The 1st Day
Reapers' Game
Everyone hurried to make it across the crossing before the lights flicked back to red, though the crowd was so great, and everyone was so involved in their own activities – making a call, conversing with their friends, asking for directions – that it would have taken some time after the stop light had shown before vehicles could continue.
Individually, their voices were impossible to distinguish, but together the hubbub was enough to wake up Neku.
His eyes gradually opened, revealing sapphire-blue orbs, and the first thing he registered was the seemingly endless sea of feet that stretched and moved for all directions around him.
Neku hauled himself up from the dirty pavement, puzzled why not only he had been unconscious on the ground but also why no-one had made a scene of it. In fact, he doubted anyone had seen him at all; not that he cared, because if anyone had, he would doubtless have to fend off conversation.
At last he became aware of a small disc in his hand. Splaying out his fingers, he inspected the object, a small black pin adorned with an ivory-white skull. The design was familiar, like a distant memory, and its weight felt nice against his palm.
He threw it into the air and caught it again, but the moment it connected the din of voices was augmented, individual voices screaming broken sentences that battered into his mind, swamping the music from his headphones.
Just as suddenly, they were gone.
"What the…" Neku stumbled backwards as the thoughts became his own again. "I can hear voices in my head!"
He regained his composure, crossing his arms and hiding his jaw below his collar. What just happened? Thinking to himself, he looked again at the badge. And where'd this pin come from?
"Hmm…" Neku closed his palm, and folded his arms once more. This pin… Why do I have it? Wonder if there's a connection…
There was only one way to be sure. He pressed the skull of the pin with his thumb, and again felt the rush of voices in his mind: About time we found a team to play against… And those uniforms the floor staff had on were super-cute… "Excuse me, I was just smelling you…" It stopped as he moved his thumb.
Neku was no less shocked than before. Voices! Definitely voices! But why? He calmed himself down, before a realisation struck him with a gasp. Am I hearing people's thoughts! What the hell is this pin? He asked himself as he dropped the disc into his pocket
Before he could wonder further, a mobile beeped. "Huh? Whose phone?" No-one around him had registered the message, so Neku checked his own phone. "Mine?"
The message read "Reach 104. You have 60 minutes. Fail, and face erasure. —The Reapers"
Neku dismissed it with a wry smirk hidden under his collar. "Oh, that's cute. See ya, spam. Deleted." His grin faded as it failed to disappear. "Huh? Still there… It's like the junk mail from hell—"
A sharp but painful burn seared across his hand right hand, where the pin had been moments ago. Neku had raised his hand subconsciously, and felt a cold hand grip his heart for a second when he saw that a series of digits had been etched onto his palm: 59:58… 59:57… 59:56… "Huh?"
"What?" The crackle of static drew his attention over his shoulder. Four words – YOU HAVE 7 DAYS – were spelt across a large screen in a red very close to the shade of blood, but Neku barely looked at them; something much stranger was happening.
"F…frogs!" Green smooth-skinned amphibians were forcing their way through skull-shaped sigils that hung in the air like leaves falling in autumn. They were big; larger than a grown cat, but their strangest feature was their graffiti-like blue-black hind limbs, which were wiry but easily supported their bulk.
They provided the frogs with formidable jumping skills, it seemed, because no sooner than one of the creatures had landed onto the tarmac than it launched itself at Neku, knocking him onto his spine. "Oww! What the… They attacked me!" He cried aloud as he rapidly pulled himself back up. Several more graffiti-frogs joined the first, crowding around him. "What do they want with me? D-down, froggie…"
Another hurtled into him with painful strength. "…Ungh! What the hell is going on! Somebody! Help!" No-one even looked affected by his cry. "Hey… Everybody stop ignoring me! What is this place…" He was hit once more, this time from behind, and the frog circle tightened. "Crap! I gotta run!" Neku charged through an opening, sprinting as hard as he could. He didn't care where he ended up, just so long as it was away from the graffiti-frogs.
"Man, here we go again…" The orange-haired man sighed as he twiddled a sweet between his fingers, staring out over the rooftop to the streets six storeys below.
His companion beside him was amused by his complaint, keeping her arms crossed as she replied. "Stop whining." She was no less blunt than usual. "We haven't had work in, like, forever."
"Exactly. It feels like the Monday after vacation." The man batted back.
She almost laughed. "You'd prefer a permanent vacation? Day 1 has the most Players. Now's our chance to rack up some points! How else you gonna make up for last month?"
"Aight, aight…" The man groaned, supposing she was correct. "One week won't kill me. Probably." He paused for a moment, rolling the stick of the lollipop around his hand. "Hey, while we're at it… How 'bout we play a little game?"
He had piqued her interest. "A gaaame?" She cooed.
"Yeah, so it doesn't feel so much like work. C'mon, you love it." He said through a knowing grin.
