Prologue
The finest swords are quenched in the coldest water. The most brilliant minds are forged in the crucible of contradiction. Before Blue Lock, there was only the stagnant, polite world of Japanese youth football. In that stillness, I introduced a pleasant, chilling chaos.
- Kyomu Jashin
•••••
The atmosphere in the deserted futsal gym located on the outskirts of Tokyo was heavy with the scent of aged rubber mingling with the freshness of recent sweat.
It was a realm inhabited by spirits and risk-takers, where the destiny of Japanese football was being shaped not on immaculate televised fields, but on weathered concrete beneath the glow of flickering fluorescent lights.
At just sixteen, Itoshi Sae bore the heavy burden of a nation's dashed hopes resting on his slender shoulders, and he felt a familiar sense of disgust churn in his stomach. The players surrounding him were satisfactory.
They possessed technical skills and physical abilities and were, unfortunately, entirely predictable in a way that felt deeply disheartening. They were merely cogs in the machine. He was a skilled artisan, navigating a world filled with unrefined tools.
The team he was part of had a lead of two goals. It felt completely effortless. A pass made here, a dribble executed there, followed by a precise and clinical finish. With each passing minute, he sensed his ambition, his dream of discovering a striker deserving of his brilliance on the global stage, slowly fading away.
At that moment, he made his entrance.
The door remained closed without a sound of slamming. It softly opened, and a figure glided in, a shadow separating itself from the deeper darkness beyond. He stood at an average height and had a build that was neither too slim nor too robust.
His features were sharp and conveyed a sense of intelligence, yet it was his eyes that truly captivated Sae. Their hue resembled that of a tranquil, profound lake, mirroring all that surrounded them while disclosing nothing at all.
He provided neither a greeting nor any form of acknowledgement. He stood quietly at the sideline, watching the game unfold with the calm curiosity of a scientist observing bacteria as they multiply.
A player from the opposing team, filled with frustration and humiliation, directed a trembling finger at the newcomer. "You! Jashin! We are currently short one person. Get in!"
Jashin, the boy, simply nodded in response. He didn't don a team jersey; instead, he opted for a straightforward black training top. He skipped both stretching and warming up. He walked onto the court with a grace that was both fluid and eerily quiet. The game continued once again.
In the initial ninety seconds, he appeared as a mere spectre. He did not ask for the ball. He did not make bold or forceful runs. He moved with a fluid grace, making a sequence of subtle adjustments that, to Sae's keenly trained eye, started to gently alter the very geometry of the pitch.
Sae caught the ball close to the centre line, quickly envisioning the three most effective routes to the goal. He overlooked the new variable. A ghost remained nothing more than mere air.
Then, the ghost began to speak. His voice was gentle, but it pierced through the grunts and squeaks of shoes with a chilling clarity.
"Your left back tends to favour his right foot at a seven-degree angle when faced with pressure," Kyomu Jashin remarked, addressing no one in particular rather than Sae. "This is a clear indication that you can take advantage of it by pushing him to the outside and blocking his option to pass to the central defender."
Sae's left back, a sturdy boy named Kenji, paused for just a brief moment. Indeed, it was true.
Sae narrowed her eyes, focussing intently. An unexpected occurrence. A careful observation.
He delivered a sharp pass to his winger, who was quickly surrounded by defenders. The progress came to a halt. Jashin was indeed right.
When Sae next had the ball, he chose to explore this unusual situation. He accelerated, heading straight towards Jashin. He would take apart this newcomer with pure, undeniable excellence. He feinted to the left, a manoeuvre that had outsmarted countless defenders, his body a work of art in the realm of deceptive movement.
Jashin refrained from biting. He didn't make any effort to tackle. He stepped back and to the right with precision, angling his body in a way that effectively blocked Sae's most threatening passing lane. At the same time, he directed him into a narrowing pocket of space.
"It's not a feint if your centre of gravity doesn't fully commit," Jashin murmured, his eyes fixed intently on Sae's hips. "You possess such goodness that it's challenging for you to completely accept the lies you tell yourself. It results in a brief pause of 0.2 seconds. The information is obvious."
