He was the son of a highly-esteemed police chief. He was a scholar from the moment in which his eyelids peeled and the photophobic cornea strained under the drenching sun. There was, perhaps in today's society, a certain beauty in his parade, or perhaps the way in which he justified himself, but this was not important. The mind, as unpredictable, logical, and surreal-- a paradox, an ill-explained paradox-- as it was, it could cradle both purity and cruelty within the same borders. And his, as anyone's, was teeming with malignant sub-life that wrenched and twisted the line of ethics to a vertigo by the inebriated.

When the bitter, furious and vigorous taste of vomit backs into his throat, Light Yagami spits quickly and quietly at the nearest garbage container. Murder was, to his family, among the catastrophic remains of a devolved civilization before their time. And Light, he thinks that once he's had a criminal aunt-- or had she been a distant cousin?-- who was prohibited to attend their holiday dinners. But when his knuckles, white and ossified, batter along iron, it was he who was the criminal and the pen-bearer. And that name, Kuro Otoharada, was difficult to remember under precise panic, but Light assures himself that it was for the best.

In Dante's Inferno, Light wonders if his feet, his limbs, every fiber of muscle-tissue would split apart at the seams. He shudders in perception-- or was it the vomit?-- in which his back quivers terribly. He thinks to close his eyes for just a moment-- just a small, insignificant moment-- in order to prevent his imagination from the Seventh Circle and its slaughterous Minotaur. His body remains still; at each movement, the parching sways of hemic Phlegethon disables his bones like the ocean shores against adamant rock. Seventh Circle, Outer ring and the cantos (perhaps the twenty-first? Twenty-second?) swirls his skull like a petri-dish, and pools over his ears; and to which level, Light wonders, would his lips pant and his teeth bite with the combustion of his body?

(Easy question, he thinks to himself much later than this: his amber fringe would flicker and dance with pyre, defined cheekbones and sensuous lips would submerge fully into the hot bath. His flesh would melt and decompose almost instantaneously, and he would be testing his charred tongue about all the fibs he once told.)

Heaving the last of his lunch, Light recognizes that he has brought forth yet another empty lethargy. With disgust, the youth wipes with his sleeve the residue of Mother's carefully-constructed bento (plump, sesame-sprinkled onigiri, rich swipes of meat, leafy greens, and a steamed bun) with pregnant regret, lips pursing. Light was faithful, taught of guardian angels and metaphysical veils of safety; instead, he was given a pair of eyes from where pain was love, love was pain, and everything whirled counter-clockwise in its cyclical nature. He hears the hoarse, uncouth tittering, and for a moment considers crying-- tears, as Father taught, were not unmanly and cleansed the heart-- but then halts, deciding upon an unswept expression instead.

And the youth never once thought his calligraphy indecent, but when he lies to himself-- and his pressing weeps carries his body to the impenetrable shelter of the phoenix-family-- he briefly considers losing his sense of literacy, and his sense of lucidity.