Disclaimer: I own none of the original characters nor plot of Blue Lock.

Warnings: cursing, references to illegal abortions, and just a really awful "parenting", racism, fat phobia, bullying/harassment of a child

BIG HUGE GINORMOUS THANK YOU TO MY GEM OF A BETA

*ALCHAZAR*

(who got this out for you all within like less than 24 hours because they're a superstar)

AND MY REVIEWERS:

uzu i-sa, illya rosenthal, ElvenMatter, hioristan6, dramione111, KindOfScenic, 102602, Isagi loves thighs, OliviaStone, TheTruth3910, barbatosfavoritenun, AnythingForGiorno, K4S4N3, Sp8cefluff, Hesthel_00

Thank you so so so much for taking the time to drop a review. I reread them anytime I get stumped and appreciate you all so much :'D Detailed responses in Chapter Notes below!

O n i k ko

{鬼っ子}

chapter 9 part three – destroyer of dreams

A/N: Abbi means grandma in Spanish, Tito means grandpa in Spanish. Niña Bonita means "pretty girl" but it's also another moniker for Santa Muerta (a cult image and female deity that is considered a personification of death). Source: google and wikipedia lol.

Do you have any memories, where you aren't quite sure if they're real or not?

Reina Itoshi has one. (Well, more than one, but this specific one haunts her the most.)

However this 'memory' is from when she was only around three or four years old, so it's too early for her to possibly remember anything, right? It can't actually be a real memory. So, maybe she just... made it up? (She makes up a lot of things, according to everyone around her.) Or maybe she dreamed this not-memory once, and the dream (nightmare) was so vivid and so real, that she mistook it for something that actually happened.

Real or fake, she's dreamt the same nightmare more than once over the years. She's even dreaming of it right now…

Young Reina hides just outside the kitchen.

Abbi's mad. (Which is strange to Reina. Abbi always smiles; Abbi's never mad.)

"You come here after so long, drunk like this? Estas loca? Huh?! There is a child in this house!"

"Child?" Reina cannot see the second woman's face, only her back. The visitor standing in the kitchen wears a pretty dress and laughs a bitter laugh. " No, no, Mamá … That thing upstairs is nothing but a parasite you forced me to bring into the world-"

"Silence!" Abbi yells.

"-even though it leached away on my life, fed on my future, and ruined everything!"

"Don't you dare blame that innocent child! You destroyed your own life! Now leave. Come back when you're ready to get sober. I'll help you then, but not like this, Izzy." Abbi sighs, sounding more tired than Reina's ever heard her. "Not like this."

"Help?!" The visitor screeches. The pitch hurts Reina's ears. "Help would have been driving me across the border to let me bleed that wretch out of me before she cost me the biggest role of my career! Fuck you Mamá and fuck that little-"

The angry woman spins around suddenly, eyes widening when she sees Reina cowering just behind the entrance to the kitchen. The little girl tries to quickly hide behind the wall again, but it's too late.

"Oh, my, my, my." The woman, her mother, grins even though her eyes don't look happy at all.

"Reina? What are you doing here? I told you to stay in your room!" Reina hears Abbi, but she cannot see her grandmother.

All she sees is the woman in the black dress.

Her mother crouches down, close enough that Reina can tell she smells bad. The woman runs a hand almost gently along Reina's cheek. (But her nails are too sharp for the caress to be called gentle). "What a pretty face you stole from me… La Niña Bonita …"

"Izzy," Abbi says in a warning tone.

"Do you know what that name means?" Her mother's face turns awful. "What's wrong, are you mute? Huh? Do you not even speak, la Santa Muerte?!"

"Isabella, that's enough!"

But before Abbi can stop Reina's mother, the raging woman grabs Reina by the hair, causing the girl to cry out in pain. "Little princess ," the woman sneers. "For all that my mother worships you, you are no angel." The woman brings her face right up to Reina's, breath smelling foul. "Always remember this, I never wanted you. You are poison, a demon of death, and a destroyer of dreams. You kill everything you touch. Pretty little witch, did you know your Tito is dead because of you?"

