Chapter Text
It was supposed to just be a hobby. An old ball that fell out of a box of knicknacks that Zoey must have shoved to the back of her closet. She knew which one it was because of the tape, the specialty kind that had turtles on it.
She had no idea how the thing got out in the first place. Not that it would have taken much. The tape was old enough for the elastic to give out at any moment, something from the discount section of a run down hobby shop was not meant to give out a year's worth of life, let alone four.
She was rambling again, and frankly missing the point. The tape wore off and the ball, a soccer ball, leather and torn around a few spots came tumbling out of the box.
She still remembers how she got the thing, her first travel game.
(Zoey stumbled off the field, having finished the closing sportsmanship ceremony in a daze. The only thing that mattered to her was that she didn’t let in a single goal.
A dazed grin was plastered onto her face as she grabbed her bag, at that point everybody had already left the field and called it quits for the day.
Which made it even more confusing when a few feet to her left was the game ball.
It wasn’t a normal ball, she could tell that easily. It didn’t have the shine of a ten dollar ball that could with some love and gentle neglect maybe last you a season. Green stars adorned the sides of the leather ball.
She crouched down, rolling the ball around to catch some name scrawled into the side, maybe find a set of parents searching for a far too expensive toy.
Nothing, several minutes of finding flies later had Zoey instead stuffing the ball into her ill-fitted yellow bag with the promise of ‘looking for the owner next game’
Her dad was waiting for her at the front of the lot, she could still see him tapping the steering wheel along to an old pop song that he swore was the worst. He paused for a moment, his eyes flickering over the ball before going back to rolling up the windows.
The next game became the game after that, then the one after that.)
Unlike the former owner, Zoey had seen fit to throw her name next to the pump valve in large blocky letters. Under that was her old number, just in case the owner found it and wanted to let her know. Four years later, Zoey assumed they bought a new one.
Her finger ran across the worn leather, and she couldn’t bring herself to put the ball back.
From time to time she’d glance at it where it sat in the corner of her room, squeezed next to the door as a pseudo door-stopper. That one time where Jinu had slammed open the door in his usual fashion, likely intending to dramatically declare something incredibly stupid. The door flew back to hit him in the nose. She might have glanced at her beloved ball a bit more reverently after that.
She got bored, stuffed to the brim with a mountain full of busy-work for a class that she couldn’t care for more than the fancy letter at the end of the report card.
Maybe, just maybe she threw the ball a few times. To cool her mind, she said to herself. To kill some time, she naively thought.
Like all forms of procrastination, it became a not so nasty habit for her to throw the ball and shift her body on the floor to meet it. She ignored memories of her doing the very same thing years ago, of papers that sat on her desk as the steady pulse of the leather ball met her fingertips.
Then the ball started to travel with her.
She’d throw it at Jinu on occasion, the two seeing which one would waffle first at the increasingly hard to catch situations they put the other in. Sometimes involving a fragile object as the target.
On a completely different topic, the two were banned from approaching the kitchen when in contact with, as Baby put it “Their circular missile”.
The ball would come to her to the laundromat, which might come across as a bit odd to most. But Zoey swears that she has a completely good reason for it! Carrying the entirety of six piles of laundry takes a toll, and an insane amount of time to run through it all.
So if the ball came with her to practice a few tricks while waiting for the spin cycle to go by, it was purely out of convenience. Even better when she got to play some pickup with a few kids waiting with their mom, who seemed grateful to let her kids off the leash for a few minutes. Really, it was just convenient.
It all came to a head on a Saturday night.
Zoey was out to clear her head, the ball at her heels as she walked through the crisp view of a hibernating Seoul. A few people passed her by, the two would nod in that no nonsense way that city people did- the ‘I don’t know you but goodnight I guess’- and she would be left again with the gentle whir of the street lights.
Call it stupidity, call it curiosity, but when Zoey heard a lot of yelling down that alley way that old ladies would glance twice before cutting through, she twisted the ball into the shortcut and followed suit.
It took a few more seconds to clock what kind of yelling it was.
Not the robbery sort, not the pissed off kind when you cut an old man off from his daily jaunt, nor the nice kind when a relative you haven’t seen in the last decade shows up with not any stories but a fat envelope to make sure you don’t ask twice.
