A/N: COMPLETELY UNNECESSARY BACKROUND DATA: Mello is, in this story, two years younger than Light. He started school one year earlier than other kids and then skipped one grade. Near is three years younger. He started school the same age as everyone else and skipped three grades, thus ending up in the same year as Light and Mello. Light could've skipped years too but he played a martyr and told the principal that he thought it would be arrogant to think he knew it all and then skip. So, he didn't and those three are in the same class.

I was inspired by many different stories here, two especially. If you want to know which, ask me in a review: I do not want those writers to be associated with my way less awesome work.

Disclaimer: I don't own Death Note or any of the characters.

PART ONE: CLOSED SPACES

A 12-year-old boy called Light Yagami was standing in the middle of a huge, unfurnished room. Exactly in the middle. He had calculated that the walls behind and in front of him were both about 2 metres away and the walls on his left and right were 3 metres away. He turned around for the 27th time to make sure that he hadn't moved away from the center, gave a heavy sigh and sat down. Still trying to keep things symmetric, he pulled his knees up and put his hands around them. Had anyone been looking down from the ceiling, he would have seen an almost perfectly square-shaped object in the middle of an empty room.

Exactly in the middle.

Light was scared out of his mind, and trying to forget it.

"Damn it!" He said aloud, and then caught himself. It would not do for his image as a genius if someone caught him talking to himself. Or freaking out over the fact that he was alone in a locked room. Alone in a place where, if the amount of dust was anything to go by, no one had been for at least ten or twenty years. And the door behind him was locked. The door was locked, the only window was a tiny little square very close to the ceiling and the walls were closing in, he was sure, they were creeping closer and he would run out of air and his body would be crushed and no one would ever find him and-

He bit his lip hard and stopped thinking. Instead, he turned his head to the ceiling and started counting the panels on it.

Light had always been a quiet, clever boy who did not like to socialize with people of his age. He had a few friends at school but he wasn't too close with them. Light's parents were worried. Those idiots, Light thought. They couldn't scold him for not cleaning his room (which Light always did with great care and perfectionism) or doing badly at school (Light always had perfect grades of every subject) so they just had to whine about his social life.

And that was exactly how he had ended up in an abandoned house in the middle of a night.

When Light's mother had broken her ankle and ended up in hospital, Light's father had come to pick the boy up from school so they could go see her. Unfortunately for Light, Soichiroo Yagami had a superhuman sense of hearing when it came to things he could annoy his son with. When he had come to the classroom, one of the kids Light was friends with had been planning a "Super Awesome Midnight Expedition to a Mega Scary Local Haunted House". Yay. Anyway, Soichiroo had heard him and immediately told him that Light had his permission to go with them. Not that he had Light's permission to tell anyone Light would be going, but, well, since Soichiroo seemed to be obsessed with the damn trip and Light had already been told to "Spend more time with friends or else", Light had accepted his fate and joined the expedition.

Damn them all! Light was now in the haunted house. He had gone with the rest of the kids, even though he had been absolutely terrified by the amount of dust everywhere in the house (Goddamnit, if I wake up tomorrow coughing my lungs out, I'll send my hospital bills to your parents!). Then one brat Light especially disliked had decided to play a prank on him. This hellchild, Mello, had told Light to go check out the empty room to see if he had dropped his keys there and had then slammed the door shut behind him.

Light had only just avoided hyperventilating when he had been told by the second most annoying brat in his school, Near, that the door was locked and they couldn't find the key. So, while the other kids had gone to get Light's police dad to help them, Light was stuck in a big, empty room that was likely to give him asthma or fungal pneumonia or some other disease he didn't want.

He was so not going anywhere with the class retards ever again.

The room was too quiet. Light could hear his own slightly irregular breathing and almost nothing else. Even though he usually found silence calming, it was now making him paranoid: every creak, every rattle, every sound he registered seemed mortifying. Just as Light had finished counting the panels fourth time, he heard a sound that scared him so much he jumped to his feet, abandoning his obsession for symmetry. The tiny window three metres above his head creaked open.

This can't be... Light thought. How the hell had someone managed to climb up to the window, and more importantly, who was it? A slender-looking hand pushed the glass panel into room, letting in some cold, fresh air. Another, similar hand appeared and the intruder rested his elbows on the windowsill. He leaned in and pushed his head through the window. Large, black eyes stared into the room and then focused on the panic-stricken Light. The person waited a moment, but then, since Light seemed to be too scared to make a sound, he asked in a monotonous voice: "What are you doing in my room?" As he spoke, he put his thumb in his mouth and started chewing on it.

