Chapter Text
"Ladies and gentlemen, we have now arrived at Tokyo-Haneda airport. The current local time is 13:36. Please remain seated with your belt securely fastened until the aircraft comes to a complete stop. After that, you will receive the signal to..."
The rest of the announcement was drowned out by the collective shuffling of the other passengers as they gathered their belongings. The plane had already touched down but remained in slow, lurching motion as it rolled towards the gate.
Yoichi shifted in his seat. It had been a twelve-hour nonstop flight from Munich, and he couldn't wait to get up and stretch his legs.
The announcement hadn't technically said it was okay to get his phone out yet, but what was the worst that could happen? He fished it out of the pocket of his sweatpants and toggled off airplane mode. Then, he watched with a sort of resigned annoyance as his number of SMS notifications, all from the same two contacts, climbed into the triple digits.
Thank goodness he had a decent international plan.
"Stop fucking spamming my phone, you shitty clown," he typed peremptorily, not even bothering to read any of Kaiser and Ness's messages before scrolling down to see if there was anything from his sister or mom hidden somewhere in the deluge. He'd touched base with his mother the night before and knew that she was planning to pick him up from the airport by car- an unnecessary indulgence, because his family lived right down the street from a train stop and Yoichi was more than capable of getting there on his own, but one that she had insisted on due to the amount of luggage he was bringing home. So, like a good mama's boy, he'd promised to keep her updated on the progress of his flight.
"Just landed, waiting to get off the plane. But it'll take a while to get through customs so no need to rush."
Immediately, as if his mom had her phone in her hands already waiting for an update from him, his phone screen erupted into an explosion of animated hearts, which was then followed by... a text with another string of hearts. "Oh, yay! You made good time! Sumire and I will be on our way then! Can't wait to see you Yocchan!!!"
Then, a moment later, another, less sparkly text arrived from his sister. "I'll be driving," she wrote, as if there had been any question. Yoichi had never once seen his mom behind the wheel of a car. He didn't think she even had a license. By contrast, however, his sister Sumire was some kind of bigwig attorney, and could frequently be seen picking up clients in her sleek black Lexus. "You said you were flying Lufthansa, right?"
"Yeah. It should be terminal one."
She shot a thumbs-up emoji back.
That being settled, and the plane still being far from the gate, Yoichi navigated back to his group chat with Kaiser and Ness. He scrolled his way up what seemed like miles to the top of his unread messages.
"You'll never guess where Alexis and I are right now," Kaiser began. This was followed by a photo of the interior of Noel Noa's house. He vaguely recognized the picture as being one that somebody had taken at a team function more than a year ago- if he squinted, he could see a little corner of that sparkly pink unicorn balloon they'd bought Grimm for his birthday. Clearly, Yoichi thought, Kaiser was fucking with him.
Kaiser continued. "Such a shame you couldn't join us. Noa called right after you left for the airport to invite us over. He said that there was some valuable soccer advice he wanted to discuss."
Ness piped up after that. "He made us dinner from scratch, too! We got to see him wearing an apron and everything."
"Yes. It was delightfully domestic. Then for dessert we had those sweets that your fat ass keeps cheating on your diet plan with. The ones that your mom sends from Japan sometimes?"
"kintsuba," Ness supplied the word.
"Gesundheit. Also, wow, Noa just gave Alexis a hug. Not merely a manly shoulder hug, understand, but a full-on and quite tender embrace."
"His aftershave smelled nice. sorta woodsy"
"It was Dior Eau Sauvage. But I'm sure you already know all his products, Yoichi; I've seen you smell the man before."
"wait srsly??? whats wrong with you??"
"He's a fool in love. What more is there to say? Ah, poor Yoichi. I wish you could be here to be a part of this, I really do."
Kaiser and Ness were the biggest dumbasses on the planet, Yoichi thought. Truly terrible people, the both of them. Though, the image of them sitting sprawled out on that uncomfortable leather couch in Kaiser's living room, drinking out of mismatched cups and laughing dorkily at their own stupid attempts to troll him couldn't help but bring a smile to his face.
Usually it wouldn't make sense for a person's closest friends to also double as his most bitter enemies. But somehow the three of them made that arrangement work. Call it German efficiency?
