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Training is exponentially more intense between the First Selection and Second Selection stages.
Chigiri, at one point in time, had been used to pushing himself like this — sprinting, long-distance running, even some weight-training had been the norm back in middle school — but it is a time long past now. The Chigiri of the now has no time to reminisce about his past fitness when he’s forced into working muscles he’s never even heard of before, from dawn until dusk. Every day.
The Chigiri of the now is constantly sore, and tired, and hasn’t had enough sleep for several days because of the stick-thin glasses guy who doesn’t know the value of sleep and recovery and has decided to make it everyone’s problem.
The lack of sleep is messing with him. He’s never felt so cranky or light-headed at the same time before. The problem is, the lack of sleep seems to be messing with everyone in their stratum as well — albeit in a slightly different way — and somehow it is Chigiri’s burden to bear.
The fact of the matter is: in the sleep-deprived delirium that has settled over the Blue Lock facility, people seem to be forgetting that Chigiri isn’t actually a girl.
“Don’t talk to me,” he groans, when he wakes up at the ass-crack of dawn to the sight of two of his teammates ogling at him from the foot of his futon.
“Princess,” Igarashi says, with eyebags that look as horrific as Chigiri’s head feels, “You look so… radiant today.”
“Disgusting,” he says, and flings the covers at them, sending them sprawling into a fabric-entangled pile. From the corner of his eye, he sees Isagi and Iemon, both in the middle of tidying up their futon as they struggle to shake themselves awake, look over at the commotion with no small amount of pity. Chigiri ignores them.
Somehow, while the rest of the stratum tries to pull themselves awake, Chigiri is one of the earliest to trudge into the eating hall, half-asleep.
Kunigami too is already there, one of the few boys who hasn’t yet succumbed to the lack of sleep — though he feels like he shouldn’t be surprised, from the way this new training routine is near identical to Kunigami’s usual — and with a heap of rice and eggs and meat in front of him that makes Chigiri’s stomach feel queasy just by looking at it.
Still, he brings his tray over to him, exchanging a quiet good morning across the otherwise empty table, and barely taking a seat when he senses a presence behind him.
No, Chigiri bemoans, it’s too early for this.
“Hey, princess,” says a boy — from Team V, he thinks, though he doesn’t recall his name — who tries to grab his chair and lean over him, fingers uncomfortably close to brushing against his hair. “I have a question—”
“No,” he says immediately, and looks away without a second thought. “Leave me alone.”
“You didn’t let me say anything,” Boy from Team V complains, as if he isn’t the sixth person who’s tried to proposition him out of nowhere the same way. Surely, Chigiri thinks tiredly, surely by now someone would have had the presence of mind to let his fellow players know that Chigiri doesn’t want to be bothered.
“I don’t want to hear it.”
“Ojou-sama,” he repeats, with a familiar hint of delirium in his voice, “No, ojou-chan—”
“Dude,” Kunigami suddenly cuts in, brows furrowed and looking two seconds away from standing up and drawing to his full height. It’s an intimidating expression on his strong face. “The guy doesn’t want to talk to you.”
The words seem to flip a switch in Boy from Team V, who blinks at Kunigami, then at Chigiri, then straightens up and pinches the area between his brows.
“Right,” he mutters, shaking away some of the frenzy in his eyes, “The guy doesn’t want to talk… The guy…”
It’s only when the boy leaves, that Kunigami — tall, broad, wonderful Kunigami — turns to look at him. Chigiri might be hallucinating a halo of light behind his head for all that the other boy seems to glow, the words my hero bobbing around sluggishly in his head like the two blocks of tofu in his miso soup.
“What the hell was that?” Kunigami asks, looking perturbed.
“Kunigami,” Chigiri says, with equal parts exhaustion, frustration, and delirium, “Be my boyfriend.”
Kunigami’s spoon clatters against the table. “What.”
“Fake boyfriend,” he amends.
Kunigami’s voice is strained as he fumbles for his spoon, tentative in the sort of way that seems out of place on his big stature. “Why?”
