Chapter Text
Gai liked the way his lungs burned on mornings like this.
The sky over Firewill University was still a cool, thin blue, the kind that felt like it hadn’t made up its mind about the day yet. The floodlights over the main pitch were still on, throwing long pale streaks across the grass. The stands were empty. The campus beyond the trees was quiet.
It felt like the whole place was holding its breath with him.
He exploded out of the penalty box and sprinted toward the halfway line, feet drumming against the turf. The markers he’d set—small orange cones in a crooked line—flashed past at the edges of his vision. His thighs burned. His calves screamed. His heart hammered in his chest, loud and reassuring.
Halfway line.
Slow to a jog.
Turn.
Sprint again.
Preseason was over. The training camp, the double sessions, the endless conditioning work—that was done. Officially, at least. The athletic department had even posted a cheerful “THANK YOU, FIREWILL!” graphic on social media yesterday, like the hard part was behind them.
Gai didn’t believe that for a second.
The season started in four days. That was the part that mattered.
He reached the cone near the penalty area, stopped too sharply, and bent over with his hands on his knees. His breath tore a path out of his chest, harsh and satisfying. Sweat dripped from his hairline down his neck, soaking the collar of his green training shirt.
The scoreboard above the far end of the pitch was dark, a blank black rectangle against the morning. He liked it that way—clean, unforgiving. No numbers yet. Nothing earned, nothing lost.
“Gai!”
The shout came from behind him, lazy and amused. Gai straightened, already grinning, and turned to see Genma sauntering onto the field, carrying his cleats by their laces like this was a casual stroll and not the first team training of the week.
“You’re going to burn out before coach even gets here,” Genma said. “Leave some oxygen for the rest of us.”
“That’s what warm-ups are for,” Gai replied, rolling his shoulders back. “To prepare the body for the passion of competition.”
Genma blinked at him, then stuck the end of an imaginary toothpick between his teeth. “You know normal people just say ‘to not pull a muscle’.”
“Normal people don’t play in the starting eleven,” Gai shot back.
Genma snorted, but there was a small, reluctant smile at the corner of his mouth. “Cocky this morning, aren’t we?”
“Confident,” Gai corrected, lifting his chin. “There’s a difference.”
Another figure hurried across the track that ringed the field, one hand holding his glasses in place, the other clutching a water bottle. Ebisu looked like he’d sprinted from his dorm in whatever clothes were closest to his bed.
“You started without us again,” Ebisu accused, slightly out of breath. “Coach is going to think we’re lazy.”
“You are lazy,” Genma said. “Gai here is just trying to make us look bad.”
“I would never!” Gai said, horrified. “My efforts are for the benefit of the entire team.”
“Uh-huh.” Genma dropped his cleats on the grass and sat down to pull them on. “Tell that to my hamstrings.”
Ebisu squinted at the cones. “What were you doing? Sprints? Again?”
“Speed and endurance,” Gai said. “Our first match is in four days. We have to be ready.”
Ebisu grimaced. “You sound like coach.”
“Thank you,” Gai said, genuinely pleased.
“That wasn’t a compliment.”
Gai laughed, the sound bursting out of him unchecked and echoing across the empty stands. The air felt lighter after. Mornings like this always loosened something inside him—some tight knot of nerves and expectation that lived under his ribs. Moving made it bearable. Pushing himself until his muscles shook made everything make sense.
The sun crested the edge of the campus buildings, turning the glass windows of the sports center into slices of orange. From here, Firewill looked almost grand—the old brick dorms with ivy crawling up their sides, the modern library with its big glass façade, the clump of oak trees near the student union where undergrads liked to nap between classes. The stadium wasn’t big, but it was theirs. The pitch wasn’t perfect, but it was home.
“What’s the schedule again?” Genma asked, tying a knot that looked like it might give out after two hard cuts. “We open against…?”
“Konoha University,” Gai answered immediately. The words had been sitting on the tip of his tongue since the fixtures were announced. “Saturday. Away.”
Ebisu groaned. “Of course it’s Konoha. Why couldn’t we start with someone easier? Like, I don’t know, anyone else.”
“Konoha’s not invincible,” Gai said.
“They’ve won the league three years in a row,” Ebisu pointed out.
“Which means,” Gai said, “they’re overdue for a humbling defeat.”
Genma barked a laugh. “You hear that? Firewill’s very own motivational speaker.”
