

"Let's go home," Kaiser says, pulling away and kissing Yoichi lightly on the temple. "You
need to pack a suitcase."

The cruelest things are always said without any real intention to hurt.

As the door closes behind Yoichi, Kaiser stumbles back to the same couch and collapses onto
the blanket Yoichi folded before he left. The dust still hangs in the air, clinging to his throat.
Kaiser convinces himself that it is the dust and not something else by breathing heavily.

He wants to run outside, jump over the gate, yell after Isagi, do anything to get him back.

He wants to go back to sleep and not think, not think, not think.

But he can't.

He is Kaiser, he repeats to himself and presses his hands to his face, to the circles in front of
his eyes.

He is Kaiser.

And nothing is impossible for him, and he certainly won't lie here suffering for a man who
doesn't need him.

He imagines the vines of the tattoo growing, widening, across his chest and down his neck,
clinging tightly. The thorns dug into his skin, forcing him to stop moving. He imagines the
roses sprouting in his throat, giving him just enough air to barely breathe, enough to keep him
from thinking while the petals clog his throat.

He opens his eyes and reaches for the spare phone Isagi left behind. His fingers tremble as he
pierces the SIM card slot with a needle, then inserts it and waits for the phone to turn on. In
the blessed European Union, his plan includes both minutes for calls and Internet, so Kaiser
doesn't have to worry about payment; he usually puts money on the account at once for six
months in advance.
The screen lights up and texts about missed calls start to pop up - and Kaiser hasn't logged on
to Twitter, WhatsApp, or Facebook yet.

There are a surprising number of them. Most are from Ness, of course - Kaiser is afraid to
count them, the less he looks at them the better. But these messages are to be expected.

Kaiser's no idiot, he knows that if there's one person in this world who won't leave him, it's
Ness.

(But the voice inside him is still wondering if he believes that himself).

But in addition to Ness's messages, there are flashes from Sae, Lorenzo, Loki, Gesner, Grim,
his former teammates, coaches from junior, youth, and adult teams, managers, and dozens of
other people close enough for Kaiser to give them his number.

That's...

Something in his chest chugs horribly, something tight and suffocating and human.

With the ease born of years of practice, Kaiser crushes that feeling (almost, but not quite, he
can't make it to the end, and probably never will again, because what for?) and calls Ness.

Kaiser doesn't even have time to think about it - Ness answers not even on the first ring, but
halfway through.

"Kaiser!" Oh, that's why he just wanted to text. Ness's voice - frayed, exhausted, and full of
puppyish hope - makes him feel a little, just a little, a tiny bit guilty. "Why are you... Where
are you... I'm sorry, I'll tell you normally, just don't hang up, you..."

"Stop apologizing," Kaiser simply tells him instead of greeting him. "I'm in Baden, in
Austria. When will you be here?"

Kaiser hates the way something inside him, despite the demanding voice, falters as he waits
for an answer. It's not Lorenzo, not Sae, not Yoichi, Ness is the constant in his life, he belongs
to him in a way no one else ever will.

(Of course, he won't leave him behind, will he?)

"I know that Baden is in Austria," Ness answers hoarsely. And well, Kaiser's happy for him,
may he sit there being such a bookworm for the rest of his life. "I'll check the tickets now, but
please don't go anywhere, I was so worried..."

"...I'm not going anywhere," comes out softer than Kaiser intended, but maybe that's not such
a bad thing.

When Kaiser sends Ness to bed an hour later, still nervous and distrustful-happy, he fidgets
with his phone, having texted Gesner and Grim, the manager, and his now former teammates.
He's not sure he wants to go to the bedroom himself, even though the pills make him sleepy
all the time. It reminds him disgustingly of the sickly sleepiness he felt during the first two
weeks.
Loki, a textbook athlete, turns off his cell phone at night. Lorenzo, like the insomniac
crocodile he was, was probably awake, which meant it wasn't much fun calling him. But
there was someone who was known for his good routines and for not giving out his phone
number to random people...

