An Insane Game

Hi to everyone reading this! I hope you enjoy the story, and yes I know the protagonist can appear to be a bit of a dickhead, but it gets better.. I think..

Chapter 1

"Hmm? A slip of paper?"

There was a boy, sitting hunched over in fierce concentration on the edge of his bed. Tenshin Kiyonori concentrated intensely on the screen in front of him, controller in hand. At Nineteen years old, he stood almost 6'1, tall for the average Japanese man.

He leant back running a hand through his messy dark brown hair as he sighed, how could he let this newbie Sakomoto player beat him?

The new player had risen through 500,000 ranks in 5 days, he lay just below Kiyonori.. Until now.

"Ugh.. I swear I'll beat that Sakomoto guy someday," he cursed at the ceiling, throwing his controller down lightly onto the bed.

~—~

He had been a NEET since graduating high school from grade 10, the incredible intelligence he was gifted with going to waste, as his uncle thought.

He considered his uncle to almost be the bane of his existence, disapproving of almost everything the teen did, especially those regarding Kiyonori's waste of talent on games. After graduating from high school, Kiyonori had become obsessed with gaming.

He would sit in his room almost all day, coming out only to eat and occasionally converse with his uncle.

As for his uncle.. he and Kiyonori were on okay terms, although Kiyonori often disobeyed his words in favour of playing whatever game that had caught his interest at the moment was.

His uncle had started taking care of him after his parents died when he was twelve, in an 'accident' at a party with some friends when a fire was started. The truth behind it, he found, was that apparently there was some bad blood between the party-holder and the yakuza. T

he boy had lived his whole life wondering.

"Who? Who was it that so easily decided the lives of others?"

Tenshin Kiyonori looked at the small paper slip that he had found inside an envelope marked with his name.

As his eyes passed over the words displayed on the small note, he had answered his own question, albeit at least partly, for the first time in his life.

'Maybe this time, the one who decides is me?'

He had his gaze riveted upon the small piece of paper flapping in the breeze from his pedestal fan.

"Is there someone you want gone from this world?" He read out aloud, an almost undetectable quiver in his voice, despite the cold feelings of doubt and dismissal pervading his thoughts, gripping his heart, he couldn't help but feel a hunch that it could be real.

"¥100,000 reward for getting rid of someone you hate. That doesn't seem like a bad deal, right?".

'Wrong'. He studied the words written once again.

"Nah, this has gotta be one of those stupid chain-letter things," He dismissed, throwing the object over his shoulder, it fluttering down as it rode the air to land at a rest on his carpet as he turned back to the game he was playing.

—TIME PASS—

"Could you go down to the shops and get some milk for me?"a voice sounded from outside Kiyonori's room, the deep tone of his uncle barely heard over the ringing of explosions and rustling of soldiers' equipment resonating from the speakers on the sides of Kiyonori's TV.

"Why can't you do it, old man?"

"I'm cleaning up and doing something productive, unlike you, can't you just do this one thing?" He almost pleaded, his words both a request and a reprimand.

"Fine fine." Kiyonori muttered, pausing his current game and dropping his controller onto his bed, opening the door to his room and walking out past the kitchen to the door, stopping only to take his uncle's wallet as he walked by.

Kiyonori's uncle, Matsuoka Eisaku, made his way across the house. He had been waiting for that irritating boy to leave so he could have a few moments of peace, and maybe to fix up that messy room of the boy's, his OCD made him cringe every time he had to open the door to the dark dungeon of a room.

Eisaku braced himself as he twisted the smooth wooden door knob, pushing the door open slowly on creaking, un-greased hinges, as if in an attempt to lessen any noise already made by the door.

As he opened the door, his eyes were met with a scene that caused him to recoil with horror. Small piles of wrappers and food scraps scattered around the floor, numerous dirty clothes, cd's, books and the like littered the ground.