She turned into a park it seemed, the waist high fence the only real divide between her and the yelling. Zoey found something better than she expected, it was a game.
A handful of people littered the bleachers, an old man that was whispering to an infant that gurgled back to what Zoey guessed was passionate color commentary, a few teens that seemed to have nothing better to do, and a very familiar dramatic friend of hers.
His hair was tucked into a white cap that had the word hunters scrawled on it in a thick sharpie, a signature on the brim. His arms were thrown over the fence, cupped up against his mouth to yell the loudest.
Zoey walked over, soccer ball tucked into her left, a smug grin on her face. Jinu didn’t seem to notice her presence, loudly shouting out to whoever Rumi was. The sharp elbow into his gut made a bit more impact.
He threw her a sharp glare, but brought his focus back to the game. Or rather the certain someone, which looked like Miss Ninety-Eight to her.
She asked if he was still home there. Waved a hand in his eyeline a few times for good measure.
“Later okay?” He muttered.
She leaned onto the fence next to him. “So! What’s the score?” Zoey had the wonderful view of watching his expression sour in real time. The field was a cheap one, the scoreboard was turned off and left up to interpretation.
He pointed to the left, a small grin on his face. “See that black team? The Seoul Hunters are black and gold when home.” He said, he waved a dismissive hand towards the right team, red and silver “That’s the Busan Hawks.”
“And the score?” Zoey asked.
Jinu put his face in his hands, muttering something too faint for her to catch.
“I don’t speak armpit.”
“Mrrph ph prrrow aawwwks” He muttered slightly louder.
“Still can’t hear you~” She sang.
Jinu looked up at her.
“Four. To two. Hawks.” He said.
Zoey smiled a bit wider, cupping her hand over her ear. “Sorry, can’t hear you.”
Sometimes she really can’t help herself. It’s a real problem sometimes. Especially now when Jinu took the opportunity to yell the score as loud as humanly possible into her right ear.
If her whole head wasn’t ringing she’d be tempted to ask again.
While Zoey thought to blame her lack of hearing on her currently shattered eardrum, the angry muttering from Jinu proved otherwise.
Most of the team didn’t spare him a glance, before someone in black and gold—the hunters she reminded herself—Miss Ninety-Eight, yelled back. “Thank you for the score!”
She gently elbowed Jinu in the side, “Yeah Jinu, thanks for the score.”
As the contract for all friends who pretend to hate each other, he pushed back twice as hard. His elbows were pointy, but she didn’t take much notice of that. “Shut up” The force did little to hide his reddening ears.
For the next twenty minutes Zoey was sure to mention this every two or so seconds, making sure to give him a hearty thanks each time while batting her eyelashes.
In the end, the hunters only managed to tie by a hair’s breadth.
For once, Zoey could actually say it was at the fault of the keeper. The aggressive playstyle that had the defenders pushing up as far as they could go didn’t suit the demure number Seven, who was hesitant to push on balls that went over their fortified wall.
Well if she thought about it like that, she supposed it’s more of a playstyle clash than any fault on the keeper.
That turned the few encounters into a one on one, or even worse: a two on one. So most of the time, the keeper had her shit rocked. All it took was a single pass for the offense to rain hell on the unlucky number Seven.
The Hunters carried it with grace, shifting to cover the keeper’s blind spots, if a bit awkwardly. Zoey could tell it bothered the girl. Who wouldn’t be when you’re the weak link?
But even the coverage didn’t stop two more goals from slipping past the defence, the defenders folding in on themselves and cutting each other off.
It was a far stretch to say that Zoey saw something in her eyes, or even in her posture. Yet there was something nagging at her. Number Seven was pissed off.
It nagged in the way she jerked her limbs through each motion, and the way she stood stock still after each goal scored on her.
After yet another goal that left the Hunters six to four, number Seven walked to the post, not to get to her ready position in the dead center.
To instead, slam her head against the metal post.
In contrast to the double take the ref gave to the sound (and Zoey, think of the concussions!), her team mates didn’t look so much as shocked by the occurrence. Number Ninety-Eight looked back, gave her a thumbs up, then proceeded with the kickoff.
Zoey wasn’t allowed to linger on the implications of any of that.
Who could, when the team finally clicked?
