You've known Yoichi all your life.

You've grown together, sharing toys and childish adventures in the playground while you played in the mud and invented stories made out of children's dreams. He played football and you've cheered him on whenever he scored a goal. Shared scraped knees and umbrellas during rainy days, and he'd give you a piggyback ride back home after school when you were too tired to walk yourself.

Shared things between hushed whispers only meant for both of you and soon enough, the childhood starry-eyed look turned into quiet yearning, with longing stares through the hallways of school and shy brushes of the back of your hands under the tables.

Before you hit high school, you both shared your first kiss, and the friendship that had been shared for more than a decade between you both wove the strings for you to start a relationship. Knowing each other for all your lives had only made it easier, knowing someone so deeply and so intimately.

He was everything you've ever wanted in someone, and you were everything he wanted to cherish and hold forever. You've been in love with each other forever.

Until Blue Lock happened to him.

It started slow, but the changes started to be too obvious to be ignored. And Yoichi, while still looking like the boy who had held your hand during countless of nights and laughed along you, was not there anymore. It was as if he had changed overnight, a shell of someone you used to know.

The boy you loved, once sweet, turned bitter while away from you. And he wasn't coming back.