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Once upon a time, there was a fifteen-year-old boy who lived in Shibuya who was selected by the ward’s Composer as a proxy in a Game against His Conductor. The Composer, you see, was disheartened with His people, and wanted to Erase them all and start over again, from the ground up. His Conductor was fiercely loyal, yet believed the Composer was making a terrible mistake, and thus challenged Him. The rules were drawn up, the stage was set, the moves were made.

In a world, one of many parallel worlds, the Composer’s proxy began this Game, a Game he did not know the true significance of, fiercely a loner. Through the help of his partners—a girl named Shiki whom he in turn helped overcome her jealousy, a boy named Beat who wished for nothing more than his sister’s safety, and the Composer Himself, under the guise of a teenager named Joshua, who came to watch the progress of His Game—this boy, named Neku, overcame his issues, broke out of his shell, and was rewarded with the ultimate revealing of the Composer’s plot. A betrayal the likes of which Neku had never suffered before, because for years he had never allowed anyone to become close enough to hurt him. Even when faced with the Erasure of all of Shibuya, he was still unable to discard the trust he had placed in the Composer, and was shot for it. But the change Neku had gone through over the course of the Game changed the Composer as well; and instead of Erasing Shibuya as He had intended, He returned Neku and his friends back to life and gave Shibuya another chance.

That was an entirely different world.

This Composer set up everything the same way: the same players, the same backdrop, the same story. But His proxy did not perform as wonderfully as the other one had.

Instead of overcoming her envy, Shiki became engulfed and consumed by it. Neku refused to acknowledge her as they progressed through the Game. They didn’t cooperate with each other, and only survived the week by Neku’s sheer force of strength.

Due to the ruse set up by the Conductor in the absence of the Composer, it was a necessity that Shiki was made into Neku’s entry fee for the second week. However, this was not his driving force at all; instead he was pushed on by his desire to no longer deal with partners and pacts and go back to being a loner. Neku refused to make any progress, even with the Composer’s direct attempts at improving him. Instead, he went so far as to make an attempt on his partner’s life in the latter portion of their week. Even though Joshua ‘sacrificed’ Himself for Neku in the end, Neku still held Him in suspicion. Because of the lack of an assassination attempt by Minamimoto, Neku had no memory of anyone other than Joshua being at the mural when he was shot, and thus still pinned the blame on Him.

During the third week, when he was the only player, he nearly refused Beat’s help due to his suspicions. If it weren’t for his desperate need for self-preservation, he wouldn’t have formed the pact. Even then, he refused to trust Beat or believe in his devotion to his little sister. Neku only chased after the pin along with his partner because it was in the hands of the Game Master, whom he was dead-set on defeating.

Eventually the two managed to make it to the Shibuya River, the location of the Conductor and the Composer. After Neku managed to almost single-handedly take down the Conductor, Joshua played His hand. He revealed the entire setup, and how Neku had been helping Him the whole time. Then He challenged Neku to a showdown, the endgame between the Composer and His proxy. It was a simple Game, a duel, where whoever survived would be Composer. Neku showed no hesitation, and no sooner did he pick up his weapon then he took aim at his former partner and pulled the trigger. His gun wasn’t loaded. As a fee for that Game, the Composer had taken the one thing most important to Neku: his best chance at winning.

The Composer then Erased the entirety of Shibuya and the people in it, leaving behind only Himself and His Producer. Since then He has been rebuilding the ward, bit by bit, free of the egotism and filth it had been plagued with. While it’s a difficult and lengthy task, it was a necessary step to ensure that the rest of the progress made by other grounds around the world was not undone and lost. Hopefully by the time He’s done, Shibuya will once again be ready to refine those who can help make humanity’s future a brighter one.