"Sae?" Kaiser asks cheerfully as the dial tone is interrupted by dead silence. It's almost one in
the morning in their time zone. "Hi, are you busy?"

Kaiser laughs out loud to the accompaniment of an awakened Sae cursing all over him in a
Spanish-Japanese-English mix.

And the never-ending heaviness in his chest gets a little bit lighter.
 Chapter 7

When Kaiser wakes up, it's from a knock on the door. This is strange at the very least because
Yoichi is no longer here, and Ness wouldn't have had time to get here. He's probably still
struggling with some Ryanair or Wizz booking system, they just finished talking about three
hours ago. Heaven help him if he flies Lufthansa, then they'll never meet again, it's a one-way
trip to hell, like the Deutsche Bahn.

Kaiser, in his haste to get rid of the unknown guest, jumps up from the couch and hits his
elbow trying to cover his knee. The hand immediately goes numb, and Kaiser, angry as a
thousand devils, with sand in his eyes and a sore head, limps to the front door.

Yoichi - wet from the rain again, because they never bought an umbrella - stares at him
intently, but says nothing. Drops are dripping down his face, hair, and jacket. He looks like a
stray cat.

"Get out," Kaiser says loud and clear and tries to slam the door. Isagi, who has learned from
experience, puts the handle of the suitcase into the opening and pushes himself and Kaiser
inside. Now, both are wet and cold and both spit up water.

But Kaiser wakes up. Not that he's too happy about it.

“You can't just barge in here like it's your house!” Kaiser yells at him and tries to push him
away. Instead of separating, he and Isagi just push each other harder.

“Well, just watch me," Isagi barks back, pulls off his jacket, and throws it aside somewhere,
past the doormat and the coat rack. He is angry and disheveled.

“How can you even..." Isagi starts and then spits out the water.

He continues almost angrily. “I am so tired of having to play along with you all the time!”

Isagi grabs his shoulder and drags him further down the corridor. His fingers, wet and cold
from the rain, burn Kaiser's skin.

“Have you lost your mind?” Kaiser shouts at him, trying to break free. “What the hell are you
doing?!”

“And what do you think I'm doing?!” Isagi pushes him into the bedroom.

”Undress.” Kaiser thinks he's misheard.

“You're crazy," he says lightly. Now, it makes sense - Yoichi has gone mad and Kaiser has
become an invalid. That's the end of their story.

Isagi grabs his elbow and pushes him sharply and painfully onto the bed - Kaiser hisses as he
bangs his elbow.
But even now, Yoichi holds Kaiser's knee lightly, making sure not to hurt him.

“Idiot," Kaiser slams his healthy knee into Yoichi's stomach with all his might. Isagi exhales
hoarsely and grips his leg tighter. Fingers clench hard against the skin as Yoichi clings to him.

“What was that even?!” Isagi barks at him, no longer paying attention to the blow and trying
to pull off Kaiser's sleepshirt. “"Have a nice flight?" Are you out of your mind?”

Isagi remembers Kaiser's words that he, terribly tired of being senselessly angry at himself
and Isagi, pushed out of himself before slamming the door behind Isagi.

They're both angry now and neither is holding back - it never ended well when they fought
before and never will. That's the way he and Yoichi are made.

A pair cut from the same cloth, as sweetie Kenyu once said.

“Are you telling me that's not what you wanted from me?” Kaiser says coldly and wriggles
out of his T-shirt. Yoichi's fingers, wet from the rain, slide over his ribs. “What, "break a leg"
would have been better?”

“All I wanted from you," Yoichi yells back, pulling off his sweatshirt. “Was to stop fucking
around and insisting that I leave. Every time I thought that now you'd stop this bullshit, that
now you'd use your brain and stop talking nonsense."

“I thought about giving you time, going away for a week, letting you cool off before coming
back, but honestly?” Anger reflects in Yoichi's eyes, along with the rare light of the moon
peeking through the clouds. "I'm tired of dancing around you. You don't fucking need it. It's
like this every time. I give in to you once, and you keep picking at it until you cut me open
completely.”

