Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Chapter One: The Space Without Reo

Nagi hated how empty everything felt without him. The soccer field, the locker room, even his dorm—everywhere he went, Reo’s absence pressed down like a weight on his chest.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this. Reo was supposed to cheer him on, scold him when he slacked off (though Reo would never), and drag him into things he was too lazy to care about. Reo was supposed to stay.

But instead, he walked away. He blocked Nagi out. He pretended like their bond—their whole world together—meant nothing.

Nagi clenched his phone in his hand, staring at the unanswered messages stacked one after another.
“Reo…” he whispered. His throat felt tight. “You’re mine, you know. You always have been. You just… forgot.”

It didn’t matter if Reo was angry. It didn’t matter if Reo pushed him away. Nagi loved him, more than anyone else ever could. More than anyone else ever would.

And Nagi wasn’t going to lose him.

Not to Blue Lock. Not to soccer. Not to anyone.

If Reo wouldn’t come back on his own… then Nagi would just have to go and bring him back.

A faint smile tugged lazily at his lips, the kind of soft, dreamy smile that would have looked romantic—if not for the bloodlust (CREATOR: "hate that word") in his eyes.
“I’m coming to get you, Reo. And this time…I’m never letting you go again.”

But it wasn’t that simple.

Blue Lock wasn’t just a soccer program—it was almost a fortress. A sealed world where only the chosen could enter, with Ego and Anri always on guard, codes, schedules, eyes everywhere. Ego’s eyes and Anri’s eyes. They were always watching, always tracking, never allowing cracks in their perfect system.

For anyone else, it would have been impossible. A waste of time. A hassle.

But Nagi wasn’t anyone else.

Days began to pass in a blur. He stopped caring about practice. He stopped answering texts (he barely did in the first place). The club that had taken him in couldn’t hold his attention for more than minutes at a time. Because when he wasn’t sleeping, he was thinking of Reo. When he wasn’t thinking of Reo, he was planning how to reach him.

Nagi—the boy who once thought everything was too much effort—found himself hunched over notebooks, scribbling messy lists at three in the morning.

Ways In

• Staff entry points (hard, cameras everywhere)

• Food suppliers? Deliveries? Need disguise.

• Bribe someone? Who’s cheap/desperate enough?

• Break a camera loop (need equipment).

Money

• Prize money from club matches. Not enough.

• Sell gear? (Don’t care.)

• Maybe steal?

• The saving Reo trusted him to take care of? (Don't want precious mad at me)

Reo’s Location

• Dorm wing = secured.

• Training grounds = constant surveillance.

• Matches or locker rooms? Best chance.

Each page bled with his lazy handwriting, some lines scratched over, others circled three times. He tore out pages when he didn’t like the shape of the plan, crumpling them in his fist before throwing them aside. The floor around his bed was littered with paper.

It wasn’t a hassle anymore. It was necessity.

Every thought tightened the knot inside his chest, pulling him closer to one truth: Reo was there, trapped behind those walls, waiting for him to come. Maybe Reo didn’t know it yet. Maybe Reo had forgotten. But Nagi hadn’t.

And he wouldn’t.

One night, staring at a messy sketch of the facility gates, Nagi felt a strange calm spread through him. His pen hovered over the page as he whispered to himself:

“Don’t worry, Reo. I’ll find a way in. No matter what it takes.”

To anyone else, the pages around him would have looked unhinged—lists of bribes, smuggled keys, disguises, and desperate schemes all piled on top of each other. But to Nagi, they were proof of love. Proof he was willing to work harder than he ever had in his life, just for Reo.

Ego and Anri thought they were protecting their players. They thought they were keeping Reo safe inside that prison they called Blue Lock. But they didn’t understand. They couldn’t.

Only Nagi could keep Reo safe. Only Nagi loved him enough to fight for him.

His pale eyes softened, and his lips curved into a dreamy smile as he laid the pen down. In his mind, he wasn’t a stalker, or an intruder, or a threat. He was a saviour. The only one who could pull Reo out of the cage they’d locked him in.

“I’ll save you, Reo,” he whispered into the quiet, his voice tender with devotion.
“You just don’t know it yet.”

