BLUE LOCK CHAPTER 23: UNTIL THEY MET

UNTIL THEY MET

The Scoreboard That Changes Everything

The chapter opens not with a whisper, but a declaration. Plastered across a massive screen for all to see is the result of Wing 5’s ninth match — Team W 1, Team Y 1. A draw. And in the Team Z Monitoring Room, where the players sit absorbing the news, one man lays it out plainly:

“In Wing 5’s ninth match, Niko from Team Y scored a goal… to get a tie with Team W and the Wanima Twins.”

He pulls out his phone. He presents the standings. The numbers tell a story that no amount of optimism can soften.

Team V sits at the top — nine victory points, three wins, zero draws, zero losses, a point differential of +15. Untouchable.

Below them, Team W with five points. Then Team Z, clinging to third place with four points. And beneath them, Team Y and Team Z’s fates still in play.

“Team Z is in third place!”

The room absorbs it. Then comes the edge that cuts the deepest:

“All that’s left for Wing 5 is our final match…”

The final match. Team Z versus Team V.

No Room for a Tie

The brutal arithmetic is laid out without ceremony. Because of victory points, even a tie in the final match would not be enough. Team Z would still be eliminated. The conclusion is delivered like a sentence handed down by a judge:

“We have no choice but to win!”

There is a brief, dark silver lining acknowledged in the room — if Team W had won their match, they would have had seven victory points, and even a Team Z victory in the final game would not have been enough to advance. Team Y’s draw, accidental as it was, had kept Team Z’s dream alive by the thinnest of margins.

“That was great of Team Y to go and get a draw for us!”

But the relief is short-lived. One voice cuts through the moment with quiet dread:

“Niko… is getting stronger.”

A shudder passes through the room. There are, it seems, players out there who grow stronger even through defeat. And Niko is one of them.

The Enemy Waiting Ahead — Team V

The focus shifts. Their opponent for the final, decisive match is introduced with the weight of a verdict. Team V’s key players, three of them, are described with the kind of reverence reserved for forces of nature.

They have scored eighteen goals across three matches. They have won all three. Their attack power is described, bluntly and without flattery, as “stupidly strong.”

First comes Reo Mikage — six goals. Then Zantetsu Tsurugi — five goals. And finally, the team’s top scorer, the one carrying seven goals on his back:

“…Seishiro Nagi.”

The warning that follows is stripped of all decoration:

“If we don’t stop them… we have no hope of winning.”

And then, almost involuntarily, a name escapes — quiet, loaded with something deeper than tactical concern:

“Nagi… pisses me off!”

A Life Built on Boredom — Reo Mikage

The chapter pivots. The thriller slows to a portrait. And the portrait belongs to Reo Mikage, heir to the Mikage Corporation — a combined worth of 705.8 billion yen.

His life, the narration tells us, is filled with boredom.

From the very beginning, Reo had everything. His father’s words had been delivered like scripture:

“Reo… you were born to surpass me. Get used to the idea that everything in this world is yours.”

His mother, softer but no less aware of the absurdity of their world, had simply said:

“You have your own life, Reo.”

He had physical beauty. Intelligence that kept him at the top of his class. Athletic ability that left others gasping. And yet, sitting in a room overflowing with every toy and comfort a child could want, the only words that came to him were:

“I’m bored. This sucks.”

He got everything he wished for. But he could not find anything he actually wanted.

The world had handed Reo Mikage a feast, and he had sat at the table feeling nothing.

“Anything I can get easily is boring.”

What he craved was singular, specific, and impossible to simply purchase:

“I want a treasure that only I can have.”

The World Cup and the Fire That Followed

Soon after, in the summer of his first year of high school, it arrived. The glorious Golden Cup — broadcast across the world, inspiring fanaticism in every corner of the globe — and for the first time, Reo Mikage felt something crack open inside him.

“This is it…!!”

Three words followed, printed across the page like a thunderclap:

“I WANT THE WORLD CUP!!!”

For the first time, Reo found something he wanted. Not something that could be given to him. Not something that could be bought. Something that had to be earned.

He went to his father. He told him.

The response was a door slammed in his face.

“No way.”

“Forget about it.”

“There’s no way you can make it if you’re just starting now. Only a chosen few can become pro soccer players.”

“You’re my successor. You’ll go to a top-tier college and become a top-tier businessman.”

“We’re saying all of this… for your sake.”

Reo said “Yes, sir.” And he quietly stifled what the narration describes as the first urge to kill that he’d ever felt.

But it only made his feelings burn hotter.

He made his plan. He was confident. He would make his school win nationals — then the World Cup. The fact that his school’s soccer team was weak barely registered as an obstacle. He sat with his thoughts, wrestling with the question of what to do next, unwilling to give up, when fate intervened in the most ordinary, chaotic way possible.

The Staircase and the Stranger

On a staircase at school, a boy came tumbling down — phone flying, body sprawling, landing with a casual “Ah, I died” that suggested a complete absence of concern for his own survival. Reo, startled and then electric with recognition, watched the boy catch himself on the railing with a form and reflex that should not have belonged to someone who had never played a sport in his life.

“H-hey… you’re amazing! Are you on the soccer team?!”

The boy looked at him with flat, unhurried eyes.

“I don’t play soccer. I’ve never even played sports.”

Then, with no particular interest:

“I just want to live my life as lazily as possible. So gimme some money.”

Reo stared. This boy had just fallen down a staircase, caught himself with the body control of someone who had trained for years, and was now asking for cash. His name, it turned out, was already known — “You’re that rich kid.”

Reo pushed past the request. He had seen something. Something in that trap, that form — raw and unpolished and completely, impossibly natural.

“Wait, wait! That trap, and that form… You definitely have talent!! Let’s play soccer together!! If you try hard, you could be a pro!”

The boy considered this. His response arrived with devastating simplicity:

“If I have to try hard… then it sounds like a pain.”

“I don’t wanna work. I hate annoying stuff.”

Reo felt his father’s words echo back to him. “Only a chosen few can become pro soccer players.” And standing right in front of him was one of those chosen few — utterly indifferent to his own gift.

The thought hit him like a physical force:

“…I WANT THIS GUY!!!”

A Treasure That Could Not Be Bought

He pushed. He bargained. He refused to let go. And ultimately, when Reo promised “We’ll do things your way, then!”, something shifted. The boy who wanted nothing, who asked only to be left alone and perhaps handed some money, looked at this manic, wide-eyed heir to a billion-yen empire and, with no ceremony whatsoever, agreed.

“Let’s play some soccer!”

The chapter closes on its own epitaph, written with the quiet finality of a story that has been waiting to be told:

Reo Mikage’s life was filled with boredom…

…until he met soccer and Seishiro Nagi.

To see what comes Next → Continue to Chapter 24