JE/NEWS+KAT-TUN- "Four JE AU Plotlines That Aren’t Ripped off from a Shoujo Manga and One That Is"
Title: Four JE AU Plotlines That Aren’t Ripped off from a Shoujo Manga and One That Is
Universe: JE/ Hikaru no Go/ Deathnote/ Liar Game/ Battle Royale/ Every bad shoujo manga ever
Theme/Topic: N/A
Rating: PG-13
Character/Pairing/s: NEWS, KAT-TUN (some YamapixYuuko)
Warnings/Spoilers: Random, crack, OOC, parody, vague references to anime/manga.
Word Count: 3,310
Summary: We don’t need any more high school romance AUs, but we’re going to keep getting them anyway.
Dedication: Ann- The Shounen never fails. XD
A/N: Mostly just silliness to get me back in the groove, I guess? I read some random shoujo manga this weekend and it was all very useless and stupid. WHY IS THERE SO MUCH RAPE JAPAN? AND BROTHER HUMPING EEUW. LOL on a random note, I almost forgot to write Yamapi into this fic.
Disclaimer: No harm is meant by this!
1.
“Alright, we’ll go, okay? Don’t look at me like that,” Tegoshi concedes reluctantly that afternoon, and shoves his hands into his pockets before ducking into the stuffy-looking Go salon at Sai’s behest. “But only one game!” he insists, “Then we’re going to play soccer, got it?”
The lady at the front desk gives him an odd look when he walks inside just like that, talking very animatedly to himself.
He smiles and quickly changes the subject. “Hi! Can I play Go here?” he asks.
She manages to smile back. “Of course. Is this your first time?”
He nods. “I’ve never played before, ne,” he admits, as he digs around in his jacket for some money to pay the entrance fee. He cranes his neck and looks around for someone to play with in the meantime, and is forced to wrinkle his nose at the options, because all he can see right now are several middle-aged or elderly gentlemen, all of whom are smoking pipes and rolling black or white stones between their fingers while very slowly deliberating over their next moves. “These guys have probably been playing for…a very long time, ne,” he says, eventually.
The lady laughs. “Well, most of them are of the…older demographic.” Then, she stops to point towards the very back of the salon while Tegoshi pays his deposit and signs his name. “There’s also Shigeaki-kun over there in the corner though,” she reports, “but even though he’s young, I don’t think you want to play against him…”
Tegoshi’s eyes follow the direction she’s indicating, and he lights up when he sees another boy about his age, sitting in front of a Go board all by himself while looking very serious. “Hey, maybe he’ll play with me,” Tegoshi says obliviously, and thanks the lady before charging forward.
The front desk girl sighs. “…because Shigeaki-kun is a Go genius,” she finishes alone, lamely.
She looks helpless and hopes that their resident genius goes easy on this new kid.
~~~~~
Shige is sitting by himself in the salon that afternoon, meticulously going over the moves of his father’s last championship game on the board in front of him, trying to figure out what he would have done differently if he’d been his father’s opponent instead.
He furrows his brow. “And then,” he mutters, putting a black stone in the corner, “maybe here?” Pause. Scowl. “No, then otousama would go…”
“Hi! Shige, right?”
Shige blinks. Looks up.
A kid who looks a few years younger than him smiles back at him guilelessly. Shige stares. “Excuse me?”
“Shige, right?” the kid repeats without missing a beat, no honorifics at all. “It sure is a relief to meet someone here who’s my age, ne.”
Shige continues to blink, mostly because he is not sure what is happening right now.
The kid takes a seat across from him. “So, you want to play?”
Shige’s very eloquent reply to the offer is, “Buh?”
The kid motions to the board. “You’re all by yourself, right? So let’s play.” He clears off the stones-and Shige’s very carefully constructed strategy-with one arm.
“Is this some kind of a joke?” Shige eventually manages.
No response.
Because the kid is not listening, Shige realizes. The kid seems to be talking to himself over his own shoulder. Maybe the kid is crazy.
Shige turns to look accusatorily at the front desk girl over his shoulder.
She shrugs helplessly at him. Be nice, he's new, she mouths.
Shige rolls his eyes and settles back down into his seat with an air of long-suffering. “Fine,” he acquiesces to the kid eventually. “One game.”
The kid beams. “Great! My name’s Tegoshi.”
He picks up a white stone and after a minute of thought, fumbles it onto the board, barely on the correct lines.
Shige can already tell just by the way Tegoshi holds the pieces that this is going to be a monumental waste of his time.
