Akira Amamiya gazed out the floor to ceiling windows, the bright sun and soft breeze calling to her. She sighed as her professor droned on about who-knows-what. At seventeen, she thought it would be a good idea to just get University over with. But, my god, what a bore. She'd have to see her advisor after class. This just wasn't working for her. It was the beginning of her second semester… she was still within the deadline to get a full refund of her tuition. Father's money wouldn't go to waste.
Turning back to the front of the class, she tried to focus on the lesson. She might as well get something out of the next hour. Tapping her fingers impatiently on her desk, she didn't bother taking notes as everyone around her rushed to keep up with the lecture. The screen in front of her consisted mostly of doodles of flowers and squiggly lines. Her therapist would just love to dissect these. Just what did the daisy in the right hand corner say about her deepest, innermost self? Or, better yet, what was she thinking about when she split the screen in half with a solid, straight line?
A folded up piece of paper landed on her desk. Glancing up, a young man with a handsome smile caught her eye and waved, winking at her. Smiling back, Akira picked up the note and, ensuring that he was watching her, threw it to the girl next to her. He frowned, glancing at the mousy looking girl with a look of wonder on her face, and turned back to the professor. Akira rolled her eyes. She had been on a date with him just last week and made it very clear that she wasn't interested in seeing him or his oversized ego again. What kind of guy doesn't even compliment the incredibly flattering cocktail dress his date is wearing?
Another paper fluttered down next to her, catching her eye. She sighed as it missed her desk and looked around, searching for the culprit. Whoever it was was too shy to gage her reaction. Leaning over, Akira picked up the piece of paper. They got annoying, but she loved getting these notes. Sure, they were immature, but she couldn't blame them. And it was touching that they would go through the trouble of bringing paper and a pencil to class just to get her attention. She rushed out of her classes so quickly she never gave anyone a chance to approach her. She hated to linger, opting to spend most of her time at the University in one of the many art studios.
Unfolding the piece of paper, Akira held her breath. It was blank. Was this a joke? Perhaps. There were a few girls in this class who didn't particularly like her. She had, admittedly, been a bit of a bitch when they grouped together for a project and she turned down every one of their ideas. But, come on, the philosophical meaning behind the new black becoming floral? Not an idea she wanted to be associated with, regardless of her love for fashion. Shaking her head, Akira's long hair fell around her shoulders, blocking her face from the views of those next to her.
Searching the little piece of paper once again for any sign of a scribble, she looked up to search the room for the culprit. With a quick intake of breath, her eyes widened and she froze as her eyes found her professor. Standing next to him, unbeknownst to him it seemed, was the tallest man she had ever seen. He stood completely still, watching her with a straight face. His long, fair hair almost covered his golden eyes. The giant, black horns protruding from his head seemed almost normal. Scars covered his bare, muscular chest. He wore nothing more than a pair of jeans she was sure came from that new store down the street that she would never admit she ever set foot in.
Akira spent the rest of the hour staring at this otherworldly being, who stared right back. His eyes seemed to pierce her soul, causing her breath to come out in quick, sporadic gasps. She felt a tap on her shoulder and flinched, her eyes never leaving the golden ones that she had found.
"Psst, Akira, are you okay? You got so tense all of a sudden…" the girl she had thrown her previous note to whispered fiercely, still clutching the note in her hand. Akira nodded slowly and forced a little smile.
"Of course, I've just been finding this part of the lecture incredibly intriguing…" Akira trailed off. The girl raised an eyebrow and shrugged, turning back to the professor. The being at the head of the classroom slowly curled his lips into a smile. Akira blushed profusely for reasons unknown to her. The blank paper still in her hand, she gripped the sides of her desk.
"Calm down, calm down, calm down…" Akira muttered to herself, not bothering to hope no one would hear her. It was obvious no one else was seeing the man towering over their professor. Perhaps this was the psychotic break her therapist was sure would happen someday. She had never gotten the dramatic breakthrough she so desperately wanted Akira to have. Akira assumed the woman was simply an overemotional moron that she happened to get along really well with.
