"You're doing good, the accuracy of your shots is definitely different."
The girl nodded, grabbing the towel and gently wiping her sweaty face.
Ego watched the replica of her last kick, noting the details of the trajectory of her movement and the resulting trajectory of the ball.
His eyelids tightened slightly when he noticed the discontinuity of the arc formed by her foot.
He tightened his lips, shifting his eyes to the girl lying on the ground, her eyes closed and one hand carefully placed on the left side of her torso, just below the rib.
The girl had shown up that very night, around two o'clock, in front of the doors of the Blue Lock. Three days after she left and two days before her scheduled return date.
Ego was not stupid enough not to know that something had happened. It was hardly likely that a libertine like Nicole Vinciguerra would decide of her own free will to return to a stuffy, closed place like that.
If he also added those small and imperceptible mistakes that the girl was making even while having an even more perfect technique than when she had left three days earlier, it was only normal to have his suspicions.
"You keep making mistakes during your left kicks, though. Your movement is not fluid." said Ego into the microphone, raising an eyebrow when he saw the girl remain still on the ground.
He noticed just a slight nod from her, but nothing suggested surprise, regret or perhaps disappointment at the idea of missing those kicks.
"Also, the system is reporting slightly more labored breathing than before and a higher stress level." he continued, casting a glance at the computer screen beside him.
Each candidate had a watch attached to their wrist directly connected to Blue Lock's system: it reported heart rate, blood oxygenation, breathing, sleep quality and stress level during physical activity.
It was useful to understand how much stamina the subject had and where in particular they wasted the most oxygen during training.
Nicole raised her hand in the air, waving it as if to ward off an annoying fly, and subsequently causing it to fall back on the synthetic lawn beneath her.
Ego sighed, shaking his head in disapproval and deciding to drop the subject.
Sooner or later the problem would surface anyway.
Skip time
Team Z dorm
The girl entered the dark room, taking light and delicate steps in such a way as to avoid the sleeping beauties who were in their beautiful dream world.
Ego had finally decided to kick her out of the camp after only two hours of training.
It was the first time she had re-entered the dormitory before six in the morning, and she was honestly not used to the idea of actually being able to sleep with the team Z boys as she had done the very first few nights.
She reached her futon, positioned between the warm bodies of Kunigami and Raichi, lying carefully on her back and staring insistently at the ceiling.
She was definitely not used to sleeping in there.
She gently stroked her neck, almost wincing as she felt the fabric of the high collar of her shirt. She would have to wear it until the shape of his hand disappeared from her skin.
Not to mention the uncomfortable gauze that surrounded ber torso to protect the wound under her left rib.
It wasn't the first time she had been walking around with serious injuries on her body, but it was the first time she had to pay so much attention to them so that they wouldn't be noticed by all the people around her.
"Holy shit, go to sleep you idiot." she heard at her side, and her blood-red eyes met Raichi Jingo's ochre-yellow ones.
His eyelids were slightly half-closed, his eyes evidently slumbering.
"I swear, if you don't close those fucking eyes and silence whatever strange voice is forcing you to stare like a psychopath at the ceiling, you're going to get punched in the face."
She had already received enough of those.
Nicole sighed at the blond's silent threat, taking advantage of the fact that he was on her right and deciding to lie on that side of her body.
A small mocking grin appeared on her face.
"What? Do you really wish so much to watch me while I sleep?" the girl asked softly, seeing Raichi roll his eyes and turn his head away.
"Just fucking sleep already, you look like shit." he finished, returning to snoring soon after.
The girl's fake grin disappeared, and her position returned to the same as before: with her back against the mat and her face turned to the ceiling.
Then, closing her eyes, she finally surrendered to her physical and mental exhaustion.
Skip time
Two days later
Two more days passed between intensive workouts and sweaty shirts. The girl stayed with Team Z for those two days, putting in as much effort as they did if not more, driving her body to exhaustion more than her injuries would allow.
The healing of these in fact was proving extremely slow: the cut under her ribs had no time to heal because of the girl's fast and wide movements.
Whenever the white blood cells tried to repair the damage, the redhead would do something to eliminate what little work they had done.
None of the Team Z boys seemed to notice the shabby health condition of the last-place candidate.
They obviously noticed the slightly heavier breathing, the pallor of his tanned face, the dark circles under his eyes. But they thought it was normal since he was the last one on the rank.
At most what was strange to them was the fact that his scores were better than theirs.
"NICK-KUN COME ON, I WANNA START THE SECOND SELECTION." shouted Bachira, shaking the redhead's shoulder hard and forcing her to open her eyes.
Nicole looked at the boy's pimply face inches from her own, with irises brighter than the usual yellow and a smile resembling the bewitched one of the Cheshire cat in Alice in Wonderland.