Chigiri pauses. People are normally discouraged when the person they’re pursuing is already in a relationship right? It would make sense that turning others down with a simple, "I have a boyfriend.” would be the easiest way to do so — besides, Kunigami had just intervened and managed to turn someone away faster than he himself has ever managed.
There may be another ulterior motive urging him from the depths of his hindbrain, but he resolutely does not think about it.
With all this in mind, Chigiri hums, “So you can fend off those guys for me.”
“I can do that without having to be your boyfriend though. Like what I did just then.”
This is true, Chigiri thinks, but it’s a faint acknowledgement in the back of his mind that disperses before it even has a chance to form. He cocks his head, “You don’t want to be my fake boyfriend?”
Kunigami, in the middle of chewing on his food, starts coughing. “Uh—? No, that’s not—”
Was it a strange thing to ask? Chigiri doesn’t feel awake enough to decide. He stares at Kunigami, unflinchingly, studying the faint red that begins to ghost over his ears. It kind of matches his hair. Kunigami’s coughing fit seems to have died down.
“Okay,” the person in question responds, voice croaky. “I’ll be your boyfriend — uh, fake boyfriend.”
Chigiri blinks. “Really?”
“Yeah, why not?”
“Oh.” He straightens, suddenly feeling a little more awake and a lot more aware of — and horrified by — the words that had just come out of his mouth. Shit, what did he say? Fake boyfriend? And Kunigami was just fine going along with it? “You’re really okay with it? You don’t have to — I can deal with them myself… Or I can ask someone else to—”
“—No!”
Chigiri startles. Kunigami, in his sudden exclamation, has dropped his spoon again. He blinks, “‘No,’ as in…?”
Kunigami clears his throat, picks up the spoon like nothing happened, “Uh, I meant that I’m really okay with it. I’ll be your fake boyfriend. It seems like you really need a break from, uh, all the trouble?”
Ah, so it’s simply that hero-like personality of his, Chigiri thinks, strangely disappointed. Sometimes he wonders if the boy is too nice for his own good. But, since he’s agreed…
“I’ll be relying on you then, darling.”
For the third time that morning, Kunigami’s spoon falls onto the table.
Chigiri doesn’t remember what he had been thinking when he’d suggested that Kunigami become his fake boyfriend — perhaps he thought that all the teenage boys, running on fumes and relegating all form of thinking to some kind of animal hindbrain, would take one look at Kunigami’s physique and feel so threatened by will of survival instinct that they would back off. Or perhaps he thought that Kunigami was better at acting intimidating, from the way he had talked the one boy into leaving him alone that morning — but he does remember believing it would work much better than it does in reality.
“Ojou-sama, just one chance.”
Chigiri feels an immediate headache bloom at his temples, but refuses to let it stop him from seeing through his stretches. Across from him, Imamura is bleary-eyed and blabbering, refusing to take the hint.
“Sorry. I have a,” Chigiri pauses, the word feeling strange in his mouth, “…Boyfriend.”
“Eh? No you don’t,” Imamura says, without missing a beat. Chigiri’s eye twitches a little at the quick rebuttal, though if anyone were to ask, he’d deny feeling any feelings of offense. The other boy however, sniffs, affronted, “Lying to me in the face of my sincere feelings. I see how it is.”
“Do you even remember my name.”
“… Ojou-sama,” Imamura says, which is enough to answer his question. Then a brief pause. “Why is Kunigami looking at me like that?”
“… I told you. I have a boyfriend.”
“And it’s Kunigami? No fucking way.”
… There seems to be an issue with his idea, and it’s that nobody is willing to believe him when he says that he has a boyfriend. They seem to believe Kunigami even less when he tries to back Chigiri up on that front.
This, Chigiri can’t fault them for, because Kunigami does tend to look like he’s being held at gunpoint when he tries to lie about their relationship status.
