Chapter 1:
It was going to be a normal day. I would go to school, hang out with my friends, go to work, go home, and repeat the process again the next day. That's what's funny about life. Just when you start to get into a routine life finds a way to screw with you. I was sixteen when I moved to Japan for my dad's new job as head of a large corporation. I wasn't thrilled about the move but what could I do? I had no choice so I accepted it.
When I first approached the house I thought it was a joke. We could never had owned this large of a house back in America. This house was three floors with a fully furnished basement and finished attic and four rooms. I stood in front of it holding my bags.
"Is this it?" I asked.
"Yep! I told the company that promised to put us up here that the only way I could consider a big move like this was if we had a nice house to live in. I'm lucky they wanted me badly enough to go along with it." My dad said. He smiled at me and put down one of his bags putting a code in a panel on the stone wall surrounding our home. When he pressed the enter key the chest high gate popped open. Dad handed mom the key. "Go open the door for him dear."
"Of course." She replied. She walked over and unlocked it allowing me to open it. The inside of the house was very plain. It had a large entryway that was completely white. There was a set of stairs to the right just before the doorway that would lead into the kitchen which came with the stove, fridge, etc. From the way it looked the whole house was fully furnished. For the moment I had decided to ignore the rest of the house and find a room to claim which was the first one I saw. I walked into a room with blue walls which was different from the tan that filled the rest of the house. A bed sat with a plaid bedspread and three green pillows. On the wall parallel to the bed was a dresser with a TV on it. I put my bags on the bed and began to unload them into my dresser.
"Mike!" It was my dad. "Someone is at the door for you!" I heaved a sigh and trotted down the stairs. When I got to the door there was a kid who looked about my age standing in the doorway. He was short and a little pale. For the interest of ease I won't write what we said in Japanese.
"Hi." I said.
"Hi. My name is Motoki Oshima but my friends call me Oshi." His unnerved face made me a bit wary. "Call me whatever you want. My mom wanted me to come over and introduce myself and bring over some cookies which I gave to your dad."
"Thanks. Am I going to be attending your school?"
"Probably. All of the kids on the block go to the same high school."
"So you're sixteen?"
"Sixteen, seventeen in february. How about you?"
"Same but I'm seventeen in may."
"So around Koinobori?"
"Isn't it that day when people hang up streamers to wish for good health."
"It's so their son's grow strong and it's celebrate on the fifth."
"Mine's the day after."
"Cool." He smiled at me. "Do you want to go for a walk?"
"Sure." I turned and looked into the house. "Mom, dad! I'm going for a walk with the neighbor!"
"Okay son! Be back before sundown!" My mom yelled back. I closed the door and we began walking.
"So how did you get to the door if we have that gate?" I asked.
"Your dad buzzed me in. You guys have a security system that lets you unlock it from the inside. All I have to do is press your buzzer on the wall and it'll tell you i'm here."
"Cool." I felt my pocket start to vibrate. I took my smartphone out of my pocket and found it was a text message from my dad.
"What is it?"
"Just my dad giving me the code for the gate." I closed out of the messaging app and opened my journal app. I began to write down what had happened in the day. I typed my meeting with Oshi and us going on the walk and wondering where we were going. After that I closed out of it and locked my phone.
"What were you doing there?"
"Writing in my journal. It's something I've done since I was ten and I've just done it every since."
"That's cool. I have one as well but mine is just some loose-leaf in a three-ringed binder. I only write about significant events. If there was a big change then I write about it."
"What about the details?"
"I guess I don't like to focus on the minor stuff."
"I'm the opposite in that way. I love the minor details. It means the world to me knowing the lead up. The events make more sense that way."
"Dude, it's a journal. Nobody needs to understand it but me." He smiled. "Let's hurry before the shop closes." I decided not to ask questions like here we were going or how far it was. I just followed. He led me into a town that was busy. It seemed like one of those places that had more people walking than driving. It seemed like the majority of them were families or students. It wasn't surprise seeing as it was a saturday and it was beautiful. We approached the door to a shop before he stopped me.
"What is it?"
"Before we go in I need you to know this guy doesn't take to new people well."
"Should I be scared?"