Light had lost his voice momentarily before, but now he snapped back to normal. "This is your room? It's an abandoned house! No one's lived here for at least ten years!" Light's all-knowing tone was answered with a slightly tired one.

"Well, perhaps I have not really been here for a while, but I used to live here with my, err, grandfather and he still owns the house, so, because of that, and by a force of habit, I still call this my room." Light thought the intruder - well, Light probably was the real intruder now - stressed the word really somehow oddly, but he decided not to comment on it. "However, you have not answered why you are here."

"Oh! I'm sorry for coming here without permission", Light said, expecting the owl-eyed person to scold him for invading other people's homes. "Some of my friends at school wanted to came take a look at this place because there's a rumour that this house is haunted, and, um, I was forced to tag along." Light paused for a tiny moment and the man at the window interrupted him: "I see. So, I suspect you do not believe this house is haunted?"

"Of course not! Ghosts don't exist", Light answered immediately. How old did this guy think he was, six? "I see", the man said again and adjusted his position at the window a little, and leaned more inside as if to see better. The light of street lamps from outside had dimmed Light's vision of the man a bit earlier, but now he could see that he was actually quite young (Twenty years old? Or even younger?) and that he had incredibly wild, messy black hair. "So, what happened then? Why aren't your friends here anymore?"

"Well, I got locked in this room and they left to get help." Light was a little taken aback when he said that. He had actually forgotten about his claustrophobia for almost five minutes. "Speaking of which, do you think you could get me out of here?" The messy-haired man let his thumb fall from his mouth, apparently deep in thought. "I'm afraid my grandfather has the all the keys, and I would rather not try break the door. I do not believe I would be strong enough - in fact, there is a 78 per cent chance I would fail." He pushed himself off the window, and Light was confused and scared. Where was the man going? Was he just going to leave him there? Then his head appeared in the window again.

"Are you any good at climbing?"

"What do you mean? Climbing up the straight wall to that window?" Light burst out. "Please do not be so sarcastic. Coming from a child of your age it sounds so morbid", the man sighed and explained, "There is a long rope under the tree I'm at. If I threw you that rope and tied the other end to the tree, would you be able to climb up?" Well, I have done pretty well in PE, Light thought and said, "I could try, if you can tie that rope well..." The man nodded, and disappeared again.

Light looked around the room. All the other rooms in the house had been furnished - only this one was completely empty. And yet the strange man had claimed this room was his. Had he moved away and taken everything with him? Actually, why were the other rooms furnished? No one had lived in those, either, for some ten years at least. Why hadn't the owner taken the furniture with him? And why had the house been empty for so long?

Light's thought process was interrupted by a heavy rope falling from the window. The man pushed his head through the window again and said: "Start climbing. I have tied it quite well." Light tested the rope, and started carefully climbing up. On his first attempt he fell back onto his feet, but then he tried again. He put his feet on the wall, and ignored the burning feeling in his palms. Slowly, he crept up closer and closer to the man leaning on the window. He didn't dare to look down even once; he didn't particularly fear heights, but if he fell from there... He couldn't think further. Suddenly, climbing up felt like a stupid idea. He should have just stayed down and fought his claustrophobia. Too late now.

"You are doing well. Don't panic, don't let go, just keep strong", the man told him. He didn't seem to have enough common sense to offer his hand to Light, though - he was leaning on one and chewing on the other.

Finally, just as Light had thought he wouldn't be able to go on anymore, his hand found the windowsill. Startled by the discovery, Light let his grasp slip a bit and was just about to fall as the window-man's long fingers grasped his wrist out of nowhere. He pulled Light up so he could get out through the window.

-----

Cliffhangeeer!!!

If you review, I'll write more and you'll get to know what happens next. Though, to crush all false hopes you may/may not have, I need to tell you that writing even just this chapter has taken me a good 4 months. It might- screw that, will take long for me to update. I hope you still review anyway... It cheers me up, and I write faster when I'm happy.

...If there are any angry fans of Freudian Slip out there, I am working on the new chapter, I'm just slow *sweatdrop*