Work

Aiku and Lorenzo both tip their caps to Isagi's left-footed strike, with Lorenzo conceding he is worth far more than his fifty-million price, yet warning him not to swell up over one sneaky goal. He rallies Ubers to get down to business. At the restart, Isagi is thrown by how slowly the opponents advance and by Lorenzo's refusal to push forward, so he locks onto Baro, betting the surge will originate there.

A flashback returns to the league's opening, where Snuffy asks his players what the sport means to them. Sendo names it his dream, Aryu his only path, Aiku something worth staking his life on. Snuffy presses harder, asking what would remain if the game were taken away, and dismisses anyone unable to picture that as an amateur trapped in fantasy. For professionals, he insists, victory is an obligation, but the deeper truth is that soccer is labor. He casts Ubers as a firm whose players are staff and whose fixtures are business, naming himself the executive and asking each employee to serve as a limb of his tactics.

Back in play, Isagi tracks Baro's tendencies and cuts out a pass meant for him, only to be swarmed by three markers the instant he wins possession, denying him the sightlines Metavision needs. Niko lifts the ball off him, sneering that Isagi walked into the snare and realized it far too late. Rather than rattled, Isagi is impressed, recognizing Ubers as a supremely coordinated unit and reframing them as one vast organization instead of eleven separate men.

A flashback shows Snuffy laying out his method, casting the team as a company of employees executing the tactics he, the executive, dictates. During the match, Isagi intercepts a pass headed for Baro but walks straight into a designed trap, and Niko takes the ball back from him.

Work is the second chapter of Volume 25 and the 214th of the series, part of the Neo Egoist League Arc, spanning twenty pages. It is written by Muneyuki Kaneshiro and illustrated by Yusuke Nomura.