A phone alarm rings endlessly at dawn, with the early rays of the sun shining through gaps and feintly illuminating the bedroom of one Elric Santori. The bellows from this phone go uninterrupted for nearly 5 minutes, when finally a groggy arm stretches out from beneath the bed sheets and sluggishly turns it off. A brief silence follows, then Elric sits up on the side of his bed, letting out a long-drawn yawn paired with an arm stretch that could reach the heavens. The time is 06:05 on a Thursday morning, and he has to get ready for school. "Oh man," he sighs to himself before continuing, "I think I have a match today as well." High school football matches always happened after school, which meant that Elric had to take at least an hour-long walk around the neighbourhood in the morning before coming back and getting ready to go to school. Elric himself doesn't have much of a logical explanation for this. It's always felt right for him to do that, and that's always been enough for him.

  After brushing his teeth and changing into a grey tracksuit, he walks out of his empty house and is greeted by blotted sunrays on the ground. Seems like it's a partly cloudy morning. The houses on Lonehill Drive were as quiet as ever, which suited him just fine. Elric juggles between a brisk walking pace and a lax stroll at irregular intervals, with not much of anything, yet a whole bunch of everything happening all at once in his head. Time moves slowly, yet he finds himself atop the hill overlooking the neighbourhood. A flat and barren patch of land with dead weeds and grass is all that's up there, with the scene broken up by a single boulder with a flat top that serves as Elric's throne of sorts. Up here, he's somewhat at peace. Unbothered and unbound. As he just stares over the endless houses below, his phone vibrates in his pocket. A new message from Kainé, his childhood friend:

  Heey! Good luck with your match today :)

  Elric starts typing but is interrupted by another message of hers saying: Btw, you better not be late for school!! >.< Also, my dad said you can join us for dinner tonight (He's lowkey insisting.)

  That bit about not being late irked him somewhat, but deep down, he still appreciated her message, replying: thanks. I'll let you know how it goes.

  After a few minutes, Elric made his way back home to get ready. His walk this morning took a bit longer than usual, but that didn't bother him. As he walked into the yard, he thought to himself, "A perk that comes with living by myself is that I don't have to explain myself. Any other house, and I'd be getting my head blown off for this." He takes a quick shower and lazily puts on his school uniform. He grabs his sling backpack and loosely puts it over his shoulder, locks the front door, and starts making his way to the nearest train station, which is only a 10-minute walk away. The train takes him to Lagarde, a district on a smaller island where Lagarde High School, the school he goes to, is. He always walks past a bus stop that's even closer to his house and would take him straight there, but he prefers not to. He likes the slightly longer trip on the train. The view of the river that separates one island of Lalezar from the other gives him a surreal sense of peace. As he sat down by a window seat this morning, the clouds gave way to the sun in its full glory. That annoyed him a bit.

  He disembarks at Lagarde Train Station and walks a short distance to the school. It's around 09:07, which means he's over 40 minutes late. Elric knows he's missed his entire registration period and that his first period of lessons just started mere moments ago. As he arrives at the school gates, he's greeted by the grimace of Vice Principal Vivaldi. A towering man, his scowl grows even darker when he sees Elric approaching the school so casually.

  "So happy you could grace us with your presence, Santori." Elric looks at him and proceeds to say bluntly, "Sorry. The train ran a bit late this morning." Vivaldi's face loosens a bit, but the disdain, along with some pensive thoughts, still lingers around his eyes. "Funny how this always happens whenever you have a match later in the day. Any thoughts about that?" Elric, for some odd reason, is always taken aback whenever he's shown that people pay attention to how he lives his everyday life. "Sir, if I had an explanation for it, I would've told you by now." He always had an odd way of surrendering to a brewing disagreement while still maintaining his silent yet stern demeanour.

