Kira Game

Chapter 01: Burden in my Hand


Rm. 316, Dormitory Building
Whammy's House
Winchester, England
13
th December 2004

Dear Mello:

First of all, greetings! You must be surprised to receive a handwritten letter such as this during this day and age. I cannot fathom the extent of confusion or suspicion that you must be going through at this moment. It must be a sight to behold. I hope that despite this, you find it in yourself to keep on reading this letter. After all, it is terribly significant for you and your life, in more ways than you can imagine.

Next, congratulations on your fifteenth birthday! Again, this might come as an unpleasant surprise for you—I know that people who know personal details such as birthdays are considered by Whammy's House residents as enemies. However, you have nothing to fear, Mello. I am definitely not your enemy. I know that it may be difficult to accept, but believe me when I say that you have no choice when it comes to this matter.

The point of the letter is this: I humbly ask you to accept the birthday gift that I sent you along with this letter.

It may not be apparent at this time, Mello, but this gift of mine is one of the grandest, most amazing things that this world has ever seen… well, I suppose that comes from the fact that it is "out of this world," so to speak… ha, ha, ha! In any case, this small rambling of mine shall make sense once you look over the gift I have sent you.

You must know that this gift is not for anybody else to use. If that were the case, then there will be disastrous consequences. Do you understand? This gift should not be possessed by just anybody, and certainly not just anybody among the pupils of Whammy's House. This should only be used by persons with ability. And so I have chosen you among all the rest to receive this gift, because I have that much faith in you. I know that you will make good use of it.

All I ask of you, Mello, is that when you make a decision regarding my gift, take the whole matter seriously. If not, then I'm afraid that this effort of mine to befriend you shall be for naught. I shall be forced to withdraw the gift from you.

Regards,

Xavier Voltaire, II


"… Are you kidding me?"

It was too early to read something as weird as this. His head strangely light, the young boy tried to relieve the stinging in his eyes by closing them.

It was exactly 1 AM when Mello woke up and found the letter on his desk, a mere hour after he turned fifteen. As if without warning or fuss, it lay serenely on a spot where it caught the light from the moon and the stars, which made the white A4 envelope glow unnaturally.

He found it hard to comprehend how it got there, and when—after all, he didn't sense anybody going into his room after he fell asleep, and he only woke up because he needed to go to the toilet.

Somebody's pulling my leg here.

He read the letter once, twice, three times over. Nope, the birthday message was as absurd as ever. If he weren't dreaming, he was looking at the real thing. .

So… this Voltaire guy knows my alias, and that the 13th of December is my birthday. He knows that I am in Whammy's House, and that I am staying in this room. He also probably knows that I am the second heir to the name of L. And yet he's hinting that he's somebody I've never met before…more importantly, that he's a stranger who has dangerous abilities.

This guy… if he really is a guy… he's got nice handwriting. It's as good as calligraphy, actually. This letter must have been written with an expensive pen.

He shook his head, as if willing his brain to awaken.

Whatever—why am I taking this seriously? It's probably Matt… but he can't write this neatly, so he must have gotten Linda to help him. But he couldn't have known that today is my birthday, unless…

He sighed. It was too early for such analyses.

Giving up temporarily on the letter, Mello decided on looking at the so-called gift first before anything else.

With two fingers, he pulled out a smaller black envelope from inside the white one. He turned it over to look for any signs of writing, but the surface was smooth and undisturbed.

It looks like a sinister birthday card could be inside it…

There were two items in the envelope: a black booklet with nothing on the covers, and five sheets of ruled notebook paper. One of the edges of the papers was torn evenly—it looked like they were ripped carefully from a class notebook.

Mello looked at them with distaste, put them haphazardly on his desk, and opened the booklet. The first thing he read was

Death Note: How to Use It

I. The human whose name is written in the Death Note shall die

He frowned when he read it. He kept on frowning as he read all the rules in the black booklet. Ridiculous as it all sounded at past one in the morning, it didn't take much for the young prodigy to understand, absorb, and memorize all the rules listed in the booklet, even in his half-awake state.