It hadn't always been this way, of course. When Yoichi had first moved to Munich at the beginning of high school, just over ten years ago at this point, there had been nothing even slightly resembling friendship between himself and Michael Kaiser. Haughty and unyielding, Kaiser had ruled Bastard München's youth league team with an iron foot. At his command, none of the other boys had even acknowledged that Yoichi was on the field at the beginning, much less deigned to pass to him. And honestly, he couldn't blame them. The Yoichi from back then had been nothing more than a scrawny foreigner who knew nothing of the language and culture, one who had spent his youth trying to fit an entirely different mold of athleticism than the one he would need to succeed on the international stage.
("One for all, all for one"- that had been the team motto where Yoichi had originally started high school in Japan. Those words had never sat right with him, and after a few months spent trying and failing to integrate with that team and its philosophy, they had been what had propelled Yoichi to seek out other opportunities overseas. Not until he'd arrived in Germany had he realized just how much he had already internalized this collectivist, self-mortifying ideal and, in doing so, let his own ego starve.)
To catch up with Kaiser, Yoichi had needed to overcome this mindset. Once he did that, his level of play had then needed to grow and evolve at a rate that he would have hitherto believed to have been impossible. For the better part of a season, he had thrown every drop of his blood and sweat and tears into the struggle. There had been days when all of his efforts had seemed pointless, as if his goal was too far out of reach. There had been nights when he could barely see the Noel Noa poster he had on the ceiling of his dorm room through a haze of barely-contained tears. The beginning of his time overseas had been by far the most agonizing era- physically, mentally, and emotionally- of Yoichi's young life.
It had also been the first time he'd felt fully alive.
Again and again, he had taken the totality of what he'd previously believed to be "Isagi Yoichi" and shattered it with his own hands, breaking it down to build it back up it stronger. One after another, his metavision and physical skills had snapped into place. He had learned to communicate on a level much deeper than language (though he would always fondly remember the nights he'd stayed up late studying the most devastating ways to trash-talk Kaiser in German). His plastic young brain had been reshaped and streamlined and adapted until the day where he had finally emerged from that crucible as a player that could challenge a monolith like Kaiser and win. A striker that could lead his team to victory by the power of his own goals.
Even after all that, he and Kaiser still didn't work together on the field. They remained, in a very real sense, rivals. But the other boy had condescended to share the field with Yoichi, and to rent an apartment in the same building as him. Despite several opportunities to transfer to other teams over the years, he had also always found one reason or another not to do so.
Yoichi felt like that was telling.
Once Yoichi had forced his own team to recognize him, the rest of the world began to follow suit. He, Kaiser, and Ness had formed a trio known colloquially as the "Imperial Three", which had led Bastard München to victory in the Bundesliga and in various regional tournaments over the years. He wasn't quite at the very top of the heap yet, as far as internationally renowned strikers went. But he was confident that he would get there someday. If there was anything that his rivalry with Kaiser had taught him, it was how to believe in what, to other people, seemed impossible.
No matter how high Yoichi's star rose, however, there were some things that would never change. And he had come to accept that the warm, fuzzy feeling that fluttered in his chest whenever Noel Noa praised him was one of those things.
Though his childhood idol was solidly in his 40s now and had long since retired as a player, he had stayed on at Bastard München in the capacity of an assistant coach. Yoichi worked with him closely. So naturally, since shitty Kaiser spent so much time watching Yoichi closely, he had figured out right away how much he admired Noa.
Because Kaiser was a feral-dog-infested-garbage-heap disguised in human form and, therefore, had never mastered the full range of healthy emotions, he had misinterpreted Yoichi's pure adoration for Noa as something sexual. Which was completely ridiculous! Yoichi was as straight as they came. If anything, he saw Noa as, like, a cool French uncle or something. But that didn't stop Kaiser from roasting him mercilessly about it whenever he was bored.
Yoichi continued to backread the group chat while the plane docked at the gate. Then there was a flurry of activity as he exited the aircraft and powerwalked his way over to customs, trying to beat the rush. He knew even before he arrived at the crowded hall that it would be a futile effort, however. How many times had he made this trip, over the years? No matter what time of day he arrived, he had never seen a line of customs that he would call "short".
He installed himself at the end of the line and pulled out his phone again.
"Enjoy your delusions, fallen emperor A and Hogwarts dropout B. As if Noa would ever give you two neanderthals a second glance when I'm not around."
He didn't expect either of them to respond. It was six-something in the morning Munich time, and the off-season had just started. By all rights, his teammates should still be in bed. Probably sleeping off hangovers, if the way that their texts from their last night had gotten progressively more misspelled and ridiculous was any indication. But apparently Kaiser had decided to switch gears and become an early riser all of the sudden.
