(All characters and place names in this work are products of the author's imagination and do not exist. If any resemblance occurs, please judge for yourself. I also hope readers will finish the first three chapters before deciding whether to stay.)
The screen went black.
The mournful melody of the ending theme echoed through the cramped rented room.
Kannazuki closed his aging laptop, its screen last frozen on Light Yagami's twisted, defiant face.
The man who had tried to become the god of a new world had ultimately died on a staircase like any ordinary mortal.
"What a waste."
Kannazuki lit a cheap cigarette, and smoke curled through the dim room.
If the first half of Death Note had been a battle at the pinnacle between two geniuses, L and Light Yagami,
then, to Kannazuki, the second half had felt more like a clumsy performance of actors merely reading their lines.
Kannazuki still couldn't let it go: Light Yagami hadn't lost because of his intellect, but because the writers had forced his downfall.
"If their final coordination hadn't gone wrong, if Teru Mikami hadn't been such an idiot..."
He shook his head and stubbed out his cigarette.
Reality had no room for ifs.
Light Yagami was dead. Kira was gone.
Kannazuki glanced at the digital clock on the wall.
Five in the afternoon.
The evening rush of delivery orders was about to begin.
He put on his yellow delivery uniform and helmet, then stepped out into the forest of steel and concrete.
The overcast sky hung oppressively low.
The air reeked of exhaust fumes and damp odors rising from the sewers.
The order notification was piercing.
"You have a new delivery order. Please process it promptly."
Kannazuki swung onto his electric scooter with practiced ease and twisted the throttle.
His first delivery was to the Splendid Garden residential complex.
It was an old complex with no elevators and roads riddled with potholes.
Carrying two portions of spicy hot pot, Kannazuki hurried up to the fifth floor.
After delivering the food and heading downstairs, he stopped at the building entrance.
A nauseating stench hit him.
It wasn't the smell of a rubbish heap. It was the rank stink of rotting flesh.
There lay Splendid Garden's notorious "local attraction."
An old man.
Ninety-eight years old.
The old man huddled in a sheltered spot beside the building, with a few moldy pieces of cardboard beneath him.
He was so old that his skin hung from his bones like dried tree bark.
Kannazuki parked his scooter, his gaze falling on the old man's legs.
What kind of legs were those?
After years of kneeling on concrete to beg, his trousers had worn through at the knees.
And not just his trousers.
The flesh over both knees had been worn away while he was still alive. There were no scabs, only festering red flesh and stark white bone.
Yellow pus seeped through the gaps around the bones, and several greenbottle flies buzzed around the wounds.
The old man seemed unable to feel pain-or perhaps his pain receptors had already died.
He was rummaging in a black rubbish bag beside him.
Half a moldy steamed bun, and a bottle of water someone had left unfinished.
The old man shakily stuffed the bun into his mouth, his throat wheezing like a pair of bellows.
"What a sin."
Two middle-aged women passing nearby covered their noses and quickened their steps.
"Old Li has three sons and two daughters. Every one of them lives in a big house, and they've just dumped their father here."
"Shh, keep your voice down. His eldest son, Zhao Gang, lives right upstairs on the second floor. He's a thug. If he hears you, he'll make trouble."
Kannazuki's grip tightened on the handlebars.
He knew this old man.
While making a delivery the previous week, he had found the old man passed out from hunger beside the road and bought him two meat buns.
That day, the old man had knelt before him and knocked his head against the ground so hard it thudded, leaving his forehead covered in blood.
All for a mouthful of food.
"Cough, cough..."
The old man choked on the hard, dry bun and began coughing violently, his face turning purplish red.
Kannazuki couldn't bear to watch.
He hurried to a small shop by the road and bought a bottle of water and two bread rolls.
He went over to the old man and crouched down.
The stench was stronger there-the smell of a life rotting away while still alive.
"Sir, have some water."
Kannazuki unscrewed the cap and held out the bottle.
The old man's cloudy eyes shifted. When he saw Kannazuki, his hand, like a withered branch, suddenly clutched the bottle.
"Thank you... thank you, living Buddha..."
The old man tried to kneel again.
His knees, with their exposed white bones, were about to strike the concrete.
Kannazuki caught him by the arm.
"Don't kneel. Have something to eat."
Just then, a second-floor window was flung open.
A burly middle-aged man in a tank top stuck his head out.
Zhao Gang.
The old man's eldest son.
"Hey, hey, hey! You, delivery boy! What are you doing?"
Zhao Gang held a cigarette between his fingers, the flesh on his face trembling.
Kannazuki looked up and stared coldly at him. "Your father's starving to death."
"What the fuck does that have to do with you?"
Zhao Gang spat, landing it right on the cardboard in front of the old man.
"This old bastard's too tough to die! Nothing kills him! What are you feeding him for? So he'll have the energy to wail once he's full?"
"Are you even human?" Kannazuki asked, suppressing his anger.
"Oh, really?"
Zhao Gang flicked away his cigarette butt and turned to head downstairs.
Less than a minute later, the building entrance was kicked open.
Zhao Gang stormed out, followed by a woman with permed curls and a pinched, spiteful face.
She was the old man's eldest daughter-in-law.
Zhao Gang rushed up and kicked away the bread Kannazuki had just bought.
The rolls tumbled into a puddle of filthy water nearby.
"Eat, eat, eat! That's all you fucking do!"
Zhao Gang pointed at the old man's nose and unleashed a torrent of abuse.