"He's not going to hurt you he might just be a little cold. Just swing around a few times and he'll warm up to you." He opened the door and a bell rang. It looked like a pawn shop back in America with different items all over like guitars, vinyl, watches, knives, bows, and clothes. Basically a little bit of everything. "Kazuma! Where you at bro?"
"Oshi! What's up bro?" A large man appeared from the clutter. He wore a camo wife beater that showed off his muscles. He finally noticed me. "Who is this?"
"This is my new neighbor. He's from America and I think his name's Mike."
"One of the gun-loving, fat gobbling, war-starting ones eigh?"
"I really find all of that was offensive. We're not all like that." I stated.
"Then what are you like?"
"I bet the American you're describing wouldn't bother learning Japanese because you guys already know English."
"I see your point." He turned to Oshima. "Why'd you bring him here?"
"I know what you think but he's not bad. I decided to bring him along because I need something built."
"What is it?"
"A dresser with one drawer having a fake bottom. Parents are getting nosey and I need a place to hide things."
"Any preference on wood? Style?"
"Something cool. Irresistible even. Something they would see and wouldn't question why I bought it."
"Got it. Give me three days. It'll be done by then." He took a notebook out and jotted something down. "Any colors?"
"Black, red, the usual. Make it look good. Make it a bit smaller than average just to make it easier to get in the door and to my room."
"I'll need the dimensions of both doorways." Oshi took a piece of paper out of his pocket and handed it to him.
"This'll be everything you need to build it."
"I'll tell you the cost when you come to pick it up." He turned to me. "I'll see you later, American" I nodded and we left.
"I don't know if I like him." I said.
"You will. He was pretty cold to me when we first met but he's saved my life more times than I can count."
"How so?"
"I'm not a very popular kid at school. I get picked on a lot for being antisocial and it worries my parents. It's been that way since sixth grade. There have been a few times where kids have ganged up on me to try and beat me up but Kazuma was there and saved me. He always managed to get there in time."
"Sounds like a good friend. People picked on you for being withdrawn?"
"It happens often. Students who can't conform get ostracized."
"You don't have any rules about bullying?"
"Not really. If a student is caught fighting they are put on yard work. Other than that there's no further punishment."
"Sounds pretty brutal."
"You learn to defend yourself. The strong get along and the weak get left behind."
"What are you?"
"I'm the equivalent of an urchin. I stick to the strong to avoid being left behind."
"I see. I should probably be getting home."
"I'll walk with you." That was the rest of the day. We walked home and I learned a few things about him. He's the oldest of four, he has one brother and two sisters, his mother and father are divorced, and he can't wait until he can leave after high school. I waved him off and ran up to my room and stared out of the window. It was dawn when I finally got home. I watched as the morning sun dissolved and the moon began to rise showing off the beauty of the sky. In all of my life up to that point I had never been able to appreciate the sky more.
I laid back down in my bed and turned on the TV. I ended up falling asleep to the news. Apparently there was a killer on the loose somewhere close to my town. That had concluded the first day of what I had originally thought would be hell. Just the day before I had to leave all of my friends to move somewhere unfamiliar. I had to learn the language and somehow be okay with the transition.
That night I had a vivid dream. I was standing on a chrome panel that seemed to be one part of twelve other floating panels. In between the first and twelfth was a throne where a boy sat. He had a long, black robe that seemed like he'd been wearing it for a long time due to all of the holes in it. His hair was long and black but despite wearing the clothes of a sixty year old homeless man he was very young. He looked like he could be my age or even younger. On the panels figures began to appear. I say figures because that's all they were, almost as if the bright sky above us wouldn't display their features. It was only an outline of the people behind it.
The boy stood up and appeared to be floating in mid air. He raised his hands as he spoke.
"Hello ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for coming, as if you had a choice. My name is Amano Yukiteru but you can call me God." I looked around and noticed a small, tan figure floating on it's back. He pointed at the figure. "That is Murumuru. She has been my only companion through these many taxing years."
"I still say we should have done what Yuno did." The creature responded. Yukiteru glared at her with great hostility.
"I will never stoop as low as she did. Now, back to the subject. As I might have mentioned before I am very old. I believe I have been god for three thousand years now?" Murumuru nodded in response. "It has been tiring and I believe it is time for me to retire. That is why I have gathered all of you here."