“I’m serious,” Gai insisted. “We’ve improved. Our defense is stronger. You,” he pointed at Ebisu, “have been working on your timing. And Genma’s shot from the edge of the box is deadly.”
“You just want me to keep shooting so you can rack up assists,” Genma said.
Gai opened his mouth to deny it and then closed it again. “That would be acceptable,” he admitted.
Ebisu groaned again, but there was less despair in it this time. “We’re going to need a miracle.”
“We don’t need miracles,” Gai said. “We need work. And we’ve done that.”
Genma shook his head, but there was a glint in his eye. “You keep talking like that and coach is going to give you a captain’s armband by mistake.”
Before Gai could respond—heart doing something weird at the thought—the distant sound of a whistle cut through the morning. Choza Akimichi strode out from the tunnel, clipboard in hand, cap pulled low. A few other players trickled in behind him, yawning and stretching.
“Alright, Firewill!” Coach called. “Enough standing around, let’s move. Dynamic warm-up, then ball work.”
Gai jogged toward him without needing to be told twice.
Training blurred into a rhythm that lived in his bones: high knees, side shuffles, passing drills, small-sided games that left his shirt clinging to his back. The air filled with the sound of shouted names, thudding footfalls, the sharp thwack of cleats striking ball.
Coach Choza stopped them halfway through to go over set pieces. They gathered near the sideline, sweat steaming off them in the cool air.
“First league game,” Coach said, voice level. He didn’t have to raise it; everyone leaned in. “Against Konoha. You’ve seen the clips. You know what they’re good at.”
“Everything,” Ebisu muttered under his breath.
“They press high and they punish mistakes,” Coach continued. “Their midfield is smart, and they have their star, but we can hurt them there if we’re brave.”
His eyes flicked to Gai.
Gai straightened instinctively.
“You’re going to have to run,” Coach said. “A lot. I want you overlapping every chance you get, but you cannot leave your side exposed. If you gamble, you have to win.”
“Yes, sir,” Gai said.
“And the rest of you?” Akimichi let his gaze sweep over the group. “We are not stepping into their stadium to be a training exercise. We’re going there to play our game. You’ve worked too hard this preseason to act like we’re already beaten.”
He flipped the clipboard around and smacked it lightly with his palm. “We earn respect. We don’t wait for them to give it.”
Gai felt his chest swell. His muscles ached, his legs were heavy, but the idea of stepping into Konoha’s stadium and proving that Firewill deserved to be there lit something bright and hot under his sternum.
He didn’t want to be an easy three points for anyone.
He wanted them to remember Firewill.
He wanted to make them work.
“Back to it!” Coach barked.
They scattered.
By the time training ended, the sun was properly up and the rest of campus was awake. Students crossed the paths beyond the stadium in clusters, backpacks slung over one shoulder, coffee cups in hand. The air smelled faintly of cut grass and cafeteria food.
In the locker room, steam hung in the air from the showers. Someone had music playing quietly from a phone balanced on a bench—something with a steady beat that made Gai’s foot tap without thinking.
He sat on the edge of the bench in front of his locker, towel wrapped around his waist, hair damp and falling messily over his forehead. His body hummed with that warm exhaustion he loved, the good kind that meant he’d left everything out there.
Genma flopped down beside him, already half dressed and still somehow managing to look like he had just rolled out of bed.
“So,” Genma said, nudging Gai’s shoulder with his own. “Big away game, top of the league, scary reputation. Nervous yet?”
Gai considered it. He hadn’t really given himself time to name what he was feeling. The whole morning had been one continuous line of motion.
“I’m…” He searched for the word. “…excited,” he decided.
“That tracks,” Genma said.
Ebisu, who was carefully lining up his toiletries in his locker like he was staging a photograph, glanced over. “Excited? I feel like I’m going to throw up every time I think about their stadium.”
“You’ll be fine,” Gai said. “You always are.”
“That is demonstrably false,” Ebisu said.
“You get in your head too much,” Genma told him. “Just pretend it’s practice.”
“Practice doesn’t have a thousand people watching me shank a shot into the parking lot.”
“Then give them a better show,” Gai said lightly.
Ebisu groaned, but some of the tension left his shoulders.
“You’re both insufferable,” he muttered.
Gai grinned and started pulling on his Firewill hoodie, the one with the faded logo at the chest and a small tear at the cuff from where someone had stepped on it last season. It was soft from too many washes, familiar in a way that calmed him.
His phone buzzed in his locker. He fished it out with one hand.
