Potechi
Right after he put his dirty dinner plate on the sink, Light opened the door to the cupboard and searched for a bag of consommé flavoured potato chips. "Mom, where are my potato chips?" he called.
"They're just there, behind the seaweed—"
"Never mind, I found them," he yelled again. He grabbed the said bag of potato chips rather roughly. It crinkled helplessly at the tightness of his grasp.
"I'm going upstairs to study," he said.
Sayu saw him and gave him a disapproving look. "Potechi? Aniki, eating again? Aren't you worried about gaining weight?" she asked.
"I'm going to study for hours. I'll need the energy eventually," he said. He crinkled his nose. "And why are you calling me Aniki? I feel dirty, like I'm a gangster who's about to do some sneaky, no-good stuff."
"Nothing in particular, aniki." Sayu said, before she noticed the odd facial expression on Light's face. It seemed that he found the bag of potato chips very amusing. As he stared at it, his face contorted into something so sinister that it was comical. "What's with that silly look on your face?"
"Huh?" Light snapped out of his brief fantasy and recovered. "Oh, nothing. I was just thinking of what I'll do when I top the national exams, that's all."
"Hmm. Well, if you say so, Light," said Sayu. She let him walk upstairs, undisturbed, before deciding to watch TV in the living room instead. "I think Light is studying too hard," she thought to herself in slight worry.
Quadratic equation fun!
Yeah, right. Light barely took notice of the algebra book lying at the side of his desk, although for the next four hours he labouriously solved all of the practice problems in three chapters of the book.
Earlier, as aware as he was of the bugs and surveillance cameras in his room, he made a show of 'opening' the bag of potato chips, even though it already had a mini-TV inside. "Well, greatest-detective-in-the-world L? You can't vindicate your hypotheses about me, can you? I am just opening a bag of potato chips!" He can't help but smile malevolently as he thought these things.
The shinigami Ryuk, invisible to the cameras, would have backed away from Light at those moments, if he weren't so bothered by withdrawal symptoms.
Japan's number one student sat down and, with all the flair of a skilled orchestra maestro, put the nib of his rather expensive Parker pen on the surface of a clean, white sheet of paper, and his left hand inside the open potato chip bag. And here begins the obra.
"I solve the problems with my right hand… I watch the mini-TV for the criminals' names and faces… I write them on a small sheet of Death Note… and I eat a potato chip!" Dramatically, he did all these tasks, even doing a funny turn of the head as he rapidly and accurately bit into a potato chip.
And he repeated this process until the news show on Fuji terebi was over. He did a little chant in his head, "Problems with my right! TV for criminals! Death note with my left! EAT A POTATO CHIP!" and each time he did so, his excitement grew and grew. The thrill of outsmarting a world-class detective at his age, as well as getting away with murder, was enough to make him feel giddy inside. Ryuk's withdrawal symptoms also worked to elevate his excitement.
After he finished all the problems in the book, he also realized that he was out of potato chips. And that all the excitement from outsmarting L all but exhausted him.
"Yawn. I think it's time I hit the sack," he said to himself smugly, crumpling the potato chip bag and throwing it in the rubbish bin, TV and death note and all.
As he went to the toilet to brush his teeth and wash his hands free of the potato chip oils, he wittily wondered to himself if the world will ever know how significant consommé potato chips were to the future of human society.
Somewhere else, a foreign detective was watching Light as he "studied". The unfolding of events caused him to bite down on his thumb in amusement. Next to him was Light's astonished father.
L, staring at the screen, commented: "Light-kun is quite a talented student, being able to study algebra for four straight hours without any bathroom breaks or blank moments."
"Uh-huh," answered Souichiro. He had the look of someone his age who just went through a particularly traumatizing roller coaster ride.
"But I noticed that many of his solutions have quite an uncharacteristic number of errors on them," said L. "For instance, look at this frame here. The error is blatant. The signs are all wrong, resulting to an error in addition."
"Uh-huh."
"It was as if he weren't concentrating enough." L put a finger to his chin in thought. "I wonder why the combination of potato chips and college algebra had such an orgasmic effect on him, though," continued L. "It is like watching a young boy reading pornographic materials."
Silence.
"Ryuzaki. Please watch your language." Souichiro had his head bowed down in shame at that point.
"Sorry, Yagami-san. But you must know that the probability of Light-kun being Kira increased. 7 percent." Saying nothing more, the amused detective bit greedily into a mochi ball.
- end -
Author's notes: Light eats potato chips so uniquely that I had to make fun of it. :)
Comments, as always, are welcome.