Chapter 35: The Cold Standard
The final whistle didn't spark a celebration for Eshan. It was just a signal that the job was done.
While the rest of Team Z collapsed onto the turf—chests heaving, faces flushed with the ugly, desperate sweat of survivors—Eshan reached down, pulled his socks up, and started walking toward the tunnel.
To him, the ninety minutes hadn't been a miracle. It was an equation he'd been forced to solve because his teammates were failing.
The walk to the locker room was long. Behind him, he could hear the chaos. Raichi was already screaming at Kuon, his voice a jagged rasp that echoed off the concrete walls. Eshan didn't turn back. He didn't care.
He was the first one through the locker room doors. He sat at his spot, the silence of the empty room a brief luxury before the storm arrived. He began unlacing his cleats, his fingers steady, showing none of the adrenaline-fueled tremors that the others would have.
Then, the door slammed open.
"WE'RE ALIVE!" Igarashi shrieked, falling onto a bench.
The room flooded with heat and noise. Isagi stumbled in, leaning against the lockers right next to Eshan. He was vibrating, his eyes dilated, looking like a man who had just seen a ghost and lived to tell the tale.
"Eshan," Isagi panted, his voice raw. "That last pass... how did you know Chigiri would break his limit right then? If we didn't have that, we were finished. Team V is going to be—"
"Isagi."
Eshan didn't look up. His voice wasn't loud, but it cut through the noise like a blade. Isagi stopped mid-sentence, his breath hitching.
"The game is over," Eshan said. He finally looked at Isagi. His silver-gray eyes weren't excited; they were flat. "If you spend the next few days talking about how we 'survived,' you're going to lose the next one. Stop looking for a pat on the back and go get some water. You look pathetic."
The bluntness hit Isagi like a physical strike. He blinked, the hero-worship in his eyes flickering out, replaced by a cold realization. For Eshan, this wasn't a team effort. It was a obligation.
"Hey! Don't act like you did it all yourself!" Raichi roared from across the room. He had Kuon pinned against the metal lockers by his jersey, but he turned his rage toward Eshan. "We all put our lives on the line! This rat almost ended us!"
Eshan stood up. He was taller than most of them, and as he stepped into the center of the room, the shouting died down. Not because they liked him, but because his presence was too heavy to ignore.
He looked at Kuon, who was dangling from Raichi's grip. Eshan didn't look angry. He looked like he was looking at a broken piece of trash that was cluttering up his workspace.
"Raichi, drop him," Eshan said.
"Like hell I will! He sold us—"
"Drop him," Eshan repeated, his voice dropping an octave. "You're wasting energy on a dead man. Kuon is a non-entity now. He's the eleventh body on the, we need him. Treat him like a cone in a drill and move on. If you keep barking at him, I'll assume you're too scared of Team V to focus on the actual ball."
Raichi's jaw tightened, but he let go. Kuon slumped to the floor, coughing.
Eshan grabbed his bag and headed for the showers. He didn't look back. He had already moved his mind to the next problem, and right now, his teammates were just noise he had to filter out.
The showers were a thick fog of steam. Eshan stood under the cold spray—not hot, cold. He needed to reset the electricity in his nerves.
He closed his eyes, and the pitch appeared in the darkness of his eyelids. But it wasn't the match he'd just played. It was the one coming up.
Team V.
He saw Nagi Seishiro in his mind. The white-haired boy who played like he was bored of existence. Most people saw Nagi as a genius. Eshan saw him as an inefficiency. A man who relied on raw talent was a man who had a ceiling. Eshan didn't have a ceiling; he had a plan.
He felt a sharp, stinging pressure behind his eyes. It was a familiar sensation— his brain demanding more information than the current world was providing.
Zantetsu's acceleration. Reo's tactical copy-pasting. Nagi's gravitational pull on the ball.
"I see it," Eshan muttered, the cold water dripping off his chin.
He didn't need to practice his "feel" or his "vision." He needed to synchronize them.
He stepped out of the shower, dried off, and dressed in the standard black Blue Lock tracksuit. While the rest of the team was in the cafeteria, probably trying to force themselves to eat through the tension, Eshan headed back to the field.
The stadium was dark, the blue emergency lights giving the turf a metallic sheen. He walked to the center circle, a single ball waiting for him.
He didn't sprint. He didn't shoot. He just dribbled.
Slow. Precise.
Every touch was a whisper. The ball stayed glued to his boot as if it were an extension of his own nervous system. He wasn't "training." He was recalibrating. He was sharpening .
He knew Nagi and Reo were probably watching from the observation deck. He knew Ego was analyzing his every twitch from the control room.
"Team V," he said to the empty stadium.
He kicked the ball. It didn't have the flashy curve of a Bachira pass or the raw power of a Kunigami shot. It was a straight, clinical strike that hit the bottom corner of the net with a sound like a muffled heartbeat.
"You're already out of time."
He picked up his bag and walked off the pitch. He was done for the night. He didn't need a miracle to beat Team V. He just needed ninety minutes and a ball.