The security door was locked tight.
Kannazuki stood behind the door and listened for a minute. There was no sound in the hallway.
He returned to the table, pulled out the plastic folding chair, and sat down.
The black Death Note lay flat on the tabletop.
The skeletal skull design on its cover had a dark sheen beneath the incandescent light.
Ryuk floated down from the ceiling and settled on the edge of the bed.
His enormous body made the old spring mattress creak.
"The cop's gone." Ryuk bit into a Red Fuji apple, chewing with a crisp crunch.
"Why didn't you just write down his name? Think how much trouble that would've saved."
Kannazuki ignored the question. He leaned back in his chair.
"Ryuk," Kannazuki said, "who do you think is smarter, judging by the methods I'm using now-me or Light Yagami?"
The room fell silent for two seconds.
There was only the sound of an apple being chewed.
Ryuk swallowed the flesh. His red eyes shifted to stare at Kannazuki.
"Who's Light Yagami?" Ryuk asked.
Kannazuki's hand froze halfway to the pen.
He turned his head and looked at the shinigami.
There was no trace of pretense in Ryuk's expression. That pure bewilderment belonged to someone who had never heard the name before.
Kannazuki tapped a finger against the tabletop.
"I forgot." Kannazuki withdrew his hand. "You said before that you didn't come from the Shinigami Realm.
"You're something the Creator made by giving physical form to a fictional concept."
Ryuk let out a cackling laugh.
"So you don't have any memories of the original story." Kannazuki picked up the old phone with the chipped screen corner. "Good thing I finished driving early today.
"I'll give you a quick introduction."
Kannazuki unlocked his phone.
He opened the browser. His fingers tapped rapidly across the on-screen keyboard.
He entered the name: Light Yagami.
He tapped search.
The page changed.
Kannazuki looked at the screen.
Rows of search results appeared.
[Night God: an introduction to a class in an online game]
[Unsolved mysteries of the far side of the moon]
[A guide to the best nighttime moon-viewing spots in Linhai City]
There were no entries about an anime character. No Baidu Baike page. No Tieba discussions. No Zhihu questions and answers.
Kannazuki frowned.
He cleared the search box and entered a new title: Death Note.
He tapped search.
The page changed again.
[A high school student left a suicide note; contents revealed]
[Thriller novel "Death Notebook" now being serialized]
[A forensic doctor's notes: recording the truth behind death]
Kannazuki's finger hovered above the screen.
Nothing.
The biggest search engine on the internet could not find this globally popular manga and anime.
"What's wrong?" Ryuk leaned closer, his enormous head stopping beside Kannazuki's shoulder.
"Internet down?" Ryuk looked at the text on the screen. He could read Chinese, but he did not understand what Kannazuki was looking for.
Kannazuki said nothing.
He closed the browser and opened his usual video app.
He entered two names in the search box: Tsugumi Ohba, Takeshi Obata.
No results.
Kannazuki opened his shopping app and went into his order history.
He clearly remembered spending two hundred yuan at a secondhand bookstore six months ago on a complete set of the Taiwanese edition of Death Note. Ryuk had been on the cover of the first volume.
He scrolled through the screen.
He stopped at the date from six months ago.
The order read: item purchased, Hunter × Hunter, volumes 1-12. Amount paid: two hundred yuan.
Kannazuki shot to his feet.
The chair legs scraped against the floor with a piercing screech.
He strode over to the simple bookshelf against the wall.
The third shelf.
The spot where the black-covered manga set had been.
Twelve volumes of Hunter × Hunter now stood there in a neat row.
Kannazuki reached out, pulled out the first volume, and opened it.
The pages were yellowed.
Inside was Yoshihiro Togashi's artwork. There was no trace of shinigami or notebooks.
Physical reality had been altered.
Kannazuki stood before the bookshelf, holding the book.
He turned his head toward the black notebook on the computer desk.
"Kannazuki, what exactly are you looking for?" Ryuk finished the last bite of his apple and tossed the core into the trash.
Kannazuki returned to the table. He tossed the volume of Hunter × Hunter onto the bed.
He sat back down, interlaced his fingers, and rested his chin against them.
"The Creator." Kannazuki's voice was low. "He erased every piece of information about Death Note from this world."
Ryuk tilted his head. "Erased?"
Kannazuki picked up his phone and opened the Cape Community app.
Half a month ago, he had killed the thug Zhao Gang and the robber Wang Hu. The whole city had been talking about it.
Cape Community had erupted into a frenzy of deification.
Kannazuki had browsed those posts at the time. He clearly remembered one wildly popular reply: "This kind of punishment is practically Light Yagami in real life! He definitely has a Death Note!"
Kannazuki opened his browsing history in his profile.
He kept scrolling down.
He found the viral thread titled [Linhai City's series of heart attacks: divine punishment or human intervention?].
He tapped it.
The page loaded for two seconds, then jumped straight to page fifteen. He found the highly upvoted reply.
Kannazuki stared at the screen.
The reply was still there. Its posting time, number of likes, position in the thread, even its punctuation-all were unchanged.
Only a few words had changed.
[This kind of punishment is practically Kira in real life! He definitely has some kind of shinigami curse at his disposal!]
Kira.
Kira.
Kannazuki scrolled.
Hundreds upon thousands of replies followed.
[Support Kira! Clean out this human garbage!]
[Kira is Linhai City's god of the night!]
[Long live Kira!]
Every mention of "Light Yagami" had been replaced with "Kira." Every mention of "Death Note" had been replaced with the vague phrase "shinigami curse."
Kannazuki put down his phone.
He leaned back in his chair.
The chain of logic rapidly rearranged itself in his mind.
The Creator had brought the concept of "Death Note" into the real world.
To ensure this "game" was authentic and one of a kind, the Creator had unleashed some incomprehensible higher-dimensional power.
He had not merely tampered with the internet's underlying data.
He had also altered the knowledge and memories of all humanity.
He had even changed physical objects in the real world.
In this world, Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata had never existed. That manga had never been serialized. There had never been an anime called Death Note.
Light Yagami did not exist.
Now, the only person in this world wielding the pen, the only Kira, was Kannazuki himself.
"Humans really are fascinating." Watching Kannazuki's shifting gaze, Ryuk let out a shrill laugh. "Your expression right now is even better than that cop's was."
Kannazuki closed his eyes.
He took a deep breath.
Three seconds later, he opened his eyes. The shock in them had been replaced by absolute calm.
"This is better." Kannazuki picked up the Black Water-Based Pen from the table.
"How is it better?" Ryuk asked.
"If the manga still existed, Chen Lei or some other cop would eventually follow the clues of 'heart attacks' and 'serial deaths' and connect them to Death Note."
Kannazuki removed the pen cap. "Once they knew the rules from the original story, all my secrets would be exposed.
"They'd know how to guard against me. They'd even know the notebook's fatal weakness."
Kannazuki tapped the pen tip against the tabletop.
"Now the Creator has eliminated that hidden risk for me."
Kannazuki looked at the notebook's cover. "In this world, I'm the originator. The police are facing a supernatural phenomenon with no historical precedent and no logical pattern."
"Ha ha ha, you really are an optimistic guy." Ryuk flipped over in midair.
"But the Creator didn't do this to help you."
Kannazuki looked at Ryuk.
"The Creator just thought that if the police could figure out how you kill by reading a manga, the story would be far too boring." Ryuk split his mouth into a wide grin. "He wants a pure battle of wits. One without spoilers."
Kannazuki did not argue.
Before you continue