"Oh, yeah. You know me." She sighed, but eventually conceded, "All right. What's the game?"
Lollipop replied instantly "How 'bout Reaper Sport 3, a Player Hunt? Let's see who bags the most Players during today's mission."
Giving a half-giggle half-cackle, she replied, "Are you joking? That's no fun at all!"
"You don't like it?" Lollipop was hardly surprised by her response, and it was evident in his voice.
"But I'm gonna crush you! There's no contest."
"Ohh, zing! Now I actually have to try." The man's voice dripped sarcasm. "You know the drill. Loser buys the winner a hot bowl of ramen." He smiled inwardly, knowing that he would not be out of pocket.
He was out of breath; Neku had run past the large crossroad, into an open area with a dog statue, no less full of citizens milling about than the Scramble. He looked around at the people here: schoolgirls giggling, men trying to impress women, an ashen-haired youth with his hands deep in his pockets and a superior expression plastered across his face, a girl in a white dress waiting for somebody. But no amphibians "Should be… safe… here…"
He was wrong. A graffiti-frog landed several feet in front of him, and Neku was shocked. "Rrgh… Freakin' frogs! Just leave me alone! I didn't do anything to you!" Shouting at it had been a long shot, and it hadn't worked.
The frog ignored Neku, however, and plunged into the chest of a man in his twenties. He grunted in pain, and vanished in a plume of monochrome sand. Another frog did the same to a girl, and Neku realised that it was happening to people all around him.
"They vanished! Why are people disappearing! What's happening…" Neku gripped his head as he tried to get a hold of the situation, willing his heart to slow down. "Why am I even here? What the hell!" A frog leapt towards him, clipping his arm and slapping his back with its scribble-like limbs. "They're gonna get me!"
A lilting, girlish voice cried, "Found one!" It was a mixture of joy and relief.
Neku gasped, but was interrupted before he could say anything further by a girl with rosy-cerise hair, her face the picture of desperation. "You! Forge a pact with me!" She said through gritted teeth.
"Uhh… I've kinda got my hands full…" Clearly, he thought, she had responded badly to the threat of evil frogs.
She insisted, tightening her hands into clenched fists to stress the urgency. "Listen! If we forge a pact, we can beat the Noise!"
"Who cares about a little noise?" Delusional. She was definitely delusional if she was more worried about the din around them than of alien amphibians.
"You wanna get erased? Hurry up! There's no time! Make a pact with me! Please!"
Neku could do little but concede; it would be best not to argue with this girl right now. "A-all right! I accept."
A cyan light blinded him for a couple of seconds, and when it dimmed he heard the dull thumping of a heart in his ears. It wasn't his heart.
"What's with the light show?" Neku found himself giving considerable concentration to not fall over in shock, a task he had done several times already. Everything today was happening so fast, and little made sense.
The girl ignored him, and now a mask of determination covered her features. "Here! Use this pin!" She said as she slapped a red and orange badge into his open palm.
Neku was hardly listening, "But… the funny lights…" He babbled.
If she felt as surprised as he had been, she didn't show it. Her voice was stern, to make sure that she convinced him. "I'll explain later! Right now we have to stop the Noise!"
"Uhh… OK?" The boy had to accept that for now, answers would have to wait until the 'Noise' had been stopped.
One of the graffiti-frogs had ricocheted from another person and landed not far from where the pair stood. The girl shouted into his ear, "Get ready!"
Neku tensed, tightening his fist around the pin as the frog made to move again, but was surprised to see a tall stream of fire had surrounded it. In a chirp of pain, it broke into a blizzard of black, white and grey. The flames moved as he averted his gaze towards two more frogs, quickly covering and razing them.
Suddenly Neku realised something. The flames had moved at his command, he had willed them to the frogs. "That fire… I did that!"
"Whoa! You can use the pin?" His attention was brought back to the girl, who was giggling excitedly beside him. "You must be really good at psychs. Guess I found the right partner, huh?"
"That's what you call those flames? A psych?" She had been the one to hand him the pin, so surely she would know.
"Yup. And now that we've made a pact, the Noise won't come after us!"
At last, Neku managed to calm himself down, feeling his own heartbeat begin to fall. "In other words, we're safe."
"Right. See? All gone."
Still, Neku was sceptical. "All gone." He repeated, half expecting another barrage of creatures to hop after him. "So… what are Noise?"
"They're those monsters we just fought. Duh."
Monsters? Uh, sure… Neku inspected the red badge. And "psychs"? Is that what this pin is for?
"Anyway, where are my manners?" She was talking again. "My name's Shiki Misaki. Call me Shiki."
I call this wack.
Still talking. "We've got a long week ahead of us!"
"A week? Week of what?"
"The Reapers' Game is seven days long, right?"
