ROAD TO DREAM

Chapter One - Exile

"You're taking a huge risk."

"I expect huge rewards."

"I'm sure you're aware what hopes rest on the people whose shoulders you are about to overburden. Are you quite certain you know what you're doing? None of these 'test subjects' are dispensable, you know."

"Precisely. So neither is my plan."

Matsuyama Hikari knew that he sounded (and probably looked) like an insecure five-year-old with a bad case of paranoia high on sugar. "Are you sure you have to do this, Misaki-kun?"

"Yes, I'm sure." With even-toned resignation in his voice, Matsuyama's long-time friend Misaki Taro continued to pack his traveling bag with learned efficiency, moving quietly around his dormitory bedroom—no, his former dormitory bedroom—emptying drawers and clearing tabletops. His unhurried footfalls wove a tangled web all over the deep red carpet with their path, connecting the plain, made-up bed and its bedside table by the single window, the closet up against the opposite wall and the shorter adjacent cabinet.

"But is it really all right to go, at this time?" Matsuyama pressed, observing Taro with a mixed sense of helplessness and incredulity. How could he stay so composed and cool-headed when the fragments of their shared, shattered world were being juggled by a diabolical clown who kept dropping more pieces by the hour?

"Well...we don't exactly have a choice, Matsuyama-kun."

Matsuyama made an angry noise. It was evident from his restless pacing that he did not buy into his friend's supposed belief. "To hell with that!" he burst out, whirling around on his heels to face the placid brunette, who had jumped at his sudden yell. The pent up resentment that had been building up all evening lashed out at last. "If you'd argued, they might have changed their minds and let you stay! Why didn't you argue?"

To his chagrin, Taro merely paused long enough to smile complacently. "We lost, Matsuyama-kun. Fairly. What's there to argue about?" Then his work resumed, his back turned. It was clear that he had already given up, on his own accord. And he was doing it without throwing a tantrum or smashing in walls, or any show of protest, for that matter. He was letting go without a fight.

Unfortunately, not everyone had the luxury of being hopelessly subservient. "So we lost," Matsuyama conceded reluctantly. "We lost fairly, by the rules. But the rules weren't fair." Surely even Taro could see that? Surely it was obvious to anyone that their new coach Gamo had no solid basis in dismissing any of the seven players who had been discarded from the Team that day?

But his reasoning was met only by soft, helpless chuckling. "A player's responsibilities during a game do not involve challenging the referee," said Taro, quoting Tsubasa. "We only have to try our best. And we did. It just wasn't enough." The traveling bag was zipped up with a low 'brrrr'.

Now he's rationalizing Gamo's mistakes, Matsuyama thought wryly. He's arguing for his own condemnation. "Maybe not," he allowed. "But when the referee's being completely illogical… Would you just stand by and say nothing if someone was awarded a red card for scoring a goal?" The nervous energy he'd hoarded ran out. His footsteps halted, and he settled for leaning against the doorframe.

"No," Taro answered with a rare hint of firmness. "But I'd only interfere if no one else did. You saw what happened downstairs. I'd say a people are being very frank about what they think of this situation already. My opinion would only be repetitive of theirs."

It was Matsuyama's turn to laugh. It was a harsh laugh, bitter with rage-triggered blame. But it was a laugh, and it flew naturally from his throat because he thought he had understood something, finally. "And because of that, you think that expressing how you feel isn't important? Or is how you feel not important, period? Misaki-kun—Taro—you're allowed to get mad sometimes, you know? After what happened today, you're perfectly entitled to—"

"I'm fine, Matsuyama-kun," Taro said soothingly. Too soothingly. With too gentle a smile. "I mean it."

This time, Matsuyama didn't challenge the point, only shook his head. This was pure Taro talking. Taro wasn't like Hyuuga Kojiroh. Taro didn't always feel the need to parade his emotions to the world. Taro knew how to pretend; Taro knew how to hide. The boy could be filled with murderous intent and even someone as close to him as Tsubasa wouldn't be any the wiser.

"Does all this really bother you?" Now he was resuming his standard role. Standard worried face. Standard concerned voice. Standard 'good listener'.

Standard Misaki Taro.

