Chapter One: Cruel World
Hanakotoba— English: the language of flowers. Marina ran her fingers over the word, still unsure whether her mother had scribbled it in romaji to give her Japanese editors the finger, or maybe it was just her latest flair, another notch in her belt of absurdity. Marina thought: Probably the former. Her mother always had that rebellious streak within her. She was never one to play by the rules, not even when the rules were hers to make. Sharp as broken glass, her mother always cut through life straight to the bone—even sharp enough to cut herself on occasion. And this unnecessary romanization was her little revolt, a poke in the eye to the stiff-lipped traditionalists who despised her but never stopped reading.
That was her mother: Nishimiya Miki, the clever instigator.
By day, a darling of the elite, revered and feared in the academic circles of the Kantō region. Essays, sculptures, symphonies—she was everywhere and nowhere, slipping between the cracks of the high-brow world like mercury. But by night, she became something else. The widow who danced with no shame, the divorcée who drank champagne like it was water, turning life into a performance only she could orchestrate. She wasn't just known; she was feared—dangerous, unpredictable, impossible to ignore. The salons she hosted—that's what she called them—were legends. Extravagant, strange, wild. The kind of gathering where the air itself seemed alive. Men would always arrive, armed with ambition and arrogance, seeking to dominate her mother. But they quickly learned: Marina's mother was never one to be tamed. Miki was a storm wrapped in silk and wit, and everyone knew her name, for better or worse.
However, in Marina's mind, it was for the better.
Now, sitting in the cluttered shadows of her mother's Tokyo apartment, Marina's fingers grazed over the brittle edges of an essay Miki had written on hanakotoba—a linguistic phenomenon that whispered secrets between stem and bloom. Each flower a quiet messenger, and each petal an emotion her mother had tried to teach her…but all Marina could feel now was the hollow silence between the words, the unsaid things that lingered in the gaps; if only she had listened. "You see, Marina-chan," Miki had said, her eyes sparkling with mischief, "kiku are for funerals. But I keep them here to remind me of life's contradictions. Beauty in death, love in loss."
Now there's only death and loss.
The lease was up today—the day she was supposed to sift through the remnants, pick through the life her mother had left behind, figure out what stayed and what went. It felt wrong, like stepping into a room that hadn't changed in years, everything still frozen in place, waiting for someone who wasn't coming back. Her eyes wandered the walls, a mess of patterns and colors, loud and wild. Her mother was like that—never one for simple, clean lines. Marina's lips curled into a small, tired smile.
There's only death and loss.
(Mama, why aren't you awake yet?)
Her gaze settled on a vase perched precariously on the edge of a crowded bookshelf. It was filled with dried flowers—higanbana, she realized. The flower of the afterlife in hanakotoba. Had her mother placed them there as a final message, knowing Marina would understand? As she reached for them, gently touching the brittle petals, she jerked her hand back, suddenly remembering her mother's voice, animated and passionate, cautioning her years ago. "These are poisonous," Miki told her. "Do not touch or eat them." She snatched the flowers and set them atop a shelf Marina's little legs couldn't reach. The petals crumbled slightly under Miki's fingertips, and for some reason Marina thought of burning ash. Miki then scooped her up in a tender, loving embrace, shielding her from the fallout.