Reapers? Excuse me? Who is this flake? He had been right earlier. She was delusional.
He thought he heard her ask his name, but he kept to his thoughts as a more serious problem came to mind. Forget her… Where am I? How did I get here?
"C'mon, tell me your name."
The sign says "Shibuya Station"… The name was not familiar. Why am I in Shibuya?
Still the girl persisted talking and asking questions, but Neku remembered the intersection. I just need to retrace my steps.
Neku moved away swiftly, and Shiki gasped as would a small child; responded like one too: "Hey, whoa… Wait for me!" She ran to catch him up, and he turned around the moment he realised.
"Why are you following me!" Neku snapped.
Shiki was crestfallen, mumbling, "Why are you making yourself so hard to follow?"
Why would I slow down for you? "Screw you. I go where I want."
She didn't get that he wanted to be alone. "Go where? We're trapped in here!"
Delusional, but Neku half-reasoned with her anyway. "What? Don't be stupid."
"You're the one being stupid." Her emotions turned to pensiveness, then to firm insistence. "We made a pact. We're supposed to stick together!" And back again. "You can't beat the Noise alone. You can't survive!"
She really puzzled Neku. "Survive what?"
"The Game! Don't you wanna win?" His apparent ignorance chafed her patience.
Oh, grow up. "Pfft. Play games on your own time." Why does she have to get me involved in her hide-and-seek?
Shiki was genuinely surprised at his apathy towards the Game, jumping as much as if she had been scared. "Hey! That's not funny! They'll erase us if we don't win! You saw what happened to those people! You wanna join them? Besides," She perked up, "We're partners. Partners work together."
She had said it as if it was the most obvious thing in the world, but Neku refused to get involved.
"You're already a part of this. You're a Player, just like me." Shiki mumbled while staring at Neku's shoes.
"A what? I'm not playing anything." She wouldn't get him involved that easily.
"Oh yeah?" Shiki wouldn't be tricked like this. "Then why do you have a Player Pin?" She held up her own black-skull pin. "Don't you have a timer on your hand? I do…"
The ticking of a clock. 20:05. "What. The. Hell."
Now to ensure he got the message. "See, you're a part of the Reapers' Game, too."
Neku was silent for a moment, when she violently jumped onto one foot, arms crossed in front of her body. "We don't have time for this!" She yelled, "The clock's ticking! We've only got twenty minutes! Let's hurry to 104!"
Not sharing her desperation, a cynical expression covered Neku's face as he repeated her words. "What's that?" He remembered the word from his the text.
"Ten-Four! 104? You got the mail, right? "Reach 104 or face erasure.""
That junk mail… Please. What kind of nut would believe that? He hesitated, fiddling with an orange lock. Then again… This day has been pretty weird. And she's gonna follow me anyway. May as well go along and try to figure this out. Neku agreed with a sigh. "Lead the way."
"Good." Finally, Shiki was making progress, and didn't want to lose ground. Firmly, she spoke to him again. "Now, for the last time… Tell me your name."
He was silent, and Shiki worried that the chance had passed, but he did reply in the end: "Neku. Neku Sakuraba."
"Neku, huh?" Shiki tried a compliment, hoping that he wouldn't walk away again. "Cute name."
Shut up.
"All right, Neku. Let's get over to 104!"
The boy's gaze settled on a building in the distance, the Outback Cafe, and she had to get his attention again. "Hey, Neku." He didn''t turn round. "We have to get over to 104, this way. There's no time!" Shiki hoped her voice carried the urgency, but he set off again without her.
"Hey—wait up! Neku…" She saw him walking towards Centre Street. "I told you, we can't leave!"
"Oh please." Bemused, he walked towards the street, only to hit an invisible barrier. "You gotta be kidding me!"
"Next time, try listening." Shiki looked smug.
"So this is all part of that "Reapers' Game"?"
"That's right."
This is nuts. She's actually telling the truth? Then that means the mail I got—
"Neku! Move! We have to get to Ten-Four!"
Shiki dragged him to the right road, and he walked forward into another barrier. "Oww!" Neku yelped. "It's blocked! There's no way past!"
"We can't get through!" Shiki was equally shocked, and she hadn't even hit the wall. "But this is the way to Ten-Four!"
Neku wasn't listening to her. The hair on the back of his neck prickled, and a many-legged something crawled under his scalp, making him shiver. Why do I feel like I'm being watched? His eyes scoured the crowd, picking out a man in a crimson jacket, the hood pulled up to throw his face in shadow, and a green bag slung low by his waist. He wasn't heading anywhere, just stood with his hands in his pockets, looking up towards the two Players. That guy over there. What's he staring at?
The man muttered something that Neku couldn't catch, and his attention was diverted back to Shiki as she began talking again: "What are we gonna do about this wall?" She walked towards it, passing further than Neku had. "Huh? Neku! It's open."
