GERMAN PEOPLE I'M SORRY FOR THE MISTAKES (if I made them)
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Life is pain and the enjoyment of love is an anesthetic.
(Cesare Pavese)
It is said that it's only from the age of three that those first memories that will remain vivid into adulthood begin to be fixed in memory. Before that age, the brain has not yet developed the ability to store memories, but only useful information.
I remember well that cold winter day, November 11 of 2007. My third November 11. My third birthday.
I remember the feeling of the potholes in the asphalt of Rome as the wheels of the car took us to a destination unknown to me, and I remember well the silence in the vehicle, interrupted only by the wind banging against the closed windows.
The usually crowded city was at that moment completely empty, and not even the millions of souls belonging to the gladiators and servants who died during the Roman Empire seemed to want to leave the Colosseum that evening.
The cold was too much for both the living and the dead.
I do not remember the faces of the two of them. In my memory they are like expressionless dummies, without eyes to read or a smile to admire. Even striving could not remove that cloud of smoke that hides their identities.
I remember the feel of the jacket around me, a heavy jacket, perhaps too heavy for someone sitting in a car. It made me feel suffocated, hot, cooped up. I had felt the need to take it off, but had not done so since I had been advised to keep it on.
I don't remember their voices. I don't remember if they laughed, if they cried, if they yelled at me, or if they used to speak to me in sweet, soothing words. I don't even remember if they ever told me a story before they put me to sleep.
I remember the feeling of the evening chill on my bare cheeks as soon as I had gotten out of the car. There were no stars in the sky, and the only light that illuminated my street was a hesitant streetlight, turning on and off at a strange pace.
I don't remember whether I was greeted, hugged, or simply left there. I don't even remember what it felt like to be in their arms, to be welcomed by their human warmth. Maybe because it had never happened.
I do remember the dark alley, though, and the sheetless mattress that had been abandoned next to some trash. And I remember the stench of garbage that with the wind was dragged up to my roots, preventing me from escaping the nauseating smell.
And I remember how that whiff of cold, and that fearful feeling of loneliness, had forced me to huddle in that big jacket that used to be too warm and now wasn't warm enough.
And suddenly I remember something about my parents, perhaps my only memory about them. A memory for which I am grateful, a memory I hate with all my being. My first and only memory of my own flesh and blood.
And that memory was their gift for my third birthday: a warm jacket to let me die more slowly in the cold.
Present time
He laughed. He seemed to know how to do just that. With that maniacal, hideous, loudly unpleasant, crazy laugh of his.
He laughed so hard that his face from its normal complexion had turned first red, then purple, then black. His eyes wide as if they were about to fall out of their sockets and slide to the ground like marbles.
Beside him, Abigail's marbles had never been more evident. Tears in her eyes were uncertain whether to slide down her face or not now that shock, terror and distress were taking the place of the previous fear, regret and anguish.
Her face, from its pale complexion, had become first cadaverous, and then completely white, almost as if instead of having seen a ghost she herself had become one.
Not a sound came from her, not even that of her breathing given that she was not breathing at all. But it did not matter since her silence was occupied by his noisy exhaling.
A hole was in the ceiling of the room, and one could glimpse the extreme inferior of the bullet that had just been fired.
The weapon from which it had come out was in an oblique, swinging position, held carelessly, sluggishly, in a weak and oblivious grip.
The person who had pulled the trigger had her eyes fixed in those marked by a myriad of red capillaries of his, her expression as expressionless as that of an empty shell.
But the skin she was wearing now seemed to be definitely catching fire, ready to become mere ashes on a battlefield full of blood and death. And her head ached, as if it had actually been pierced by the bullet but without killing her, forcing her to perish under the agonizing torture. And her mouth was clamped shut, her tongue knotted, her throat unable to make sounds or speak words.
She had not shot herself.
She had not ended her ephemeral and boring survival.
She had moved the barrel of the gun at the last second and the bullet that was supposed to go through her skull had instead hit the ceiling.
"I KNEW YOU WOULDN'T DO IT! ANYTHING TO AVOID RUINING THE SWEET AND ANGELIC ABIGAIL." the man screamed in delirium, his gun abandoned on the sheets covering his lower body.
