AN: Looks like I'm continuing this after all! More to come shortly. I'm also considering reviving Binary Helix. Please do leave me reviews; even if I haven't managed to get back to you, I appreciate every one. And for those of you who haven't read my other stories, I am very much against yaoi in the DN universe. It just has no canonical basis.
More exciting things are coming in the future, I promise. :)
1/25/2010, 3:57 PM
The letters were mocking him.
He'd had to hunt for a pencil. Light was used to using pens—when did he ever make mistakes?—but he'd suspected that this would be a matter of trial and error.
He'd been right.
Light took a sip of his coffee and frowned. It was his third cup today, and it was already lukewarm. The code was taking longer than he'd expected. He'd already checked for a simple Caesar Shift—an alphabet shift, where each letter was shifted a set number of places—but that clearly wasn't the case. Now, he was trying a Vigenère.
The Vigenère cipher was a permutation of the Caesar Shift, where a repeating keyword was used instead of just shifting the letters by a set interval. The Vigenère was easily breakable as well; if he had a computer, he could have done it in a few minutes. Light was, however, determined to make this puzzle last.
He chewed his lip and ran his finger along the lines of text. The letters were mocking him.
The first letters might have been his name, he reasoned. If he followed that assumption, it wasn't too much of a leap to surmise that—
"Light?"
Light looked up, annoyance creasing his face. Mizuki was leaning against the counter; the other patron had apparently disappeared while he'd been absorbed. "I'm sorry," she said. "I wanted to make sure you were all right. I know that you usually leave by this hour."
He checked his watch. Ten-thirty. Not obscenely late, but…when had he arrived? Four?
"Oh," he said. A wave of irritation rose in his throat. Irritation at what? At the disturbance, or at losing track of time? "Thank you Mizuki. I'll be going."
He stared at the code while the bus rolled and lurched across the uneven pavement. Maybe he would punch it into his laptop when he got home.
No. That would be cheating. This had to last.
With a sigh, Light scratched out yet another attempt and started over.
oXAXo
Nobody noticed his arrival at the dorms. Light bolted for his room, eager despite himself. This was a new kind of frustration. Frustration with a purpose, a goal—it was different. Unexpected.
He remembered his first taste of this kind of frustration, years ago. He'd been working with math printouts when he had come across something he hadn't understood: an x, thrown into the midst of all the numbers.
The concept of algebraic variables had clicked as soon as his father, chuckling, explained it to him, but anger had flared in his chest. He was Light Yagami. He shouldn't need help!
He'd been four years old at the time.
Each time he encountered an obstacle, the same sense of frustration surged in his blood. Taming it, forcing the anger into usable energy, was the key. Light thrived on frustration; it was so, so much better than the grayness of boredom.
Boredom was, he supposed, the absence of frustration. Boredom was the paralysis of too many possibilities and too little, at the same time. And that…that was what he'd been mired in.
He blinked at the past tense. But it was true—he wasn't bored. Not now. Not with this delicious puzzle. The twist of English made it more difficult than he'd expected; all of his cryptography courses had been in Japanese.
He found the crumpled piece of paper from earlier and smoothed it out. Perhaps they were related? No, no, of course they were. Of course. Whoever had left the cipher at the bookstore clearly knew his habits well; this was an elaborate trick.
This one was shorter, only a few lines long. Light ran through the possibilities, starting once again at the Caesar shift.
"No…no…no…"
And then the letters arranged themselves. T-H-E-K-E-Y-W-O-R-D-I-S…
"Apples?" Light read aloud, incredulous despite himself.
That was…ridiculous and frivolous and loaded with potential metaphors and clichés. With a shrug, he tried it as a keyword for the Vigenère.
It worked. Light felt disappointment stirring in his stomach; what, so was this a textbook sequence of common codes? He sorted out the letters, adding in punctuation and spacing, until the second piece of paper read:
Light Yagami:
I would preface this letter with the typical "dear;" however, I am uncertain if that would be appropriate, given our previous relationship, which did not end on the best of terms.
Forgive me. You see, I am very well acquainted with you, Light, though in this particular instance you likely do not know me. I have a proposal for you, Light. At the very least, I can promise a stimulating conversation. Once you have deciphered this, please come to the address listed below. Time is irrelevant; haste is a priority, as I will not be in the area for long.