He reached for the sheets of paper on his desk and touched the torn edges.

So, Voltaire, this grandest and most amazing thing that you're raving about is the Death Note. And these must be sheets from that notebook, and you want me to make good use of them… so are you saying that you want me to kill?

It was dark, cold and silent, and to make noise would probably wake up some of the grumpy kids next door. Despite all that, Mello laughed out loud and long.

Ridiculous, that's what it was!

Whether the Death Note was real or not didn't matter. He just turned fifteen an hour and forty-five minutes ago, and suddenly some guy was telling him "Happy Birthday! Here are some pieces of paper. Now go out there and kill!"

It just seemed right for him to laugh at that time.


In Whammy's House, children were given the freedom to study wherever they pleased. Most of them were systematic, and thus chose the study hall or their own dorm rooms as work areas. But during that time, the younger kids had exams and requested to have the study hall all to themselves. Thus, the older kids had to use other places for their studies.

At precisely six o'clock in the evening, seven residents from Whammy's House were in the living room. It was the warmest there, it seemed, and Mello used his 'influence' to shoo the other kids away from this area. He only allowed a few people to stay: Matt (his personal sidekick) and those who were too stubborn to move from the area (namely, Linda and Near).

Huge hardback textbooks, neat lecture print-outs, notebooks, highlighters, pencils, and chocolate wrappers were scattered around each kid. Each school item had worn-out looks about them, as if thoroughly exhausted from excessive use. Near was the only one who didn't seem like he was working too hard on his studies: he alternated between writing a comprehensive report for Chemistry class and creating a colourful fortress made out of Lego blocks.

Matt groaned loudly and threw his pencil on the floor. "Damn it… all these words are making me sick," he said with a deadpan voice.

No-one made any effort to respond to him.

"Huh… nice talking with you guys, really. You guys sure know how to make a guy feel better."

"Fine, fine, I won't babble about uselessly anymore… so long as one of you turn on the TV."

Linda sighed a little too loudly and said, "Matt, what sort of study habits do you have? You can't watch TV and study at the same time!"

"Hey, I'm great at studying. I beat you, don't I?"

Linda scowled and puffed her cheeks in annoyance. It seemed that whatever Matt said was a ridiculous truth that she couldn't escape.

Matt laughed. "Ah, Linda dearest, don't look at me with such scorn! I'm sure you'll do great in the next exams… I'll even get some of the questions wrong for you, if you like—"

"Shut up and look at the television," snapped Linda. She grabbed the TV remote control and pointed it at the TV screen. A split-second later, it went to life.

"Good evening, and welcome to World Watch. The President of the United States, today, stated that…"

"The news? Booo-ring," said Matt. The lower half of his face didn't hesitate to show disgust. "Too serious, man… I need to de-stress and all that, political science is killing me! Hey, Linda, can you switch it to Cartoon Network or something?"

Linda, who was stressed beyond reason for their exams within the next two weeks, only needed to glare once at Matt to make him go, "All right, sheesh, don't blame me if you get wrinkles this early." After that, she went back to writing onto her notebook.

"A series of deaths in certain companies in Japan has been linked to the Yotsuba group, which has profited from…"

All the words on the page blurred, and all the figures and images turned into incomprehensible tangles. Mello felt his eyes sting with exhaustion. He closed his Molecular Biology textbook, shut his eyes, and pressed the space on the middle of his brow.

Exams, exams, nothing but fucking exams. Why am I doing this again?

The drone of the anchorwoman on the BCB news did nothing good for his dully frustrated thoughts: whatever Yotsuba was, it was a pretty boring story.

Right. All I want is to beat that shrimp.

Without thinking, Mello's eyes opened and drifted over to the gigantic Lego fortress on the side. It was difficult to see what Near was doing, but it seemed that he was back to writing his report.

Damn it. He's not even trying to work on his homework. And he's beating the shit out of me.

