Several buses were lined up outside the Japan Football Union to transport the strikers who had agreed to participate in BLUE LOCK.
And in the end— every single one of them accepted.
Even those who complained, hesitated, or showed outrage eventually boarded the buses.
After all, no one there could completely abandon the possibility of becoming the best striker in the world.
Each of their egos spoke louder at the very last moment.
During the ride, the atmosphere remained strangely silent.
Some players stared out the windows at the passing scenery, while others tried making conversation to ease the tension.
But Haise Sasaki?
Haise simply remained seated, staring out the window.
His violet eyes reflected the blue sky as thoughts drifted through his mind.
Within a matter of hours, Haise and the other 299 strikers finally arrived at the massive complex of facilities that made up BLUE LOCK.
The gigantic blue structures towered like a fortress isolated from the rest of the world.
At first glance, it did not look like a sports facility.
It looked more like a laboratory.
And the moment they entered, every player was handed uniforms and training clothes to change into.
Anri Teieri called the players one by one, quickly distributing the packages while screens scattered throughout the corridors displayed instructions for each participant.
When Haise opened his uniform, his eyes calmly settled on the symbol printed across it.
Number 300.
Letter Z.
The last-ranked player.
His eyes narrowed slightly.
‘Last place…’
Haise slowly raised his gaze toward a camera installed on the corridor ceiling.
He knew.
Jinpachi Ego was probably watching everything at that very moment.
‘Do you really think despair affects me the same way it affects them?’
A small, cold smile appeared on Haise’s face.
‘For someone who has already been at rock bottom…’
Violet flames subtly flickered within his eyes.
‘…the only path left is upward.’
Without saying another word, Haise Sasaki began walking through the corridors, following the signs toward Room Z.
The atmosphere was cold and eerily silent.
The sound of footsteps echoed against the metallic walls while countless players made their way toward their assigned dormitories.
And the moment Haise entered the room, he found another boy already standing there.
Cyan hair.
A delicate face with almost feminine features, despite clearly being male.
He calmly watched the movement around him while holding his uniform in his hands.
“Oh…” the boy commented after noticing Haise approach.
“So you were the first one who ran.”
Haise briefly glanced in his direction.
“And you are?”
The boy gave a small, relaxed smile.
“I’m Yo Hiori. Nice to meet you.”
“Likewise.”
Haise’s response was short and direct.
Without much ceremony, he started changing clothes right there.
Yo Hiori’s eyes widened slightly.
His gaze involuntarily traced across Haise Sasaki’s body as he partially removed his black jacket.
And immediately, something felt wrong, very wrong.
‘He doesn’t even look insanely muscular…’
Hiori thought in disbelief as he analyzed Haise’s physique.
‘Then what kind of body is that…?’
Haise’s muscles were not exaggerated.
They were not monstrously large, yet they looked perfectly built.
Every muscle line appeared refined to the extreme, as if his entire body had been developed solely for absolute physical efficiency.
There was no wasted structure, no visible imperfection.
It almost looked artificial.
‘From a biological standpoint…’
Hiori continued silently, staring in shock.
‘Can a person really develop a body like that naturally…?’
Then Haise noticed his stare.
His violet eyes met Hiori’s directly.
“…Is there a problem?” Haise asked calmly.
Hiori immediately looked away.
“N-No…” he answered quickly.
“I was just wondering when this is going to start.”
Haise merely let out a quiet nasal sound before finishing putting on the BLUE LOCK uniform.
Number 300, Z
As the minutes passed, more players arrived at Room Z one by one until the total finally reached twelve.
Haise observed the room while stretching, casually raising his arms above his head with the ease of someone completely comfortable in a place that had clearly been designed to feel uncomfortable.
‘Twelve strikers.
And the size of this room…’
His eyes swept across the space once, calculating.
‘So this is it.’
‘Time to bury someone’s dream in the depths.’
The moment the last player finished changing, the screen above the room flickered.
Jinpachi Ego’s image appeared, filling the monitor with that overwhelming presence capable of making any room feel smaller than it actually was.
“Finished changing, you raw diamonds?”
The voice alone was enough.
Everyone in the room stopped what they were doing at the exact same moment and looked up, as if pulled by an invisible string.
“Hello.” Ego began with that same calm cadence as always, like someone who felt no urgency because he already knew nobody was going anywhere.
“The people sharing this room with you are both your teammates and your rivals. They will help you improve. Your abilities have been quantified and ranked by me according to my own arbitrary and biased judgment.”
A brief pause.
“That’s what the numbers on your uniforms represent. At a single glance, you can tell exactly where you stand among the three hundred.”
