Archive of Our Own

Rin gets the call at seven in the morning after a night of fitful sleep. The sound of his default ringer reverberates off the walls in his small, practically empty bedroom, and by the time he registers the sound, he’s already half out of his bed and slipping his feet out from under the warm sheets.

“He’s apparently exhausted, but awake,” his father, Itoshi Masaki, is saying over the line. Rin can hear the sound of Masaki gathering things, his mother calling for things they’ll need in the background, exhaustion creeping into the edges of their voices like decay. Rin wonders if the call they had gotten woke them up, too—if the exhaustion is a result of the news or the lack of sleep. “We’re heading out on the next flight to Madrid. Should get there before midnight our time and we’ll get to see him the following day.”

Rin stands. “What flight are you on?”

“There’s one leaving a little after eleven.”

“What airport?”

“Ah,” his father falters. The rummaging pauses. “Rin…” 

The sigh his father lets out tells Rin all he needs to know, but the words that leave his lips still make his chest tighten. 

“He doesn’t want me there.”

His father hums in agreement. Masaki Itoshi has never been one for platitudes. It’s always been something Rin has respected, but he can’t find comfort in the honesty right now. “Sae told us not to let you come. He told us not to tell you at all, actually, but this is already all over the news, so I figured it was best to tell you before you stumbled over that on your own. Your mother thought that was a bad idea, but I convinced her it was a good one so long as I made the call.”

A sharp noise of indignation comes over the line. Rin can almost imagine the scene: his mother chastising his father with a look and maybe a throw pillow, his father dodging or batting it out of the way. It comes to mind so readily, but feels so… distant. It’s been years since Rin has set foot in the Itoshi house—years since he’s tasted his parents’ food, listened to their bickering, or heard their rhythmic breathing down the hall in the middle of the night, but the familiarity weighs heavy. 

Rin grits his teeth.

“Chin up, Rin,” his father says quietly over the line after a moment. “He’ll come around. It’s painful for him right now, but he’ll let you see him once he’s ready.”

There are a thousand things Rin could say to that, but he says none of them. Instead, he mumbles a barely respectful fine and ends the call.

And now he’s standing here in the middle of his bedroom, purpose abandoned and silence setting over the space like the thick morning mist outside. He grips his phone in hand, like a string pulled too tight. He can’t stay still—he won’t.

The inside of his closet is as neat as always—lines of casual wear and formal attire hang from their hooks, though maybe a little crooked from the last time he’d gone looking for something in here. There’s a couple of old cleats that he should get rid of soon. Rin moves the hangers to one side and reaches in.

Jammed in the back—right in between his only full suit and an old workout set—is the small, black carry-on he uses on game trips. 

He pulls it out by the handle, throws it on the bed, and starts to pack. As he moves around his room, grabbing essentials with one hand methodically, he finds the next flight to Madrid from the Tokyo Narita Airport leaves in five hours with the other. There’s a couple of scattered seats available—he books one of them without a second thought. 

Then Rin calls his manager.

“It’s Itoshi,” Rin says without a proper greeting. His manager, Ueda, grunts in acknowledgement. “I have a family emergency.”

⚽

His parents must land a couple of hours before he does, because when Rin texts them on his way out trying to hail some kind of taxi, his mother replies to his request for the hospital address with a stern You better not be in Spain right now and leaves his question unanswered.

So Rin calls her. Gets sent to voicemail twice. Calls his father with the same result, leaving Rin standing on the sidewalk, luggage half in the car and glaring at his phone while a driver yells at him in rapid Spanish Either get in or get out!

Then comes the address from his father, and Rin throws everything in with a sudden urgency, rattling off the address as clearly as he can. The driver just frowns at him for a second before peeling out of the terminal.

When Rin arrives at the hospital forty minutes after landing, his mother is waiting for him in the lobby, a tight expression adorning her usually relaxed face. 

Itoshi Aiyu, though her sons are both vastly different in personality from her, carries the same set to her shoulders—the same rigid frame—when she’s feeling anything… inconvenient. Unpleasant. Aiyu, as a highly successful Financial Advisor for one of Japan’s acclaimed top ten companies, has shown the public this cold side of her many times. In private, Rin has only seen this side of her in his adult years to cover one hand’s worth of fingers, but he sees the same rigid frame and determined look in his eyes every time he looks in the mirror.

Rin comes to a stop in front of her, luggage rolling to a stop next to him. They stare at each other for a long moment.

Aiyu’s previously long, pink-tinted brown hair is now more of a grown-out bob. It’s not the same color as Sae’s, but Rin can still see the traces of him on her face—the sharp nose, the shape of her cheekbones. There are wrinkles, now, on her face—crow’s feet at the corners of her teal blue eyes, smile lines that stand sharper now that she isn’t smiling—that Rin doesn’t remember being there last time he saw her. That definitely weren’t there the last time he lived at home, either. 

Neither of them bother with greetings. She doesn’t even force him to give her an obligatory hug so she can play the doting mother and talk about how big he’s gotten or how much she’s missed him. It throws him off, a little bit, but Rin sets his jaw and waits.

And waits.

“Let me see him,” Rin demands finally. 

