The sun rose over the horizon as I looked up over my papers. I had pulled yet another all-nighter without realizing it. Amra had kept quiet the whole time, which was strange for her.

I heard a knock on my door.

"Come in," I said, attempting to hide the weariness in my voice.

"Good morning Zuki!" said Kaori brightly as she entered my room.

She looked over at my still made bed then over to me.

"Have you even been to bed yet?" she asked.

"Nope," I said.

"Ugh, Mizuki Hoshi! Do you care about your health at all?! When was the last time you slept and for how long?!"

"Erm… The day before yesterday. Three hours," I replied.

"That isn't good for you!" She said angrily.

"Perhaps you should sleep more, Mizuki," said Amra quietly from the corner.

Amra, the shinigami, had been with me ever since I had picked up her Death Note. That was back when I was nineteen. I remembered that night as clear as crystal.

I had been on my way back to my dormitory when it fell in front of me, simple as that. Even in my young, naïve mindset, I sensed something ominous about this notebook.

I picked it up and examined it. Perhaps look for an owner? Keep it as my own? Perhaps it had fallen from the window of a higher office building. Despite my qualms, not to mention the million questions running through my head, I decided to bring the notebook home with me. I spent that night flipping through its blank pages. Why was it called a Death Note? There wasn't a thing written. Perhaps it was a serial killer's log of victims, and he had erased evidence. No, I mustn't think so morbidly.

The questions of the book's mystery kept me all through the night, and the next day. Through all my classes, all I could think of was the notebook sitting on my nightstand.

That night, I had sat on my bed, hesitating upon whether or not I ought to write something in it. It wasn't mine. But after all, it wasn't as if the owner would find me, or it.

As I sat there, pen in hand, I heard a voice behind me. I had never been easily frightened. As a child, the dark had never been my foe. Spiders, snakes, heights, things that which sent other children into fearful states. I was immune.

She (I could tell it was female) had a ten foot tall, long, turquoise scaly body. She was wearing what looked like a black buckle up suit that ended at her knees and elbows. She had black hair that flew like seaweed in texture in several directions. She had big flapping wings that were blueish and scaly like her body. Her eyes were spectacular, amber with red pupils and blue diamond shaped speckles in the amber.

"Wh-who are you?" I said to the creature.

"Mizuki Hoshi. My name is Amra. I am a shinigami, and you seem to have found my Death Note."

She had then gone into a lecture about what the Death Note was, how to use it, and what it was generally used for.

"Zuki? Zuki? Mizuki!" I heard Kaori's voice.

"Oh, yeah, what?" I said, shaking myself back into the present.

"Are you coming down for breakfast or what?"

"Depends... Did you make my favorite?"

"Yes Mizuki," she huffed.

"Marshmallow fluff on toast?"

"Yes," she said, "So are you coming down or not?"
"Yeah. Coming," I said, putting my papers back in a folder and walking out of the room.

Downstairs, I found that Kaori had in fact made my favorite breakfast.

I started to eat when she said, "Zuki, you are the weirdest eater in Japan."
"Nuh-uh," I said, with a mouth full of marshmallow fluff, "It's only food. It's not that unusual,"

"Yes, yes it is, but hey, whatever floats your boat I suppose."

I smiled and continued to eat my breakfast.

"So, did anything come of your all night session last night?"

"Well," I said, swallowing my toast, "I narrowed our list of suspects considerably.

"Really? Yesterday we had 15. How many are we down to?"

"3," I replied.

Her jaw dropped and she looked at me in bewilderment. "How did you come to that?!" she said.

"Takashi Omino... Couldn't have done it because I checked police records, he got a DUI that night at the time of the murder but it was hushed up because of his political status..."

I began naming off the other suspects and why they were not guilty.

When I finished, Kaori looked at me in amazement and said, "Now what about the last three?"

"Out of them, I truly believe the female is guilty."

"Akane Tuke? Why? She had no motive,"

"Oh yes she did. Did you know that love can turn the best people vile? I think Akane loved Mei Azura's husband,"

"But... All the witness reports stated that Akane was nothing but nice to Mei,"

"Oh, to her face of course. But deep inside, Akane nurtured a hatred for Mei. She came up with a very elaborate plan, which may have cleared her of suspicion if she hadn't made a fatal error in calculation. She slowly cut off contact with Mei so that her motive wouldn't be considered, but she did it too quickly. How does someone go from speaking to someone often to not speaking at all in two weeks? It doesn't happen."

I paused to take a sip of tea and let Kaori input her opinion.

"But even if that was true... How did she kill her?"

"Through a reliable amount of research and hacking into the forensics lab's systems, I examined the cell images myself and it seems that Mei was poisoned by an undetectable arsenic,"

"If it's undetectable how did u detect it?"

"I've... had expierience with it before. It makes minute changes to the internal cells in the blood, turning it slowly fatal. Process of diffusion and action takes about two weeks before the body shuts down and dies," I said.

"So you're saying..."

"Akane slipped Mei an undetectable arsenic, tried to destroy her connection and motive, and was thwarted by her simple error in timing," I said simply.

"Makes sense. But how can we prove it?"

"I thought of that too. I checked her purchasing records, and there's no such buying of such a substance, but if she purchased it with a disposable debit card and somehow destroyed the receipt on bank systems of exactly where she spent it, the transaction will still be apparent. All we would have to do is find the total of the transaction, search the black market for such a concoction, match up the price, and we have evidential support that Akane purchased arsenic and used it to slowly destroy Mei Azura."

"Wow, you're amazing Mizuki."

