Chapter Text
Yamada Taro doesn’t think much about his job. Most days, he goes into the office once in a while to show his face and receive reports. Most days, except for today.
He leans back in his cushy office chair and lets out a sigh, swiping a hand down his aged face, looking even more so with the amount of work he still has to get through.
But eventually, he gives up, and calls his assistant into the room via the desk phone. He’s knocking on the door not a moment later. If there’s one thing Yamada appreciates in life, it’s punctuality.
“You called, sir?”
Yamada waves a hand at the heaping pile of manila folders on his desk. “Tell the rest of the office we aren’t accepting applications anymore. And, next time, add an interview portion to the job listing.” He says, finally. “The pool of applicants is very poor this time around.”
His assistant, Ishikawa, nods knowingly, having gone through the rigorous process himself, all those years ago. “Do we have any likely prospects, sir?”
Yamada pushes a small pile towards the other man. “Yes. Well, we’d be sending them as an outsource to the program, anyways. If there are any issues we can just replace them.” He places a hand on the folders. “There is one executive decision I’m making, however.”
Ishikawa really hopes it doesn’t lead to more overtime, whatever it is. It’s his nephew’s fifth birthday today, and he’d like to get off work on time, for once. “Oh?” He says, carefully.
Yamada folds his hands in front of his face, looking awfully serious for a moment. A tingling sense of foreboding creeps down Ishikawa’s spine. “I would like to extend an internship position.”
**
“Achoo!” Miles away, you blow your nose into a tissue. “...someone’s talking about me.” You mutter.
For you, it’s the beginning of the weekend. Your favorite day of the week. You’d been laying in bed since you woke up at eleven in the afternoon. It’s one-thirty, and you’re just now moving to get out of bed, but at that moment, your phone rings.
Your joints creak as you bend over to pick it up from where you’d tossed it earlier, and the caller ID reads ‘uncle’ with a smiley face.
You smile. That doting man was your only family still living in Japan, everyone else having gone overseas to pursue their respective fields once you entered your third year of high school.
That sort of ambition clearly skipped you somewhere in the gene pool. If you could make just as much money in your own country, why bother moving somewhere completely new?
You press the phone to your ear. “What’s up, uncle?”
“My darling niece! Did I catch you at a bad time?”
“No, you’re fine.” You move the phone to your other ear, and slip on your indoor slippers. Wandering over to the kitchen, you look through the cabinets for something to eat. “I was just about to make lunch.” You move on to the fridge, opening the door, and your eyes catch on a styrofoam box. Maybe today would be a natto day.
“Good, good. I’m glad you’re eating well. You’re still a high school student, you know! You’re still growing.” You listen to your uncle’s words idly, mixing up the natto with a pair of chopsticks. It’s a bit of a struggle with the phone still pressed to your ear, so you stop to put your uncle on speaker and leave your phone on the countertop. “Listen, I have something I want you to hear me out on.”
Your ears perk at his words.
“I know you’re still in school right now, but I have the opportunity of a lifetime for you. I want you to think about interning with me.”
You drop your chopsticks- natto half mixed and forgotten on the kitchen counter. “Huh?”
“My dear niece, I want you to intern with me!” He repeats, excitedly. “Isn’t it exciting? Haha, we’d basically be a family business.”
You pick up your phone again, not wanting to miss a word he says. It’s a good opportunity. Your uncle worked in the information technology department, playing with computers all day. In other words, he worked in the very field you were interested in. You’d officially be a nepotism baby, but that’s fine by you, since you had the skills to back up your background.
Excitement and nervousness bubble up in your chest. Yeah. You wouldn’t mind it at all. “I’d really, really like that!”
“Well, sorry, you wouldn’t be with me personally, per se.” His words stop you in your tracks. “The position I want to recommend you for is with a new program that’s being implemented. Their head of operations contacted me about sending engineers and analysts over, and it’d be in the mountains. Isn’t that fun?”
“Oh.”
Yamada, hearing the dip in excitement in your voice, leans forward, spreading the papers underneath his elbows. “Are you disappointed?”
You are, maybe a little, if only because you wouldn’t be working somewhere you were comfortable at. But you don’t tell your uncle this, after all, he only has your interest in mind. It’d be bad to seem ungrateful. Besides, with this opportunity, you could get a leg up in your college acceptances. Now was not the time to be picky.
You hesitate. “No... no, I’m not! Can I know a little more about it?”
“I don’t know too much about it myself.” Yamada recalls the report he had received a few days prior, short and to the point, maybe a little too much so. “The heads over there seem awfully reticent with information, but I do know that if all goes according to plan, there is a high likelihood of success for everyone involved.”
Now that piques your interest.
Still...you have no idea what you’re getting yourself into. And neither does he, apparently.
“Well, you can just think about it for a little longer. I know I sprung this on you suddenly, so you can give me an answer by the end of tomorrow. Then I’ll send a notice of leave to your school.” He says, voice kindly.
