Hello, ladies and gents! Welcome to This is Reality – this little project is meant to be a parallel with 's story, In the Real World. I'm writing this in preparation for a story I'll be co-writing with , and I hope you check out their own story as well! In any case, I hope you enjoy this story. Let's get on with the show!

~DN~

Chapter 1 – The Fiction

My day was going broodingly fine until I collided with another person on the sidewalk.

To be fair, I wasn't looking where I was going, but then again, he must not have been, either. We ended up sprawling in a tangle of limbs, swearing as my iced latte spilled everywhere. Well, I was swearing. The poor guy just seemed confused. I took one look at him, and couldn't help but frown. "Hey, are you okay, man?"

His head snapped around to my direction. He was Japanese, I noted. Not that it was anything unusual – we were pretty near the Little Tokyo section of LA – but he was dressed formally, like he'd just come from some private school with a dress code, and I couldn't think of any nearby that had the kids wearing white dress shirts and no jackets. He seemed oddly familiar, but then again, maybe I'd seen him in passing around the neighborhood.

He looked relieved, and he grabbed onto me as we stood up. He was clutching at my arm like I was the only thing that made sense in the world (which didn't really make getting up much easier, considering how short I am).

In hindsight, the way he was desperately clinging to me should've set off some alarm bells in my head, but as it was, I did nothing.

"Where...am I?" His voice was a little off, and heavily accented.

"Oh! Are you an immigrant?" The poor guy just seemed so lost, I figured Japanese might make him feel calmer. Even though I was born in the US, my parents came here as a young couple, so I grew up speaking it.

"You are Japanese! God, I thought I was gonna go insane! Tell me, where am I?"

So he was lost? Okay, so he didn't live here...Maybe he was visiting family? "You're in the Arts District." No look of recognition on his face. "Not far from Little Tokyo." Still as clueless as ever. "You're in the Arts District, Los Angeles, California, USA? The Earth? Do you remember what today's date is?" Maybe he had amnesia.

He kept shaking his head. "No, no! Last I checked, I was in Tokyo. The real one, in Japan," he added. "I was walking home from school, when all of a sudden, I blacked out. I woke up about half an hour ago, sitting on a chair in front of a coffee shop. And now I'm here!"

My heart went out to the poor guy – we needed to get him to the police, and figure out what happened to him. Who kidnapped him, if necessary. "It's okay – It's going to be all right. I'm Eric Oshiro. Wait, sorry, Oshiro Eric – what's your name?"

"Yagami. Yagami Raito."

And for some reason I instantly felt less inclined to believe him.

~DN~

"Light Yagami." Are you shitting me? This thought kept looping through my head as we sat in a booth at a restaurant.

And the look on this guy's face – he definitely believed that was his name. What, exactly, were the odds that there was a real family, in Japan, called the Yagami's, who decided to name their son Light? He didn't seem to get why I was so stunned – Death Note is a pretty well known anime and manga, surely someone else had made fun of him at least once?

The worst part of it was, I recognized him. He looked almost exactly like the character.

He must've been cosplaying and hit his head or something. The only problem with that theory was that there weren't any conventions happening in LA right now – and besides, there were far more recognizable character from Death Note to cosplay as – if he hadn't said his name, I would have thought he was just a Japanese Bieber impersonator (and wasn't that a frightening thought). So, this guy must be crazy.

Or he could be on drugs, but aside from thinking he was fictional psychopath, he acted like a normal, functioning human being, not under the influence of anything nasty. There weren't any physical symptoms I could see – no redness in his eyes, no pale and unhealthy skin, nothing. The way he talked was normal, too, no slurs or inconsistencies. I'm not an expert or anything, but I'd rather think this guy was mentally ill than a hallucinating junkie.

"So, Yagami-san, have you ever heard of Death Note?" I said it slowly and carefully. For a moment, I thought I saw something flicker in his eyes, but he just shook his head. So, either he was just outright lying, or he was just very much in denial. I decided it might be best to just humor him.

"Oh well then. Too bad – it's a really great anime." His eyes widened when I said that. Ooooh. Or maybe not so much humoring him, as feeding him information and seeing how he reacts. He was probably panicking inside.

I sometimes wonder if I have a cruel streak. I try to be a nice guy, I really do, but sometimes this side of me comes out that I call my 'troll self' because trolling people is just fun sometimes.

But my better self usually gets ahold of me before I go this far. I really shouldn't be doing this to him. "The reason I ask, is because your name is just like one of the main characters. Are you sure you've never heard of it?" I took a long sip of my drink and watched his reaction. He seemed to have frozen, his face carefully blank. It was an in-character reaction - just like Light Yagami might have had upon finding out he was fictional. Cool. At least, it would be if he wasn't a nutjob.

