Finals are over! I'll be out of town for the weekend, so updates are coming early this week but will be back to normal next week.

This chapter is a bit shorter than usual, but it's also a bit of a breather before what I anticipate to be a much heavier chapter.

Weeks passed. Light and Hideki were still absent from class all of September, and I wondered how they were going to pass any of their classes. Sayu and Sachiko still claimed that Light was working with his father, though they sounded less certain than before, and began indirectly asking if I might have heard otherwise, to which I responded in the negative.

Talk about Kira began to die out and his cult was much less vocal, as criminals stopped dying altogether and company CEOs began to have heart attacks instead. Some felt betrayed, fearing their savior had abandoned them. Some claimed that it had to be somebody else, that there had to be an imposter and that Kira must be in hiding, waiting for the fake to be outed.

With this shift, my own uncertainties evaporated; I did not support this Kira, nor did I need to consider my stance. This was just another criminal killing out of greed, someone who would benefit from the deaths. Rather than consider the philosophy behind it, I focused only on the surface and how that affected Light and Hideki. They were doubtlessly involved in the Kira investigation, and though I didn't know the details, I had the possibilities narrowed down. Adding to the equation Hideki's meticulous, if eccentric, way of doing things, I also considered that Light had been more or less handcuffed to Hideki, which I couldn't imagine would be anything other than a precaution for safety.

The conclusion I eventually drew was that Hideki didn't trust Light, which made sense when I thought about their earlier interactions through that lens. What I wasn't sure of was what reasons he had for doubting him, though I was running out of room to postulate and was ending up closer and closer to what I didn't want to think about; that Light was a suspect in the Kira investigation.

I don't know why the thought bothered me so much. Of course I didn't want to believe that a close friend could be a mass murderer, but ignoring certain aspects of the situation wouldn't make it go away; it would only leave me ignorant. So I told myself that I had to leave that open as a possibility.

But why would Kira be working on an investigation team devoted to catching him? Probably because it would dissuade suspicion and maybe even hinder law enforcement. If a killer didn't want to be caught, where better to hide than among those who are looking for him? The more I thought about it, the worse I felt and the harder it was for me to deny the possibility. Light was a genius, of course. I'd known that since I first met him. If I had to pick someone I knew as possible candidate, then he would be the first person I thought of.

My unease persisted all throughout September and intensified in October when I got another call from Soichirou, who told me that Light had requested to see me one more time.

Just like the last time I had visited, I was blindfolded and disoriented by the many turns taken on the way to the investigation headquarters. The next time I could see, I was in the same room as my previous visit, and Light, Hideki and Misa were present.

"Hi," I said with a slight wave. "Good to see everyone again." I took the same seat on the couch as last time.

"Would you be willing to submit to a personality test?" Hideki asked rather suddenly.

"I guess so," I said, "But why?"

"Just for fun. They took it earlier."

"It was actually kind of fun," Misa said, looking up from the fashion magazine she was flipping through. "Mine said that I'm the kind of person people admire, and that people wish they were more like me!"

Light gave no indication that he had either way, though he looked uneasy and stared at me intently. There was a tense silence.

"How long will it take?" I asked.

"Not long. You just answer a series of questions."

I couldn't figure out what exactly Light was trying to tell me, and I didn't see the harm in taking the test. I didn't have anything to hide. "Sure," I said.

Pleased with my answer, Hideki leaned forward a bit and reached out towards the pen and paper in front of him on the desk. "First question," he began, "What time of day would you say you're at your best?"

"Probably the afternoon."

He wrote something down. "Alright. Next; what are your favorite colors?"

Almost all of the questions were like this in the beginning; incredibly general and lacking apparent relevance to anything I could think of. I'd wondered if it had something to do with the investigation, but I couldn't see what kinds of conclusions Hideki could draw from the information I gave him. Light continued to watch our exchange silently.

"Here's a hypothetical situation," Hideki said, "You're concentrating very hard on something—let's say you're studying—when someone comes in an interrupts you. Would you be receptive to a break, or would you find yourself irritated at whomever had interrupted you?"

This didn't seem like a complicated question, but it had more depth to it than some of the previous ones. I answered honestly. "It depends, really. I can see myself going either way."

Hideki recorded the answer and pressed on, and gradually, the questions became more complicated, though I could still see what was really being asked. How do you make difficult decisions? What are your morals? How do you handle authority figures? It went on for at least ten minutes and Hideki went through several pages writing down what I said before he finally stopped.

"We're done," he said, staring down at the paper, and I nodded.

"So what are my results?"

He read over whatever he had written once. "You're careful," he began, "And practical. Your peers likely see you as gifted or talented, though you're modest. You're not the type to make friends quickly or easily, but you are very loyal."