His mother stands firm. Though she’d refused to send the address, Rin had still sort’ve thought that she’d sigh and stand aside. Maybe force Sae to let Rin in, just this once. But she looks at him, and Rin gets the hint. It stings, but he relents, and the awful twist in his gut at losing this returns like an old friend. If his teammates could see him right now—twenty-four years old, over six feet, and giving in to his mother so easily—he’d never hear the fucking end of it.

“How bad is it?”

Aiyu’s tight expression softens into something more like loss. There’s a bit of anger that echoes in the depths of those light eyes, too—presents itself in the crinkles of skin around her eyes, the slight indent in her lip where she’s biting it on the inside.

“He’s not fit to see anyone right now,” she informs him in lieu of an answer as someone moves past them in the waiting room. They give them a wide berth, but his mother’s eyes still follow them until they’re out of her sight. Then they settle back on Rin. “Your father and I got kicked out about fifteen minutes ago. He isn’t taking it well. You need to leave—”

“You knew I would come,” Rin argues. Hopes, at least, that they hadn’t really thought that he’d be okay staying put. “Why are you turning me away now?”

“That was before we knew the extent,” his mother hisses. She steps closer, like she has to keep this between them, and Rin’s heart plummets. He feels sick. “He’s not—if he sees you…”

Before we knew the extent. 

The overhead announcement system asks for someone by name. Rin’s ears are ringing.

“How long is he out for?” Rin tries again. His mouth tastes like lead.

Aiyu studies him. There is no tell-tale twitch like when she’s suppressing her anger, but there is also no trace of the usual warmth in her face, either. The lack of it makes him feel five years old, watching as his mother becomes a cold, unforgiving stranger before his very eyes. A misstep of his—breaking his toys, sneaking out after bedtime to grab a drink of water—could turn her into a frigid woman, and in the months before Sae had left when Rin was eleven, that frigid woman was what he saw more often than not. The difference is there is no seven-year-old Sae to shield him. There hasn’t been in a very long time.

You’ll get in the way of his success if you cling to him like that, he can hear her hiss in his head like she did all those years ago.

“If the doctors are right,” says the frigid woman now, “then it may as well be forever.”

For a brief second, all Rin can think of is that they were lucky this hospital is still standing. That Sae’s rage hasn’t killed them all with its fiery heat.

And then the swell in his chest overflows, and his chest aches with the grief.

⚽

Rin ends up passing the time in the waiting room for the first day. His parents swap posts frequently—one parent posted in the same room (or near) one of their sons at all times. Masaki greets Rin with a hand on his shoulder at the end of his turn, his mouth pulled into a crooked smile, and fills their time in the waiting room with bathroom and drink breaks, flipping through magazines left out on the table and just generally giving a half-assed effort to keep Rin occupied. Where his wife becomes cold, Masaki becomes jaunty. He makes crude jokes, sniffing remarks, and unnecessary comments to fill the silence. He tells Rin to lighten up at least twice when Rin feels himself slipping out of his body, to which Rin makes considerable effort to only react by sliding his father a cold glance.

When it is Aiyu’s turn to watch over their youngest (adult, mind you) child, neither she nor Rin say anything to the other. Their time is spent pretending Rin isn’t actively not-there, staring at the wall ahead as thoughts slide in and out of his head. He’s sure his body is there—is attached to his consciousness—but actual feeling leaves him in waves.

It gives him time to think about her words. It may as well be forever.

That means it’s season-ending. Maybe multiple seasons. Rin remembers the brief period of time Sae had to come home after his last injury—remembers the carnage his rage left behind. It’d been a tear in his ACL, and despite the damage, the doctors had been optimistic he’d make it back without incident—but by the time he’d been working on PT, the season had finished and another one had begun. 

Because they'd... gotten somewhat friendly, or as friendly as Sae can get, over the years once Rin joined the J.League, Rin had wanted to take care of Sae after his surgery. This had been a point of contention as Sae went through his surgery. In the end, his parents had insisted on the job, stating it was their duty as parents. Sae hadn’t cared who was taking care of him. Rin, at the time, hadn’t even thought that Sae even knew where he’d ended up, too wrapped up in his own head to process what was happening around him. When Rin had tried talking to him at the hospital, Sae had stared through him like he was a mere ghost, and had let their parents wheel him out in a wheel chair into the awaiting car without saying a word.

He was only supposed to be out of the game for eight months. They all had known that he’d go back—a near tear on his ACL wouldn’t have destroyed his career by any means, but it had required surgeries, rehabilitation therapy, and constant monitoring.

When Rin had gone to visit them, Sae had just gotten settled in back at home. Their parents had attempted to eliminate the last bits of their childhood for Sae’s sake, but had kept some of Sae’s trophies in hopes of reminding him of how far he’s come. That’s what Sae had used not only to break the window, but to put a head-sized hole in the wall in between where their bunk bed used to be and the wall. After Sae had left, Rin had checked—had seen the way his head could fit perfectly in the hole his brother’s rage had left.

Rin had expected a cold exterior. A purposefully indifferent and demeaning Sae could be beyond devastating as it was. Yet, that’s not what Rin had gotten when he walked into the Itoshi house that first night. And that remains the last time he ever stepped foot in that house.