Chapter Two: Collecting the Debt

Nagi didn’t need anyone to tell him where to start. Reo’s sadness didn’t come from Blue Lock—it had been there long before that. It had been planted, watered, and grown in the sterile halls of his family’s mansion, in the cold, calculating way his parents had dragged him into the Mikage business.

And Nagi wasn’t going to let that continue. Not if he could do something about it.

He found himself standing outside their estate in the early evening, the sky bruised purple, blue and red with sunset. From the outside, it looked calm, elegant, untouchable. But Nagi didn’t see elegance. He saw the bars around HIS Reo’s life, the golden cage they’d built, and the cruelty hidden behind polite smiles.

His hand rested against the gate. He could have just called, emailed, sent a warning—but that wasn’t Nagi’s way. He wanted to feel the power, the control. He wanted them to know that someone cared enough about Reo to fight back.

Inside, he imagined Reo, tense and withdrawn, doing everything they demanded. Nagi’s chest ached. This wasn’t fair. Reo didn’t deserve their chains. Reo didn’t deserve a life he didn’t choose.

He took a deep breath, almost trembling with a mix of anger and devotion.
“You’re going to pay for this,” he murmured under his breath. “Not for me… for him.”

Nagi didn’t think of it as revenge. He thought of it as justice. He wasn’t threatening them for fun. He wasn’t acting out of cruelty. He was saving Reo, showing the people who trapped him that he wasn’t alone. That someone loved him enough to fight for him.

He imagined the look on Reo’s face when he finally walked in and forced them to understand: relief, surprise… maybe even gratitude. Reo would understand. He had to.

And Nagi’s lips curved into a small, almost tender smile. In his mind, the risk didn’t matter. The danger didn’t matter. Because nothing—nothing—was more important than Reo.

“I’ll fix this,” Nagi whispered. “I’ll make them pay… and you’ll be free. I promise, Reo.”

The air around him felt heavy, quiet, and yet alive with possibilities. Nagi’s heart pounded, not from fear, but from the certainty of purpose. In his mind, he was a hero. A saviour. And nothing would stop him.

He lingered at the edge of the estate, staring at the grand façade bathed in the dying light. Each window seemed to him like a pair of eyes—watching, judging, smugly satisfied with the control they held over Reo. Nagi’s jaw tightened.

He could almost hear the faint echo of Reo’s laughter from years ago, playful, carefree, before the golden bars had been locked around him. That sound hit him like a hammer. It wasn’t just memory. It was proof. Proof that Reo didn’t belong here, didn’t belong under their commands. And someone had to make them see that.

Nagi crouched near a hedge, scanning the perimeter like a predator. He wasn’t a predator, not really. He was a rescuer. A hero. That was what mattered. If anyone asked, he was here to free Reo, to tear the strings from those greedy hands and give Reo a choice. A real choice.

Hours passed—or maybe minutes. Time had no meaning in the haze of obsession. He traced the lines of the driveway, imagining all the ways he could confront them. A simple conversation? No. That would let them believe they could intimidate him. Letters? Impersonal, weak. No. He needed their attention, their fear, their acknowledgment of the wrongs they’d done.

He started jotting notes in his small notebook, a new page with a fresh list:

How to Make Them Pay

• Expose financial secrets? Too visible, dangerous.

• Threaten reputation? Too subtle, might backfire.

• Scare them enough to understand Reo’s suffering? no, they deserve worse.

• Show them Nagi will stop at nothing? Absolutely.

• KILL THEM! anything for precious.

Each bullet point felt like a promise. Not a threat, not cruelty—just… love. Love so fierce it demanded action. Love that would carry him through anything.

He imagined walking through the grand hallways, speaking in calm, soft tones while his words cut sharp as knives. He imagined them flinching, eyes wide, realizing that the boy they thought insignificant could do whatever he pleased if Reo’s well-being was on the line.

Nagi’s thoughts drifted to Reo again, imagining him quietly relieved, maybe proud, maybe even a little awed at how far Nagi would go for him. That was all that mattered: that Reo knew, truly knew, how deeply he was loved. Every other consequence, every law, every human decency—none of it mattered. Because Reo’s freedom was worth any cost.

