Warnings: spoilers (for L's real name and the Death Note novel, Another Note), and somewhat disturbing subject matter (consider this is from B's POV).
Everto Oculus: Latin for "Demon Eye"
I've wanted to write a story with Beyond Birthday as the main character for a while now, and I've finally done it! I really hope it didn't turn out boring, but it is a bit slower paced. That is, it's more psychological drama and character development than an action story. If you've read my previous stories, it's more along the lines of "259" than "Face".
Beyond Birthday is, if you don't know, the main antagonist in the Death Note novel, Another Note: The LA BB Murder Cases. According to this novel he was the second child at Wammy's House, just after L (now that I've checked, A was the FIRST child at Wammy's House after L). Now, I've said this before, but I believe that Beyond Birthday was not always a murderous psycho. At one time he was just a kid, though probably a kid with some problems.
Anyway, enjoy! Here is Chapter 1 :)
Death Note and all associated characters belong to Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata. Beyond Birthday belongs to NISIOSIN (and perhaps Ohba and Obata as well?)
The little boy wouldn't stop staring. Standing beside his mother in the subway station, clinging to her hand, his gaze refused to waver from the businessman standing anxiously beside the tracks. Was he late for work? Or had he already worked through the night and was eager to get home?
Tick tock, tick tock…
The man had already felt the boy's gaze on him several minutes ago. It was slightly unnerving; enough so to make the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. He glanced over at the child with an uncertain smile, greeted only by the boy's dull stare. What on earth was he looking at? At first the man assumed he was staring him directly in the face…but his eyes were looking above that weren't they?
Tick tock, tick tock, tick tock…
He glanced above his head. Was there a spider that had fascinated him, or some other little bug? No. There was nothing, and he tried to shake off his uncomfortable feeling. Surely the subway would be arriving soon? He glanced impatiently at his watch.
Tick tock, tick tock…
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the boy raise his hand uncertainly. Why was he waving good-bye? The boy didn't even know him and…oh, there was the subway. About time, nearly half an hour late-
As the crowds rushed foreword, desperate to be the first on board, the man was shoved from behind. It was a freak accident, and perhaps if he had not been standing so near the edge of the concrete, perhaps if he had not been so impatient for the subway to arrive…
He fell onto the tracks.
People screamed. The mother whisked up her child, pressing his face to her neck to shield his eyes. His red-brown eyes, brimming with tears.
"Bye-bye Jonathan," he whispered, far too quiet for his mother to hear. It was a shame the man had never been able to introduce himself.
A shame indeed. Welcome to my world. You could say a lot of things in it are "a shame".
...
From the moment we are conceived, we begin to die. You think I'm trying to be morbid, don't you? Well I'm not. I'm telling you the way things are.
Most people call it "growing up". Then, once you're "grown up", they call it "getting older". You only die after you've "gotten older". And apparently there's this certain point where you can say a person is dying. What is that point, exactly? Is it when the heart is slowing? Is it when the organs are wearing down? Is it when the body is ceasing to work?
No. No, no, no. Doctors are wrong. Most humans are wrong. They're all stupid and naïve and they put off saying "you're dying" until the last minute because they're afraid of their own mortality. Life is not a mountain. One does not climb up one side, get to the top which is considered their "prime", and then go down hill. Life doesn't work that way! Life is a line. Straight across, straight to the end. And I should know.
How do I know? I see it every day. From the tiniest infant to the oldest woman, the numbers never stop. What numbers you ask? The numbers that tell their lifespan of course. Everyone I've ever seen has them, except for me. I can't see mine. But for everyone else, they're right there above a person's head, just below their name. They look almost as if they're made of a reddish mist, and they don't work like human numbers. If you were to ask me how then was I able to understand them, I wouldn't be able to tell you. They simply make sense to me. There was no formula I used, no special technique. I just knew what they meant. I could understand them before I could count to 100.