Regrettably, you’re the bad combination of someone who cares too little about the consequences of their actions and easily instigated. It’s remarkably easy to be, when you have a loving uncle willing to cater to you and live alone. Not that it’s something you abuse often.
“I’ll do it.” You blurt, letting the acceptance spill from your mouth without a second thought.
At the end of the day, your uncle is just looking out for you. If he’s coming to you with a chance, might as well take it.
He laughs heartily, and the sound puts a smile on your face. “That’s my niece!” There’s some shuffling of papers over the speakers before your uncle’s voice reaches your ears once more. “Okay. I’ll get the paperwork ready immediately. You’ll start next week.”
You nod, mostly to yourself. His eagerness is infectious. “Okay. I’ll be waiting.”
“I’ll send you more information shortly, my dear.”
“Thank you, uncle,” You say, warmly.
The two of you make small talk for a little bit longer before your stomach growls, and you excuse yourself from the call. With silence descending over the kitchen, you’re left alone with your thoughts.
Now, what exactly have you gotten yourself into?
**
In short, you don’t really know.
Your uncle calls again two days later.
He called it Blue Lock. That was the program you were meant to work at. It was supposedly an elite soccer training camp where three-hundred of the high school players that showed the most potential in Japan were gathered. At the midst of it all is the chance to make or break their soccer careers.
It sounded very spartan, like a survival reality show. You could get into that.
You’re allowed to leave after hours, but the drive is about an hour long by car and the road is hardly lit, so you mentally prepare yourself to spend most of your time up in the mountains.
The day before you’re scheduled to leave, your class throws you a good-bye party. Your friends cry a little, but you tell them it won’t be for long. You drop off your plants at your uncle’s house. And for the most part, the days leading up to the start of your internship are somewhat uneventful.
And while you feel a little nervous at first, the feeling quickly fades. You’re sure that you have absolutely nothing to be anxious about. It was just work, as usual.
Having thoroughly convinced yourself of that thought, you sleep like a baby.
The next morning, your uncle picks you up in a black car, coffee and snacks waiting for you.
“Good morning,” you say, swiping a hot dog bun from the bag. It’s still warm when you take a bite from it, and you close your eyes in bliss. A part of you wants to ask your uncle which bakery he bought it from, but knowing him, it was probably somewhere too expensive for your student allowance to make a habit out of. “Morning, Ishikawa.” You greet the driver, your uncle’s assistant. He nods at you through the rearview mirror.
“Morning, my dear!” Your uncle is already situated inside the car, coffee in hand. He’s dressed in formal clothes today, hair slicked back. It’s a strange sight, since you’re so used to him in tracksuits on his days off. “Are you excited?”
You strap yourself in, and crack open the plastic cap of a coffee drink. “Yep.”
The sun is just starting to come up over the horizon, saturating the dim sky with orange. Underneath your feet, you feel the gentle rumbles of the engine as the car roars to life, dampening your hearing with its white noise.
The trip into the mountains flies by in a whirlwind. It gets foggier the farther you get from the city, so you abandon the window view. You and your uncle chat to pass the time, with Ishikawa occasionally chiming in with his two cents.
Somehow, the conversation turns to your love life, and at that point, you’re trying very hard to pull off a compelling performance being asleep. Unfortunately, it’s not very convincing, because your uncle is also in the back seat with you.
It’s Ishikawa who initiates the topic, and you glare at him through the rear view mirror. “No, I don’t have a boyfriend, Ishikawa.” You say his name with a pointed dip in your tone, mentally telling him to abort conversation.
For a second, you allow yourself to believe that it was the end of the conversation, but then your uncle chimes in.
You resist the urge to tear your hair out.
“That’s right! The thought of my niece being with some punk... No, no. I would not allow it. It’s too soon.”
Yamada, despite his laissez-faire tendencies, is protective. That’s why, for all the freedom he gives you, it’s still a no-go at eighteen years old to go with some guy he doesn’t know and start growing up in ways he doesn’t expect. Give him... ten years. He’ll be mentally prepared by then.
“I won’t, uncle,” you tell him with an exhausted pat on his arm, neglecting to tell him he would be the very last person to know when you were dating. It was too early to fight about something so trivial, when you had bigger things to focus on right now. “Anyway, what do you think about... Woah. What’s that?”
You’re mid-sentence when the fog suddenly parts, and a black skyscraper comes into sight. At this point, the road has turned steep, and narrowed in by trees.
Yamada takes a sip of his coffee before responding. “That right there is our new project. Blue Lock headquarters.”
You turn back to the window, contemplative. So, that’s where you were going to spend the next several weeks of your life, you muse, taking a sip of your drink. It was pretty big, and you still have fifteen... Maybe even twenty minutes left of the drive.
Not too long after, the car rolls to a stop.