The Yotsuba story was finally over, and the anchorwoman's stern face presented itself to the audience. "In the City of London, the popular DJ Meteor Garden, who is said to have raped and brutally murdered Ally Shell, the lead singer of the rock band The Red Hearted Crows, dodged a guilty verdict, and consequently, death penalty…"

"Whoa. I like the Red Hearted Crows," said Matt, with a voice that seemed to float uselessly away from the noise in the living room. Nobody took notice of his stray remark. Death: it was just one of those things…

"That guy… he doesn't deserve to go free, you know… he was obviously guilty! I…" a teary-eyed relative of Shell sobbed. "He does it for fun… and he's going to do it again, I know he will…"

Mello looked up, and at that split second, the clip with the crying lady ended. He found himself staring into the annoyingly smug smile on Garden's face, as he paraded himself among rows and rows of news cameras.

He opened his Molecular Biology notebook and found one of the sheets of the Death Note, tucked in neatly between two unassuming pages, practically begging for attention.

Write on it.

He looked over to the others in that living room: Matt, who was twirling a pen between his fingers and staring dully at his notes with his mouth half-open; Linda, who was diligently making notes for Criminology class; and finally, Near, who was rearranging the blocks of one of the walls in his fortress.

"Coming up next: an exclusive interview with Meteor Garden."

In his mind, the neat, curly handwriting of Voltaire scrolled. Come on, Mello. You know you want to.

He blinked once to clear his head and wrote down Meteor Garden on the piece of the Death Note.


"Right here, we have DJ Meteor, who is ready to say his version of the story. Good evening, Mr. Garden."

"Good eve—"

As fast as he wrote down the name a mere forty seconds ago, it seemed that the actual death came swiftly and easily.

Mello's eyes widened, ever so slightly, as Garden started screaming and frothing at the mouth. He clawed at his chest desperately, as if there were a caged animal inside that begged to be set free.

And just like that, he dropped on the floor, gave one violent twitch, and died.

The interviewer screamed, and then the screen turned grey. The channel's logo and the sentence "We'll Return Shortly" flashed on screen. A hideous but steady beeping sound filled the empty space.

"D… damn," uttered Matt. His mouth was half-open again, this time due to shock. His eyes remained fixated on the screen, which didn't change.

Linda and Near also looked up at the TV screen—Linda, with a look of surprise on her face, as if she were caught off-guard, and Near, with a genuinely curious expression, comparable to a cat watching a fish take its last gasps for breath..

Mello also faced the TV screen, but he focused more on composing himself. God knows that he was so terrified that even his heart shook in terror. His thoughts spiraled and churned and threatened to burst, like a flood in a paper cup.

I have to assume that I killed that guy... no, do I have to act like a criminal now? Oh shit, I don't know what to do… did I really kill that guy? Did I do that, just by writing down his name on a piece of paper?!

But all the same, he couldn't show this to the others in the room.

Linda made a noncommittal sound, which got everyone's attention. She then pointed the remote at the screen and switched it to another news channel. "They're probably going to talk about it here later, when the word gets out… let's just watch out for it."

Before she spoke, the air seemed abnormally tense that even Near seemed to freeze inside his Lego fortress. After she spoke, the tension broke, and all they could do is to agree wordlessly.

In this channel, a calm-looking anchorwoman with a beautiful mole recited the news: "… you are still watching the case involving Otoharada Kuro, a Japanese man responsible for six deaths in the Shinjuku area of Tokyo. He is currently holding hostage twenty Japanese and English children and two school teachers at a daycare centre. He is shouting out demands to the Japanese Police, who are having a difficult time convincing him to get out of the building…"

"Live from Japan? That's pretty weird," commented Matt, in a voice that didn't seem to belong to him.

Everyone's eyes were transfixed on the screen. (Well, at least, that's what Mello assumed.)

"Otoharada, in a drunken rage, attacked six pedestrians with a kitchen knife, resulting to six deaths and two severe injuries. NPA Vice-Chief Yagami Souichirou said…"

The news item was flaunted for around a couple of minutes. After that, there was an awkward pause.