There's only—
(When she went back into the master bedroom and saw her mother still lying there, clad in unwashed pajamas and dried tears, a thick black cloud of grief eclipsed Marina's senses. It had seemed heavy subjectively, inside her head—the world around her slowing, like the moment had its own gravity yanking her to the floor as she crawled towards Miki. The tatami mat had been buried beneath layers of depression and inertia. Dirty clothes, emptied sake bottles, packs of camels. Every mound filled the room with a poignant stench of death. She reached out, her tiny fingers brushing away the cigarette ash that surrounded her mother. Marina had been cooking the last pack of instant ramen for her brother when she took a sharp tumble off the chair aiding her in reaching the stove, and now Miki was too fatigued to help her clean up the mess. Probably due to starvation. Due to starvation, due to starvation, the words played over and over in her mind like a scratched record, each syllable catching on the grooves of her skull, looping endlessly, refusing to let the hunger settle. God, she was so hungry. Marina placed her hand deliberately on her mother, who was looking up at her with those sullen tears, her despair at the loss of her husband; Miki began to murmur something and that was when she grabbed Miki's shoulder and shook it to force her out that dreamlike stupor. Her words were needy… no… no… be honest… they were desperate: Mama, why aren't you awake yet? Miki's answering shove, then Marina's soft wince as she stumbled back from the terse blow; no mother was meant to handle her daughter so severely in a world of happy families. Then, Marina's own retaliating blow as she shot back in a harsh tone: It should've been you instead of Papa; and Miki was just laying there, tired and weak, trying to understand how her daughter could've said something so cruel and vile—at least that's how it appeared in Marina's eyes. It didn't occur to her how scathing those words could be in her six-year-old mind; it was only when her mother's painful sobs encompassed the room that she had realized her mistake. She wanted to take it back, to let her know that she didn't mean it; but how? For a moment, she was quiet; every pause a jagged seam that her thoughts snagged on, the same apologies tumbling over themselves, fraying and unspooling, as if trying to stitch themselves into something she could understand, but only weaving tighter knots. In the end, Marina did not apologize, she only sat in the ruins of her grief, holding back tears and thinking—)
There's only death and loss.
She turned away from the bookshelf, her eyes landing on a stack of notebooks piled haphazardly on her mother's antique writing desk. Miki's distinctive scrawl covered their insides—a mix of kanji, hiragana, and that rebellious romaji that had been her signature act of defiance. It was an agonizing reminder that she was no longer here. Not anymore. Marina approached the desk, not fully aware of why her feet were moving but knowing they were headed somewhere they shouldn't. But it was more than the nostalgia causing that hollowing ache in her stomach and chest and throat. It was the remembering of what she had said—what she had done. Shame and revulsion gnawed at her insides. The notebooks scattered below her seemed to pulse with accusation, their ink still fresh with the weight of her sins; it lingered like smoke from a long-dead fire. What happened twelve years ago now felt as fresh as twelve hours ago.
It was a momentary lapse of judgment. You wouldn't have said it otherwise. Right?
Marina's fingers hovered over the topmost notebook, its black leather worn and weathered like something ancient and wrong; the image of it hit her like a bitter wave, rising from her gut and choking her throat. Not her mother's. No. This didn't belong here. Her hand froze. White symbols—etched into the cover, twisting and curling like they knew something she couldn't. She opened it, half-curious, half-terrified. Only blank pages stared back, cold and empty. Marina's brow knitted together in confusion. It didn't fit. Why were there no ramblings, doodles, affirmations? This was incorrect, out of place amongst her mother's familiar chaos. She flipped the pages again, slower this time, her mind bracing itself for something to leap out at her. But nothing. Just that nagging feeling, the itch beneath her skin.
The book was watching her. Not with eyes—no, something worse. Like it was waiting, biding its time. Then, as if the universe decided to play along, a gust of wind tore through the room, sharp and sudden. Papers flew, and dust swirled up in a choking cloud. Marina gasped, startled, the notebook slipping from her grasp. It hit the floor with a soft thud, spine cracked open.
The blank pages were no longer blank. They bloomed—flowers, thousands of them, exploding across the paper in intricate detail. The pages ripped themselves free, one by one, as if yanked by invisible hands. It was a silhouette at first—nothing more than a shadow folding into a shape no human mind could ever fully comprehend—but then the room exploded. Each petal now seemed to pulse with life, a soft glow that made the air around the apartment hum. Like the book had been alive all along, just pretending to sleep. It was so bright that it burned her eyes, forcing them shut against the searing luminescence. When she blinked back to the world, she almost wished she hadn't.
God, she really wished she hadn't.