Sincerely,
Ryuzaki
An address followed. Light recognized it almost immediately; it was one of the upper-scale hotels downtown. Intriguing.
There was something convoluted and undeniably strange about the message. First, why the game of the ciphers? And secondly—how could this Ryuzaki be "well acquainted" with him—how could they have had a "previous relationship"—when Light had never heard of the man? Obviously, the man had meant to contact him, so they were connected in some way. But how?
It was almost creepy, the way he'd known where Light lived, what coffee shop he frequented, but Light couldn't bring himself to worry about that. More intriguing was the simple fact that this was a game. It almost made up for the disappointing simplicity of the cipher.
Light glanced at the clock. It was only eleven forty-three. He felt more awake than he had in long, long time. Nobody would notice his absence.
Light was the epitome of a social butterfly: fluttering from group to group, uttering a word here and flashing a smile there. But he had no loyalties to the dull-witted plants of the collegiate garden, and his presence was never more than feather-light. It made him well-liked, and gave him the invisibility he needed.
Light opened his closet. If he didn't want to look out of place, he'd need some dress clothes.
oXAXo
The hotel lobby was exactly as he had expected: lush and soft, full of rich red furniture and gilded accents. The ostentatious display was grating, but at least he could act at ease here.
Light slipped on his customary mask—half-smile, mild intensity, complemented by a barely-interested gaze—and made his way to one of the chairs. He sat, legs crossed over each other, a paperback copy of Hamlet held open in his hand. He didn't read, instead opting to scan the room.
There were the usual suspects. The hotel desk attendant's uniform was burgundy, with gold trim; he looked tired. Light ruled him out immediately; there was no intelligence shimmering behind his eyes. A few businessmen were chatting wearily, their half-bald heads glistening under the lights. A mother with a pearl choker clasped the hand of a four-year-old. A few solitary men in their twenties and thirties were scattered through the lobby on their laptops, and a younger couple was drinking coffee in the corner.
None of them looked particularly intelligent, though he supposed that some of the solitary men could be the mysterious "Ryuzaki." Light chewed his lip.
Maybe he'd be better off waiting.
oXAXo
L Lawliet, known to this new world as Ryuzaki, was crouched in front of his laptop
He had rigged his own cameras in the hotel lobby. He smirked as he saw Light walk in, all slippery nonchalance and faked indifference. The image on the screen was blurred and jagged—his fault, for using cheap equipment—but the walk, the smirk, those were unmistakably Light's.
"Light," he whispered, and shivered. He wondered if this was a good idea.
Not that he had much of a choice. L had to be careful, and he had to be fast; his time here was limited. With a sigh, he closed the lid of his laptop and reached for the bowl of sugar cubes he kept by his side. Pure sugar was crude, but he needed his mind at peak awareness.
He only had one shot at this.
oXAXo
"Light Yagami."
The voice was mechanical, flat, spoken in near-perfect Japanese but with the smallest hint of an inflection that he didn't recognize. Light looked up from his book and frowned.
The man looked like he'd spent the last month on the street. His jeans were ripped and stained; he wore a nondescript white shirt that was at least three sizes too big. The clothes, however, weren't what made him look out of place. His hair was an unruly mess of black string, and his eyes were underlined with deep bags. The way he stood made Light immediately suspect him of being chair-bound; here was a man whose closest friend was probably his laptop.
If he could afford one, that was.
Light hadn't seen him in the lobby earlier, so he must have entered recently—from the elevators, probably, since those were out of his line of sight. Light's eyes narrowed. He couldn't afford proper clothing, but he could stay in this posh hotel?
"So I am," he said in acknowledgement. "I'm afraid you have me at a disadvantage, though; I don't know your name."
The man slipped his thumb into his mouth and smirked. "I think you do," he said. "My name is Ryuzaki." The smirk had a crooked tilt to it, as if he was sharing a joke with someone who wasn't here.
He didn't offer a hand to Light, instead turning on his heel and calling over his shoulder, "Follow me."
Light allowed himself his own thin smile. This Ryuzaki—if that was his real name—was just as strange as he had suspected.
Perhaps spring break wouldn't be so bad after all.