Still, the angle of intimidation has some success, if only against the boys outside of Team Z — the boys in Team Z have become familiar enough with Kunigami that even weaponising his height and physicality isn’t enough to scare them in any way. Chigiri thinks that, unfortunately, they may have become too familiar with himself too, from the way some of them continue to approach him without any regard for their own wellbeing. But this is besides the point.
“Knock it off,” Kunigami says wearily, having learnt that there is no use in playing along. He almost looks as annoyed as Chigiri feels when Imamura continues talking — which seems like a feat, considering this is the same Kunigami who hadn’t shown a hint of irritation when Chigiri had foregone turning up to a team meeting on time in favour of doing his hair.
“… a goddess like you should deserve the very best. That is, if ojou-sama would allow me,” Imamura is saying, which sounds like utter nonsense and, worse still, terrible flirting to Chigiri’s ears.
His head is beginning to throb from his — actual — headache, the sounds of talking and blood thumping against his eardrum becoming overwhelming. Unconsciously, he reaches a hand to rub at his temples. The lack of sleep is starting to get to him, he thinks distantly — more than it already has, if he’s so easily set off by some talking. It certainly doesn’t help.
He doesn’t realise that Imamura has tried to take hold of him until Kunigami’s voice cuts through the fog, forceful and clear.
“Okay, that’s enough,” he says, with one of Imamura’s forearms in a tight grip. He’s stepped in front of Chigiri to intercept him, it seems, and there’s a furrow in his brow and set to his jaw that makes it seem like his patience has been whittled as much as everyone else’s has by lack of sleep. An unbidden thought surfaces — that it makes for an attractive sight. “Chigiri’s trying to train — which you should be doing too if you don’t want that glasses guy on your ass about slacking off.”
“Ow, shit,” says Imamura. Though Chigiri is unable to see what’s happening, he thinks the boy is starting to sound more like himself, speech no longer slurred. “I get it — okay, sorry — I’ll leave!”
Imamura does just that as Kunigami lets go, and then Kunigami is watching Chigiri over his shoulder, who continues to rub at his temples.
“Are you okay?” Kunigami frowns at him, reaching out a hand and letting it hover over Chigiri’s arm. At the same time, Chigiri asks, “Do you think we need to be more convincing?”
“Eh? More convincing?” Kunigami repeats. Followed by, “No, wait a second. Why do people keep trying to grab you? How long has this been happening?”
“I’m sure people leave you alone if they think you’re in a relationship,” Chigiri mutters to himself, brows pinched in thought, “So if the problem is just getting everyone to believe it…”
“How are you not more concerned about this?”
“Hm? I’m very concerned about this,” Chigiri finally looks up. Kunigami, who continues to look at him, still has that furrow in his brow. It makes him look somewhere on the boundary between concerned and upset. “Nobody believes you’re my boyfriend, and I think I understand the problem.”
“That’s not what I was — was talking about… what are you doing?”
Finally, the furrow in his brow is gone. Instead, Kunigami’s face is carefully blank as his gaze trails from Chigiri’s face to his own hand — the hand that he had left hovering by Chigiri’s shoulder but is now firmly grasped in Chigiri’s grip, their fingers interlocked.
It’s a very warm hand. Large, slightly callused from all the weight work he knows Kunigami does. It doesn’t pull away or resist as he tugs and twists it this way and that, still up at shoulder level where Kunigami was holding it before. Kunigami himself, he distantly notices, has gone strangely still.
“Hm. Trying something out,” Chigiri replies, and leans his cheek on their intertwined hands as he lets his mind wander. “Things like hand-holding and physical touch are common for couples, right? Maybe it’s more convincing if we—”
An incoherent noise escapes Kunigami’s throat, sending him into a coughing fit and interrupting Chigiri’s line of thinking all at once.
“Are you alright?” Chigiri asks, alarmed, as Kunigami, who begins to turn a light shade of red from his sudden fit, tries to stifle his coughing with one arm. Distracted as he is, he doesn’t pay attention to the way neither of them let go of their interlocked hands, nor the way Kunigami squeezes his fingers as he tries to get his sputtering under control.
“I’m fine! It’s fine — I can — physical touch is — uh — I’m fine with it. I can do that.”