Her mother is roughly pulled away, and Reina plops to the ground. "Get out!" Reina's never seen Abbi so angry before. "Get out of my house!"

The front door slams shut. Reina turns and sees Abbi there, staring at the young girl with a heavy mix of pity, confusion, and sadness.

(Older Reina understands. How do you explain to a four-year-old why her mother wishes she never existed? How do you explain to a child that her mother will never love her?)

So Abbi doesn't explain, not really. The woman just hugs Reina, who didn't realize she was shaking until she clings to the familiar warmth of her grandmother. "Your mother is very sick, so she's saying crazy things. You don't believe a thing she says, okay, Mija? And don't… Don't ever open the door for her, okay? I don't want you alone with her, not ever."

Reina nods and nods, until what she's nodding against changes from warm cinnamon-smelling wool to the cold smoothness of her Astrophysics textbook.

Present-day Reina stretches the stiffness out of her neck, and sits up to lean back in her leather desk chair. She looks to her laptop screen to check the time, but it's pitch black and still asleep. All she sees is her face in its reflection.

("Do you want to know what men see, when they see girls like you and the whore that brought you into this world? Hmm? They see something disposable. That's all you'll ever be to anyone. An unwanted mistake. Something to use and throw away. You'll never mean anything more to anyone.")

Those are words from a memory Reina knows is real.

("I bet you think you're just so smart, don't you? With your scores? Do you think anyone believes you earned them? Dumb thing like you, who couldn't even read or write or even speak properly for so long?")

'Stop.' Reina shakes her head. 'I don't want to remember that anymore.'

("If it wasn't for that conniving bitch who sired your whore mother, I would be able to throw you out on the streets, where you belong. But instead, my husband thinks we can find a match for you? Ridiculous. No matter how I wrap you up, the only thing you could ever be to anyone is something temporary. Nothing more than a worthless oten, staining my family.")

Reina slams her hand onto the keys, an animated screensaver erasing her face. Music suddenly starts through her ear buds, and the singer's voice drowns out any others. Reina looks at the time and frowns. She needs to leave for Ginza soon so she can still meet Yoichi at the café at four. She closes her laptop, and changes into one of the premade outfits strung up in her massive walk-in closet. She misses her dorm already, and the messy shirts and sweaters exploding out of her drawers. But rules are rules, and she learned the hard way as a child what happens when she breaks them.

Reina slides on the pants, unsurprised to find that, as per usual, they fit just a little too snuggly. ("A reminder to not indulge. Your ugly skin is already going to make it hard enough for me to marry you off. I won't have you be fat too; I'll never be rid of you, then.")

Reina sighs. 'Just this weekend,' she reminds herself. ' Then I can go back to my dorms and be far away from her.'

She turns to the mirror to adjust her clothes. Her eyes meet those of her reflection. Her face… the one that looks so similar to the woman in her dreams. But, there are subtle differences. Her long curled eyelashes, the camber of her eyebrows, and her ears that stick out just a little. The small things she only notices because she's spent years scouring her reflection for proof she was different from the woman in the photos taped into Abbi's journal.

'The ears would annoy me, if they weren't such perfect ways to never lose my pens when I'm studying.'

Reina takes one last moment to fiddle with the fancy sweater. 'It's itchy.' Not soft like the one that Yoichi gave her just earlier today. She remembers his expression in his kitchen, when he turned and saw her wearing it.

She bites her lip, but a smile breaks through anyways.

'Isagi Yoichi.'

(The boy who started as an accident and a plan, but who became so much more.)

Reina wishes she had brought his sweater with her. It smelled like him, it was warm, and it was her favourite colour, too. (But she wasn't stupid. She could never wear that sweater in this house, not with his name splashed on it. Even if she hid his name, the sweater wasn't one of the preset outfits she was permitted to wear.)

Thinking of this morning brings up another memory.