Unease becomes his constant companion—every minute he’s overcome with nausea that keeps him firmly in his seat as long as he can muster, pressing against him as a weight that refuses to give. And when the nausea subsides, the pressure doesn’t ease—it morphs into a numbness Rin can’t shake.

At the end of the first day, it’s decided for him that he’ll return with his father to the hotel to get some sleep, and then the next two days continue in the same way: the two who’d been forced to leave for the night before arrive each morning from their hotels, and then sit in those godless fucking waiting rooms—answering texts and emails and phonecalls that never end to field whatever press or give whatever updates are demanded of them—until dark settles again, and they decide who’ll be staying at Sae’s bedside that night. It’s never Rin. Each time his parents switch, Rin finds enough of himself to ask, and each time he finds himself sitting in his parents’ rental car on the way to the hotels, wondering how long he can be iced out before he gets frostbite.

By the fourth day, Sae still won’t let him into his hospital room. He does get a glimpse exactly once, though: at the end of three days into his pitiful waiting room stint, Rin catches a glimpse of Sae as he is being wheeled from his room to the operating room for a second time, there by complete coincidence because his father asked him to bring a drink from the vending machines. His brother looks like a vengeful spirit, all unkempt hair and pale skin. There are dark bags under his eyes, and red, angry lines on his cheeks that Rin can’t tell if they’re from the game, or self-inflicted. 

As they roll him down the hall, Sae doesn’t look at anyone. Instead, he stares at the ceiling like he’s planning on blowing it to smithereens. When he passes by Rin, though, their eyes meet for just a moment—Rin nearly crushes the aluminum of the open can in his hand.

Sae sees him, but they’re already moving by. Rin sees his brother sit up, turning his body to face him and all that’s in Sae’s eyes is fire-filled rage. When the doors close to the surgery bay, there’s a commotion on the other side. The sound of a body crashing into the doors. They rattle in their places, and Rin is struck by the horror aspect of it all—the unknown beast lurking just beyond the last defense. He’s back in his apartment, alone in the dark, watching the doors rattle and the beast groan, before it all goes silent.

Rin’s waiting for the next jump scare—for the burning fingers around his neck. That’s when Masaki comes to usher Rin somewhere else—anywhere else—talking to him, telling him he needs to go with his mother like Rin is a small child, and Rin can't even argue with him, too stuck on the look on his older brother's face.

He can still see Sae’s rage on the back of his eyelids when he closes his eyes later that night.

Sae goes into surgery, eventually. And when he gets out, and is actually coherent again, Aiyu books a return flight home for Rin and drives him to the airport herself.

“I have to see him at least once,” Rin had argued when she stopped by his hotel room, throwing his stuff into his suitcase for him. The whole ordeal had made him feel much younger than his current twenty-four years, complaining to his mother like a young child.

“You did. And you won’t get to see him a second time,” Aiyu had stated simply. Her warmth had still not returned to her. “He threatened to have the hospital deny you entrance.”

She’d then shoved his hastily repacked bag into his chest, looking up into her son’s eyes, and ordering him firmly, “Go.”

So, with no other option, Itoshi Rin gives up the fight and returns home.

There is a stone weighing on his chest when he lands, and another when he gets into the Uber he ordered, and another when the car pulls up to his apartment building. And when he slips through the door into his apartment. They grind together, heating as he lingers in the entryway, staring at the space he’s never called home. 

Rin drops the handle on his suitcase and lets it collapse to the floor with a distinct thud.

Every blink calls back the explosive rage in Sae’s eyes at seeing him in that hospital hallway. Every breath reminds him of the fury Sae had released in their childhood room—every twitch in his hands echoes the anguish in Sae’s movements the night Rin had visited him three years ago. This feeling is different from the swelling tide he’d felt hearing his brother may never play again. This is a boil. It starts with the hot stones in his chest: simmering his internal organs, blanching his bones, filling him with a burning sensation at arm’s length. 

For the first time in four days, he is alarmingly present, and that is just as rage-inducing as anything else. All he can think is that it burns. It burns hotter than anything he’s ever felt before.

The first thing to go is the small ceramic bowl that usually houses his keys when he returns—the resulting sound rings in his ears. The boil doesn’t lessen. Instead, it bubbles over, and Rin steps over the shattered glass into his kitchen, still in his outside shoes, where a bowl he’d left out in his haste to leave joins the ceramic one with a sickening shatter. 

Utensils join them next. He intends to just let them fall, but he can’t help the force he puts into it, like trying to get them as far away from himself as possible. One by one, each clattering to the floor. His ears ring. His heart races. His movements start to pick up into a frenzy, and Rin finds himself throwing open cabinets, barely registering the loud bang they make as the doors hit wood, to empty out each and every one, filling his kitchen with a cacophony of falling kitchenware. And then he rips drawers from their tracks and tosses them into the mess.

Rin doesn’t scream—doesn’t cry. But he can hear it anyway, echoing in his ears with the sound of shattering glass as he wreaks havoc on everything he owns. His vision is red. The edges blur. When he runs out of utensils, he moves to furniture, toppling every bookshelf and table he owns, tipping over his couch and ripping open the cushions with his bare hands. Then he moves to appliances, systematically tearing out every condiment he’s ever owned from the refrigerator, kicking the washer and dryer set he’d just bought two months ago until the metal outsides are properly dented. And when he runs out of things to kick, he goes back and systematically crushes every bit of broken glass and shattered plastic under his foot until nothing is recognizable.

