"Have you finished your work for the night?"

Light stared moodily into his coffee mug. "Yes, Mother."

His mother, as timid as always, bit her lip hesitantly. "Light…"

"Yes?"

"Are you feeling okay, dear? I do worry about you. You work as much as your poor father."

Light's dull grimace slipped off his face instantly. He met her concerned gaze and flashed his best smile. "Of course, Mother. I'm fine."

Her smile was less than perfect. "If you say so, Light."

Light Yagami finished his coffee and took the empty mug to the sink before making his way to his room. As soon as the door closed behind him, the smile slid off his face like water running off an oil-slicked raincoat. In its place, his calm, placid mask slipped over his features—a perfectly ordinary, commonplace expression, except for the slight downward tilt at the corners of his mouth.

Discarding one falsehood for another, Light thought wryly. I don't even know what my normal expression looks like anymore.

His room, uninhabited except for the weekends when he returned home, was as impeccably neat as ever—bland, cool, and vaguely welcoming. Like a newly cleaned hotel room, it gave off the beige air of pseudo-vitality. The main centerpiece was his desk, naturally—perfectly spotless, gleaming with the orange scent of wood polish, just another abandoned prop in the play of his life.

All the world's a stage…

Light wondered if Shakespeare was a cynic.

Getting accepted into college had been simple. From the first practice exam, his nationwide dominance had been easily established. It had left him feeling…disappointed, almost, even if it was just another verification of a well-known fact. He still took out his textbooks from time to time, if only to keep up the act, but education was no longer a challenge.

Actually, very little was.

Light clicked on the print icon and folded his hands behind his head as the papers slowly spooled in the printer. No research, an hour of typing, and the resulting paper was undoubtedly more than good enough for his professor's standards.

He saved his work to his thumb drive, closed the program, and picked up the papers when the printer finally finished spitting them out. The stapler bit into his essay easily, clamping down on all fifteen sheets, and then he was done. He had no homework, a long weekend, all the time in the world—and absolutely nothing to do.

The librarian's student-assistant knew him well enough by now, and as usual, her face clamped down into a carefully vacant expression as she took his ID card. "Ah," she said, "Light Yagami. Done already?"

"Yes, thank you," Light said, feeling his face contort into its customary smile. "I find Professor Nakamura's class to be on the simpler side, so I didn't need the computer for that long."

"A father like yours, and you still use the school computers," she said, keeping her tone jesting. Her eyes flashed in a way that made Light feel decidedly unsettled. "Don't you have your own?"

"I'm sorry, Takada," he said coolly, dropping his pretense of the angelic schoolboy by an inch. "I don't consider myself above using campus facilities."

Takada smiled at him, but it was no less false than his own charming mask. "Oh, I'm sorry if I've offended you," she said earnestly. Her gaze flicked to the computer. "You've been cleared." She handed him his ID card back, still smiling prettily, and folded her hands carefully in her lap. "Have a good weekend, Yagami-san."

"And you as well, Kiyomi-san," he said, just as cheerfully courteous, reverting to her surname in recognition of her own return to formality. Takada's smile twisted, but if she found something humorous, she didn't care to share it. She waved at him on his way out.

Light closed the library doors behind him and surveyed the campus that spilled out along the hills. It was flawless, sculpted to perfection, organized in rolling green lawns and flowering cherry trees, all clipped to carefully measured guidelines. On the paved pathways, students strolled, laughing, mouths jerking and hands gesticulating in a predetermined dance of social mimicry.

Light's carefully tranquil smile mellowed still farther, deftly eradicating any instinctive sneer that dared to try and emerge.

He started down one of the pathways, clutching his paper in one hand and the lapels of his jacket in the other. It was spring, supposedly, but from the crisp breeze in the air one could easily have mistaken it for otherwise. It would be a long walk back to his dorm.

After scaling the steps and threading his way past chattering students, Light slipped into his room and turned the deadbolt. It was probably a meaningless exercise—after all, no one had reason to barge into his room, unless they were moronic enough to think that he would offer them help. He didn't have any good acquaintances on campus. Light kept himself warm, but distant; amiable, but fleeting. He was always busy, always flitting from one group to another, touching on everyone and striking up small talk to maintain his appearance as a kind, self-assured student while preventing anything resembling a friendship from developing. It did wonders for his sanity. Maintaining a friendship was far too time-consuming, and besides—no human being could offer him anything he didn't already have.

He opened the drawer in his desk and slipped the paper inside, intending to proofread it later, if only for lack of a better waste of time. He knew instinctively that his errors would be insignificant, if there were any at all, but he needed a time-consuming excuse to skip out on the typically juvenile weekend festivities that his peers would undoubtedly have planned. Nakamura was known for assigning lengthy, menial work, even if his class was depressingly dull.

Light closed the drawer and paused, eyes shifting to the door as his ears registered a peculiar sound. Footsteps…

Not that it was an unusual sound, of course; Light did live in a college dorm, and footsteps were by far the least bothersome sounds. That did nothing to cancel out the fact, however, that his dorm was the last one on the hall—and besides, these footsteps were…soft, cautious, completely uncharacteristic of the other residents. They were nearly inaudible, but from what he could hear, they were measured and careful, and that in itself provoked his curiosity.