"Huh? What's up with that?"
"No idea. A lucky break, I guess! C'mon, we gotta keep moving." Shiki hurried forward, leaving Neku to his thoughts.
Something about that guy in red… Huh? Where'd he go? Weird. Neku made after the girl.
"Made it!" Shiki was jumping with girlish joy when her partner caught up.
Neku gasped as a pressure was relieved from his hand. "The timer vanished!"
Shiki knew what that meant. "Whew. Mission complete." Only now did she realise how tense she had been, and her muscles ached as she relaxed them all.
"Pfft, big deal." A sharp female voice shouted, causing Shiki to gasp and Neku to jump in surprise; neither had been expecting her. "Only an idiot would screw up on Day 1."
"Who's there!" The voice came from above, but neither Neku nor Shiki could determine where its owner was. "Oh, no…" Shiki, though, knew who its owner was. "A Reaper?"
"Reaper…" The word tasted foul as Neku repeated it.
"You two are gonna get erased sooner or later." It continued. "So come on. Help a girl out and earn me a few points, 'K?" As if on cue, three sigils appeared before the pair, and Noise began pushing their way from them.
"Those monsters again…" Neku was ready for them this time; he had won against graffiti-frogs before.
"Neku, you know how to fight now, right?" Shiki had taken something soft and black from her satchel. "This time focus your thoughts on me!"
"What? Fight your own battles!" Neku said brusquely.
"Please! To stop the Noise!"
"…Fine. Come on!" Neku concentrated on his partner, again hearing the other heartbeat, and feeling her resolve to win drifting across their pact.
He clicked the red pin as a single frog jumped towards the pair; flames encircled the creature, and it squeaked in pain, but refused to die. Before he could think of something else to do, a black stuffed cat ran up to and punched the frog, erasing it.
"Good!" Shiki encouraged her partner. "Now we can fight together! We can beat the Noise faster as a team! Let's do this!"
Neku turned his attention to the second frog, sending flames chasing after it while Shiki handled the third. The frog didn't show fear of the flames, and kept coming towards Neku as fire engulfed it, until at last it perished in a monochrome puff; Shiki's opponent had suffered the same fate.
The boy felt confident after the victory. "Is it over?"
"Not yet, Neku!" She shrieked like a small scared child. "Over there!"
He turned his attention to the final sigil, which was larger and resembled the skull of a large mammal. Whew… This one looks tough. Already, a graffiti claw was dragging a larger bulk from the symbol. …Like I've got a choice. "Hey! Stalker!"
"I'm not a stalker!" Shiki squealed in defence.
Neku didn't have time for her antics. "Whatever. Just… Don't mess this up!"
The cerise-haired girl tried to look confident. "I… I won't!"
Now, the pair could see the new Noise for what it was. It resembled a bear, and stood nearly twice Neku's height. Its entire forelimbs were made of the bone-like curves seen on the frogs' hind legs, but these were thicker and incorporated sharp claws. The bear's white-furred body was muscular and wide, and Neku guaranteed physical contact with it would be like punching a wall.
Can't afford to be intimidated. Neku clicked his pin again, watching the flames spread to their target. When they hit, it growled, pulled back its fearsome claws, and slammed Neku to the floor. When he hit the pavement, it felt like a rhino had run him down. "Gaah!" He shouted in pain.
With Neku's head still spinning, Shiki threw her toy at the Noise, but it batted it away with its graffiti paws.
Neku was brought back to his senses when he felt the sting of pain from Shiki: her Noise opponent had just struck her. The heartbeat in his ears increased, and he realised with a jolt that it was Shiki's. The pact had certainly connected them, and that only meant more hassle for him.
Clicking the pin again, he brought flames from behind the bear. It growled as the fire licked its fur, and grunted as the stuffed toy punched its chin. It was enough, and the Noise broke away.
"Whew… We did it…" The joy of victory escaped Shiki this time, and a sad pensive look was plastered over her face. "But you heard her… Day 1 is nothing. What if the missions only get harder? We've got six more days… Are we gonna make it? I…I don't want to be erased…" Thinking that tears would be impossible to evade if she continued this train of thought, she flicked open her phone and became entirely focused on its screen.
Neku didn't comfort her, though this was partly because he had been paying her no heed at all. He had been deep in his own thought. I can't believe this… Why am I stuck here? The boy gripped his head as bad notion followed bad notion. What if I'm erased! What the hell kind of game is this? This can't be right. Gaaah! I'm really stuck here? In Shibuya!
Chapter Closed
Oh flipping heck, I butchered that one… and a part of me died before the end. Before anyone complains, I will describe Shiki thoroughly in chapter two, because I have a plan to make it more effective than just throwing it in here. Please review if you have something to say or advice to give or whatever.