He destroys. Just like his brother.

The Itoshi brothers, both bursting in ruinous flames.

Rin punches the wall when the bubbling boil doesn’t subside, and it’s the sharp shooting pain in his knuckles that finally dulls it, so he does it again, and then he feels something wet hit his face. With shaking hands, he reaches to touch the spot—only to realize his jaw had slackened. His tongue hangs.

Rin stills. He ghosts his fingers over his tongue contemplatively, touching it with more softness than he has with anything else. As he does, he looks over his ruined apartment, breathing heavily. The boiling has simmered and died out, now leaving a hollow, raw ache behind.

Maybe the Itoshis were only built to destroy.

⚽

If Itoshi Sae’s name hadn’t been plastered across all of the soccer world with the words FORCED RETIREMENT, one would think Rin had gotten the career-ending injury.

He spends the first few days back from Madrid in a mindless state. Several times, he finds himself sitting in the shower at weird hours, water pounding on the back of his head so that it’s all he can hear, see, and feel. His team grants him two months of family leave—Sae is an international superstar, a blow to a family member like that would shake anyone—but it’s not like Rin can use that time to visit Sae in Madrid to fucking grieve with him over what should have been. 

Instead, Rin bides his time in his ruined apartment. He buys paper plates. He walks around the apartment with shoes on at all times in order to avoid getting glass in his feet. His water bill skyrockets from the amount of time he wastes wishing the water would dissolve him like salt, taking him bit by bit down the drain with it.

During this time, Rin manages to find a video of Sae’s injury.

It is not by accident. It’s not even something he stumbles upon while reading the news and takes the final leap to press play. One night, Rin is sitting in the ruins of his apartment, eating take out on a small space of floor he’s swept broken glass and utensils away from, staring at his upturned table with its splintered wood from where he’d tried snapping it in half, and the horrible, godawful thought that enters his mind is I wonder if the sound of Nii-san’s leg breaking was the same as breaking wood.

It’s one of those thoughts where the harder Rin tries to push the thought away, the more it plays on the back of his eyelids, taunting him with the image and noticeable lack of sound. He doesn’t want to know what Sae’s calf looked like when the opposing player stamped on it, doesn’t want to hear the resulting pain in Sae’s scream afterwards, but there’s a part of him that needs it. It needs to know what ended Sae’s future. 

What does breaking bone sound like? his thoughts whisper.

Rin stills—closes his eyes and breathes until the whisper stops echoing. Then he moves on from his soft yakisoba noodles to bite down on a piece of lightly battered karaage. His teeth hit something solid through the crunch of the fried batter, and all Rin can think is, there’s fucking bone in this.

He gags. Spits out the mangled bits into his hand, expecting to see blood, or bone. His heart is pounding. His body is stiffening with pure fear and repulsion. 

All he sees is the fucking karaage. 

With his fingers, and his heart still racing in his chest, Rin tears the bits of chicken to find the bone, but all he finds is meat. His hands drop to his lap, letting the mangled pieces slip to the floor.

He wonders if Sae screamed. He’s never heard his older brother scream a day in his life. He’s barely ever heard him yell.

It’s a thought one second, and then Rin’s phone is tilted in his hands, a news recording of the exact moment beginning to play just seconds before it happens. He watches, with baited breath, as the guy that’s clearly marking Sae tries to steal the ball from him.

Sae’s anguished scream echoes through the phone’s small speakers. He can feel the vibrations of it in his fingers, and feels nausea all the way to the tip of his toes, the shitty tell of his mouth watering and bile rising, eyes glued to the way Sae’s calf is split clean in half in two separate places, bleeding profusely all over his skin and jersey, watching as the offending player steps off of Sae’s leg with horror and disgust. 

His question is answered: the bone does not quite sound like the wood of the table leg snapping. It’s cleaner than that.

The player backs up, looking greener by the second, before heaving the contents of his stomach into the grass. Sae doesn’t reach out to grab the injury like Rin thought he would have. Instead, he’s lying on his back, the pain visibly radiating through his body as it stiffens, and writhes, and there’s blood pooling on the ground as medics rush in with a stretcher. Rin can see the white of bone in the mangled, bloody mess of muscle and skin. It’s only when the medics cover it with their bodies that Rin can breathe again.

When they try to lift Sae, the scream he lets out is more guttural than the first, and Rin gives in to the nausea. It rings, making him gag further as he pukes up what little he managed to eat for dinner into the empty takeaway bag. His body shakes with the effort, mimicking the movements Sae’s body as he writhed in pain, and Rin aches to drag his nails across his face to take off the skin, to escape from his thoughts and these incessant fucking images in his brain.

When there’s nothing left in his stomach, Rin pants heavily over his own mess. He feels absolutely drained. On his phone, they’ve just finished cleaning the blood off of the pitch with sand and water, and the game resumes, but Rin can only think of the snapping bone. He pauses it as one of the Re Al players scores a goal on the other side of the pitch, his finger hesitating over the pause button.

The scream. The blood. The snap.

