It was strange how quickly things became routine.
Sena helped around the house, did drills in the yard, and eventually was okayed for weightlifting—for the small amounts of weight he could manage—all with Monta at his side. For how much Monta grumbled, he was surprisingly cheerful about practice, even the one-on-one sessions he had with Hiruma. Sometimes Sena wondered what kind of training was involved in those sessions, exactly, but he didn't think it could be that bad, since Monta always came back full of adrenaline and stories about this or that amazing catch he'd made.
After the first day, Sena made sure to eat whenever anyone else was eating, and it got easier each time. He found out from Kurita the speed he had run in front of Doburoku, and every day he sprinted until he had met the mark at least once, just to assure himself that he was still capable of what his master wanted, especially on the days he felt particularly undeserving of all that he was allowed. It wasn't always easy, and sometimes after a few failures, he had to visualize his life before—and what his life would surely return to, if he didn't succeed. That was usually enough motivation to push him through, even if it left him weak-legged and dizzy afterwards, and only partially with relief.
When they weren't training, Sena and Monta spent a lot of time in Musashi's room, even when the man was asleep. That way they could fetch him whatever he needed, or wake him if he had nightmares—though always from a distance. When Kurita got home from work, sometimes they'd all gather around a laptop and watch recorded football games and discuss cool plays. It was almost peaceful, especially when Hiruma wasn't around, which he often wasn't, lately.
On one of the rare afternoons that he was, Sena and Monta came in from the yard to find him sitting in the kitchen, squinting at his laptop. "Good news, shrimps," he said without looking up, "Got us a game this weekend."
"A game?" Monta panted, as he filled his water glass from the faucet. "Against who?" Sena, who had come in for water too, froze in the doorway.
"Who else? Only the best defense in the league: the Oujou White Knights." Hiruma shut his computer lid and beamed. When he didn't get the enthusiastic response he seemed to be looking for, he added, "They're back at full strength now, nothing like the shriveled up nothing they were last year."
Sena didn't know what to say, and Monta was too busy gulping down his water to respond. Hiruma finally noticed that the two of them were ragged from training, and frowned. "All right, you two have zero fucking endurance. We need to add distance running to your training," he waved ominously toward the front door, "out there."
"Out on the streets, master?" said Sena, as Monta finally stopped drinking to make a face at him. "By ourselves?"
"What, you not planning on coming back?"
"N-no! Of course not!" Sena found himself gripping the door frame, hard. Surely his master didn't think—
"I can find you wherever you go," said Hiruma, grabbing a pen and paper and starting to sketch some streets and intersections, "so don't even think about it."
Monta squawked at that. "Why are you looking at me? Sena's the one who asked—"
"Every slave that gets sold has a tracking chip." Hiruma tilted his head and tapped the back of his neck with the pen. "Embedded when you first go on the market. I can find you on my phone more easily than an open urinal."
Sena knew that, of course, minus the urinal part. He thought Monta might say something indignant again about not being a slave, but he had gone strangely quiet, one of his hands curled involuntarily around the nape of his own neck, as if clutching a remembered pain.
"You, fucking shrimp." Hiruma slashed a couple more lines across the page. "Let the monkey set the pace. I don't want you showing off your legs out there. That's our secret weapon."
"Yes, master." Sena braced himself for Monta's normal mockery, but it didn't come.
"And drink some water before you go." Hiruma folded the map into a tiny football and flicked it to Monta. "You look drier than my grandma's left elbow."
They set off down the route Hiruma had drawn, side by side on the sidewalk. Even though it wasn't Sena's top speed, he was still winded almost immediately. They'd been getting a lot of training in, but there was only so far you could run in a yard.
"Let's test our bench press again," said Monta, maybe to distract him. "I bet we've gotten a lot stronger."
"It's only been a week!" Sena said, but he wanted to see too. More importantly, he wanted to show his master that he was improving, and not to give up on him.