"I hate to break it to you, Yoichi, but you're not the only striker in BM's roster that's capable of carrying on Noa's legacy. Sure, you might be the only one that wants to suck his dick, but otherwise there's nothing special about you."
He felt his face twist into a manic grin. "Unlike you, I don't need to suck dick to get ahead in life. Feel free to try on Noa if you want, however. Your career needs all the help it can get."
"Oh, fuck you."
Yoichi let out a snort of laughter as he stepped forward in line, drawing the disapproving gazes of several older ladies nearby.
Kaiser continued. "So I suppose the fact that you're annoying me this early in the morning means that your flight went smoothly?"
And there was that gap again. An uncomfortable moment where Kaiser pretended he was a normal person who cared about his friends in a normal way. If Yoichi hadn't known better, he would have been touched. "Yup! Konnichiwa from Tokyo-HND." He snapped a quick picture of the customs line. "No matter how many times I visit home, the crowds always get to me. I feel like I'm gonna be swept away or st."
"Pathetic. The Yoichi Isagi I know would never worry about getting lost in a crowd. What happened to being an 'egoist', hmm?"
"Oh shut up. You'd be impressed too. Tokyo is like ten times bigger than Munich- 14 mil people vs 1.5. That's part of the reason I keep telling you to come visit me here- it's one of those things you don't really get until you see it."
A pause for a minute.
"I guess the Yoichi that I know would be the type to nerd out over statistics, so oh well. I'm satisfied. I'll be going back to sleep now, don't you dare bother me for at least another six hours. Don't you have friends in Japan that you can annoy instead?"
Yoichi rolled his eyes. Because he knew and Kaiser knew that the answer to that was "no".
He'd barely been fifteen when he first left Japan. Sure, he had come back to visit frequently, for at least a week or two every summer. It wouldn't have been impossible for him to keep in touch with his old middle school friends, or to make new ones in the meantime. But that had never been something he'd prioritized. His life had taken a very different path from everybody else that he'd used to know. As a pro soccer player with an increasingly noticeable German accent, he'd yet to find anybody in Japan that he had much in common with.
Besides, it wasn't like he disliked just hanging out at home. His parents, sister, her husband, and their five-year-old son all lived together under the same roof, so there were always people around to keep him company. Though Yoichi was known for his bold, flashy plays on the soccer field, that part of him didn't translate over into his private life- at heart, he was a homebody who preferred playing with his nephew and eating his mom's food rather than going out on the town.
(Speaking of which. He had it on good authority that his mom was making her famous pork katsu that night as a "welcome home" meal. What a day to be alive.)
He acknowledged that, for this visit in particular though, he might need to break these homebody habits. Simply because this time, his mother had finally accomplished what she'd been trying to do for years and guilt-tripped him into staying for two months.
In other words: for his entire off-season.
Usually he preferred to stay in Germany during the summer. His whole life was there, you know? But this year, it seemed like each and every star had aligned against him: not only were his parents emotional about it being the ten-year anniversary of him leaving home, but he had also recently been dumped by his girlfriend of four months, so he didn't have her as an excuse to stay either. He was finally making enough money that he didn't feel pressure to help run training camps or work other jobs like he had done in previous summers. And then, cherry on top, his devil of an older sister had sent him a video of her kid saying that he really, really wished that Uncle Yo would stay with him all summer and come and watch all of his soccer games, and he had looked all cute and squishy and hopeful and-
Well, long story short, here Yoichi was. Finally at the service counter at customs, declaring the seven bottles of Jägermeister that he'd brought as gifts for the various members of his extended family that he was sure he'd be roped into visiting at some point and telling the bored clerk that yes, he was a Japanese citizen, here's his passport, and was planning to stay in Saitama at his family's house for about eight weeks.
After that, it was the work of a few minutes to pick up his two luggage cases and head outside to the pick-up area.
Sumire's car rolled up right as he made it to the curb. Perfect timing, as usual. His sister was the kind of extremely organized person whose plans always came together without a hitch. Yoichi knew how much effort it took for her to make everything seem so effortless, especially where busy international airports intersected with nebulous ETAs, and he was especially grateful for that today. A light rain was coming down, and he didn't want to stay out in it any longer than he had to.
Of course, that didn't mean that he resisted it when his mom jumped out of the passenger seat and wrapped him in a spine-cracking hug. He'd tolerate a few raindrops for that.
After detangling from his mom, he stowed his damp luggage in the trunk and then got into the back of the sedan. Sumire, anticipating that he would be wet from the rain, had put a rubber floor mat down as well as a sort of plastic tarp over the seat. As Yoichi arranged himself gingerly on these, his mom chattered with excitement.
