A/N: This fic contains OCs from later chapters of my bff kakkanobi's Whistle! fic Wind. Some of them are mind, and some are hers. (Sute, Tenshin and Eikichi belong to kakkanobi, and Shiitan belongs to me.) Anyway, this is NOT the game that happened in volume 16. I repeat, NOT THAT GAME. This game is purely fictional, probably a game before the one where Pantera Fuchu moved up into J1 (yayyyyy!). Masahiro Suō belongs to Daisuke Higuchi-sensei. kakkanobi claimed him when we were falling in love with Whistle! characters, but I love him, too. And I wrote the first fic. So there. xD Anyway! Please enjoy.
Darkness.
The door of the apartment burst open with a bang, the dark apartment, dark walls. A body hurled itself inside, wind blew and caused papers to dance as the door slammed shut. The man leaned against the wall, hot tears pooling on the rough skin of the hands cupped over his face. Trembling like an grove of aspens in a raging storm, he rested his weight on the dark wall. Despair washed over him, cleansing old wounds, opening new ones.
Breathing hurt. Struggling with sobs, lungs about to burst. The stale air of the dark apartment seemed to have solidified; it would not allow him to draw it into his lungs. Coaxing and coercing the air into submission, he choked in a breath, and let it out in a pained wail that echoed in his ears, mocking him, his pain.
Dark walls. Dark faces, ugly smirks, laughing, laughing at him, his failure. His back straight, he had walked off the field, a true warrior, the scoreboard still flashing his faults, his mistakes for the world to see.
See it did. It was all over the papers. He had failed. His teammates were probably furious. No. He slammed the wall with a clenched fist. Tremors ran up his arm at the impact, and he winced through his tears. No. No! Sobs broke over him once more, forcing him to give up thinking.
Pantera Fuchu lost. And Masahiro Suō, striker, number nine, is to blame.
He barely stopped himself from hitting the wall again with his fist. Good. He had common sense. He would not let this rage, this pain take over him. He wrestled with it, falling to his knees, clutching at his head to keep it from hitting the wall as he dropped to the ground.
He opened his eyes and gazed at the dark wall. Blurred, but you can't blur black. There's no difference between one patch and the next. The only way he could tell it was blurred was the fact that liquid still seeped from his eyes. It was only logical that his vision would be blurred.
He should turn some lights on. Chase away some of the darkness. The dark apartment. Dark walls. His soul was dark. His soul was black. Black heart. Black eyes. Black hair…
Stop.
I can't.
You will.
I will.
Yes.
No.
You must!
I can't!
You will.
Dark walls. Dark windows. His head spun. He was already on the ground. What else would he be asked to give, to do? What else had he to lose?
Life, death meant nothing. To end the pain. Salvation. He had a knife in the kitchen. If only he could find the muscles that would move his legs. He could get the knife. He could end it. He could…
He couldn't. Resolve hardened around his decision. He could not end it. To end it would be running away. He hadn't gotten to where he was by running away. Why was it so difficult now? How had he recovered from failure before?
This was different, though. No J1. Stuck on J2 until they had another chance, another chance of a lifetime, one he couldn't blow. No doubt they hated him. Hated his face, his attitude, his yakisoba.
His stomach growled, completely oblivious to the turmoil in his mind.
Dark walls. Hunger. Yakisoba. Dark apartments. The knife in the kitchen. Dark soul. Pantera Fuchu. He had lost. His fault. The scoreboard. Dark thoughts. Dark memories. Darkness.
Masahiro Suō had never been afraid of the dark.
The tears slowly tapered off. Masahiro stood up slowly, managing not to sway and risk toppling over and hitting one of his many possessions that had been strewn carelessly over the floor. He wiped his face with the back of his hand, but had to use a tissue for his nose. It felt good to crumple the tissue in his hand and throw it into the trash can. Even though he was a good ten feet away, the trash can being across the room, the tissue fell right in. This made Masahiro feel a teeny tiny bit better.
Giving in to his growling stomach, Masahiro grabbed the box of yakisoba he had set aside for his dinner. Transferring the fragrant, slimy mass of noodles into a bowl, he picked up a pair of disposable chopsticks and dug in.
The comforting taste of his favorite food warmed his body, calmed his mind. He could think clearly again.
What was it exactly that he had done wrong? As Masahiro ate, he grabbed a piece of paper and a pen. The paper had a few words scrawled on one side, probably an old shopping list. Sighing faintly, Masahiro turned it over to the blank side, and drew a crude replica of a soccer field from a forward's point of view.
"Let's see. Eikichi passed…I didn't see, though. They were all tangled down there, and I thought Shiitan had the ball. But it came from Ei, at the other side…"
Masahiro finished the yakisoba, dropped the chopsticks into the empty container, crumpled the Styrofoam up and lobbed it at the trash can. It hit the rim and bounced off, landing a few inches away from the base.
"Probably shoulda kicked it," Masahiro sighed, smiling ruefully. He got up and actually placed the yakisoba container in the can.
He then returned to his drawing. He drew a crude stick figure and wrote "Me" under it. He proceeded to sketch the rest of his teammates, the way he remembered. The scene was burned into his memory.
He scrawled out the opposing players next.
"So…I was in front of Shiitan, anticipating his pass. Eikichi kicked the ball past me, about ten, maybe fifteen feet to my right. I chased after it, but one of the defenders kicked it over my head, and, confused, I ran towards the defender who intercepted it. That one, however, kicked it all the way into our goal. Tenshin didn't even try to stop it. He was on the other side of the goal."
Masahiro felt suddenly relieved. "I guess they got lucky. Maybe it wasn't my fault after all."
He resolved to talk to the team about it in the morning.
Sute had been in the tangle as well, he remembered. In fact, Sute had probably passed the ball to Eikichi to send up to Masahiro. Masahiro remembered something of the sort. But he had been stupid, had relied on Shiitan, hadn't been flexible.
"I'll apologize tomorrow," he told himself, smiling. "Right now, I should sleep. Practice will be brutal."
He walked into his bedroom, suddenly exhausted. Reverently, he stripped off his soccer uniform, and slid into his old sweatpants and a too-big soccer jersey.
Masahiro brushed his teeth, ran his hands through his hair, and grinned at his reflection in the mirror.
I feel on top of the world.
He shut his bedroom door and walked to the light switch to douse his bedroom in pitch blackness.
He flicked the switch, made his way to the bed by instinct.
Masahiro snuggled down into the cold sheets, warming them up with his happily buzzing body.
He slept.
The darkness brought peace.
A tiny sliver of moon hung in the sky outside the window. A sliver of happiness, a shred of hope.
A light in the darkness.