'We hugged.' She grins, putting a hand to her chest and fisting the fabric of her itchy, pre-approved sweater. Heat rushes up her cheeks. She wants to jump into her bed and just squeal into her pillow because he had held her so tightly this morning, as if he couldn't imagine ever letting her go. (So her mother and Rin's mother were wrong. They were wrong, wrong, wrong. Because she found Yocchan, and he cared for her, and he was kind. He had held her like she was special . So Isagi Yoichi was proof, wasn't he? That she could be someone worth keeping, that she was more than just… disposable and temporary and unwanted and all those ugly words her so-called family branded into her brain since Abbi died.)

And Yoichi didn't want something just temporary. Because if he did, he could have kissed her in the shrine and then disappeared. But he didn't. She knew he was leaving for Blue Lock soon, but that was only for a while, right? He'd keep talking with her even while he was there, right? It's not like that facility could keep their phones from them, or anything stupid like that. And once Blue Lock was done, the two of them could spend time together just like this past week. (He'd probably be busy practicing sometimes, but it's fine. She could study and do her research while he played, but they could still find time for each other. They could balance out their dreams and each other. It'd be perfect.)

And he wasn't staying just out of pity (like Mina, Momo, and Ochako), because he didn't know everything that had happened. So he was… he was staying just for her. She'd never had that before; she didn't even realize how desperately she craved it until she met his parents and experienced how genuinely kind they were to her too. (No strained smiles. No backhanded comments. No snarky insults batted her way when Otousama was out of ear-shot. No Itoshi-sama hovering nearby, her eyes heavy as they judge every single word Reina speaks and action she takes. No constant reminders that Reina was some lesser being that should be on her knees thanking Otousama for bringing her into this giant house that she hates. No strangers' eyes dragging up and down her body, calculating if her last name outweighed her foreign blood.)

The alarm on her phone beeps.

She quickly turns it off and heads out of her room, eager to finish up in Ginza so she can meet up with Yoichi afterwards. 'Maybe if I finish up fast enough, I can text him, and then we can spend even more time together before I have to come back here for din-' To her surprise, she meets her older brother in the large foyer downstairs.

"Sae-nii?"

The famous midfielder turns towards her, pulling out an ear bud. "Reina?" Her brother is dressed for a run, which is weird. He usually only runs in early mornings and late evenings. Sae-nii eyes the purse strapped to her side. "Where are you going?"

She steps closer, glad that he's talking to her normally. (It's been hit or miss since he's come back from Spain, honestly.)

"To Ginza. I'm going to pick up a dress your mother had ordered for me to wear tomorrow."

Sae-nii raises a brow. "Just get it delivered here."

Reina shakes her head. "It might need to be altered, so it's easier to go in person."

He frowns. "And you're going alone?"

"No, I'm having Chizuo-san drive me." (A truth and an omission. Because Chizuo-san, one of the family's staff, is driving her to Ginza. She'll just be instructing him to leave after he drops her off.) "And then I'm seeing someone I tutor at a café in Shibuya. She makes really good coffee." (A truth and an omission. She will be seeing Megumi-senpai, but she'll also be sitting across from Yoichi.) Reina normally wouldn't bother telling Sae-nii this second part at all, but her older brother seems a bit suspicious. And since she can't take off the stupid bracelet this weekend, she needs an excuse in case Sae-nii uses it to check in on her location and sees her wandering in Shibuya.

"Fine." Her brother concedes. "Be careful." He turns to leave.

But the minute she sees his back she immediately reaches for it. "W-wait!" She clutches his nylon shirt. She's had him back for over two months now, but it hasn't felt like it at all. And after last time… after what they said to each other after that stupid dinner… "C-Could we… umm…"

Memories come easily and unbidden.

("You almost ruined Nii-chan's chance to play in Spain.")

("That's all you'll ever be to anyone. An unwanted mistake.")

("You are poison, a destroyer of dreams.")

Reina chokes.

Because what if she's with him and she messes up again, and Sae-nii hates her forever this time?

Reina couldn't handle it.

