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If you asked anyone who even remotely knew Isagi Yoichi, they’d say he was the complete opposite of what Alphas were supposed to be.
Well, to an extent.
He has his Alpha qualities, there wasn’t a doubt about that. He was very strong-willed, motivated, protective, and ambitious. All very good qualities for your stereotypical Alpha. He didn’t back down from challenges; in fact, he dared any one of his rivals to compete with him on the field. He was also obviously motivated to be the best in any field he stepped into. And who wouldn’t be? This was Blue Lock after all. He was also protective, especially of people he liked. And ambitious? That was practically the Alpha's middle name.
But, true to most people’s words, he did have some… other qualities that made him the complete opposite of what an Alpha should be.
For one, while he wasn’t on the field, he could be considered quite the pacifist. While he always challenged people on the field, the Alpha couldn’t stand to see fights happen in real time. He hated instigators, and his first thought was always to calm down a situation instead of asserting his dominance. People say he’s a whole different person on and off the field, and they would be right.
Another thing, Isagi tended to act ‘too soft’ with the people he liked… whatever that meant. For example, Bachira, Kurona, Hiori— basically anyone whom he saw an ounce of teamwork, he tended to treat more lightly. Like an omega would. He never understood how Alphas could totally embrace the lone wolf act. He never felt like he had to assert his dominance around his friends or push them all away. He was an egoist, yes, but a good person before that. Even if he tended to get competitive while playing.
Isagi was strange in this way, even he knew it. He was strong enough to keep people respecting him, but ‘soft’ enough that people felt comfortable around him. If it wasn’t for his scent, people would constantly mistake Isagi for a Beta. But even then, if you really looked into his scent, then that would lead people down a whole other path of confusion. It was too rough for an Omega and too calming for an Alpha. He smelled of rain, black tea, and cedar wood all at once. And if you genuinely took a chance to appreciate the Alpha's scent? Subtle notes of honeysuckle and something freshly baked, almost like blueberry tarts. An undeniable sweetness.
But hey, as long as it didn’t affect his performance, who cared about all the odd things about his secondary gender? It’s not like being odd was a bad thing, just look at Bachira!
“Yo, Yoichi,” called a voice coming from the front of the locker room.
Isagi and the rest of Bastard München had just finished up a tough practice game against PXG. Despite it being some friendly fire, mostly to settle a dispute between the team’s coaches, it was clear that both teams were absolutely playing to win. And honestly, when weren’t they?
Isagi looked up from where he was staring at the floor while drying his hair. He was sitting on a bench near the lockers, kind of spacing out since nobody else was in the locker room with him. He had just finished bathing while his teammates, Hiori and Kurona, had already left the locker room to rest for the night.
“What do you want, Kaiser?” Isagi sighs, putting down his towel to wipe a hand down his face, dreading this conversation already. Kaiser was never up to any good, and Isagi was well aware of this.
“Well, that’s no way to treat your beloved teammate,” Kaiser beams, smirking as he always was. Despite Isagi’s record of never fighting off the field, Kaiser always looked insanely punchable to the Alpha.
Isagi takes a deep breath and reaches into his bag for a comb, effectively ignoring Kaiser.
Though because the other Alpha in the locker room is never deterred, he keeps on talking. “Yoichi, I have a question for you,” Kaiser says.
Isagi takes out a flimsy comb and starts separating the rest of his hair from his overgrown bangs, only glancing up at the taller man to raise a confused brow. “Uhh… ask away, I guess?”
“You’re an Alpha, right?” Kaiser asks.
Isagi feels his brain cells deteriorating.
“You act so different off the field, it’s almost pathetic. Where does that fiery rage go when the match finally ends?”
Isagi sits there, deadpanned, as Kaiser smirks above him. He’s wearing that stupid, ‘Yeah, I just said that’ look that he always wears, no matter what. But Isagi can give it to him, he did sound… somewhat curious, despite how he went about asking it. Isagi also notices that Kaiser doesn’t have his scent blockers on. Seriously, he’s pretty much spewing his scent of pure confidence and curiosity out with no shame. His natural rose scent is mixed with subtle notes of amber, which actually makes for a nice combination. Yeah, egoist Isagi Yoichi just said that. God forbid he appreciates another Alpha’s scent. Even if that alpha happened to be Michael Kaiser.