Matsuyama could have gone along. He could have said, no, it didn't bother him that much. He could have said, don't worry, the Team will be fine, despite the fact that the preliminaries to the World Junior Cup were coming up, and they would be playing without seven of their best players. He could have played the game; it wouldn't even have been that hard.

Instead, he unclenched one fist and held out an object, crumpled from his tight grasp, because as much as he wanted to reassure his friend and be reassured in turn, Matsuyama decided it was more important for Taro to learn that pretending didn't make fairy tales real. "Hyuuga gave this to me before he took off."

It was a captain's armband. The captain's armband. The two of them stared down at it for a long moment before Matsuyama's face split in a rueful grin. From now until Tsubasa returned from Brazil, he would be the guy frantically trying to hold the rest of the team together through crisis, and his first act as leader was to pick a fight with an ex-team member who was incidentally his best friend. A wonderful kick-off to his temporary reign. "What am I going to do?"

Unaware of the underlying turmoil behind that particular utterance, Taro simply smiled sympathetically. "You'll be all right." The compliment sounded genuine enough. "You've been captain before."

"But not of soccer superstars—most of which could take me down in a one-on-one tackle," Matsuyama groaned, indulging in a moment of self-pity. So engrossed was he in his predicament that he didn't notice Taro had shouldered his bag and retrieved his soccer ball until said young man had placed a comforting hand on the shoulder of the new Japanese Junior Soccer Team captain.

"You'll manage," said Taro. With a final pat on the back, he circled around Matsuyama, padding down the dim corridor outside his abandoned room towards the solitary lift. "See you in a month," he added with a wave.

Matsuyama watched him go with a searing sense of panic. Taro was going to leave, he realized. Misaki Taro was going to leave the Junior Team. For real. "It'll be fine in a month," he finally broke down and called out. "You'll join us again, for sure."

Whether his friend took these empty promises for what they were, or believed them faithfully to be certain truth, he didn't find out, because it was then that the lift doors closed, and Taro disappeared from view. Matsuyama was left with the unbearable silence of a deserted hallway, which he tried to escape from by returning to his own dorm room and watching as looming darkness swallowed a departing brunette.

Breathing out a sigh, he collapsed onto his bed. There was nothing he, or anyone from the Team for that matter, could do for Taro now, whatever difficulties he faced in the following month. That worried him, because soccer wasn't a sport that could be effectively refined alone.

Taro being the ridiculously social person he was, Matsuyama didn't doubt that the guy had soccer playing friends outside the Team. But for a player of his caliber to elevate his skills significantly within a month? That didn't require just any soccer playing friend as a practice-mate.

Flipping onto his back, he absently went through the people Taro could possibly turn to, in a situation like this. Who, among his former acquaintances? Who, among his former coaches? Who…?

The solution dawned upon him, making his whole body jerked violently and knocking his pillow to the floor. He choked in disbelief, as he knew, with electrifying trepidation, who.

"Oh—oh, God."

The moment Taro stepped outside the gates, it hit him like a Tiger Shot with a rock-filled soccer ball.

He was off the Team.

He, Misaki Taro, had been kicked off the Junior Team.

It couldn't be true. It couldn't be true. It simply wasn't possible because Taro being removed was like Tsubasa being removed, and that just couldn't happen. He was a regular player of the Japanese Team, wasn't he? He was important to them. They had actively sought his participation during the Youth Cup, sending a special agent to contact him in France, hadn't they? They couldn't be thinking to replace him now. It couldn't happen. Couldn't.

But it was happening.

As he reached the main road from which the Team training ground and dorms were out of sight, the gravity of that day's happenings threatened to drag him through the crumbling sidewalk into certain suffocation from hard, unforgiving earth. It was real, he finally admitted, his eyes closing in defeat. The rejection was real. He had finally fallen from his imaginary pedestal to find that he was not, in fact, indispensable.

There has to be some mistake, he thought desperately. Out of everyone, I can't possibly be the worst… But as soon as the idea occurred to him, he slapped it away. No, no, that wasn't right. Being taken off the Team proved that there had to be something terribly wrong with him. How could he still assume that he was better than everybody—than anybody? When had he become so arrogant?

Stunned and horrified into a daze, he had walked several blocks before coming to terms with the fact that he was going in a straight line with no actual destination in mind. Taro winced at his inattentiveness. I'm losing it, he told himself, as if that knowledge could improve his outlook. Soccer problems later. Right now, where am I going?

