Who Are You, a kuroko no basuke/黒子のバスケ fanfic

ANGRY YODELING, FFNET FORMAT MAKES THIS FIC LOOK LIKE SHIT the vision was kind of important sob. why cant i have formatting freedom like on ao3... this looks terrible...

but anyway. There were already plenty of 'who are you' titled fics before akkr week, now there's only a tiny TON more; however it seems mandatory for all akashi fans (ewww look at what I've become…) to write their own versions of this theme, so here's mine. While I am not overly happy with the result (I realize that some of the reasoning he does from the very start is simplicistic and could be discussed further but I aM NOT VERY GOOD AT DEPTH so I had to go with what my mind suggests), I am surprisingly happy that I put my effort into this nonetheless.

Side notes:
1. The list's structure is inspired by "Oceano Mare" by Alessandro Baricco.
2. Various stuff is quoted zzz: "I am a cat" by Souseki, "Through the Looking Glass" by Lewis Carroll, "Romeo and Juliet" and "Julius Caesar" by Shakespeare, "The Metamorphoses" by Apuleio, aaaand "Il Principe" by Machiavelli.
3. Bokushi might sound like a broken record, but considering this is set in chapter 266, he wasn't that collected, and since my focus had to be Oreshi, I didn't give him too much space on memory lane. I kinda wanted to make it sound like he tries to sound logical at first but then he goes wilder and deeper in his subconscious until he doesn't know what he's trying to say and by then Oreshi can easily block him out.

'Who are you?' said the Caterpillar.

This was not an encouraging opening for a conversation. Alice replied, rather shyly, 'I — I hardly know, sir, just at present — at least I know who I WAS when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then.'

'What do you mean by that?' said the Caterpillar sternly. 'Explain yourself!'

( We have already been asked this question.

The first time, one of us was stronger and the other was weaker, and when we looked at ourselves that evening under the moonlight, we saw the confines worn so thin, thin, thin in-between, that despite the jumbled stream of thoughts, a single answer rang louder, clearer. An answer so persuasive in its iron logic that all other ones answers that could have existed inevitably drowned in negligible shouts of cavillous sentimentalism. The reassurance of those thoughts was the closest thing to peace we could grasp. At that point, it was effortless to convince each other of unanimity: we were two and we were different, but not different enough to disagree on the fundamental priorities to pursue in our life.

This second time, one of us is weak and the other more so; somehow, even while tangled together in a crumbling mess of dichotomies and shifting convictions, we have never looked so starkly divided. Almost like a seagull's wings drenched in coal tar—the white and the black, how easy it appears to discern them at first sight.

Yet, when the wings move, the coal tar follows, glues limbs and feathers together and it's excruciating to pull them apart. Who might be the seagull and who the tar between the two of us, that is still left to decide.

A cat once said, "For every living being, man or animal, the most important thing in this world is to know one's own self." Never let it be said that a journey so mandatory unravels on even paths. Anyone who thought so must have little to no insight on the delicate matters of individuality, and a despicable lack of self-knowledge. Who are you, said the Caterpillar, and to Alice it seemed the hardest question she had ever been posed.

Because it is the kind whose answer might be different every time it is asked; and every time it is asked, it digs deeper in the soul, and pretends, so ruthlessly pretends its counterpart like the Red Queen pretends the heads of her enemies. Except that it's your own head you're asking for: you are your own enemy, with each truth you try to hide to yourself, each flaw you twist into thinking it's something else entirely, each secret beyond your certainties you refuse to acknowledge.

And if finding an answer is hard for an average person, it becomes understandably an agonizing process for two minds coexisting in the same head. But it doesn't matter how grueling it is, there is no escaping it now. We believe the time has come to draw lines again; grab our seagull wings and wash the tar away; collect our tokens and lay them on an operating table for a painstaking dissection. And if something that was supposed to be separated is not, force the knife on the thread and severe it. No mercy towards us, not anymore.

The swirling rush of voices overlapping in the attempt to overwrite each other is maddening. Despite the starkness, all it takes is one glance astray, one word too alluring to lose focus, and float, and fall. Because of this, it is safe to carry a handful of tools in such a perilous journey: discern some things that define who we are, to help us understand; and hold tight onto those when everything else threatens to fade, otherwise one might fade along as well.

The first time we didn't care. If one of us faded, it was like not fading at all, because we thought we were one, and that the differences were only tricks of light.

But now, I don't want to fade.

