April 1990
"Misa, hold still." The irate woman gripped her daughter's chin with harsh fingernails, jerking the girl's face towards her as she licked a finger on her left hand, rubbing it sharply under the child's eye, smearing the brown eyeliner just a bit, creating a wing-tip.
The child held as still as she was able, standing on the toilet so that she would be tall enough for her mother to make-up her face. She was wearing a stiff, shimmery dress in a lavender color, which was said to bring out the green bits in her blue eyes.
Still, being only six years old, holding still was somewhat difficult. Eventually she twitched her nose and her mother hissed.
"You brat! Don't you know that you have to look perfect for church today?" the grip around her wrist tightened and Misa let out a squeak of pain, knowing without looking that the skin there was already bruising.
"Why, mama?" she finally asked as the last of the gloss was applied to her lips. But her mother didn't answer, and Misa was finally released to step off of the toilet. Hurrying to the mirror, she examined her reflection with a more critical eye than most children had for their own appearance.
My nose is still too big, she mused unhappily, and my skin is a little blotchy, but daddy said that that would go away when I get older…
She wasn't too pleased with the heavy makeup her mother had applied to her face; it made her look clownish, but she knew it wasn't wise to comment on this, and instead held still as her mother buckled shoes to her tiny feet.
"Heels, mama?" Misa had worn heels before; though they were rarely made in such a small size, the Amane's had had them specially created. "Misa must be the most beautiful," was what her parents both agreed on, and Misa, craving their attention, had gone along with it. She knew they wanted her to be beautiful; that meant that they loved her a lot, right?
Her father was there a second later, lifting the tiny girl in the fold of one meaty arm. There was no way they would let Misa walk to church today; she'd get her shoes dirty. Still, even as they exited the house into the warm spring breeze and began their brisk walk towards church, Misa was not happy.
Her father's grip around her middle was tight, too tight, as if he were holding her in a vice. Although Misa was very small for her age—unhealthily small—she was still a six-year-old, and as such her father quickly grew wary of holding her this way. She felt sweaty, and she sighed loudly.
Her mother glared at her. "Don't sigh, Misa! We are going to introduce you to the top agency owner in this part of Japan, Mr. Kinashita Yoshikazu, and it would be in your best interest to impress him."
Misa was surprised. She had done some modeling before—in television commercials and such, but had never actually been to an agency. And, of course, as her parents encouraged (or rather, insisted that she study modeling), of course she had heard of Kinashita. She instantly began feeling nervous, a bead of sweat dripping down the back of her neck.
"Mama," she asked timidly, trying not to bite her lip (her mother said it was a terrible habit that would eat away any lipstick she wore), "how do you know we're going to meet him?"
But Misa knew; of course she knew. Her mother's manipulations and connections… Misa had seen it all before. And as they walked into a church building she had never seen before or been into in her life, watching her mother fake an expression of reverence and piety, and as she was set down on her own feet to walk quietly on the soft carpeted floors, she felt nauseous.
It didn't take long to find him.
Dressed impeccably in a suit and tie, the professional-looking but alarmingly thin man grinned at her, sweeping her off her feet with a bark of loud laughter.
"There she is. There's the girl. I looked at the pictures and thought to myself, 'no six-year-old looks that childish and yet so adult at the same time, but clearly I was wrong!"
Misa found herself shaking slightly in his grip, though she knew better to fight away or to complain. Her parents beamed at the man as he escorted them to a pew in the center of the room, still carrying Misa. She tried to quell her own nausea and nervousness. She hadn't even spoken to the man and he was already treating her as if he owned her.
"You have a beautiful daughter, Mr. and Mrs. Amane," the man complimented. "Absolutely lovely. I can see it now; sundresses, hats, and parasols for magazines like Today. Lingerie and lipstick for other magazines, like The Evening Gentleman."
Mr. Amane's smile froze on his face a bit. "L-lingerie, you say, sir?" he asked hesitatingly. "Misa is only six years old; I don't think—"
Mrs. Amane cut her husband off smoothly. "You know best, Mr. Kinashita!" she giggled. "I'm sure we can work something out for the right price."
The man laughed heartily, sounding disconcertingly like Santa Claus in April. "Of course we can; of course we can! With the right price, I always say, everybody's fantasies can come true!" he pinched Misa's face roughly in his fingers. "Hmm. From close up, she's not as pretty as she is in the pictures, eh? But no matter; no matter! We'll get her looking as beautiful as a peach!"
Both her parents nodded, dollar signs in their eyes, grins taking up their entire faces.
"We'll call her Misa-Misa!"
~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~
June 2004
What appeared to be a four-foot high pile of dirty blue-and-green clothing with two legs sprouting out of the bottom of the stack shuffled its way through the crowded hallways of Wammy's House.
"Hey, Mells! Don't forget! That shirt is "delicate cycle only," the mocking voice of Chen rang from the crowd.
The laundry made a sound that could be interpreted for a growl. It stopped for a moment and the boisterous look on Chen's face fazed into one of fear, as if he was afraid the muddy socks at the top of the bundle would launch themselves from the stack and wrap their way around his throat.