He sank to the edge of the hedge, tucking his notebook into his hoodie. The estate was silent now, the night pressing down like a weighted blanket. Nagi’s heartbeat slowed, but not in fear. Calm. Purposeful. Determined. He whispered into the dark, almost like a prayer, though it was for no god but Reo... his new god.

“They think they own you. They think they can dictate your life. But I see it. I see you. And I… I’ll fix it. I’ll fix them. I’ll fix everything.”

His hand pressed against the iron gate, imagining the feeling of tearing it down, of pushing through every obstacle. Of standing in the hallway, voice low, eyes soft but unyielding, telling them exactly what they had done wrong. The thought made his chest ache in a way that was painful but beautiful—a sacrifice, a devotion, a test of love.

Nagi leaned back against the cold metal, letting the shadows cover him. The wind stirred faintly, whispering against the trees, carrying with it the memory of Reo’s laughter, the taste of all the words he had left unsaid. He clenched his fists.

“They’re hurting you. They don’t see you. But I do. I didn't before but I do now. And I always will. And if I have to burn everything down, if I have to break every rule, cross every line… it doesn’t matter. Because you’re mine, Reo. And I’ll save you from them.”

A smile curved his lips, soft, dreamy, but his eyes gleamed with an intensity that bordered on madness. In his mind, he wasn’t dangerous. He wasn’t obsessive. He was a saviour. The only one who could truly love Reo enough to save him.

The estate remained silent. The gates loomed like walls between him and the boy he loved. And yet, in the hush of night, Nagi’s heart swelled with certainty. The plan would work. It had to. He would find a way. He would tear Reo free, even if it broke the world around him.

And in the back of his mind, buried beneath the obsession and the plotting, a whisper of something softer lingered:

“Reo… I’ll save you. You just have to wait for me.”

He rose from the hedge, brushing leaves from his hoodie, and vanished into the shadows, the notebook clutched tightly against his chest, every step echoing the promise he had made—and would keep—no matter what it took.

Chapter Three — The Notebook of a Saviour

The notebook sat on his knees like a small, heavy thing that held the world. Nagi turned the page with careful fingers and watched the ink breathe under the lamplight. He had written the line the morning before—Parents… taken care of.—and underlined it twice as if ink could make a fact truer. The world had not thundered, no choir had sung; instead the estate folded quietly into its own hush and the public moved on. That was exactly how he wanted it. Quiet made things easier to shape.

He flipped through older pages: scrawled diagrams of gates, half-formed names of people who might be helpful, doodles of Reo’s face in the margins. He had become a cartographer of other people’s lives, mapping the edges of a life he wanted to redraw. Each note was a small prayer. Each crossed-out idea a confession of impulse tamed into method.

Nagi clicked his pen and made a new header: Blue Lock — Next Moves. He didn’t write instructions. He wrote intentions. That was important to him; there was a difference between a blueprint of how to break something and a map of how to be where someone was. He believed in artful ambiguity — enough to steer events without having his hands visibly stain the moment they did.

He wrote, in a tidy, deliberate hand:

• Learn staff rhythms.

• Find soft point of contact (people who move between worlds).

• Make presence plausible without official approval.

• Get Reo alone—safely, calmly, for a talk.

• Keep everything signed, written, guarded. Trust is fragile.

Beneath the list, he drew a small heart and shaded it in twice, the childishness a secret ritual that made the cold things feel warm. He read the list over, tasting each word. The words steadied him. They were his vows, and every vow invested him a little deeper into a life that would now have consequences he could no longer pretend to avoid.

Outside his window Blue Lock’s lights were small, persistent beacons. He could have watched them all night. He had, more than once, sat a block away and watched the entrance, counting the people who came and went—coaches with clipped strides, delivery trucks that moved like clockwork, students who laughed too loud to be completely hardened. He watched and catalogued like someone learning a language. Rhythm taught you where to fit a foreign word.

Nagi never fooled himself into thinking he could simply walk up and sign a volunteer form. Ego and Anri’s program was a sealed design; it did not accept earnest offers from strangers and last time Nagi begged to be taken back into blue lock they threatened to call the police on him. He had learned that quickly. So he pivoted. If the front door was closed, he would slip in through the space between the bricks—the errands, the deliveries, the peripheral jobs that everyone assumed were anonymous and dull. He told himself it was craft, not theft: getting where you needed to be by reading the seams of a system and stepping through the cracks others ignored.

