Akashi Sejiro had spent most of his first year in high school drifting through the academic pipeline with the efficiency of someone who excelled at tests but never truly moved. That changed the afternoon his father, attempting to diversify his son's strictly scholastic life, nudged him toward picking up a hobby. Akashi approached the assignment with the same quiet diligence he applied to exams, scrolling through random sports clips… until the algorithm fed him the one match that detonated something inside him.
Noel Noa vs. Lionel Messi — a spectacle unburdened by hesitation. Pure decision-making, artistry, violence, elegance. The kind of football where every step was a declaration. Akashi watched the playback three times in a row. By the third, something had shifted behind those red irises. He wanted that feeling. That agency. That invincibility.
He joined Keijiro High School's soccer team the next week.
The coach didn't know what to do with him at first. A tall kid with unsettlingly sharp eyes and impeccable memory but absolutely no formal experience? A developmental project, nothing more. The team was already strong; Akashi spent matches warming the bench and tracking plays with obsessive clarity, rewinding every movement in his mind until he could reproduce it on the training pitch.
His progress was abnormal. Teammates joked that he learned tactics faster than he learned everyone's names. Dribbling patterns he saw once, he executed the next day. Opponent tendencies he observed from the bench, he countered in scrimmages with surgical precision. And in his debut match—short as it was—he demonstrated enough raw presence to make the spectators double-take. A single decisive run, a defensive stop that shouldn't have been possible, and the glint of something predatory in his gaze.
The coach labeled him "next year's weapon." A strategic asset to incubate until he was ready.
Akashi appreciated the rationale but felt the impatience tightening in his chest every time his boots hit the turf. He didn't want to wait for next year. He wanted to test how far the limits of his talents stretched beyond the quiet sidelines of Keijiro High.
The match ended. The stadium lights cooled. He walked home alone, replaying every moment with Perfect Memory—a blessing, a curse, and the foundation of every instinct he possessed. It wasn't long before he reached his family's modern Tokyo residence, where his mother greeted him with an expression he couldn't quite decode.
"There's a letter for you," she said. "It came earlier today. From the Japan Football Association."
His heartbeat shifted gears.
In his room, the envelope lay pristine on his desk. He broke the seal slowly, methodically, as if opening it too fast might collapse the moment. The contents were brief but seismic: a summons to an experimental national program. A forward-thinking initiative designed to revolutionize Japanese football.
Blue Lock.
The name alone carried weight he didn't yet understand.
He arrived at the facility on time, alone, and more focused than he had ever been in his life. The players around him buzzed with nerves and ego—strikers from across the country, radiating ambition strong enough to slice through the sterile air.
Akashi surveyed them with the Eye of the Emperor, reading posture, tension, and micro-shifts in movement. He wasn't just cataloging opponents; he was measuring the ecosystem of competition he had stepped into.
Ego appeared and gave his speech where only an egoistic player can became the best striker in the world and who survives and climbs over 299 players will be revolutionary striker who will lead japan U20 to world cup.
He was eventually funneled into a group—Team X. The room felt like a low-voltage storm, charged with restless ambition. Forty-four players, all forwards, all convinced of their own superiority.
Amid the noise, a gravitational center pulled Akashi's attention. Barou Shouei. The "King." Physique carved like a monolith. Posture radiating territorial dominance. His presence disrupted the ecosystem of egos the same way a predator changes the behavior of every animal in a forest.
Akashi approached him, not out of impulse but out of evaluation. "Barou Shouei," he said evenly.
Barou glanced at him, unimpressed. "And you are?"
"Someone who intends to stand above you."
The reaction was instantaneous. A flicker of irritation crossfaded into a smirk dripping with contempt. "Try not to embarrass yourself before that."
Akashi didn't respond. He didn't need to. The Eye of the Emperor mapped Barou's micro-movements—his balance distribution, his breathing rhythm, the latent power in his frame. Barou was a titan. But titans had angles. And Akashi wanted to uncover them.
Moments later, a piercing alarm cut the tension. A mechanical voice summoned all players to the central hall where Ego Jinpachi materialized on the display like an executioner unveiling a sentence.
Without preamble, he initiated the first selection test. A simple game of tag… with elimination on the line.
Chaos ensued. Sparks of desperation, flashes of athletic brilliance, and the stench of crushed dreams filled the air. Akashi navigated it with cold precision—Perfect Memory replaying patterns of movement, Absolute Defence triggering at every incoming threat, and his predictive vision steering him through the carnage.
One unlucky striker failed to escape and was struck last. His number blinked red. Eliminated.
Ego's voice cut through the hush. "This is Blue Lock. The weak disappear. The strong devour them. And you—Team X—will now operate as a unit. You will compete in a round-robin tournament against the other teams."
Murmurs rippled across the hall. Teamwork? For strikers? The contradiction was intentional.
Ego continued, "Your ranking is fluid. Your survival depends on both your individual egos and your capacity to weaponize your team. Fail to adapt, and you'll join the trash pile."
The briefing ended. Lights dimmed. The players—exhausted, shaken, but burning—drifted toward the dorm corridor.
Akashi remained still for a moment. The echo of Barou's presence, the sting of Ego's words, the electric pull of competition—everything compressed into a singular objective forming at the center of his being.
He wasn't here to survive.
He was here to dominate.