“Lying four-eyes.” Haise muttered low enough that only Hiori, standing right beside him, could hear.
Hiori slightly tilted his head.
“Hm?”
Haise didn’t answer.
His eyes remained fixed on the screen.
“Your rankings may change depending on the results of your training sessions and matches.” Ego continued without the slightest reaction.
“And the top five players will unconditionally participate in the tournament taking place six months from now. They will be registered as forwards for the U-20 World Cup.”
A murmur spread through the room.
Haise felt something stir inside him, not exactly surprise, but the genuine impact of hearing it said out loud with the same clinical coldness Ego used to turn the impossible into simple logistics.
“Furthermore.” Ego’s voice dropped another level.
“Anyone who loses in Blue Lock will never again have the chance to play for Japan.”
“What?” Someone in the room blurted out the word loudly, but nobody paid attention.
Everyone was too busy processing the exact same thing on their own.
Haise let out a slow breath through his nose.
‘It’s the same principle as the Legend Prospect Project.
But this time, it involves the entire Japanese National Team.’ He looked at the screen with that familiar coldness in his eyes.
‘This sadist really enjoys messing with people’s minds, huh?’
Hiori, who had noticed the sigh, watched him silently for a moment.
(N/A: Stalker?)
“What you need to gain here is ego.” Ego said, and there was something dangerously close to amusement hidden within the neutrality of his voice.
“And now, I’m going to test how to measure it.”
A slow grin spread across his face.
“So…” His eyes darkened behind the glasses.
“It’s time to play tag.”
A metallic click echoed through the room. This story is hosted at g.com.
“You have 136 seconds.”
As if the sentence itself had been a password, a hidden hatch in the ceiling directly above one of the long red-haired strikers suddenly opened without warning.
A regular soccer ball dropped from above and slammed against the floor with a dry sound that echoed throughout the entire room.
“Whoever gets hit by the ball is ‘it.'” Ego explained in the same tone someone would use to describe something completely ordinary.
“Whoever is still ‘it’ when the timer reaches zero will be eliminated.”
He paused briefly, as though remembering some minor detail.
“Ah. Don’t use your hands.”
A cartoonish image of Haise suddenly appeared on the screen alongside his rank, name, and remaining time.
Then he walked toward the ball.
And stepped on it.
The instant his foot touched the surface—
Everyone froze.
A pressure descended upon the room so suddenly and so heavily that several players instinctively held their breath.
It felt less like standing near another high school athlete and more like being locked inside a cage with something fundamentally wrong.
To them—
Haise no longer looked human.
Against the darkness of the room, his figure seemed completely white, unnaturally pale, like a supernatural entity born the very moment it touched the ball.
The shadows around him deepened while his violet eyes glowed with an eerie intensity that cut straight through the room.
The atmosphere changed.
No, it was devoured.
Even the air seemed heavier now, causing several players to deliberately retreat.
Others stiffened where they were.
And Haise…
Haise simply stood still with one foot on the ball, staring at everyone in complete silence while fragments resembling broken mirrors floated slowly around him.
Then, a smile appeared on his face, a predatory and refined smile.
“So…” His voice echoed softly through the frozen room.
“Who wants to survive?”
…
In the monitoring room, the screens displayed every corner of Room Z in real time.
Ego sat reclined in his chair, his eyes fixed on the monitors with an expression that wasn’t quite a smile, yet wasn’t his usual complete neutrality either.
There was something there.
Perhaps satisfaction.
Or anticipation.
“What’s happening?” Anri asked from beside him, genuine confusion in her voice as she stared at the screens.
“Why is everyone so frozen?”
The question made Ego let out a slow sigh.
He leaned back even further into the chair, raising a hand with exaggerated patience.
“As always, you understand nothing, errand girl.”
‘Errand girl?!’
Anri froze for a second, clutching the clipboard against her chest while shock spread across her face.
It wasn’t even a stupid question.
She was clearly missing something Ego considered obvious, but that hardly made the comment less insulting.
“They’re frozen because of the pressure.” Ego began, never taking his eyes off the monitors.
“They’re afraid of whatever is holding the ball.”
Anri looked back toward the screens, trying to see what he was seeing.
“The Legend Prospect Project was created to force Haise Sasaki to discover his weapon.” Ego continued, his voice quieter now, almost as if he were speaking to himself.
“But he never found it.”
“Seriously?” Anri turned toward him in surprise.
“That looked like a weapon to me. Not to mention the dribbling and all the other physical abilities he displayed.”
Ego shot her a brief sideways glance.
Short.
But enough.