"How can you even think that I could ever leave you?" Yoichi exhales painfully, squeezing
the lubricant onto his fingers, and it infuriates Kaiser until he sees a red blur in front of his
eyes.

Kaiser grits his teeth in anger. “I believe someone proudly proclaimed himself that I mean
nothing to him without football.”

“I said no such thing!” Isagi yells at him hurtfully, completely exhausted. “It's always like
this with you - you interpret everything in the world the way it suits you. I gave you time to
calm down after the injury and everything that happened - and you only get angrier with me,
I tell you that I won't leave you - and you give me your Wizz discount account and almost
buy the tickets yourself.”

He looks so miserable, so broken, his whole expression pierced with such anguished pain,
from the wrinkle on his forehead to his puckered lips, that it makes Kaiser sick.

God, Kaiser never meant to hurt him like that. And in the end, they're still stuck in this
eternal cycle of Kaiser hurting Yoichi and Yoichi hurting him.

Isagi looks away, too vulnerable, swallows and reaches for Kaiser.
“All the time," he finally presses his fingers inside. Kaiser shrinks at first, he's not used to it -
they haven't seen each other since the summer - but then he relaxes with an exhale when
Yoichi strokes his thigh too gently. “You make up things I want to say to you and then you try
to push me away. You're just a coward.”

“What was it then?” Kaiser hisses, discarding the pointless desire to comfort the other man,
getting used to the stretch and the cold lubricant, only slightly warmed by Yoichi. “"I've got it
all wrong?' Don't bullshit me with that crap - you know yourself that's not all there is to it.
Shall I tell you what happened?”

“Do you know why you were so insistent that I get back into the sport, why you really left? “
Kaiser asks angrily while Isagi stretches him quickly and painfully and adds a finger. He
almost hisses from the pain but suppresses the sound, not wanting to show it to Isagi. “You
were scared like the last fool.”

“Fuck off," Isagi, still not looking at Kaiser, pushes his fingers deeper. The light, which no
one in the corridor has ever turned off, half-shadows his tense face.

Kaiser flinches, exhales sharply from the stretch, and continues, also angrily, though his
thoughts are muddled. “You were frightened when you arrived and saw the quiet invalid
instead of the usual me, and you cowarded. You didn't like that I didn't dance around you like
I usually do - was that it?”

“Do you ever shut up?” Isagi barks at him, pulls out his fingers and unzips his fly. “You
always know best? What others think, what others want?”

Only Kaiser knows he's right.

“And of course I was afraid. You just don't remember what you looked like and how
frighteningly quiet you were," Isagi hisses and pushes inward, gently despite the sudden
movement and lifts Kaiser's knee. He grips the other thigh, the healthy leg, until it's bruised.
Kaiser stifles a groan as the painful stretch stings from the inside out. “Do you know how
scared I was when I came in and found you sleeping in that pile?”

“I thought you were dying.”

It comes out unexpectedly helpless and vulnerable, and Kaiser suppresses his first reaction -
the desire to gently touch the other man's cheekbone, to run his fingers over the sun-hardened
skin, to burrow into his hair, to comfort him.

“You know I'm not going to die because of a little thing like that," Kaiser says softer than he
wants to.

“I know," Isagi answers and freezes for a moment. His fringe falls over his face. “I know.”

“And you're not the one who will," Yoichi continues, pressing into his hips and taking
advantage of the fact that Kaiser moans softly about the rightness of it all, unable to answer.
“Tell me that I was a coward, when it was you, as always, who decided to try to throw me
out, as well as the football, because you made something up for yourself there. Because it
made you angry that I don't give a damn about these fuck-ups of yours.”

Of course, Kaiser isn't angry at all.

It's just insanely scary and pointless at the same time. He built his whole life around the
image he had of himself, put everything he had into it. And then Yoichi came along, who
didn't care, who saw both the cover and the disgusting insides, and saw the same person
underneath, while Kaiser himself denied it year after year, unable to separate himself from
the football. Who didn't care if Kaiser smiled pointedly or sobbed in pain, if he won in the
stadium or played roulette in the casino. Yoichi may have been frightened at first, may not
have known what to do next or how to help, may have even backed away, but in the end, he
still couldn't let him go.

