The Crimson Path

[Kuroko's Basketball / Canon-focused / Seijuro Akashi / BG]

*The title, "Akaji," comes from the line, "The red road winds like a dragon or serpent, stretching thousands of zhang beyond sight." I came across it many years ago while doing a Chinese test. The test explained "red road" as "a path through a scorching wilderness."

*The sweet stuff starts in chapter 16. Half-sweet, no ice, not cloying, and it won't give you cavities.

*For the confession, see chapter 22.

*The sweetness ramps up in volumes three and four. Volume three is like summer lemonade, while volume four is like rich milk tea. Volume five has a few bumps along the way, but it still has a happy ending.

1. There is no clear distinction between servant Akashi and I Akashi. Chapter 8 is a vague dividing point. I write him as a complete Akashi, and try to portray his split personality in a relatively realistic way.

2. The focus is on the ordinary side of Akashi: despite being the heir to a conglomerate, he's still just a relatively mature high school student. For more about his vulnerability and the emotions he carried over from his Teiko days, see the introduction below.

3. The timeline runs from his first year at Rakuzan High to the end of his third year. The ending covers university and life after graduation, with a childhood flashback woven in along the way.

4. The heroine, Sawano Rina, is someone who works hard at everything, and a childhood friend who appears out of nowhere (if seeing each other just once as children counts).

5. The other Kuroko's Basketball characters, apart from Akashi's parents, barely appear.

[About servant Akashi and I Akashi]

It just occurred to me that servant Akashi may be more like his father, while I Akashi is more like his mother. It's an interesting way of looking at them.

But I don't really like separating them into distinct personalities. The original work says that in everyday interactions, the second personality isn't very different from the first. A Zhihu user analyzed Akashi psychologically, saying that children who lose their mothers young may imitate their mothers' behavior to fill in the blank left by the absent maternal image. I quite agree.

When I wrote about Akashi's father later in the story, I independently arrived at the same idea as that user: his father believes kindness is a weakness.

What I want to explore in this story is Akashi's vulnerability, the emotions he cherishes from his Teiko days, and how he has always obeyed his father. When he meets Sawano, he sees in her a drive to pursue her own goals and a defiance of the past.

There's a post on Tieba called "Seijuro Akashi's Secrets (Official Information Compilation)." I mostly followed the clues in it, such as Akashi choosing to become a professional shogi player because he considers it an ideal profession, and his preference for shirts.

Theme: Love is like a nightingale, an eternal pursuit of beauty and selfhood.