(Because she loves her older brother more than anyone.)

It had gutted her back anytime when he'd been angry at her, and then when he'd left abroad she'd felt like she'd lost a limb. Reina would probably die if Sae-nii ever hated her. (There was a time, a long time, where he was all she had.)

A pressure on her head interrupts her worrying. She looks up to see Sae-nii putting his hand on her hair, just like he did when she was a kid.

He sighs. "I'm going over some games after dinner today. Did you want to join me?"

She beams, nodding eagerly. (He's been colder since he came back, but he has moments like this. Moments where she knows he cares, just like he did before.)

Reina has Sae-nii back, and now she even has Yoichi too. It's just like her favourite star promised.

'Things will always get better.'

A/N: it only took 100k words but you finally got a glimpse of Sae lol! Hope you all enjoyed : ) Please, if you're enjoying, don't forget to leave a review :D Shorter update that normal but hopefully i'm forgiven since ya'll got some Sae :) ?

Oten (汚点) means disgrace/stain, and is one of Rin's mom's favourite insults to use on Reina

Preview for future chapters of Onikko

She stumbles off the bed, veins having turned to ice with his words. She slowly turns to faces him and her voice breaks (she thinks maybe her soul chips with it.) "You… don't really mean that, right?" She asks, even though she knows he does. She just doesn't want to believe his cold words. Because if they're true, then that means even someone who spent every day with her sees absolutely nothing in her worth keeping.

The boy stays on the bed, starring at the comforter. He doesn't even bother facing her tears.

"I hate you." Her whispered words are quiet but certain. "I hate you so much." In that moment, there is no one (not her father, not Itoshi-sama, not her mother, no one) that she hates more than him. Because he's just proved it, hasn't he? That she'll never be more than an unwanted mistake.

Responses to Reviewers

dramione111 - ahhh tysm! I'm so glad you like Reina, the voice, and Reo's pov. I'm so glad you read and are enjoying by other fics too :D I have some partials of future chapters done for those but nothing concrete. My muse is pretty BL heavy right now (so I'm hoping to actually FINISH a story for once) but one my muse for the others come back I will endeavour to finish those too! I also miss Time Twisters and Wolves Aflame so next time I go on break I'll try to see if I can get something posted for them, but I'm so out of the loop with my old Harry Potter and ASOIAF/GOT plot lines that it might turn out better if I wait until after this fic so I can wholly focus on those intricate worlds again!

uzu i-sa - I had so much fun writing that and just cooing over how cute he was being. So essentially they're about a week into the two week break, but after that, NEL will be starting! And yes, although I'll be keeping some NEL cannon bits I will be adding in some drama because of Reina! Nw I honestly looked for like 30min and go nowhere. I figure I'm just going to make whatever works best with the story the "law" in this world, joys of ffn lol ;P Tysm for your readership and reviews, I truly appreciate them and you!

illya rosenthal - I'm so glad you picked up on that! You are totally right, but little Yoichi isn't being very rational at the moment ;) Tysm for reading and your review :D

ElvenMatter - tysm! I tried really hard to make her realistic/as if she could actually exist in this altered BL-verse. And omg yes definitely hornier than canon LOL :'P Oh yes you are totally right, changed! Please let me know if you ever catch any other errors! Tysm for reading and your review !

hioristan6 - ohh I'm definitely considering a scene with Reina realizing Bachira has a crush on Isagi and being super jealous about it. But, I just love the idea of a Bachira x Reina friendship and Bachira x Yoichi friendship so much too so I'm debating lol. I def initially considered doing a bit where there was one of the BLE members being jealous over Reina, but I just love their friendships too much :'D tysm for reading and your review!