Isagi leans forward and runs his lips over Kaiser's neck with force.

“And then," Isagi continues, breathing heavily and kissing Kaiser somewhere on his temple.
This is abruptly and quickly different from the way he continues to stretch Kaiser from the
inside with every new movement.

“After only one week, you looked so happy," Yoichi presses hard into him and Kaiser chokes
out a groan, still unable to answer him. “So happy, so yourself. It was as if there had never
been any injury at all.”

“How can you look like that when you demand that I leave?” It doesn't come out as angry as
Isagi wants it to.

His eyes look almost desperate in the moonlight that shines through the windows overlooking
the garden.

“So it's all my fault again?” Kaiser trembles with a mixture of anger, rage at Yoichi and the
familiar pleasure he is finally beginning to feel. “You, Yoichi, really enjoy making me out to
be the villain. Are we back to the protagonist and antagonist theme of your life story?”

“Shut the fuck up, just shut the fuck up," Yoichi, not listening to Kaiser, finally starts to fuck
him for real, thrusting violently into him. It's painful and sharp, hard and tight, just the way
Kaiser likes it best.

“Still," Kaiser chokes back a sob and clings to Yoichi. Everything inside feels raw and
sensitive, so much so that he has to blink away the tears. “It doesn't mean anything, because
when I said that I would move on, you replied…”

“You always think that everything is about you!” Suddenly, Isagi yells at him. His eyes
reflect a mixture of pain and longing. “As if I shouldn't even think about myself!”

“Then why?” Kaiser simply asks.

He's afraid of the answer, afraid of what it might mean, afraid of how Yoichi will destroy his
whole world once again.
“Because," Isagi takes Kaiser under his lap and starts to move faster and more painfully as if
he couldn't stop. “I know you can do without football, even if it takes a while. That's just the
kind of person you are - you'll never break, no matter what happens.”

Yoichi always believed in him more than Kaiser believed in himself.

“But I don't know how to play without you.”

And all of a sudden, everything is working out so well and falling into place.

“You," Yoichi says with a groan and finally touches Kaiser, who pushes himself into his fist.
Kaiser suppresses a silly whimper; he's lost in the midst of sharp flashes of stimulation,
soreness, and crystalline understanding. “The man who made me play the way I play now.
The man who makes me play better at every championship than I did at the last. We grow at
each other's expense.”

“If it weren't for you," he continues, squeezing Kaiser harder and pushing again. Isagi's gaze
clings to Kaiser's face, clenching and breathing frequently. “I never would have made it to the
Neo Egoist League, never would have made it to the Japanese national team, never would
have played in Bastard or Royale, never would have won the Ballon d'Or last year.”

“You once said that I push you endlessly to go above and beyond. But do you have any idea
what you do for me?” Suddenly, he leans forward, exhales sharply, and presses his forehead
against Kaiser's shoulder. It gets wet and hot inside.

“What kind of player am I if you're not there to stand in front of me?" He says softly into his
shoulder, biting hard into the skin above the tattoo - and Kaiser, sobbing, shudders and comes
into his palm. Tears - from who knows what - run too coldly down his heated skin.

“How can I go on without you?” The soft words fall into the bitter air, their weight mixing
heavily with it.

For a few minutes, everything is silent, only the sound of their breathing is audible in the air.
Only then does Yoichi begin to move, reluctantly, somewhere - probably to the bathroom and
a towel to wipe them both down.

“Sleep," Kaiser tells him quietly, despite the disgusting stickiness that is beginning to pull at
his insides. Another man's heart beats against his own. “It will be morning soon anyway.”

What else can he say? It's clear enough.

It's as if the storm had suddenly subsided and the sun decompressed.

Yoichi moves just a few centimeters, enough for Kaiser to make himself comfortable and
throw the blanket over them. Then he snuggles up to Kaiser again, warm, familiar,
completely understandable. He hugs Kaiser even tighter, and Kaiser hugs him back.