The poor man didn't know where to start, frantically looked from place to place, wondering what was the worst thing that needed doing fast. As he took a step inside, stepping on the slip of paper Kiyonori had thrown over his shoulder earlier. He bent over, his facial expression matching is groans in the slight pain caused by his aching 'old man' joints as he picked up the piece of paper, bringing it close to his face to study it properly.

"Why would he have something like this?" The man wondered out loud, answered by no one but the silence. '

W-well.. what if he wanted me gone? He's always calling me old man this, old man that, maybe he decided to hire someone to take me out?' He fretted, ever the paranoia freak. 'Y'know, maybe I should..' Eisaku swallowed, he wasn't quite prepared to spit out the words 'get him before he gets me.'

He had no love for the boy anyway, the useless kid wasting the intelligence and opportunity that Eisaku's dear sister had given him, along with her life. He only kept looking after Kiyonori out of respect to the dead sister he had once adored so much.

"I mean.. i-if this is real.." He talked in a hushed tone, letting a slight stutter creep into his words. His hands shook a bit, holding the piece of paper tightly as he looked around the room, as if anyone could be listening. "N-no one would suspect me right? No one could blame me after having to live with this dreadful child, year after year..right?"

"Huh? Why are you in my room old man." Eisaku turned around to see Kiyonori standing behind him, a curious, if slightly angry expression rest upon his face.

"I-I just saw how much of a mess it was in here, so I-"

"Yeah yeah, I left the milk on the dining table." He was cut off abruptly as Kiyonori pushed past him, lightly pushing his uncle out of his room, then closing the door on his face. Eisaku turned to face the hall, walking out into the living room and sitting down on the couch with a sigh.

"That's right.. no one would really care if he just went missing one day, would they?"

~—.—.—.—~

A blinding, stabbing pain.

A pain that tore at his chest, burning as if it were on fire.

Kiyonori's eyes shot open, the pain stemming from his lungs enough to shock him into action as he observed his surroundings. After the initial shock of something cold splashing into his eyes, they adjusted to the light and he noticed.

He was underwater!

He couldn't breathe!

Kiyonori mustered all his strength and kicked his legs, moving his arms as he shot up, moving towards the light at the top that would bring him air, and with it, life. As he broke the surface, he took deep, gasping breaths, as if he could make up now for the oxygen he was deprived of before.

'Where the hell am I? What the hell happened?' Confusion clouded Kiyonori's memory as he struggled to comprehend the situation he was in, partly due to the shock of the near-death situation he just experienced.

He looked around, he was in the middle of a lake, he wore the clothes he wore that day when he bought the milk for his uncle, his memories after that time unclear. He seemed to remember something about falling..

A parachute floated nearby, it was safe to assume that that was how he managed to get there.

His head bobbed up and down on the relatively flat surface of the lake, only disturbed by his presence.

"Ugh, which way's the closest to land?" He asked of nobody in particular, soon sighting a strip of sand only 100 metres away from where he floated. Kiyonori began swimming towards the shore, the threat of drowning still fresh in his mind, he was determined to get out of the water.

In no time, he had dragged himself, onto the sand collapsing onto it with exhaustion and shock. He took a closer look at what he had on hand. He carried his wallet in his pocket, a small bag on his back -which he later opened to find a bottle of water and a few day's worth of rations inside- and a zipped satchel that was surprisingly heavy for how small it was.

Kiyonori opened it up, finding a metal case with Triangular-ish shaped metal objects with suction pads at the bottom, eight in total. A remote lie in the case next to them.

"Ugh, no wonder it was so much harder to swim." he complained, taking off his shirt and wringing it out before putting it back on. He looked around, the lake was surrounded by a thick jungle, the scent of salt pervaded the air, at the end of the field of his two mountain peaks soared in the distance.

"What is this, the prologue to some sick game?"

NEET- Not in Employment, Education or Training.

I hope you enjoyed the first chapter of my new Btooom! fanfic, 'An Insane game'. Leave any reviews or pm me for ideas or things I can improve on.