Taro halted in the middle of a street of closed shops. Several cars whizzed by, but none miraculously stopped and offered him a ride to…where? Where was he going? Did he now know even that? Exasperation in his chest mounted. The phrase I need to train repeated dully in his head, but the words were meaningless and worth as much to him as the wad of gum that had just adhered to his shoe.

Train? Train what? Why? How? Why? He had to earn his back his place on the Team; that much he knew. But where to start? What were his weaknesses? It wasn't like he had a detailed description of what exactly he had been kicked out for. All he had to go on was Coach Gamo's parting reprimand:

"What's wrong with you, Misaki? It's like you forget how to play soccer when Tsubasa's not around."

What did that even mean? It certainly didn't provide him with a whole lot of information. Had the coach expected him to extract some kind of…hidden message? If so, Taro had found yet another thing he had failed miserably at. One more thing that said Gamo was right—Taro was indeed inferior.

Not that Taro set much store by what coaches told him. Not as much as the others did. He knew he was supposed to trust in his coach's judgment, but he frankly found it hard, never really having gotten used to being told how to play soccer. He'd mostly learned by himself, after all, while following his father around the country. He'd taught himself how to dribble, how to pass, how to dodge and shoot and pretty much everything he knew today.

Tsubasa often marveled at how 'special' Taro's playing style was. Taro had always figured the deviation was simply due to his lack of training in the normal way.

And in his private mind sometimes lurked the idea that he shouldn't be judged the normal way either. Not in the way Coach Gamo was judging him now. Because in all honesty, Taro couldn't see the difference between how he played when Tsubasa was with him, and when he played alone.

The thing was, what he thought didn't matter any more. If the coach threw him out, there was nothing he could do to get back into the Team except by complying with 'the rules of the game' and try to fix the problem he still didn't think was there.

Unfortunately, Taro had never been really good at solving non-existent problems.

Thus he could reasonably conclude that his next move should be to find help. He needed to get back on that team. He would never forgive himself for missing out on the Junior World Championship. Which led to the next question: who to ask for this much needed help?

Not a coach. Taro didn't think too much of coaches at that moment. Plus, he didn't know any of those personally. It wasn't like he'd had the luck, as Tsubasa had, to stumble upon someone like Roberto. No, he wanted someone to train with, not under.

Taro could list three people who could take on the role of that 'someone'. Three people in the world how could help him out of this mess. That shouldn't have been too devastating; as far as crisis control went, having three people fit for the job didn't make him all that bad off.

The hitch was that two of those people were regrettably unavailable. One of them was still in Brazil, fighting it out on the soccer pitch to become the nation's best player, and wouldn't particularly appreciate being forced to deal with problems at home. He would be sympathetic, of course. But Taro couldn't bring himself to bother this person.

As for the second… Well. The pressures and responsibilities of being the new captain of the Junior Team were quite enough to keep his hands full. Managing a team in which half its members were frankly more skillful and experienced players than himself—at least that person was aware of this—was undoubtedly quite stressful. Again, Taro didn't want to further burden his friend. The guy really didn't need the extra pressure.

That meant, that out of all the people Taro could see himself talking his troubles over with, only one person was left.

"Kami help me."

"I'm not asking you to be nice."

"It sure sounds like you are."

"Really? Well…I'm not. You're just going to have to take my word for it. All I'm asking here is that you don't indiscriminately grind him to the ground."

"Is that it? Come on, would I do that?"

"Judging by your track record, yes."

"You're being paranoid and overprotective."

"And you're getting riled up just talking about him. Listen to yourself, Suzuki. What does that tell you about what will happen when you two are actually face to face?"

"…All right. I admit I've been harsh sometimes. And don't get me wrong; I'm not proud of it. But if I've been as bad as you say I have, what makes you so sure he'll come running here? Sounds pretty masochistic, if you ask me."

Mikomi raised a brow in skepticism as a long-suffering sigh resonated from the depths of her portable phone. "I know; it is masochistic," the voice replied. "He probably knows it too. But for some strange reason, he trusts you. And he'll only involve someone he absolutely trusts, because this is his dream we're talking about. With Tsubasa in Brazil, you're probably the only one he'd consider going to for help. Heck, you're probably one of the few people who can help, exactly because he listens to you as much as he does."