“Well, yeah…” Isagi pauses to take a breath. “I am an Alpha. I’ve been one for seventeen years. It’s just that unlike you other Alphas, I tend to not want to be an asshole everywhere I go. But you probably wouldn’t know about that, seeing how you treat poor Ness,” Isagi says, finishing up with his hair and stuffing the comb, along with his other belongings, back into his gym bag.
“I don’t believe it,” Kaiser states, ignoring the Ness comment and instead playing with the ends of his dyed hair. “You have to have… something going on. I don’t know what, but you should get that checked out. Nobody else here can go from a blood-thirsty Alpha while on the field, to a pacifist nobody while off it.”
Isagi’s scent sours, only slightly. The subtle scent of honeysuckle disappears in a flash. It wasn’t quite anger, but more annoyance. He grimaces before taking his bag and standing up, walking towards the door. “Well, I’m sorry that I don’t fit into your sorry stereotype for an Alpha. If you have a problem with how I act, meet me on the field tomorrow,” Isagi throws back at Kaiser, shoving the door open and walking through it.
On the way out, Isagi bumps into Ness, who was scrambling into the locker room at the same time Isagi was leaving. Knowing the Omega, it was probably to find Kaiser. Ness stumbles a few times before finding his balance and running over to Kaiser, who is still standing by the bench Isagi was once at.
“Kaiser! I was looking everywhere for you!” Ness squeals, giving his signature smile to the blonde alpha. The alpha doesn’t return the smile, but turns to acknowledge Ness… at least.
“Go shower, you’re covered in sweat,” Kaiser says, threading a hand through his own hair. He then places a not-so-gentle hand on Ness’s shoulder as he walks past him and towards the door.
Ness nods and hurries to grab his shower essentials from his locker. Anything for Kaiser, obviously.
The next time someone had openly asked about his secondary gender, it had been with Kurona and Hiori. Though this time, it felt more like a casual conversation, rather than whatever the hell the interaction with Kaiser was.
In the Neo Egoist League, the players still had to share a room with other people. This time, though, thankfully, the players were allowed to choose their roommates (as long as they shared the same team.) Hiori was the first to ask to room with Isagi, and Kurona asked to join not long after. Of course, Isagi gladly said yes. They were teammates, yes, but also had grown to be friends. Sharing a room with friends was something Isagi was glad to do.
Currently, Isagi was squeezed onto his twin-sized bed with his two teammates on either side of him. Kurona had just started his ‘heat,’ if you could even call it that. The boys were so loaded up with hormone blockers and all that shit that they didn’t get heats or ruts, but sometimes lingering feelings stayed. Especially the need to nest and be close to people. The extent of an Omega's heat was simply insane clinginess, to say the least.
It started with Kurona asking to lie next to Isagi, just wanting a familiar scent to comfort him. The alpha said yes, of course, because who was he if not making his friends happy? But when Hiori came into the room after dinner and saw them so close, he asked to join them as well. Hiori was a beta, so he realistically didn’t need to join them, but Isagi didn’t have the heart to say no.
So there he was, cuddled up with two of his teammates on his small ass bed. Hiori was lying peacefully on his left while watching YouTube, while his shark-toothed friend was lying on top of his thigh on the right. Kurona’s face was comfortably planted down on Isagi’s thigh, causing it to fall asleep. Isagi yawned, getting comfortable himself. Kurona’s scent was saccharine, and the weight from Hiori was also comforting in its own way.
Kurona looked up at Isagi after about half an hour of comfortable silence. “Isagi, I have a question, question,” Kurona spoke up, turning his head around to stare straight up at Isagi, who in turn turned his head down to meet his gaze.
“Oh sure, what’s up?” Isagi questioned, rubbing his eyes open with one of his hands. He’d slowly been falling asleep. Sue him, he was comfortable.