I will anchor my being to this short list of things and I will fight for my answer to be the final one, because now, I am sure, we are different. This is how it's supposed to be, how we forced it to be: in the ultimate fight for supremacy, the enemy is myself. The loser, will be wiped from history. )

The first is my name. I am Akashi, the firstborn of Akashi Masaomi and Akashi Shiori, heir to the family's wealth and financial empire. An Akashi isn't obliged to not fail, they simply do not. They never bend and never break. Therefore, I will always succeed in all that I do. An Akashi is the very definition of ever victorious; to win is to be right, to win is to breathe. I am my father's legacy and I am my father—

There was a speckle of light glimmering on the private tutor's spectacles. It refracted in slivers down his cheek and on the pages of the book splayed between us as he read aloud.

"What's in a name? That which we call a rose, by any other name would smell as sweet."

He asked me to repeat in my long-perfected English and I repeated. What's in a name, and he nodded at my perfection, said it was right, like always; but what's in a name.

I am Seijuurou. Stating this, I am not denying that I am Akashi, but only shifting the core of the focus, stressing the accent in the pronunciation of a perfectly spoken sentence towards one end instead of the other. That I am Akashi is written in my blood. It would be misleading to deny or omit as it is an absolute truth, and as all truths it has shaped other truths into existence. That I am Seijuurou, while not being a personal choice, is written nowhere but in my soul. And if I were to designate a term for my person, a word that could represent my entire being truly, I would choose my first name, and abandon my last and in itself the Seijuurou would not only hold the Akashi but also all those other truths that weren't stipulated by blood and stretch beyond it. Juliet was Juliet before she was a Capulet, and Romeo was Romeo before he was a Montague, and if they had lived their lives only as Capulet and Montague, no tragic beauty would have come out of their story. My word holds its own meaning, it holds the selfishness of yearning to be not a burdening figure of speech but substance called by its proper name, not a synecdoche but an individual, with will and desires and principles.

I am Seijuurou.

The first is my name, the second is my eye, and it is golden; it sees all and accepts no disrespect, expects no surprise. It sees in a spectrum of black and white and the shades trace degrees between what is useful and what isn't. Schemes, projections, calculations lie bare before it and no leaf passes by unnoticed no matter how infinitely inconspicuous, it is trapped in its grip and crushed—

It is red. It always has been, ever since I was aware that the image blinking back at me from the mirrors was me and no one else. It is red just like the other eye and with it, it creates a whole instead of a fragmented gaze reflecting broken sides. This eye sees schemes as clearly as it sees potential and tries not to neglect it mindlessly for a certainty of absoluteness. It doesn't look away from underachieving effort, but it observes it all, trying to accept that not everything in this world is predictable and under control. Not all things were born in a rectangular box that established their shape and limits before they even existed. And despite the fearful thrill that elicits, it is alright. My eye sees this and it keeps looking in search for more. It is red and it respects and finds what reaches beyond its expectations as beguiling as the colors of an aurora.

The first is my name, the second is my eye, the third is my basketball, the excellence that comes with it, that must come with everything I do, and once I have excelled above all, be cast away to face the next challenge that won't be a challenge. Basketball is nothing but an experimental ground for the future. No mistakes will be allowed then, hence they aren't in the present either, nor in the past, as that was written by winners and I am the product of past victories—

It was a gift; something I laid my eyes upon with distant interest at school, passing by the gyms, and once again one afternoon, when our car broke down next to a street court where a group of boys were playing. It instantly spoke to me of contact. What kind of contact I longed for I wasn't sure then, but it resonated within me as an old unsatisfied need, unvoiced even in the private corners of my mind, because I knew I would have not found understanding there. So when my mother came to me with a hard-earned offer, and told me I could choose to have one thing I truly desired, in my reluctance I asked for a basketball. She bought me one, let me join my first team, and conceded me a freedom I had not experienced before. I felt the first touch of it on my fingertips, the first taste in my heart, and I then wondered pathetically if in the future I would have the resolve to grasp anything like that ever again; if something as simple as that could have been sufficient to always make it through.

I still have that basketball. It lies well dusted in the wardrobe of my bedroom, too smooth and deflated to be used, but it still speaks to me of contact. Not of fake, rational liberation, but of a deeper form of freedom. The most arduous, and the one I have always unconsciously sought.

The first is my name, the second is my eye, the third is my basketball, the fourth is a handshake, which I refuse because there's no point in partaking in displays of nonexistent camaraderie. I only want enemies, ones that can ease my boredom, and on whom I can impart the lesson not to oppose me, to know their place because in this world losers don't get the right to—

His hand silently reached out for mine when I first defeated him in shogi. It had been a tranquil afternoon spent in a classroom empty except for the two of us, the very first of many that followed. I didn't know what meaning the action held for him at the time, but as for me, I shook his hand because it was polite to, and because despite my certain win, it had been an interesting game.