The being turned to face her professor. Akira couldn't breathe. When the professor turned to the board to start writing, the entire class looked up. The professor rarely, if ever, utilized the board. Curious faces watched him as he started to draw with a finger, a projector somewhere in the room reading his movements and producing red. No one could anticipate what was being drawn, his movements quick and full of purpose. After a moment, the professor stepped away, took a deep breath, and ran. He ran full throttle towards the window, to the outside world that Akira had previously so longed to be in.
With a crash, the window shattered upon the professor's impact. The room was spiked with fear and confusion. Akira stood slowly, watching her professor fall to the ground, covered in bloody gashes. They were on the first floor, the windows had no safety system installed. The professor staggered to his feet and continued onward, toward a bridge full of rushing cars.
Akira stumbled toward the broken window, the glass crunching beneath her boots. The godly being forgotten, she watched with her classmates as the professor fell to his knees in the middle of the bridge, automated cars swerving around him and stopping at the side of the road. Akira vaguely heard one of her classmates on a phone, frantically begging for help. She watched as her professor heaved himself up, looked about himself, confused, and started for the railing at the side of the road. The next thing she knew, he had thrown himself over the ledge.
She knew his body would be crushed against the boulders at the bottom, resting in the center of a large lake. She staggered back, turning and shoving her way through her classmates. Many had tears staining their faces. Akira pressed her hand to her mouth, trying to control her breathing. Her eyes widening with realization, she spun around, searching the room for the man with horns. He was nowhere to be seen. Shocked, she fell to her knees.
Looking up, Akira stared at the board. On it was a drawing of a bright red apple with a bite taken out of it.
"Did you know him at all?" Akira gazed, bleary eyed, at her therapist. She hadn't slept last night. She had been too confused.
"No. I only sat in on his lectures," she answered. She sat cross legged on a plush blue couch, her long red hair pulled over her shoulder. She ran her fingers through it absentmindedly. Akira's professor had committed suicide three days ago. Immediately after the incident, after she had spoken to the police and gave them her information, she had charged to the advisor's office and dropped all of her classes. They did so with a full refund, no questions asked.
But she couldn't get those golden eyes out of her head.
She spent the next few days alone in her apartment, painting and thinking. She kept the blank piece of paper with her, folded up in a locket that she had worn around her neck every day since she was twelve. She considered every possible thing her therapist would ask her. Every assumption she would make. She would definitely claim that Akira had finally had a psychotic break after years of grief and denial. Why else would she be seeing incredibly attractive men with devil horns and gold eyes?
Akira had decided to keep the horned man to herself. The memory was too real to be dismissed as a hallucination. She could still feel the power that radiated from him. His confidence was so absolute, Akira didn't deny that he had to power to do anything.
"Akira?" her therapist was frowning at her. Uh oh.
"Sorry, Tabitha. I was just dwelling on the past few days…" Akira smiled at her. Tabitha, her therapist for nearly ten years now, was an American woman in her late 40s. She had come to Japan for her PhD, fell in love, and never left. Akira would never admit this aloud, but the woman had become like a mother to her. "I didn't know the professor at all. But he seemed like such a decent man… so sure of himself. From what I heard, his family is in just as much shock as the rest of us." Akira watched for Tabitha's reaction. She nodded vigorously.
"His wife was horrified. I met her once at a seminar…" Tabitha went off on a tangent. She was such a gossip. Akira loved and hated it. It made her a horrible therapist. What did she say about Akira to her other patients? Was she the crazy one? The hormonal teenager? The sob story? She'd probably never know.
"Tabitha, what do you know about…" Akira didn't finish as something caught her eye. A quick flash outside the window. She was on the fourth story, so perhaps a bird. But it didn't move at all like one. Her imagination? Probably, but she didn't think so.
"About what, dear?" Tabitha asked patiently. Akira stared out the window a moment more, making a quick decision.
"The stages of grief?" she finished. She was going to say hallucinations, but a gut wrenching feeling warned her not to. When did her intuition become so accurate?
"Oh, I'm glad you asked," Tabitha smiled brightly. She then launched into an extremely detailed explanation about the five stages of grief, relating each one to Akira's personal circumstances. Akira continued to stare out the window, her eyes narrowed. She even pinched herself a few times.