~~~~~
Nearly two hours later, Tegoshi stretches happily and bounces out of the Go salon. “Thanks, neesan!” he says casually to the front desk girl, on his way out.
She waves after him and tells him to come back soon, thinking to herself that he seems like a nice enough kid; if anything, he’s definitely not a sore loser. And maybe Shigeaki-kun had actually been accommodating today, like she’d asked him to be. Pleased at the thought, she goes to take Shige some juice, as a reward.
In the meantime, Shige is left by himself at the back of the salon again, except this time he is hunched over the board of the game he just finished playing, with a deeply indignant, disbelieving look of horror on his face.
In other words, it is the face of someone who has lost.
“What the hell just happened?!” Shige screams.
2.
“Nakamaru, look what I found!” Massu announces one morning, when he arrives on campus and sees his friend reading at his usual spot in the library before their ten am lecture is supposed to start. Nakamaru blinks and looks up from his textbook when he hears Massu’s voice; he is greeted by a fancy looking black notebook being waved right in front of his face, like it is something amazing and precious and not to be trifled with. Nakamaru supposes that it’s a nice enough notebook, though at the same time, it’s kind of morbid looking when placed in juxtaposition with Massu’s bright blue sweater and purple pants.
“Death…note…” he sounds out, when he looks at the English written on the cover. “Isn’t that name kind of dark? Why are you picking up random things you find on the street? That could be dangerous, ne. And what if that belongs to someone? Maybe you should take it to the police station.”
“It fell out of the sky right in front of me this morning, ne,” Massu reports calmly. “And I already know who it belongs to, because when I picked it up, this guy appeared and said it was his!”
He points vaguely towards the air behind him.
Nakamaru doesn’t see anything. Alarm bells start to go off. “This guy?” he inquires, carefully.
“This guy with wings,” Massu elaborates, while still gesturing vaguely to the air.
Nakamaru wonders if this is some sort of horrible terrorist attack, except that instead of bombs, now the terrorists are coating everyday items in hallucinogenic drugs to make the people who pick them up go crazy. He thinks he remembers reading something about the possibility of such a thing occurring in one of his international crimes classes. Either that or he fell asleep again and dreamed it; he’ll have to check his notes to be sure. “Alright, Massu,” he begins after a minute, trying to sound calm, “why don’t we just throw that book away and go wash your hands?”
Massu looks reluctant. “There’s a bunch of stuff in English on it so I don’t know exactly what it says, but from what the guy with the wings is telling me, if people’s names get written in it, they’ll die within a minute, ne. I can’t just throw this away; what if someone bad picks it up and tries to kill people?”
In the back of Nakamaru’s mind, those alarm bells get louder. He tries to think. “Okay,” he says, and does his best to sound reasonable instead of panicky (which is kind of what he really feels right now according to the sweat starting to bead on his nose). “You have to realize that it’s a little bit hard for me to believe that you suddenly touched a magical black notebook that fell out of the sky this morning and now you can see a mysterious man behind you with wings.”
Massu considers this. Pouts. “So, you don’t believe me?”
Nakamaru bites the inside of his cheek. “Well,” he begins eventually, trying to smooth things over in case Massu really has gone crazy, “it’s not that I don’t believe you, but it makes me worried that you might be sick. It’s possible that you’re sick, right?”
Massu blinks. “I feel okay.” He shakes the notebook again. “I’m pretty sure this is what’s making me see Ryuk-kun.”
Nakamaru is confused. “Ryuk-kun?”
“The guy with the wings,” Massu explains patiently.
A beat.
“Right,” Nakamaru manages. “Well, it might be the notebook, but it could also-maybe-be a sickness too. I mean, what if it’s one of those sicknesses that don’t make you feel ill right away?”
Massu looks confused.
“Like um, a brain tumor, or something,” Nakamaru poses.
Massu looks horrified.
“For example,” Nakamaru hastens to clarify. “So, just to make sure it’s not something like that, why don’t you just give me the notebook and see if Ryuk-kun disappears or not? Then we’ll know whether it’s you or if it’s the notebook.”
Massu looks skeptical.
Nakamaru holds out his hand.
Massu reluctantly hands the notebook over.
“There,” Nakamaru begins, once it’s in his hands, “Can you still see…”
He trails off abruptly when a guy with wings suddenly appears, casually hanging out in the airspace directly beyind Massu’s left shoulder.
“Yo!” said guy-Ryuk-kun, Nakamaru supposes- greets, with a decidedly off-putting smile and an exaggerated wave of one gangly limb. “How’s it going, human?”
