Chapter Text
By the time Kuri’s conversation with Demian ended, Reo had already pulled herself back from the storm that had raged inside her.
Her breathing slowed. Her gaze scanned the field. She knew what needed to change. What position needed to shift. She looked to the touchline.
Fukuda-san was already watching them, calmly turning his fingers in the air, signalling the positional switch. Reo’s eyes lit up, and she smiled—a wide, real smile.
Yes. Let’s do it.
But then she remembered something that had clawed at her attention since the restart. The long ball.
Reo turned back to her team, her voice cutting through the murmur of players settling into their positions. “Listen up! They are not going to rely on long balls.” The team looked at her, puzzled.
Kuri stepped beside her, his expression confident but unreadable. “She is right,” he added. “That goal wasn’t about style. It was a message. It was psychological warfare—they wanted to put doubt in our heads. That is all.”
Reo just huffed on hearing this. Kuri smirked at her.
Reo didn’t have time to deal with Kuri—or with the anger he accidentally stirred. So she turned to her teammates.
They instructed their teammates on what was about to change. Reo caught Akkun’s eyes and knew instantly that Fukuda-san had given the exact instructions. Her mind settled.
I might have been an idiot till now but that doesn’t mean I can’t choose differently now.
First, Kuri and Reo traded places with Ootomo and Kiriki. Now. Kiriki and Ootomo were in the central area of the pitch while Kuri and Reo were at the wings.
To Barcelona this seemed antithetical to common sense. Kuri and Reo were technically sounder than Kiriki and Ootomo. Therefore they should be in the central region running towards the goal not in the wings as a support.
But that was exactly what Reo wanted.
Reo watched the midfield trio—Yuri, Falco, Ascari—glide into place. Everything about them moved like a blueprint. No deviation.
And suddenly it clicked.
So that’s what’s been suffocating me.
Their positional play wasn’t just discipline—it was doctrine. The kind that allowed no wrong steps, no risks, no self-expression. The kind that required absolute control, like an iron lid sealing a boiling pot.
Reo exhaled slowly.
No wonder it feels like the air gets thinner every time they touch the ball.
She wanted to see what happened when someone cracked that lid.
Ootomo played a rapid one-two with Kuri, so clean and precise that it sliced between two pressing Barcelona midfielders like a needle through fabric. The pass returned to him perfectly weighted, and Ootomo absorbed it as if he had been born with the ball at his feet.
The crowd gasped.
Reo grinned.
Together with Kuri, they began to dictate the pace—short, sharp passes, not meant to advance, but to reform.
Reo joined them, forming a new triangle in midfield.
Esperion was not trying to attack. Not yet. First, they needed to stabilize. Reo felt the change in their movements. The hesitation. She could taste the uncertainty in the air.
Kiriki joined in, adding a new layer to their shape. The triangle’s tips shifted constantly, rotating like a gyroscope.
Barcelona’s players weren’t used to this kind of chaos. They scrambled to understand Esperion’s play. But nothing changed for Reo. The rigidity still pressed down on her. Suffocating her.
By the 67th minute, Reo and others had stabilised Esperion’s attack structure. Seeing this Reo gave a signal to Takasugi.
We need to attack soon.
Takasugi understood her and focused his attention on his new target, Obsidian. Reo turned to give the signal to others to be ready themselves for their attack.
Just then, Takasugi’s voice rang out once again: “Go!”
It was like pulling a trigger.
Esperion surged forward, a collective strike. Sariel, startled, panicked and sent a shaky horizontal pass toward Gato. But before it could reach him, Yuuma shot out of nowhere and intercepted it.
Gasps again from the crowd.
Reo moved up with the line, watching with held breath.
Esperion, in their hopes they forgot the biggest wall between them and the goal. Starless.
Yuuma tore into the penalty box. He feinted a shot with his right foot, graceful and fluid, meant to send the keeper diving.
Starless didn’t flinch—didn’t even blink. He fell into the save with terrifying precision, as if he had seen the future a second before everyone else.
The rebound snapped back into play.
Kuri struck. Clean. Low. Perfect.
But Starless was already twisting again, body reshaping mid-flight, reaching. The thud of the ball hitting the glove reverberated through the stadium—a second save. Even sharper.
The stadium gasped as one.
Reo stood frozen.
Akiyama performs miracles, she thought. But this… this feels inevitable. Like the goal itself belongs to him.
Among the 11 players on the pitch, one position, which is neither the ace striker nor the playmaker, can single handedly carry a team from hell to heaven. The goalkeeper.
What do they teach these players in La Masia?
Barcelona surged forward with renewed fire, the energy from Starless’s incredible double-save fueling every movement they made. The pitch tilted ever so slightly, momentum shifting.
Reo could see it in their eyes. The subtle spark of conviction had returned.
Yuri, Falco, and Sino settled into a triangle so fluid, so steady, it felt like a silent rebuttal to the chaos, Reo, Kuri, and Ootomo had unleashed just minutes ago. They weren’t just responding with skill—they were demonstrating.
A lesson in stability. In mastery.
As Reo watched the ball glide between the three of them, she could almost hear the message underneath it: "This is what a triangle is supposed to be."
She gave a wry smile, pulse kicking in her veins.
Yeah, well. They are not wrong. A stable triangle created by three playmakers won’t collapse.
But Reo also knew the other side of the coin. Why they were doing this. What their calm precision was meant to avoid.
We need to break that. We need to make them uncomfortable. We need to fracture the idea of position, of roles. That’s where freedom lives.
As she tried to formulate their next counter-move, a shadow stepped back into the center of the board—Demian.
He dropped into midfield again, completing their diamond. But it wasn’t the same as before.
The rhythm changed.
Now the ball moved too cleanly. Too quickly. Esperion couldn’t even get close. Reo watched, jaw tightening, as Barcelona shifted between ghost-like passes and hypnotic tempo changes. They weren’t just playing—they were orchestrating.
She watched Demian drift effortlessly from pressing the back line to commanding the midfield to creating chances up front.
She couldn’t help but admire Demian.
It is beautiful. A forward who can play defence and also in the midfield so seamlessly.
But he was still a striker. He proved that to her and the world when he ghosted past Akkun with a motion too smooth to track—then fired the ball into the bottom corner.
The net rippled and thudded with the force of the ball.
3–1 Barcelona.
The stadium erupted.
But Demian didn’t.
No joy. No triumph. Only relief.
As if scoring wasn’t a victory— but exhale after surfacing from underwater.
Understanding dawned on Reo.
I know that look.
Before Esperion, football had never given her joy. Only shelter. Only escape.
A single thread keeping her from the porcelain-doll life her parents had carved for her.
Win, and she lived another day.
Lose, and the cracks would start spreading.
So when she scored or won a match, she was just relieved.
She just exhaled.
Nothing more.
Seeing it on Demian’s face—someone who moved like he was born for this—made something painful click into place.
Barcelona’s structure.
Their obsession with perfection.
Their refusal to deviate even a step.
It wasn’t dominance.
It wasn’t artistry.
It was fear.
Safety.
A fortress built to withstand whatever chased them from behind.
Reo’s fists clenched.
Reo turned to look at Kuri, who was glaring at Demian with desperation.
You want to see a new kind of football, right Kuri? Fine, I will show you.
A wild, reckless idea sparked to life in her mind—impossible and irresistible. Her heart thumped harder.
Wait, Barcelona. Your safe space…your sanctuary…I’m gonna break it.