Chapter 1

Boredom is a terrible thing.

Boredom was this uncontained feeling of no entertainment nor happiness, and as time goes on, it grows more and more frustrating to be bored. And once the frustration sets in, so does the listlessness that only makes boredom all the more irritating. Then when it reaches that point, it becomes exhausting to do the simplest of tasks. After the tiredness, the hysteria and insanity of wanting—no, needing to do something, almost anything to get the boredom off your mind seems to drag you further and further down to the point there is no returning to your old self.

Many think that if you are just bored, this will happen, but it will not happen if you are just a little bored. This happens when you are trapped in endless waves of boredom with no hope of ever swimming out.

A youth by the name of Light Yagami grew bored around the age of six, and it was also around this time he realized just how much better than others he was. He tried explaining his troubles to his parents, but they didn't understand, they never understood their gifted son. All they wanted to hear was from Light was how his grades exceeded well beyond his peers and how he was continuously awarded trophy after trophy and awards after awards.

So Light kept it to himself, hoping that maybe someday he would find another as bored as he, who plastered on a fake smile when asked how he was feeling, and hated the bitter taste in his mouth when he said "fine."

This boredom was what led him to pick up the strange notebook which had fallen out of the sky. He read the front and was confused by the cover.

Fauna Note.

The instructions were in English, too. The human whose name is written in this notebook will become an animal, with the default being doves.

Surely this is a joke. Light had instantly thought, about to put the notebook back, but then he remembered how bored he was and decided to keep it and test it. If it was a joke, then nothing would change, and if it was real, there was no doubt this would be entertaining.

So he tested it. And tested it again. He found that this notebook was legit. Forty seconds, a bright flash, and suddenly there was an animal of his choosing in place of that person. When the book had said doves, Light had instantly thought of the brown turtle doves he saw from time to time, but these were the pure white ones from storybooks. The other animals were a different story, and came in different shapes and sizes, at least that was what he noted from when he turned that entire gang into dogs.

When he met Ryuk, a Kami, he had realized this was finally the friend he had desired, someone as bored as he. All he had to do was satisfy the diety's apple craving. Perhaps it wasn't the most healthy of relationships if Ryuk was only here for amusement and food, but at least Ryuk enjoyed Light's company for who he actually was and not what the world wanted him to be.

While Light wrote in Lind L. Tailor's name and watched him turn into a dove on public television, he laughed at the idea of how people would react. They would see him as a Kami if they didn't already. People had taken to referring to him as the Kami known as Hachiman, the God of war, and the divine protector of Japan and its people, whose symbolic animal and messenger is the dove. Even if there was nothing about Hachiman turning people into doves, that was the general consensus of "close enough" by the world.

So now Japan was lowkey going online to rub it in the faces of other cultures that their God existed. And now, on live television, this would be the icing on the cake. Light hadn't known for sure what he was going to do with this power, but becoming a God overnight was going to certainly be interesting.

Even if the police wanted to get involved, what could they do against someone, who many thought was a God, and technically turning people into doves wasn't a crime, but it still bettered the world. Light made a mental note to start subtly turning other people into endangered species to begin bringing those back. He wondered if he could resurrect extinct species this way, but decided he would test it with something small first to avoid detection.

When the real L tried to challenge him, Light laughed,

"You can try, L. I am a God now—you will bend to my will!" He continued to laugh, the pure insanity of the fact his superpower, of all the weird superpowers, had managed to make him achieve godhood within a week. As obscure as the power to turn people into doves was, he couldn't help but be thankful to the universe for giving him this. It didn't go against his morals and was just so hilarious he was pretty sure he would never be bored again.

Suddenly, this crushing weight was off his chest, and he realized. He was a God to these people with L has his only rival. What the hell was he going to do now?

He decided to reread the rules of this notebook and debate what animal this real L would become because he almost wanted to give his new nemesis something special.

...

Of all the weird cases L had taken in his detective years, a person who had the power to turn people into doves and was mistaken for a Kami took the cake by a considerable margin. And because cake theft was the worst crime, L had instantly jumped on this case.

But having watched with his own eyes as his stand-in was turned into a white dove, his eyes and brain disconnected a bit. If this had been killing someone without being there, it would be strange, but something about the fact it was doves of all things made this just too bizarre for him to instantly wrap his head around.

He also realized another issue. What would happen even if he did catch this Hachiman person? Not only would the Japanese population go into outrage if they actually believed this was a Kami, but turning people into doves wasn't a crime. It couldn't be counted as anything L could think of. It was so unusual and out of the ordinary that nobody had ever thought, "Hey, let's make a law against turning people into birds."

There was a chance, he supposed, that this actually was a Kami. But that was in no way going to dissuade L from taking this case. On the contrary, that idea made him even more excited even if he knew that was probably not the case. Even if this wasn't a crime, they lived in a day and age where the world would want to see how this happened, and confirm or deny the existence of Gods. So L was still given free rein to do what he wanted to find Hachiman.

As he scanned reports and more videos from prison security of people turning to doves—the poor people in charge of keeping prisons clean—L grew so excited he was almost shaking. Boredom was a wretched thing, and this was, without a doubt, whether Hachiman was a real Kami or not, going to be incredibly interesting.