The bracket fills fast, chalk numbers smudging under thumbs before the ink of them even sets.
Full sides today, eleven a side, sixty minutes a match with a real half at thirty apiece, which means whoever wins today will have earned it in their legs as much as their feet.
Sora is already on the wall, newspaper unopened, watching everything as it takes place.
Sides get picked by draw rather than by friendship, slips of paper torn from a notebook and folded into a plastic bag, which is the only way to stop the older boys from just drafting each other the way they always do.
It means teams end up lopsided in age and mismatched in ability, elementary kids next to a couple of high schoolers who wandered down when they heard Tatsuya was in town, but nobody complains, because complaining today feels like complaining in front of him, and nobody wants to be the kid who did that.
Rui gets pulled onto a side stacked mostly with boys from Nishinari Sogo and most probably his seniors next year, a year or two older at least, the oldest of them already carrying the loose-limbed height that hasn’t caught up to him yet even though he’s not far-off from them.
He was the youngest of them all and nobody said anything about it, but he still felt it.
Rui held the boots Tatsuya’s people handed him minutes ago still smelling like a shop rather than a life.
Yasuda, the tongue reads and Rui would know the name blind, the way everyone in Nishinari does.
Tatsuya’s worn them since he was a kid, I guess he was slipping out to the Rec to play in them, long before anyone outside the neighborhood knew his name.
He kept wearing them all the way through his international debut at eighteen.
Rumour has it both Mizuno and New Balance where in talks of signature shoe but he never switched.
That kind of loyalty is why a brand that used to mean nothing outside a few old-timers’ memories is back in the limelight, all because of one man from refused to wear anything else but Yasuda .
I guess some things you don’t leave behind even when you can afford to, Rui thought, working his heel down into the stiff kangaroo leather.
Rui’s team groups up by the fence to sort itself out, eleven boys and no coach, which means the lineup gets decided the way everything at the Rec gets decided, by volume and stubbornness in roughly equal parts.
Ken, the oldest Sogo boy and 18 by the looks of it which makes him the closest thing to a captain, tries to run it like an actual selection but it collapses within a minute into eight boys all pointing at the same patch of grass and insisting that’s where they play.
“I’m a nine,” says a Sogo first year named Yamato, arms crossed like the matter’s already settled.
“I don’t do anything else.”
“Everyone’s a nine,” Ken replied.
“Everyone’s always a nine, do you want us to line up like a firing squad in front of their defence.” They went quiet before started debating among themselves.
The whole circle sorting itself from the front backward, strikers first, then the midfielders who fancy themselves playmakers, all of it loud and half-joking but entirely serious underneath.
Yet, nobody wanted to say the actual sentence out loud but everybody’s dancing around it, ‘that somebody has to defend, and nobody standing in this circle wants to be that somebody.’ The problem with defending is it doesn’t get you noticed.
Defending is the work nobody cheers for, the header that just prevents a bad thing instead of causing a good one, ninety minutes of running for a moment that, if you do it right, nobody remembers happened at all.
None of them want to do it, not with Tatsuya sitting on a crate twenty meters away rolling a ball under his foot.
Definitely not today.
“Somebody has to defend” Ken says, looking around the circle like he’s daring anyone to argue with the math of it.
“Four across the back, without defenders the opponent walks through us in ten minutes.” Silence.
A couple of the first year boys suddenly found their boots very interesting.
Kaito, one of the taller boys standing at 175 cm, said he’ll do it but only center back where he’ll be the anchor of the defence with the ball going through him and subsequently forced one of the younger boys to join him at the centre, Sho, Kaito had called him.
Sho was about Rui’s height at 167cm and had similar build to Kaito, which indicated to a closer tie than friendship.
This left the flanks still needing bodies and still finding no volunteers.
Ken’s eyes go around the group once, twice, doing the sum the way he always does, more instinct than thought, and land on Rui.
“You,” he says pointing at Rui, “Right back.”
Rui feels something drop in his chest, though he doesn’t let it show.
“I’m better going forward,” he said to Ken, careful to keep it flat instead of whiny.
“I’m quick, I can beat a man, I’ll do more good up there.”
“If that’s so, you’ll get your chance when we attack.” Ken replied, already moving on and dropping another boy into left back, like he’s dealing cards.
Nobody argues on Rui’s behalf, and he doesn’t argue for himself either, because arguing marks you as somebody who thinks defending is beneath him, and that’s a worse thing to be at the Rec than merely unlucky in the draw.
A couple of the ones who wanted to play up-front exhale, relieved without quite hiding it, the universal sound of a problem solved by somebody else.
Haru drifts past with a water bottle and catches the tail end of it.
“Looks like somebody will be holding it down” Haru said giggling and enjoying his friend’s one in a million misfortune, before Rui could retort he was already walking away towards his own team.
Rui glances toward the crate without meaning to and Tatsuya isn’t watching the huddle at all, just working the ball slowly under one foot, patient in the way of someone who’s seen a hundred of these arguments settle themselves and knows exactly how little the shouting ends up mattering once the whistle goes.
Sora is watching everything from his spot and when Rui’s eyes catch his for half a second, Sora gives the smallest nod.
Rui doesn’t know what to do with that but takes it as encouragement, so he jogs to his position at the back, working the stiffness out of the new boots while he waits for his team-mates to get into position and he tells himself, he just needs to make the best of the card dealt to him by Ken.
All while waiting for everything to fall in place and for the game to start.
(Author)
Thank you for reading.
Constructive feedback to improve appreciated.