Without a lick of hesitation, number Seven sprinted up and down the field with reckless abandon, all reservations lost at the urgency of having ten minutes on the clock and six points to make up for. Sometimes it seemed too much, and the Hawks would slip past to make a breakaway for the goal. Little did they know that the wrath of god itself was on their heels
One step, two step, number Seven would hook around their ankle, dive into them, or at one particularly concerning point right into their kick. The defence was quick to pick up on these moments, sending these seconds of weakness flying into the stands. It might just be Zoey, but to her the Hunters seemed to relish in it. A quick high-five at each save. At the stakes, the feeling of just barely twisting past the ball to take away the Hawk’s seemingly easy goal.
In return the Hawks got rougher. Meaner you could say, with five minutes on the clock it was anything they could get away with.
Every botched call emboldened them. Jinu got louder in turn, and surprisingly Zoey did too.
She forgot all about that stupid joke, and if it wasn’t the two of them shouting their lungs off for each play, she would’ve forgotten all about Jinu too.
It was stupid, it was for a team that she knew next to nothing about. But something just gripped her and wouldn’t let go. Zoey wanted to hop the fence and join them, four years be damned.
It felt even more stupid for her to admit when the Hunters scored yet again, tying up the game with just half a minute to spare (Jinu brought out his watch when she asked for the time), she pulled Jinu into a crushing hug.
The team didn’t win, but they screamed as if they did.
She hung back on the fence with Jinu. It seemed like he had something to say, if not to the ref he proclaimed was dumb deaf and blind, then to Miss Ninety-Eight— or Rumi as Jinu called her.
Zoey tucked herself against her ball, wedged between her and the fence. It felt a bit embarrassing holding it near someone who played seriously, like any of the players would see it and personally come out to spit on her.
A few feet off Jinu talks to who Zoey has tentatively named Rumi. She is crouched over a black duffle bag, holding a pair of cleats as she shoves on her slides. She shook off the turf from her cleats but Zoey knows from experience that those black pellets are wedged in five other spots that you learn to live with.
The two seem familiar, with Jinu in his usual fashion leaning a touch too close to say something likely very rude.
Zoey takes the moment to make the best impression.
She yanks his collar back, “Sorry about him, he tends to make a mockery of him as he goes.”
Rumi smiles, “Oh trust me, I know”
Jinu chokes, Zoey ignores this.
“I’m Zoey!” She said as she smiled wide at the girl peeling off her shin guards.
“Rumi,” She said.
She tilts her head towards the ball at Zoey’s side. Eyes gleaming with something almost predatory. “You play?”
Zoey released Jinu from her grip to scratch at her cheek, “Just a hobby, nothing special really.”
“Ah she’s just being humble.” Jinu said, a cocky smirk on his face. “ She brings that damn thing everywhere and I mean everywhere.”
Zoey shoots him a look, why is he trying to sell her so hard? Jinu smirks at her and jerks his head to Rumi. Roll with it.
The hell she is.
“Really now?” Rumi said. She doesn’t catch the exchange, eyes still fixed on the ball. Zoey wonders if she wants it. Maybe just maybe if she threw it, that would serve as a distraction!
Wishful thinking.
Zoey tucks the ball into her chest, hooking her chin over it. “It’s really nothing. I just get bored sometimes and it’s lying around! Really…” Zoey said, but it didn’t seem to register to Rumi, who seemed to be calculating something, her eyes flickering to Zoey, the ball, then to the field.
Rumi seemed to decide on something, clearing her throat. “So you’d be open to maybe playing some?” At Zoey’s dubious look she rephrases. “Just like passing and stuff.” She threw the cleats inside and zipped up the duffle.
“Yeah,” Zoey answered without thinking. She reasoned to herself that it was just passing the ball, and almost knocking over the various vases around the house was getting old anyway. She couldn’t embarrass herself that bad. Zoey tried not to think about the and stuff part, it was vague enough to be shuttle runs for all she knew. Best not think too hard.
It was only twenty minutes later; half-way home after exchanging numbers, fingers tapping against the ball as she talked with Jinu about random nonsense, when she realized that once again she bit off more than she could chew. And make a fool out of herself in front of the coolest girl she's ever seen.
She sighed dramatically, Jinu gave her a look. “The hell’s your problem?”