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Not a word is said between the brothers eating dinner together until the youngest, after a slurp of broth, asks seemingly out of nowhere:
"You know what you're doing after this?"
Sae chews on a bite of his dinner and considers. Maybe he'll grab a side dish but other than that? His team just played a match, and it's getting late in to the evening. He usually spends most days at home anyway, hardly eager to exhaust energy and time on company he knows will just annoy him.
"Go home, probably."
"After football."
"After football what?"
Rin squints at him. "After you retire from football."
Sae turns sharply for a glance around the restaurant for signs of any eavesdroppers. The paparazzi would be on this so fast.
Making headline news before the night's over isn't on his bingo card.
"Don't just say shit like that, idiot."
"Everyone retires."
"I'm twenty."
"I know."
Sae squints at him this time, confused for himself, and between them stays a long moment of silence.
The way Rin's bringing this up so casually, like a talk about the weather, as if it was to be expected. Like it's completely normal. He's ignorant, or boldly indifferent, to how the implication alone of his brother not playing football anymore would, by no exaggeration, shake the sports world.
Sae's manager would despair and feel partial blame, fans would cry eternal heartbreak and display memorbilia in mourning, scouts would go bald from the lost chance of recruiting him. It would be more noise than a sold out stadium and more trouble than flying back to renew a passport just to sucked into the Blue Lock project.
Rin, annoyingly like many youths today, is talking like bodily deterioration starts at twenty.
(Sae has numbing ointment for muscle flare up emergencies, sure...but that's not a point to Rin's cause. Shut up!)
Since when is retirement something people forty are obligated to think about? It's minutes to eight on a weekday and Sae didn't even know he would be dinning with his younger brother until his mother called and insisted. She was hard to dissuade and their dad folds like a one legged chair in a storm against her.
So after his match, Sae met up with Rin and walked them to a noodle restaurant where they ate in silence, and Sae was happy to.
Now this. It's only thanks to the miracle and placebic healing of time that they've become civil enough to sustain from killing each other on sight.
Sae says, "People don't usually retire before they have a quarter life crisis."
He's only twenty years young—full of vigor, strength, ego. Still yet to be crowned the world's best midfielder but still aiming for it.
"So you haven't though about it," concludes Rin while plucking up a helping of noodles on his chopsticks, slurping it all in one with a hefty appetite.
"Have you?"
"Duh."
"You're eighteen."
Already too old to be using 'duh' unironically like a middle schooler.
"It's no different to career talks with the school counselor."
"You're right, Rin. Deciding which college you want to further your education in is the same as retiring before I can even legally drink."
"Just say you don't have a plan and shut up."
"You shut up. Football's all I know."
"Yeah. Guess we know you'd be shit at anything else."
What Sae knows is Rin's talking a lot of shit for someone well within hitting distance. Maybe a kick to knock him off his chair and the concussion he'll get from his head smacking on the linoleum will set him right.
Rin mentions his boyfriend's name in a bite of more food, adding on, "He'll be a coach for kids, or something. Not me. Don't have the patience."
Kids would cry in an instant. What would make any sane person voluntarily seek to be near Rin's volatile orbit is a mystery.
Rin continues, "But I can take a class. Maybe film studies. Or I might travel."
Sae nods along, listening, eating up the rest of his dinner.
"Could get into art, too."
Sae snorts disagreeably, "I've seen you fuck up finger painting."
Everyone in their family circle has.
A kindergarten class project completed in a single rainy afternoon. It was a mass of splotches and blots in every colour on white paper, smudging the page in watery descending lines, that their mother still framed and hung up with pride for all guests to see right above the hallway door.
Rin's face sours and the embarrassment strokes blush on his cheeks, "When I was, like, four."
"Six and it's the easiest way to paint."
"Like you could've done better."
"Probably, but art's never interested me."
"Why not?"
"Because football."
"You really need a plan. Especially when I beat you and you're left in the dirt. No one will want you then."
"Have you considered being a motovational speaker?"
"Fuck you. I was trying to help but whatever."
Rin stabs at his next portion of food, then goes for some of his water.