“Are you sure you’re not an Omega, Omega?” Kurona asks, yanking the blanket covering the three of them further up.
Hiori looks up, laughs to himself, and goes back to his video. Thank god Hiori wasn’t getting involved, Isagi did not need a double trouble moment.
“No, I’m not,” Isagi simply responds.
Kurona examines Isagi’s face, his brows furrowed together in pure confusion. “Your scent… It’s comforting. But not like an Alpha’s. Sometimes you smell like an Omega, Omega.”
Isagi chuckles, feeling beads of sweat form on the back of his neck. “I’m sorry to hear that, should I change my scent blockers then? I’ve had these ones on for a while,” Isagi says. It’s true, he’s had these on since early in the morning, and dinner was not too long ago. Maybe his scent was leaking out more than he thought it was. And maybe, just maybe, his scent wasn’t as comforting to Kurona as he first thought.
Kurona shakes his head, shoving his face back into Isagi’s muscular thigh. “No… I like it. It’s not as crazy or overpowering as other Alphas here. I like it. When we’re this close, you sort of smell… sweet, sweet,” Kurona confirms, voice low and spacey. Isagi can understand why he’s speaking like that. The poor guy’s body was probably fighting those heat suppressants with everything it had. But thanks to modern technology, those chemicals were working at keeping that heat subdued.
“Huh. I get that sometimes, but it’s still strange to hear it,” Isagi responds, already starting to drift off again. It was clear that Kurona’s scent blockers were also wearing off, slowly pulling Isagi into a deep sleep. He almost wished Hiori could smell the lovely scent of matcha, eucalyptus, and pure sugar coming from Kurona.
Isagi forces a single eye open to check on his teammates, only to find out both of them had drifted off, moving closer to Isagi purely by instinct. He was an Alpha, despite what his scent said, so he had the odd urge to protect the omega and beta besides him. They were practically a pack. He tugged both of them closer before closing his eyes once more. This time, they wouldn’t open until the next day.
A few days after Kurona’s ‘heat’ ended, the topic concerning the confusion with Isagi’s secondary gender came up once again. However, this time, it was a full-blown argument that was taking place in the cafeteria.
“Isagi is definitely an Alpha, have you seen him?!” Bachira argues, practically jumping off the walls like that would somehow make people listen to him. “I knew it from the first time I passed him the ball that he was an Alpha!”
Chigri nods his head, swinging his unbraided hair off his shoulder. “Yeah, I agree. During the first selection, he made that obvious.” The ‘‘MOVE IT’ yelled at him mid-game during the first selection played through the redhead's thoughts.
Isagi stared at the crowd that was slowly forming around him in disbelief. His eyebrow twitches uncomfortably, and anytime he tried to calm down the situation he was promptly drowned out by more shouts and yelps.
Surprisingly, Nagi had decided to give his input about the topic. He was fairly far away from the crowd, leaning his weight onto Reo like he was some overgrown dog. Poor Reo, who knew a Beta like him could adopt the overgrown Alpha known as Nagi. The albino peels one eye off of his phone and sits up from where he was leaning onto Reo’s left. “I’ve always thought Isagi was a Beta, kind of like Reo,” he admits before going back to playing on his phone.
“No way! No way!” Bachira shouts again, sticking out his tongue and pointing at Nagi. Nagi doesn’t look up, tapping away while his weight rests on Reo.
Isagi takes a slow bite of his salmon, realizing that no matter what he tried to say, nobody was going to listen to him. They’d probably drop the subject soon anyway. Egoists are egoists, no matter what their secondary gender is. If it weren’t football, the subject probably wouldn’t hold up long. Or so Isagi thought.
“I bet he’s an Omega,” comes a voice from the front entrance to the cafeteria. Everyone’s heads, despite a few loners who haven’t offered their thoughts on the topic, spin around to see where the voice was coming from. Turns out, it was coming from Shidou.
Hiori, who was sitting beside Isagi, puts his chopsticks down and questions Shidou. “Why do you say that?”
