The end of the world was Blue Lock’s beginning in hindsight: the U-20 Japan VS Blue Lock match was a new horizon when it came to Japanese football. Everyone was looking forward from the precipice, unaware of the cliff below.

Nagi received the message on the third day of rest. Stay inside, it had said, virus affecting both living and dead tissue mutated, and Nagi didn’t have a problem with isolating all day either way, so it was fine.

By Sunday, the world had already gone to bloodshed. He distinctly remembered your words when you pulled up to his house in a car that was distinctly not the usual Ba-ya driven limousine, and you told him urgently to get in. Nagi found himself swept away by your request for the second time. The first was professional football. The second was this—the decision that, as he looked at the sudden surge in cases near Hakuho and his apartment system later, he realized was likely the reason for his survival. Nagi was still worried, though…

Your parents were billionaires—even in a lawless world, money was still a substitute for blood—so you and Nagi got by in a military camp. Then that one was raided, and then the next had cases of the virus, and the next was unsecured, and—and, then, the carrier truck you both were in swerved, crashed, and killed the driver. So it was just you two.

But that was what Nagi thought was their natural state. It was always just you two in the end. Even in Armageddon.

An eighteen-year-old Nagi was slumped on a storage case. The abandoned stocking warehouse they found, thank God, it still had functioning electricity somehow; it was likely an outpost flooded out days earlier judging by the bloodstains on the ground. He was playing an offline game on his beaten-up phone. You were looking around.

“Hey, hey, Reo,” Nagi said, trying to attract your attention. His dark eyes never looked up from his phone, “Can we stay in this place a little longer? It’s getting pretty late.”

Nagi asked this question invariably, almost every time they recuperated.