"You old bastard, why aren't you dead yet? The house has already been transferred. What are you still hanging around here for? You're a fucking curse!"
The old man trembled in terror, clutching the water bottle against his chest as though it were a priceless treasure.
"Don't hit me... I won't eat... I won't eat..."
The old man begged indistinctly for mercy.
A crowd of onlookers had gathered.
Some filmed on their phones; others pointed and commented.
But no one stepped forward.
Everyone knew Zhao Gang was the neighborhood thug. He had served time for assault.
Kannazuki stood and placed himself between Zhao Gang and the old man.
"Enough."
He stared into Zhao Gang's eyes.
"Move!" Zhao Gang shoved him.
Kannazuki didn't budge.
Years of making deliveries and climbing stairs had left him in decent shape.
"What? Trying to play the hero?"
Zhao Gang sneered, pulled a folding knife from his waistband, and slapped it against his palm.
"Delivery boy, how much do you make a month? You want to stick your nose in? Believe me, I can make sure you never work in this neighborhood again."
The daughter-in-law beside him shrieked too. "Come look, everyone! A delivery man's attacking us! He's bullying a poor widow and her orphan!"
Turning truth on its head.
Calling black white.
The crowd began whispering. Some who didn't know what had happened even started criticizing Huang Tian.
"Young man, don't make trouble. Just go."
"That's right. It's their family business."
Kannazuki looked at Zhao Gang's arrogant face, then at the old man trembling on the ground, the white bones of his knees exposed.
A profound helplessness welled up inside him.
This was reality.
There were no superheroes. No justice descending from above.
Bad people lived comfortably. Good people lived like dogs.
The law?
With a family dispute like this, even if the police came, they would only mediate.
Once they finished, Zhao Gang would shut the door and torment the old man even worse.
Kannazuki drew a deep breath, clenching his fists before letting them loosen.
He couldn't hit him.
If he did, it would count as a mutual fight.
He would be detained, lose his job, and might even pay compensation until he had nothing left.
He still had rent to pay. He still had to eat.
"You win."
Kannazuki ground the words out through clenched teeth.
He turned, took all the loose money from his pocket-just over fifty yuan-and pressed it into the old man's hand.
"Sir, hide this well."
With that, he climbed onto his electric scooter without another glance at Zhao Gang.
Behind him came Zhao Gang's triumphant laughter and the woman's curses.
"Who the hell does he think he is? Pah!"
Kannazuki twisted the throttle and sped out of the complex.
The wind lashed his face, stinging painfully.
At last, the rain began to fall.
Cold rain struck his helmet visor, blurring his sight.
Kannazuki stopped beneath a large tree by the roadside and removed his helmet, letting the rain soak his hair.
He stared at the hazy gray outline of the city in the distance.
Neon lights began to flicker, and the city reveled as though all were well.
Meanwhile, in that dark corner, a ninety-eight-year-old man gnawed on a moldy bun while the maggots in his knees feasted.
"Lord Kira..."
Kannazuki wiped the rain from his face and murmured to the empty street.
"This world is rotten."
Even more rotten than before.
If justice couldn't be served now, then justice arriving late meant nothing.
His phone vibrated.
"Overdue warning! Your order is about to exceed its time limit!"
Numbly, Kannazuki put his helmet back on and continued weaving through the rain.
Until eleven that night.
Kannazuki dragged his exhausted body back to his rented room.
He was soaked through, his knees aching.
He tossed his delivery box onto the floor and stripped off his drenched clothes.
He had made forty-five deliveries today and earned less than three hundred yuan.
And he still had to deduct the late-delivery penalties caused by that incident.
"Fuck."
He cursed under his breath, cracked open a can of beer, and took a long swig.
His gaze happened to sweep over the delivery box on the floor.
Its lid wasn't shut all the way.
Something seemed to be tucked into one of its compartments.
Something black.
It looked like a book.
"Did someone leave a package behind?"
Kannazuki frowned.
He remembered that the box should have been empty after his last delivery.
He walked over, bent down, and pulled it out.
It wasn't a package.
It was a black notebook.
The cover was black too, without any patterns, only an eerie matte texture that seemed to absorb light.
It felt icy to the touch, like the skin of a corpse.
Kannazuki froze for a moment.
Where did this notebook come from?
Had some customer slipped it in as a prank?
He turned it over to look at the cover.
Two English words were written on it in white.
The lettering was twisted, exuding an ominous air.
Death Note.
Kannazuki's beer-holding hand froze in midair.
"Death... Note?"
He instinctively looked toward the computer on his desk, which was already shut down.
That prop from the anime?
A cosplay accessory?
"Who has that much time to waste?"
Kannazuki scoffed and casually tossed the notebook onto the desk.
The notebook landed with a slap, but instead of closing, it fell open to the first page.
The black page was densely covered in rules written in white.
Kannazuki's gaze happened to pass over the first line.
His heart abruptly skipped a beat.
The lettering wasn't printed.
Instead, it looked as though it had been carved with some kind of sharpened bone.
[The person whose name is written in this notebook shall die.]
Outside the window, a flash of lightning split the night sky.
Its deathly pale light illuminated the room.
It also illuminated the black notebook lying silently on the desk.
Kannazuki put down his beer and reached out as though compelled by some unseen force.
The instant his fingertips touched the page.
An electric shudder shot up his spine to the crown of his head.
"What if it's real?"
A mad thought grew like a weed in his mind.
Before you continue