Kurenai: Are you alive or did pre-season finally kill you?
Kurenai: Coffee?
He smiled before he could stop himself.
Gai: Very alive! Training done. Coffee sounds youthful.
Kurenai: Stop saying youthful like that. Meet you at the union in 20.
He finished dressing in record time.
“You’re in a hurry,” Genma observed, smirking.
“Kurenai asked for coffee,” Gai said.
“Ah,” Genma said knowingly. “The actual captain of this team.”
“It’s true,” Ebisu said. “She terrifies me.”
“She’s very supportive,” Gai protested.
“She threatened to break my legs if I didn’t stop doubting myself,” Ebisu said.
Gai thought about it. “That is supportive,” he decided.
Genma snorted. “Tell her we said hi. And that if she’s going to threaten to break things, start with the opposing defense.”
“I’ll pass along the message,” Gai said, slinging his duffel bag over his shoulder.
He stepped out of the locker room into the hallway, the walls lined with old team photos and faded banners. In some of them, the Firewill kits were different colors, the haircuts questionable, the players unfamiliar. But the expressions—determination, joy, exhaustion—were the same.
He paused for a heartbeat in front of last season’s team photo. His own face stared back at him from the end of the back row, grin too wide, hair cut too short.
They’d finished mid-table last season. Respectable, people had said. Solid.
He didn’t want respectable.
He wanted better.
And in a frustrating way, mid-table had come with another consequence: Firewill never qualified for the upper-tier crossover matches—the ones where the league leaders played the higher-ranked challengers from the opposite bracket. Konoha had lived in that upper bracket for years, orbiting on a different axis entirely. Firewill only ever faced teams near their own standing: scrappy, inconsistent squads fighting for survival, not glory.
So even though Konoha had lifted the trophy three seasons in a row, Gai had never stood on the same pitch as any of them. They belonged to a different tier of the same world, parallel paths that never converged.
This season, for the first time, the league had reorganized its opening fixtures so the bracket tiers mixed early on. Firewill’s name and Konoha’s had landed on the same line.
Gai didn’t see it as luck.
He saw it as an invitation.
The student union was already buzzing when he arrived, noise bouncing off the high ceiling. The smell of coffee, fryer oil, and whatever the daily special was mingled into something vaguely edible.
Kurenai was easy to spot even in the crowd, sitting at a corner table with her hair pulled back, a textbook open in front of her and a coffee cup held in both hands. She looked up as he approached, dark eyes flicking over him like she could read his energy before he said a word.
“You’re limping,” she said instead of hello.
“I am not limping,” Gai said, instantly offended.
“You’re definitely favoring your left leg.”
“I’m walking with purpose.”
“That’s not what it looks like.”
He sat down across from her with a huff. “Training was intense. Purposeful. As it should be.”
“Uh-huh.” She closed her book with a soft thump. “You look like you’re about to either pass out or start running laps around the union.”
“I feel great,” Gai said. “Preseason is over. The season is about to begin. This is the most alive a person can be without actually being on the field.”
Kurenai studied him for a moment, then hid a small smile behind her cup. “You’re excited.”
“Yes.”
“Nervous?”
He hesitated. “A little,” he admitted. “But it’s a good nervous. It means I care.”
“You always care,” she said. “That’s the problem.”
“How is that a problem?”
“Because you carry everything.” Her tone was matter-of-fact, not unkind. “The losses. The mistakes. Every time someone misses a shot, I know you replay it in your head like it’s your fault.”
“That’s because I could have done something,” Gai said. “If I had closed down earlier, or marked better, or—”
“Or maybe it’s not all on you,” Kurenai cut in.
He shifted in his seat, uncomfortable.
She sighed. “I’m not saying don’t care. Just… remember you’re not the only one on the team.”
“I know I’m not.”
“Do you?” Her gaze softened. “Who’s your first opponent?”
“Konoha University,” he said.
One of her eyebrows lifted. “Big one.”
“Exactly,” Gai said, some of the earlier energy returning to his voice. “It’s the perfect way to start. If we do well, it sets the tone for the whole season.”
“And if you don’t?” she asked.
He thought about that. About the possibility of things going wrong, of Konoha slicing through their defense, of walking off the field with the sound of someone else’s celebration soaking into his skin. It was, actually, what everyone expected, even his own teammates.
He pushed the image away.
“Then we learn,” he said. “And we get better. That’s all.”
