As soon as he saw the sender, Kid knew the text for what it was. How many times had he seen Hiruma blasting out messages to his network of slaves—purchased, blackmailed, or otherwise? Now, more literally than most, he was one of them, compelled to Hiruma's bidding at the buzz of a phone.
"Let's take a break, Tetsuma," he called out, hoping he kept the bitterness from his voice. He coaxed his horse toward some nearby shade, and then slid off the saddle. Tetsuma, ever literal, simply stopped in place. The cows he'd been herding now milled around his suddenly still form, nosing at this new statue that had appeared in their midst.
Taking off his hat to let the breeze ruffle the sweat from his brow, Kid opened the message.
"Oujou's going to regionals. Can you beat them?"
"Are you... talking about football?" Kid muttered, too surprised to keep from speaking out loud. He sensed, rather than saw, Tetsuma turn to look at him, from within his herd.
Seibu had always done well at the annual tournament, making it to nationals more years than not, but nothing good ever came of being overconfident. More importantly, training had been far from their top priority this year, what with the imminent financial ruin they faced, which they ultimately never escaped, only traded in for a devil.
Still, he knew and trusted his team. After thinking his answer over carefully, he typed, "Oujou is a much weaker team without Shin."
That was the problem with the slave teams that made up the majority of the league. Rather than participate, wealthy slave-owners who knew little about football simply purchased and traded athletes to play for them. When teams were owned by someone who had no knowledge or care for the game, they were so often mismanaged. After Shogun's retirement, Oujou's new owner had pulled Shin and some others off the team simply because he saw dollar signs elsewhere, or so the rumors went. That was why a team like Seibu, which didn't have any really exceptional players, other than maybe Tetsuma, continued to do well, while Oujou had dropped off the charts.
"Hey Tetsuma!" Kid plucked a water bottle out of his saddle bag. "Slant!"
No matter how much time went between practices, he trusted Tetsuma would always know the pass routes by heart. Kid fired the bottle, not so much throwing it as placing it at precisely the time and location that Tetsuma would catch it, and only then looked to make sure the other man was on his way. He had forgotten that Tetsuma was being mobbed by cows, but Tetsuma was already charging his way through the herd. Reliable as ever, he made the catch with a satisfying smack, and zero expression on his face. Kid could have sworn he looked happy.
It was true that regionals were coming up, and they needed to get back into practice if they wanted to compete. He'd put out the call. They could start practices again, even do some recruiting. They could afford to, now that debt collectors were no longer roaming the property, touching and measuring things like they were already on the auction block. Now that...
Now that Hiruma had paid their debt.
Now that Kid was a slave.
What was he thinking? Seibu wasn't a great football team owned by one of the players. Kid was a slave now, which meant that Seibu was a slave team too, no different from Oujou.
A sudden chill found him, that had nothing to do with the breeze or the shade. He looked down at his phone with new suspicion, only to see that he had more messages.
"Fucking eyebrows, always so modest."
"Can you beat them with Shin?"
If Hiruma owned the estate, and owned Kid, it meant that he owned the team too. Was he asking for a particular outcome here? Maybe if Seibu beat Oujou, and then purposefully lost to Hiruma's own Deimon...
The very thought was like a stab to the heart. He'd built this team himself, him and Tetsuma: sweating with them, straining, bleeding with them. Slave and free alike, during the season, every single player threw their whole being into the sport. To train and struggle and fight their way up to the top, only to be forced up to give up just short of the goal: could he do that to his team?
As he turned this thought over in his mind, the phone buzzed again in his hand.
"Long fucking silence."
"If you can't, then practice."
"Will do," Kid sent, and put the phone away.