Nakamaru stares at the notebook. “Eh?” he says. “R-really?”
Ryuk’s smile widens, and he nods. “Yup!”
In the meantime, Massu just looks confused. “Huh? Wasn’t I just at home?” he asks, sounding dazed.
Nakamaru passes out.
3.
Shige slaps a hand to his forehead. “So you decided to open the mysterious black box that got left in front of your door without a return address on it before you read the attached note. Ingenious. So like you. Why am I even surprised?”
Koyama looks pathetic. Fidgets. Sighs. “I didn’t know there was going to be 100 million yen inside!” he feels the need to add, in his own defense.
“You didn’t know if there was a bomb inside either, moron!” Shige snaps, as they sit in his best friend’s apartment with a large box of undoubtedly illegally gotten funds in their possession.
A fancy black invitation with the words Liar Game Tournament written on it sits on top of the box, looking incredibly suspicious and evil and Shige honestly has no idea why Koyama even entertained the thought of opening a box with something like that attached to it in the first place.
“Shige,” Koyama meeps, “Shige what do we do now?”
Shige looks troubled too, and rereads the information on the card one more time, trying to find an out.
Nothing.
Eventually, he sighs and folds his hands in front of his face, looking very deliberate and cool. “I guess,” he says with quiet resolve, “I’ll just have to figure out a way for us to win this. It’s a game where you outsmart people, right?”
Koyama flops over in relief, because Shige is the smartest person he knows. “Right!” he says.
~~~~~
Five days later, when they lose all of their money to their (very capable) opponent in the first round and end up owing an organization called the LG Secretariat exactly 100 million yen, Koyama comforts himself with the knowledge that with the two of them working together to pay it all back, they’ll definitely get it taken care of before they die.
Because even now, Shige is still the smartest person he knows.
In the background, Shige bitterly tells him he needs to hang out with more than five other people in this world.
4.
“Why are we here?” Jin demands, and tugs on the collar currently clamped around his throat; it makes an ominous beeping sound whenever he jostles it. “Also, this is very not flattering! It makes my neck look fat!”
“Your fat makes your neck look fat,” Ueda tells him flatly.
“At least we don’t have to go around Kyoto looking at shitty castles we’ve already seen before,” Koki says, and stretches in his chair. “This school field trip is still totes ghetto though, yo.”
“It’s definitely not still a field trip if we’re suddenly on an island, ne,” Taguchi pipes up, and laughs to himself.
Nakamaru blinks. “What if there’s a field on the island? Then it still counts, right?”
“Shut up,” Jin and Kame tell everyone.
From there they linger in relative silence, while Jin continues to fidget with his collar and the beeping noises it makes start to get faster and faster the more he fools around with it.
Eventually, when they’re all tired of waiting and ready to try breaking out again, the locked door to the abandoned classroom they are holed up in opens and a crotchety old man appears, face steeped in shadow.
“Hey, I know you from somewhere yo,” Koki murmurs.
“I was your middle school science teacher, asshole!” the crotchety old man barks as he steps into the light, looking irate as all hell. “You’d remember me if you hadn’t slept every day during biology, moron.”
“It wasn’t just biology,” Nakamaru feels the need to point out.
“Um, that’s nice. But none of this answers any of my questions from before,” Jin interrupts, and pulls at the metal collar around his neck again. “Also, if I have to wear this, can I please get a size down? It keeps moving around and knocking me in the jaw.”
No response.
Kame asks the question that matters. “Why are we here, sensei?”
“Congratulations,” crotchety old man announces when Kame finally gets on track, “this year you six have been chosen to participate in a little competition.”
Blank stares.
Jin sulks. “Is everyone just ignoring me or what?”
“Yes,” his classmates tell him.
“What if we don’t want to participate in whatever competition you’re having?” Ueda asks.
“Then I’ll kill you,” crotchety old man replies, simply. He looks like he means it.
Ueda shrugs mentally and leans back in his chair. “Fair enough.”
Nakamaru raises his hand. “Um, sensei… what kind of competition is this?”
Crotchety old man actually smiles. “One that’s been a long time coming. I’m going to give you idiots three days to kill each other. Last man standing wins.”
A moment of silence.
The six students all eye one another.
Crotchety old man seems pleased in a sinister kind of way at the tension in the room. “I know it’ll be hard for you to work up that killer instinct after being classmates and seeing each other every day for the past few years, but rest assured, if you don’t go at one another’s throats with everything you’ve got, all six of you are going to die. That’s what those collars are for. If two or more of you are still alive after the time limit is up, they’ll explode and kill everyone.”