Kurenai watched him over the rim of her coffee cup. “You really don’t know how to do anything halfway, do you?”
“I don’t see the point,” Gai said simply.
She shook her head, but she was smiling now. “Well, I’ll be there. I want to see Konoha’s faces when you outrun their entire right side.”
“Left side,” Gai corrected automatically. “I’m on the right. I’ll be outrunning their left.”
“See?” she said. “Carrying everything again.”
Gai laughed, the tension in his chest easing.
They talked about classes after that—her brutal reading list for the semester, his sports science assignments, the group project he was already dreading with two guys who thought attendance was optional. The normalcy of it grounded him, tethered the bright, fast thoughts in his head to something solid.
By the time they stepped back out into the afternoon, the sun was high and the campus was fully alive. Students sprawled on the grass, others hurried toward lectures, a group near the fountain argued loudly about some show Gai hadn’t seen.
Kurenai nudged him with her elbow. “You should rest.”
“I will,” he promised.
“That doesn’t mean ‘run more sprints on your own,’” she warned.
He hesitated. “…Then I will rest after doing that.”
She sighed. “You’re impossible.”
“Thank you,” he said, because he genuinely believed it was a kind of compliment.
She rolled her eyes and walked away, waving over her shoulder.
That evening, the locker room was empty except for the soft hum of the vending machine and the distant echo of a bouncing ball from another practice somewhere. The light from the hallway cast a narrow rectangle across the bulletin board by the entrance.
Gai stopped in front of it, duffel bag slung over his shoulder. Coach had pinned the printed fixture list there that morning.
FIREWILL UNIVERSITY — MEN’S SOCCER
2025 FALL SEASON
He traced the first line with his eyes.
Matchday 1 — KONOHA UNIVERSITY
He could almost hear the roar of an away crowd he hadn’t met yet, feel the unfamiliar turf under his cleats. A bigger stadium. A louder noise. A stronger opponent.
His heart didn’t sink at the thought. It rose.
Beside the fixture list, someone had stuck a sheet of paper with a few still frames from a video scout session—blurry screenshots of Konoha players in mid-motion, jerseys white and black, faces mostly indistinct. One of them, on the far left, was captured from behind: just a glimpse of a player mid-sprint, number obscured, hair a blur of pale gray under the lights.
Gai’s gaze slid right past it.
He didn’t care about faces yet.
He cared about the challenge.
He curled his fingers briefly around the strap of his bag, feeling the calluses at his palms press into the fabric.
Four days.
Four days until the scoreboard stopped being a blank, forgiving thing and started telling the truth.
He smiled to himself, small and fierce.
“Alright,” he murmured to the empty room. “Let’s see how far we can go.”
Then he turned off the lights and stepped out into the hallway, leaving the grainy screenshots on the bulletin board behind him—unseen, unexamined, waiting.
Gai woke up sore in the best possible way.
His legs felt heavy when he swung them out of bed, a pleasant, dragging weight that reminded him of every sprint, every last-minute tackle from the day before. The dorm room was dim, light leaking in through the cheap blinds in tired gray strips. His roommate’s bed was empty—Genma had morning labs again, which he never stopped complaining about.
Gai stretched until his spine popped, then rolled his shoulders, testing the edges of the ache.
Preseason was over. The league was real now. The thought made something fizz beneath his ribs.
He got dressed quickly—Firewill hoodie, beaten-up training pants, the pair of running shoes that had seen better days—and stepped out into the hallway. The dorm smelled like coffee, deodorant, and too many people using body spray to cover the fact that they hadn’t done laundry in a while.
On his way down the stairwell, he passed a group of first-years huddled on the landing, two of them in Firewill jerseys with someone else’s name on the back.
“That’s him, right?” one whispered when he thought Gai was out of earshot. “The fullback who never stops running?”
“The crazy one?” another said. “Yeah, that’s Maito.”
“The crazy one” stung and flattered at the same time.
He pretended not to hear and waved anyway. “Good morning!”
They blinked, startled, then waved back in a half-panicked way.
Campus in the early morning had a particular kind of quiet—students trickling toward classes, maintenance carts humming along the paths, the distant thump of a ball from the rec fields. The stadium sat at the edge of it all, big enough to feel important but small enough that Gai could see every row of seats and imagine them full.
He cut across the main quad toward the science building, coffee from the union cooling in his hand. A couple of people in Firewill sweatshirts nodded to him, the quick, impersonal kind of acknowledgment reserved for athletes whose names most people knew but whose schedules nobody understood.