It hovered there, filling the room with a presence that clung to the walls like a bad dream. Seven feet tall, maybe more, hunched over like something from a twisted puppet show, its joints creaking under the weight of secrets best left untold. Things no one had any business knowing. Its face, if you could call it that, was a nightmare in itself—like a kabuki mask left too long in the dark, twisted and warped, but still grinning. Always grinning.
And then there's the wings—because of course, it had wings—not the angelic kind like you'd expect. No, these were jagged, like sails ripped to shreds by a tycoon, flapping behind it with the sound of dry leaves skittering across pavement… But the flowers. Oh my, the flowers. Dozens of them—higanbana bloomed from its body like some hellish garden growing straight out of its flesh. They shouldn't have been beautiful. They weren't supposed to be. But there they were, petals trembling as though they were alive, and maybe they were. The whole thing was a mosaic of beauty and horror stitched together by some higher being's hands.
Then it spoke—a hundred voices tangled together in a low hum. A voice that wasn't really a voice at all. It was a shiver down the spine, a whisper that made the hairs on the back of her neck stand straight up.
"You've come so far, little one," it rasped the words like dry paper scraping together. "For what? To uncover the truth? Or maybe to bury it?" It floated towards Marina, the walls closing in as the creature's presence pressed down on her lungs.
She tried to speak, tried to move, but her body wasn't listening. She could only stare, heart pounding in her chest as that grin loomed closer, those flowers blooming and wilting, blooming and wilting, in an endless cycle of grotesque allure.
"You want answers, don't you?" it said, leaning in. "But answers come with a price. The truth is not what you think. It's uglier, darker... but so much more beautiful than you can imagine."
Its wings twitched, rattling, as though it were barely holding itself together. Yet the eyes—those impossibly old eyes—never wavered, locking onto hers, piercing right through her like it could see everything. Every fear. Every doubt. Every desperate hope she tried to bury deep down where even she couldn't reach them.
"I've been watching you. You've seen the worst of your kind. Suffered at their hands, endured their cruelty. I saw the fire burn in you—the fire that comes from wanting more than survival."
What is this thing? What's its name? Does it have a name? What does it want with me? Is it going to kill me?
"I've deemed you worthy, Marina. You are not like the others. You have the strength to wield my power, to do what needs to be done. To become a savior... of sorts. And this notebook is called a Death Note. I am its keeper, Kedron. I am a Shinigami. A God of Death."
The name rolled out like a cold gust of air, curling around her, sinking into the cracks of her mind. Her heart pounded in her chest, her breath stuck somewhere between a scream and silence. She couldn't tear her eyes away—couldn't look anywhere else even if she tried.
It—no Kedron reached out then, a hand—or rather a claw—hovering in the air between them, fingers long and skeletal, tipped with nails sharp enough to carve into the very fabric of reality. He picked up the Death Note, holding it out for her. And for a moment, just a moment, she thought she could see something in those eyes. Something familiar. Something almost… human.
"Take it," Kedron whispered, his voice now almost gentle, a promise wrapped in menace. "Any human whose name is written in it…will perish. It's as simple as that. The power of gods, Marina, is now within your mortal hands."
Her breath caught in her throat. The room felt too small, the light flickering around her. And yet, even as the terror clawed at her, something deeper stirred. A pull. A curiosity that refused to die as she reached out, forever sealing her fate with the touch of a notebook. Finally, she spoke:
"You're giving me too much to accept."
"Oh, do not mistake this for an act of kindness," Kedron replied. "I am no hero, nor do I care for the fate of your kind. This is all... an experiment. For centuries, I've watched your species flounder in the muck, killing and betraying one another. But I have a theory. I believe that if the right human were to wield the Death Note, important things could happen. The world could be changed." He leaned closer, the scent of decay washing over her as his tattered wings rustled in the stillness of the room. "And you, my dear, are that human. My chosen one, if you like. You will take this notebook and use it as you see fit. Cleanse the world, punish the wicked, or perhaps you will fall prey to the same darkness that consumes them. That is for you to decide."
"Come now," he urged, the flowers on his body swaying in a breeze that wasn't there. "You've already seen too much to walk away now. Step into the dark. Step into me. "