“Oh,” Nakamaru stammers. “I see.”
Crotchety old man moves on. “From here, you’ll each be assigned a random number and then given a corresponding field kit full of food, water, maps, and a randomized weapon with which to eliminate your colleagues.”
“Wait, wait, wait,” Kame says, and holds up a hand to stop this. “You’re serious? You seriously want the six of us to go out there and throttle each other? For what? For the sake of our own survival?”
Crotchety old man nods.
Silence.
Except for Taguchi, who giggles nervously through his nose because he can’t help it when everyone is just kind of looking around at one another and not saying anything.
The sound of it makes the others all twitch instinctively.
“For now,” crotchety old man continues, “I’ve got this instructional video we can watch and…”
He gets cut off when five of the six students all proclaim, “We’re in,” without missing a beat, and then proceed to jump out of their seats.
Crotchety old man blinks in surprise when everyone immediately tries to throttle Taguchi first, right there in the middle of his very important explanation of the rules.
“Um,” he tries, putting a hand up to get the students’ attention again, “we haven’t actually started the competition yet.”
No one is listening to him.
5.
Yuuko still has two shimmering paths of tears streaking her flawless cheeks when Yamapi very heroically carries her into their school that morning, before their homeroom class is supposed to start.
“What happened?” everyone immediately asks, while Yamapi still has the righteous fire of boyfriend rage lingering in his intense eyes. He also has a very dashing bruise on the corner of his face that means that he got into a fight recently, most likely while using the aforementioned righteous boyfriend rage to protect his cute and sweet but utterly helpless girlfriend from miscreants.
“Nothing happened!” Yuuko assures their classmates quickly, and tries to adjust her skirt and wipe the tears from her face because she doesn’t want to worry anyone unnecessarily. “I’m fine! Really!”
“Some random guys tried to rape Yuuko-chan on the train today!” Koyama informs the class loudly for her, as he stumbles into the room after his adorable neighbor and her very manly boyfriend. He is carrying both of their school bags for them like any good side-character ought to.
Yamapi makes a furious fist with his hand when he remembers the incidents. “It happened four times in a row! If I wasn’t there, who knows how it would have turned out!” he mutters, and tosses his hair back in a way that makes the air sparkle.
Yuuko gives a fluttery sigh and clings cutely to the front of his shirt. “I don’t know why these things keep happening to us just a few days after we finally confessed to each other,” she sniffles. “Everything was perfectly normal before.”
From across the room, party girl Jinnifer just snorts and flips her compact closed. “She only got molested four times today? It’s happened to me four times in the last hour. You don’t see me going around sobbing to the world about it.”
Everyone looks at the older girl with a vague feeling of sympathy. “It must be hard being a woman in Japan, ne,” Koyama says sadly.
“Eh, Jinnifer-chan is really amazing,” Yuuko murmurs, despite Jinnifer being her number one in-class enemy. “She doesn’t even have anyone like Tomo-chan or Kei-chan to protect her, but she’s still this strong ne.”
Jinnifer shrugs noncommittally. “As long as you can walk it off afterwards, it’s like it never happened. And if it happens more than five times, you just learn to like it.”
“Or you’re just a big whore,” Ryo-the-kind-of-loveable-delinquent clarifies, and earns a nasty look from Jinnifer.
“Maybe the two of you should try taking self-defense classes or something,” top-of-the-rankings character Shige-kun proposes to the girls from his desk in the front of the classroom. He doesn’t even bother looking up from his book when he talks.
“Pffft like that ever works. Social moron,” Ryo sneers.
“Don’t worry,” Yamapi vows valiantly, eyes now burning with the righteous flames of utterly devoted boyfriend love as he holds Yuuko in his very manly arms, “I will always be here to protect you, Yuuko-chan. No matter where you are. Even if it’s the girl’s toilet or Bangladesh. You’ll never have to try and take care of yourself since it’s my job, as your capable boyfriend. Don’t forget that I am president of the student council and captain of the kendo team and co-captain of the karate team. And incredibly good looking.”
“You’re the best, Tomo-chan,” Yuuko flutters sweetly.
And so, Yamapi lives up to his promise like any perfect specimen of the male species ought to, daily fighting off the droves of daring male rapists in Japan, all of whom would have their evil way with sweet, innocent Yuuko-chan in openly public places if not for the constant presence of her valiant and devoted boyfriend.