KindOfScenic - omg ikr! Also, Bachira (and Chigiri and Igaguri) incoming in like one and a half/two chapters :D ! I'm so glad it translated well, I was nervous people would think it was "disproportionate." Omg ik, there's def more scenes of Isagi being irrationally jealous over Reo and Reina coming up! "why am i hyping him up reading this while also dragging him by the sock" - I straight up ask myself the same thing with every chapter I write for him :P I tried looking into AOC and honestly when I saw how young it was in some parts of the world (ELEVEN!) i got freaked out and decided to post it to you all and if there wasn't an obvious answer I was just going to make up whatever worked best for the fic's drama ;D oh man, the daddy issues are COMING friend, they are COMING. Mostly Rin & Reina though.

Isagi loves thighs - omg i was HORRIFIED when I saw how low some of the AOCs were in the world! Some were as young as ELEVEN! ELEVEN! Then I got stressed so I just stopped and tossed the question to you all instead lol. Omg Barou's profile was so HIM I couldn't even, and you're TOTALLY right- INSTANT likeability. We got just a small snippet of Reina's POV here (but the full one will be coming a few chaps from now!) Oh Kaiser will def have his opinion regarding Reina, I just don't think anyone here will like it. Omg Ikr I just LOVE his parents. I feel like their characters have taken over this fic without even tryin, they're just so awesome. I am SO heartbroken over the last episode, mostly because Shidou was voiced by Gojo's VA and I lost my gosh darn mind over it and then sobbed over how we wouldn't get it for another WHOLE YEAR. The designs were AMAZING, esp Shidou and honestly even some of the background characters were SO cool to see animated. I will try my very best to get to the end!

OliviaStone - omg dw about it at all, not when *I* am literally the most insecure person in the entire world (hence my desperate begging for attention and comments at the end of every chapter) #embarrassed. My goal was to update this story at least once a month, but people like you left reviews and that just made me get so excited so I ended up doing every two weeks and then at some point it became every week-ish. I will try my best to upload weekly, but if not, then at least every two weeks! I can't totally comment on the voice yet (but also, yes, you are very right. there's just one more element to it that you'll see in his next dream). A bit of Reina's past/drama for you this time! Only a touch though. I promise, more drama incoming chapter 10 ;) Toxic is def coming as we progress - after all, it's me, you know I lack the ability to write healthy relationships *Sweatdrops* Tysm for your reviews as always 3 !

TheTruth3910 - I'm so glad you liked it enough to read all the way through! Tysm! Although NEL will remain mostly true to cannon, there WILL be parts that change because of Reina and the things he learns through her! So I actually youtubd Whiplash breakup scene since I hadn't scene it and omg the BRUTALITY ("That's exactly my point." O.O) Tysm for reading and you review, I hope you continue to enjoy!

barbatosfavoritenun - hehehe some early Sae just for you all, how'd you like the little taster? Tysm! I'm having a total BLAST writing them! You and me BOTH, lol! Tysm for reading and reviewing :D

AnythingForGiorno - omg never apologize, I'm so happy you're still reading :') Only some touches of family drama so far, but believe me, it's going to get MESSY. Tysm for your readership and review !

K4S4N3 - I was TOTALLY fangirling while I was writing it too LOL! Reina x Isagi drama incoming in chapter 10 friends. Tysm for reading and reviewing!

Sp8cefluff - omg dont apologize, I hope your last week of term went well :D Bachira and Chigiri (and Igaguri!) are coming up near the end of chapter 10 :D ! Oh dear, yes, his hormones are def out of whack *facepalming over the actions of my own characters* Tysm for your readership and review!

Hesthel_00 - tysm so much for reading and taking the time to review! I'm so happy to hear you are enjoying it so far! Initially I was going to post once a month, then I got excited because ppl were leaving reviews so I ended up posting every 2 weeks and the almost every week. My goal is to put out at least SOMETHING every two weeks. I'll probably try to post on Sundays when possible, but work sometimes makes my weeks hectic so sometimes it all depends on when I'm able to get things written. I struck gold with Alchazar (my beta) though since literally something I will give them like zero notice but they'll still get the chapter read at Loki-godspeed rates (like they literally did this chapter in like 24 hours) :') omg dw you didn't come across badly at all! I'm just so happy you're enjoying it :D

102602 - tysm for reading and leaving a review!