"Really? I don't think there's that much interesting to me, honestly."

She then looked at my face for a moment. "Zuki, you look awfully tired. I think you should sleep," she said.

"Maybe I should," I said, yawning.

"Go upstairs," my worrisome best friend ordered.

"Will you search for that evidential support? I'd really like to be done with this case today."

"Of course," she said, shooing me towards the stairs.

I went up, Amra following me.

"You're awfully quiet today, Amra, it's not like you," I said to her as we ascended.

"Really? I hadn't noticed,"

"For a shinigami you're an awful liar, Amra. Are you bored? If so I can kill another death row prisoner, but you know my terms. Only directly before injection."

"To be honest, Mizuki, I am a little bored, but you know, that kind of killing isn't very exciting. Just once could you kill someone out of the blue?"

"Amra," I said, stopping.

"Every day I work on cases. Mostly murder cases. Cases where a guilty person kills an innocent person. It is almost always guilty versus innocent. If I ever killed someone (again, I thought to myself), I'd become guilty, and I can't become what I despise. I cannot become the guilty while I protect the innocent."

"Are you understanding this?" I said to her,

"Not really, but I'm not too educated in human matters. Nevermind, just forget I said it."

"Alright, alright," I said, drawing my curtains.

I climbed into bed and fell asleep instantly.

It felt as though I awoke, but I knew I was in a dream. Everything around me was pure white. The floor was hard and white. I wasn't in a room because there were no walls, it was simply white abyss. I looked around for a little while, really confused as to where I was.

I stopped and stood still. I looked around. I saw something. It was in the shape of a man, I could tell from the body type. He was only a shadow, no detail or name to be given. He walked towards me. I didn't feel frightened, I didn't feel the urge to run away... I felt comfortable. Something about this stranger was odd. It was as if I trusted him with my life. And, for the most part in this odd, utopic dreamsacape, I did. He grabbed my hand and gently tugged me away, and I followed him. We walked on and on in the weird abyss. I was thinking we would come upon something very soon. Something that would make sense to this. But we didn't.

After what seemed like ages walking with this stranger, he stopped. He twirled me towards him. I faced his shadow, and he leaned in towards me. I didn't pull away, strangely, nor did I want to.

He was two inches from my face...

BANG.

I sat bolt upright in my bed, my heart going a hundred miles an hour.

"Sorry, sorry, sorry, I'm sorry," Kaori was whimpering as she cleaned up her mess. She had been working at my desk looking through last night's papers and reports when her bowl of ramen, her ideal breakfast food, fell from the desk, shattering onto my floor, sending bits of sharp ceramic and noodles everywhere.

"It's fine, don't worry about it," I said, catching my breath, "Are you okay?"

"I am, what about you?"
"I think... Ouch!" I said. I felt a jabbing pain as I moved my left leg, which had been unconcealed by blanket when the spill happened. I looked down to find a jagged bit of ceramic stuck inside it.

I reached over and pulled it out. I was lucky. It wasn't very deep at all.

"Oh no, Mizuki, you're bleeding!" she said, running off to fetch me a band-aid. She returned with a Hello Kitty band aid and put it over my cut after I'd wiped the blood off with my shirt.

"Thanks, Kay," I said.

"No problem, I'm really sorry," she said.

"It's fine, it didn't even hurt," I said, smiling. I knew if I smiled, Kaori would be reassured.

"Okay," she said, smiling back.

"So did you get any of that evidential support done?"
"Of course I did silly!" she said, pulling out a manila envelope.

Kaori may be a bit scatterbrained, she may be clumsy, but she is always on task.

Since I couldn't get back to sleep, I went downstairs, got on the computer, and began to hack police files to look through cases. I didn't like to be long without something to work on, ever.

Nothing seemed too interesting until I came upon one file. The Fortunato case.

Four people enter an abandoned, once-an-old-manor's catacombs in Takeshi-muri, Chiisagatagun. Two came out, the others were never recovered. The two who came out were in a manic state before they both passed away about three days ago. Hmm. This was very interesting.

"Kaori, come here for a second!" I shouted into the kitchen where my friend was.

"Yes?" She said as she came to my side, staring at the screen.

"What do you think of this case?"

"Sounds interesting... You thinking about taking it on?"
"Yes, I am," I said, "It looks difficult. I've been up for a challenge lately."

"Well, it's your call Zuki, I'm just here to help," she said.

"You're here for more than that. I need your opinion before I do anything."

"Well, I think it'd be a really hard case," she started, "But if you're up for it, I think it'd be fun to work."
"It's decided then," I said, smiling.

"It looks really time consuming though," she said, looking closer at the file's details.

"Are you absolutely positive that you want to spend so much time on one case?"
"Really, Kaori, what else do I have to do?"
"Well..." she started thinking, "You could try dating you know."

I huffed.

"I'd rather work one case for the rest of my life than date, Kay," I said, "Detective work harks more to me than any man could."

"It was just a suggestion, Zuki," she said, "No need to bite my head off."

"Sorry," I said.

"No problem," she said, instantly bright again, "So when are we starting this case?"
"Now," I said.

"Now?!"

"Yup,"

"But, we've only just finished the last one today!"
"Which means, of course, it's time for a new one."

"But,"

"Kaori, if you want a break, I'll just look through the files for the next day or so and you can have some time to yourself, okay?"
"Okay," she said, exhaling deeply. She, unlike myself, had other interests to dabble in besides her job.

She went off to do something in the kitchen (if there was anybody who was obsessed with cooking, it was Kaori Hayashi), and I set to work on this case.