"As for that, I really don't think—"

"Suzuki, don't argue. We all know your opinion will matter. A lot. What you do or say could either give him wings or cripple him."

"And knowing that I tend more to cripple him, you tell me that I have this great influence…why?"

"Because I feel the need to spell it out to you that you're potentially able to jeopardize the prospects of the Junior Team with just one nasty look."

"Oh."

Idly drifting into her room, Mikomi sat down upon her bed with a frown. Why did things always have to get so complicated the moment he was involved? So troublesome. "Well…I can't promise anything. What I'll say when he comes—if he comes—is…I don't know. Sometimes I just can't help it—"

"Then learn to control yourself, for Kami's sake. Rein in your behavior, like you're always telling your friend Kamikaze. Remember, I'm not telling you to drop everything and help him. Just try not to destroy him on sight, all right?"

Mikomi rolled her eyes, fiddling with a corner of her pillow. "I'm not that bad, you know. But, okay, I'll see what I can do." And with a few more pleasantries, she hung up, tossing the phone aside with a small snort of irritability.

That was pointless.

She highly doubted that she had needed the warning she'd gotten. He definitely would not come. Seriously, if a person has been stamped into the mud enough times by another, you'd think they'd both know to stay away from each other. If not avoid, then at least ignore. For anyone to go looking for his or her tormentor was… She didn't think anyone could be so hopelessly dumb. Especially not him, being all-knowing in social matters or whatnot.

Yet, now that the possibility of a visit had arisen, she found herself wishing that he would come. Whimsical as it was, she wanted, out of pure curiosity, to see how he would act around her. Was he the kind to hold a grudge for long? She suspected not; her first impression was that he was more of the forgive-and-forget type. In fact, being the over-sensitive, wishy-washy pacifist he was, he would probably pretend nothing had gone wrong between them, smile, and be so friendly she would want to strangle him.

That was probably his idea of anger management or something, knowing him. But then again, she'd never seen him actually angry with anyone else before. Perhaps he would start screaming the moment he laid eyes on her?

Abruptly, Mikomi pounded one fist on the mattress and swiftly got to her feet with an impatient scowl. Enough speculation. She was getting annoyed just thinking about him. Besides, he wouldn't come; he wasn't stupid. Sitting around wondering about someone she hadn't seen or heard from for over two years (and most likely wouldn't see or hear from for another two years) was utterly non-productive. She had better things to do with her time.

The next day in the Nakazawa household, Sanae entered the kitchen, bidding her mother a cheery good morning as she returned the watering can in her hands to its proper place in the cupboard under the sink. "The bushes need trimming again," she reported, running soiled fingers under a stream of tap water.

The elder Nakazawa woman nodded, sitting at the dining table with a cup of tea. "I'll get your father to do it sometime this week," she promised. Not that the man had any great love for their garden. Perhaps it she should take up the trimming herself. Absently taking a sip, she suddenly put down her drink, looking up in interest. "By the way, wasn't that young Misaki-kun walking by outside just now?"

"Yes," Sanae confirmed, wiping her hands and joining her mother at the table. "He was in a hurry; had to catch a flight to France, from what he managed to say before rushing off." Looking mildly puzzled, she reached for a second teacup. "Though he did also mention something about wanting to contact… No, that can't be right, she's not in France."

"Your soccer friend?" her mother guessed, quite familiar with the girl in question. She had been Sanae's sole girl friend a few years ago, both not being content to stay at home to cook and clean, but ran wild on the streets instead. Even when her daughter mercifully decided to settle down a bit, they had not given up their companionship, maintaining regular correspondence. "But isn't she in…?"

"Yes, that's why I'm wondering."

The two looked at each other, equally perplexed.

Author's Note: This story is, to those who know, a modified version of the original Road To Dream, but still takes place in a storyline most of you won't be familiar with. To accomodate those readers, I'll try to have flashbacks and explanations of the more important scenes from the anime (Captain Tsubasa J), so just take it as an alternate version of whatever anime/manga you guys watch/read. I'll deviate a lot from the CTJ plotline, anyway, so it really won't make too much of a difference. If it gets confusing, just let me know. Happy reading.