And then, of course, it crossed Light's mind to wonder why he was being distracted by something as commonplace as a set of footsteps. His breath hissed out in faint irritation as he realized exactly how low he had fallen. He needed to find something to occupy his mind…

The footsteps stopped, and there was a rustle by his door.

Light spun around and stared as a slip of paper was silently inserted through the crack between the door and the carpet. Then, the footsteps started up again, this time heading away from his room, and Light was left feeling distinctly bemused.

He crossed the room and picked it up slowly, cautiously. Upon unfolding it, Light was presented with complete and utter nonsense: a mess of jumbled English letters, separated into five-character blocks with bland precision.

Gibberish. How…lovely.

Light thrust the deadbolt aside and yanked his door open—only to be presented with an empty hallway. Well, then.

Who the hell thrust random pieces of paper underneath dorm room doors?

Light strode over to his desk and dropped it in his wastebasket. Time-wasting gibberish. He didn't have time for idiotic, nonsensical pranks.

On the contrary, a voice in his mind piped cheerfully. You've got all the time in the world, and nothing to do with it.

Light groaned. He collapsed onto his bed and stared at the ceiling for precisely twenty-one point oh four seconds before rolling back onto his feet.

There had to be something productive he could be doing in his spare time.

oXAXo

Unfortunately, decent entertainment was in short supply.

It was spring break, so it wasn't as if he could stay in his dorm all weekend—that would immediately invite questions, and probably invitations, too. So, for lack of a better occupation, Light Yagami left campus with his bookbag slung over his shoulder and headed for the bus.

He disembarked at his usual stop and made his way slowly through the streets. Here, in a mostly residential corner of the city, life was somewhat less hectic, and he was just another casual pedestrian in a crowd of commuters.

The bookstore he finally entered was a small one, crowded with ceiling-height shelves that burst with paper-bound locution. Inside, it smelled faintly of coffee; the café in the corner was open, churning out waves of warmth to counteract the cool air outside. None too surprisingly, it was almost empty; other than the sole employee, a man who was engrossed in his tea was the only customer. He had his back to Light, and Light prayed that it would remain that way. He wasn't in the mood for idle chatter.

He smiled and nodded to the woman behind the counter, and she returned it with her own round-cheeked grin. "Yagami Light," she said. "I wasn't expecting you this weekend. It's spring break, isn't it?"

Light shrugged. "No sense in breaking a routine."

Mizuki chuckled and pulled a paper cup from the rack. "Your mother must be proud, having such a diligent son," she commented. "Your usual?"

"Yes, please."

He had been coming to the bookstore for some time now. He'd discovered it by accident, on one of his meandering walks through the city. It was a small place—crushed between two towering apartment buildings on the side and topped by yet more condos—but, more importantly, it was almost always open, and it had been one of the few glowing windows when a thunderstorm had caught him off-guard last semester. Since then, Light had taken to visiting on a regular basis—first for the coffee, then for the books, and, finally, for the solitude. It was a rare commodity. Mizuki was good company. She kept to herself, read her books, brewed coffee, and occasionally prattled about her sons, doctors both, which was a crime of pride that Light could forgive.

Mizuki handed him the cup, steaming with the dark aroma of pure, unsullied coffee, and paused. "Oh—and Light?"

"Yes?"

"I have—a letter for you." Mizuki looked uncertain. She reached under the counter and handed it to him: clean, pristine, an unassuming envelope. "It was here in the morning, when I came in," she said. "I swear it wasn't here last night, and I was the one who opened, so…"

"You don't know who left it?"

Mizuki shook her head and tucked a wisp of fading hair behind her ear. "I don't know," she admitted. "But it has your name on it, so I figured it couldn't hurt. Do you know who would leave it here?"

"I don't, actually. It's strange." Light shook his head and flashed her a grateful smile. "Thank you, Mizuki."

"Never a problem, Light," she said, and then paused, looking at him expectantly. Light blinked, then remembered.

"Oh," he said, reaching for his wallet. "Sorry. Give me a moment, let me find my card—"

When Light made it to his normal table by the window, the coffee was still smoldering between his hands. He inhaled carefully, feeling the wisps of rich smoke rise past his lips in unfurling spirals of warmth. Coffee, he decided, was one of the few things that he enjoyed.

He studied the envelope with a small amount of trepidation. First that damned piece of paper under his door, and now this…

The kanji on the cover was crisp and clear, penned by someone with a seriously obsessive nature. And who would bother sending him a letter not by ordinary post, but by leaving it in a bookshop? None of his "friends" at school even knew that he came here.

Light sighed and slit the thin strip of adhesive with one careful fingernail, frowning as part of the paper caught and ripped. Upon opening, a trifolded piece of paper peeked out, meek and pale as its quiet encasing. Light removed it impatiently and unfolded it, only to be presented with…

More bloody letters.

Block after block of English characters, strung together to form gibberish…but obviously, there was more to it than that. A code. A cipher.

Light had dealt with rudimentary cryptology before, and he was no fool. Someone was sending him encrypted letters. He set the paper aside and returned to his coffee. The warmth radiated through his hands, and he closed his eyes.

His lips curved upward.

Finally, finally—a puzzle to play with.

He just hoped that it would last.