Chapter 1: Arrival

I felt the warm sand beneath my back and I saw the flapping wings of the vultures while they were speeding up towards me. I didn't try to move anymore. It wouldn't be worth the effort. I had no water nor a horse. Halt hadn't given me any instructions for surviving in the desert. There were no goddamn deserts in Araluen.

The thought of death didn't scare me as much as it used to. If you could even call this dying. I would soon again appear in some other psychotic writers' fantasy. As my breathing slowed down, I closed my eyes. For a moment I could hear someone calling my name...

The lights were astonishing, as were the sounds, slamming into my ear with vibrations I first associated with a hurricane. I had become too used to the silence and solitude of nature.

As usual, I had fallen right on my ass. The sand was still in my grey cloak and my messy hair. I must have looked incredibly out of place with all the modern dressed people in this high-tech looking city. The sudden change of environment left me speechless for a moment. Teleporting could do that to you.

I tried to stand up, and after tripping twice, I finally succeeded. The citizens where giving me harsh looks, which I answered with intense glares. I noticed how Asian they all looked. When I investigated some more, I came to the conclusion that I was in Tokyo, Japan.

Thank God I was always able to understand the language of the story I was in. I wondered if it was in a manga, considering the décor was Japan. I used to enjoy reading manga. When I had been able to, that is.

Too bad I would never find out, I was, of course, going to avoid anything and anyone that could potentially play an important role in the plotline. Honestly, I had already experienced the horrors that this could trigger and I wasn't stupid.

Or at least, I liked to think so.

I could at least say for sure that I wasn't as dumb as to do something that previously made me end up with fatal wounds brought to me by a sword and dying from dehydration in a desert. No, I had to stick to the plan that I had made when I first had appeared in the world of stories. I had to focus on a way out -whatever that was- instead of interesting characters that would get me killed anyway.

However, first things first. What to do when you're seventeen years old, dressed in the attire of a ranger - arrows, grey cloak and some other medieval shit- and trapped in Tokyo with no money and evidence of you being a legal citizen?

I honestly had no idea how to answer my own question. The whole situation was just too complicated.

To make it less complicated, I gave myself some little assignments like: "Walk to that shop over there, Myuna." Or: "Ask that sweet-looking girl over there what year it is, Myuna."

After looking strangely at me, the girl -dressed in a school uniform- told me that it was currently December the 5th. Upon hearing thisI quietly thanked the girl and walked away, not really caring where I was going.

December the 5th, 'Pakjesavond' as they would call it in Holland, my home country. We would celebrate the birthday of Sinterklaas, our version of Santa Claus. We would always celebrate it, even when I was too old to believe in him. The flashback of those happy times were too much for the me standing all alone in the crowded streets of an unknown city. Tears streamed down my face for the first time in four years. I wondered why I started crying at that moment instead of all the frightening moments I had experienced before.

'Are you okay?' I looked up and saw a blonde girl. She resembled someone, though I couldn't say whom. The girl was dressed in a small, frilly dress that made me shiver in her place, given the low temperature. I also thought it made her look dumb, combined with her vacant expression. Then again, given my poor wardrobe, who was I to talk?

'I'm fine,' I said, while roughly removing my tears.

'Soon, you don't need to be sad anymore. Kira will erase all criminals for us, you hear me? So you gotta stay strong. Just like Misa!' The girl gave me a pat on my shoulder and walked away. I hardly noticed it. My brain was processing what I had just heard.

It all made sense now. The feeling I was in a manga, the timeline, Kira, Misa. I was now part of a series I had read when I was twelve years old. I was in Death Note.

"Well done," I complimented myself sarcastically, "you've only been here for half an hour and Misa Amane probably already knows your name."