He was “that soccer guy” to most of campus. The loud one. The one always running. The one who did extra laps when everyone else was done, who shouted encouragement from the sideline even when his voice was already hoarse.
He was fine with that. Mostly.
Sometimes he wondered what it would be like to walk through campus and have people know him for something else. But then he felt his legs, the steady pull in his muscles, and decided this was enough for now.
He slipped into his morning class only a few minutes late, but in a room that quiet, even a soft-close door sounded loud.
“Mr. Maito,” Professor Yamanaka said without looking up from the attendance sheet. “So nice of you to join us.”
Gai froze mid-step. “Sorry. Practice ran a little long yesterday.”
“We are not on the field now,” Yamanaka replied. “Take a seat. Try not to confuse muscle fatigue with an excuse for being late.”
A couple of students snickered.
Gai ducked his head and found an empty seat in the second-to-last row. His notebook already had half a page of drills sketched into the margin from earlier in the week—arrows, little Xs and Os, notes like pressure here and don’t dive in. He turned to a clean page and forced himself to write the date.
The lecture was about motor learning and adaptation. Usually he liked this topic; there was something comforting about the idea that bodies could change, could get better at things through repetition and feedback. Today, his thoughts kept drifting toward Saturday.
Konoha University.
He’d watched them in highlight videos before, but always as a distant, polished shape on a screen—a team from a different level, the kind people talked about in impressed tones: Did you see their pressing? Did you see their passing sequences? Did you see that forward, Tenzo, taking on three defenders at once?
Firewill didn’t exist in those conversations.
Not yet.
“Mr. Maito.”
He jerked his head up. Inoichi Yamanaka was looking directly at him.
“Yes?”
“Since you are clearly contemplating the mysteries of the universe, perhaps you can tell us: what is one benefit of variability in practice for skill retention?”
Gai blinked. Then, gratefully, his brain caught up. “Uh—mixing different tasks during training makes the brain work harder to retrieve the movement patterns, so the skill sticks better in the long term. Even if performance looks worse during practice.”
Yamanaka regarded him for a moment, then nodded once. “Correct. Stay with us, please.”
He nodded.
A couple of people looked at him curiously—oh, the soccer guy knows things—but the moment passed quickly. The lecture rolled on. Gai forced himself to copy down key terms, to circle the ones he wanted to look up later.
He wanted to be more than the fullback who never stopped running. He wanted to pass his classes on purpose, not just scrape by on attendance and effort.
But when the professor dismissed them, his first thought was still of the field.
The gym was busy in the early afternoon. Music thumped from speakers mounted high on the walls, different songs bleeding into each other. Athletes moved between machines in well-worn circuits—basketball players working on vertical jumps, track runners in a corner with resistance bands, a couple of swimmers doing some incomprehensible dryland routine.
Gai gravitated toward the row of treadmills, then thought better of it and headed for the bikes. Coach Choza had a sixth sense for when players overworked certain muscles; he didn’t need to give the man extra reasons to glare at his quads.
He set the resistance high and began to pedal, legs settling quickly into a steady rhythm. The ache from the morning loosened, then shifted into something more precise. Controlled.
A shadow fell across the bike next to him. “Of course you’re here.”
Gai smiled without looking up. “Hello, Kurenai.”
She swung herself onto the neighboring bike with the practiced ease of someone who knew exactly how much effort she was willing to expend on cardio and not a fraction more. Her ponytail slipped over her shoulder as she adjusted the seat.
“You really don’t believe in rest days, do you?” she said.
“Active recovery,” he corrected between breaths. “Keeps the blood flowing.”
“Your blood has never had a flow problem.”
“That’s very kind of you to say.”
“That wasn’t a compliment.”
He laughed, then winced when it jostled his ribs.
Kurenai side-eyed him. “So. First game. Konoha.”
He nodded, focusing on the sound of the pedal chain. “Yes.”
“How are you feeling?”
“Excited,” he said automatically. Then, after a beat, “A little nervous. But mostly excited.”
She hummed. “You know, both can be true at once. You don’t have to pick one.”
He chewed on that in silence for a few rotations.
“I want us to prove we belong there,” he said finally. “On that field. Against a team like that.”
“You do belong there,” she said. “You earned that schedule.”
“I know. It’s just—” He searched for the right words. “People talk about Konoha like they’re untouchable. Like everyone else is just there to watch them win. I don’t like that.”