"Get to the point!" Yelled the figure standing to my right.
"Settle down, Second. I'm getting to it. The reason I've called you all here is to participate in a game. It is one I was in before I became god. The few things you all have in common are the keys to this game. You all keep either a journal or a diary and live in the same region of Japan."
"What do our diaries have to do with this?" I asked.
"Well, Third, it is quite simple. I have given your diaries the ability to tell the future specific to how you have written in your diaries up to this point. For example, if you always write about the best way to escape, you now have the escape diary and your diary will tell you about the best ways to escape in the future. Each of you has a different diary. This was the premise for the game I played."
"You said this was a game so how does one person win?"
"Tenth, you win by killing the other players. A way to do this is the obvious way, stabbing, shooting, and other messy methods but the cleanest way is to destroy their diary. Do that and the other player will die. This is how I played the game but I'm adding a new rule. Your diary will gain the ability of another diary when you kill another player. The prize for winning, you become God." I felt a lump in my throat. "You will take my place and rule over the world and all of it's parallels but you must be careful. You cannot bring anyone into this game who is not a diary owner." His face turned somber and grim. "I made that mistake."
"Why would we want to know that?" asked another player.
"When I played the game my mother and father were murdered and it was my fault. That is all. As of now this game has begun. Please play as best you can!"
I awoke with a start and in a cold sweat. The news was still on the TV and my cell phone was on my night stand. I opened my diary app and looked it over. Nothing had changed which was a relief. I grabbed my uniform and got dressed for the day. I went through the same process of brushing my teeth and putting on my deodorant like I always did. After I was finally ready I grabbed a bagel and left making sure I got my map app opened and was guiding me to the school on my walk through the city. A short while after starting the walk I looked back and saw Oshi. He looked different than before. He had bags under his eyes and he had a sad expression. I stopped to allow him to get closer until I started walking beside him.
"Hey Oshi." He didn't look at me. "Are you okay?" He shook his head. "What's wrong?"
"Just a creepily vivid nightmare." He responded. My skin began to crawl at the thought of my dream last night.
"Wanna tell me what it was about?"
"Just something about diaries and a game. It just had me really freaked." I stopped walking and he turned to me. At first he looked confused but then a look of realization spread across his face.
"Amano Yukiteru and Murumuru." He looked in horror at me.
"What are you going to do now? Are you going to kill me?"
"No. We don't even know if any of this is real or if we happened to have the same dream."
"What are the chances though? That we just happened to have the same dream on the same night!" He started screaming so I put my hand over his mouth and dragged him into an alley.
"You need to shut up! If this is real, if by some chance this is all real, it needs to stay between us and nobody else. If anybody learns about us then we become targets for the other ten." He nodded and I took my hand off his mouth.
"I checked my diary and there were entries I didn't write in there. Big things."
"Like what?"
"It predicted I would get beaten up after school and killed two days from now."
"Just to be sure we should avoid doing whatever you did before getting jumped."
"That's the thing. I don't know what happened before that. It only told me I would get jumped."
"That's right, you only write about major events. It will only show big things that happen."
"What about yours?"
"Mine hasn't updated so I don't know." As if on cue my pocket began to vibrate. I checked it and my diary app was telling me my new entry was loaded successfully. I opened it up and saw a list of things I hadn't done yet. "It just updated."
"What does it say?" I scanned the list and found something about him being jumped.
"It says you did something pig-headed and got some guys mad so they jumped you after school in an alley next to the sushi place." I then realized what my diary was. "It's the opinion diary. It contains my analysis of a situation and my opinions."
"What do you think I should do?"
"Don't do anything stupid or rash." He nodded.
"We have to hurry or we'll be late." He said and we continued on our way.
"Third." I said. "Yukiteru called me third."
"He called me fifth."
"So now all of the other numbers will come after us. They'll try to kill us."
"It looks like the only way for you to survive is by sticking with me."
"How so?"
"It's the same reason you couldn't prevent from being jumped. Your diary only writes about big things so you need me for the details."
"So, what you're saying is, we need to work together."
"Only until you kill someone and take their diary. That way you'll have a fighting chance."
"So you're giving me a fighting chance at winning even though that could mean you losing.?"
"Believe me, I have no intention of losing."