They didn't, and after a threatening moment or two passed, the leggy bundle of fabric continued on its journey to the basement.
Mello hadn't meant to start the food fight—well, it was more like a food riot—in the cafeteria yesterday during lunch. He had only intended to fling some good-natured vanilla pudding at Matt's head with a plastic spoon. It was vanilla, anyway; why would anyone have wanted to eat it? How was he supposed to know that Matt wasn't as engrossed in his game as he seemed, and had the good sense to duck before the goo managed to strike him in the face?
Clearly, Vex (the muscular girl who happened to have been seated behind Matt when this seemingly harmless event occurred) did not appreciate the subtle humor of having cold, slimy pudding slide wetly down the nape of her neck.
By the time a hysterical Aqua had dragged Roger from his office, the cafeteria was barely recognizable.
"Who is responsible for this?" the old man had boomed, outraged. With a little struggle and a lot of grunting, Mello pushed his way up to the top of the stack of bodies that pinned him to the floor. With what looked like smashed peas dripping from his eyebrows and what could have been gravy smearing the entire left side of his face, he had slid his legs painfully out from underneath Vex.
"Mello did it, sir!" Vex was clearly livid.
Roger rolled his eyes heavenward and stooped to drag the fourteen-year-old boy to his feet.
"Come with me," was all he said.
And so now Mello was tasked with the Cruelest Punishment Roger had Ever Given (or so he called it; Matt had suggested that he was being melodramatic.); Mello had to wash every single stain out of each piece of clothing people had been wearing during the fight. It had been two days now and he wasn't even halfway finished!
Grumbling to himself, he dropped the pile onto the floor, moving to one of the many washing machines that dominated the otherwise nearly-empty room. It took quite a bit of strength to heft the mass of damp, heavy clothes to the nearest dryer, but he managed it.
He went to the other set of machines and repeated the process. But when he had gotten to the third and reached inside, the only thing his fist closed on was a skinny ankle.
"Gyaah!" the blonde screamed, dropping the wad of wet black clothes to the floor. "Shit! Near, what are you doing in there?"
Two black eyes blinked as the light from the room filled the dryer, and the small boy curled inside stifled a yawn.
"Hello," Near said, a pleasant lilt to his usually robotic tone. Then, slightly more irritated-sounding, "you didn't have to wake me up, you know."
Mello gaped at the younger boy for a minute, his mouth opening and closing as he tried to find words for this situation.
"Near. You're in the dryer, on top of a bunch of clothes that I just cleaned, and you've been sleeping?"
The boy shrugged his shoulders. "I like it in here. It's warm and dark and it smells nice."
"It smells "nice" because I just washed all those clothes, you idiot!" Mello's voice was rising, both in pitch and in volume. He was so incredulous that he forgot to be cool.
Near winced, covering his ears. "Don't shout." It was possible that it was because he had just woken up, but Near distinctly seemed to be… pouting, something Mello had never seen before. "I'm in a metal box. When you shout it just echoes."
Mello could take no more of this strangeness. Grabbing both ankles this time, he yanked backwards until the twelve-year-old slid from the machine and onto the pile of wet clothes with a loud squelch. Near winced and rubbed at his backside, looking up at Mello with his dark, unreadable eyes.
"Ouch." , was all he said.
"Great," Mello seethed, eyeing the wet clothes which seemed to be attracting dust bunnies and lint from the floor like a magnet. "Now I'm gonna have to wash these again."
Near frowned thoughtfully as he lifted a black dress out from underneath him, and he brushed some of the lint off the front.
"I can help you."
Wordlessly, the boy (though he had to stand on his tiptoes to do so) began placing the soiled black clothes back into the washing machine before measuring out the correct amount of soap to pour over the top.
Mello gaped at Near for a few more seconds, then shrugged. If the little freak wanted to help, who was Mello to stop him?
Mello returned to the blue clothes he had carried in earlier and, with a large container of stain remover, began the long and laborious process of cleaning every spot from the food-caked fabric. After what felt like hours, his back straining from being so hunched over, he finally finished.
When he stood and glanced around, cracking his spine with relief, he was astonished to see every washing machine and dryer lumbering away doing their duty, and a pile of neatly-folded clean clothes in the center of the floor. Near, who sat kneeling in the midst of the pile, was stacking the clothes around him as if creating some type of fortress. Mello was reminded of when they had been very young and L had taught them to make fortresses in the snow; it appeared that Near had perfected and even improved upon the fortress design.
At noticing Mello's attention on him, Near looked up with a strange smile on his lips. "It seems as if I have gotten a lot of work done," he commented, his voice back to its normal, emotionless tone. "The two of us seem to work very well as a team."
A thousand responses flitted through Mello's brain, but, feeling somewhat grudgingly grateful, he settled on the least rude.
"Yeah, whatever."
~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~,~
Howdy! DBL here! I'm starting to get burned out on this story, but I really don't want to let it drop. If anybody has any fresh ideas—things they want to see characters doing, for example—please make suggestions! I want to see this story through to the very end, but I'm beginning to run out of ideas! No character in DN is off-limits, so if you want to see a character show up, make suggestions! :)