They live happily ever after and have lots of hot babies.
END
EDITS?
Universe: JE/ Hikaru no Go/ Deathnote/ Liar Game/ Battle Royale/ Every bad shoujo manga ever
Theme/Topic: N/A
Rating: PG-13
Character/Pairing/s: NEWS, KAT-TUN (some YamapixYuuko)
Warnings/Spoilers: Random, crack, OOC, parody, vague references to anime/manga.
Word Count: 3,310
Summary: We don’t need any more high school romance AUs, but we’re going to keep getting them anyway.
Dedication: Ann- The Shounen never fails. XD
A/N: Mostly just silliness to get me back in the groove, I guess? I read some random shoujo manga this weekend and it was all very useless and stupid. WHY IS THERE SO MUCH RAPE JAPAN? AND BROTHER HUMPING EEUW. LOL on a random note, I almost forgot to write Yamapi into this fic.
Disclaimer: No harm is meant by this!
1.
“Alright, we’ll go, okay? Don’t look at me like that,” Tegoshi concedes reluctantly that afternoon, and shoves his hands into his pockets before ducking into the stuffy-looking Go salon at Sai’s behest. “But only one game!” he insists, “Then we’re going to play soccer, got it?”
The lady at the front desk gives him an odd look when he walks inside just like that, talking very animatedly to himself.
He smiles and quickly changes the subject. “Hi! Can I play Go here?” he asks.
She manages to smile back. “Of course. Is this your first time?”
He nods. “I’ve never played before, ne,” he admits, as he digs around in his jacket for some money to pay the entrance fee. He cranes his neck and looks around for someone to play with in the meantime, and is forced to wrinkle his nose at the options, because all he can see right now are several middle-aged or elderly gentlemen, all of whom are smoking pipes and rolling black or white stones between their fingers while very slowly deliberating over their next moves. “These guys have probably been playing for…a very long time, ne,” he says, eventually.
The lady laughs. “Well, most of them are of the…older demographic.” Then, she stops to point towards the very back of the salon while Tegoshi pays his deposit and signs his name. “There’s also Shigeaki-kun over there in the corner though,” she reports, “but even though he’s young, I don’t think you want to play against him…”
Tegoshi’s eyes follow the direction she’s indicating, and he lights up when he sees another boy about his age, sitting in front of a Go board all by himself while looking very serious. “Hey, maybe he’ll play with me,” Tegoshi says obliviously, and thanks the lady before charging forward.
The front desk girl sighs. “…because Shigeaki-kun is a Go genius,” she finishes alone, lamely.
She looks helpless and hopes that their resident genius goes easy on this new kid.
~~~~~
Shige is sitting by himself in the salon that afternoon, meticulously going over the moves of his father’s last championship game on the board in front of him, trying to figure out what he would have done differently if he’d been his father’s opponent instead.
He furrows his brow. “And then,” he mutters, putting a black stone in the corner, “maybe here?” Pause. Scowl. “No, then otousama would go…”
“Hi! Shige, right?”
Shige blinks. Looks up.
A kid who looks a few years younger than him smiles back at him guilelessly. Shige stares. “Excuse me?”
“Shige, right?” the kid repeats without missing a beat, no honorifics at all. “It sure is a relief to meet someone here who’s my age, ne.”
Shige continues to blink, mostly because he is not sure what is happening right now.
The kid takes a seat across from him. “So, you want to play?”
Shige’s very eloquent reply to the offer is, “Buh?”
The kid motions to the board. “You’re all by yourself, right? So let’s play.” He clears off the stones-and Shige’s very carefully constructed strategy-with one arm.
“Is this some kind of a joke?” Shige eventually manages.
No response.
Because the kid is not listening, Shige realizes. The kid seems to be talking to himself over his own shoulder. Maybe the kid is crazy.
Shige turns to look accusatorily at the front desk girl over his shoulder.
She shrugs helplessly at him. Be nice, he's new, she mouths.
Shige rolls his eyes and settles back down into his seat with an air of long-suffering. “Fine,” he acquiesces to the kid eventually. “One game.”
The kid beams. “Great! My name’s Tegoshi.”
He picks up a white stone and after a minute of thought, fumbles it onto the board, barely on the correct lines.
Shige can already tell just by the way Tegoshi holds the pieces that this is going to be a monumental waste of his time.
~~~~~
Nearly two hours later, Tegoshi stretches happily and bounces out of the Go salon. “Thanks, neesan!” he says casually to the front desk girl, on his way out.
