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Background[]

When he was four, Sōichirō Tachibana joined the youngest teams of Tokyo Musashino FC.[1] One year before the start of the story, Tachibana was a forward in the Musashino junior team, and he witnessed the J-Youth Cup's final that Tokyo City Esperion FC's Youth team won.[2] That motivated him to try to join that team when his time as a junior player finished.

Main Story[]

Sōichirō Tachibana was first introduced in the entrance exam to enter in Esperion's Youth team, being known as a prestigious forward in the junior team of Musashino.[3] He passed the physical test, and in the 7-vs-7 match, he teamed up with Yūdai Hasegawa and Yonshiku Ri.[4] In that match, his team scored three goals, with Tachibana scoring at least one of them.[5] It was rumoured that the entrance exam was organized to test specifically Tachibana's skills. During that match, he was also seen losing a ball against Akinori Kaneda in an individual play. Five minutes before the end of that match, Tachibana pressed Ashito Aoi, who was keeping the ball very close to his own goal.[6] However, he could not steal it. Tachibana was chosen for the last part of the exam.[7] Before its start, Ashito, who realised that only eleven players passed to the last round and therefore, they would be likely playing against another team in a 11-vs-11 match, tried to gather some other candidates. Tachibana was one of them, as well as Kaneda, Eisaku Ōtomo, Hōichi Fukatsu and Junnosuke Nakano. Tachibana revealed that, in spite of the fact that Musashino was going to promote him to the Youth team, he had not been feeling any growth at all for many years. As a consequence, he could no longer see himself becoming a professional footballer and that was the reason for him to try to join Esperion's Youth team. Tachibana found out that the 11-vs-11 match was going to be against players in Esperion's Youth team.[2]

Tachibana played in the center-forward position.[8] In the first play, he received a ball from Ashito and sent it to the left flank, from where Otomo sent a cross to Ashito, who shot to the post. In the next play, Tachibana received a pass filtered by Otomo, but his shot was stopped by the goalkeeper Enshin Akiyama. At that point, Tachibana wondered why was Esperion playing so badly, and Kaneda commented that Esperion's players were not that good after all. At the half time, the candidates were already losing 2-0, and Tachibana tried to have a meeting in order to cheer up the team.[9] At the middle of the second half, Ashito crashed hardly with Nagisa Akutsu, but that did not make him give up, attitude that impressed Tachibana.[10] In the last minutes, when the candidates were already losing 4-0, Tachibana noticed how Kaneda had already given up, as he stopped running.[11] In the last three minutes, Tachibana realized that likely Ashito and himself are the only candidates that have not given up yet.[1] In the last play of the game, Tachibana received a cross from Ashito, and faced Yōichi Kiriki in a one-on-one.[12] Tachibana sent a cross to Otomo, who shot, but Akutsu blocked the shot. Nevertheless, the deflected ball reached Ashito inside the box, who managed to score the only goal for the candidates.

After the match, Tachibana, Ashito and Otomo were summoned by the Esperion coaches.[13] Before leaving the facilities, he exchanged his phone number with Otomo. A few weeks later he received the news that he passed the entrance exam.

Tachibana casually found Ashito and Otomo when he arrived to the Esperion's training field, where the three of them celebrated reuniting again.[14] He revealed to Ashito and Otomo that despite being from Tokyo, he was going to sleep in the dorms, as the other two.[15] Two nearby Esperion's supporters, Midori Haruta and Emi Kasahara, asked them for an autograph. Tachibana was the first to sign it, saying very passionate words that made both Ashito and Otomo feel embarrassed.

When they arrived to the dorms, they found Yūma Motoki and Jun Marchs Asari, and introduced themselves. They revealed that during the entrance exam, they were still players from Esperion's Junior team that were called up because of a lack of players, and that Yuma and Asari were a forward and a defender, respectively. After that, they were interrupted by Toshimune Mibu, Esperion's public relations, who provided them with information, showed them the dorms, and handed them their uniform.

The day after, all the players met in the photography room to take the pictures for the Esperion's official book.[16] Tachibana introduced his roommate, Kanpei Kuroda, to both Ashito and Otomo. After that, Kuroda himself introduced the new members to the other first-year players in Esperion's Youth team. Tachibana participated later in a meeting with the coaches in Esperion that was interrupted by the arrival of the last member in the team, who was scouted by coach Fukuda himself: Keiji Togashi.[17] At the end of the meeting, Fukuda proposed to do a practice match involving first-year players only. The coach Aki Tsukishima announced the line-ups for the match, and Tachibana was paired with the goalkeeper Kengo Myōjin, the defenders Asari, Ryūichi Takeshima and Yui Masuko, Otomo as a midfielderand the forward Roan Mino.[18]

In the first play of that match, Tachibana performed a high press against Yuma, who managed to pass to Kuroda.[19] In the next play, he received a pass from Asari, but lost the ball against Ashito, who did a very agressive tackle. During the match, Tachibana was able to pick Tsukishima's interest, who realized he had a good understanding of tactics compared with those coming from the Junior team.[20] Due to his performance, only Yuma was chosen by coach Tatsuya Fukuda to be promoted directly to the Esperion's Youth A-team, remaining in the B-team the rest of the first-year players.[21]