We often lingered in each other's company, and within me, the certainty that I would always win against him never died. He was progressing, reaching every day a bit closer to my level, but I believed the outcome would not change. Sometimes, I found our fruitless rematches boring. Yet, he always acted incredibly obstinate in his desire to win, and I kept accepting his challenges. Why did I, I wonder, and why did he; and I don't think it was because of victory, nor of a need for a rival to fill our leisure time. It was because a curious contact had come within my reach. It stood with awkward boldness right in front of me and from there it was my choice to make, once again. So I reluctantly accepted that rivals could also be comrades; that he didn't seek me out in the hope of teaching me my place with his win, but because he wanted to, and on my part I enjoyed being sought. It was a pleasant feeling, that of not exactly 'trusting', but 'having the impression' that winning or losing, in both eventualities something would have stayed between us.

I think we were friends. And if we were, then he was the first friend I ever had.

The first is my name, the second is my eye, the third is my basketball, the fourth is a handshake, the fifth is an illogicality, of any person who believes there is something more important than VICTORY. VICTORY is a basic concept: if a game's win is achieved by scoring more points, then I'll score more points; if it is achieved by forsaking all unnecessities behind, I'll take it that way. No sophistry, no struggle because what does fun matter, why do pretty words like pyrrhic VICTORY exist when WINNING is just WINNING. The results justify the means, ruling and ethics are not meant to go hand in hand, and when they'll ask why, I will say that I didn't love Rome nor did I love Caesar—

It is the illogicality of all people who believe there is something more important than victory, and the beauty of witnessing that belief come to life. It is my own illogicality in wanting to be one of those people. There is no proper answer to why it matters. People say, it just does, and the logical mind will sneer at the weak yet stubborn incoherence of it, blind to the greatness of the sterile void that runs deep in their veins, and to that I will allow myself a wild streak of incoherence and say, I experienced fun, I experienced caring, and now I understand that it matters. It just does.

The first is my name, the second is my eye, the third is my basketball, the fourth is a handshake, the fifth is an illogicality, the sixth is a bird in a cage, that flies as far as I want it to fly, sings because it's OBLIGED to, and I feed it, and maintain it, so that it can carry out what is REQUIRED by the ones who possess the CONTROL and the means to EXERT it—

"Why do you think a caged bird sings, Seijuurou?"

"I can't tell," I said. "Because it enjoys the sound?"

My mother, a pale sickly figure then, wrapped in a thick old-rose yukata that had more consistency than her, smiled tiredly. Death hadn't come for her yet but she was already a ghost and our blooming garden where we sat could have been her heaven. "Mmh, it might be."

"Or that's the only thing it can do," I tried again to see her smile, and I meant 'can' as in 'know how to'. But my mother's eyes spoke of a different translation as she hummed, and her delicate finger slipped past the bars of the white cage and beckoned the attention of the bird.

"The only thing it can do. Yes... maybe singing is the only thing it got."

I used to see Teikou as a wide orchestra, with me as one of the conductors, more cognizant of our duties than some of the coaches themselves. Caged birds lay around me, singing out their talent, and I rose above them and their silent protests, entitled to a sense of control. But before I would think that, I agreed that we were all birds, and we were all caged and I remember the pain of that, of being unable to contain the damages, of holding onto a pale hope like everyone else that one day the cage would not be a cage anymore. That our talents would not be a burden, just as it used to.

Sorrow is an important facet of a human life. It is a good but tricky teacher, it ingrains coded information into your brain telling you not to fall for the same pattern twice, to avoid it next time you incur in the same situation. In my own way, I learnt what there was to learn from my sorrow of those days, and then proceeded to willingly erase all of it. I chose to discard it, and forget, and not commit the same mistake twice, thrice, again and again, because it seemed nonsensical to expect a different outcome from the same pattern of events. All things were meant to come to an end.

Now I tell myself to remember, because pain stays a good teacher. It hurts while it shows you what you can't live without, it hurts while it takes that away. Sorrow, my sorrow, is the proof not of something needed to be left behind, but that once I cared, and it mattered, so much that sometimes, the risk of pain is worth another attempt at it.