She waves after him and tells him to come back soon, thinking to herself that he seems like a nice enough kid; if anything, he’s definitely not a sore loser. And maybe Shigeaki-kun had actually been accommodating today, like she’d asked him to be. Pleased at the thought, she goes to take Shige some juice, as a reward.
In the meantime, Shige is left by himself at the back of the salon again, except this time he is hunched over the board of the game he just finished playing, with a deeply indignant, disbelieving look of horror on his face.
In other words, it is the face of someone who has lost.
“What the hell just happened?!” Shige screams.
2.
“Nakamaru, look what I found!” Massu announces one morning, when he arrives on campus and sees his friend reading at his usual spot in the library before their ten am lecture is supposed to start. Nakamaru blinks and looks up from his textbook when he hears Massu’s voice; he is greeted by a fancy looking black notebook being waved right in front of his face, like it is something amazing and precious and not to be trifled with. Nakamaru supposes that it’s a nice enough notebook, though at the same time, it’s kind of morbid looking when placed in juxtaposition with Massu’s bright blue sweater and purple pants.
“Death…note…” he sounds out, when he looks at the English written on the cover. “Isn’t that name kind of dark? Why are you picking up random things you find on the street? That could be dangerous, ne. And what if that belongs to someone? Maybe you should take it to the police station.”
“It fell out of the sky right in front of me this morning, ne,” Massu reports calmly. “And I already know who it belongs to, because when I picked it up, this guy appeared and said it was his!”
He points vaguely towards the air behind him.
Nakamaru doesn’t see anything. Alarm bells start to go off. “This guy?” he inquires, carefully.
“This guy with wings,” Massu elaborates, while still gesturing vaguely to the air.
Nakamaru wonders if this is some sort of horrible terrorist attack, except that instead of bombs, now the terrorists are coating everyday items in hallucinogenic drugs to make the people who pick them up go crazy. He thinks he remembers reading something about the possibility of such a thing occurring in one of his international crimes classes. Either that or he fell asleep again and dreamed it; he’ll have to check his notes to be sure. “Alright, Massu,” he begins after a minute, trying to sound calm, “why don’t we just throw that book away and go wash your hands?”
Massu looks reluctant. “There’s a bunch of stuff in English on it so I don’t know exactly what it says, but from what the guy with the wings is telling me, if people’s names get written in it, they’ll die within a minute, ne. I can’t just throw this away; what if someone bad picks it up and tries to kill people?”
In the back of Nakamaru’s mind, those alarm bells get louder. He tries to think. “Okay,” he says, and does his best to sound reasonable instead of panicky (which is kind of what he really feels right now according to the sweat starting to bead on his nose). “You have to realize that it’s a little bit hard for me to believe that you suddenly touched a magical black notebook that fell out of the sky this morning and now you can see a mysterious man behind you with wings.”
Massu considers this. Pouts. “So, you don’t believe me?”
Nakamaru bites the inside of his cheek. “Well,” he begins eventually, trying to smooth things over in case Massu really has gone crazy, “it’s not that I don’t believe you, but it makes me worried that you might be sick. It’s possible that you’re sick, right?”
Massu blinks. “I feel okay.” He shakes the notebook again. “I’m pretty sure this is what’s making me see Ryuk-kun.”
Nakamaru is confused. “Ryuk-kun?”
“The guy with the wings,” Massu explains patiently.
A beat.
“Right,” Nakamaru manages. “Well, it might be the notebook, but it could also-maybe-be a sickness too. I mean, what if it’s one of those sicknesses that don’t make you feel ill right away?”
Massu looks confused.
“Like um, a brain tumor, or something,” Nakamaru poses.
Massu looks horrified.
“For example,” Nakamaru hastens to clarify. “So, just to make sure it’s not something like that, why don’t you just give me the notebook and see if Ryuk-kun disappears or not? Then we’ll know whether it’s you or if it’s the notebook.”
Massu looks skeptical.
Nakamaru holds out his hand.
Massu reluctantly hands the notebook over.
“There,” Nakamaru begins, once it’s in his hands, “Can you still see…”
He trails off abruptly when a guy with wings suddenly appears, casually hanging out in the airspace directly beyind Massu’s left shoulder.
“Yo!” said guy-Ryuk-kun, Nakamaru supposes- greets, with a decidedly off-putting smile and an exaggerated wave of one gangly limb. “How’s it going, human?”