Chigiri stares at him. “Okay.”
Kunigami clears his throat, and reddens further as he continues, “But give a guy some warning before you—”
A crackle from the speakers interrupts him. All of them go still with a sudden bout of dread.
“Unpolished gems,” Ego’s voice comes, heralding a message that Chigiri has begun to suspect is automated. “Get your asses off the floor. It’s time to start weight-training.”
“I’m gonna throw up,” Isagi groans into the table, like he has at the beginning of dinner every day since this hellish training interlude started.
Chigiri understands. Chigiri himself is still sporting a headache that has only gotten worse by the hour, and now threatens his only chance at getting any food in him with the rising feeling of nausea. There’s the mildly soothing feeling of someone rubbing circles into his back, and it leads him to give in to the urge to lean into the body beside him, turning his head and squeezing his eyes shut for some reprieve from the harsh artificial lighting of the dining hall.
The hand at his back stops briefly, but quickly resumes when Chigiri makes a small noise of complaint.
“Is Chigiri alright?” Isagi asks, always the too-kind and too-concerned teammate.
At the same time, Bachira yawns and says, in that impish tone of his, “Man, I had high hopes for Kunigami holding out until the end, but I think you broke him, Chigirin.”
“I’m fine. Headache,” Chigiri says in response to Isagi. To Bachira, he cracks an eye open and says, “What?”
“You know,” Bachira waves a hand, aborting the motion halfway to stifle another yawn. “Half the people here have been losing the plot whenever you’re in the same vicinity, as if they haven’t seen a woman in months and need to cope somehow.”
“That’s because they haven’t seen a woman in months,” Isagi mutters. Which isn’t accurate — it hasn’t been quite so long, despite the training definitely making it feel like so — but the sentiment of it makes Chigiri huff a laugh regardless.
So he’s talking about the worsening cognition brought about by the poor sleep and rest, Chigiri thinks, which makes sense in the context of his earlier comment — Kunigami has managed to go through several days of this hellish training and escaped looking as worn down as the rest of them. If anyone in Team Z were to make it through to the Second Selection as fresh-faced as they’d begun, it would be Kunigami.
Though, it doesn’t quite explain why Bachira thinks that’s no longer the case. To him, Kunigami seems his usual self. Perhaps he’s in no place to judge — the lack of sleep has long since taken its toll on him, after all.
“Breaking?” he asks blearily, and leans his head against a shoulder. “Kunigami?”
Beside him, the person he’s leaning on — the person in question — startles, and Chigiri briefly worries if Kunigami is about to choke on the food he’s inhaling and have another coughing fit.
Bachira snickers, “Case in point.”
“What are you talking—”
“Ahem. Ignore him,” is all Kunigami has to say about the matter. Then, before Chigiri can question it further, a hand comes up to stroke his hair, down the back of his neck, in a move that leaves him feeling completely boneless.
The fatigue is just getting to him, he justifies to himself, and this headache makes it impossible to think properly. There’s no other reason for the way he doesn’t fight the touch, and instead sinks further into Kunigami’s side, feeling the crease in his brow smoothen out the longer Kunigami plays with his hair. He’s only taking a moment to rest his eyes.
“Oh,” he hears Isagi say.
“Well. Anyway,” Bachira continues, “You and Chigirin, huh? I couldn’t believe it at first, you know! Chigirin’s been on something of a warpath the past few days — though I guess if it was going to be anybody, it would be Kunigami.”
“Eh? What do you mean?”
“Oh, you know…”
Chigiri is content to let the others talk while he rests his eyes, their voices becoming background noise in the fog. Distantly, he recognises that he should be interested in the topic of conversation, but he can’t bring himself to concentrate. He can only register the feeling of someone — still — petting his hair.
“Excuse me, ojou-sama — oh, is she—?”
“Quiet down,” is Kunigami’s voice responding, low and strangely close to his ear, “He’s sleeping.”
