May 16th. Friday.
Heishi arrived at the Fujin home.
"I have received the manuscript for the first chapter of Death Note." He stood before Kai and bowed deeply.
"Kanzaki-sensei, thank you for your hard work."
He was clutching the manuscript so tightly his knuckles had turned white.
This was the first step for Death Note's serialization, and the first step in the meteoric rise of the serialized manga artist Ryuji Kanzaki.
He felt the weight of the moment and was filled with a sense of mission.
This feeling was a first for him. It was as if success was inevitable, and the certainty of it made him so excited he could barely contain himself.
"Thanks for coming out, Heishi-san."
Kai waved his hand. He'd only finished the last manuscript pages the moment Heishi walked through the door.
Weekly manga was even more grueling than he'd imagined.
Fortunately, Kai's body was in good shape. Sturdy and healthy. He could take the punishment.
...
After Heishi left, Kai stood up and addressed his assistants. "This week's work is officially wrapped. Let me take everyone out to eat. We've known each other for a while now and haven't had a proper meal together. That's on me."
Majima shook his head. "Sensei, you don't have to."
"I've been eating great here already." Amasaki had been living on fast food deliveries and had already developed the beginnings of a double chin.
"Let's go." Yuta was always the first to move. He grabbed a hat from nearby, put it on, and stood up, signaling he was ready.
"Mm." Kai nodded and started toward the door, leading the way. Before stepping out, he turned back to Majima. "Majima, you should wear a hat too."
He didn't want to become the center of attention in public.
"Okay." Majima nodded, looking bitter about it.
...
At midnight, back home after the dinner, Amasaki wrote in his notebook.
[Kanzaki-sensei treated us all to a high-end meal. The beef was incredible. Sensei is really great.]
...
Time flew to the 26th, and the 23rd issue of Weekly Shonen Jump appeared on supermarket shelves.
A lot of people had been waiting for this one.
Among them was Eiichiro Oda.
He was intensely curious about what kind of content had sailed through Jump's serialization meeting so easily, while his own manuscript had been rejected twice and he was still grinding away at revisions.
Without seeing it for himself, Oda simply wasn't willing to let it go.
To be honest, he was a deeply confident person.
Being leapfrogged by someone younger stung.
After buying his copy of Weekly Shonen Jump, Oda sat down at an outdoor drink stand and started flipping through the magazine.
In the table of contents, Death Note was listed first among the twenty serialized titles.
So there was no need to search. The moment he turned to the first page of the main section, it was right there.
Light Yagami was holding a massive scythe taller than himself, with Ryuk the Shinigami looming behind him. It matched the cover of the magazine.
Oda began reading carefully.
The protagonist's name was Light Yagami, and he had picked up a notebook.
It had been thrown into the human world by Ryuk the Shinigami out of pure boredom. He wanted to see what kind of interesting things would happen when a human got their hands on the Death Note.
The notebook couldn't kill a Shinigami anyway, so there was no risk for Ryuk.
Five days later, Ryuk went to find Light Yagami and felt an immense rush of satisfaction.
In such a short span of time, this kid had killed quite a few people. The notebook was filled with dense rows of names.
He looked like a model student. Handsome face, youthful features, a hint of innocence in his eyes. And yet underneath all that, he was this. Interesting.
At first, out of boredom, Light had used the Death Note to verify whether it was real by killing a criminal who was holding up a nursery school.
At that point, he could still be called a hero.
But one case didn't prove anything, so Light wanted to run another experiment.
There were punks in his class who bullied other students, but they were too close to him. He couldn't act on them without raising suspicion.
Then one day, he witnessed a delinquent harassing a woman on the street. He seized the opportunity and wrote in the notebook that the man would die in a car accident.
The man was hit and crushed by a truck.
The notebook was real.
Having killed two people, especially one whose crime didn't warrant death, Light found it hard to accept at first.
But he moved past it quickly. Dangerously quickly.
"The world is rotting, and it's best for the rotten people to die!"
He would use the Death Note to reshape the world. Become the god of the new world.
Oda's eyes went wide. 'This is one hell of an opening.'
"The way the character's psychology is handled is really impressive. In such a short amount of content, you've got a fully realized anti-hero."
"Courage, guts, and willpower. This is exactly the kind of protagonist Jump needs."
"And this guy Kanzaki, his drawing and storyboarding have improved at a ridiculous pace. He's evolved from a grunt to an elite monster. Although most manga artists are boss-level, to be fair."
Elite monster. That was how Oda rated him.
Light wanted the world to know someone was out there doing this, so he didn't specify causes of death in the notebook. Criminals began dropping one after another from heart attacks.
The International Criminal Police Organization held an emergency meeting and descended into endless arguments. But when the world's top detective, L, joined the fray, they began to unite and accept his command.
Who was L? He had assisted police forces around the globe in solving major cases, yet no one knew his real name or what he looked like.
He communicated exclusively through his assistant Watari, who served as his intermediary.
L issued his judgment on the Light Yagami situation.
This incident is unprecedented. The methods are cruel. It is an absolutely intolerable, heinous mass murder case.
Detective L began his challenge against Light Yagami.
Oda didn't understand. How could Light, who possessed the Death Note and was being hailed online as "Kira," possibly lose?
Sure enough, in the next sequence, L appeared on a live television broadcast.
He revealed his face to the camera and placed an identity sign bearing his name in front of him.
Then he provoked Light directly, declaring he would bring him to justice.
"Everything you have done is evil!"
Light was furious. He wrote the name in the notebook.
L collapsed from a heart attack.
"As expected." Oda nodded. "This is a classic manga move. You create a powerful enemy and have them easily crushed by the protagonist to establish dominance."
'But wait. Why would Light kill L? Shouldn't Light be the hero? Or is it that…'
The realization hit him, and Oda felt a surge of excitement.
'Kanzaki, you madman. You're actually going for an unprecedented villain protagonist!'
"This is incredible."
He drank a glass of orange juice to calm himself down.
From the very first page, the plot had been building momentum, the pacing accelerating with every beat, squeezing the air out of his lungs.
After catching his breath and steadying himself, Oda kept reading.
L had clearly collapsed. But his voice was still coming from the television.
It turned out the person who appeared on camera was a death row inmate. Not the real L.
Through this single broadcast, L had confirmed two things.
First, Light could genuinely kill from a distance. But since L hadn't shown his own face, Light couldn't touch him. The killing method had limitations.
Second, Kira had watched this broadcast, which had only been aired in the Kanto region. In other words, his place of residence was in Kanto.
"!!!"
Oda shot to his feet, slamming the table. The empty glass tipped over and hit the surface with a sharp, ringing crack. "What an incredible plot!"
______________________
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