Sae felt a sudden jolt, much like an unexpected wave of energy rushing through. No one had ever taken him apart in such a way before. He was both admired and feared, and many sought to emulate him. They did not examine him as if he were a defective piece of code.
Anger, cold and piercing, cut through Sae's typical indifference. He pushed past Jashin, relying on sheer strength to prevail, and succeeded in taking a shot that ultimately missed its mark. The victory we achieved carried an overwhelming sense of defeat.
The flow of the game changed direction. It wasn't merely that Jashin was skilfully dribbling past every opponent; it was as if he were manipulating invisible strings that guided his every move.
A pass from Sae's teammate that lacked the right weight here; a defensive error occurred there. The once-smooth operation of Sae's team was now struggling, its mechanisms hindered by tiny particles of carefully measured sand.
The score has now reached a tie.
As the final moments ticked away on the imaginary clock, a loose ball rolled to a stop, resting halfway between Sae and Jashin. It was a 50-50.
They advanced in unison. Sae moves with an explosive and technically flawless grace, reminiscent of a world-class prodigy. Jashin moved with a strange, precise efficiency that appeared to use every bit of energy without any waste.
Sae arrived first, his touch flawless and precise. He got ready to protect the ball, determined to put an end to this absurdity. However, Jashin had no intention of attempting a tackle.
When Sae's foot struck the ball, Jashin's foot landed not on the ball itself, but exactly on the spot of concrete where Sae would have to step next in order to pivot away. That was not a foul. It was an anticipation of what was to come. An imposed error in calculation.
Sae faltered, his cadence disrupted. The ball rolled away, moving freely across the ground.
Jashin gathered it. He moved two steps ahead, entering the area that Sae had been compelled to leave behind. He stood twenty-five feet away from the goal. The angle was quite narrow. The custodian positioned himself, fully prepared.
Kyomu Jashin did not execute a significant backswing. There was neither a roar of effort nor a grimace of strain. His body twisted and then relaxed, embodying the calm yet overwhelming force of a landslip. The moment his instep met the ball, it produced a sound that was both striking and unmistakably precise.
The events that unfolded next were beyond Sae's comprehension of physics.
The air surrounding the ball… glimmered. The heat haze shimmered, creating a distortion in the air between Jashin's foot and the goal. The ball appeared to capture the faint light, leaving behind a ghostly halo of orange and red, and it let out a sound like a jet engine slicing through the stillness of the gym.
The custodian recoiled, raising his hands not to make a save, but out of an instinctive urge to protect himself.
And then there was silence.
The cheers fell silent the moment the ball struck the back of the net. There was neither the sharp sound of netting snapping nor the gratifying impact of a thud. The ball settled into place, as if it had just materialised in that very spot.
The sole sound that filled the air was the goalkeeper's uneven breath, accompanied by the subtle, electric buzz of the lights above.
4-5. The game was over.
Kyomu Jashin remained completely motionless. A subtle, nearly undetectable smile graced his lips. It was neither a smile of joy nor one of triumph. The smile belonged to a pathologist who had just delivered the news of a terminal diagnosis.
He shifted his calm gaze towards Sae, who remained on one knee, his perspective shattered.
"You seek a flawless striker to validate your own purpose, Itoshi Sae," Jashin remarked, his tone gentle yet now imbued with unwavering certainty. "You are creating a sanctuary dedicated to a vision. However, you are working under a mistaken assumption."
He started to leave the pitch, stopping briefly to share his concluding, impactful analysis.
"You think that strong egos need to be developed. I think they need to be broken first. Your philosophy revolves around the concept of creation. Mine is a form of purification. What about your Blue Lock project?"
Jashin glanced back, his eyes shimmering softly in the dim light.
"It is not a forge. It is a pen filled with gentle lambs. And you have just invited the wolf to come and audition."
He vanished into the shadows from which he emerged, leaving only the lingering scent of ozone, a silent ball in a net, and a deep, unsettling doubt planted in the heart of Japan's greatest prodigy.