The Japan Football Union headquarters loomed over them, which looked like a monolithic slab of grey concrete and glass that looked less like a sports facility and more like a fortress built to keep secrets. The sky above Tokyo was dull, but Renzo didn't mind. He wasn't looking for color out here.
Renzo stood at the base of the steps, his hands buried in the pockets of his black bomber jacket. He took a deep breath, ready to take the next step.
Here we go.
He glanced to his left. Hyoma Chigiri was staring up at the building, his expression a mix of awe and apprehension. The wind tugged at his red hair, pulling strands across his face.
No wonder the whole school calls him Princess.
"You ready to go, Princess?" Renzo asked.
Hyoma blinked, snapping out of his trance. He shot Renzo a glare. "Don't call me that. And yeah… I'm ready. It's just… big."
Renzo smirked. "That's what she said."
"Oh my god, shut up," Hyoma groaned, though the tension in his shoulders dropped. He adjusted the strap of his duffel bag. "Did you say bye to Koyuki? If she finds out you ghosted her before entering a secret training camp, she'll actually burn the city down."
Renzo nodded, tapping his pocket where his phone was. "I messaged her. Told her I'm going to become the best in the world. She sent back a thumbs-up emoji and a picture of a knife. Whatever that means."
"Sounds about right," Hyoma laughed nervously. "Alright. Let's do this."
They walked up the steps together. The automatic glass doors slid open, welcoming them into the jungle.
The lobby looked expansive. Signs pointed them toward a large set of double doors at the back. As they pushed through, the temperature seemed to rise ten degrees, fueled by body heat, at least hundreds of players.
The room was filled.
Renzo scanned the sea of bodies. There were exactly three hundred of them.
"This is insane," Hyoma whispered, his eyes darting around the room, recognizing faces. "Look over there. That's Kira Ryosuke. The 'Jewel of Japan.' And there, that's Sendou. This… this is going to be one heck of a camp, no?"
Renzo didn't answer immediately. He was scanning the crowd, but not for celebrities. He was looking for eyes. Eyes that looked like his. Hungry eyes.
He saw a few. A tall, dark-haired guy with dead eyes standing near the wall. A boy with yellow tips in his hair who was humming to himself, seemingly oblivious to the tension. A tall, muscular guy who looked like a superhero.
"There are a lot of prey," Renzo murmured.
"Prey?" Hyoma looked at him, confused. "You mean players?"
"Sure."
Before Hyoma could ask what that meant, the low hum of the crowd died instantly.
Click.
The lights in the hall slammed off, plunging three hundred strikers into pitch blackness. A collective gasp rippled through the room.
Then, a single spotlight snapped on at the front of the room. It illuminated a stage where a lone figure stood.
He was a strange, stick-thin man. He wore a black suit that hung loosely on his skeletal frame, and his hair was a messy black bob cut that framed a pale, angular face. He stood with a slouch, looking down at the crowd as if they were insects he was deciding whether to crush or study.
He tapped the microphone headset he was wearing. The sound screeched through the speakers, making everyone wince.
"Testing. One, two."
After making sure the mic was working, he began.
"Congratulations," the man said, spreading his long arms. "You unpolished gems."
The crowd murmured in confusion.
"All of you are under-18 strikers," the man continued, ignoring the confusion. "You have been chosen by my biased and arbitrary criteria. All three hundred of you."
Renzo felt a prickle on the back of his neck. Biased and arbitrary. He liked the sound of that. It sounded honest.
"My name is Jinpachi Ego," the man announced. "And my job is to make Japan capable of winning the World Cup."
A murmur of disbelief washed over the room. Winning the World Cup? It was the dream every Japanese kid grew up with, but also the joke every Japanese adult laughed at. It was impossible.
"I'm going to put it simply," Ego said, adjusting his glasses. "Japan has only one thing missing, which is required to become the best in the world. And that is… the creation of a revolutionary Striker."
He pointed a long, bony finger at the crowd.
"From these three hundred of you, I will forge a single hero. A striker who can trample over everything and everyone to stand at the summit. For this purpose, I have created this facility. Blue Lock."
Behind him, the massive screen lit up, displaying a blueprint of a pentagonal prison-like structure.
"From today, you will live here together. You will follow my special training regimen. You cannot go home. You are essentially quitting your previous football teams."
The murmurs turned into shouts of protest.
"Wait, quitting?"
"I have the Nationals next week!"
"Who is this guy?"
Ego's voice cut through the noise, louder now. "By surviving Blue Lock, you will throw away everything you know. You will sacrifice your youth, your friends, and your common sense. But in return… the last one standing will become the world's greatest striker."
The room erupted.
"Hey! You can't be serious!"
A voice rang out, clear and charismatic. It was Kira Ryosuke. He stepped forward from the crowd, his face flushed with righteous indignation.
