The creator

Kannazuki stared at the enormous, twisted figure on the desk.

Three seconds later, he slowly relaxed his right hand's tight grip on the combat knife.

Since the other party was a supernatural being, physical defense was not only meaningless but laughable.

He pulled over a battered folding chair and sat down opposite the god of death.

His gaze swept over the monster's body inch by inch, like a scanner.

Deathly pale skin, bulging bloodshot eyes, a mouth that stretched to his ears, and a pair of black-feathered wings that exuded an air of decay.

He looked exactly like the figure in the manga Kannazuki remembered.

"What are you trying to do?" The god of death tilted his head, his enormous frame looking utterly out of place in the cramped rented room.

He grinned, revealing uneven, pointed teeth.

"Human, you don't look frightened at all."

"Fear doesn't solve anything." Kannazuki's voice was calm, as though he were speaking to an ordinary customer placing an order.

"What's your name?"

The god of death froze for a moment, apparently not expecting such an ordinary question from this human.

He raised a claw tipped with sharp nails and scratched his tangled hair, his bulging eyes rolling twice.

"My name?" The god of death gave a harsh laugh.

"I've lived so long that even time has lost its meaning.

In our world, names are optional.

So right now, I don't have a name at all."

Kannazuki watched him without a flicker of emotion in his eyes, but his mind was racing.

No name?

That was impossible.

In that manga that had taken the world by storm,

this god of death had a very definite name-Ryuk.

A desperately bored hedonist who took pleasure in watching humans.

Was he lying? Or deliberately hiding it?

Kannazuki knew full well that beings from higher dimensions often had twisted tastes beyond ordinary human comprehension.

The god of death's claim that he had no name was most likely meant to conceal some rule, or perhaps he simply found it amusing to toy with a human who had just acquired the notebook.

That possibility could not be ruled out.

So Kannazuki did not immediately believe him.

Yet his harmless-looking face retained the same dull, unassuming calm of someone at the bottom of society, betraying not even the slightest doubt.

If the other party wanted to play, he would follow his script.

"If you don't have a name, communicating will be inconvenient."

Kannazuki stood up, walked over to the plastic bag in the corner, and took out a Red Fuji apple he had bought yesterday.

He gave it a cursory wipe on his clothes, walked to the computer desk, and set the apple in front of the god of death.

"Then from now on, I'll call you 'Ryuk.' Is that all right?"

Kannazuki looked straight into the god of death's eyes, his voice carrying an unquestionable obstinacy.

Once he had decided on something, even a god of death had to play by his rules.

The god of death's attention was instantly drawn to the bright red apple.

He reached out with his enormous claw, snatched it up, and sniffed it hard, a twisted expression of utter bliss appearing on his face.

"Ryuk..." The god of death murmured, repeating the sound. Crunch!

He opened his cavernous mouth and crushed half the apple in one bite, skin, core, and all. Juice trickled from the corners of his mouth.

"Humans really are interesting." The god of death laughed indistinctly as he chewed great mouthfuls of apple. "Mm, not bad. That name will do.

From today onward, I'm Ryuk."

Watching him devour the apple greedily, Kannazuki found one of his suspicions fully confirmed.

An appetite for apples and a fondness for watching from the sidelines.

The rules of this black notebook, and the monster before him who claimed to have no name yet readily accepted being called "Ryuk."

Everything fit perfectly with the deductions in his mind.

"Does it taste good?" Kannazuki asked.

"The apples in your human world are delicious!"

Ryuk swallowed the rest of the apple in a few bites, leaving not even the stem, then licked his lips, still craving more. "Got any more?"

"As long as you behave yourself and stick to being a spectator, you can have all the apples you want." Kannazuki sat back down on the folding chair and folded his hands over his knees.

"Now tell me, why did you appear here?"

At Kannazuki's question, Ryuk abruptly stopped licking his fingers.

His bulging, blood-red eyes rolled twice before he burst into harsh laughter.

"Gahahahaha! Humans really are interesting! You've finally asked the right question."

Ryuk flapped his enormous black-feathered wings, stirring up an icy gust that sent the draft papers on the desk rustling.

Kannazuki sat on the folding chair without so much as swaying.

He watched Ryuk, his voice steady. "You were too bored in the realm of the gods of death, so you deliberately dropped the notebook in the human world to amuse yourself.

You wanted to see what kind of madness humans would descend into once they obtained this power. It was all for your twisted amusement. Am I right?"

This was the most basic premise of the original Death Note manga.

Kannazuki was probing.

He needed to establish whether the being before him was a projection that copied the fictional setting in its entirety, or an entity with its own independent logic.

Ryuk stopped laughing. He raised his sharp-nailed claw and waved it repeatedly.

"No, no, no, no, no. That's not it." Ryuk stretched his mouth into a grin, exposing a mouthful of uneven fangs. "You guessed wrong."

Kannazuki lowered his eyelids slightly, his expression unchanged while his mind began racing.

Was he lying?

According to the manga, Ryuk had thrown the notebook into the human world out of sheer boredom.

A hedonist willing to sell information for apples had no reason to conceal the truth about this.

If Ryuk wasn't lying, then that changed the nature of everything.

Death Note was a work of fantasy created by Japanese manga artists.

Why had a prop and a god of death from the manga appeared in the real world exactly as depicted?

Had Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata once encountered a real god of death and used him as the basis for their manga?

Or had some higher-dimensional power directly manifested fictional concepts in reality?

"You didn't drop it." Kannazuki raised his head and looked straight into Ryuk's eyes. "Then who did?"

Ryuk's exaggerated smile vanished.

His enormous body leaned forward, casting a vast shadow over Kannazuki.

"My creator." Ryuk's voice grew low, carrying an eerie sense of pressure. "He was the one who chose you."

Creator.

The word echoed through the cramped rented room.

Kannazuki did not ask who the creator was.

A being of that caliber was beyond his reach for now.

He needed to know only one thing: he was not some lucky man who had stumbled upon the notebook, but a chosen pawn in an enormous game.

"What did he choose me for?" Kannazuki asked.