Blue Lock: The Tasteless Game

Tasteless

From the moment he was old enough to compete, every sport felt the same.

It began with swimming. Then athletics. Basketball. Tennis. Anything his parents enrolled him in, he would pick up with unsettling speed. Coaches praised him as a natural, opponents called him gifted, and trophies accumulated without ever feeling earned. Every challenge followed the same pattern: confusion, understanding, mastery. By the time everyone else had caught up to the basics, he had already grown tired of them.

Football was supposed to be different.

Unlike every other sport, it wasn't just about physical ability or mechanical repetition. It was played by twenty-two people at once, each making countless decisions every second. It was unpredictable. Chaotic. Alive. At least, that was what everyone said.

So he chose football, believing it would finally be the game that refused to let him solve it.

Instead, it disappointed him.

The movements of defenders became obvious. Passing lanes revealed themselves before they opened. Teammates and opponents alike repeated the same habits, the same mistakes, the same patterns he'd seen in every sport. 

Every match became another puzzle with an answer he could see long before anyone else did. Victories came one after another, but none of them left him satisfied. The applause of spectators, the admiration of teammates, the praise from coaches——it all sounded hollow when the outcome had never once been in doubt in the first place.

People called him a genius.

He couldn't understand why.

To him, he wasn't doing anything extraordinary. He was simply choosing the most obvious answer while everyone else struggled to see it; if anything, that just made everyone else... less ordinary. 

Watching defenders freeze after a feint or celebrating a routine goal only made him wonder if football had always been this... shallow.

He kept playing, not because he loved the sport, but because some part of him stubbornly believed there had to be someone, somewhere, who could prove him wrong. 

Someone who could make these games unpredictable again. 

Someone capable of forcing him to think beyond the answers that came so effortlessly.

Until then, every match tasted the same.

Victory had become the dullest feeling of all.

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Football is a sport. Crazy, right?

And that is exactly why he cannot understand it.

Why is it that the moment he does something remotely skillful, the eleven players in front of him turn into second-rate garbage? They just stand there, gaping like farm animals. At that point, why even lace up your boots?

...Though I guess the same question applies to me.

Why is he bothering?

It is all so easy. So easy that it is bland. Boring. Tasteless.

Shirogane stared at the dark-striped shirt closing in on him and, without even flinching, rolled the ball to the side before springing over the incoming slide tackle. 

The defender skidded past him uselessly, his momentum wasted in a pathetic attempt to snatch the ball back.

"Tch——foul!" came the shout from behind.