"Unfortunately, our time is up, but next month we can definitely continue…" Tabitha kept talking as she walked Akira out. She went so far as to take the elevator with her to the ground floor and accompany her to the entrance. Akira smiled at her as they hugged goodbye. She really did like Tabitha. Sometimes.
With a sigh, Akira started a slow walk to the closest bus station. With a purse over one shoulder and her hair over the other, she watched the cars speed by, driving themselves and their occupants to their destinations. She closed her eyes as a strong wind hit her head on and she stopped. Glancing back to the huge, generic business district she was leaving, she turned around and headed back. Quickly and purposefully, she made her way back to the front doors of the building she had just left.
She paused, glancing to her left and to her right. Advertisements lit up the windows around her, switching between the flashing lights of a sale at Barney's and the workers within the building, who wouldn't be aware of the images outside their windows. Confirming that no one else was around to see her, she veered to the left and marched around the corner of the building, searching the grass.
She occasionally glanced about herself, nervous of being caught looking for a hallucination. She looked up, hoping no one happened to be looking out any of the windows. She searched the grounds frantically, eager to prove her insanity and get out of there. With a sigh, she concluded that she was insane and turned to leave, only to trip.
Grumbling about rocks and her shoelaces, Akira transferred her weight to her butt and glared at the ground in front of her, needing something to take her frustration out on. On the ground, in plain view she told herself bitterly, was a black notebook. Huffing, Akira grabbed it and stood up, opening it up. Flipping through the pages, she found that they were all blank, except the very first one.
Her eyes narrowed, Akira ran her finger along the missing corner of the page. She bit her lip as she remembered the note in her locket. Then writing on the page caught her eye, scrolled in elegant black ink. Who was carrying around not only an old fashioned notebook, but an ink pen? Reading the words, though, Akira held her breath and gripped the pages tightly, crunching them together.
In a quick and fluid motion, Akira jammed the notebook into her purse, glad she had opted for her large turquoise one today. Then, heading in the opposite direction from which she had come, she hurried home.
The bus ride took entirely too long, although it was only a five minute ride from Tabitha's office to her apartment. She stomped to the elevators, smiling at the receptionist and hurrying to an empty one. She pressed the button for her floor several times before she started to shoot upward. At the top floor, Akira ran to the end of the hallway and burst into her apartment, breathing heavily. Thank god for elevators. She had insisted on having this apartment, though. The far corner of the top floor was perfect inspiration for her creative mind. She had waited 6 months for the residence to become available.
Slamming the door behind her, she leaned back against the door and slid to the ground, letting out a sigh and closing her eyes. Okay, so one of her hallucinations had been real. That was at least a tiny bit comforting. Her eyes remaining closed, she dug through her purse and pulled out the notebook. With a deep breath, she hugged the black book to her chest.
"I'm definitely not insane… I'm definitely not insane…" she repeated to herself. She held on to the realness of the notebook, not trusting herself to open her eyes. Her vision hasn't been reliable lately. With a chime, an automated voice on an intercom spoke.
"The dinner you've requested is ready!" The voice was cheerful. Akira sighed and opened her eyes slightly, looking at the book in her arms. She tilted it away from her body to see the cover.
"Death Note…" she muttered the title. "What kind of sick joke is this?" With a glare, she stood up and looked forward, prepared to head to the kitchen. She froze before she could move her feet.
A tall man wearing nothing but jeans stood at the end of the hall, watching her with an amused grin on his face. His horns curled menacingly forward and his golden eyes glittered in the light of the setting sun. Akira took a step back as something behind him twitched. Something she had somehow overlooked, being captivated by his eyes. Two large black wings protruded from his back, covered in heavy chains. They looked torn and ragged, but beautiful all the same. Akira worked to make her mouth move. The man took a step toward her and she flinched away, slamming her heel against the door. He paused as she raised a shaky finger, pointing to his wings.
"Have those always been there?" Akira asked in what she considered a surprisingly strong voice. The man raised his eyebrows.
"Of course."
Akira screamed, throwing the notebook at him with all her might. She crouched into the corner and covered her head with her arms, flinching as she heard the satisfying sound of contact.
"I am officially a basket case…" Akira muttered as the man muttered a surprised, 'Ow!'