Chapter Text
Snow fell like ash in downtown Sendai.
Mikami stood silently in the back row of a near-empty church, a legal brief clutched in one gloved hand. A man had beaten his son to permanent disability, and was let go. “Insufficient evidence” was the verdict. The boy was ten.
God is watching, Mikami thought. God will fix this.
But the courtroom had been silent. And so was heaven.
He didn’t pray anymore.
Mikami walked home that night, under the flickering orange of sodium street lights. A headache was building behind his eyes, and could only be attributed to the fury he’d been feeling. He’d learned over the years, especially in his line of work, to silence this fury. Fighting with a judge in a court of law after the verdict has been made serves no purpose. But tonight, his fury refused to be silenced.
He passed a sleazy dive-bar. A middle aged man stumbled out of the swinging double doors, bottle in hand. He had just about knocked Mikami over, seemingly unaware of his surroundings. Mikami scowled in the man’s face, and then, recognition hit him like a brick.
The same man had stood trial a month ago for vehicular manslaughter. Yuji Tomohisha. “Remorseful,” the judge said. “Rehabilitated.”
Nobody asked the family of the girl he had killed.
If only there were justice in this world… Mikami mused.
The man, unsteady on his feet, stumbled towards his car, fumbling with his keys and the bottle he held.
Mikami wanted to act, he was a prosecutor after all, and this was about to be a clear case of driving under the influence. However, he was frozen in place.
The man got into the driver’s seat, started the car, and lurched down the street.
Mikami pulled out his phone, aiming to call 911. His phone hit the concrete before he could dial the first digit.
It happened in a flash. The man was dead. Or at the very least, critically injured.
He, seemingly out of nowhere, veered his car to the right, straight into a telephone pole. The sound was brutal. Metal shrieking, glass shattering, the dull thud of finality.
Mikami stared as the man’s head lolled against the airbag. Blood smeared the cracked windshield. The bottle had launched like a missile and shattered along the car’s interior. The headlights buzzed and flickered, casting ghostly shadows against the snow.
For once in his ordered, rule-bound life, Mikami considered the possibility of coincidence.
It had to be. There was no other way. He had only just wished for justice, and in the blink of an eye, the man was dead. A mere thought of retribution. And then… death. Cold. Surgical. Inevitable. Coincidence. It just had to be.
Mikami snatched his phone off the ground and began walking swiftly. He wanted to go home, but felt unable to. He wandered the city late into the night, ruminating on the event he’d just witnessed, numb to the cold that enveloped him.
A death that had arrived on cue, unprovoked, summoned by pure will. Impossible. It couldn’t be. Despite Mikami’s refusal to believe what had just happened, the dissonance remained. Was it really just that? Mere coincidence?
He thought of the boy. The father. The courtroom.
And then, he was stopped in his tracks.
Something black was lying on the snow-dusted ground outside his apartment. Mikami approached, out of nothing more than pure curiosity.
A book. Black leather cover, crisp-edged despite the frost curling against it. Embossed into the cover, in plain English: “Death Note”.
He picked it up with hesitation. The cover was warm.
The first rule was, logically, impossible. The second, deranged. The third, poetic in its horror.
The human whose name is written in this notebook shall die.
He stood beneath the streetlight and read each rule twice. Then again. The city was hushed around him. No drunken laughter, no screaming children, only the wind.
His fingers tightened around the book.
—
It appeared that night.
Mikami sat at his desk, mulling over the rules of the notebook. His mind raced, trying to decide if he was actually stupid enough to believe in this obvious prank. It was a prank. A notebook made by some high-schooler with the intention of freaking out passerby’s. Yeah, that’s it.
Then, the Shinigami took shape. It didn’t come with smoke or lightning, rather, it slowly formed in the corner of Mikami’s room. A warping of space, a wrongness taking shape.
The Shinigami stood silently for a few moments, watching the unaware Mikami stare at the book.
“You watched him die,” the creature spat, a voice like dry leaves scraping asphalt. “And you believed it was justice.”
The color drained from Mikami’s face. He turned slowly in his desk chair, wide-eyed and trembling. He wanted to scream, but upon opening his mouth, nothing besides a hoarse crack came from his throat.