He looked up then and I froze. His eyes were the same as when I'd first seen him at the entrance ceremony; searching and suspicious.

"You know how to plan ahead. You never act on impulse and prefer to consider your next move for days, maybe weeks or months in advance, which takes a degree of patience. You have a docile nature and are not apt to violence of any physical sort, though with the appropriate preparation, you are more than capable of psychologically disabling an opponent. You also have a preference to keep things to yourself and generally play your cards close to your chest, with the exception of close confidants, of which you likely have very few. And, perhaps most importantly, you are completely compliant with societal norms and the concepts of crime and punishment."

"Okay," I said uneasily, "That sounds pretty good."

"It is," Hideki agreed, "Of course, you're almost an exact match for Kira's psychological profile."

I figured that was the inevitable direction that he was going with the test. "Kira is killing people," I argued, "How does that not constitute physical violence?"

"Kira is killing people remotely through heart attacks, and we don't know how yet," he corrected, "While physical violence of some sort probably shouldn't be ruled out completely, it's something we have yet to fully understand. You're a match on every other point, regardless."

"So what? Are you just testing everyone and seeing who matches?"

"I am not saying that you are Kira," he said, "I am saying that you are very similar to the kind of person that Kira is." He paused. "Your answers were quite similar to Light's, actually."

I was certain then, when I looked across the table to Light, that he was a suspect. "Does this help you with the investigation somehow?" I asked.

"It might in the future," he said with a shrug, "But you can relax. I've been compiling a much more comprehensive psychological profile of you throughout our philosophical debates, and I can say with almost one hundred percent certainty that you are not Kira."

"Almost?" I repeated incredulously.

"Yes. I thought initially that you might be the type to be taken in by the cult phenomenon, though the reality is much more complicated than that. I don't doubt that you would be susceptible, given the appropriate circumstances, but…." He trails off. "Perhaps that's all I should say."

"Ryuuga, you're freaking her out," Light said with a laugh, and then looked to me. "Don't worry, he doesn't actually suspect you."

But there was so much that wasn't being said hanging in the air between the three of us; Light's eyes still held some kind of message for me that I couldn't decode, and Hideki glanced between the two of us. "I'm sorry," he said slowly, "Light is correct. I don't suspect you." His tone of voice didn't leave me convinced.

I stayed much later than my previous visit and didn't realize it until Misa announced that she had to get some sleep early for a commercial shoot in the morning and shooed us out into the hallway, but not before Hideki had her call for Soichirou to walk me out and take me home. "I didn't even notice it was so late," I said, "It was good to see you again. I hope I see you both on campus sometime soon."

"Me, too," Light said, "I miss you."

I must have looked surprised because he offered a small smile. He misses me in a strictly platonic sense, I reminded myself, even if that's not what I hear.

But then he glanced over his shoulder at Hideki, who stood at arm's length staring at the wall in disinterest, and he came a little closer. I retreated a step to avoid crowding him but he came forward. "Light?" I asked.

"Would it be okay," he said, keeping his voice low, "If I gave you a hug before you left?"

I eyed Hideki over his shoulder, who was still not paying attention to us. His tone was quiet and secretive, and he had that playful smile on his face that he did when he had the advantage in debate. "I wouldn't mind," I said quietly. There was nothing wrong with a hug, was there? We weren't doing anything wrong, yet I felt guilty for some reason.

But when Light wrapped his arms around me and pulled me against his chest, resting his head on mine, I wasn't sure I could call it platonic anymore. I was not a physical person, and neither was he, but I doubted this was the kind of hug that one gave their friends. My heart beat a little faster and my face felt hot. Light didn't let go.

"There are things I want to tell you," he whispered, "But not right now."

"Light," I said, but didn't know how to continue, so I gave up on speaking and relaxed against his chest. Light's heartbeat was quick, too.

The ringing announcing the arrival of an elevator down the hall echoed around us and Light pulled away, and I stared up at him with a million questions in my eyes as Soichirou came towards us. "Ready to go?" he asked.

"Yeah," I said, but I glanced back over my shoulder once. Light nodded to me, an unspoken promise there, but I didn't know what he was promising.

I had trouble sleeping that night, kept up by mounting confusion and worry. What reason did Hideki have to suspect me of being Kira other than a psychological profile? What reason did he have to suspect Light, for that reason? And most importantly, what was going on with Light? I still remembered how warm it felt to be held by him and it made my chest ache. Love is real, I realized, it's real and it's painful.

The guilt, however, of somehow going behind Misa's back, had slipped my mind altogether. While there were no immediate repercussions for this, it's important when I reflect on it; one part of Kira's psychological profile that I was not aware of that day was his complete lack of remorse.