There were people he could speak to—vendors who left delivery slips in the evening, a maintenance man who always smoked by the east gate, the driver who ferried equipment and never asked questions. He thought of them as the loose threads of a tapestry, easy enough to tug when you knew which way to pull. But he also knew the danger of being crude. He wanted finesse: a presence on the periphery that felt natural, a story he could tell that made his presence reasonable.

He imagined a dozen approaches and crossed them out, not because they wouldn’t work but because they felt theatrical. Nagi wanted his work to be invisible. A gentle hand that rearranged furniture while guests thought the room had always been this way. His mind wrapped around the idea like a lover—soft, sure, and possessive.

Reo’s quiet face haunted him more than the mechanics of entry. He would picture the boy in a training shirt, hair damp, jaw working the way it did when he was trying to push a thought down. He remembered Reo’s offhand comments—small, bitter fragments about obligations and the weight of decisions. For Nagi, those fragments were gospel. Six months could be a lifetime when you set your attention like a magnifying glass on one small fire. He had watched the spark, fed it until it roared.

The notebook became a running narrative that night. He didn’t only list tactical notes; he wrote the contours of the moral universe that justified everything he had done and would do. He wrote, in a voice half-thrilled and half-scared, a little manifesto of devotion:

You asked to play. They built contracts around you. I will return you to a field you choose. I will be the quiet hand that cuts the rope. If the world must burn for this to be gentle, then burn it quietly.

He underlined quietly until the paper shivered.

Instead of volunteering, Nagi cultivated plausible pretexts that didn’t require approval from Anri or Ego. He paid cash for information, left envelopes in plain sight, and met people who could move between the clean, bright world of Blue Lock and the dull, invisible world of its suppliers. He attended public matches and ancillary events where the staff relaxed and guards slipped off, and he learned the peripheral choreography: who took smoke breaks where, which truck idled longest, which gate had the oldest hinge.

He did not write the “how-to” of wrongdoing in his notebook. He wrote faces and moods and the rhythm of days: driver—tired; receptionist—insomniac; laundry room—loud radio at 3pm. Those notes were human details, not instructions. They were the map of the people around Reo, the ones whose small habits opened doors without anyone ever blaming a single soul.

He also kept lists of neutral, believable reasons for being near Blue Lock: catching a late match, checking out a youth seminar, delivering equipment for a local youth league. The language was intentionally bland—things anyone could say without raising eyebrows. He practiced the lines until they felt like truth. Lying felt too loud; arranging the truth felt like art.

He built a reputation not as a volunteer but as an incidental presence: a spectator who cared a little too much, a parent of a kid in a distant academy, an unremarkable figure who could be politely ignored. That invisibility was his greatest ally. People who aren’t suspected don’t get checked. People who don’t demand attention are simply facts in the background.

On other nights, he would leave small envelopes for the people who worked the edges—the ones who handled laundry, the catering assistants, the truck drivers. He did not keep receipts; he kept faces. He paid attention to mannerisms and small kindnesses. He did not force loyalty with threats; he purchased quiet gratitude, the sort that made a man glance the other way out of curiosity rather than conviction. In his head, it was an economy between humans and favours, and he was the one who could afford to invest in Reo’s freedom.

Nagi also began to catalogue vulnerabilities the way a gardener might catalogue plants—what needed light, what needed pruning. Not people as objects, but relationships as living things he could tend. Reo’s isolation was the central plant; around it grew vines he could nudge. A team captain who remembered a kindness, a laundry attendant who loved gossip, a receptionist who was bored at night—each became a node on the map.

The notebook preserved ritual. He kept a small calendar and marked the days with tiny checkmarks: envelopes left, a question asked at a canteen, the time a truck arrived. When things went right he drew tiny stars. When things veered unexpectedly, a black square. These marks let him measure a progress that was invisible to everyone else.