“Who’s sleeping,” Chigiri grumbles, but doesn’t raise his head or open his eyes to find out. He’s resting his head on something that begins to move about as soon as he talks, much to his displeasure — it’s enough to shake away some of the fog settled over his mind.
There are voices exchanging words over his head, parts of it weaving in and out of his mind before they fade into something lost. He catches Kunigami saying, a firm quality to his voice that brooks no argument, “Hey, that’s my boyfriend. Back off.”
For a brief moment, Chigiri believes it to be true. He wishes it were true. Then, he loses the memory to the fog.
Kunigami and the mystery person must have been exchanging looks in the silence after that, because when Chigiri manages to crack an eye open a few moments later, a boy that he only vaguely recognises is bowing his head in their direction in apology, shooting out a quick, “My bad, I didn’t know you two were — nevermind,” before rushing off.
“What the hell was that about?” Chigiri mumbles, his heavy eyes falling shut again.
“Nothing,” says Kunigami, “Hey, don’t fall asleep on me again—!”
The fake boyfriend ploy, it seems, is finally working.
In the few days following the first, the number of people trying to proposition him out of nowhere have dwindled to nothing. It might be that everyone is finally so worn down that they have nothing left of their energy to put towards anything that’s not sleep or the bare essentials for survival, or it might be that Chigiri by now has already firmly turned down everybody who has even thought to approach him. Even so, he’s convinced that the timing of it all aligns too well for the fake boyfriend ploy to have nothing to do with it.
Kunigami, for his part, has been getting better at playing the role of a protective boyfriend — or, really, a boyfriend at all — as well as being compliant with Chigiri’s attempt at playing a couple. That being, sticking closely and engaging in a lot of touching.
Truthfully, Chigiri doesn’t realise he’s doing it sometimes.
He and Kunigami had already been on friendly terms before all of this — at least, they would eat meals together often, and Chigiri would sometimes do his leg care routine late into the night in the training rooms while Kunigami worked out across from him. Time spent with Kunigami was easy, a little relaxing, even if only because he wasn’t as boisterous as most of the others in the team. He hadn’t noticed, however, exactly how quickly it had shifted into something new.
Something, he dares say, like a safe haven. Chigiri doesn’t recall the last time he’d felt so comfortable around somebody else. He certainly hadn’t been close with anyone back from his school days — where he had been known only for his skill in soccer and his cold, cocky attitude outside of it, and then promptly shunned once his knee injury left him with neither — so it comes to him as a surprise how easy and natural it feels to stick close to Kunigami, or lean against him, or allow him to sling an arm over his shoulders, or clasp their hands together and not let go.
He tries not to think too hard about it now, when Kunigami has his hands in a sweaty grip and pulls him forward into a deep stretch that will — maybe, hopefully — save his legs from feeling the same horrific soreness along his arms and sides.
“Thanks,” Chigiri sighs, shaking out his limbs as Kunigami takes him by the hand again to help him up.
“How’s the knee?” Kunigami asks, as they leave the training hall. Neither of them acknowledge the loud whining aimed at them by the team members that haven’t yet finished their required laps.
“Mn, it’s fine,” Chigiri hums. It’s actually rather cute, he thinks now, that several of Team Z have been concerned enough to ask after the wellbeing of his knee. It’s certainly better than some of the other things they’ve been asking after — and he’s glad he doesn’t have to worry about the latter anymore. He lets out an amused huff at the stray thought.
“What are you laughing at?”
“Nothing,” he says. A pause. “Just thought that this was… nice.”
Kunigami shoots him a sidelong glance, looking a little disturbed. “What, the training?”
“No,” Chigiri huffs, “Just… It was frustrating to have people keep approaching me for… you know. With ulterior motives. It’s nice being able to focus on just soccer and training again — nobody trying to touch me, nobody trying to ask me out…”
“Ulterior motives,” Kunigami repeats slowly.
“Mn. It’s almost like half of them came here to find a girlfriend instead of playing soccer — I was getting real sick of it,” Chigiri grumbles. Remembers it is the person beside him that helped put a stop to it. “I guess I owe you thanks for the help.”
