NIKE -Blue Lock-

Baltimore oriole

The redhead stood up, stretching her back slightly. She was the calmest in the room, the least guilty, the most indifferent. She smiled at Anri, who dared not raise her gaze from the ground, at Ego, whose black eyes were full of resentment and regret, at Kunigami, whose mask of negativity had given way to horror.

She was smiling in a room of guilty, victims, and silent witnesses. And her?

She was the cause of it all.

"Poor hero. You're a teenager who has been forced to abandon his dream-" she repeated what she had already said, as if she wanted to dig the words into their hearts.

"-an ugly duckling whose wings were clipped before he could become a swan." Nicole sneered, the red of her eyes intense, almost as if she was feasting on their hatred and pain to make it brighter.

She reached out, grabbing the chin of the still-seated boy and lifting it, forcing him to keep his gaze locked on hers. His Adam's apple felt constricted, and he prayed she wouldn't grab his neck and squeeze.

"And all this just to entertain me a little..." she cooed, stroking his lower lip with the tip of her thumb.

Didn't she realize?
Didn't she realize that speaking like that could only increase the hatred the boy already felt for Nicklaus?

No.
It wouldn't happen.

Because victory never takes the blame. What blame does she have? She's meant to be cruel to losers. She's born to crush the miserable. She's created to stir up fights and wars between parties and be the only one to come out victorious.

No.
The blame wasn't hers.
The blame was on those who had chosen him as a sacrificial victim, those who had stripped him of dignity and had abandoned him in the face of certain doom.

His orange eyes slowly shifted to the faces of the director and the manager. The former hadn't even spared the boy a glance, as if he truly believed Rensuke wasn't worth it: Ego had made him a plaything for her after all, he had forced the poor hero into that inhuman regime until he turned into a puppet. The latter... the second-hand guilt was almost pathetic on her face: because she had witnessed it all, she had seen Ego choose a future striker from 300 and turn him into a victim, and she hadn't done anything to stop it.

Nicole didn't even glance at them, her hungry gaze too busy observing the shattered expression of a boy who might have become someone, who had all the potential to be the best.

And who, above all, had been served up to her first.

"All right-" the girl smiled and clapped her hands once, only now turning to the adults.

"That was such a lovely tea time, love this kind of vibes from you all!" she exclaimed in a sing-song voice, moving her hands in an extravagant and certainly inappropriate manner given the dramatic situation.

She then turned her attention to Kunigami and, with a caress on his cheek, bid him farewell promising that they would meet again.

And with that, she walked away, leaving behind chaos she had just sown among mortals knowing that none of them would emerge victorious.

Kunigami stood still, in shock. His orange eyes couldn't move from the spot where Nicole Vinciguerra had been just seconds before. His ears still rang with her words, with her amused and wicked tone as she revealed that name whose authority was extraordinary. And his mouth still felt the delicate yet poisonous touch of the girl, whose lips he already knew too well.

Lips.

Oh, the shame, the humiliation, the regret. He had kissed Nicole Vinciguerra, again and again, without even knowing it. He had stolen a kiss from her in a dark room, kissed her and then left her to the fleeting alcohol in a bathroom, and then he had kissed her in the gym with desperation before leaving her laughing at him.