Kurona, who was sitting right beside Hiori, gave his teammate a questioning look, almost like they knew what each other was thinking and didn’t have to use words to express it. Isagi thought it was… kind of cool, in its own way. He could only do that stuff while he was on the field.
“Well, first of all, the guy thinks too much…” Shidou starts, pointing at Isagi from across the room with his thumb. His other hand is in his pocket, and the rest of the egoists watch as he walks his way over to Isagi’s table, taking a seat and kicking his feet up on the table.
Isagi’s eye twitches, the urge to make his claim bubbling up to the surface. Sure, maybe during the second selection, that would be true. But nowadays, he’s been letting his ego take control. Maybe he didn’t have as much base instincts and fiery aggression as Shidou, but he’s definitely gotten better at going with the flow of the game.
“You’d think an alpha would rely on their instincts one hundred percent of the time, but off the field this guy stares off into space until someone snaps him out of it!” Shidou proclaims.
Ah. Well, that actually made more sense. He does tend to space out and get lost in his own thoughts. There’s no rush of the game to let Isagi go with the flow when he’s off the field. He likes sitting with his thoughts, sue him!
Bachira and Chigiri both nod. “I mean, there’s also the fight that happened during the second selection…” Chigiri cuts in, causing everyone’s attention to turn to the redheaded Alpha.
Suddenly, Rin, who was sitting by himself a couple of tables away, raises a brow and speaks in a low tone, “those two fought during the second selection?”
Shidou grins like a sly fox, but before he gets the chance to say anything, Bachira speaks. “Yep! It was after the match with Shidou and Reo. Mister I-spent-too-long-in-the-tanning bed swung at Isagi first. Who knows what type of Alpha versus Alpha fight would have happened if we weren’t there.”
Rin coughs out a laugh, but not a genuine one. It’s never a genuine one from that guy. It was in more of a condescending tone that screamed ‘Really? How lukewarm.’ And just like Isagi was thinking, the next words that came out of Rin were, “How lukewarm of you.” It was barely heard, though, as people started talking over each other again in an attempt to prove their points.
Isagi sighs, and Kurona and Hiori notice this. It seems like the Alpha finally decided that he needed to say something. “If you two weren’t there, I would have fought back. While that isn’t my first option, I wouldn’t have sat there and taken it. I’m an Alpha, I can hold my ground!” He shouts, slamming his fist down and effectively shutting everyone up.
Nagi, who had started offering his opinion once again, and Reo, who was promptly dragged into it, were the first to stare at Isagi in silence. Then Rin, then Shidou, then Chigiri, then Kurona, then Hiori, and finally Bachira, who had somehow ended up standing on top of the seats during the whole commotion.
“I just… okay, you know what? Why don’t we just drop it? It’s not like our secondary genders affect our performance here at Blue Lock. So why don’t w—“ Isagi pleads, but is shortly cut off when the big-screen TV that’s on the wall of the cafeteria flicks on.
“Hello, my diamonds in the rough,” Ego greets. Everyone in the cafeteria turns their attention to the big-screen TV, including the people who weren’t crowded around Isagi. “It seems like there’s some uncertainty surrounding the secondary gender of our ace, Isagi Yoichi.”
Rin’s eye twitches after hearing Isagi be called their ace.
The other players who weren’t even a part of the conversation, people like Charles, Niko, Kunigami, Barou, Aiku, Otoya, Kaiser, Ness, and a bunch of other people, squint at the screen. Isagi holds his head in his hands, resisting the urge to bang it into the table until he knocks himself unconscious. Fuck! Why was this such a big deal?!
“So, I propose this: Isagi will go see the physician we have on standby, and then you guys will have paper proof of what Isagi is. I do not want this affecting any performances. Do you understand, you diamonds in the rough?” Ego says, very strongly, despite being a Beta. He’s leaning even closer to the camera than he was before.
There’s a moment of silence. And then two. And then, for good measure, another beat of silence.
