The girl moves a loose hairlock aside and sighs. She has seen a lot of weird customers, but this one deserves a place in the top three.
He's tall, dressed in a black trenchcoat with a hat. Most of his face is covered with a black half-mask. He's sitting in his chair in a slouched position with his knees close to his body, almost like a fetus. Between his middle finger and thumb dangles a phone.
The man called himself Ohba Tsugumi, but she was certain this wasn't his real name.
She cleared her throat.
"I'll call you back later," he said, hanging up. He looked back at her. "Sorry about that. Where were we?"
"Something about a supernatural notebook."
"Yes, the Death Note. when someone's name is written in there, that person will die."
"Sounds promising," she said, typing away on her keyboard.
"A boy finds it and decides to cleanse the world of criminals," Ohba continues.
"Uh huh. And how does he check whether they are guilty?"
"Sorry?"
"The concept of guilt never shows up anywhere in your plotline," the girl pointed out. "Look at this: 'that man has been repeatedly accused of sexual assault, but the police have never convicted him because of lack of evidence'. Apart from the fact that you're implying the police isn't doing their job well, did it ever occur to you this might mean the man is innocent? Anyone can accuse people of rape, that doesn't mean it's true."
"Yes, but Kira-"
"Seems to be surprisingly non-concerned with this. He never even considers that when people ask him to kill a so called 'criminal', that this person might be innocent. Or that some people in jail might be innocent. Strange, for such a smart guy to be so gullible."
"He has a vision. A world made out of kind people."
"And his short sighted division into 'good' and 'evil' people never gets him into trouble? No one ever points out the blatantly obvious problem with dividing the world into right and wrong? Quite the contrary, after killing L he suddenly finds himself in a world where crime rates have plummeted, although any explanation as to how this would work seem to be absent. How does he track criminals? How does he learn their names? If he can only access police files then how would crime rates drop? By the way, the US has a death penalty, and I don't see their crimes dropping. Quite the contrary in fact."
"That's not the point. The point is that people can't play God. No one has the right to kill others."
"Yes, you made that blatantly obvious by going out of your way to make Light lose in the end, in the most horrible way possible."
"Light was defeated by his arrogance."
"I'm afraid I have to point out that by giving L an amazing death and Light a horrible one, you transformed your theme from an interesting philosophical question to a condescending moralizing fairy tale."
Their argument was cut short because her secretary arrived with coffee. Ohba-sensei poured an impossibly large amount of sugar into it. He stirred it, and even though he was well over the limit of what one cup could contain, all sugar dissolved. Then he took a sip and said: "I see you are team Light. I'm team L however."
"And the writer is always right, yes, I know."
"Besides, nobody cares about the plot. It's the L/Light Yaoi fanart, that's what's important."
"Can't disagree with you on that."
Finally, they agreed upon something.