“Good,” Kurenai said simply. “You shouldn’t.”
He glanced at her. “You’re not going to say something like ‘be realistic’?”
“I’m a communications major, not your therapist,” she said dryly. “My job is to listen to you rant and then remind you not to self-destruct.”
“That is an incredibly valuable role,” Gai said earnestly.
She snorted, but a small smile tugged at her mouth. “Look. You care more than anyone I know. That’s your greatest strength. It’s also what scares me.”
“Why?”
“Because when things go wrong, you treat it like a moral failure.” Her gaze went ahead, not at him. “One bad game and you act like you’ve personally disappointed the universe.”
“That’s a bit dramatic,” he protested.
“Is it?” she asked softly.
He opened his mouth. Closed it again.
He remembered last season—walking off the pitch after a 3–0 loss, the field lights too bright, the taste of humiliation bitter on his tongue. He’d gone back out alone an hour later and run sprints until his legs gave out, because he hadn’t known what else to do with the feeling.
Kurenai had found him and dragged him back inside. She hadn’t said much then. Just sat with him while he tried to catch his breath.
He sighed. “I just don’t want to waste anything. Time. Effort. Opportunities.”
“You won’t,” she said.
He smiled a little at that. “Coach said something similar yesterday.”
“Good. I like him already.”
“You’ve met him,” Gai reminded her.
“Then I stand by my opinion.”
They pedaled in companionable silence for a while. Around them, life in the gym moved on—weights clanked, someone dropped a dumbbell and swore, a trainer clapped encouragement at a struggling runner.
“You know,” Kurenai said after a few minutes, “even if Konoha is as terrifying as everyone says, I think they’re in for a surprise.”
Gai blinked. “Why?”
“Because they’ve never played against you,” she said. “Not this you. Not the one who’s spent all summer waking up at sunrise to torture his cardiovascular system.”
He felt heat rise to his cheeks that had nothing to do with the bike. “You make it sound more impressive than it is.”
“I make it sound exactly like what it is.” She slowed her pedaling and hopped off, stretching her arms over her head. “Don’t break yourself before Saturday, okay?”
“I won’t,” he promised.
She gave him a look.
“I will try not to,” he amended.
She nodded once. “Better.”
That evening, the film room smelled faintly of dust and old coffee. The entire squad was crammed into the narrow rows of seats that faced the pull-down screen at the front. The lights were dim, the only illumination coming from the projector and the glow of a laptop on the table where Coach Choza sat.
Choza looked, Gai had always thought, like he should be running a barbecue joint rather than a college soccer program—broad shoulders, kind face, the kind of presence that made people feel simultaneously safe and vaguely guilty for disappointing him. But once the projector turned on, his expression sharpened.
“Alright, listen up,” he said. “We’ve got footage from Konoha’s last two games of last season. Remember: they lost maybe twice in the whole year. This isn’t to scare you. It’s to show you they’re human.”
Aoba, sitting a few seats down from Gai, muttered, “If that’s supposed to be comforting, it isn’t.”
“Quiet,” Choza said mildly, without looking back.
The first clip started.
The camera angle was high, showing the whole field. Konoha’s formation spread across it like ink—black shirts with white trim, moving in coordinated patterns. Their passes were crisp, their spacing disciplined. On the far side of the screen, a forward in the number 9 jersey—Tenzo—held off two defenders like it was nothing, chesting a ball down and laying it off cleanly.
“That’s their striker,” Choza said. “Strong. Smart with his back to goal. Don’t dive in. Make him play sideways.”
He let the sequence run. The ball went back to midfield, then out to the left.
“This,” Choza tapped his pen on the table, “is where they like to hurt people.”
On the grainy screen, the left side of Konoha’s attack came to life. It was hard to make out faces, but the movement was unmistakable—quick, confident, a player hugging the touchline before cutting inside with a sharp change of pace.
Aoba whistled softly. “That’s… fast.”
“That’s rehearsed,” Choza said. “Speed doesn’t matter if you read it early.”
Genma, slouched low in his seat, raised a hand. “So… no pressure on our right side at all, then.”
Choza’s eyes slid toward the back of the room. “Where’s our right back?”
Gai straightened instinctively. “Here, coach.”
Choza’s gaze met his in the half-dark. “You’ll have your hands full,” he said. “But I wouldn’t put you there if I didn’t think you could handle it.”