In the distance, they saw someone coming their way, a jogger in a gray, hooded sweatshirt. To distract himself from the burning in his lungs, Sena studied the other man closely, the unfamiliar logo on his chest, the smooth, precise motions of his gait, the breath puffing from his mouth. As they passed, Sena looked up into the hood and found the man's eyes were full of intensity, focused on the distance. Abashed, Sena forced himself to focus on his run as well.
After they had passed a healthy distance, Monta finally turned to him and hissed, "Did you see his hoodie?"
"Uhh, I guess?"
"That was the Oujou logo! He's on the Oujou football team!"
It was overwhelming, how much Sena didn't know. He had to study more. "Oujou? The team that master wants us to play?"
"I wonder if he was their receiver," said Monta. "He was kind of tall."
Sena had been wondering what it would be like to play against real opponents, instead of just practice runs against Kurita and Monta, and sometimes Hiruma. In his mind, the enemy team had always been vague blurs: the edge of an elbow, a blob blocking his way. Filling in the blurs with the solid intensity of that Oujou player, the only one he had as an example, was a lot more worrying.
As they jogged in place at the next intersection, waiting for a car to pass, he said, "Hey Monta," because Monta always seemed to have a positive view of things, "What do you think would happen if... we were to... lose—"
"Watch it!"
Monta using his catching skills to grab Sena by the sleeve, and jerk him forcefully backwards, was all that saved him from running directly into the path of an oncoming motorcycle.
The rider did some crazy drift that brought him squarely across their path, forcing them to stop, right in the middle of the street. Mindless of any traffic, the rider swung his long leg over to dismount, pulled off his helmet with long arms, and unfurled a long, lolling tongue from his mouth that flicked at Sena like a lizard after a fly.
"Where do you kids think you're going in such a hurry? What were you gonna do if my bike got scratched," the biker put a hand on Sena's shoulder from a mile away, "thanks to your carelessness?"
"Sorry, man," said Monta, trying to get in between them. "Looks like the bike's fine, so we'll just be—"
Several more bikers pulled up in quick succession, and dismounted, all but boxing them in.
"I said," said the lizard man, grip tightening on Sena's shoulder, in a way that gave him flashbacks. "How are you going to repay us? For the damages?"
"What damages?" demanded Monta, while Sena stood stock still. "Like I said, your bike is fine!"
This couldn't be happening, Sena thought, not in the middle of the street, in broad daylight. The traffic light changed, but the cars waiting to turn suddenly found somewhere else to be. A pedestrian who had been looking to cross abruptly turned and marched purposefully the other way.
Over the backs of some of the bikers, Sena saw the shape of another jogger approaching, and fixated on it, already falling into the familiar sensation of dissociating from a situation that he had no way out of. As the shape got closer, the Oujou logo on his sweatshirt became visible, a charging knight holding a lance. It almost looked like...
It shouldn't have been possible for him to have looped all the way around already, unless he'd been jogging insanely fast the entire way, but as he got closer, and closer, Sena became more and more sure: it was the same intense jogger from earlier, and he wasn't slowing down. Without warning, he shoved his way through the bikers in front of him, and his arm shot out to slam the lizard guy in the side.
"Shit, it's Shin!" one of the gang yelled, a little late, his leader already crumpled on the ground.
"Come on!" said Sena, snapping back to himself in an instant of adrenaline, and grabbed Monta's arm. Together they ran past the jogger who'd saved them, toward the hole in the line of bikers that he had carved. Sena felt bad about abandoning him, but they would be no help in a fight, and he had to protect his master's property, first and foremost.
The bikers were starting to close in, trying to trap them, and Sena knew he couldn't let that happen. Without thinking, he sped up, charging the shrinking opening until he just managed to swerve through. As he turned to check on Monta, he remembered his master's words like a punch to the gut: "I don't want you showing off your legs out there. That's our secret weapon."
Maybe no one had seen?
But his hopes were dashed when Shin called out from behind, still with an armful of gangster, "Are you Hiruma's runner?"