Before basketball, Kuroko is the boy always on top of his afternoon tv programming, earning meager grades, posessing average cooking ability (he maintains, he is great with a microwave and pack of cup noodles): all in all, an unremarkable child destined for no notable achievements, no discernible drive to do much of anything important his parents are informed one parent conference.

So when he plops himself in front of the television set the night before golden week, it is with gloom he flips through the channels and tries to shelve the memory of his parents and the open-close mouth guppy thing they did whenever they didn’t know whether to scold or hold him. 

The basketball game is a distinct ripple in the stream of flipped channels Kuroko runs through because of its seemingly sheer mundanity. But the yellow polished floors the players glide on and the back and forth flow of the gameplay lure him into a daze that still the muscles of his hand so the remote thunks on the floor. It is a recorded match. It is an infamous one where the shooting guard dunks from the free throw line, air slipping through his limbs until his arm reaches and grabs the rim, slamming the ball with the grace of a natural. 

Kuroko remembers the moment well when he transfers to Teikou, his parents offering their encouragement at having seen their boy moved by something he always lacked—passion—even if it meant agreeing to move into a house barely fit for the three of them to pay their son’s tuition. 

It was hard to ignore what was in their son’s eyes; that day, Kuroko decides to be something remarkable.