A Shinigami named Ryuk sat atop a pile of bones overlooking the vast, barren and unchanging wasteland that was the Shinigami world. Just about everywhere there were stationed abstract heaps of bones that resembled the heads and limbs of various beasts; the shape of these were about the only things that differed throughout the entire realm. This whole indifference of the place was what bored Ryuk; he found it all completely uninteresting, having lived in the exact same place his entire life.
Actually, there was something else that differed in the Shinigami realm: each Shinigami looked and acted entirely different from one another. This one in particular, Ryuk, somewhat resembled a nine-foot clown; not the one you might see at a carnival, of course, for if any human ever saw Ryuk, or any Shinigami, for that matter, they would almost certainly die of heart failure. Ryuk possessed more human features than one might expect: he had eyes (these were yellow) and a row of sharp, jagged teeth. Like a human, the only real hair on his body was on the top of his head, but instead it was slightly blue in colour and stood up straight from his scalp. He was extremely thin around the waist but had broad, muscular shoulders; his legs, long, thin and dangling, resembled his arms but with feet instead of hands.
By now you are probably wondering what a Shinigami is. They are reapers: the Gods of Death. Each one of the Shinigami owns a notebook; this is what they use to kill. The Shinigami would stare down at the human world through little portholes stationed around the Shinigami realm and, after finding a suitable victim, would write the person's name in the notebook. When that person died, his remaining lifespan was added to the Shinigami's; because of this, they were, in a sense, immortal.
Although the Shinigami possessed the power to kill ruthlessly and without second thought (which they often did), most of them only killed to continue living. They had grown so used to the idea of wiping a person off the face of the earth with a single stroke of the pen that they had become tired of it. Nowadays, any Shinigami who actually did his job and killed regularely was laughed at by the others. When they weren't sleeping or leaning over these little portholes to kill, they were often gambling (with bones, since these were the only things they had to gamble with).
"Hah! Two sideways skulls! Looks like I win again!"
"Damn…"
Ryuk smiled inwardly. It looked like someone was gambling right now. He looked around to find the source of the shout – ah, there it was. He stared at the group for a long time while they argued about the rules. Why bother… he thought. There's no use arguing about the rules when you don't gain anything in playing whether you win or not.
Finally one of them shouted: "Hey, Ryuk! Why don't you come and join us for once? We could use the company!"
Ryuk stood up and walked over to where they were playing their game; underneath the shelter of a cave, where there was a rock suitable for use as a table. He knew he could have just shouted back, but why not waste more time by walking over to answer? It was equally as pointless as staying seated on the pile of bones and not answering at all.
When he reached the entrance, he stopped for a moment, and speaking as slowly as he could to pass the time, relayed the same answer as he gave every time he was asked to join: "No, thank you. I have better things to do."
"Like what?" asked one of the Shinigami. "Killing?"
The rest of them laughed stupidly.
Ryuk felt no real obligation to continue the conversation, but at least he was wasting more time by doing so. "No… of course not. It's been five days."
Dismissing his friends, he started heading off in the opposite direction of the cave. As he was about to leave, a second Shinigami asked, "huh? Where're you going, Ryuk? The Shinigami world looks the same everywhere you go – you of all people should know that."
"It's been five days since I lost my notebook," said Ryuk.
"What? How clumsy can you get?" Hey, wait – didn't you trick the Shinigami king into giving you two? How could you lose both, Ryuk?"
"Yeah…"
"Hah! Well, do you have any idea where it is?"
"Certainly…" Ryuk said as he turned around to face the Shinigami. "The Human World."
"What? The human world?" exclaimed the Shinigami. "You're crazy, you know that, Ryuk?"
With that, he turned around to continue his gambling game.
Ryuk soon arrived at the big transparent dome with a swirling tempest of light and wind below it; this was one of the portholes into which the Shinigami stared to choose his victims. The light and wind quickly faded away to reveal a vast expanse of streets and buildings. He searched around the city until he found the exact place where he had dropped his Death Note five days ago: near a fountain in front of a human school.
The Death Note was still there…
Ryuk stood up, and as he did two enormous wings the same colour as his hair sprouted from his shoulder blades. "Looks like I'm going to have to fly," he chuckled as he leapt through the portal and disappeared from the Shinigami world.
"Mr. Yagami?"
Light paid him no attention, and instead continued staring absently out of the window at the fountain that stood in the centre of campus. There was something else there, a black book, it appeared to be, but he couldn't be sure.
"Mr. Yagami, are you paying attention?"
"Huh?" The teenager's senses snapped back into focus immediately.
"Mr. Yagami, I would like you to translate this text for me, please."
"Page, sir?"
"Page one hundred forty-two, paragraph number fifty-six."
"Certainly."
Light stood up and read from the book he cradled in his arms: "You should follow God's teachings. If you do, the seas will remain quiet and the storm will not come."
"Good, Mr. Yagami, thank you."
Light sat back down and continued to stare out of the window. For some reason, he just couldn't take his eyes off that book…
As soon as the class ended, Light grabbed his things and put them into his backpack before starting out the door.
"Oh, Light!" someone called just as he was about to leave.
Great, he sighed, turning around to see who it was.
"Make sure you call me tonight, okay?" It was just some girl; he couldn't even remember her name correctly.
"Okay," he called back as he waved to her from across the hall. Light wasn't going to call her… why should he?
From the entrance to the school building, he walked straight over to the fountain towards the book he had been staring at earlier. He was now much too curious to avoid it; there was something about it, something that intrigued him greatly. Enough that he wanted to find out what it was, anyway. He just hoped it was something interesting.
