Chapter Text
Ego Jinpachi lazed in his office chair, absentmindedly scrolling through football videos on YouTube. Doing so was not part of his job description, but he deeply enjoyed forgoing his job for mindless brain rot. The JFU didn’t pay him anywhere near enough to care about their useless projects, so he spent a fourth of his time half-assing their tasks and the rest kicking back in his chair and watching football matches almost religiously. If he were a religious man. But he wasn’t, and so, he watched them as if he was helplessly and hopelessly addicted, and they were his lifeline.
Nonetheless, watching such videos for hours on end did make him bored and subsequently dread his job for its sheer lackluster nature. He was just about to slip into the dark embrace of sleep when the loading screen of YouTube finally disappeared and showed him the next video he clicked on and the suggested videos’ thumbnails on the side.
A spark of interest coursed through him as he saw a rather plain-looking black screen thumbnail with an equally dull title to match. It had very few views and likes, probably due to the horrible marketing, but Jinpachi had always liked to watch new YouTubers start out, if only to make fun of them. He hovered over the video, seeing the rest of the video was similarly black-screened, and sighed. Clicking on the video, he read the title and the username. ‘Analyzing Noel Noa’s Match Against FC Barcha’ by FootballAnalyst11. It was so cringe that Jinpachi almost wanted to click off.
A youthful Japanese male voice filtered raspily through the speakers. Jinpachi made a face at the low quality audio. However, he ignored the grating texture on his ears and paid attention to the analysis. Rudimentary stick figures and sketches of his plans filled the blackboard, and Jinpachi found he couldn’t tear his eyes away from the screen. It was clearly amateur and rough, but Jinpachi could sense great potential there; there was untapped, unpolished talent in this boy surely. As he spoke almost hesitantly about his analysis, he was explaining things each player on both teams did right and things they could improve upon. The analyst had things to work on, especially articulating more clearly what he was thinking, but Jinpachi could sense that his brain knew far more than his mouth could convey.
He leaned back after the video finished with a cheerful, meek little ‘thanks!’ and stared at the ceiling. With a thoughtful hum, he twirled his pen in his hand and clicked on the channel. That was his first video and the channel only had one other video. That one seemed to be a shorter one about Noel Noa’s match against England. That was also something he had noticed—the kid was a huge fan of Noel Noa. His section on the French player’s skills was long and overly full of praise and lacking any criticism. He sounded rather preachy and fanatic during those few minutes, so much so that Jinpachi had skipped forward a few minutes and still missed none of the important points.
After watching the other video, he was sure that the kid had some talent and was just wasting it with his horrible thumbnails, boring content, and frantic, unorganized speech. Mind made up, Jinpachi peered over his office wall to his secretary, Anri.
“Anri-chan, I’m sending a YouTube channel over to you. Figure out who’s the kid behind it.”
His secretary gave him a disapproving look, halting in her studious typing to give him an even more serious frown. “Ego-san, have you been watching videos instead of working again? You know I can’t keep covering for you so much.”
Jinpachi gave her a dismissive wave and pulled up her email address to send her a link to the channel. “It’s your job. You agreed to this arrangement. Email sent—find at least a name.”
Anri sighed, having no argument against that because she really had agreed to cover his ass when she pleaded with him to work for the JFU with her. Until she could convince the higher ups to let them work on her dream project, she would have to suffer with almost two times the work so that Ego wouldn’t run off. She truly believed Ego would be the only one capable of making Blue Lock a reality, so to see Japan win the World Cup… she would make this work somehow.
She pulled up the channel and worked her magic, blanching when she realized that the email attached to the channel was the boy’s actual email and contained his name and address easily accessible. She wasted no time in sending the kid a quick email to warn him that he should fix that before someone more unsavory contacted him. Although, she thought, glancing at Ego, who was watching the poor kid’s video yet again with an oddly wide grin on his face, it might be too late.
She sent an email back to Ego with the YouTuber’s details and made a quick wish that Isagi Yoichi would be ok, even with Ego’s attention on him.
———————
Ego fingered the corner of the paper he had printed out that listed all the details Anri could dig up about Isagi Yoichi. 11 years old, in a small neighborhood football club, and a striker, thankfully… Well, he was younger than Jinpachi had thought.
Without any further ado, he walked up the stairs of a quaint house in the Saitama prefecture and rang the doorbell.
Luckily for him, instead of his parents answering the door, Isagi Yoichi himself hesitantly peeked out the small crack of the open doorway. When they met eyes, Jinpachi saw his confusion and apprehension clear in his sharp blue eyes.
Jinpachi smiled widely at the kid and pushed up his glasses, not even bothering to try to be a bit less creepy for the benefit of the kid’s anxiety. The kid fidgeted, slowly making the crack in the doorway less wide in an attempt to separate himself from the strange man. Jinpachi simply grinned and handed him a piece of paper with his formal offer.
“Isagi Yoichi, how would you like to be the best striker in the world?”