"Really? Interesting. And no, I'm sure I haven't. Tell me about it – what's it about?" He spoke casually. Like it was just an odd coincidence. He mirrored me by taking a sip of his coffee.

Guilt gnaws at me. I shouldn't be doing this. I shouldn't be playing with him like this. I should just take him to an authority, and find out if he has any relatives, any missing people who fit his description. I pay for our check, and stand up to leave, resolving to check him into the hospital. Maybe the psychiatric ward could help him. 'Light' follows me as we exit the restaurant. "Well, it's about a Japanese high school student who finds a notebook who can kill people, and what he does with it. There's a genius detective who goes after him and everything – it's really cool." I'd walked a few paces, before realizing that the guy had stopped. I turned to look back, and realized I'd made a terrible mistake.

Shit, the manga store! I should've remembered that was there – I could've taken another route and gone on humoring him! Dammit! In the window of the store, there was a big Death Note poster – with Light and Ryuk posing together. The Light Yagami look-alike muttered something in Japanese under his breath; I couldn't quite hear it, but I'm pretty sure it was a curse.

"Crap," I muttered. Truth be told, my 'Light' looked so much like the manga drawing it was scary. There goes the 'humoring him' plan. "Now I gotta explain this. Look, Yagami-san, don't worry -"

"Excuse me, Oshiro-san, but I think we're far past that." The teen who called himself Light Yagami was glaring at me, his voice as threatening as black ice. It put my nerves on edge – was he as psychotic as the character he pretended to be? "At first I thought you somehow knew these things about me, and were just dropping hints – but now I see this isn't true. Just when were you planning on telling me you thought I was fictional?" His last few words were drawn out, hissing and spitting like a cobra. I was shaking right down to my polyester sneakers and cotton socks. The only plan I still had was humoring him – I couldn't think of anything else. For all I knew, it might calm him down enough to get him to trust me again. There might well be something I could salvage from the situation – I'd do anything that kept me safe right now; the street was far from deserted, but what were the odds of someone calling the police, when they all likely were just hoping someone else would? Might as well try.

"Ya-Yagami-san, please – you've got to understand! What would you do, if you met someone in the street who claimed to be a fictional character? You'd think they were crazy, right? What else was I supposed to do? I had to test you, and make sure you were who you said you were! The real Yagami Light from the story would have acted as if he had never heard of the Death Note – a crazed fan might have gone into a psychotic break, or something else might have happened – but he definitely would have had a different reaction. I'm on your side, Yagami-san – I think that what you were doing in your world was the right thing." He seemed to have calmed down a little. Hopefully, I could keep him that calm until I could get him to the hospital. Screw the hospital, my nerves screamed, call the police! But I had to get him to the hospital – he might have blacked out at some point and been injured for all I knew. Maybe he'd been abused, and this was his way of coping. Either way, it would be kinder to get him to a hospital, my own nerves aside.

A much more relaxed 'Light' replied, "So, Eric-kun," not noticing me wince (I hadn't given him permission to call me Eric – kind of a faux pas in Japanese culture, and I was only a first generation American – to this day, I have no idea what led him to call me by my personal name), "Your reasoning with finding out my identity was more than a little flawed, but you're right. I am the real Kira. Though," And he seemed to shudder, and his expression of fear and confusion came back to his face. "I still don't know how I got here. Or how to get back. And I haven't seen Ryuk anywhere since I woke up -" He looked like he was having a panic attack.

"Hey, it'll be alright, Yagami-san." Back in control. "Don't worry, we'll figure out a way to get you back home." And get you help, while we're at it. It seemed like pity had overridden my fears – for now. "Before you blacked out, what was the last major thing you did? It might help if we figure out when from your timeline you came into the real world." He flinched when I said that. Whoops. Wrong choice of words.

"I...I..."

"Look, maybe you've been injured. We should get you to a doctor; he can look you over, and then we'll go back to my house, rest, and figure all this out. Okay?" Smooth. I felt like a genius. He'd never be going to my house, of course – the hospital would hopefully keep him overnight, and all I'd have to do was visit him every now and then to see how he was doing. This was just a promise to assure him he could trust me. I'd unfortunately been well-schooled in the art of lies by a female friend early on in life; sometimes I wonder if she messed me up somehow.

'Light' shook himself and slowly nodded. "All right. But we can't enter me under my real name – if the...anime, is too well-known, they'll think I'm crazy, like you did. I want you to call me Hayashi Arata from now on. That way, my identity will be protected."

Shit - this was going to be long day.

