"Where is he?!" You could hear Atsuya's voice as he walked over to you, the rest of the team following closely behind.
"He's in there" you replied as you pointed at the door. Then the doctor came out.
"Is any of the patient's relative present?" The doctor asked and Atsuya immediately stepped forward. "Yes, I'm his brother," he replied.
"The patient had fainted while on a walk," the doctor started. "Oh you don't say, we were thinking he'd broken his arm while juggling" Atsuya said sarcastically for Kidou to step in front of him. "Calm down and let him finish,"
"He is fine, just a little weak and dehydrated. He should be fine in two to three days."
Atsuya let out a sigh of relief as the fear finally washed away from him. "Thank you" Gouenji bowed at the doctor. "Can we go see him?" Endou asked.
"Yes, but you all can't go in at the same time. The patient still needs time to rest" the doctor replied before he left.
"Maya, what exactly happened to him?" Kazemaru asked as he held your shoulder lightly. "I-I'm not sure. One second he was fine and then the next, he started breathing heavily and when I went to get him some water, he'd fainted" you explained.
"Well why did you even take him out in the first place?!" Atsuya yelled at you and flinched at his harsh tone.
"I-I didn't know it would be this serious," you stuttered.
According to the doctor, Shirou had been sick for a while now and his body had almost completely shut down so the matter would have escalated if you hadn't called the ambulance in time. Sometimes you even wonder how he could still play soccer so well.
"You could have prevented this, you knew he wasn't feeling too well and yet you still took him out. You should have known better. You failed as our manager. This is all your fault!" He yelled as he shoved you. You stumbled a bit but thankfully, you didn't fall.
It was as if he was holding back. But that wasn't even what hurt the most. "I failed?" You whispered to yourself as tears gathered in the corner of your eyes.
"Calm down, Atsuya! This is a freaking hospital for crying out loud and you have no right and I mean NO right to push her like that ever again, Understand?" Kidou said to Atsuya before he faced you, not even bothering to wait for his reply.
"You're a failure!"
"You good for nothing!"
"Pathetic!"
"This is all your fault!"
You covered your ears as different memories came flashing back. All the pain, the beatings and the bruises. It felt like you we're reliving it all over again.
"Maya," he tried to touch you but you swatted his had away. "D-don't come near me, p-please" you said as your head only hurt further it was like the flood gates to all the memories you'd try to stash away finally broke down .
"Maya, it's me," he said as he tried to come near you but you took a step back. "Don't come near me, I did nothing wrong, please" you begged, your eyes shut tightly as tears rolled down your cheeks.
You found it hard to breath as the voices in your head only got louder and louder.
"You failed!"
"Your fault!"
You couldn't take it anymore. You ran out of the hospital ignoring all the voices that were calling out to you to come back.
You weren't sure where you were heading but you just needed to get away. To get away from all the voices that had been causing your nightmares. You just needed to escape.
__________
"Where's manager?" Shirou asked as he looked around but couldn't find you anywhere in the room.
"She-"
"Is she outside? She probably blames herself for what happened even though it was me who begged her to take me outside. I should probably go and talk to her," Shirou said as he tried to get up but was immediately pushed back down gently by his brother.
"She's not outside. She left." Asuto said and a frown immediately spread across Shirou's face.
"What do you mean she left? Why?" He asked. Hikaru then explained everything.
"And nobody bothered to go looking for her?!" Shirou couldn't believe what he was hearing. How could his brother act like this. Sure, he knew about his brother's anger issues but this was just too much. It wasn't even her fault.
And they all just stood there acting like everything was alright while you were out there, probably soaking wet in the rain and having no where else to so because he was sure as heck that you wouldn't just go home.
The more he thought about it, the more angrier he got.
Then the door opened and Anna walked in. "What happened, I got a call telling me that I should come to the hospital right away...... And where's Maya?" Anna asked.
They explained everything thing to her and her eyes widened in shock.
"No, no, no, no. This is bad, this is very bad" she paced round the room. "Did anyone see which direction she went?" she asked but they all shook her head.
"She never told you, did she?" Anna sighed. With everyone's confused look, she already knew the answer.
"I think it's time you all knew why Maya left America and came to Japan." Anna said as she took a seat, everyone's eyes following her every movement.
"When Maya was still in America, she was the manager for one of North America's football team, 'The Blue Dragons'. They were a very good soccer team who had dreams of playing in the FFI one day." She started.
"Maya was a very quiet girl, she didn't really say much and they'd always take advantage of that. I met Maya on one of my trips to America and we'd stayed in touch. She would always tell me how they never treated her right over there. They'd take the frustration of losing a match on her and always blamed her for everything bad thing that ever happened. She was like their personal punching bag," no one said a thing as they all listened attentively.
"Once the team had entered into the American Prelims, they were on a winning streak and fortunately for Maya, she could finally take a break from all the stress and all the violence. But all that came crashing down when they lost the final match against Star Unicorn so they didn't get to play in the world tournament. That was what tipped them over the edge. Thankfully Ichinose found her but he was already too late,"
"It took a while but she finally came around. He then handed her over to me and asked me to take her back to Japan. It took a lot of convincing but she later agreed. By then, you all had just won the match against Russia and became world champion."
"I decided to enlist her as one of Inazuma Japan's managers and thankfully, she was chosen. She had never stepped foot in America since that day."
None of them could believe this. And you never said a word to anyone of them. "W-We have to find her," Shirou tried to stand up but his brother won't let him. "We all just can't storm out and start looking, we need to think rationally" he said.
"He's right, she could literally be anywhere" Nosaka said. "We'll split up. First person to find her must call the rest immediately" Endou said and everyone nodded before leaving Shirou and Anna in the hospital.
*⚽*
It's been an hour now and there was still no sight of you. It was raining heavily so finding you was posing to be a bigger challenge than they'd anticipated.
You sat in a playground beside one of the slides. You had no idea where you were. At least the sound of the harsh rain was able to drown own the voices in your head a bit.
"Maya!" Someone called the out to you but it sounded so far away. You raised your head up from it's spot on your arm as you looked around. Your eyes burned as water ran down from your hair into your eyes forcing you to shut them tight.
Then all of a sudden the rain stopped. Huh? You thought as you forced your eyes opened to see an umbrella hovering over your head.
"Maya are you alright? We've been looking all over for you," Nosaka's voice reached your ears as you felt him rap his jacket round your body before picking you up in his arms while Nishikage continued to hold the umbrella over your heads.
You didn't know where he was taking you to but your eyes started feeling heavy. You tried to stay awake but the sudden warmth was pulling you down. Soon you'd already succumbed to the darkness.
~~~~~~~~~~
Sorry for the late update guys. Was busy with a few tests but thankfully we're on a short break so I'll try to update more. Thanks for all the love on the story. I really appreciate it🤍. Till the next chapter👋.