“That wasn’t his weapon.” He turned his attention back to the screen.
“Not even close. I’m certain of that.”
His gaze narrowed slightly.
“His talent is far too great for something as small as isolated dribbles or shots.” His voice grew heavier.
“There’s something else. Something that still hasn’t fully surfaced.”
On the screen, Haise lightly moved the ball beneath his foot.
A nearly imperceptible gesture.
Far too casual to be accidental.
“The moment I saw him play for the first time, I confirmed it.” Ego continued, his voice steady, like someone presenting a conclusion he had already reviewed countless times.
“Most of his talents were dormant. The technique everyone saw and admired is merely a talent he developed by using another talent as its foundation… one that hasn’t even truly awakened yet.”
Anri unconsciously tightened her grip around the clipboard pressed against her chest, feeling a strange pressure she couldn’t properly name.
There was something about the way Ego spoke about Haise—with that overwhelming certainty, almost possessive in nature—that made it difficult to simply listen and take notes.
“And judging by what I’m seeing…” Ego leaned slightly forward, his eyes narrowing while watching the screen.
“During Phase 0, his talents have already begun awakening.”
A faint smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.
“Little by little… but they are awakening. And that is widening the gap between him and the others.”
Ego paused briefly before continuing, his gaze locked onto the monitor with unsettling intensity.
“That gap creates psychological pressure.” His voice lowered.
“And the fear born from it paralyzes the weak before the match even begins.”
…
The silence in the room lasted exactly as long as Haise needed to glance at the ball on the floor and make his decision.
“If you want your dreams to survive…” He spoke in a completely calm voice, almost bored.
“Dodge.”
BAAM!
The kick came immediately after.
The ball tore through the air with a speed and force completely disproportionate to the casualness of the movement that had produced it.
Before anyone in the room could properly track its trajectory, it had already reached its target, smashing directly into one player’s face with a dry, definitive impact.
The boy collapsed before he even had time to process what had happened, losing consciousness midair.
The entire room froze.
Haise calmly walked toward the ball and picked it back up, returning to the role of “it” as though this were the most natural thing in the world.
His eyes swept across the faces around him with a coldness that wasn’t performative in the slightest.
It was genuine.
“One down.” He said flatly.
“Ten left.”
A single second of absolute silence.
“RUN!”
And then chaos erupted.
Everyone exploded into motion at once, sprinting in every possible direction, scattering through the room as if distance and disorder alone could make things harder for him.
It was understandable logic.
It was also completely useless.
Their frantic movements changed nothing.
Haise watched them for a moment, his eyes calmly moving from one player to the next with the patience of someone who had more than enough time.
In his mind, this place served one very simple purpose.
He was the judge.
And every kick was a sentence.
Those who passed would enter the heaven known as Blue Lock.
Those who failed would be sent straight to hell.
“Access denied.”
The second kick came with the same lethal precision as the first.
The ball shot forward in a straight line before smashing violently against the wall, ricocheting and changing direction twice before finding its targets.
Two players were struck in rapid succession, collapsing before they could even react.
Haise was already moving before either of them touched the ground.
He leapt over the two falling bodies, his frame suspended in midair, and trapped the ball with flawless precision, stopping it at the exact instant of contact as though he had practiced the motion thousands of times before.
With the ball now under control, he twisted mid-descent, contorting his body in a way that seemed to defy what should’ve been physically possible.
Then—
The spinning kick exploded across the room. You are reading on g.com, the official source.
The ball tore through the air and struck two more players before either of them had any real chance to evade.
Haise landed.
The ball rolled neatly back to his feet.
And for a brief moment, he simply stood there, silently observing the result.
“Six left.”
Among those still standing, Hiori Yo was desperately trying to keep his thoughts functioning.
It wasn’t easy.
Part of his brain was still trying to process what he had witnessed over the last few minutes—the speed of those kicks, the overwhelming force behind them, the way the first impact alone had rendered someone unconscious instantly.
It wasn’t human.
Or rather—
It was human, but in a way Hiori had never considered possible until now.
‘Why is he doing this?’ Hiori thought, his eyes tracking Haise while he kept moving.
‘What’s motivating him?
Other people’s expectations?
Some need to prove himself?’
The ball suddenly tore through the air toward him before he could finish the thought.
Hiori threw himself sideways purely on instinct, feeling the displaced air graze past his face.
His heart violently slammed against his ribs.
“Thinking during this trial, Hiori Yo?”
The voice came from somewhere Hiori hadn’t expected.
He turned his head—
And Haise was already there.
As though he had materialized out of nowhere beside him.