Abigail opened her crystalline eyes wide as horror took the place of shock at the harsh reality.
She had not shot... Nicole had not shot because of her, for her. She had not shot to save her, to not leave her alone with that man, to not ruin her with the everlasting memory of a suicide she was forced to witness.
If Abigail had not been there...
The mere thought of the endless and horrible possibilities forced the blonde to bring a hand in front of her mouth to suppress a sob.
Instead, the man continued to cackle as his mad, cruel eyes stared into the neutral, blank ones of the redhead, who was watching the scene like a spectator behind the screen.
"PLAYING THE BENEVOLENT GOD WON'T DO ANY GOOD, NIKE-"
And he continued to express his amusement uncontrollably as she began to back away, the gun still in her right hand.
"BECAUSE SHE WILL NEVER LOVE YOU AS SUCH."
She turned, walking out the door as she increased her pace more and more.
"NO ONE WILL EVER LOVE THE CRUEL VICTORY."
Her walk soon turned into a run and, passing the dozen or so women who watched her without seeing her, disappointed that neither monster was dead, she walked out of that house without ever really escaping his words.
"IT WILL ALWAYS BE YOU AND ME, AS ONE, UNTIL THE END."
And with his words, she sped away.
To an unknown place that would never be far enough away. To an unknown place where no one would ever find her.
Not that anyone was willing to look for her.
Meanwhile... 4 a.m.
Blue Lock facilities
While all this was going on, inside the institution, the spirits of the adults were in turmoil.
"This could be your fault." said the man with black hair and heavy prescription frames, his face possibly paler than it already was.
"I doubt it, she was already in distress when she came to me." the coach stated stoically, his eyes tired and dark circles still present from the night before.
"It's the fault of your words Ego. You were too harsh on her." continued Anri, the one who showed the most anguish and anxiety among all with her pacing back and forth in the room with no clear goal other than tranquility.
The three adults had gathered only an hour earlier after Ego had been notified by one of the girl's four roommates about her absence. It was not abnormal for the girl to not fall asleep at night or show up in the dorm at indecent hours, but since she had not slept with them the night before either, they had wondered if she had changed rooms or something.
When they had confirmed that the girl was not with her roommates, not with the coach, not engaged in sexually motivated actions with some other candidate in other stratums, and not even alone in the training rooms, then they had succumbed to panic.
And that was when, reviewing the camera footage, they had discovered that the girl had left in the middle of the night through one of the doors that only Ego, Anri, and Nicole knew about.
Anri grunted, quickly grabbing her cell phone and frantically starting to tap on the screen, attracting her colleague's attention.
"What are you doing?" the hunched-backed man asked hoarsely, his gaze dark as he stared at the woman.
"What do you think I'm doing?! I'm calling her manager-"
"Her manager doesn't even know she's in this project." Ego immediately interrupted her, sighing and closing his eyes in exasperation.
Noel looked absentmindedly at the two, while in his head he revisited the smile the girl had given him before saying good night.
The fake smile.
"Have you tried asking the prodigy Itoshi Sae?" he asked suddenly, causing the woman to turn abruptly and the 30-year-old petite man to look up.
"Itoshi Sae... that's... that's so right. Why didn't I think about him?" replied first slowly and then quickly Anri, scrolling in search of a new contact inside the cell phone.
She quickly brought the speaker to her ear, her hand in the air with one finger raised in a sign to be silent. And so they stood, waiting for the ringing sounds to turn into a human voice.
And as soon as it did, Anri's raised finger soon became a frantic waving of her hand.
"Good evening or good morning Mr. Itoshi, may I urgently ask if Nicole is with you?" she asked as diplomatically as possible, a quite difficult challenge, her gaze fixed on the floor as she waited for the prodigy's answer.
However, what she received was only an exasperating silence.
The blocked hand with palm facing the two men suggested to them that the answer had not yet come.
"She's not."
Anri thought twice before shouting like a madwoman for making them wait so long for such a paltry answer.