Before he can think better of it, he rewinds it and starts it all over.

⚽

When the Urawa Rubies’ management learns that Rin hasn’t visited Sae since his leave started, they strong-arm him back to practice at around month three—or is it four? Rin can’t keep track of the time passing through his fingers, because everything is measured in three things. The scream, the blood, the snap. Suddenly, he’s playing games again, but the ball slips out of his possession as Rin starts to give players a wide berth, and he misses nearly every shot because of the ringing snap in his ears—everything feels wrong, and grating, and unbearable, and he can’t seem to figure out what to crack to get back into gear.

He… fails. Itoshi Rin fails, for the second time in his life, to be independent of his brother. All he can think about is the scream, the blood, and the snap of bone.

Four months after Sae’s injury, Rin gets permanently benched for the rest of the season. Six months later, when all he can think about is the snap of Sae’s leg as he hits the pitch, Rin bites down the ugly bullet and retires. Maybe he’ll come out of retirement (if the scream ever stops ringing). Maybe it’s for good (stained like blood on the pitch). All Rin knows is soccer isn’t the same (with the snap of bone mid-game).

Rin can’t fucking stand it.

But at least he’s not the only one.

During this time, Rin receives semi-regular updates from his parents on Sae’s recovery. Just mentions here and there—or whenever his father will finally text him back—saying he’s out of a cast or starting physical therapy. That there’s talk of what he will and won’t be able to do when he’s finally done with all of his recovery. They managed to save his leg so he can walk around on his own—with a metal plate—but despite that, he’s warned not to overexert it. His father texts him matter-of-factly a week before Rin retires that Sae was being forced to consider retiring by Re Al’s management, but the official announcement doesn’t come until a month after that. 

How did he take it? Rin texts his father the same day as the announcement. At this point, Rin has been off of the Urawa Rubies for a full month, yet he’s still keeping up the routine—a life habit he can’t seem to shake. With nothing to do after his morning run, and while peeling an apple for his post-run breakfast, he’d turned on the TV to follow international soccer when it’d come on. He’s catching only the tail end of the announcement. Rin has dimmed the volume on his TV speakers as the segment plays, but he can still hear the sports casters arguing in loud voices on what this will do to Re Al’s chances in the next season.

Stitches in his left hand, is what his father texts back, twenty minutes later. Had to replace the window in your old room.

Rin thinks about asking if Sae has mellowed out if that’s all he broke, but keeps all thoughts about the matter to himself.

(Was his hand as red as the blood on the pitch?)

At some point, Rin has to consider life after retirement.

During his time as a player, Rin had constantly been approached by modeling agencies—whether for quick shoots or longer potential contracts, usually with athletic companies but sometimes for fashion lines he absolutely did not care about—all of which he turned down. Rin had only cared about soccer, he’d tell them, and he wasn’t going to give a half-assed effort by doing side gigs as a model when he had training and new abilities as an athlete to develop. Now, though… 

For the first time in his life, Rin doesn’t have soccer to turn to. 

He never went to university. His grades in high school were absolute shit for anything that wasn’t English. There was no trade work he could potentially be good at or knew anything about. Rin’s life so far has been totally and utterly devoted to soccer. 

(Soccer that’s stained by the scream, the blood, the snap.)

So Rin does the embarrassing thing, because while he’s not in a financially despondent situation post-retirement, he does need some kind of income and some way to fill the days before Sae’s injury becomes his only waking thought. And modeling is… lukewarm. Awful. Rin gives a half assed effort—like he kind of warned them he would all those years ago—and the agencies eat it up. He’s not major by any means, but there’s money in the bank, and food in his stomach, and he’s busy enough to keep him from spiraling.

It takes a while, but eventually, the sound of Sae’s leg snapping stops playing in the background of all of his thoughts. Eventually, he stops seeing blood wherever he looks.

(But the scream never leaves.)

⚽

Six months after retirement, as May rolls in, Rin finds out by complete and utter accident that Sae is starring on the hit Reality TV show The Mole.

It’s on a sports news site that Rin has been torturing himself with for the past ten minutes as he sprawls in a random chair some intern had brought up, scrolling in between shoots while waiting for whatever shitty, stupid thing they’ll have him do next. His brother’s name has been all over the news, despite his retirement—technically so has his, but only tacked on after Sae’s, because the sports world can’t seem to get over the Itoshi brothers that went up in flames together. There’s a lot of theories and questions out there about whether they planned to retire together because of Sae’s injuries and why. Rin, years ago in his rise to the ever competitive J2 team Urawa Rubies, had given several interviews where he’d been asked about sharing a stage with Sae—to which Rin gave combative answers about beating his brother at his own game—and now those interviews are being brought back to light. Asking why would Itoshi Rin give up his own soccer career when he’d been so intent on surpassing Sae all of this time.

Those articles make Rin’s limbs ache. But there are so many of them that he reads them anyway, scoffing at the large amounts of vitriol and positivity alike.

So, it’s a little bit of a surprise when Rin stumbles upon a collection of articles that morning with Sae’s name in them that don’t have anything to do with critiquing his retirement at all.