Nakamaru stares at the notebook. “Eh?” he says. “R-really?”
Ryuk’s smile widens, and he nods. “Yup!”
In the meantime, Massu just looks confused. “Huh? Wasn’t I just at home?” he asks, sounding dazed.
Nakamaru passes out.
3.
Shige slaps a hand to his forehead. “So you decided to open the mysterious black box that got left in front of your door without a return address on it before you read the attached note. Ingenious. So like you. Why am I even surprised?”
Koyama looks pathetic. Fidgets. Sighs. “I didn’t know there was going to be 100 million yen inside!” he feels the need to add, in his own defense.
“You didn’t know if there was a bomb inside either, moron!” Shige snaps, as they sit in his best friend’s apartment with a large box of undoubtedly illegally gotten funds in their possession.
A fancy black invitation with the words Liar Game Tournament written on it sits on top of the box, looking incredibly suspicious and evil and Shige honestly has no idea why Koyama even entertained the thought of opening a box with something like that attached to it in the first place.
“Shige,” Koyama meeps, “Shige what do we do now?”
Shige looks troubled too, and rereads the information on the card one more time, trying to find an out.
Nothing.
Eventually, he sighs and folds his hands in front of his face, looking very deliberate and cool. “I guess,” he says with quiet resolve, “I’ll just have to figure out a way for us to win this. It’s a game where you outsmart people, right?”
Koyama flops over in relief, because Shige is the smartest person he knows. “Right!” he says.
~~~~~
Five days later, when they lose all of their money to their (very capable) opponent in the first round and end up owing an organization called the LG Secretariat exactly 100 million yen, Koyama comforts himself with the knowledge that with the two of them working together to pay it all back, they’ll definitely get it taken care of before they die.
Because even now, Shige is still the smartest person he knows.
In the background, Shige bitterly tells him he needs to hang out with more than five other people in this world.
4.
“Why are we here?” Jin demands, and tugs on the collar currently clamped around his throat; it makes an ominous beeping sound whenever he jostles it. “Also, this is very not flattering! It makes my neck look fat!”
“Your fat makes your neck look fat,” Ueda tells him flatly.
“At least we don’t have to go around Kyoto looking at shitty castles we’ve already seen before,” Koki says, and stretches in his chair. “This school field trip is still totes ghetto though, yo.”
“It’s definitely not still a field trip if we’re suddenly on an island, ne,” Taguchi pipes up, and laughs to himself.
Nakamaru blinks. “What if there’s a field on the island? Then it still counts, right?”
“Shut up,” Jin and Kame tell everyone.
From there they linger in relative silence, while Jin continues to fidget with his collar and the beeping noises it makes start to get faster and faster the more he fools around with it.
Eventually, when they’re all tired of waiting and ready to try breaking out again, the locked door to the abandoned classroom they are holed up in opens and a crotchety old man appears, face steeped in shadow.
“Hey, I know you from somewhere yo,” Koki murmurs.
“I was your middle school science teacher, asshole!” the crotchety old man barks as he steps into the light, looking irate as all hell. “You’d remember me if you hadn’t slept every day during biology, moron.”
“It wasn’t just biology,” Nakamaru feels the need to point out.
“Um, that’s nice. But none of this answers any of my questions from before,” Jin interrupts, and pulls at the metal collar around his neck again. “Also, if I have to wear this, can I please get a size down? It keeps moving around and knocking me in the jaw.”
No response.
Kame asks the question that matters. “Why are we here, sensei?”
“Congratulations,” crotchety old man announces when Kame finally gets on track, “this year you six have been chosen to participate in a little competition.”
Blank stares.
Jin sulks. “Is everyone just ignoring me or what?”
“Yes,” his classmates tell him.
“What if we don’t want to participate in whatever competition you’re having?” Ueda asks.
“Then I’ll kill you,” crotchety old man replies, simply. He looks like he means it.
Ueda shrugs mentally and leans back in his chair. “Fair enough.”
Nakamaru raises his hand. “Um, sensei… what kind of competition is this?”
Crotchety old man actually smiles. “One that’s been a long time coming. I’m going to give you idiots three days to kill each other. Last man standing wins.”
A moment of silence.
The six students all eye one another.
Crotchety old man seems pleased in a sinister kind of way at the tension in the room. “I know it’ll be hard for you to work up that killer instinct after being classmates and seeing each other every day for the past few years, but rest assured, if you don’t go at one another’s throats with everything you’ve got, all six of you are going to die. That’s what those collars are for. If two or more of you are still alive after the time limit is up, they’ll explode and kill everyone.”