"Ah, it's been so long since our last visit, Yocchan! You've put on some more muscle again, haven't you? I could tell right away. Hugging you these days is like hugging a brick wall."
"Yeah, you are getting beefier by the minute. Not as much as Captain Hottie Noel Noa, but still." Sumire turned to look back at him, a teasing glint in her eyes. "You know, you could be such a hunk if you just did something about your hair."
She reached a hand back to try to grab at his black locks. Yoichi swatted it away.
"Nothing's wrong with my hair! This is a classic, conservative hairstyle!"
"No, it is literally a bean sprout sticking out the the top of your head," she sniggered. "Please let me take you to Daisuke's stylist while you're here. I'm begging you. You can't be a pro baller and keep running around with the same dorky haircut you had in high school; it's against international law or something."
"Rude! Takuya-chan, back me up. My hair's not that bad, is it?"
Next to Yoichi, his nephew Takuya sat in his booster seat, swinging his legs back and forth. He was wearing a damp, lightly grass-stained Bastard München jersey, and had a serious expression on his face. "If your hair's against the law, that's bad," he said finally. "I know haircuts can be scary, but you can do it. You're brave."
Up in the front seat, Yoichi's mom stifled a laugh, and Sumire full-on cackled like the hideous swamp hag that she was at heart.
"Yeah, you tell him, Takuya-chan!"
Yoichi made a face at his nephew. "It's not against the law, your mom's just being silly," he explained.
Takuya didn't seemed convinced. He had always been an anxious kind of kid. Extremely literal, too. He took after his dad in that sense- certainly he hadn't gotten it from Sumire. "Are you sure? Mama knows a lot about laws, since it's her job. I think you should listen to her."
"Hm. Well, I'll consider it."
The boy looked up at his mother, who, having accomplished her sisterly duty of knocking Yoichi down a peg whenever they met, was now carefully merging back into the traffic lanes to exit the airport. "Can we still go eat ice cream after this? Or is Uncle Yo going to get arrested as soon as he leaves the car? Do we have to go to the haircutter first?"
"Of course we can still get ice cream! And don't worry about your uncle getting arrested. Crimes against fashion are a ticket at most." She paused to pay attention as she finagled her way into the faster-moving of the two lanes of traffic leading away from the terminal. As soon as she did so, traffic in that lane stopped moving and picked up in the one she just left. She sighed, resigned. "I hope you don't mind if we stop, Yoichi. An hour and a half is a long time for him to sit still in the car. We played in a park for a while on the way here before the rain came so we didn't have to drive it all at once, and I told him we could get a treat on the way back."
"It's fine." Isagi said. He liked ice cream. It had been like ten months since the team's nutritionist had allowed him to eat any.
"Thanks. The shop I looked up is about half an hour from here..."
The women of his family then proceeded to interrogate him about his life. His team had narrowly missed winning their third consecutive Bundesliga title the week before and so, correctly assuming that was still a sore spot for Yoichi, they avoided asking too many questions about work. But his mom had visited a few times and had met most of his friends, and she was brimming with questions about how they and every member of their extended family were doing.
He had just finished satisfying her curiosity about what his downstairs neighbor was up to these days when they arrived at an ice cream store. Sumire dropped them off at the door and told them to get her something with sprinkles while she looked for parking.
When she joined them a few minutes later, her face was grim.
"Ugh. What a pain," she grumbled, sliding to join them in the sticky, plastic booth. "Listen to this-"
Takuya, immediately picking up on his mom's distress, tensed up and pushed the cup of choco-strawberry swirl with rainbow sprinkles that he had picked out for her in her direction. She remembered herself and smiled at him, and he relaxed so hard it was as if he'd just got finished defusing a bomb.
Geez. This kid.
"Aw, thank you, Takuya-chan! That looks tasty." She leaned forward to ruffle his hair before grabbing a spoon.
"What's wrong?" their mother asked. "Is the car okay?"
"Oh, yeah, the car's fine. But I just checked my phone, and there's an email from Takuya's summer soccer league." She looked down at her son. "Bad news, bud. Do you remember Coach Kira from the parents' meeting last week?"
Takuya frowned. "The white-haired guy?"
"Yeah. Him. It looks like he had to step down. He's not going to be able to be your coach after all." She looked over at the adults, responding to their inquiring faces with a shrug. "Some family thing. They didn't say exactly what and they were... like, very careful about not saying exactly what. So who knows? His daughter's dropped off the roster too. They're down to eight players now."