SAE ITOSHI TO STAR IN NETFLIX REALITY SHOW, THE MOLE, FOR SEASON 3, AIRING IN JULY

His brother stares dead-eyed up at him from the photo, caught during what looks to be an interview on some shitty talk show Rin’s never heard of. Sae looks like he normally does—focused and uninterested in anything that isn’t on the field. Whatever vengeful spirit had possessed him back in that hospital in Spain is long gone, now. His hair is well kept and slightly longer than it was during his retirement announcement, so now Sae’s hair is starting to reach past his ears, and his eyes have dark bags just barely starting to color the underside, hiding the Itoshi’s signature long bottom lashes in their dark, unnerving color.

Someone calls Rin’s name on set for the next set of photos. Rin thinks his agent said this was for a sports magazine when they’d started, but he cannot begin to imagine nor rationalize the reason one of the interns is holding onto a pair of floaties.

“I’ve got to make a call,” Rin grumbles instead of complying, and leaves the room—leaving his agent to clear up their confusion behind him.

His phone is already dialing his mother’s number before he’s rounded the corner for privacy.

“Rin,” his mother greets. She’s back to sounding somewhat like his mother, at least, but she sounds so much… colder, straddling the line between the frigid woman and motherly warmth. Most of their interactions now consist of Rin reaching out instead of the other way around. She hasn’t complained about a lack of calls since before his retirement. 

“Why is he—” Rin grits his teeth. “Why is Sae going on that—that reality shit?”

Aiyu gives a disapproving hum. From that alone, Rin can tell she’s just as irritated about it as he is. “They approached him. He won’t tell me why he agreed.”

Rin waits, stupidly, to see if she’ll say anything more, but long gone are the days he couldn’t get her off the phone. Now, his mother sounds more like she did when he was eleven, as Sae packed his bags for Spain.

Did Nii-san ever get this version of her? Rin had used to wonder. Or is it just me?

Rin tries to smooth the wrinkles in between his eyes with his hand. “And you’ll just let him go?”

Aiyu huffs. “Yes. He’s twenty-six. I don’t care what he does now.”

There’s something behind those words, like she means something else that she’s not saying, but Rin can’t figure out what it is. 

“And he—he still refuses to talk to me?”

“No.”

“Why the fu—“ Rin swallows roughly at the near vulgarity, pressing his back against the hallway wall. There’s voices around the corner as they discuss something about the stupid lighting for the next round of photos. He tries again. “Why not? It’s been over a year. Everything I know is secondhand at this point, I don’t understand why he won’t just tell me himself.”

Why is it just me?

“You failed,” Aiyu says simply, as if the answer is obvious. “Maybe he would have talked to you after a while. But your retirement was the last straw, I’m sure.”

Rin’s chest stings, like salt in a raw wound. He presses a hand to the spot in an attempt to dull the sensation, but it doesn’t work. Nothing works.

Rustling echoes over the phone as his mother, presumably, moves on the other end of the line.

“Itoshis don’t fail,” she continues, the rustling turning into the clicking of heels on tiled floor. “I know I never instilled that in you as much as I did Sae, but it’s unforgivable nonetheless. Where your brother couldn’t shine, you were supposed to pick up that light, yet you retired before he even hit PT. Why should I care what either of you do?”

Rin’s tongue is heavy and cotton in his mouth. All he can do is run a hand through his perfectly made-up hair, ruining it with his touch.

“I have a meeting,” Aiyu informs him as her steps slow on the line. “Call your father and bother him.”

The call drops.

Rin's throat tightens. He swallows dryly and lets the phone fall from his ear. 

His fingers feel swollen and useless, but when Rin loosens them just enough, they let his phone slide through his fingers smoothly and without issue. It clatters to the floor, but doesn’t break. Not even a small crack in the corner of the screen. So he picks it up and drops it again. And when that doesn’t work, Rin picks it up again, and uses all of his strength to propel the phone into the tile underneath him. 

He needs it to break.

The phone, this time, cracks on impact, but it’s not enough. Rin crushes it with the heel of his shoe, not caring about the screen’s glass that he was getting all over the floor, delighting in the crunch it sends through the hall.

When he steps off of the ruined phone, Rin stares at the destruction with the same blank, dead expression he’d seen on his brother’s face just minutes earlier. Uncaring.

Disinterested.

He’ll have to get a new phone later. For now, Rin shakes off any remaining glass that might be lingering on his shoe and takes a deep breath, like fanning flames, before returning to the other room.

⚽

Rin watches the show.

It’s a shit experience. During the first few minutes of the first episode, Rin sees Sae’s face in motion—hears his voice, even—for the first time in years during his introduction interview, and has to turn the TV off immediately. In the newfound darkness of his living room, Rin considers not watching the show at all.

When Sae’s face comes on the second time, Rin’s fingers twitch for the off button on the remote again. He doesn’t, just grips the remote harder. 

“My name is Itoshi Sae,” says his brother on the TV. Sae’s voice is almost the same as it always is, just flatter. Even more resigned than before. “I’m twenty-six and a retired professional soccer player.”

And then Sae is getting replaced by another contestant, and Rin can breathe again.

Every week, three episodes or so get released to Netflix as the season comes out, so Rin sits that first night in his newly refurnished apartment that had taken most of his time post-retirement to get in order on the couch in front of the TV, his eyes glued to every movement on the screen.