He was careful, but not because he feared being discovered—at least not primarily. He was careful because discovery would mean Reo’s life would be entangled in public, in interviews and investigations and pity. That would not be protection; that would be violence. In his head, the saviour could not be ruthless in the eyes of the one saved. The narrative had to remain clean. He had to remain clean.

Late at night, he wrote fantasies in the notebook that he would never show anyone. They were small, intimate scenes that imagined the aftermath of everything he did: Reo in a small apartment with sunlight on the floorboards, playing a quiet playlist as he learned to cook simple things; Reo laughing at a silly movie Nagi had chosen; Reo leaning against him and saying, half asleep, thank you. These were the prayers that hardened into resolve. They were his proof that the work was not monstrous but merciful.

There were moments of doubt, though. He would sometimes lie awake and imagine Reo’s face when the truth arrived. Would gratitude bloom? Or sting? Would Reo's quiet retreat into himself shutter completely if he discovered the scaffolding of his new life was built with secrets? Nagi allowed the question, examined it, then folded it away. He had rehearsed answers a hundred times: I did it to keep you safe. That argument must be unassailable. He would practice the cadence of apology until it sounded like absolution.

Then there were the practical, relentless steps of everyday guardianship—paperwork, accounts, trustees. He became a ghost inside those corridors, a name that appeared at the edges of forms. He filled out forms with a trembling hand and signed where his signature would look like kindness and prudence. He sat in meetings once, with estate managers whose eyebrows arched as if smelling something strange, and spoke with the voice of someone who had known pain and wanted only the best. He learned the tempo of bureaucracy and used it. Time was his ally; the slower things moved, the less anyone could parse the cause from the effect.

At times he worried less about being found guilty of wrongdoing than about being found unworthy of Reo’s trust. That fear tasted like acid. He wanted the boy to believe in him afterward, to understand that what he had done was not selfish but sacrificial. He wanted to be loved back. That hunger was the cruellest thing he kept in the book, a written plea that read like devotion and read like demand: Let him see me for what I was trying to be.

One page was dedicated entirely to contingencies—if Reo left, if Reo wanted the accounts open, if someone questioned transfers. These were not instructions on wrongdoing; they were emergency scripts for a man who had placed his entire moral economy on a single act. Practice made performance into truth. He rehearsed apologetic lines, carefully constructed explanations that positioned him as protector, never author. He crafted a story where the ugly edge of his deeds would be palatable to a hurt boy.

Still, he never lost the tenderness. The notebook preserved tiny, absurd acts: a list of Reo’s favourite teas, a sketch of the way he held a spoon, the titles of songs he hummed under his breath. They were relics of intimacy, proof that his obsession was actually careful love. He kept them like vows.

And when the day came that mattered—the day he finally arranged to be at the edge of where Reo’s world frayed—Nagi felt a calm so deep it was almost prayer. He had planned not the mechanics of violence but the choreography of presence: an encounter in a corridor under the pretence of friendly concern, an offer to walk Reo partway to a training ground under the guise of discussing a match, a casual conversation that could become confession if the angle was right. He plotted access, not spectacle. He wanted a conversation, a soft evacuation from obligation, not drama.

He placed the notebook in his jacket pocket and folded his fingers over it like a talisman. The pages were warm from his hands, saturated with ink and intent. He told himself, again and again, the same words he had been telling since the first night: I saved you. You will thank me. You will be free.

As he walked toward Blue Lock his steps were small and measured. The night air compressed around him, and the lamps lined the way like a quiet audience. He moved with the obstinate grace of a man who had rewritten his life to be the instrument of someone else’s. He believed what he had written. Belief, in the end, was what made everything possible.

On the edge of the gates he paused. He pressed his palm against the leather of the notebook and let the shape of it rest against his heart. He had kept a ledger of everything and crossed some things off with a thin, precise line. He had done the terrible and the tender and called both by the same name. He had ordered the world so that one small boy might have room to breathe.

He looked toward the lit windows where Reo might be, somewhere inside the maw of rules he had promised to unmake. Nagi smiled, and the smile was soft and faint and dangerous in a way that made him feel very much like a saint.

“Soon,” he whispered to the empty night, and the notebook, and the boy who slept behind walls. “Soon, Reo. I’ll show you why I did it. I’ll show you how I love you.”