~~/DEATH NOTE/~~

"A Prologue, or, How It All Began"


Boredom.

I suppose it is safe to say that is how it all began.

Boredom...and disillusion.

Two figures. Living in two very different but strikingly similar worlds. They are unique to each other in every way with nothing in common. Except for the boredom and the disillusion.

The first figure. Not living, not dead. Inhabiting the place above, below, and within the human world. A being with no companions, no soul, and no purpose in carrying on. A figure fed up with the emptiness of his home. A shinigami.

He is not like the others who pretend otherwise or simply cannot see the truth. He knows their fruit tastes like sand and that their card games last thousands of years. At some point his eyes opened to the reality of their predicament. He saw the wasted time and the wasted space, and all the withering skulls and the dry dirt around them. The others, still trapped in a fantasy, call him the eccentric one, the strange one, knowing that he is set apart for a reason they cannot explain. But now he knows the futility of their very existence.

His world is rotten.

He is disillusioned.

With so much time at his disposal, and with no companion beside to relate to, the boredom set in. Once he could see the emptiness consuming himself and his home, all activities dried up like the earth beneath him. Suddenly, games became mindless, and fruit became tasteless. Nothing was fun anymore. Nothing entertained him. He knew it was all to no avail. And so, like poison in the bloodstream, boredom trickled into the daily routines. It was only a matter of time before he felt fed up with his own lack of enjoyment and carefree attitude everyone else seemed to have. And he became very, dangerously, bored.

And the only answer that would temporarily heal the boredom was to drop a small, black object into the world of the living: the human world.

The second figure. Living, breathing, with a body, mind, and soul. Born and raised in the human world with no knowledge of the reality of shinigami. A human boy. A boy who never turns in a late paper, has never flunked a test, and remains at the top of his class. The girls want him and the other boys want to be him. His parents love him dearly. He has never known true pain or loss. He has never done anything adventurous or meaningful.

He, too, knows the futility of his existence. He sees the direction his life is headed in the years to come, and he despises it. He knows if things never change, he will have spent his entire life following the well-worn trail everyone else has taken. He will have thrown his most precious gift to conformity. The vicious cycle has grabbed him by the throat. His life, insofar, seems insignificant.

He is bored.

But his eyes, too, have been opened.

As the maturity develops and his wings itch to fly from the vicious cycle, he looks around him with disgust. He sees the state of darkness and despair that plagues his planet. Evil is rampant. Villainy is everywhere. And the good people either cower in fear or do nothing. One crime after another claims innocent lives, and he is helpless to it. He is trapped in a pattern he knows is nothing but emptiness, and he is living in a world he knows is marked with suffering. And so, like a black cloud cast over the sun, disillusion crept into his heart. It was only a matter of time before it deepened and seethed into a bitter, festering, but silent rage. It is a rage he cannot put into words, but it is desperate for a voice. It is a rage against the grind of conformity. A rage that despises his state of living. A rage that hungers for justice.

His world is rotten.

Two figures. One in a living world and one in a dead world. Both are rotten.

Two figures who couldn't be anymore different from each other. Except that they are both terribly bored and terribly disillusioned.

Two figures. One is burdened with a hunger for justice. The other, with a small, black object.

Here is where our story begins.

It is when these two—the hunger for justice and the small, black object— collide in a single, simple, life-changing moment. A moment when human meets shinigami, boredom meets boredom, disillusion meets disillusion. A moment that would not have existed were it not for those two seemingly trivial but deadly ingredients that started it all.

And it often makes me wonder how things might have been different. How many small things might have prevented this one moment from happening. If there had been that companion, or one glance in the opposite direction, the formula would have forever lay incomplete. But there wasn't.

It is a combination that will prove to be deadly.

It is a formula that will turn man into god, god into monster, and monster into demon.

It is a moment that will, in time, change the world.

Welcome to the Death Note.


AN: Hello DN fandom! This was basically a prologue I had in mind for a Death Note novel or the like. I've always been fascinated with the fact that it all started because both Ryuk and Light were both bored and fed up with their worlds...and how that was what caused Ryuk to drop the Note and for Light to find it. So...mind-blowing and gorgeous...been cursed with so many Death Note emotions lately that I had to get it out.

Anyway, I hope you liked it! Please let me hear your thoughts!