“What, you’ve never seen a Shinigami before?” The creature laughed.
“Sh- Shini- Shinigami..?” Mikami’s voice was quiet, weak. He cleared his throat and straightened himself, suddenly very aware of the meekness he was showing in the face of a supernatural creature.
The Shinigami laughed again, a dry, heaving thing that echoed far too long in the quiet room. “You’re taking this better than most. Usually there’s screaming, running, bargaining. You humans are so quick to beg when you believe you’re already dead.”
Mikami fixed his eyes on the… thing. The Shinigami. His hands clenched in his lap. His breath trembled, but his back remained straight.
“I’m not dead,” He breathed. “You wouldn’t be here if I was.
The Shinigami tilted it’s head. Its face, if one could call it that, was an unreadable mask of bone and shadow. “Sharp. Very sharp, you are.”
“You killed that man, Yuji Tomohisha, didn’t you?”
“No.” The Shinigami grinned, its teeth sharp and glimmering. “But someone like me did.”
Mikami furrowed his brow. “There’s more than one.”
The Shinigami nodded. “My name is Raseph. Though, I am not your God, and I wouldn’t want to be in that position anyway.”
Raseph drifted forward, long limbs bending unnaturally, eyes glowing in the dim lamplight. “But I am a messenger, a witness, and now… a supplier.” He pointed towards the notebook with a long, gangly finger.
Mikami looked toward the notebook, then to the Shinigami in his apartment. “Why me… Why give this to me? Why did you leave it outside my apartment?”
“What, you think I chose you? Hardly. I simply dropped the notebook, and you simply picked it up. A good friend of mine recently did the same, dropped his notebook, and he seems to be having quite the ball. That’s how it all works. Chance. Coincidence. And the chaos that ensues.”
“You expect me to believe that?” Mikami narrowed his eyes.
Raseph bared his teeth in what might’ve been a smile, though it was hard to tell with his inhuman features. “Believe what you like, but what is—is. You picked up the notebook, and now it’s yours.”
Mikami stood slowly. “You said someone like you killed that man, who?”
“I mentioned my good friend, I supposed you’d be sharp enough to figure that out.”
Mikami was silent for a few, long moments.
“Another Shinigami… notebook of death… a supernatural murder weapon…” His mind placed each of the puzzle pieces together, and when the picture was complete, his eyes widened with shock.
“…Kira.” The name left his lips like a confession, sacred and profane.
The Shinigami’s grin twisted and contorted, becoming wider. “So you have been paying attention.”
“They’ve been whispering that name across every TV panel, across every dark corner of the internet. Politicians refuse to utter the name. The police say it’s ‘mass delusion.’ Heart attacks. All criminals. All public. Someone with a Death Note… someone… like me.” Mikami paced, his pulse thudding in his ears.
“Yes,” Raseph said, lowering himself into a seated crouch on the edge of Mikami’s desk, legs folding like broken branches. “A young man in Tokyo. His name is Light Yagami.”
Mikami’s heart began to pound.
Yagami.
The name meant little on its own, but the work, the divine labor, that name was tied to…
“He’s made something beautiful.” Mikami looked upon his Death Note with a gleam in his eyes, something not quite rational, something obsessive.
“A world sculpted by pure will… sculpted with purpose. He’s doing what the law is too cowardly to.”
“Careful, that’s the kind of talk that makes people gods.” Raseph tilted his head in amusement.
Mikami let out a low laugh. “You mean you don’t already see it? Kira… Kira is God. Kira is divine, his will is absolute. Kira is not just a man, he… he is justice…” He looked down at the Death Note again, shaking fingers tracing the letters embossed into the cover. “This… is holy.”
Raseph snorted. “Holy? That’s new. Most consider it a curse. A tool. A game.”
“I’m not most. I will use this… and prove myself to God, I’ll be one of his valued disciples… I’ll be… God’s favorite.”
“You humans and your gods, always looking for something to follow. And what if your God doesn’t accept you?”
Mikami’s mouth twitched into a smile. “Oh, He will.”