~DN~

Several hours later, I crashed down on the couch back at my house, as moody as I had been before I received my new pet lunatic, if not more so. I hadn't been able to get away from Arata (which I had decided would be his name for now – I wasn't going to call him Light in my head) and talk to the doctors about his little delusion. He'd persisted in his clingyness, refusing to let me out of his sight, like I was his security blanket. That, or he suspected me, but that was unlikely – he wasn't really Light Yagami, after all. And so I'd been forced to take him back to my house. What had I gotten myself into?

My 'house' was really just a condo my parents owned. Right now, they were on vacation in Japan, with my two little sisters, Emma and Emily. They'd left me behind, presumably to watch the house, even though they knew I'd always wanted to visit. Bile rose to my throat at the thought. It was like they were telling me, You can't be Japanese again until you've learned your lesson and come to your senses. Which was a stupid little piece of sentiment in and of itself.

Currently, Arata was sitting at the minibar in the kitchen, watching me through narrowed eyes. Yeah, my house was expensive. My dad worked for a big Japanese software company, as an executive in their new American branch. The vacation was courtesy of the company. My older brother, Ethan, couldn't come, as he was currently living upstate in Berkeley, taking summer classes. So I was alone here. For the next five weeks.

Granted, it wasn't that bad. I could go where I wanted, do what I wanted – I'd visited a skate park and made some new friends. Not that I tried getting into clubs, or drinking, or doing any stupid, illegal stuff. Aside from, well, who I was, I was a good, clean kid. Not that my parents saw that.

I glanced over at Arata, and sauntered over to join him. A jolt of fear ran through me, as I saw he was writing in a black notebook – but it was okay, I reassured myself, it was okay, because it wasn't the notebook, it wasn't real, just one of the ones that was sold as merchandise at conventions. Jeesh. Seeing it with Arata, who looked so much like Light, almost gave me a heart attack.

I had to struggle not to laugh at my own morbid joke. Arata checked his watch. "So, Eric," I was startled as he spoke in English.

"Uh, yeah?"

"Do you really think I'm doing the right thing? That Kira's cause is great and noble?"

"Of course." Not really. Watching Death Note, I hadn't really sided with one side or the other. The story itself was entertaining enough – I didn't feel the need to pick a side. But it was what Arata needed to hear.

"And yet, you seemed very intent on walking out of the room in the hospital." His eyes slid in my direction. "How curious that is. Was the poster, perhaps, faked?" Arata stood up very suddenly. My heart started racing a million miles an hour. "I don't know how you knew about me," he said, switching to Japanese, "But soon, it won't matter." He looked at his watch.

I shouldn't have done this, I shouldn't have brought him home. What was I thinking?! He believes he's Light Yagami – of course he'd be homicidal! Good God, what am I gonna do?! Arata towered over me – I'm short and small for my age; I wouldn't stand a chance, even if I could grab a kitchen knife or something. "Five...Four..." What the hell was he doing? Please Mom, Dad, at least don't bury me in a dress...

"Three...Two...One..."

Arata looked at me like he was expected something to happen, and his eyes widened in realization. I was ready to cry with relief – he'd tried to kill me with the Death Note, but it wasn't real.

The notebook flopped to the ground. On it was written several variations of my name: Erik Oshiro, Erik Oshirou, Eric Oshiro, Eric Oshirou – those in addition to several others. Arata was trembling and shaking his head. "No, no, no no! This can't be!" He snatched up the notebook and the TV remote, and turned it on. I decided that now probably would be the worst time to mention that Eric wasn't legally my first name.

The Jimmy Kimmel show popped up first thing – Arata scrawled his name in the Death Note, along with the celebrity who was on as a guest. He waited, checking his watch. There was nothing I could do to humor him now – his attempts to make the Death Note work would be futile.

Forty seconds passed. Arata didn't seem to have any words left. His face was just open, in a state of complete shock. I realized, seeing him now, that his breakdown on the sidewalk must have at least been partially faked. Method actor? Maybe he was so good, he fooled himself? Unlikely, but it was an entertaining thought.

"The Note doesn't work," he said, stunned. "It doesn't work – I haven't seen Ryuk – this is...which means..."

I stepped forward, putting a hand on Arata's shoulder. "I'm sorry, Yagami-san." Guilt gnawed at me again – here I was, comforting him in a moment of weakness, insincere and purely to ensure my future survival.

"Am I real?" He didn't seem to be asking anyone, just speaking to the air. I felt a spike of empathy for his identity crisis, and I sat down next to him. Dammit, I realized, I'm not going to be able to get rid of him. Compassion really is a weakness.

We sat there for a long time. Each of us kept to our own thoughts, brooding and silent.