Sae is a leader. As a kid, Rin wouldn’t have been so surprised by this, but with the dramatic turn that Sae had taken in their teenage years to suddenly not caring about anyone or anything that wasn’t soccer had Rin thinking that he would have taken more of a side role. For the first episode, that’s true—Sae spends more time watching the people around him than anything else. His confessionals are dry, mostly filled with short answers with nothing meaningful in them, and everyone around him seems put off by his watchful presence and calculating eye. 

The second episode, though, is when Sae starts to lead. And that’s as much of a surprise to the other players as it is to Rin, it seems, because they share glances at the sudden turn around—he’s still giving short answers, and he’s still just as cold as he was before, but everyone seems to sway towards the authoritative voice he uses and fall right into line.

“Sae is really good at leading,” says one of the girls after their weird prison break challenge. Sae’d managed to work out teams so that they all managed to get out with no loss of cash—only an additional ten thousand dollars—which was a feat, because Rin notes there were several idiots this season that wouldn’t be able to make their way out of a paper bag. “I trust him with my life at this point. He’s kind of making us all want to work together so the pot will be bigger. The mole doesn’t stand a chance!”

The show is fucking stupid. The whole thing is idiotic. And yet Rin can’t stop watching.

He doesn’t quite understand how it works, but he watches the three episodes that are out so far, hates all of the competitors fiercely and equally, then turns the TV off and heads straight for bed. Once in bed, he tries to get his brother’s voice out of his head.

The next week, he watches the next three episodes as Sae continues to act as their default leader, until the very last episode where some jackass decides that they’ve been trusting Sae too long and that he’s too smart not to be the mole, to which Rin regrettably gets too caught up in calling him a half baked loser with a shitty sense of direction to realize that the episode is, in fact, left on a cliffhanger. He huffs as the ending credits play, feeling heat creeping under his skin, realizing he’s actually… invested. It’s a special kind of mortifying that makes him want to destroy his apartment all over again.

In the third week, the last four episodes drop at midnight, and despite how… oddly invested he is, Rin decides he isn’t going to stay up past midnight for this stupid show. He is, however, off the next day—by complete coincidence and not because he moved his schedule around—so he watches them the second he wakes up, making breakfast as he watches and pausing it only when he starts getting restless and needs to go on his morning run. He finishes the finale by noon.

Sae stays on the show the entire time. And, in a complete twist of fate, tanks the team near the end of the show, and ends up being the mole.

What the fuck.

Rin shuts the TV off mid-episode. Again. He refuses to be invested in what he’s just watched—or disappointed by the end.

He throws the TV remote onto his coffee table and collapses back on the couch. Without the sound of the show playing, his apartment is eerily quiet. Rin can’t hear anything but the sound of his own breathing.

Sae had done a good job, Rin supposes. The editing probably helps, but Rin knows most of that is just Sae, purposefully keeping everyone at arm’s length and maintaining his neutral expression to prevent anyone from reading him.

But at least those people got to see him. Interact with him.

Not for the first time since he started watching, Rin reflects on the easy way Sae had picked up the leadership role in the second episode, and all of the interactions he’d had with his cast members that still has Rin reeling. Like he was just a guy with a bad attitude and not a force to be feared or avoided. For some reason, the idea that Sae willingly did The Mole with strangers—willingly interacting and working together with them—makes Rin’s skin crawl.

Why them?

Rin raises a hand to gently thread it through his hair.

The thought in his head sounds just as pained as it did during his phone call with his mother. 

You failed, her voice reminds him, the sound wrapping around him like a cloud of mist. He nearly chokes on it. Itoshis don’t fail.

His fingers lightly ghost the skin of his throat, half expecting to feel something around it cutting off his air supply, but there’s nothing. Just skin, and a faint, racing heartbeat.

Rin grabs his new phone—courtesy of his agent after a lengthy lecture—from where it’d gotten tossed onto the couch cushions and opens up the messages with his father.

Why did he do The Mole?

Once the text is out there, Rin glares at it. Considers unsending the text, but spends too long debating it and runs out of time. Then he lets the phone slip back onto the couch and gets up to do literally anything else.

After a long shower, Rin comes back to several messages from his father, none of which are particularly useful answers.

I don’t know, he won’t say, is the first one—which Rin shouldn’t have expected his father would if his mother didn’t, but it still makes him frown.

He’s been cagey lately.

And then Masaki hits Rin with: There’s a new show that’s trying to recruit him. The Traitors, or something. It’s previous reality stars only, and they want him for their second season now that The Mole is over.

I think he’s going to say yes.

Rin scowls at his phone, hair still dripping onto the towel around his neck as he sits perched on the edge of the sofa cushion. Then he swipes out of their messages, because he doesn’t have anything to say to that. He’s still trying to wrap his head around the idea of his brother going onto another TV show as a thought wriggles in the back of his mind, unformed. He types in The Traitors into his search bar. All that comes up is a bunch of drama shows, so Rin switches over to the News section and finds an announcement. 

Season one is barely in the works, it sounds like from a brief skim of the article. It’s barely an idea. Some weird show with a similar premise to The Mole about secret traitors trying to sabotage everyone.

