Rui noticed Haru, he raised his hand towards him and Haru immediately spotted him and walked towards his friend.
Haru dropped against the wall as the match finally caught up with him, with sweat darkened collar on his shirt.
For a moment he just sat there, staring at the futsal court, while gold were resting and the last two teams to play warmed up.
Rui watched him gaze at everything and everyone before asking what he already knew, “How did your match go?”
Haru didn’t look over right away.
“We lost, Two-one and that’s after scoring the first goal.”
“I know.”
That made Haru turn his head.
“You already know the score?”
“Yeah, someone walked past and mentioned it.” Rui’s voice stayed even “Didn’t think I need the details.”
Haru let out a short breath and Rui recognised it as sign that he won’t be closing it anytime soon, “Details are important, they wouldn’t be if they’d put four past us. We fought to the end and there’s nothing to argue about the match, but two-one means we were right there and we were winning the game, we were the better team in our heads but given how the game went after we scored…”
Haru stopped speaking and just shook his head, after glancing at were gold was seated, thinking about Gold’s dominance after his scrappy goal.
Rui didn’t answer immediately and just waited, the same way he always did when Haru needed the space to let whatever was sitting in his chest out.
Haru took a water bottle nearby and drank it deeply, before registering that Rui was glaring at him albeit too late and Rui said, “That’s my water bottle”
“Ohh, you were not drinking it though.”
“I was about to before you decided to drink it.”
Haru held it out to Rui with a crooked grin already forming, before cheekily replying,”Quality control and You’re welcome, no need to thank me.”
A couple of Rui’s teammates nearby laughed under their breath, they had stopped pretending they aren’t listening on their conversation.
Haru handed the bottle back and stretched his legs out in front of him, staring at the sky like it might offer a better version of the afternoon.
“We were hungry and exhausted from the game.”
Haru’s voice rose a fraction as the old theatrical edge returned, “Hunger and exhaustion isn’t exclusive to winners, Rui. It’s a universal human condition, you don’t get special rights to food just because the match was nicer to you and I saw Blue hanging around the field before our game started.”
“We have another game coming and need to be ready for it”
“I know and congratulations on making it to the semifinal.” Haru tipped his head back against the wall.
Rui was quiet for a beat.
“Final is next, assuming we get past our next opponent.”
Haru turned to look at him properly.
“You’re already there, just play with belief and you’ll win.”
“If only things were that easy, Haru”
Haru waved a hand, dismissive but not unkind.
“You’re thinking about how the final already, you already believe that the next game is won and I wish i had that much belief when we played, maybe we would’ve won.”
Rui almost smiled, “It doesn’t mean anything when the outcome is yet to be determined.”
“It means you believe you can win, and you already won a game” Haru pointed at himself “Exhibit A of people who cannot currently say the same thing.”
The conversation loosened after that, they talked about random things and Haru mentioned he’d walked past the ongoing second last game before the semis “the game is electric”he said.
“The crowd kept on cheering on this one kid who kept his opponents on his toes whenever he touched the ball and he looked younger than you but given your peculiarity, he’s probably thirteen too.
Rui glanced over to the field, something faintly interested crossing his face. Visit g.com for the full chapter.
“Was the match that exciting?”
“Yes, I couldn’t help it. The glimpses alone of what I saw had me excited” Haru said it completely seriously, which made the boys nearest them laugh again.
“I am telling you, but I only watched enough to see why the crowd was on their feet and then I kept walking. Didn’t want to miss the important part of my own afternoon which, as it turns out, was sitting here explaining to you why two-one feels worse than four-nil.”
Rui went back to his food, but he was listening and time stretched.
The tournament noise reached them in pieces, a distant whistle, the muffled swell of a crowd reacting to something none of them could see, then quiet again, folding back into the ordinary sounds of boys resting between matches.
Somewhere behind the buildings an older spectator was arguing with another about whether the whole tournament would actually finish before the light turned gold, or whether Tatsuya’s people had badly underestimated how long a tournament genuinely took to run through one patch of ground for a single day.
Haru’s eyes kept drifting shut, then snapping open whenever the distant crowd made a sound.
“You should sleep,” Rui said eventually.
“Absolutely not.”
“You’re exhausted.”
“I’ll miss something.” Haru cracked one eye open and looking faintly offended on principle, before adding “This is a one day tournament, Rui. Things are happening constantly. I refuse to be the guy who slept through the moment something actually mattered.”
“There’s nothing happening here, go watch the game if you want to see something happen”
“That’s exactly what people say right before something happens.”
As if the universe had been waiting for the cue, the noise from the Rec changed and it rose all at once, denser and very loud a sign that the match being played had changed from what it was.
Every head on the futsal court turned toward it at the same time a shared, involuntary attention of a whole group that understood that something happened.
Haru was already sitting upright, as Rui set his food down without looking away from the direction of the sound and for a second neither of them spoke.
They just listened, trying to construct of whatever was unfolding metres away through nothing but the collective voice of a crowd.
Then Haru grinned, wide and looked at Rui before mouthing off “I told you.”