A/N: Hey, y'all! I just wanted to try a Kuroko no Basuke SI-Oc fic, so here it is!

Summary: When told that she was going to die, she accepted it and wanted to stay dead. Fate had other plans for her. "Hi, senpai. Have you noticed me yet? "…Get back to practice, Akashi."

Pairing/s: Fem! SI-Oc Akashi x Nijimura

Disclaimer: I do not own the beauty known as Kuroko no Basuke. I do, however, own this fanfic, this idea, and my OC/s.

A/N (30 Mar 2020): Oki, so this is the second chapter I'm revising to make sure it fits with the writing style I've developed over time. For the old readers, I hope you enjoy. For the new readers, I hope you come to like this story and follow Elise/Sei's journey!

Prologue

"Remember to do your exercise book later. Your fingers need to be warmed up for your competition tomorrow. You can't afford to slack off," her father told her as he drove the car through the busy highway.

Elise didn't bother replying, since she knew that he knew that the message got across. Become a piano prodigy. That was the plan. Then, she'd get into a school in Europe and live out the rest of her life there, but first, she had to keep her grades all above ninety percent and then she'd have to keep winning piano competitions, just like the one that would be held tomorrow at 4 PM.

Elise watched cars speed past them through the window. Mentally, she made a to-do list of everything she needed to finish once she got home: revising two of her essays, studying for her Chemistry quiz on Monday, and a few minor things that probably didn't need to be done today. Regardless, she would have to do it to accommodate her schedule tomorrow, since the drive to her competition venue would take at least an hour.

She shifted her gaze towards the front of the car, where her parents were talking about her competition tomorrow, how excited her mother was to see her back another trophy because obviously Elise is going to win again! How couldn't she?

Elise sighed and closed her eyes as she always did because cars made her dizzy. She was settling down in her seat, preparing to sleep when she heard the loud honk that made her eyes snap open. Past the tinted windshield, she could see a large ten-wheeler truck headed towards them at a fast rate. Everything seemed to happen in slow motion: her mother panicking, her father trying to prevent the collision from occurring by moving the car to the far left.

Suddenly, the silence was deafening, and all she knew was black.

She was lying on a hospital bed when she came to, barely breathing and body aching as the doctors spoke with her mother in solemn voices. The beeping of the monitor could be heard next to her. She blinked and stared at the blinding lights in the room.

Why was she here again? Oh, the car crash.

She should have been panicking right now, but maybe it was the shock, or the medicines that had surely been placed in her IV, that kept her in a slight daze.

Was she going to die?

Her mother approached her after consulting the doctors, breath shaking and a forced smile on her face. She sat next to Elise and held her hand. "You'll be fine. I know you will be. You're the only one I have left, Elise."

Ah, so her father was dead, and she was next, wasn't she?

"I wish it was me, instead. You don't deserve this, Lis. You were, you were supposed to go to Europe! You were going to have a life much better than your father's and mine. You were— you were supposed to live."

She couldn't seem to reply. 'You don't deserve it either,' she wanted to say, but her lips felt so heavy.

Silence followed, and she felt a little tired.

It was only when she felt her mother's grip on her hand relax that she knew her mother was not able to fight the tiredness of her own body. Elise could see that her mother had minor injuries that were bandaged, but she supposed the crash was also mentally tolling. Her mother had also probably seen her father's body.

Her mother had fallen asleep next to her a few moments later, and Elise stared at the ceiling once more.

Was this it then? No more piano, no more school, no more friends, no more living?

Thinking was getting tiring as well. She sighed, closing her eyes to rest them for a bit, but she ended up succumbing to the darkness that followed, and in the back of her head, she already had a feeling that this was her death—

—not.

She thought death was something 'peaceful', in the sense that you felt nothing. An eternal rest. A freedom from any pain that was suffered during one's final days.

She didn't expect this.

She remembered that people talked about reincarnation — how souls were recycled and given new life, but not necessarily in the same time period as the one they had lived in. Naturally, she found the idea impossible, because what then did that say about population demographics and the like? If souls were simply reincarnated, surely that would mean that the population would have a certain limit to it? But with the ever increasing population, then that implied that only some souls were reincarnated, and that begged the question of what criteria exactly needed to be met for a soul to be reincarnated. Was it something random instead?

These endless questions about reincarnation, and all the possible contradictions to the concept itself, led her to believe that it just wasn't possible, and that humans really did have an expiration date. After all, no one she knew or knew about could possibly have all the answers to her queries.

But despite this, she was stunned. If there was some criteria out there that determined which soul got chosen to be a part of the cycle, what criteria did she meet? Because it was either she was just dreaming (unlikely, since she had died. Unless, dreaming about impossible things was a part of death?) or she truly was reincarnated.