Anyway, these numbers count down a person's life. They tell how much time is left, and every moment they're changing. It's like the human's clock. Tick tock, tick tock, counting down every second. There is no counting up, and then counting down. No. It's counting down the whole way. A straight line.
That's how I know people spend their "life" dying. I never said it was a bad thing. Dying can be fun. You can still do plenty of things while you're dying. So go ahead, travel the world, see all that there is to see. Get married, have kids. Die your death to the fullest!
Henh, henh, henh…oh, ugh. I hate that laugh. It's my laugh, but I hate it. Probably because everyone else has always hated it. I should laugh "ha, ha, ha" or even "heh, heh, heh". I should have once had a baby's laugh, then a child's laugh, and then a man's laugh, but I've always had the same laugh and it's never changed. It's a laugh in my throat, and yet there's a deepness to it that comes out of my chest. Sometimes it will sound like I'm choking, and my school teachers used to get so concerned for me because of it. I never liked them.
I used to think everyone saw the world how I do. That disillusion lasted until kindergarten, when all the students were asked to draw a picture of their family. So I drew my mother and father, and the teacher came around to our desks to talk about the pictures with us.
"What a wonderful picture, Beyond!" she said when she came to me. "What very nice colors! Oh, is that your mommy and daddy's names?"
What else would they be? "Yes," was my simple reply.
"And what are these numbers, sweetie?"
I must have looked at her strangely. "You know."
"Do I really?" I could tell by the way she was talking that she thought I was playing a game. "How could I know something that comes out of your imagination?"
I frowned. I can remember now that I felt a bit frightened. What did she mean, "my imagination"? Was she implying that I was pretending there was numbers above my parents' heads? "The numbers are how long they're going to stay alive," I said slowly. The teacher's smile wavered.
"Oh…really? Well, that's nice Beyond, you put that they have very long lives."
I've already mentioned that life numbers didn't work like regular human numbers. It was not one solid amount; it was multiple but individual numbers. Looking back on the event, it probably looked as if I'd given them outrageously long lives.
She began to walk away, leaving me feeling as if I'd been accused of telling a lie. "But you have them too!" I said suddenly. "Right below your name! Mary Woods, 2 88 5 07 15 1 6."
She turned back to me, a strained look on her face. "That's enough pretending now Beyond. Sit down."
"Don't you believe me?" my voice was shaking as I said it. Don't assume it was easy to live with eyes like mine, seeing death all around. I'd clung to my sanity up until then simply because I thought everyone else saw this too. I never thought I was alone.
"Beyond," my teacher's voice was stern. "No more playing. You know these numbers are in your imagination, and you're scaring the other children. Sit down."
After school, my teacher had a talk with my parents, while I waited in the hall outside the classroom, feeling sick. I could hear nearly every word that was said.
"Beyond is a very sweet boy, and he usually doesn't cause any trouble. But there were some disruptions today."
She ended with, "I think your son has an overactive imagination. It's probably nothing serious, but you may want to have him seen by a doctor."
My parents were nice people. They sat down with me at home, my mother's arms around me, and asked me to explain about the numbers. They didn't get upset or irritated. They didn't demand I admit I was pretending. They just listened, expressions of concern on their faces. I did my best to tell them everything about the numbers, trying to make them understand that I'd always seen them. However, the very next day, they took me to a psychologist.
That was when I learned not to talk about how I saw the world. When my parents would ask if the numbers were still there, I would lie. I told them I didn't see them. I told them I thought I had imagined it after all, and I watched their lives tick down.
…
When I was nine years old, my mother, a real estate agent, had to make a sudden business trip several hundred miles away. Her boss had provided her with a train ticket while she was at work, and the moment she came home I realized something was wrong. Her life had gone down to less than 24 hours.
I really did try to stop her. I cried for so long she asked if I wanted to go with her. "We'll have fun," she said. "A nice train ride through the country. Won't that be nice? We'll get to see the mountains."
No. I couldn't go. I couldn't stop her. She left early the next morning, and by midday the report was on the news. The tracks had given out over a bridge, and the train had crashed. Quite a few people had survived…but not her.