The anchorwoman bowed down momentarily, nodded, and then faced the camera again. "This just in: in an interview show on BCB, DJ Meteor Garden, who was released from charges of murder and rape, died on the spot. It seems that the cause of death was a heart attack. Forensic experts are called to investigate this matter, however…"

A clip of the interview was shown. There was the standard greeting from the interviewer, the hanging good eve from DJ Meteor's mouth, and then the chaos that happened afterward.

After this, the screen returned to the anchorwoman. "The BCB interviewer, Missy Marple, says that there was something strange about the death. According to her, Garden did not seem to be under stress, nor did he seem to have any physical ailment that would induce a heart attack like that. It is her belief that—"

Again, another strange pause. This time, the calm look on her face vanished, to be replaced by a slightly terrified one. This only happened for a short moment—she composed herself and looked at the camera, this time with eagle eyes.

There was something climactic in those eyes. Somehow, they looked… accusatory. What, did somebody tell her that this Meteor Garden guy died by the Death Note, and that they knew who did it?Mello had a terrible feeling at the pit of his stomach when he looked at the anchorwoman's face, and dreaded what came out of her mouth next.

"This just in: The hostage situation in the Pink Tree Daycare Centre in Japan is over. Otoharada Kuro inexplicably dropped dead inside the building."

"… what?"

Zoom in to Mello's face: a look of pure, untainted, absolute confusion.


When Mello returned to his room after an awkward dinner, he found a white envelope on his desk. Again, it had that unassuming look on it, which seemed to claim that it had been there all along.

Annoyed, Mello tore the side open and fumbled for the letter inside. This letter was slightly different—instead of neat handwriting, it was typewritten. However, Mello had enough reason to believe that it came from the same person:

Rm. 316, Dormitory Building
Whammy's House
Winchester, England
13
th December 2004

Dear Mello:

Thank you for using your gift. When I watched the news, I knew that it had to be your doing. It must feel strange, right? Perhaps you feel an overwhelming fear, or else an abnormal excitement, one that feels impossible to contain? Do not worry. These are just feelings, and they will pass. So long as you keep on writing names on the papers I gave you, they will vanish, and you will return to your logical self.

There is something that I have to tell you, and it is this: because you have used my gift (and quite well, I must add), you have entered the Game.

What is the Game, you ask? It is simple: Death. Survival.

It's the simplest kind of game, with minimal rules and almost no constraints. The only rules you have to follow are the rules of the Death Note, and the only thing you have to do to win is to keep on using the Death Note.

And of course, what is a game without a playmate? In this case, a challenger. Yes! I believe that you might have noticed it during the time, Mello—I noticed that look on your face when Otoharada Kuro's death was reported on the news show… Then again, you could have attributed the second death to me. But I will tell you now, that is not the case!

The fact is, there's another one among you with the Death Note, and right now the person is most probably reading a letter, much like this one, which also warns him about another Death Note user. I can tell you in all honesty that you are both on level ground—you both know all the rules of the Death Note, and you each have the same number of Death Note pages with you. More importantly, I am confident that you both do not know who the other is!

That's it, Mello! Remember that this is not the kind of game wherein you can win without thinking. There is a reason why I chose you for your ability. I trust that you will use that ability to its fullest capacity.

Those are all the details that I can tell you right now, Mello. Please do your best in the game. A lot of people are counting on you to win.

(Also remember: Death. Survival. If you keep on repeating this to yourself, there is no way you can lose.)

Wishing you all the best,

Xavier Voltaire, II.

P.S. If I find out that you are not using the Death Note as you should, I will kill you.

- Chapter 01 end -

Notes: This story was slightly inspired by "Liar Game".

Yes, the guy's name is Meteor Garden. And yes, I got it from the Taiwanese soap opera of the same name. Don't ask me why.

I hate first chapters. I get so anal about making everything perfect, that halfway through I get so exhausted that I can't think straight, and I can't write the next parts properly, so I end up rushing through everything and ARGH. Man. I need a beta-reader. :s

Anyway, I hope the story sounds promising so far. Please watch out for the next chapter! :D