Isagi looks around at the rest of the egoist around him, each of them holding their own unique expression. From what Isagi can tell, everyone was thinking different things. Some people… looked almost devious.
“Uhm, Ego, Sir,” Isagi says, scratching his cheek. “Do I… have to share my results?”
Everyone turns to Isagi, and Rin offers the most judgmental look Isagi thinks he’s ever seen from the younger Alpha.
Ego leans back and spins around in his office chair a few times before answering. “Well, do you want your dear friends to keep pestering you about this? Clearly, this will spiral out of control and affect your performance if this continues.”
Isagi gulps. “Well, no, but I just think that—“
“Well then, that’s your answer, you diamond in the rough,” Ego cuts in, glaring at Isagi through the screen like he knew exactly where he was sitting. (Which he probably did, seeing the insane number of cameras that were in the facility.)
Isagi wants to argue, maybe ask a few questions, but the screen promptly turns off after Ahri shouts something about him going to the physician tomorrow morning. Everyone seemed pretty surprised to hear Ahri, as they started looking back and forth at each other.
Well, he guessed that settled it. Isagi would be getting tested again… after going five years since he first presented and had to be tested for the first time. This was blown way out of hand, in the striker’s humble opinion.
Isagi wants to bang his head into the table, as he’s been contemplating doing since this conversation started, but two comforting hands wrapping around him stop his urge to do so.
“So that settles it! We’ll finally know what you really are tomorrow morning,” Bachira squeaks, hanging onto Isagi’s neck and shaking him around. His badly done, but very cute bob, springs around as he shakes both of them. “I’m calling it— Isagi is an Alpha! And if I’m right, you ALL owe me your best side dishes for a week.”
Isagi notes that the last part was fully directed at anyone involved.
Everyone else nods, and Rin offers a huff of his breath. Not quite an agreement, but he was certainly involving himself to an extent.
“Fine, fine, but if he’s an Omega, you guys have to shine my shoes after every single game for a week!” Shidou yells. He’s grinning again. One of those grins that screams pure confidence in himself. Isagi just now notices that he doesn’t have any scent blocker patches on, since he’s literally leaking his scent all over the room. The overwhelming scent of blood orange, musk, and iron overtakes every one of Isagi’s senses. Poor Kurona besides him is probably fighting for his life due to Shidou.
Chigiri laughs, sitting down on the same side of the table as Shidou. He crosses his legs, side eyes Shidou, and simply says, “Fine, you’re on, antenna boy.” The redhead Alpha rips the scent blocker off his neck in one confident motion, letting his scent leak out in a controlled way, unlike Shidou. He smells bougie, like peonies and tart pomegranate.
Ah, Isagi understood it now. They were making this some type of competition. Whoever won relied on what the physician said the next day.
It would obviously be Alpha, so Isagi felt a little bad for the blonde Alpha in front of him.
“Hold on, I want in on this!” Bachira chimes, taking one of his hands off Isagi to raise it into the air. “I think Isagi is an Alpha, and if I’m wrong I’ll… uhm…” Bachira stops mid-sentence, noticing how Shidou and Chigiri were in some sort of staring contest. Everyone else was watching them, waiting to see them duke it out right then and there.
Aiku walks over to their table, and Kaiser and Ness too, surprisingly. And then they just keep coming after that. Soon enough, every single player who even remotely knew Isagi was surrounding his small table. They also started making bets, each one somehow topping the last in its utter ridiculousness.
As it gets even louder and more absurd, Isagi takes it as the perfect chance to slip away. He offers Hiori and Kurona apologetic glances before speed walking out of the cafeteria and into their shared room. The place was starting to give him a headache anyway, with all the alphas ripping off their scent blockers and trying to upstage each other. The few omegas present had started to back off, too— good at them, Isagi thought.
On his way to his bedroom, Isagi pulls on his hair in frustration. Just how the hell did he start this?! Did he even start this?! He was a victim here; that was the only logical explanation he could think of.
Not focusing on the present, Isagi accidentally bumps into a wall. A wall? Wait, no. It was a person. He looks up, only to be met with… Yukimiya?