The feeling that I could have saved her didn't last for long. I was so used to seeing death that I simply acknowledged it would happen, no matter what I did. When I was sick with the flu one night and my father decided to walk down the street two blocks to the drug store for medicine, I didn't panic when I saw that his lifespan was mere minutes. I gave him an extra tight hug goodbye, and waited until late the next day when the police came to take me from the house. They arranged for me to stay at a nearby children's shelter, and I found out that my father had been attacked and killed by thugs. Why did they kill him? For the money in his pocket, a whole twelve dollars and fifty-seven cents.
…
I'd always done well in school, but after my parents died my grades went off the charts. Their deaths snapped me into a completely different mindset than what I had before. I was different. I was alone. The others weren't like me. They were stupid and annoying, weak and petty. Squirming and struggling through their "lives", denying death, refusing to accept it. And when it came upon them they would die pathetically, because they'd learned death was a thing to be terrified of, that it was foreign and bad. I knew better. Death was magnificent, death was beauty. Death was the climax, the lift-off into the darkness beyond this earth, the launch into a different conscious, a different state of being. Every day, every moment, I was watching the countdown.
With this new state of mind, I no longer lived in fear. I was able to concentrate on my schoolwork and I scored high on the tests, math being my strongest subject. I no longer tried to hide my abilities, but instead relished them with cruel intent. To speak a person's name before it was given to me and see the shock on their face…now there was amusement.
The one thing I was careful to never do was tell a person when they were going to die. I wasn't stupid, and I knew that if one of the other orphans died young it could be from unnatural causes. If there was a murder, I didn't want to end up being a suspect because I'd known when they were going to die.
It was during my stay at the shelter when I first developed a liking for strawberry jam. The matron rarely, if ever, allowed us candy, since she was truly paranoid about us ever getting sick or developing cavities. If we were to ever get something sweet, it was a natural food, like watermelon or strawberries. We were also allowed to spread jam on our toast or pancakes if we wanted, and from the beginning my favorite was strawberry. It wasn't long before I was sneaking whole jars out of the fridge to eat it, scooping it out with my fingers simply because I liked the feel of it. Not to mention I liked that it was such a deep vibrant red. It would leave stains on my fingers, and then I could stare at that color for hours.
I was never able to stay with a foster family, so I lived in the children's shelter for one and a half years, until I was nearly eleven. A few newspapers had been out to interview me about my "unique abilities", as well as a psychic who encouraged me to "reach deeper into my inner self for great power". I'll have you know she annoyed me to no end. But just before my eleventh birthday, there was another visitor. One who would change my life.
He introduced himself as Professor Watari, though I saw his true name as Quillish Wammy. He was perhaps in his late fifties, dressed in a suit and hat, with a thick mustache. He arranged for us to have a private talk in the matron's office.
"I am Professor Watari," he said, extending his hand to me as I seated myself in front of the desk. I kept my own hands close by my sides, refusing to move them. "I've heard your name is Beyond Birthday, but the children here call you BB. Is that correct?"
"Yes."
"Hmm." He took out a notepad and pencil from his jacket, and I saw him write my name upon it. He wrote down "BB" as well, and circled it. "Now, I've heard you have rather clever eyes."
Clever, indeed. I answered, mimicking his English accent as I did. "You've heard right. Beyond can see peoples' real names and how much longer they have to live."
He smiled, looking truly enthralled, not like those other interviewers who looked at me as if I were crazy. "Really? My, my. Simply spectacular…" He scribbled down a bit more on his notepad. "I've had a look at your transcripts Beyond. You seem to have a clever mind as well." He took out three papers stapled together, handing them over for my inspection. They were sheets of math problems, starting with algebra and moving into calculus by the last page. He held out a pencil. "Could you solve those for me?"
I frowned. "These are really hard."
I could see disappoint on his face. "Can't you do them?"