Your uncle and Ishikawa unbuckle their seatbelt and get out of the car first, with you following suit. Before you can open the car door, though, Ishikawa beats you to it, pulling the door open for you, and you smile at him in thanks.
You spread your arms above your head, rolling your wrists until they pop with a small ‘crick’. Then, you take a moment to observe your surroundings.
Just like you suspected, Blue Lock is huge, its presence downright oppressive. Its shape looked more like multiple skyscrapers clumped together rather than a single building, and its titular name is blazoned at the front of the building, glowing soft white.
“Ready?” Your uncle is already carrying your luggage.
You nod. “Let’s go.”
The entrance doors are automatic. All the doors you pass through, in fact, are automatic, rolling open as soon as your little group approaches. You wonder how much the electricity bill is every month.
Your uncle leads the three of you, completely unfazed, like coming here is just something he does for fun on the weekends.
“Here we are!” He announces, cutting into your thoughts. To your surprise, you’re looking at... another door. Seeing the confusion on your face, he elaborates. “This is where they’ll debrief you. I have to run through some things with the head of operations right now.”
“Okay. See you later.”
You accept the luggage he hands to you. When he spreads his arms, you step into them, letting your uncle sweep you up into a hug. You can smell the citrusy scent of his cologne. It’s been the same fragrance of lemons since you were a kid. “You’re growing up so quickly now... Soon, you’ll be going off to college and forgetting all about me.”
You pat his back kindly. If you don’t stop him now, the man would launch into a whole speech. “Uncle, I have to go now.”
“You’re going to be late, sir.” Ishikawa adds.
Thankfully, he stops there, swiping at his eyes as he lets you loose. Thank god for people like Ishikawa.
You wave goodbye to both of them as they leave, lowering your hand slowly once you’re alone, and turn your attention to the door. It’s surprisingly not automatic, and is the first one you’ve seen so far with an actual handle.
Okay. Time to go.
Steeling yourself for... Whatever to come, you turn the doorknob and enter.
It is, without a doubt, a corporate space. Your eyes have to take a second to adjust to the darkness of the room, but once they do, the huge screen at the front of the room catches your attention.
You barely step foot into the room before a man’s voice clears his throat. “I think you’ve got the wrong room, little girl.”
You get the sense that you’re being judged. Hard.
If this is the waiting area for the other new hires, then you’re the last one to arrive, only one seat left at the end of the U-shaped conference table. Everyone else has already taken their seats, folders and pens spread out in front of them.
In other words, your first impression had just tanked majorly.
It doesn’t matter, you remind yourself. You’re here for work, not to make friends with people ten years older than you.
So you put away your pride, and bend at the waist into a shallow bow. “I’ll be working alongside everyone as an intern. I’ll be in your care.”
You meander to the open seat, which is next to an older lady who gives you a small nod and a smile as you approach. You do the same. But luckily, or unluckily, the guy who had called on you is seated on the other side of the U, directly across from you.
He gives you an unimpressed look as you sit down. Pointedly, you ignore him.
The main screen flickers to life suddenly, making you wince at the harsh brightness of the light.
“Welcome to Blue Lock.” You recognize the familiar voice of your uncle immediately. His face fills the screen, and tension begins to thickly fill the room. You correct your posture consciously. “We’ll be briefly going over expectations for your roles, so please take a look at the form in front of you.”
You tune out his voice, sliding the piece of paper closer to you.
‘NOTICE OF EMPLOYMENT: BLUE LOCK SYSTEMS PROGRAM - Effective 11/18
Specialists* provide maintenance of the computer environment and support internal information of Blue Lock headquarters in accordance to company missions and standards. The specialist will oversee management of hardware and software, diagnose and repair computer systems and software as needed, and monitor technological needs.
*This position encapsulates any temporary and/or internship roles’
You scan through the rest of the contract. It’s straightforward enough, going over your daily responsibilities, accommodations, all the formalities.
One line catches your attention.
‘The disclosing party desires to be assured that the information owned by them shall not be disclosed to any third party without their consent and shall be maintained and protected by the receiving party.’
Interesting. They were telling you to keep whatever you saw under wraps. You know it’s a soccer training camp, but is a bunch of highschoolers messing around for a couple months really all that ground-breaking?
Clearly, or they wouldn’t have bothered making you sign an NDA, or set up a whole building the size of a shopping mall just for it.
You finish reading through everything just in time for your uncle’s finishing words.
“Lastly, although this is a provisional operation, we expect quality work from all of you. Any poor performances will lead to termination, and dismissal from Blue Lock, including those participating in the internship program.” He pauses. “That’s all. Have a good afternoon.”
His face flickers off the screen abruptly, and you’re all left in the dark once more.
He’s testing you, you realize.
So, that’s how it was going to be. Your uncle was basically putting a big target on your back, that you were free to be replaced if you weren’t putting in the proper work. And that was a big ‘if’.
You shift in your seat.
Just like that, things were starting to get interesting.