Because she could feel it. She could feel the chubbiness of her fingers and toes that she could no longer control the way she wanted them to. She could feel the blanket wrapped around her body as she was easily lifted into someone's arms.

She was sure that, had she just died, she could have accepted it easily after some time, but reincarnation? The concept, the fact that it had happened to her, was just so hard for her to grasp. It almost made her hesitate to open her eyes.

All she could hear was gibberish, some language she couldn't understand, but she knew it had to be Asian. A woman laughed softly near her, cooing at her, and her curiosity made her take a peek.

A woman with reddish brown hair and yellow orange eyes gazed at her with a sweet smile, delighted for some reason. Elise then moved her gaze around the room. The only other occupant was a man with dark red hair who stood beside the woman. There was also a hospital bed with green sheets, cool air coming from the air conditioner, a nurse entering the room with a smile.

Then, it hit her. She was the child of these two people — a woman with a radiant smile and a man with a cold look on his face.

She was tempted to cry out loud in confusion, but it was that very confusion that also kept her quiet, kept her thought jumbled.

But she felt some semblance of comfort within the warmth of the woman's hands. She liked it.

Could she accept the fact that this woman was her new mother? Maybe after some time, though it didn't mean she would forget about her first mother — Alice Morgan.

And in a snap, she suddenly felt tired, and the last thing she heard was the soothing voice of her new mother before she fell asleep.

Life as a baby was rather dull for her. Eat, sleep, get cooed at by her mother, eat, sleep, eat, sleep… It felt like a monotonous cycle that did not provide for her any entertainment or enjoyment (because what was she even going to do with a dog plushie? Sure, she'd hug it to sleep but it wasn't as if she could just play with it for hours every day). Luckily enough, she retained all the memories of her life as Elise, so she made sure to remember as much as she could so that she could never forget who she once was.

Her mother helped break the constant cycle, too, when she would sing to her or read her stories — these came from picture books whose images she could understand but had words that she could not comprehend. The characters looked Chinese, but the others didn't seem like it.

"Mukashi, mukashi, sono mata mukashi…" her mother began as she placed Elise on her lap, leaning back on her mother's belly.

Japanese, then, Elise concluded. She had seen the cover of the book when her mother flipped a page, and she recognized it as a book her older cousin had been studying when he took Japanese as an elective.

The Tale of Urashimatarou? Was that it?, she wondered.

Her mother's reading was disrupted when the door opened and her father walked in with the usual stern look on his face.

"Well?" he asked her mother as he transferred his gaze towards Elise.

Her mother bit her lip and sighed. "Masaomi, she's only been here for a few months. You can't expect her to walk already. Neither can your father."

"She is an Akashi," her father replied sharply after a second's pause. "It would have been preferred if she were male, but because she is female, it is even more important for her to achieve excellence. Surely, you understand why?"

She had been here a few months. Two? Three? Four? She didn't have anything to help her keep track of the days that went by. When did babies start walking, though? She was pretty sure they crawled first, but she knew that at this state of hers, where her limbs felt like lead most of the time, she wouldn't be able to get much done.

Cons of being a baby, she supposed.

"Teach her, Shiori. She will be assessed afterwards," Masaomi said, leaving immediately after.

Her mother — Shiori — sighed again, stroking Elise's hair. "I'm sorry. He's just… disappointed. His father has been pressuring him to get a male heir, and with my condition, I can only risk getting pregnant once. He's disappointed in me, I suppose."

'No one can control it', Elise wanted to say, but she had only released a few incomprehensible words that sounded like regular baby babble.

Shiori giggled at this, though, and hugged Elise gently. "You know, once you grow up, you'll have to go through so much. The Akashi family has always strived for excellence. It's in the blood, as they say, but because you're the sole heiress, your father would only end up pushing you harder in all areas…"

Shiori sucked in a sharp breath. "But don't worry. I'll be with you, okay? But for now, I'll have to teach you to walk, then. Come on, Seijuuro, let's try crawling first, hmm?"

And as Elise was gently placed on the ground, it hit her.

Japanese.

Red hair.

Akashi.

Seijuuro.

She was a female Akashi Seijuuro.

As in, Akashi Seijuuro from Kuroko no Basuke.

Oh my.

A/N: How was it? I mean, it's my first try at an SI fic, and at a Kuroko no Basuke fic, so I hoped I got the character's personalities right, at least the ones in this chapter.

What do you think of it so far? Please tell me in a review!

A/N (30 Mar 2020): For old readers, the changes were just adding more detail to Elise's life before the accident (so her playing the piano and all) and fixing how I wrote the chapter. For new readers, I hoped you like this chapter, and that you'll like the succeeding ones too!

Stay safe, guys!