Gai’s throat tightened. “Yes, sir.”
The clip reset. Gai forced his eyes to stay on the patterns: the overlaps, the way Konoha’s midfielders shifted to cover, the spaces that opened up when their fullbacks pushed too high. He made mental notes. They’re aggressive on the press. Their right side tracks back slower. Their back line hates long diagonal balls.
He didn’t linger on the left winger as an individual. There wasn’t enough detail to see much, anyway. Just a lean figure in white, number blending into the light glare, moving with an economy that made Gai’s legs itch to chase.
“They’re good,” Choza said when the footage ended. “Very good. But every team has habits. We can use that. We’re not walking into a slaughterhouse, we’re walking into a game. Understand?”
“Yes, coach,” the room replied, voices overlapping.
“Good. Get some sleep tonight. I want sharp minds tomorrow.”
The projector clicked off. The room filled with the soft scrape of chairs and the rustle of clothes as the players filed out.
Hayate yawned so hard on the way to the hallway that his eyes watered. “I’m not sleeping after that,” he muttered. “Did you see how clean that counter was?”
“Did you see how their keeper almost spilled that shot from outside the box?” Genma countered. “He’s not a god. He’s human with slightly slippery hands.”
“Genma,” Kotetsu said, “you say that now and then sky it off the crossbar in the game.”
“Positive thinking,” Genma said. “Manifestation.”
“Please never say ‘manifestation’ again,” Izumo replied.
Gai walked among them, listening more than speaking. He liked the way the noise wrapped around him. The teasing, the complaining, the bravado—they were all just different shapes of the same thing.
They cared too. Even the ones who pretended not to.
“Gai.” Choza’s voice stopped him at the doorway.
He turned. “Yes, coach?”
Choza studied him for a long moment. “You don’t need to win this game by yourself.”
“I know,” Gai said.
“Do you?”
Gai hesitated. “…I’m trying to,” he admitted.
Choza’s expression softened. “Good start. Go home. Eat. Stretch. And don’t you dare step on a treadmill tonight.”
Gai managed a smile. “Yes, sir.”
The campus was quieter by the time he stepped outside. The sky had deepened into navy, edges tinged with the last remnants of sunset. Streetlights flickered on one by one, casting little halos on the paths.
Gai walked slowly, duffel bag hanging from one shoulder, hands in his pockets. The cool air soothed the lingering heat in his muscles. Somewhere in the distance, someone laughed too loudly. A dog barked near the faculty housing. A bike zipped past, its rider calling out a quick “Sorry!” when they almost clipped his elbow.
He thought of the video. Of black jerseys and clean passes and the way Konoha seemed to move like one organism.
He thought of Firewill—of mismatched gear and worn grass and Choza’s calm voice cutting through the noise. Of Kotetsu’s dry jokes, Izumo’s steady presence, Hayate’s quiet grit. Of Raido yelling directions from the back, Genma complaining and then scoring anyway, Ebisu treating every missed shot like a personal insult from the universe.
On this campus, people saw him as energy given human shape. Loud. Intense. The guy you asked about upcoming fixtures if you wanted a passionate twenty-minute answer. The guy you also avoided if you were in a hurry.
He wondered how people at Konoha saw their players. If their left winger walked around campus with a hood up, drowning in headphones, or if he glided through crowds without ever really touching them. If he was another one of those names people said with a kind of casual awe—Tenzo, Obito, Itachi—like they were already halfway to something bigger than college soccer.
Gai didn’t envy them exactly. But he felt something pull in his chest, sharp and eager.
He wanted to stand on the same field and not look small next to them.
He reached the path that cut between the practice fields and the main stadium. The floodlights were off now, the pitch a dark, waiting rectangle. From this angle, the scoreboard was just a silhouette against the sky.
Two days from now, it would be lit up. Scores, time, all the hard numbers that didn’t care about effort or fear or how much anyone had wanted it.
He stopped for a moment and let the quiet settle around him.
He didn’t know what Konoha’s players were doing right now, under different lights. Maybe they were watching film too. Maybe they were laughing about how easy their first game would be.
He hoped they were.
There was a strange, fierce joy in the idea of stepping onto a field where no one expected Firewill to matter and making them adjust their expectations in real time.
Gai took a deep breath, filling his lungs with the cool night air.
“Two days,” he murmured.
He didn’t know what exactly was waiting for him in Konoha’s stadium.
He only knew he wanted to meet it head-on.