"Come on Nicklaus, let's go," added the deeper voice of the autumn-haired boy, forcing Bachira to remove himself from the redhead's view to make way for Kunigami's outstretched hand.
Blood-red irises mingled with his orange ones, and the boy tightened his lips at the depth of his gaze.
When their hands touched, Kunigami had to hide the shiver that had just run down his spine.
"How do you feel about this second selection, Nicklaus?" asked Isagi, flanking the redhead on the opposite side from Kunigami.
"Honestly, I'm not so excited." she replied disinterestedly, and the two boys at her side frowned at her manner.
For them, not being excited and football could not be in the same sentence. Football was everything, it was excitement, it was adrenaline, it was future, it was passion and fun.
And the fact that one of the 301 lucky Blue Lock candidates did not think that way left them extremely puzzled, and even disappointed perhaps.
After all, why embark on such a path if he did not see football as his life perspective?
The team entered a large pentagon-shaped room, and immediately their gazes met the unfamiliar ones of other teams.
Isagi thinned his eyebrows, moving his eyes to the arm of one of them to see who it was.
"Team W, 273rd... but that's not the same person we met during our match." the bluenette said under his breath, causing Kunigami to turn his face in the same direction and causing no reaction from Nicole, who instead merely sighed and used the autumn-haired one's biceps as support for her head.
"Heya there, you gemstones of talent in the rough. Good work with all the physical training. 25 people of each stratum have gathered here, meaning 125 of you managed to pass the first section." the inventor of the project explained, appearing on a large screen inside the room and making his metallic voice ring out.
Nicole cast a glance at him, then tightened her eyelids and leaned almost entirely on Kunigami. Sleep in those two days had been impossible because of the high pain of her wound.
"Well, I'm sure there's some sharp ones among you who already noticed this already, but there's not a single person here who came from the first, second, third or forth stratum." said the more adult (more in body than head) with his monotone way of speaking, causing the eyes of almost everyone to narrow.
"None of that existed anyway. Only the fifth stratum existed in Blue Lock. All of you believed to be in the lowest teams, V to Z, and then fought like idiots in the first selection."
Screams of dissent, comments from outraged people, and insults flew around the room, all aimed at the boy in the glasses who had made a mockery of them, destroying any hint of self confidence that remained in their bodies and minds.
Only one person among them laughed, drawing the shocked stares of her teammates upon herself.
"Che bastardo esilarante." the girl said amusedly in her language, breaking away from Kunigami and taking steps forward.
She already knew about this plan of his, not that he had revealed it to her. She was a very detail-oriented girl, and she had not missed the analyses of the various candidates on Ego's screens whenever she entered his office.
Never once had she seen a letter that preceded V in the alphabet, or a number smaller than 221. It did not take a genius to figure out what Ego Jinpachi had done at that point.
"What about starting the second selection." stated the girl loudly, shushing all the chatter and drawing everyone's curious and puzzled eyes to her.
Ego sighed as his black eyes scanned the girl's not at all surprised or shaken look. If his intentions were to destroy the confidence and vanity of the candidates, it was now quite obvious that the plan had failed on her.
Not that he had ever deluded himself that he could destroy her ego.
Another boy decided to enter the scene, flanking the redhead and looking up at Ego.
"I want to go first." he stated in a stern, cold tone of voice, causing no reaction in the girl and forcing the blacknette to roll his eyes.
"See what've you done Nicklaus? I wasn't done explaining." stated Ego annoyed, and everyone could not help but notice the colloquial tone with which he had addressed the protagonist.
Suddenly everyone wondered who this Nicklaus was and what his relationship with the man was.
The girl shrugged her shoulders, looking down at the 20-year-old and not hinting at any signs of repentance or concern.
Ego suppressed another sigh, deciding to begin the second selection.
"Itoshi Rin, you may go."
Nicole raised an eyebrow, and her blood-colored eyes met the tremendously familiar teal ones of the boy who was walking through the door.
"Eh... another fucking Itoshi." muttered the girl, thinking back to the figure of the pink-haired boy.
They had the same eyes.
Perhaps she would have had fun with this other one, too.
"Nicklaus, you also go. Your face is pissing me off right now." the man's annoyed voice resounded in the room, and a small amused smile appeared on the girl's tanned face.
Nicole walked toward the same door behind which Itoshi junior had disappeared, and before she even met his own end, she cast a glance toward the candidates of the team to which she had been assigned.
"See you on the other side." and, that said, she left, going on without them.
"Or not."
Alone. As she had always been and as she was always destined to be.
Second selection
First stage end...
Surprisingly or not surprisingly (hard to tell given the girl's slightly bipolar nature), Nicole did not take the challenge seriously.
