Chapter Text
It was a dark yet unexplainably warm room that greeted Rin the first time he opened his eyes. Blinking blearily, he took in the sight of the place around him- the ceiling above, the soft blanket trapping him in with unbearably hot temperature, and the absolutely harrowing feeling of weakness deep inside his bones.
Great. Just absolutely, fucking- amazing. The deep, binding weight of his own body, the inexplainable warmth and the feeling of an axe chucked to his own head told Rin an irritatingly clear message: He’s sick.
His mind flew away to a mess of swirled, hazy memories. Rin distantly remembered the fast clinking of the exercise machine, the pain in his body that he refused to listen to and the stupid, lukewarm memory of a certain shitty brother saying stupid shit by the words of “best striker in the world” about a certain, stupid NPC.
A memory he tried to forget with a whirlwind of training and exercise machines, wrecking up his body upon arriving back in the Blue Lock facility after the U-20 bullshit, and by the looks of his state right about now, Rin’s body was still too half-baked to stomach the strain.
No wonder he didn’t spare me a glance, Rin thought distantly, as the all-too-familiar pit in his stomach threatened to plummet even further. Rin already realized that his shitty brother’s words never would escape his mouth without deep intentions, especially praise.
Praise that wasn’t directed to him, eyes that weren’t even looking at him. How foolish Rin must’ve looked, with those eyes belonging to a needy child in him that he thought had disappeared long ago.
And that pit would’ve deepened and widened in him, the numbness in his chest would’ve been colder and all-consuming, if not for a sudden migraine cutting his string of thoughts, producing a stupidly weak whimper out of his throat.
Embarrassing.
Here Rin was, fevered, weak and useless. He turned his head to the side as he heard the automatic door opening up, his eyes so hazy that the sight of Yukimiya walking in with Nagi shuffling lazily behind him looked like moving blobs of shapes and colors.
Rin sighed, closing his eyes as the axe bashed his head in again. Trying to wake up was too much of a pain, so Rin decided to screw his eyes shut and try to let the wave of pain pass.
The voices surrounding him were too muffled and murky for him to listen carefully to, but Rin could make sense of a few words steps approaching him. Something about “bags”, “asleep” and “overdone.” And suddenly, there sudden feeling of something warm slipping under Rin’s knees and his neck, hoisting him up until his back rose from the bed. A sudden vertigo clutched Rin’s head as he attempted to wake up, finding his head leaning on something warm. Too warm for his body that just so happen to take a liking in burning today. Of course, his first instinct was to squirm, lift himself away from whatever the hell he was leaning on. Too hot. He was burning alive.
But he was pressed against the warmth, helpless and unable to move. Rin could only muster up a weak turn of his head to see what really he was resting on, but his eyes were blurring with red, white, and teal. It was like he was disconnected from reality, a fragile piece of paper floating around in the confusing cosmos.
Rin couldn’t help but whimper when another axe drove into his skull, his eyelids closing up again. Slowly, he felt his body being moved with a gentle lull along with the soft sound of footsteps, and Rin just then realized that he was being carried away by someone. Again, his head bleared open, fighting the migraines to try and focus on the swirled up face above him. The shapes and colours slowly fell into place, even if nothing ever liked to be clear to Rin in his agonizingly sorry state. The blobs of teal was framed by blacks and whites, and an eye stared back at him, intense and flat. It was too familiar of a stare, that made Rin freeze.
“N.. Nii… ch..an?” Rin croaked out. Was it a hallucination, or was it real? Rin didn’t know- (read: Didn’t want to know with how weak and embarrassig he must’ve looked).
He wouldn’t put it past himself to hallucinate. Rin saw Sae every day already, in the mirror when he pushed his face back for a wash, in the reflections of salted kelp tea served once in Blue Lock's cafeteria. Between his shoelaces when he instinctively put his left shoe on first and in the middle of the curry he was eating, enjoying the Battle of Sekigahara. Plus, it was too absurd, Sae Itoshi belonged in Re Al, with all the rising football stars, planets away from Rin, as he distanced himself so. Sae Itoshi didn’t belong in the Blue Lock facility, picking up his measly, sick little brother to god-knows-where.
A sudden, piercing wave of pain engulfed Rin’s head once again, forcing him to shut his eyes.
“Go back to sleep.” A muffled voice, murky yet so chest-fillinglly soft assured Rin. No way, this tone, it must be a hallucination.
So, he allowed his head to loll against the shoulder supporting him. Because it must be a hallucination, because if it wasn’t, Rin didn’t know how he was going to look at that situation in the face. Or really, look at Sae in the face. Ever again. But It didn’t matter, and it would never matter. Because Itoshi Sae was in a plane trip back to Spain, leaving to go back to his unreachable planet once more.
Because Rin was spiralling again, and this was another product of that. Fullstop.
With the peace of mind, a darkness took over Rin. And this time, he didn’t fight it. He let it engulf him and drag him deeper. His fingers weakly fisted the Hallucination Sae’s shirt, and a soft sigh escaped him as he listened to the soft footsteps fading out in the background.
...
“…I guess you’ll always be like this when you’re sick, hm?” a voice distantly murmurs. But by then, Rin was already deep in the throes of sleep.