*
“What kind of a fool you are," Kaiser says simply, coming down to the garden in the
morning. It's like his knee wasn't enough, and now along with that it hurts all the way down -
it probably looks like he's walking on a curve.

It is almost noon - the medicine always makes Kaiser sleep longer. And the morning mist had
already dissipated, the frost had turned to dew and the pines had almost stopped dripping rain
from their needles since the night before.

Isagi, frowning heavily, sighs irritably and rises. His hands as well as his clothes are dirty.
“You never like anything.”

“What is this all about?” Kaiser looks at Isagi's limp attempts at gardening with interest. They
must be violets, almost blue with a purple heart. They look like they are dying. “Don't you
have anything better to do? Go and clean up on the second level so that Ness doesn't have to
sleep on the floor.”

Isagi looks at him murderously. The gray sky reflects in his eyes. “Are you kidding me? You
walked around the garden for an hour just a week ago whining that you couldn't find a single
herb. I got up in the damn morning, dug and stole them from the neighbors because the shops
weren't open yet, planted it - and now you're not happy about something?”

“You don't really think I was serious about growing flowers, do you?” Kaiser arches an
eyebrow mockingly. “As if my dreams were limited to digging knee-deep in mud. I was just a
little curious back then. Grow up, Yoichi.”

Yoichi, angry, dirty and disheveled, throws a lump of earth at him, and Kaiser starts laughing
and dodges it.

It is so easy to fall into this familiar routine.

 Chapter 8
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes

Kaiser had always liked trams. He had missed them when he left Munich; there were trains,
buses, and even subways in other countries, but it still wasn't the same. Now he's on one
again. They are smoother and less bumpy, and the movement behind the cities and mountains
whizzing past the windows is barely noticeable.

Of course, here between Baden and Vienna, they are not at all like the ones in Munich. But
they are also blue and long, spacious and simple.

Almost like home.

"Your leg hurts?" Isagi looks up from the phone, noticing something - Kaiser just shakes his
head. In three days, in which something between them creaked and then fused again as if
nothing had happened, everything became the way it should have been. The whole month
seemed like a lingering dream - because, look, everything between them was the same, not an
inch different, even without the football and with a future Kaiser knew nothing about yet.

Because that was the way it had always been - they could fight and break up and get angry
and misunderstand each other without end, but in the end, they couldn't do it without each
other either.

"How could you think I could ever leave you?" Yoichi asked him that night, defenseless and
naked, a strained nerve. And he added, somehow simply, a few days later, as they ate takeout
schnitzel and potato salad on the terrace of the messy second floor, where Kaiser was finally
able to climb - his knee was hurting less and less now. "You know I could never let you go."

Of course Kaiser knew.

Kaiser could not have let him go himself. Yoichi missed the only chance that Kaiser was ever
willing to give him in that moment of stupid weakness.

But that didn't matter.

What mattered was that Yoichi was stuck with him now.

"What are you smiling about?" Isagi asks suspiciously, accustomed to the fact that a happy
Kaiser rarely meant anything good to him. In early spring, the sun comes out from behind the
clouds and hides again now and then so that Yoichi's eyes light up from time to time. The
sun's rays run across his face and make him squint amusingly.

"Nothing, nothing," Kaiser says cheerfully as they approach the center and enter the
underground tunnel. Yoichi still looks at him suspiciously, noticing that Kaiser is almost
bursting with happiness.
They drive out of the tunnel into the white and cream-colored narrow streets of the center,
which intersect at every corner. Kaiser absently slides his gaze over the cobblestones,
restaurants and shops, clinging to nothing.

It only takes them about twenty minutes on the express train to the airport; the Internet is
slow and malfunctioning, and the interior is definitely not designed for lame athletes like
Kaiser - luckily the friendly Swedish lets them sit closer to the entrance so they don't have to
jump between the twisted seats and chaotically scattered stairs.