She waited, slightly bored by the idea that her challenger was a fictitious man incapable of emotion or fatigue, until there was usually 20 minutes left for those 100 goals required for the first stage individual test.
In fact, Nicole was the last to finish.
Or rather, one of the last to finish.
Apparently, the Italian wasn't the only one who had the bright idea of doing nothing for most of the 90 minutes.
In fact, once the challenge was over, both she and another boy simultaneously stepped out the door.
Her pools of blood met the rhodonite gems embedded in the other's eyelids.
"Nicklaus Vinciguerra, number 111. Shidou Ryusei, number 111." said the mechanical voice, and both nominees turned their gazes toward where the sound came from.
"Huh?" exclaimed the boy, sticking his hands in his pockets and looking absentmindedly at their names on the screen with the same number.
"That's funny." the girl merely commented, bringing all her weight on one leg and placing one hand on her hip.
Her eyes shifted again to the eccentric guy next to her, and with her gaze she inspected him carefully.
"Is your tan natural?"
The pink-eyed boy raised an eyebrow at the redhead's question and, just like her, he looked at her from head to toe.
"All natural. What about yours?" he asked, staring insistently at Nicole's face, receiving a shrug in response.
"Natural."
Silence fell between the two, and only their gazes did the talking. That was at least until grins of understanding appeared on both of their faces.
"The name's Nicklaus." the redhead introduced herself, holding out her hand to the boy.
"Your name sucks, mine's Shidou." he replied, grabbing her hand and squeezing it tightly.
His grin dropped slightly and his pink eyes moved to her hand, sensing the fineness and femininity of it.
Without warning, he pulled the protagonist's figure to himself, abruptly bringing their faces closer and leaving only millimeters of distance between them.
Their breaths mingled, as did the intense colors of their irises.
Shidou squeezed his eyelids slightly as he scrutinized every inch of the tanned face of the guy in front of him, starting from the cut of his eyes, to his nose, to his cheekbones to his full lips.
He looks familiar...
"You look like a girl." he suddenly accused him, watching the corner of those lips he was staring at rise in an unsurprised grin.
"Or maybe you're just gay." the girl replied quietly, lowering her gaze in turn to the boy's joker grin.
"Yeah, probably."
The two did not move away from each other, and it almost seemed as if the distance between them was imperceptibly diminishing.
"Can it be that every time there's a problem you're there, Nicklaus?" thundered Ego's voice suddenly, forcing Shidou to turn his gaze toward the screen on which Ego's face was depicted, while Nicole merely rolled her eyes.
The girl turned away from the boy, giving her attention to the 20-year-old man.
"So what we do now?" the redhead asked with clear disinterest, leaning her back against one of the walls and crossing her arms in front of her chest.
Ego did not immediately respond, pondering what to do.
Theoretically, the candidates would have to create teams of 3 to continue to the following stage. From there an elimination process would begin, with those candidates not chosen, and therefore left without a team, eliminated.
"You two are forming a team for the second stage." simply ordered Ego, and the two quickly cast a glance at each other.
Shidou grinned in amusement, suddenly excited.
A little too excited.
"Let's go, guygal."
Ego raised an eyebrow at the boy's exclamation, casting a glance at the girl, who merely shook her head to signal that it was all right.
"Let's go, punk."
Skip time
They were definitely a strange duo.
"IF YOU DON'T HAVE BOOBS THEN PROVE IT."
"Just admit that you want to see me naked." replied the girl as she typed something on her cell phone, lying down in such a way that her back was turned to the boy with the blond and pink slumps.
Shidou let out a moan, throwing himself onto the girl's bed with his back against the mattress.
His face turned to the figure beside him, or rather to the back of the figure beside him, who at that moment was turned onto her right side.
After Ego had told them to make a team of two, they had directly had to head to their shared room since it was now night and everyone had gone to sleep.
It wasn't a problem for either of them: they weren't that excited to play. It was, however, a problem for the sanity of the girl, who had not slept for days and whose patience was at its limit.
"Let's take a shower together." proposed Shidou again, running his eyes over the waist form glimpsed through the shirt.
"I swear, you want to fuck me so bad." affirmed the girl without turning around, finishing what she had to write to Oliver and closing her cell phone.
Apparently someone had trashed her entire apartment, leaving a series of insults written on the wall. Oliver had wanted to warn her and told her that if she needed to, she could stay at his apartment until she could find another place to stay.
Now, it was quite evident that the old man was responsible of this. He had probably trashed her apartment in such a way as to ambush her when she would compulsorily go to the estate to ask for a minimum of money to buy another apartment.
She closed her eyes, abandoning her cell phone on the mattress and letting out a sigh. She hated him.
A hand slipped under her shirt, at hip level, moving immediately to her left rib with little delicacy and making her gender from the pain when the unknown fingers touched her open cut.