He casually trapped the ball midair with the outside of his foot, the movement so effortless it looked absurd.
“Do you want to be sent to hell?”
Those violet eyes stared into him for a single instant.
Cold.
Completely serious.
‘This guy… IS HE A PSYCHOPATH?!’
Hiori immediately got out of there before another word could be exchanged.
And for some reason he couldn’t properly explain, he became the first person to survive that round.
BAAM!
The ball violently rebounded off the wall and struck another player before he could calculate the trajectory of the ricochet.
The boy collapsed.
“Five left.” Haise commented while retrieving the ball again with that same disturbingly natural composure.
Hiori watched the movement carefully.
And slowly—
Something began forming inside his mind.
‘Why does he keep retrieving the ball?
If he’s the tagger when the timer runs out, he loses.
Is that what he wants?’
It didn’t make sense.
At first glance, Haise didn’t seem like the kind of person who acted without intention.
Hiori kept watching as he dodged, seeing Haise land, guide the ball with his feet for a split second, and then fire a shot toward two players at once, using the angle of the wall to turn a single movement into two eliminations.
‘No…’ Hiori’s thoughts slowly began to take shape.
‘The one with the ball at his feet can decide anyone’s fate.’
That was it.
It wasn’t carelessness.
It wasn’t self-sabotage.
It was absolute control.
Whoever held the ball held the power to choose who stayed and who left.
Haise wasn’t playing tag.
He was presiding over a trial.
‘The ones struggling are being eliminated first…
Because they ran.
Because they drew attention.
Because they entered his field of vision at the wrong moment.’
Hiori stopped moving for a second and let his eyes sweep across the room with renewed focus, searching for what was missing from the picture.
And then he found it.
A player in the corner of the room.
Quiet.
Leaning against the wall with a small, comfortable smile on his face.
The kind of smile worn by someone who believes the storm will pass without touching him.
That his place was already secured simply because he chose not to stand out.
‘HIM.’
Time Remaining: 20 Seconds.
Hiori didn’t have time to finish the thought.
Suddenly, Haise was there, directly in front of him, as if the space between them had simply ceased to exist a second earlier.
The ball rested quietly under his control, and his eyes shifted between Hiori and the final player with the absolute calm of a man who had already made every decision and was merely waiting for the right moment to execute it.
In the last 20 seconds, Haise Sasaki would decide who stayed and who left.
‘Will it be me?’
Hiori met those violet eyes and felt the true weight of the situation crash down on him all at once.
His own eyes instinctively slid toward the player in the corner of the room, the one still leaning there with the comfortable smile of someone convinced he had found the only safe spot in this judgment.
‘If that’s how it is…’ Hiori’s thoughts hardened, hesitation being replaced by something firmer, hotter.
‘Then I’ll kick the ball at that bastard myself.’
It was ego.
Pure and simple, perhaps for the first time taking a recognizable shape inside him.
Haise waited.
Fifteen seconds passed, and he remained exactly where he stood, the ball under control, his eyes fixed on Hiori.
It wasn’t hesitation.
It was observation.
Because at the start of those fifteen seconds, he had seen something ignite within Hiori’s gaze — a small but genuine flame, the kind that doesn’t appear in someone merely trying to survive, but in someone beginning to want victory.
It was a fire Haise recognized very well.
A smile appeared on his face.
Subtle, but genuine.
“You passed, Hiori.” He said it plainly, without drama.
“Welcome to Blue Lock.”
Hiori blinked.
“Huh?”
But Haise had already shifted his attention elsewhere.
His head tilted slightly to the side, his eyes finding the player in the corner with an ease that made it painfully clear that blind spot had never truly existed.
“And you over there…” Haise spoke, his voice carrying something between disdain and boredom.
“Did you really think I wouldn’t notice a cockroach hiding in the corner?”
The player’s smile vanished.
Haise spun on his axis with a fluidity that shouldn’t have been possible at that speed, his entire body functioning like a spring that had waited for the exact right moment to unleash itself, and the kick came out so fast it could barely be followed by the human eye.
“Witness your own insignificance.”
BAAM!
“AGRH!”
The very instant the ball struck its target, time ran out.
There was no dramatic countdown.
There was only the deafening alarm.
Time had reached its end, as all things inevitably do, and the result was laid bare across the floor of that room in the form of eliminated bodies and two players still standing.
The Elimination Phase had come to an end.
…
On the path to the top of the world, no dream stands above oneself!
By sacrificing another player for the sake of his own dream, Haise Sasaki begins his journey toward the summit!
NEXT CHAPTER → For Myself and By Myself.