They wait at the arrivals desk for no more than ten minutes and the next moment his arms are
full of a disheveled Ness, who is poking his cold nose somewhere on his neck. His stiff,
frizzy hair tickles Kaiser's chin unpleasantly, and he's heavy, his weight pressing
uncomfortably against his knee, but Kaiser still doesn't pull him away while Ness mumbles
something about being worried and scared.

What a fool.

Kaiser sighs deliberately irritably, and, ignoring Isagi's smirk, and starts to rub Ness' back,
which is now uncovered by his backpack that has been thrown on the floor.

"Yeah, yeah, I know," he says again, too softly - the whole thing with the injury and Yoichi
has made him lukewarm, as Sae would say. He should stop it before his reputation gets
ruined. "That's it, stop it, it's okay."

Ness squeezes out a silent "yeah," but still doesn't let go for another three minutes, only
puffing silently into Kaiser's shoulder.

"And what are you doing here?" Ness asks unkindly, glancing unfriendly at Yoichi before
finally pulling away from Kaiser, who is quietly rubbing his knee, which is starting to hurt
from the weight that has fallen on it.

"What do you mean?" Isagi answers somewhat aggressively. Only now, Kaiser realizes that
he might have forgotten to mention to Ness after their phone call that he and Yoichi had
somehow reconciled.

Well, good thing that's Yoichi's problem, right? Next time he'll think three times before he
goes anywhere from Kaiser.

Kaiser, with the usual sharp grin that has finally found a place on his lips again in the days
since the casino, pushes them both towards the exit.

He can't quite figure out exactly what he's feeling - but it's a good feeling, bright and new.

When they finally reach Baden, dusk is slowly falling over the city, and Yoichi's hands are
full of take-out food from the kiosk at the tram stop. Ness looked at the boxes of fries, sauces,
and sausages very suspiciously, but said nothing - he must have remembered that Kaiser
could eat anything now, so he didn't risk arguing. Somehow he should bring up the subject of
football so that Ness could calm down a little bit about all this, it couldn't be good for his
health to be that stressed.
Kaiser smiles softly as he listens first to the cheerful chatter of people in the illuminated
square by the tram stop and the streets, and then to the fading evening song of birds scattered
in the wind-swept pines of Welzergasse. Behind him, Ness and Yoichi talk quietly about
something - Kaiser overhears something about transfers and overweight in his backpack and
decides he can stop listening. After all, they played together in Bastard; they had time to get
used to each other, no matter how much the reporters made fun of the topic - and even if Ness
sometimes gets angry with Isagi over things with Kaiser, they get along quite well. Kaiser
would call them friends if they didn't always fight like five-year-olds in kindergarten.

Something sinking in his chest at this mixture of sounds - these are the people Kaiser holds
dearest to him, a simple and pleasant place next to a house that, even though it smells of
humidity and the wood creaks from moisture, still echo something in him.

Kaiser almost catches the feeling, almost recognizes it, but they approach the house, and
there's no time for that anymore. He slides the key into the rusty lock, and swings open the
creaking gate, climbing the damp stone steps to the familiar front door.

As much as he would like to talk to Ness, once inside the warmed house, he yawns every few
seconds, blinking sleepily, barely able to swallow the food they've bought. Kaiser grimaces,
but eventually reaches over and wipes Ness' ketchup-stained face with a napkin, to Yoichi's
chuckle, and orders Ness in an intolerant tone to go to bed, because, well, really. He's going
to fall asleep with his face in sausage and potatoes like this.

That's okay, they've got tomorrow, and the week before the start of training for the new
season, and the rest of their lives.

What he has plenty of now, Kaiser thinks, is time.

For some reason, it almost doesn't hurt him to think about it anymore.

"What's wrong with your face?" Kaiser asks mockingly, stretching out on the couch as Isagi
returns to the room after showing Ness the bathroom. "What kind of ghost did you see?"

"Ness," Isagi deadpans and sits down next to him. Their knees touch slightly and their elbows
bump into each other from time to time. "I'm going to put his face on my screen. If I ever
forget to call him about you again, he'll bury me in the garden. And what did you tell him
about me?"