She sighed in exasperation, adding a hasty "You wouldn't happen to know where she might have gone?"
But she knew full well that this was a too difficult question to answer. She knew Nicole well enough to know that she did not know her at all, that none of them knew her at all.
Her past, her present, and her ideas of the future were unknown to all of them, and like those so was everything about Nicole Vinciguerra's character.
"Hold on." the pink-haired boy said simply, before putting the woman on hold to do who knows what.
Anri grunted in frustration, resting her butt on the edge of the desk as she continued to hold the cell phone to her ear.
"So?" asked her manic-minded colleague with a raised eyebrow, making her roll her eyes.
"So you wait and shut up." the man shut up immediately: the last thing he needed was a woman ready to cut out his tongue.
After a few long moments of waiting, Sae's voice returned to ring in her ears.
"My driver just told me that two hours ago Nicole called him to have the motorcycle brought to her. Her destination remains unknown." he informed her with the bored-sounding tone, but it was clear that the boy was as concerned as they were.
He would not have bothered to ask his driver if that were not the case.
Anri sighed and nodded, raising her eyes defeatedly back to the two men.
"Thank you, Mr. Itoshi. If Nicole shows up, please let us know. We will equally act in case she shows up here." the woman stated in a faint but still authoritative tone.
"Good." he received dryly in reply, and soon after she heard the sound of the call being closed.
She lowered her cell phone, shaking her head at the two stares aimed at her and lowering her brown eyes to the floor.
"He doesn't know anything either." she then said, confirming aloud what the other two had understood.
Ego sighed, slumping against the back of his swivel chair as he pointed his gaze at the ceiling.
"We can't do anything, she'll eventually come back." he stated in a static, bored tone, turning to the screens and continuing to do who knows what on the computer.
Noel said nothing as Anri quickly grabbed his shoulders and squeezed them, tempted to shake him until he vomited the words that were coming out of his mouth.
"Do you realize what you are saying? If it weren't for you this probably wouldn't have happened." her feminine voice was marked by vibrations and swings caused by the strong and uncontrolled emotions.
"If Nicole Vinciguerra gets moved by a few little words, then that's not the Nicole Vinciguerra I wanted." his voice, on the other hand, was flat, hollow, almost as if he was completely disinterested in the conversation.
"What are you ranting about? Are you crazy? Are you talking like this about the only diamond you would guard with your very life-"
"I am saying that Nicole would not be moved by my opinion. There's something else behind it." he interrupted her in his monophonic voice, gently but almost disgustedly detaching the hands that were gripping his shoulders and veering back toward the screens.
Anri also turned her attention to them, and only then did she notice that they were portraying all the girl's movements within that structure.
She opened her eyelids wide when she realized what he was trying to do.
"You..."
Ego did not turn his gaze to her as his detail-hungry eyes studied every microexpression of the girl.
"I have every intention of finding out what."
Somewhere else
The wind was violent against her. More than caressing her, it seemed to be slapping her, with so much force in the blows that it almost seemed to want to push her off the bike.
The lights of the streetlamps lashed beside her so fast that there seemed to be only one continuous light line, accompanying her all the way to her unknown destination.
The streets were empty, silent, devoid of the people who at that moment were holed up in their homes, together with their families and loved ones, engaged in a peaceful and restorative sleep.
Her breathing was labored.
The dark visor of her helmet was becoming fogged up, and seeing the road ahead became increasingly complicated.
Not that she was paying attention to where she was going.
First gear had been set for too long now, the throttle pushed to its fullest by the shaking hand with which she previously clutched the gun that was supposed to kill her.
Familiar blue lights began to glow behind her, and the deafening sound of a siren rang in her ears, accompanying the sound of her father's petulant voice in her head.
"PULL OVER NOW!" thundered the voice from the megaphone of the police car behind her, but in her head it resonated more like the faint buzzing of a mosquito crushed several times and not ready yet to perish forever.
She flattened herself against the motorcycle's tank as her foot lowered on the gear stick, quickly shifting from lowest to highest gear.
The engine roared along with the sirens, and soon began a chase that would end as quickly as it had started.
