Adam woke at 4:30 AM to the alarm he'd set on his phone. The park bench had done a number on his back. His neck was stiff, his stomach was empty, and the cold had settled into his joints in a way that made the first few seconds of sitting up feel like he was sixty instead of sixteen.
Thirteen and a half hours left. Give or take.
He stood, stretched until something in his spine popped, and started walking. The streets were dark and mostly empty — delivery trucks, taxi drivers, the occasional salaryman doing the walk of shame home. Adam moved quickly but didn't run. Running attracted attention. A teenager walking with purpose at 5 AM was unusual but not alarming. A teenager sprinting through residential streets was a phone call to the police.
He'd scouted Light's street last night after tailing him from the school. A quiet residential area of modest two-story houses with small yards. The kind of neighborhood where people knew their neighbors and noticed strangers.
He'd walked through once, at a normal pace, noting the house's position on the block. Third from the corner. Two stories. A window on the second floor that he was fairly certain corresponded to Light's bedroom — the one from the story. The front door faced the street. A narrow gap between the house and the neighbor's fence led to what was probably a small backyard.
He hadn't tried to get closer. Night scouting was for observation, not action. One nosy neighbor glancing out a window at the wrong time and the whole plan collapsed.
Now, at 5 AM, the neighborhood was asleep. Adam approached from the back street, moving along the fence line of the adjacent property. The gap between the houses was just wide enough for a person to squeeze through sideways. He slid in, bag pressed against his chest, and emerged in a cramped backyard — a patio, a clothesline, a sliding glass door that led into what looked like a kitchen or living area.
He stopped. Listened. No lights on inside. No sounds of movement.
Light leaves for school around 7:30. The mother is usually home during the day. The father works. The sister goes to school on a different schedule.
This was information from a story he'd watched in another life, and he was betting his actual life on its accuracy. The thought wasn't comforting.
The window.
The second-floor window was closed but not the kind with a serious lock — residential Japan favored sliding windows with simple latches. Adam looked at it, looked at the drainpipe running up the side of the house, and made a calculation that involved his body weight, the pipe's mounting brackets, and his complete lack of climbing experience.
Not great odds.
He tried the sliding glass door instead. Pulled gently. It moved. Unlocked.
Adam stood there for a full five seconds, hand on the door, processing the fact that this family didn't lock their back door. Japan's low crime rate. Right. He knew that intellectually, but standing in someone's backyard about to commit a break-in, it felt less like a cultural data point and more like an invitation from a universe that wanted to see what he'd do.
He slid the door open. Stepped inside. Closed it behind him.
The house was dark and smelled like someone's home — laundry detergent, rice, the faint ghost of last night's dinner. Adam stood in a living room, shoes off, breathing through his nose, listening. Upstairs: nothing. The house had the particular silence of a building where everyone was deeply asleep.
He moved. Socked feet on hardwood, then carpet on the stairs. Each step tested before committing his weight, the way he'd read you were supposed to move through unfamiliar buildings — edge of the stairs to minimize creaking. It worked. Mostly. The third step groaned faintly and Adam's entire body locked for three seconds before he made himself continue.
Second floor. A hallway. Three doors — one open (bathroom, visible from the hall), two closed. Light's room was the one at the end. Adam knew this.
He took a step toward it.
A door opened behind him.
Not Light's door. The other one — the middle door, the one Adam hadn't thought about, because in the story the sister's room had been background furniture, a detail he'd filed away and never considered operationally relevant.
A girl stood in the doorway. Fourteen, maybe. Hair messy from sleep. She was holding a glass of water and wearing pajamas and she was looking directly at Adam.
For one second, neither of them moved. Adam's brain ran through every possible response — excuse, explanation, retreat — and found nothing. He was a stranger standing in her hallway at five in the morning. There was no version of this that made sense.
She screamed.
It was loud. The kind of scream that fills a house and bleeds through walls into the neighbors' bedrooms. The glass hit the floor and shattered and the girl stumbled backward into her room and Adam was already moving because the plan was dead and the only thing left was speed.
He hit Light's door with his shoulder. It banged open. The room was dark — computer monitor glowing blue, desk to the right, bed against the far wall. Light was in the bed, already jerking upright, the scream yanking him out of sleep. His eyes were unfocused, confused, not yet afraid.
Adam crossed the room in three steps. Something was watching him — he felt it, a weight in the corner of the room, an attention that pressed against his skin — but he couldn't deal with that now. He dropped to his knees in front of the desk and pulled open the bottom drawer. Textbooks. Notebooks. School supplies. His fingers found the bottom panel and scraped along it looking for the seam.
Where is it. Where is it.
Behind him, Light said something in a voice still thick with sleep. Adam didn't process the words. His fingers caught the edge of the false bottom and he pried it up. Too hard — the panel cracked and splintered instead of lifting cleanly.
Something hissed.
A sharp chemical smell hit him half a second before the flame did. The broken panel had triggered something — a small incendiary strip rigged to the underside of the false bottom, the kind of thing a paranoid genius builds in the first week of owning something he can never let anyone find. The inside of the compartment caught fire. Not an explosion — a fast, hungry burn, flames licking up from the broken wood and curling around the edges of the notebook sitting inside.
No. No no no—
Adam shoved his hand into the fire. He felt the heat before the pain — a searing flash across his fingers and the back of his hand as he grabbed the notebook and ripped it out of the burning compartment. The edges of the cover were singed, smoking. His skin was already blistering. He slapped the flames out against his jacket and clutched the notebook to his chest.
Something hit him from behind.
Light had gotten out of bed. He wasn't confused anymore. He'd seen the open drawer, the fire, and the stranger holding the notebook, and whatever intelligence made Light Yagami dangerous had kicked in faster than Adam expected. Light grabbed Adam's jacket and hauled him sideways, away from the desk. Adam's burned hand screamed as Light wrenched at his grip. For a horrible second the notebook was between them, both pulling, and Adam could feel it starting to tear.
Adam drove his elbow backward. It caught Light in the ribs — not clean, not hard enough. Light grunted but didn't let go. Adam twisted, yanked the notebook free with his good hand, and pulled it to his chest with both arms.
The world changed.
The corner of the room that had been empty wasn't empty anymore. Something stood there — tall, impossibly tall, hunched under the ceiling, limbs wrong, skin a flat blue-gray like something that had never been alive. Yellow eyes. Enormous. Fixed on Adam.
He barely registered it. Light was still on him, one hand clawing at the notebook, the other fisted in Adam's collar. The kid was strong for someone who spent his days in a classroom. Adam planted his foot against the desk leg for leverage and shoved Light with everything he had. His fist connected with something — jaw, cheekbone, he didn't know — and Light's grip broke. Light hit the bed frame and went down hard, catching himself on one hand, already starting to get back up.
Adam scrambled to his feet. The notebook was in his hands. The Bazaar notification exploded across his awareness:
TARGET ITEM: Acquired Completion Time: 11 hours, 43 minutes (of 24-hour window) Awaiting extraction confirmation...
Extract now? Remaining in-world is optional after primary objective completion.
The sister was screaming again from her room. Footsteps downstairs — the mother, waking up. Light was getting to his feet, blood on his lip, eyes locked on Adam with a focus that was no longer confused at all. He knew exactly what had been taken. His mouth was opening to say something.
The creature in the corner spoke first. Its voice sounded like dry paper tearing.
"Oh. You're not him."
Adam thought yes.
The room disappeared.