"We have the Prefectural Finals! Some of us are going to Nationals! We have teams who are counting on us. I can't just abandon them!" Kira gestured to the crowd, rallying support. "Football is a team sport! We play for the bond with our teammates! You're talking about destroying that! Who the hell are you to decide that?"
Cheers of agreement erupted.
"Yeah! He's right!"
"I'm not quitting my team!"
"This is bullshit!"
Renzo watched Kira, his face blank. Boring.
On stage, Ego scratched the back of his head, looking utterly unimpressed.
"Then fuck off," Ego said. "Get out of here then, you mediocre talents." The room froze.
"Go home," Ego sneered. "Go back to your little teams. Win your little high school tournaments. Become the 'Ace' of your local town. And then what? You'll rot. You'll become a salaryman who talks about his glory days at the bar."
Ego's eyes narrowed behind his lenses.
"Football is a team sport? Japan is obsessed with that sentence. And look where it got us. The Round of 16. Stuck. Forever."
He leaned into the mic.
"Let me tell you something. The best strikers in the world… they are not team players. They are egoists."
The screen behind him flashed with images of Noel Noa.
"Noel Noa said: 'I would rather lose 3-4 scoring a hat trick than win 1-0 with an assist.'"
Renzo's breath hitched. Lose scoring a hat trick… The words resonated in his chest like a drum.
"Pele: 'I don't care about my team. I just want to stand out.'"
Ego paced the stage. "All of them have it. That overwhelming self-absorption. That belief that they are the center of the universe. That is what Japan lacks. You don't need to be a good boy. You don't need to pass the ball. You need to be the protagonist."
Ego stopped pacing. He looked out at the sea of faces, most of whom looked terrified or angry. But his gaze didn't linger on them.
His bug-like eyes swept the room and locked onto a spot near the back.
They locked onto teal eyes that were burning in the dark.
Renzo felt his heart hammer against his ribs. Thump. Thump. Thump.
"Some of you," Ego said, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper that echoed through the silence. "Some of you have spent your whole lives being told you are 'too much.' Being told to calm down. To pass the ball. To not break the other children."
Renzo's hands clenched into fists. He felt stripped naked.
"You suppress your hunger to fit into a society that values harmony over victory," Ego continued, staring straight at Renzo. "You play 'safe' to keep your parents happy. To keep your teammates from crying. You wear a mask of sanity because you're afraid that if you take it off, you'll be alone."
Hyoma, standing next to Renzo, looked at his friend. Renzo was trembling. Not from fear. He was smiling. A wide, terrifying smile that showed too many teeth.
"But here?" Ego spread his arms wide, a manic grin stretching his face.
"Here, you don't have to hide. Here, your 'problem' is your weapon. Here, you can be the monster you want to be."
The words crashed into Renzo like a tsunami. The cage that he had built around himself, the cage reinforced by his father's worry and his mother's fear, shattered.
Here, I can be me.
"So," Ego pointed to the massive doors behind him that were slowly beginning to creak open, blinding white light spilling out from the gap. "Step up, you unpolished gems. Show me what you got."
Renzo didn't think.
The "voices" in his head screamed in unison. GO.
He moved.
He didn't walk. He exploded forward.
"Renzo?!" Hyoma gasped.
Renzo tore through the crowd. He shoved past a confused student. He elbowed another out of the way. His face was twisted into a grin of pure exhilaration. The heat in his chest was unbearable. He needed to be in that room. He needed to be in that world.
He sprinted past Kira, who was still standing there with his mouth open. Renzo didn't even look at the "Jewel of Japan." He was just a traffic cone.
Renzo hit the gap in the doors first. The light swallowed him whole.
For a second, the crowd was stunned. They watched the quiet, teal-haired boy who had been standing silently in the back suddenly turn into a blur of motion.
Then, a shout broke the stupor.
"WAIT FOR ME, YOU BASTARD!"
Hyoma Chigiri, legs moving on instinct, chased after him. He didn't know why. He had his injury to worry about. He had his doubts. But seeing Renzo run like that triggered something in him. He wasn't going to be left behind.
"Don't you dare leave me behind, Ren!" Hyoma screamed, diving into the light after him.
That broke the dam.
"Out of my way!"
"I'm going too!"
"I'm the best striker here!"
The crowd surged forward, a stampede of three hundred dreams rushing toward the unknown. They pushed and shoved, desperate not to miss the chance, desperate to grab onto the madness that Ego had offered.
Ego stood on the stage, watching the chaos unfold. He watched the first boy, the one with the blue hair and the aura of a starving beast, disappear into the facility.
The hall emptied quickly, leaving only the echoes of shouting and the smell of adrenaline.
Ego adjusted his glasses, a slow, terrifying smile creeping across his face. He tapped his earpiece.
"Looks like we have some interesting test subjects, Anri-chan," Ego whispered to the empty room. "Especially that first one. The one who looked like he was dying of boredom."
He turned his back on the empty hall.
"Don't disappoint me, you unpolished gems."