"Aw, that's a shame. I know that everyone was excited about him. It was such a lucky coincidence, that one of the kids in the neighborhood has a dad that plays in the JFL," their mom said.
"Yeah, I know. Not everybody can say that their kindergartener's learning soccer from a pro."
"Semi-pro," Yoichi corrected. Sumire rolled her eyes. "What, I'm right! It's not like he's in the J.League..."
"Whatever. You're not seeing the big picture here. It was actually competitive to get onto this Kira Ryosuke's team. More families signed their kids up than there were slots; I had to, like, write Takuya a cover letter and everything as if he were applying for a job." She sighed deeply. "This stinks. I was really looking forward to one-upping all of the other moms around the water cooler at the office. Why is my life so hard?"
("What does 'one-upping moms at a water cooler' mean?" Takuya wondered.
"It means she was excited to cheer for you at your games," Yoichi's mother lied deftly.
"Oh.")
Yoichi snorted and took a big scoop of his ice cream. "Stop making this all about you, Sumire. You'll survive. Takuya will still get to play- there's an assistant coach or something, right?"
"Oh, right, I forgot that U-6 neighborhood soccer teams had a full coaching and managerial staff on payroll. We'll just have the assistant coach step in, easy peasy." Sumire shook her head. "No, that's actually what the email was about. They're trying to see if any of the other parents would volunteer to do it."
"Huh. Did anybody?"
She rolled her eyes. "Obviously not. Why do you think we didn't have an assistant coach to begin with?"
"So there are assistant coaches then?"
"That's not the point! The point is," she said, gesturing at him with her spoon, "that I literally spent an entire weekend prepping this kid for a phone interview for no reason. And now-"
Yoichi saw the exact moment that the realization hit her. Some sinking part of his stomach had known that she would arrive at it eventually, known it from the moment she'd first said that Takuya's coach had needed to resign. But that didn't make the sly smile that began to spread over her face any more tolerable.
Please don't ask me, he thought. I'm on vacation. Please don't.
And she didn't. At least, not right away. In true lawyer fashion, she opted to just barely touch at the edge of the subject at first, like a lioness circling her prey. "So, remind me. The JFL or the Bundesliga. Which one is better? Like, more famous?"
Yoichi hadn't gone to any fancy lawyer school. He technically never even graduated high school. But if he could deal with shitty Kaiser's psychological terrorism day in and day out, he wasn't afraid of his sister's mind games.
"The JFL's more famous in Japan," Yoichi evaded. It wasn't even a lie. He figured that the average Japanese person probably had at least heard of their country's minor soccer league, while they probably would not be able to name the international ones.
"In Japan," she repeated. "What about worldwide?"
Don't make me laugh. "Who knows?" he said vaguely. "What is 'fame' anyway? How do you define it?"
"Okay, I'll put it this way. You or Kira Ryosuke. Who do you think makes more money?"
...okay, now Yoichi was almost offended. Like his parents, Sumire might not know the first thing about soccer, but she would have had to have been literally in a coma for the past ten years not to realize that her little brother was kind of a big deal. Maybe he wasn't the best striker in the world (yet!), but he was definitely on a whole different level than some random guy in the JFL that moonlighted as a soccer coach for kindergarteners.
He tried not to let the flash of ego show on his face, however. She has to know, he reassured himself. She's just trying to fuck with me. "It's impossible to say, without knowing how much he makes."
Again, technically true.
"Hmm." Her eyes glinted, and Yoichi could see her getting ready to go for the kill. He took a deep breath, steeling himself against her attack.
And then all of the sudden, Takuya let out a squeak. Both of their heads snapped over to look at him, only to see him making a face like he was so excited that he could barely contain it. "Wait wait wait I just- I just got a really good idea!" His sticky, chocolate-covered hands were almost shaking with emotion.
He looked over at Yoichi, his blue eyes shining. "What if Uncle Yo was my soccer coach? Wouldn't that be so cool?"
It was a perfect one-hit K-O. Yoichi knew it and Sumire knew it too, if the sudden, proud smirk on her lips was any indication.
"What an intriguing thought, Takuya-chan," she followed up, looking over at Yoichi. "Your summer session's only six weeks. He'll be around the whole time anyway. I bet he would do it if you asked him nicely."
Takuya stood up from the table and, before Yoichi could stop him, bent his back into a perfect L-shaped bow. "Uncle Yo, will you please be my soccer coach please?" he shouted at the floor.
And then, because Yoichi was an idiot, he smiled and answered: "Sure!"