If he hadn’t encountered soccer, what will he be doing: “Probably living a normal, happy life. My personality might not have been like this.” The one line that killed me in Sae’s EGOIST BIBLE section. warning; reader wears glasses at night in this
“…I’m sorry.”
The words leave his mouth evenly, without tremor, without visible strain, but they do not come easily. They never do. Sae Itoshi does not apologize unless the situation has been evaluated, dissected, and deemed worthy of those two syllables. He doesn’t throw them around. He doesn’t soften moments with them. He doesn’t use them to make himself more likable. If anything, he avoids them entirely.
How many times has he ever said that in his life?
He could probably count them on one hand. And if he counted carefully, honestly, they would all trace back to you.
On the screen, your phone is propped up against the bathroom mirror, angled slightly too low so he sees more of your collarbone and the bright light above you than your full face. You’re adjusting the glasses you only wear at night, pushing them up the bridge of your nose, then tilting your head as if trying to decide whether they sit straight. Your fingers hover there for a moment before you pull them off again and wipe at the lenses with the edge of your sleeve.
“I know,” you reply quietly.
There’s no bite in your tone. No pointed emphasis. No subtle dig meant to make him feel worse. Just acceptance.
It would almost be easier if you were angry.
He watches the reflection of you in the mirror rather than you directly, noticing details he has no right to remember so clearly— the faint crease between your brows when you’re concentrating, the way you chew the inside of your cheek when you’re thinking, the slight smudge of gloss you must’ve reapplied after dinner.
He remembers the first time he saw those glasses in person. You had flown out to Spain to visit him not long after you started wearing them. When contacts bothered your eyes too much as an option to switch over. You were self-conscious then too, taking them off halfway through dinner and tucking them into your bag like they were something embarrassing.
He’d told you to put them back on.
You had.
He never told you why he liked them.
There are several things he could be apologizing for. Missing your birthday. Again. Missing New Year’s, even after telling you he’d “figure it out.” Missing tonight, when he had assured you, almost confidently, that he would make it this year. You had asked him more than once. Not accusingly. Just… checking.
Are you sure?
He had been sure.
Until the schedule changed.
Until the match fell directly on the dates he had carefully circled in his calendar months ago.
He had even planned something. A quiet surprise, tickets booked, reservations made, a gift he’d picked out himself instead of sending something through a manager. He’d imagined showing up without telling you, imagined the look on your face when you saw him there.
Then the league fixture was finalized.
And there had been no hesitation in his decision.
Football is not something he apologizes for.
It never has been.
That was the condition when this relationship began. Not spoken outright, but understood between you both with a clarity that didn’t require words. If you were going to be with Sae Itoshi, then football would come first. It would always come first. There would be missed calls. Missed holidays. Time differences. Empty seats at dinners.
You agreed to that.
And yet tonight feels heavier than the others.
“How was the match?” you ask instead, adjusting the angle of the phone so he can finally see your whole face. “I didn’t get to watch it.”
You didn’t get to watch it because you were at your own birthday dinner, surrounded by friends and family, celebrating yourself while he was thousands of miles away doing what he does best.
He wonders if it stings for you to ask that. If there’s something humiliating about caring about the very thing that keeps pulling him away from you. If there’s a quiet part of you that resents how easily he steps onto the field while you step around his absence.
“We won,” he replies evenly, leaning back slightly in his chair. “4–0.”
The reaction is immediate. Your eyes brighten in a way that isn’t forced, isn’t strained, isn’t layered with bitterness. You look genuinely proud, like his win feels like yours too.
“That’s amazing, Sae. I knew you would.”
The sincerity in your voice presses against something in his chest that he doesn’t know how to name.
If he hadn’t encountered soccer, he would probably be living a normal, happy life.
The thought replays in his mind more often than he likes to admit.
He thinks about what that version of himself might look like. A version that doesn’t view relationships as things that must bend around ambition. A version that doesn’t instinctively choose the field without even feeling torn.
Would he have remembered every date without reminders? Would he have booked flights without waiting for gaps in the season? Would he have been someone who prioritized presence over progress?
Would he have been kinder?
He watches you laugh at something off-screen, someone knocking on the bathroom door, calling your name. The muffled noise of the party filters faintly through the speaker. You stepped away from your own celebration to take his call.
You always step away.
He wonders how many times you’ve done that without thinking. How many times you’ve defended him when someone inevitably asks, “He couldn’t make it?” How many times you’ve smiled and said, “He has a match. It’s okay.”
He doesn’t deserve how easily you forgive him.
For a brief, unsettling moment, he imagines ending it.
He imagines saying it calmly, logically, as if it were just another necessary decision.
“You don’t have to keep doing this.”
He imagines you with someone ordinary. Someone present. Someone who holds your hand at midnight instead of sending a text hours later. Someone who sits at your family’s dinner table without checking a training schedule.
He imagines you smiling at someone else the way you’re smiling at him right now.
The thought hits harder than any loss he’s taken on the field.
No.
The answer forms instinctively, violently.
No.
He is not that selfless.
He tells himself it would be kinder. Objectively kinder. He is absent more than he is there. He chooses training sessions over plane tickets without hesitation. He plans surprises that collapse under league fixtures.
He is not built for balance.
But when he imagines you no longer waiting for his calls, no longer fiddling with something while listening to him dissect plays, no longer lighting up when he scores—
The idea feels worse than selfishness.
He is selfish.
He knows it.
He wants you to stay.
Even if staying means you adjust to his world instead of him adjusting to yours. Even if it means you continue to carry this suffocating understanding. Even if part of him knows that one day, you might wake up and decide you’ve been patient long enough.
“You should go back,” he says finally. “It’s your night.”
“I will,” you nod, lingering anyway. “I just wanted to talk to you for a bit.”
Just wanted to talk to you.
It’s such a simple sentence. No demands or ultimatums. Just being in his presence.
He doesn’t tell you that he checked flights three separate times this week before accepting the reality of the schedule. He doesn’t tell you that he stared at the calendar after the match, calculating time zones before calling. He doesn’t tell you that when he scored tonight, for half a second, he imagined you in the stands.
Instead, he says, “I’ll make it up to you.”
A promise he doesn’t know how to fulfill.
