Explosions
Death Note © Tsugumi Ohba & Takeshi Obata
It was around 4:00 AM when Teru woke up with a gasp. Kiyomi was on her side of the bed, staring at the neat row of small decorative cacti on the window-sill; she wasn't generally prone to insomnia, but her sleeping habits were just a little disorganised - at least compared to Teru's ideal routine - due to her work. "Mikami-san?"
"Did you hear that, Takada-san?" he breathed out.
Kiyomi blinked. "No, Mikami-san, I... didn't?" She paused, trying to recall everything she had heard in the last thirty minutes; she certainly didn't notice any unusual sounds aside from the normal street noises, and those were distant and not particularly bothersome.
Teru rubbed his forehead. He didn't want to appear helpless, not in front of Kiyomi or any other woman, for that matter, but his eyes were still unfocused and he looked lost. "It was like an explosion... no, a chain of explosions," he muttered. "And then it stopped."
Kiyomi placed her hands on his shoulders. She would definitely feel distressed if she woke up to anything even remotely similar to an explosion, so Teru's concern was totally understandable in itself; the problem was that he, frankly speaking, seemed to be imagining things. "Well, I guess it was a bad dream, Mikami-san," she said and kissed him lightly on the cheek.
He shook his head. "No, it wasn't a dream," he responded. "I was awake when it started. Almost completely awake."
Kiyomi sighed. Unfortunately, she didn't possess any special empathic or mind-reading skills and thus couldn't share his experience fully; all she really could do was to pull him into a soothing embrace. "Either way, it's over now," she whispered. "Try to fall asleep, okay?"
Teru stiffened a bit as she hugged him. "Yes... thank you, Takada-san." He was obviously having a brief moment of self-criticism and she felt a half-conscious pang of guilt for treating him like a scared child. There was only one thing that Teru hated about as much as chaos and injustice, and it was his own human imperfection. She remembered his recent loss in the court that resulted in a couple of broken eye vessels and a head-splitting migraine; in the end, her lover was a frail creature, like most strong, intelligent and passionate men. His - their - life would be much simpler if he took after Light Yagami, her ex-boyfriend from the university, a calm, charismatic, pleasant young man with warm brown eyes, but he was Teru Mikami, and Teru Mikami's eyes were dark and mirthless.
"Listen, Mikami-san." She ran her fingers gently through his long hair. "I know you aren't making this up."
"What?" His tone was more confident, even slightly cold. "What do you mean?"
"Oh... nothing," Kiyomi smiled faintly, but he didn't see her face in the darkness of the room. "Nothing." She closed her eyes and slowly drifted away to sleep, wishing she could fall in love with Light again.
Notes
Teru's condition is called exploding head syndrome (visit the Wikipedia website for more information). EHS is relatively uncommon but totally real, and this story is loosely based on my own experience.