"Death Note?" he said to himself as he picked up the book. It was a notebook; black with the English title written on the cover in white ink. "Meaning a notebook of death?"
Heh. This is the kind of notebook they say belongs to a God of Death. A Shinigami…
He put down his backpack and sat on the edge of the fountain. Opening the book, he saw writing on the inside cover. It's all in English, he thought. What a pain to translate…
But he was still curious, and so he began to read the notes, one after one, carefully translating each word into Japanese as he did.
How to use:
A person who's name is written in this notebook shall die.
This note will not take effect unless the writer has the person's face in their mind while writing his/her name. Therefore, people sharing the same name will not be affected.
If the cause of death is written within 40 seconds of writing the person's name, it will happen.
If the cause of death it not specified, the person will die of a heart attack.
After writing the cause of death, details of the death should be written in the next 6 minutes and 40 seconds.
Light stopped right there: this was stupid. He stared at the notebook, feeling disappointed. It wasn't as if he had expected it to be anything more, but still… it was probably bought from some joke shop.
Or did somebody write it his self as a joke and then drop it here for someone like him to come and pick it up? If somebody had made this, they certainly had a great imagination; you write a person's name in a book and then they die, just like that…
Suddenly he came back to his senses. "Who likes this crap, anyway? This is worse than those chain letters."
He unzipped his schoolbag and dropped the notebook into it. Why not save somebody else the time and just take it with me?
As he left the fountain and started heading home, he didn't notice two large yellow eyes watching him from behind…
Light sat in his room, the Death Note open on his desk. He had been studying it for the past little while now, and had grown more and more intrigued by it. He had only seen the inside cover while reading it by the fountain… now he noticed that on the subsequent pages there was written hundreds and hundreds of names, as if someone had used the notebook before.
Or as if someone had written hundreds and hundreds of names in it to make it look as if someone had used it before.
Besides, why had he even brought it home? It would only cause him trouble… what kind of impression would someone get if they found it in his backpack?
I brought it home to spare someone else from picking it up.
But was that the real reason…?
No. He didn't want anything to do with this. Light closed the notebook and picked up the remote control to his television set. He flicked it on and turned channels until he stopped at a station where live footage was being broadcasted.
"The same serial killer who indiscriminately killed six people yesterday in Shinjuku's Hanka district is still located in the preschool with the teacher and seven children as hostages…" the anchorman was announcing. Superimposed on the screen was an aerial footage of the school campus, with armed policemen standing by at its gates. "—The suspect is known as Otoharada Kurou, 42 years old and unemployed. Last night, he—"
Light picked up the remote again and flicked off the television. This world is rotting, he said to himself.
He strode over to his bed and flopped down onto it, returning to his thoughts about the notebook. It was impressive that someone would go to the trouble of writing all those names in a book all for a stupid prank like this. And then there was all the instructions they had to come up with, and it would have been hard to make the book look so… realistic.
Yes, it would certainly have been hard…
Very hard…
Suddenly, he leapt up from the bed and darted across his room to the notebook, sat down in a chair, grabbed a mechanical lead pencil from the desk and checked to make sure it wasn't empty. He held the pencil inches from the Death Note's pages for a few seconds, thinking to remember the name of the criminal he had seen on the news. Otoharada… Kurou, was it?
Wait… Light stopped dead in his tracks. If I go through with this, does that make me a murderer?
But there's no way this is going to work he told himself.
He quickly scribbled in the fourteen-letter name in both English and Japanese, unsure which would work, and turned the television back on to the channel he had been watching before.
Now… if this thing works, which it won't, Kurou should die of a heart attack in exactly forty seconds. He walked over to his bed and sat on the edge to watch.
39…38…37…
36…
It feels like time has slowed down, he thought to himself as he watched the clock around his wrist.
24…23…22…
Come on, damn it!
8…7…6…5…
Hurry up!
4…
3…
2…
1.
He immediately glanced up at the television.
"The hostages are still in the building. Will the police be able to handle the situation? I hope so, for the sake of the children," said a female voice.
Nothing. It had been exactly forty seconds, and nothing had happened. So, the Death Note was a hoax, just as he had expected.
But then, before he could breath a sigh of relief, a male voice rang out from the television's speakers:
"Wait – what's this…? The hostages are coming out! This just in: the seven children have just escaped the building accompanied by their teacher! I repeat: the children are alive and safe! The police are moving in – you're watching this live, folks, from Shinjuku's Hanka district of Japan! Will they make an arrest? Wait – they've returned, but… I don't see the suspect…"
Light watched intently, petrified.
"Ladies and Gentlemen, this just in: It has just been reported that Otoharada Kurou has just died! I repeat: the suspect is dead! Police insist that they did not fire any shots—"
D…dead? No! The Death Note worked! It can't be…
"—We have received word that the criminal just suddenly clutched his chest and collapsed to the ground!"
Collapsed… a heart attack…
"Light?" a voice called from downstairs. It was his mother. Light jumped at the sound of her voice and quickly turned off the TV.
"It's nearly 6:30 in the evening! You'll be late for your cram school, and you have your prep course tonight, right?" Mrs. Sachiko Yagami called again.
Light cleared his throat. He was still shaking. He yelled down, "yeah, mom. I was just getting ready to go…" His heart hammering wildly, he grabbed the Death Note and dropped it in his bag before hurrying off. He didn't notice two yellow eyes watching him closely from underneath the bed as he left…