"Yes," I said, nodding quickly. "Beyond can do them. But Beyond needs some strawberry jam first."
I'm not sure what it was I saw in his eyes right then. It could have been recognition, surprise, hope…it could have been all three. He nodded, as if requesting strawberry jam before doing math problems was the most logical thing in the world. "Of course. I shall be back presently."
He returned to the room a few minutes later with a jar of fresh jam, cold and unopened. I took it eagerly, scooping it out with my left hand as I wrote with my right, though I still managed to smear the paper with red stains.
"Does jam help you think?" said Wammy, or Professor Watari. He was watching me closely as I worked, occasionally writing something down. I wouldn't have been surprised if the way I held my pencil fascinated him. He made me think of those Australian wild-life observers I'd see on TV. They were always so enthralled with every small action an animal made.
"Yes, it helps. It makes Beyond's brain work faster." I cracked my neck, not really feeling like explaining it all to him. I was still waiting for him to write me off as a lunatic, like everyone else had. I moved onto the second page of equations, picking up the jar to slurp the jam directly from it as I did.
I handed over the papers in silence when I'd finished, then turned my attention to wiping out every spot of jam that remained in the jar as Wammy went over my answers.
"Absolutely remarkable," he said. "These are all correct." I tried to get a strawberry seed out from beneath my nail with my tongue, not bothering to answer. "Beyond, you have a truly gifted mind. As for your eyes…can you tell me my name? The name you see?"
"Quillish Wammy," I mumbled, my speech muffled by the finger in my mouth.
"Now, what about these numbers you see, that indicates a person's lifespan? What are mine?"
"78 2 9 45 6 05 1," I said. He slid his notepad across the desk toward me, asking if I would write them down and I did.
"How do these add up to a lifespan? Is it days? Hours?"
I shook my head, growing bored. "No. They aren't human numbers. They don't work that way. Beyond can't tell you how they work, they just do."
Wammy nodded his head, collected his notepad, and got to his feet. "Very well Beyond. I shall have to have a few words with the matron."
…
By midmorning three days later my few possessions were packed and loaded into the back of a classic Rolls-Royce, parked in front of the shelter. The children all had their faces pressed to the windows, wondering who on earth would ever want Beyond Birthday, the freak. I wasn't especially glad to be adopted, but I certainly wasn't unhappy. Wammy was smiling as he stepped out of the car and handed me another jar of strawberry jam, then walked with me down the front steps after I said good-bye to the matron. Or rather, after she said good-bye to me.
"I brought someone with me I'd like you to meet," said Wammy as we headed toward the car, my hands already in the jam jar. "Another boy I've adopted. He's a bit older than you, but the two of you are so very alike. I'm sure you'll get along perfectly."
I didn't really care who he'd brought with him. It could be the Queen of England and it still wouldn't make a difference to me. But as he opened the car's backdoor and I looked up to get in…the first thought that flashed through my mind was that there must have been a mirror in the backseat.
But no. It wasn't my reflection. My reflection never sat with its legs pulled up to its chest, chewing a thumbnail with a sucker in its mouth. My reflection never crawled toward me on all fours to bring its face to within an inch of mine. My reflection didn't have grey eyes.
The thing that was not my reflection smiled. "Is he clever too, Watari?" it said. "Is he B? Is he number 2, the next me?"
I glanced up at his name, floating above his head.
L Lawliet.
Now, about Beyond Birthday referring to himself in third person. He speaks this way on page 96 in the novel, and I realize he also speaks normally on the same page. His speech will change as the story progresses. I kind of look at it as B doesn't often live "as himself". For example, in the novel he is trying to decide on a laugh for himself that is different from his normal one, and he mimics L's behavior. That's why I decided to give him a bit of a "parroting habit", which causes him to mimic things.
Oh yes, and L's grey eyes. Well, as far as I can tell he's never actually given an eye color, in neither the manga or anime (not sure there). But I thought grey was a nice color for him, and I didn't want to say he had black eyes.