Aeolus tried with all his might to catch her and bring her down, and the motorcycle sped against him like a thunderbolt in the sky.
And, anchored to that object that could very well kill her, embracing that engine that could explode at any moment and end her pain, she let herself be carried away.
And as she continued to wander without knowing where to go, the blue lights quickly grew dimmer behind her, until they left her alone in the darkness of the night.
She continued for whole minutes, long and interminable, perhaps waiting for a measly pebble in the road to end it all.
And then finally she stopped on a beach. She quickly dismounted from the bike, unhooking the lace of her helmet and slipping it off her head, while her accelerated, uncontrolled breathing echoed in the air with the sound of waves caressing the sand in the background.
She dropped the helmet, and with it she fell too, with no more strength or oxygen in her lungs. She slumped to the ground, in a fetal position, as the sand beneath her seemed to comfort her in a warm embrace. Her tearless eyes burned as if she had cried too much, when in fact they hurt because she had not yet closed them even once. Her hands, pressed against her chest, trembling like the rest of her body. Her ears were ringing, the man's words still in her head, louder than ever.
IT WILL ALWAYS BE YOU AND ME, AS ONE...
She looked up at the water, and the last strength she had she used it to crawl weakly toward the dark surface.
...UNTIL THE END.
The water.
Water was silent.
Water was a break from time.
Water was regeneration.
She needed water.
She bit her lip as soon as her trembling fingers caressed the wet sand, and soon she was completely surrounded by the waves, as the blood flowing from her mouth mingled with the crystal clear water.
Poseidon, or Neptune, or Nethuns, grabbed her and dragged her downward, stealing her away from Gaea and away from the stability of the earth to let her sink into the tranquility and the cold of the water.
And it was then that, far from worldly noise, far from rumors, far from time, far from everything and everyone, she did something she should have done long before.
She screamed.
Skip time... 5:30 a.m.
The blond-haired German was walking quietly down the silent hallway leading to his private room.
His hair was wet from his morning shower, taken at such hour because he wanted to avoid washing with the plebs (aka the other Blue Lock candidates).
He had only a robe covering his muscular and lean body, his chest left bare by the towel's neckline. This was not a problem since most people were still sleeping, and if anyone was awake, they were surely still too busy training.
He smiled as he looked up at the ceiling, running a hand through his hair as he intoxicated himself with his own scent of shampoo and cologne. He loved being clean.
His eyes, not emphasized by the red eye-liner but still intense, shifted mindfully in front of him, and his relaxed, confident footsteps stopped like a car nailing in front of a red light.
He watched his own sky-blue irises mirrored in that opaque black surface, the reflection of his own face, perfect in his opinion, slightly distorted because of the curvature of the glass.
He took a step back, uncertain and needing to establish a distance between himself and the eerie figure standing too close for his liking.
A person. Clearly.
Dressed from head to toe in what appeared to be biker attire, completely black. On their head a helmet of the same color that concealed their identity from the eyes of the German boy who had not yet stopped staring at them.
There was not a single area of their body that was visible, not even a bit of skin that could help him figure out at least what their complexion was.
The only thing he could tell was that the person had bathed in their clothes. It could not have been rain since the helmet was perfectly dry, while their attire was completely wet.
Kaiser cringed, staring at his own reflection in an attempt to be able to penetrate the visor that hid the stranger's eyes.
He could not even speak since it was more than likely that whoever was in front of him was not wearing the same earpieces that had been given to the rest of the candidates.
"Ich denke, du bist am falschen Ort, schwarze Katze." he said in his own language, obviously receiving no response.
He raised an eyebrow, opening his mouth to say something else, but he had no time to make a single syllable resonate in the air that the knees of the figure in front of him collapsed, and their body began to fall.
Kaiser snapped forward instinctively, bringing one arm behind the stranger's shoulders and one around their waist.
He watched in disbelief as the helmet-covered head fell backward, surrendering completely to the force of gravity, and at that moment he noticed how the rest of the body he was supporting also slumped.
He shook the figure slightly. Softly at first, still confused, then harder, this time annoyed.