Why do they want him for season 2 when season 1 hasn’t even aired? Rin types back to his father after a few minutes of silence.

This time, his father answers him almost immediately.

They’ve already casted. But they saw how well he did as the mole in his season, and they think he can mislead viewers or something like that. I think they’ve gotta see how season 1 goes before it’s official.

It occurs to Rin that his father knows a lot about what’s going on in Sae’s newfound reality TV career. He decides not to comment on that. In fact, he doesn’t reply to his father at all. He swipes out of their messages once again, and then pulls up his contacts to find the one person he wants to talk to most right now.

Sae’s name glows on the screen of Rin’s phone as it rings once. And then the call falls through. He’d expected it—has tried this several times over the past year or so to no avail. Instead of feeling defeated, it makes him… contemplative.

The thought that’s been wriggling around in the back of his mind is starting to take shape. As it does, the phone slips through Rin’s fingers onto the cushion below, and he glares at nothing. Sae had gone on The Mole willingly. Now, he’s potentially going on to a second show, and Rin knows that he has to go, too. He has to be there.

Rin picks up his phone again, tapping on his agent’s number from his speed dial list, and doesn’t wait for a greeting before biting out, “Get me on a reality show.”

His modeling agent, who’s significantly slower on the uptake than his previous agent, sputters. “Wh—Itoshi-sama?”

It’s times like this when Rin regrets having to part ways with his old agent when he retired.

“I need to get on that new show, The Traitors or whatever it’s called,” Rin continues, paying Tsukishima no mind. “They only hire previous reality stars, so I need to get on a different show before they start their second season. Find one for me.”

“Ah—Itoshi-sama, I—”

Rin hangs up.

⚽

Tsukishima returns to him about a day later with news. First of all, in order to get a place on The Traitors, not only does Rin have to be a reality star to be recruited, he also has to be specifically a Netflix reality star. Which limits his already small pool of possibilities down to two shows, and both are ones he’s never even fucking heard of.

“It’s an experiment-based show on finding the love of your life through—I think it’s through a wall?” His agent pauses and begins reading off, “‘Participants sit in what are called pods, which are two separate seating rooms linked together by a wall. Using the speakers, participants are able to hear each other and spend several hours a day on dates in order to get to know one another on the deepest level…’ Eh, Itoshi-sama…”

“What’s the end goal?” Rin interrupts. He’s been sitting at his desk chair as he talks through things with Tsukishima, and he’s starting to get restless. He takes a swig of his water.

“To get married,” Tsukishima replies. Rin spits out his drink.

“The fuck?”

“Basically, you date in the pods for ten days, and then you go on a honeymoon for a week before facing what they call the ‘ultimate challenge’ of living together in the real world,” Tsukishima says distractedly as Rin cleans up his surprised spit take with an old napkin. Rin can hear the scroll of Tsukishima’s mouse. “Lots of couples break up before they get married, though, and some of them have even gone on… Perfect Match? Which is similar in requirements to The Traitors, and is another dating show, so it looks like you can tap out before the altar. I’d bet recruitment is mostly based on screen time, so you’d just need to stir up enough drama to be memorable.”

Rin makes an unapproving sound. “Is there nothing else?”

“The second one is called Sexy Beasts—”

“You’ve got to be fucking with me.”

“I fear I’m not,” Tsukishima replies quite miserably. “From what I can tell, they use prosthetics and makeup to turn each participant into a—a beast of some kind. The idea is that you can’t tell what the person looks like, but you can interact with them like you normally would. The timeline is shorter, and you’re only trying to get a second date, but—”

“No. What else is there?”

“Those two are the only shows that are taking applications that’ll match your timeline.”

Rin pinches the bridge of his nose. He takes one breath, then two. “Just… fill out my application, will you?”

Tsukishima makes a pained noise. “Sexy Beasts? You actually want to do it?”

“Fuck no, the—the Love is Invisible one or whatever you said. Just fill it out.”

“Oh, Love is Blind?” Tsukishima still sounds appalled. “I didn’t expect you—Itoshi-sama, there’s one other thing I really should tell you about, then, before I do. There’s something… special about this season that you may want to consider.”

Rin grits his teeth. “Tell me.”

“It’s… all of the participants this season are men. It’s… it’s their inaugural queer season. If you do this, then…”

Rin lets out the longest sigh of his life. Because of fucking course it is. That’s not—that’s not something he’d ever wanted the world to know about himself, but he no longer has a soccer career to give a fuck about. If anything, it’s a very strange coincidence, and makes little to no difference. Man or woman, Rin’s only had one time in his life that was ever anything close to a relationship, and he’d shut that down for his future soccer career. 

“Just do it,” Rin gets out before he can change his mind. “Send in the application, see if you can get in touch with the producers. I’ll watch the show tonight to get an idea of what I’m in for.”

Tsukishima, thankfully, doesn’t push back this time—just gives a half-hearted grunt. Rin doesn’t know if that’s out of shock or resigned acceptance, but he’s thankful for it all the same as he hangs up the phone, tossing it as far away from him as possible, like he can distance himself from what he’s just committed to. He sucks air in through his teeth and rubs his face with his hands.

It’s in motion. It's all in motion, and that’s what matters.