Sae's aware that football won't last forever—not when younger players are coming in and reiterating the fruits of facilities like Blue Lock that unearth and polish diamonds from dirt.
Even his boyfriend, who exhibits a manic and obsessive emotion to football, spends spare moments enjoying other things like art, dancing, even cooking. Ryusei Shidou is amazing in places besides football.
Sae doesn't know if he can say the same about himself.
There's a quote from an olympian swimmer famously captured in an interview when he was fresh out of the pool.
"At ten, you're a prodigy. At fifteen, a genius. At twenty, you're ordinary."
Sae will never see himself as ordinary if he can help it.
But since he's already past the prodigal and genius ages and has already spent a quarter of his life in one field, it makes more sense to go into something that can be picked up and started from anywhere without years of blood, sweat and tears being poured in from day one just to get his bearings.
In his bedroom, he finds a spare notebook, grabs a pencil and sets up a drawing tutorial on youtube on his laptop watching with a pencil in hand to follow along and replicate when instructed.
An hour, two broken pencils, and dozen scattered paper balls that loiter around the bin later, Sae still hasn't grasped the fundamentals of art. Drawing hands is hellish. Eyes never share the same size.
Sae has never been humbled—not ever, not like this, from an allegedly beginner friendly art video.
"Sae-chan, I'm home!~" Shidou shouts when he finally comes home.
Shidou finds Sae at the table in their room, glaring at the laptop from his disgruntled slouching in the seat. He bounces over, leans down for a kiss.
"Hey, whatcha doing?"
"Experiencing my quarter life crisis early," Sae mumbles. He puts down his pencil and massages his temples, eyes tired and a migraine coming.
"Okaaay..." Shidou notices the notebook. Preemptively touching it, he asks, "Can I see?"
"Sure."
Shidou picks up the book, flicking through pages with his head titling for what he assumes is a better perspective. He looks back and forth between the book and the paused video.
"Is it...a potato?"
"It's a head."
"...On a potato?"
Sae snatches back the book. "Bye, Ryusei."
"No—wait, baby, it's cute!"
That's even worse, that's condescending.
Shidou wonders, "Since when do you even draw?"
"I'm just exploring my options for when I eventually retire."
Shidou doesn't bat an eyelid at the early mention of retirement. "Okay but why art?"
'Because you like art' stands at the front of Sae's mind but he doesn't dare confess something so soft.
"I figured if someone like you can do it then surely I can master it."
"Anyone can draw stick people."
"What?"
Shidou shows Sae a gallery of his sketches from high school classes to present time doodles in his spare time. Rough sketches, incomplete, messed, visually jarring, disproportioned and a lot of stick people.
Sae is speechless.
Shidou knows this isn't the time to laugh but really, seeing Sae stunned to hell is so cute he can't help it. "I like art. Didn't say I was the next Van Gogh."
"How about you fucking go away?"
Shidou snorts at the pun. "Listen, an easy fix for these potato heads is to practice. Draw people from real life."
"Stabbing you with my pencil might be an even quicker solution."
"I'll be your muse, Sae-chan. You can draw me naked any time~"
"Go to hell. Like I'd even want help from a Demon who fucking scribbles like a two year old. Besides, it's a waste of time to like something if you can't dominate in it."
Shidou thinks that's a very sad perspective to have, but it's a reflection on Sae's upbringing as a prodigy. Weighed down by the expectations and excitement of everyone else. He kisses Sae's head in sweet, soft apology, minding the hand that tries to swat him away.
Shidou reassures, "You don't have to dominate in everything. I like art 'cause it's freeing. Creative. No rules. Art is subjective. It's more about what the artist feels. It's explosive." His hands clench in a narrating gesture as he explains, "It can go in all directions, be loud, bright, and it leaves a big impression."
"You almost sound smart, Demon."
"What I said about drawing from real life to improve isn't bullshit. Let's strip now. We can be like Jack and Rose!"
"Jack dies at the end."
"For love! He was still a great artist."
"A dead great artist."
"At least he didn't draw potato people."
The sharpened pencil sent flying at Shidou's head in the next second feels well deserved if you ask Sae.