"Hey, was soll der Scheiß? Du bist auf mir eingeschlafen, schwarze Katze." the boy said through clenched teeth, but his profanities in German resounded through the hallway.
He huffed, moving the arm with which he was encircling their waist (noting in his mind how tight it was) and bringing it to the top of their helmet, forcing them to look directly at him.
He stared at his reflection in the black visor for a few moments, distracting himself for a second to look at the way a scratch on the surface made his face look unpleasantly distorted.
Then, tired of seeing the way that mirror made his perfect face look imperfect, he brought his fingers to the lower base of the visor with the intention of raising it.
And when he did, he had just enough time to see the tip of the delicate nose and tanned skin before a voice forced him to freeze.
"Überlass den Eindringling mir, Kaiser."
The boy's blue eyes soon met the carnelian ones of the man who was calmly approaching from behind.
He sneered, replying an "Früh wie immer, Noa."
The coach did not respond to the boy, stopping beside him and lowering his gaze to the black-clad figure passed out in the German prodigy's arms.
He and the other two adults had watched the entire scene from the cameras, from the girl's entrance to her encounter with the blond. It was at that moment that, aware of the behavior the German prodigy would assume, Noel had decided to leave Ego's office.
The coach analyzed her wet clothing, her slightly scuffed helmet, the few grains of sand under the soles of her shoes.
He held back an exasperated sigh, instead maintaining his stoic expression as he carefully grasped the girl, taking her in such a way that her sex remained unknown.
He put one of her arms around his muscular shoulders and anchored her waist against his side with his large hand.
He let her helmet-heavy head fall forward, and based on that he balanced her against his own body.
"Und bekomme ich keinen Preis dafür, die schwarze Katze zu fangen?" the German asked with his usual arrogant and mocking manner, running his fingers through his blond hair and pulling back the strands that fell in front of his face.
His eyes fell back on the figure the coach was clutching, and Noel realized that it was best to leave before the boy started making one of his tantrums.
"Ihr Preis ist die Anwesenheit auf dem Feld. Mach was draus." the man replied coolly and with composure, shrugging the boy off and starting to walk away.
"Meine Anwesenheit auf dem Feld sollte ein Privileg für Sie sein." Kaiser replied with his mischievous, superior grin, watching the man turn his back on him.
The young footballer lost his smile now that his master was not scrutinizing him, and his sharp lapis stared and analyzed the figure supported by the adult's powerful body.
It was clear that Noel Noa knew the identity of the black cat.
The way he was supporting them, the way his hand gripped their waist, the way his fingers caressed the wrist of the arm placed behind his shoulders.
He squeezed his eyelids shut, putting his hands in the pockets of his robe and turning around, resuming his little journey to his room.
He thought back to the weight of the figure in his arms, their narrow waist, and the smell of salt water and gasoline that had completely overwhelmed his own of perfume and cologne.
He thought back to the tip of their nose, trying to figure out whether it was more French-like or more Greek-like, and to the bronze-gold color of their complexion.
He closed his eyelids as an amused smile curved his lips.
An unfortunate black cat roamed the walls of his kingdom.
He couldn't wait to catch it.
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The jacket Nicole owned now is kept by the old man in some closet.
Nicole was born in 2004 (I've been trying to figure out when Blue Lock is set, but it's not very clear. I decided to set it in 2022, which is the year of the World Cup.)
Moto gp bikes have two gears (for reasons of speed in the gearbox)
Nicole would have shot herself if Abigail had not been there. She felt responsible, and she did not want to traumatize the blonde, much less leave her in the hands of that man.
Noel has no reason to feel guilty, but she does feel a little responsible for what happened.
Nicole still does not know whether or not it was the old man who touched her in the bathroom the night of the Gala.
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Author
I'm sorry for the delay, but I started college and they are already demanding things.
This has absolutely nothing to do with it, but I saw the Barbie movie and I can't help but compare Oliver's attitude toward Nicole to Ken's attitude toward Barbie (not the taking power over women thing tho, Oliver still KINDA knows his place)
Whatever, tell me what you think.
Se y'all darlings