“Oh,” Nakamaru stammers. “I see.”
Crotchety old man moves on. “From here, you’ll each be assigned a random number and then given a corresponding field kit full of food, water, maps, and a randomized weapon with which to eliminate your colleagues.”
“Wait, wait, wait,” Kame says, and holds up a hand to stop this. “You’re serious? You seriously want the six of us to go out there and throttle each other? For what? For the sake of our own survival?”
Crotchety old man nods.
Silence.
Except for Taguchi, who giggles nervously through his nose because he can’t help it when everyone is just kind of looking around at one another and not saying anything.
The sound of it makes the others all twitch instinctively.
“For now,” crotchety old man continues, “I’ve got this instructional video we can watch and…”
He gets cut off when five of the six students all proclaim, “We’re in,” without missing a beat, and then proceed to jump out of their seats.
Crotchety old man blinks in surprise when everyone immediately tries to throttle Taguchi first, right there in the middle of his very important explanation of the rules.
“Um,” he tries, putting a hand up to get the students’ attention again, “we haven’t actually started the competition yet.”
No one is listening to him.
5.
Yuuko still has two shimmering paths of tears streaking her flawless cheeks when Yamapi very heroically carries her into their school that morning, before their homeroom class is supposed to start.
“What happened?” everyone immediately asks, while Yamapi still has the righteous fire of boyfriend rage lingering in his intense eyes. He also has a very dashing bruise on the corner of his face that means that he got into a fight recently, most likely while using the aforementioned righteous boyfriend rage to protect his cute and sweet but utterly helpless girlfriend from miscreants.
“Nothing happened!” Yuuko assures their classmates quickly, and tries to adjust her skirt and wipe the tears from her face because she doesn’t want to worry anyone unnecessarily. “I’m fine! Really!”
“Some random guys tried to rape Yuuko-chan on the train today!” Koyama informs the class loudly for her, as he stumbles into the room after his adorable neighbor and her very manly boyfriend. He is carrying both of their school bags for them like any good side-character ought to.
Yamapi makes a furious fist with his hand when he remembers the incidents. “It happened four times in a row! If I wasn’t there, who knows how it would have turned out!” he mutters, and tosses his hair back in a way that makes the air sparkle.
Yuuko gives a fluttery sigh and clings cutely to the front of his shirt. “I don’t know why these things keep happening to us just a few days after we finally confessed to each other,” she sniffles. “Everything was perfectly normal before.”
From across the room, party girl Jinnifer just snorts and flips her compact closed. “She only got molested four times today? It’s happened to me four times in the last hour. You don’t see me going around sobbing to the world about it.”
Everyone looks at the older girl with a vague feeling of sympathy. “It must be hard being a woman in Japan, ne,” Koyama says sadly.
“Eh, Jinnifer-chan is really amazing,” Yuuko murmurs, despite Jinnifer being her number one in-class enemy. “She doesn’t even have anyone like Tomo-chan or Kei-chan to protect her, but she’s still this strong ne.”
Jinnifer shrugs noncommittally. “As long as you can walk it off afterwards, it’s like it never happened. And if it happens more than five times, you just learn to like it.”
“Or you’re just a big whore,” Ryo-the-kind-of-loveable-delinquent clarifies, and earns a nasty look from Jinnifer.
“Maybe the two of you should try taking self-defense classes or something,” top-of-the-rankings character Shige-kun proposes to the girls from his desk in the front of the classroom. He doesn’t even bother looking up from his book when he talks.
“Pffft like that ever works. Social moron,” Ryo sneers.
“Don’t worry,” Yamapi vows valiantly, eyes now burning with the righteous flames of utterly devoted boyfriend love as he holds Yuuko in his very manly arms, “I will always be here to protect you, Yuuko-chan. No matter where you are. Even if it’s the girl’s toilet or Bangladesh. You’ll never have to try and take care of yourself since it’s my job, as your capable boyfriend. Don’t forget that I am president of the student council and captain of the kendo team and co-captain of the karate team. And incredibly good looking.”
“You’re the best, Tomo-chan,” Yuuko flutters sweetly.
And so, Yamapi lives up to his promise like any perfect specimen of the male species ought to, daily fighting off the droves of daring male rapists in Japan, all of whom would have their evil way with sweet, innocent Yuuko-chan in openly public places if not for the constant presence of her valiant and devoted boyfriend.
They live happily ever after and have lots of hot babies.
END
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