Quickly she grabbed Shidou's hand, twisting it backwards and knocking the boy off the bed.
"I JUST WANTED TO SEE IF YOU HAD TITTIES DUDE." exclaimed the boy, rising from the floor and looking with an almost outraged expression at his roommate.
The girl rolled her eyes, lifting her shirt slightly to see how the wound looked. She raised it just enough to cover her chest and uncover the gauze, now smeared with blood.
"Porca puttana..." she cursed under her breath, relinquishing her grip on the fabric and throwing herself back on the bed.
Shidou raised an eyebrow, staring insistently at the gauze glimpsed from under Blue Lock's shirt.
"You're the one who got beaten up and miserably lost or is there actually a cool story behind that shit?" he asked in a bored tone, approaching the girl's lying body again and slightly lifting the fabric covering her stomach.
Her firm grip stopped him before he could lift it too high, and his pink eyes met her red ones.
The two remained in the dimly lit room in silence, merely maintaining eye contact as the grip on the blond man's hand grew stronger and stronger.
Nicole had no expression on her face. Nothing in her gaze suggested panic, anger, anguish, pain or uncertainty.
If there was something in her eyes, then Shidou was unable to read it.
That was until she released a sigh, relinquishing her grip on the boy's hand and giving him the green light to continue.
Shidou stood still for a few moments, staring at his teammate's feminine face.
Then his pink eyes lowered to the shirt he was lifting. His vision immediately spotted the hem of the sports bra.
"Eh, I was kinda kidding when I said you were a girl you know..." he affirmed.
He was not kidding.
He lifted the fabric even higher to confirm that he had seen right and that she, in fact, had boobs.
The girl reserved an amused smile for him.
"So you really just wanted to see me naked." she said, receiving a shrug in response.
"Who says I don't still want to?"
The girl closed her eyes, allowing the boy to fiddle with the gauze. His fingers were hot against her equally warm skin, his movements rough and uncaring despite the dangerous wound under her rib. She could feel the pink gems burning on every inch of her tanned skin.
It was obvious that Shidou was not convinced about what he was doing: it was probably just an excuse for him to be able to touch her female body as much as he wanted.
He would have touched her even if she was actually male.
"Damn guygul, this wound sucks." hissed the boy once the gauze was removed, revealing a cut still wide open and still bleeding.
"Don't tell me." said the girl, standing up and stretching slightly, ignoring the pain on the left side of her torso.
Before dropping her arms down her sides she brought her hands to her hair, removing the heavy wig and released her long, blood-red hair. With a sigh she lightly scratched her head, shaking the roots to make them gain volume.
Her eyes focused on the pink ones of the boy, who not for a moment had dared to detach his from her body.
He was sitting in a mankind of way, with his legs spread and his torso slightly leaned back, while on his face was a joker smile that seemed to say aloud everything he was thinking inside his head.
The girl returned his grin.
"It's a little frustrating how I was able to hide my gender for weeks from an entire team, and then there's you finding out only after one night." Nicole stated, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear brimming with jewels and heading toward her backpack, inside which she had hidden some gauze bought in before re-entering Blue Lock.
"Maybe you just wanted me to find out-" the flirtation attempt was blocked as soon as the girl threw a pack of gauze at him.
"Maybe you're right..." said Nicole in a soft, slow voice, approaching with equal slowness the boy's body, whose eyes dared not detach themselves for a moment from her silhouette.
"Maybe you're not."
The redhead stood in the space between the blond's open legs, looking down at him with that bewitching gaze that belonged to her.
Shidou's pink eyes lowered for a moment to the flat, toned stomach in front of him before slowly lowering to the hem of her low-rise shorts.
Two fingers under his chin forced him to look up slightly so that he could look only at the open, bleeding wound under her left rib.
"You mind?"
Shidou grinned amusedly, bringing one hand to the girl's right side and one to the pack of gauze.
His rhodonite gems dovetailed with her precious rubies.
"Not at all."
_________________
Raichi told Nicklaus to sleep because he knew it was the first time in a long time that he was allowed to go to sleep relatively early.
Ego is afraid of the Nicole-Shidou pairing (or tan duo)
Shidou already suspect that Nicklaus was a girl since he resembled Nicole Vinciguerra (he is a die-hard Nicole Vinciguerra fan and would recognize her anywhere)
Ps: He eventually will tell her
Nicole thinks the fact that a boy knows her secret is refreshing
_________________
Author
This chapter is kinda different. I say more fanfic oriented.
I kinda like Shidou's character, he's a funny one.
Anyway, shorter chapter than usual but very practical and concise thanks to the many skip times
See ya next time and fuck tell me what the hell do y'all think