A/N: Written for the Chains on your Writing Competition Round 1 on AMF, with the chain: Write a multi-segment fic whose word count totals exactly 500.
Reflections of Light
~
Light caught his fleeting reflection with a slight turn of the lips. Vanity was a virtue he often enjoyed, however the fast-moving Tokyo streets were not a place to stop and admire a face he'd seen hundreds of times before. There were better places for that, like the window he stared out of when the teachers' lost his interest, or the full length mirror in their bathroom back home.
But his eyes still followed that fuzzy image, trying to discern the human from the distorted blur of brown and – black?
Light checked himself, feeling only the barest tinge of surprise. There was nothing black to be seen though. His notebooks were in his bag, and his uniform was brown like his hair. A moment later, he caught the flash and moved on.
Crowded Tokyo streets: another reason why the appearance of an individual was lost in a crowd, beyond the speed. There were simply too many people littering that place…and the world.
~
Ryuk watched from above. Honestly, he couldn't see what Light was always complaining about; compared to the Shinigami Realm, the Earth was like Paradise.
Except there was no such thing as Paradise, or its antithesis: Hell. In that sense, the Earth was as unsatisfactory as the Shinigami Realm, despite the nuances of detail that provided him entertainment.
It really was a drag, being immortal. But Light, who's very life depended on Ryuk's mood, could do to appreciate his world a little more.
~
Light had long since lost himself in the crowd, and the hum of noise still resonated in his mind when he left it behind.
It might have been more of a shock if it wasn't so regular an occurrence. But being swept up in Tokyo's hustle was a usual and unavoidable thing, when one was sixteen and without a license. It was possibly the same with a license, he reflected. The cars seemed to inch along so slowly in such times, it seemed father to just walk to one's destination.
The side-streets were less populated, and sometimes it was as though one had passed through a barrier into a new world. In fact, if Sayu had been with him she would have said exactly that, however she was not and Light was not concerned with such matters. What he did note though was the slow dullness in contrast to the flash of colours in the mainstream streets. Roads greyed out as though they were covered in a layer of dust. Fences brown or a murky white, with drying plants and shrubs locked behind. Dry brick walls that had lost their vibrant red long ago. Drying grass that clung to the edge of asphalt roads and sidewalks, trying to stay green.
Light found his lips quirking as the thought crossed his mind. Stay green, he thought. What a joke.
Green was what mankind had made of it after all, and mankind had chosen to sully the one lively colour into a lost shadow of its former self.