After the first practices, Tachibana realized Ashito's struggles with his individual skills and how he was secretely practicing at night, and both him and Otomo decided to join and help him.[22] At some point, Ashito refused to practice with Tachibana and Otomo because he said that Nozomi Date, the coach of Esperion's Youth B-team was suspecting that Ashito was not following the schedule of the dorms.[23] However, both Tachibana and Otomo realized that, at the end, Ashito decided to train with Togashi, and later on, Tachibana and Otomo joined them nonetheless.[24]

One day, all members of the B-team had lunch together, and Tachibana discovered that Ashito had an abnormally good vision.[25] The day after, the B-team had training with the A-team, Tachibana met the captain of Esperion's Youth, Kenta Yoshitsune, and realized the big skill gap between members of both teams.[26]

In the next day-off, Tachibana decided to spend the weekend with his parents in Tokyo, bringing along dirty clothes to do the laundry.[27]

Tachibana was chosen in the first match of the season against Seikyō High in the right winger position.[28] Before the start of the match, he talked to Ashito and Otomo about how much tense the situation was because of Otomo's fight with Asari a few days ago. When the match arrived to its half time, the result was of 0-3 against Esperion. At the beginning of the second half, Tachibana tried a shot, but it was blocked by the goalkeeper.[29] The match ended with Esperion's victory with a final result of 4-3.[30]

All the team went for dinner that night to celebrate their first win in their debut, together with Toshimune, Hana and Anri Kaidō, the daughter of the owner of Kaido Electronics, the Esperion's sponsor, which paid for the meal.[31] During the dinner Tachibana forced Otomo and Asari to apologize to each other for the fight both had days ago. After that, Anri asked to switch on the TV to watch Kuribayashi's debut with the senior team, and Tachibana watched him together with his teammates.[32]

In the next week, Tachibana was not chosen to be a starter in the match against Kurume Daiichi High.[33] He commented the match with Togashi from the bench.[34]

That evening in the dorms, the team found a message by Nozomi saying that Ashito was going to switch his position and become a defender, and, since he was not there, Tachibana left the dorms together with Otomo, Asari and Kuroda.[35] He did not find Ashito, who arrived later on to the dorms by himself while Tachibana was in the entrance with Otomo.[36] He saw then Ashito asking Akutsu to teach him how play as a defender.

In the next days, there was a practice match between the A-team and the B-team members to adapt Ashito to his new position as left full-back and Akutsu as center-forward (in his case as a temporary replacement to the recently injured Yoshitsune).[37] Tachibana was chosen in the B-2 team, together with Myojin, Masuko, Togashi, Takeshima, Ashito, Otomo, Takumu Numatsu and Roan. In one of the last plays, Ashito sent Tachibana a long ball, but he could not reach it.[38]

He continued practicing with the B-team in the following days.[39] Tachibana played in the following four matches, in which Esperion lost 1-0 in all of them.[40] Katsuyori Isshiki blamed the forwards (including Tachibana) for being unable to score goals, but Taira said that Tachibana should not hold such responsability. He met Ashito after the meeting, and talked about Ashito's feelings after not playing since his switch to full-back. They were interrupted by Otomo, who proposed Ashito, Tachibana and Togashi to have dinner together outside in order to improve the morale of the team, and the four of them went to Musashino. On the road to Musashino, Otomo tried to cheer up Tachibana, who was depressed for not being able to score a single goal in the first six matches of the season despite being a forward.[41] Once in Musashino, the four of them casually found Nakano and Kaneda, and it was revealed that, after the entrance exam for Esperion, both of them were scouted and became new players in Tokyo Musashino FC, Tachibana's former team. Kaneda was visibly upset because he did not pass the exam, and he blamed mainly Ashito because he encouraged Kaneda to play as a team, stating that if he would have been more individualistic, he could have passed the exam. Besides, Kaneda mocked Tachibana for not being able to score any goal, and said that he had already scored seven.[42] That worried Otomo, who was already very concerned about Tachibana's current state of mind.

Tachibana was chosen to be a starter in the match against Tama Sports University High in the left winger position. Before the start of the match, Tachibana was sitting on the field, completely depressed.[43] During the first half, Yoshitsune grabbed the ball and made an individual play.[44] Tachibana asked for a pass, but as Yoshitsune was focused on dribbling, Tachibana stopped following the play and, when he received the pass, Tachibana could not react. In the next play, Yoshitsune scored a goal, which left Tachibana speechless and even more depressed, considering he was not going to become a forward like Yoshitsune ever. In the second half, Tachibana asked for a pass from Ashito, but the latter passed to Togashi instead, who scored the last goal of the match.[45] After that, Ashito told to Tachibana that he did not send the pass to him because Tachibana was half a body off-side. At the end of the match, Tachibana asked Nozomi to not make him play in the next match against Musashino because he had lost confidence.[46] That conversation was overheard by Otomo.


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