“... You’re not looking to date anyone.”
“Hm? Well, it’s not what I came here for.”
Though, Chigiri can’t help but think, if he had the chance…
He casts a glance sideways, and it takes him a split second too long to realise Kunigami is no longer beside him. He turns, sees him stopped in his tracks with an unreadable expression. “Kunigami? What’s wrong?”
“Oh,” Kunigami blinks, eyes slowly clearing with all the poise of somebody who has just been struck by lightning. That is to say — he stumbles to catch up, shaking his head as if to chase away a poor thought. “No, it’s nothing.”
It is clearly not nothing.
Kunigami, before, didn’t seem to have any complaints about Chigiri’s closeness — almost seemed to welcome it in fact, to the glee of the tiny hopeful part of Chigiri’s hindbrain — but Kunigami, now, is acting strange. Has been for the past day. Strange in the way that he appears to go through the five stages of grief in between freezing up and tentatively extracting himself from Chigiri’s personal bubble every time he does so much as stand close by. For no discernible reason.
Well. Perhaps a discernible reason.
Chigiri is half-draped over Kunigami’s back currently, watching for the tell-tale signs of the other boy realising their closeness as he goes through his thorough routine of cool-down stretches. Kunigami is in the middle of doing his hamstrings when he appears to register it — and this, Chigiri can tell from the way he goes stock-still, then jolts as if someone is holding a flame to his back.
“Chigiri—” Kunigami starts, as Chigiri leans on him further, arms folded and elbows pressing firmly onto his back and shoulders. There is nowhere for him to go.
“There it is,” Chigiri mutters, voice low, “You’re trying to avoid me again.”
Kunigami only looks at the floor, saying nothing.
Chigiri sighs, “Is it something that I said yesterday?”
“… Can you get off me first?”
“No.”
Kunigami slumps in defeat. After a moment, he begins to speak, “Look, nobody is harassing you anymore, right? Which means you don’t need me to pretend to be your boyfriend anymore, right?”
The question is framed in a way that makes it sound hopeful for a particular answer, and it’s one that makes Chigiri feel numb.
“You don’t want to be my boyfriend.”
“No,” Kunigami says, which only serves to make his heart drop through the pit of his stomach. “It’s more that you wouldn’t want me to be your boyfriend. Fake boyfriend, that is.”
Chigiri blinks, “What?”
“Sorry,” Kunigami says miserably, “I know that you only wanted a break from your situation and asked me to play along to get people off your back. But I’m just as bad as everyone else who’s been approaching you with… ulterior motives.”
Again, he asks, “What?”
“It’s not that I don’t want to be your boyfriend,” Kunigami says quickly, as Chigiri withdraws from leaning on his back. His head reels with the admission, along with a tiny fluttering hope. Kunigami whirls around, snatching his hands before he can stand up. “It’s just. It’s just…”
Oh, he thinks faintly, the disbelief melting away and the pieces coming together. He finally understands the problem.
“Do you know why I asked you to be my — fake — boyfriend?” he asks carefully, fingers clenching tight around the ones grasping his. He sees Kunigami open his mouth to reply, and shakes his head before he can get out a word. “Not why I asked — why I asked you.”
Kunigami’s jaw clamps shut for a second. Then, hesitantly, “Because I happened to be there when you got the idea?”
Chigiri tips his head in partial assent, “Sure.” He draws in closer, watching Kunigami’s eyes flit from his face, away, and back again. “But do you think I would have asked anybody else the same if they happened to be there?”
Kunigami seems to turn the question over in his head. Struggles to answer. He opens his mouth, closes it, and finally, “I would hope not.”
“Okay,” Chigiri smiles, “That’s good.”
He watches Kunigami go still, a pleased sensation slowly unfurling inside him as it visibly dawns on the other boy what he means by it.
“Then,” Kunigami says, eyes wide, “You mean to say…”
“Let’s try this again,” Chigiri finds himself laughing. “Kunigami, be my boyfriend. My real one.”