He adds pitifully as Kaiser rests his head on his shoulder, laughing. "I'll have nightmares for
three weeks."

"Good, if you get up early, you'll have time to steal the neighbor's roses as well," Kaiser
breathes affectionately into his ear. Meanwhile, Yoichi's violets have really taken root in the
last few days and seem to have grown even stronger.

Yoichi responds by tugging at the strand of hair sticking out over his ear, dark blue at the end.
Ness, with a toothbrush clutched in his hands, in his sleeping T-shirt and pants, walks past the
living room, bumping into corners, sleepily wishing them a good night. Kaiser, not finding it
necessary to force a smile, waves to him as Yoichi gets up to show Ness his room - they
 cleaned it together, though they dusted themselves and went through all the embroidery
magazines from the 70s.

Serenity, Kaiser thinks, finally recognizing, kissing Yoichi lightly good night. He is soft and
warm, so familiar, his hands in Kaiser's hair, running gently and lovingly over the strands.
Kaiser tilts his head down, hiding an overly tender smile in Yoichi's neck.

This feeling is serenity.

In the morning, Kaiser slips out from under the blanket and carefully removes Yoichi's hand.
It's just getting light outside the window and the birds are just beginning to sing.

Kaiser presses his lips dryly against Yoichi's temple before finally leaving the room. He
doesn't even wrinkle his nose, too deep in sleep.

Kaiser walks quietly out onto the terrace. The steps, damp from the night's rain, cool his feet.
He shivers from the cold but walks down into the garden anyway. His bare feet tread the
sandy path. The air is crisp and cold. In the ground, still cold from winter, bloomed purple
sprouts and white dripstones break through.

Wisps of mist cover the garden, flowing unevenly over it, covering the incipient green growth
among the leaves and grasses, brown from autumn, now drenched with dew. It is heavy and
wet and sticky to the skin.

Kaiser closes his eyes and lifts his head up - to the pines, to the mountains, to the forest, to
the fog and the world, and inhales. After a long, long time, he finally breathes with a full
lungs.

The air smells of spring.

The end.

Chapter End Notes

At this point, this may be my favorite work I've ever written. And it's so wonderful to
finally love something you've created.

Unfortunately, without the backstory of Kaiser and Ness, I can't say with any certainty
what exactly rooted this insecurity in Kaiser. Nevertheless, it is definitely there, and this
work is primarily based on that conviction of mine. This is evidenced by his behavior
(really confident people behave more like Loki - they don't need to prove anything to
anyone, to stage demonstrative "executions", to break someone over and over again,
they already know everything about themselves - they just don't need it), by the
questions Kaiser asks of Isagi (how can he oppose someone known to be stronger?), by
his choice of opponents. Even his chain (the glass one, I hate that thing) kind of hints at
that. I was pretty sure of this before (since I started writing the work three months ago),
and after the questions for the Blue Lock exhibit, I just know it. The whole mental self-
harm thing and convincing yourself in the morning can't be just for fun (especially when
talking to yourself in the morning is literally the first tip on the internet for "how to stop
hating yourself" haha). It could always be that I'm second-guessing and misrepresenting
the facts, but in the end we all judge characters only by our own life experiences and
paths.

Kaiser denies himself, denies his past, denies Isagi, and generally denies anything that
might have any meaning to him. He's used to being alone and, apparently, representing
nothing to others without football; and that's why it's both scary and almost impossible
for him to imagine that Isagi, or even Ness, Sae, Lorenzo, and the rest of them, could
love him just like that.

I only hope that I have been able to show the beginning of a possible path he can take to
accept himself. And of course, with the help of Isagi, who is infinitely loving and wise,
who understands him in a way that no one else can, yet remains as much a living person
as Kaiser is himself. Because without accepting both himself and one's past, it is
impossible to grow, and impossible in the full sense of the word to be with another
human being.

I can't describe in words how grateful I am for you reading this work and sharing your
thoughts, it means the world to me as an author.

See you next time!

Please drop by the Archive and comment to let the creator know if you enjoyed their work!