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  Vivaldi keeps looking at him and finally breaks the silence, "... Alright. Instead of this afternoon, I'll schedule your detention for tomorrow. Are we clear?" Friday detention is hell, but at this point, Elric had no leg to stand on. "Yes, sir. Can I go now? I'm kinda late for my Chemistry class. Unless you'll escort me there?" "I'd say you're lying again, but your marks are surprisingly above average, so your lukewarm urgency might have some legitimacy to it." With an exasperated acceptance, Vivaldi walks Elric to his current class. Abandoning his 'post,' El can't help but feel like he was the last person to arrive at school and that Viv was waiting for him specifically. He quickly got rid of that thought as they reached the lab. All eyes fell on him and the Vice Principal, with almost a wordless understanding befalling him and Mrs Alba, the Chemistry teacher. Elric silently made his way to the back of the lab where his seat was and went about the lesson with no further complications.

  The school day comes to an end with no odd occurrences for Elric. Throughout multiple lessons in the day, he heard a few whispers and talks about the football match today: Lagarde High School vs Dresden Prepatory School. Elric didn't know much about them, and from the speculation he'd heard, both teams were evenly matched on paper. Coach Ingel had given some of the team members individual 'homework' for who they were most likely going to face in a 1v1. Elric found this a bit counterintuitive since most high school teams employ heavy squad rotation, and there's barely much info about players out there unless they're an attacking wonderkid. That's just the nature of football and how fame spreads, especially at the high school/youth levels. All of that aside, Elric ends his final class and makes his way to his book locker. The sports bag that has his boots and the rest of his kit lives in there with all his work and textbooks. After switching out his sports bag with his sling book bag, Elric goes to the sports locker room by the football pitch where all his teammates have probably already started their warm-up routines before the tactics meeting. This afternoon's fixture was a home game, so Dresden Prep was making their way to Lagarde High.

  Elric is a few minutes late as he sees the team running laps around the pitch. He slips into his warm-up kit and joins the group by quickly matching their pace and slowing down to a comfortable jog just behind the pack. A booming voice is heard towards the front, which El recognises to be Baumgartner. Liam Baumgartner is the team's striker, and his playing style is a throwback to the traditional Number 9: Big body, imposing, good at aerial battles and a bit of a mean streak in him. Elric despises him since he barely does anything when he's not being fed passes or crosses that are super obvious and robotic. His finishing isn't great either, but oddly enough, he's one of Coach Ingel's favourites. In terms of overall ability, a good amount of the team knows that Elric is far above everyone. This is mostly why he gets away with his tardiness and, on the surface, his lax playing style since he always delivers when it matters most. On the flipside, Ingel is a fan of the 'workhorse' type of midfielder but can't necessarily disregard El's prodigious ability. As such, a somewhat difficult dynamic formed. Ingel always plays a formation that severely limits El's strengths and highlights his 'weaknesses' in comparison to the musclehead midfielders that just work hard to hold on to a scoreline instead of changing it in the team's favour.

  The stands around the pitch slowly start to fill up with spectators as the match time draws near. A faraway bus is seen pulling into the property, which signals the arrival of the opposing team. Ingel ended the warm-up session and led the Lagarde team into the locker room to talk tactics. "Alright boys, this is how we're going about it today. We're playing a-"

  "5-4-1 low block formation," Elric said to himself. "It's the same thing every time. Overload our box with the backline, the midfield condenses and keeps it compact in front of them. Allow the opposing team to have the flanks while we deal with their crosses and passes into the box, then hope we can counter and get Baumgartner to score." Lo and behold, Ingel said that verbatim long after El had recited it to himself. Looking at the whiteboard, Ingel keeps repeating the same thing as Elric drifts in and out of focus. "Keep your discipline... Communicate... Track runners..." it's always the same. Then he sums it up by emphasising that they should focus the attack efforts through Liam, making sure to give him the ball in the most ideal way possible. At this remark, Liam and Ingel shoot a glance at Elric, at which point all the other teammates squirm a bit at the tension amongst the three. "Don't worry," Elric starts, "I'll play nice." Once all of that was said and done, the team switched into their proper match kits since kick-off was a few minutes away. They had one last huddle where Liam barked some final orders, Elric couldn't care less, and they marched out into the tunnel where Dresden Prep's team was already standing in wait.

  Elric wasn't going to play nice. In fact, this match goes a way that even he couldn't predict after having such a normal day.