Boredom (chapter)

Boredom (退屈, Taikutsu) is the first chapter of the Manga Death Note.

Plot
The chapter starts off with introducing seventeen year old Light Yagami, staring out a classroom window and noticing a black notebook on the floor.

Meanwhile, in the Shinigami Realm, the Shinigami, Ryuk, informs fellow Shinigami Zellogi and Gook that he is going to retrieve his lost Death Note, which he dropped in the Human World.

Back in Light's world, Light heads outside and picks up the black notebook, which reads “Death Note” on its cover. Looking inside, he finds a set of instructions written in English. Since Light is Japanese, he states that it will take a while to read and takes it home with him. Once home, he reads the Rules of the Death Note, and comes to the conclusion that the notebook is simply an elaborate prank. After all, how can a notebook kill people?

Five days later, Light is seen returning home from school. In his room, he looks at the Death Note in his drawer. Before he can say anything, Ryuk, now in the Human World, speaks up, shocking Light as he looks over the Shinigami. Light quickly regains himself and asks Ryuk a few questions:

1) If Ryuk will take his soul

2) If there was a price to pay by using the Death Note

3) Why he chose Light

Ryuk laughs, saying that Shinigami don't take people's souls, and that the price to pay is that Death Note users can go to neither heaven nor hell. Answering his third question, Ryuk explains that he didn't choose Light, and that he found the Death Note by chance. He also explains that the reason he dropped his Death Note in the first place was because he “was bored”.

Ryuk then notes that Light has written down many names in the notebook, much more than most humans had in the time he has had it. Light then explains to Ryuk the reason for this:

We see a flashback of Light’s first use of the Death Note. He first used it out of boredom. He was in his room watching a live newsbroadcast, where it is being reported that Kurou Otoharada is holding people captive; a picture of the criminal is shown on the television. Out of boredom, Light writes down Otoharada's name, figuring that, if the notebook was real, testing it on a criminal would be okay. Soon after hostages are seen rushing out of the building, and it is announced that Otoharada dropped dead, having suffered a heart attack.

Later, Light is seen in a store, browsing magazines. He notices outside there is a group of men harrassing a woman, the leader (who announced his name) being a man named Takuo Shibuimaru. Wanting to make sure that the situation with Otoharada was just a coincidence, Light wrote down Shibuimaru's name and specific instructions for his death. Soon after a truck comes by and hits Shibuimaru, striking him dead, just as Light had specified in the Death Note.

Light is then seen in an alleyway, mortified that he had just killed two people, one not even having been an actual criminal. But then Light has a sudden epiphany, and decides that he will use it to cleanse the world of the “rotten mess”.

Returning to present time, Ryuk, having heard the story, questions Light's motifs, and Light answers that he will now create a New World; one that he will reign over. Time has passed, and, we now see a meeting of many countries discussing how criminals had been dropping dead of heart attacks lately. We then see a new character sitting in front of the laptop watching this convention, talking about them finally take a move, and him taking the case.

Conception
The origin of this chapter's title is that Ryuk dropped his Death Note, and Light tried out the Death Note as results of their boredom. And so "there was no hesitation in choose this title for the first chapter..." as Tsugumi Ohba reveals in How to Read 13.

Trivia
The chapter concludes with a meeting of the ICPO (Interpol) with officials sent from all over the world. In the official Viz Media English edition of the manga, published in 2005, the meeting takes place during a G8 summit.

In fact a G8 summit would only include heads of government and officials from the eight leading industrialised nations. The ICPO is a completely separate body made up of police forces from most of the world's countries and could have held such a meeting independently of the G8.

Quotes
Ennui (chapitre)