It was nearing midnight, but the boy didn't show any signs of sleepiness. Ryuk watched from his place by the glass sliding door, casting a long, ghoulish blue shadow across the boy's bedroom and up the far wall.

"So, what are you gonna do now?"

Taro Kagami stared down at the notebook on his desk. It looked like any ordinary notebook: thin, black, full of ruled pages. The only unusual thing about it was the mysterious English title scrawled across the front cover: DEATH NOTE. He hadn't known what it meant when he first picked it up, but he understood it perfectly now: the notebook gave him the power to kill, simply by knowing a person's name and face.

No, his understanding went much deeper than that: he knew what it was like to die.

"What are you thinking so hard about, eh?"

Taro opened his fist to reveal the eraser he'd been clutching in his right hand. It looked even more ordinary than the notebook itself: plain and only slightly worn at the corners, as if it had hardly ever been used. It was so strange to think that this seemingly everyday object had brought him back from the realm of the dead.

"Well? Aren't you gonna to write down any names?"

Clenching his fist around the eraser, Taro looked over his shoulder at the insistent shinigami. "I can't."

Ryuk's eternal grin widened. "Too scared? You could become pretty powerful with that death note. Humans love power."

Taro shook his head. "At first I thought that maybe I could use it to get rid of bad people… but when Miura wrote all those names, he went crazy. He was even going to kill himself! Maybe it's just too much for a school kid. It's probably better if I don't use the notebook."

"Heh, heh, heh. You're pretty smart, Taro. I don't think you would go crazy."

There was no reply. Ryuk watched the boy turn back to the notebook, black hair falling forward over his round, young face. He thought that Taro's eyes already seemed much darker, much older than they had a few days ago, when he had first found the death note. Humans were so strange. They changed so quickly, especially when they were as young as this one.

"So does this mean you're gonna give it back?"

Taro kept staring at the notebook, one clenched fist resting against the edge of the desk. "What will happen if I do that?"

"You won't be possessed by a shinigami anymore. And you won't remember anything about the death note, or gods of death. It would be really boring if you did that."

"Boring? Do shinigami get bored?" Taro was looking at him now, curious.

"Sure. Nothing to do in the shinigami world. That's why I came to the human world in the first place."

Taro thought this over for a moment. He didn't want to lose his memories of the death note, or of Ryuk (even if he was a bit frightening). And he didn't really want to give the notebook back anyway: its power scared him, but it also gave him confidence. It was an assurance that he didn't ever have to let anybody hurt him again, because he had this secret power and knowledge that was all his and nobody else's. Granted, he'd be reluctant to ever use it, but that didn't make him any more willing to give it up.

"If you were so bored in the shinigami world, does that mean you dropped this death note in the human world on purpose?" he asked suddenly, turning around.

"Hnh? You could say that," Ryuk admitted.

"Then if I give it back to you, how do I know you won't just drop it for someone else to find?"

"Heh, heh, heh." The shinigami's eyes gleamed yellow in the dark.

Taro shook his head. "I can't give it back to you, Ryuk. I don't trust anybody else with it."

"So you're going to just keep it, without killing anybody? That doesn't sound like fun."

To Taro, it sounded like the shinigami wouldn't be satisfied until he'd turned the boy into a proper serial killer.

"As long as I keep the notebook, nobody can use it to kill me or my parents, or anybody else. The police already burned Miura's notebook, so I just have to make sure nobody ever finds out about this one."

"You know, if you don't give it back, I'll have to keep following you until you die."

"Yeah, I know."

"You're not that interesting. And that school you go to every day is so boring. You should know that if you want to make me follow you around like that, I might just kill you and find someone else to follow. One human or another, it doesn't make any difference to a shinigami."

Taro's mouth dropped open. Ryuk was shrugging as though they were discussing the weather or something equally mundane.

"Heh, heh, heh. You look like you're going to change your mind."

"If I die, it doesn't make any difference to you?"

"Nope. There are billions of you humans."

"Then what's this for?" Taro held up the barely-used eraser.

Ryuk shrugged again. "I don't know. It's not mine. Shinigami don't bring back humans they've killed."

Taro was confused. "It's not yours? Then how come you gave it to me?"

Ryuk's grin widened again. "It's stolen."

The boy's brow and nose wrinkled, much to Ryuk's amusement. He looked far too young to be giving such a severe look of disapproval, especially to a shinigami.

"You don't approve of stealing? Since it's powerful enough to undo even a death note, I'd say it's pretty valuable."

"I don't care if it's stolen, but what if the shinigami or… well, whoever owns it finds out that I've got it?"

Ryuk chuckled at this, but didn't reply. This Taro kid sure was sharp. Nobody in their right mind would want to be the one holding the death eraser when its original owner came to claim it back.

"Stop following me."

"Hnh? What's that?" The shinigami advanced on the boy, bent double and grinning. "Does this mean you're going to give up the death note?"

"N-no. You, you can't take it back unless I give it up willingly." Taro could hear the pitch of his own voice rising. The two were almost nose-to-nose now; Taro's entire field of vision was filled by Ryuk's ghastly, grinning face. "And you said that shinigami and humans can't hurt each other directly. So how will you kill me if I don't give you the notebook?"

Ryuk stopped dead. The human boy was right. The police had burned the second death note, and Ryuk didn't have another spare.

Hilarious.

Taro was startled to see Ryuk burst into a fit of cackling laughter, head thrown back and eyes rolling.

"You forgot, Taro. As long as you have my death note, I have to follow you. That's the rule!"

"I'll give you this if you stop following me!"

"What?" Ryuk stopped and stared. The boy had extended his hand, palm open, holding the eraser. "I don't want that thing back. It's no use to me."

"You said it was powerful enough to undo a death note. So that must mean that if I give you this instead of the notebook, you won't have to obey the rule about following me." Taro's eyes shone faintly in the dark: his childish face would have seemed so open and honest if not for those eyes.

"Heh heh! You're pretty brave, to bargain with a shinigami."

"You can either follow me around for my whole boring life, or you can take this and go. So take it."

Ryuk's eyes were gleaming again. The eraser was dangerously incriminating, as well as completely useless to him. However, he was willing to bet – quite literally – that he wouldn't have to have it for long, and he was also feeling rather benevolent toward this daring human boy. He reached a very long arm over and picked the eraser out of the boy's hand with his claw-like fingernails.

"I gotta say it, you've got guts. Pity you wouldn't write any more names in the death note, eh? Well, I'll see you around."

Taro didn't know if Ryuk meant that literally, or only as a farewell. "See you," he whispered anyway, and watched as the shinigami flared his narrow wings and disappeared into the night sky.

Edited 25/10/10