Chapter Thirty

My brother won’t tell me where he got his Death Note from. I found it in his closet while I was helping clean the house. The mystery of its sudden appearance had begun to intrigue me. On Halloween, after watching the first few episodes of the anime, my curiosity got the best of me. I snatched the faux leather bound notebook from my brother’s closet and decided to try it out.

Who knows? This one notebook might be authentic.

I thought of our former female president as I wrote out her name in big block letters. I thought of her small stature and the rather gigantic mole on her face. I closed the notebook shut and wondered if it was going to work.

Of course it wasn’t going to work. Duh. What’s gotten into me?

It’s only a copy of millions of manufactured notebooks of the same kind. It didn’t fall from the sky. It’s not unique. It was mass produced. It has no magical properties.

It made me feel a little upset about it, though, as sadistic as it may sound. I was actually hoping that my subtle attempt at assassination was going to be effective. It was superstition at work.

My case could be dubbed as a childish fantasy caused by anime obsession. However, as I began to think of it, there are quite a lot of people who actually live their life according to a set of unrealistic beliefs.

How far would some people go because of superstition? I heard that some sacrifice the comfort of hygiene and refrain from taking baths on Fridays. Some, on the other hand, somehow manage to ignore the strong smell of garlic as they attach it to their clothing to ward off evil.

I’m not saying that I view these superstitious beliefs as absurd. I think that most of them have reasonable reasons behind them. Perhaps long ago, a tribe was trying to save up their water supply and told people that they can’t take baths on specific days due to magical inconveniences. Maybe somewhere in history, someone found out that garlic is a snake and insect repellent, and somehow, its use evolved into being a malignant spirit repellent as well.

Superstitions are actually fun, now that I think about it. They stir in us a tinge of senseless hope, which, most of the time, is harmlessly amusing. However, I would like to borrow a page from the dudes who came up with the expression “don’t allow emotions/money/etc. to become your master”

Don’t let superstition master you.

P.S. Happy 30th Post!