The first is my name, the second is my eye, the third is my basketball, the fourth is a handshake, the fifth is an illogicality, the sixth is a bird in a cage, the seventh is a team, where the occasion lies for capable men to seize. Teams are assets, to be exploited at their best like pawns on a chessboard, with ductile adaptability. They are like families: they prosper in peace and WILT in wars, they are born then they BREAK, and all that is left is my own STRENGTH and I, walking on promises of best that wasn't enough, EMPTY words, EM PT Y trust, it is sim p le if they lov ed me th e y would WIN if they LOV E D ME T H EY WOULD live—

Teikou was my team. It was a team and it could have been like families, real ones, those based on respect and trust, where promises are made to each other and not to an abstract motto, and results are not the most vital thing because the journey counts as well, and what awaits after defeat counts even more. For us in Teikou, none of this was technically true, but for a while it felt so; because my teammates acted like it was true, they fancied this truth, I lived for this truth, and until I had to acknowledge that it wasn't… I was happy. I wanted it to last. It didn't, and all that remained were ashes. But I know some things today, that I didn't know then.

Rakuzan is my team now, and we might not be a family but they had trust in me like I still have in them. They're waiting, and they wonder who I am, but words won't be enough for them—they hardly are for anyone. If they're not expecting anything from me, I can make them expect by the next time. They have all given their best until now and not for one second they looked away from victory; perhaps, that truly is enough.

The first is my name, the second is my eye, the third is my basketball, the fourth is a handshake, the fifth is an illogicality, the sixth is a bird in a cage, the seventh is a team, the eighth is a weakness that looks like me, and it is the other side of me, unable to cope with the FEAR of not upholding duties, being the one left behind, not having the force needed to have them LISTEN and FEAR while I am not weak I a weakness I AM NO T A—

I have a weakness that looks like me. It lives within me and its existence is a defeat in itself. I couldn't make it alone, I couldn't bring myself to make the choices I wanted to make, and I failed my family, the part that was still listening, because what it does, I do, what it believes, I believe, what it has left behind, I have lost and all that has happened because of it is entirely my own fault. It's important to finally give it the name it deserves. It is not a lifeline, not a lifeboat, not an emergency glass to break at the wild crackling of impending fire. It is a weakness and it should be treated accordingly.

The fact that I possess it is... alright. I shall accept that I am human, that I can commit mistakes and that I have lost for the first time in my life long ago, even if I hadn't realize it until now. The thought of it all is awful, but at the same time, oddly liberating.

Things might change from here on; I was proven they could, and this time I shall not stand passively, waiting and waiting, for others to bring the change I should have brought myself. It is time to take matters into my hands—walk out of the mirror, out of the world backwards with Alice and let the touch of reality remind us of what we were missing out on all this time.

I have long wondered why of all the things he could have told me, he chose that. I like to think he did because he cared. He cared for our team as I did, spiraled down with it as I did. Then he cared enough to ask, because he believed I could be different; he had expected something else out of me instead of what I gave him.

If he hadn't believed, perhaps I wouldn't be here. I would have faded, with everything that was exclusively me because then there would have been no one to know I could have been different, and if everyone had forgotten about me, I would have forgotten about myself as well; "that which no one knows, almost does not exist," someone said.

I want to ask him if he still has trust in me as he had then, if he suspects that I am what I am now but also what I was. All of them might, or so I'd like to think; because they more than anyone else know what it means to be something but have the potential to be something else, perhaps greater, and crave, and silently wait for that potential to become reality. For this and all that we've been through together, I know a part of me will always belong with them, regardless of whether they belong with me too.

The first is my name, the second is my eye, the third is my basketball, the fourth is a handshake, the fifth is an illogicality, the sixth is a bird in a cage, the seventh is a team, the eighth is a weakness that looks like me, the ninth is a boy who looks at me and asks who I am, the tenth is a wish, and it is mine and mine alone. It's burning the expands of skin I haven't felt in so long and it's twisting knots in my stomach. My fingers are trembling with the need to touch the ball, and my throat is dry with my thirst to win, to win because I simply wish to. Is it because of the boy standing against me? The boy who has no limits because he refuses them, the boy always rising from his ashes. He loves ergo lives, and he brims with ideals that I want to try and learn how to share, how to live by, and I can't wait anymore. He's done enough, they've all done enough. I am grateful for everything and I should tell them once this ends. Alea iacta est. Now it is my turn, to show them what I could have been, and will be from now on.

Flickering, like the white sail of a boat floating distant on a spread of blue sea. For tomorrow, and the day after that, in which we all have forgiven our mistakes and we will look forward to our next meeting. For this not to be the end, but the beginning.