A/N This one is completely mad but I had so much fun writing it. Also the fastest chapter I've ever written, I think, because I wrote it in one sitting, but the quality probably reflects that. As a disclaimer, I stole a lot of lines from the canon but I've been doing that all the way through so there you go.


Chapter 28

And Here's A List Of Who I Slew


"Well, I'm glad that it wasn't a racially motivated crime."

"No matter what the reason was, it was still murder," I tell her. I don't know what she's talking about.

"Yes, but at least it wasn't racially motivated. It's so much harder to stomach," she says, lifting a fork to her mouth.

A string quartet is playing some repetitive tune as a soundtrack to fill the silences. I don't notice immediately, but the whole room and everyone in it is in black and white. I look at my hand on the tablecloth and it too is like it's from an old film, because grainy crackles flicker over everything I see. The only thing with any colour is a man sitting at the bar who draws my attention immediately because of how he stands out against everything and everyone else. Even from here I recognise the suit.

"Dior."

Kiyomi turns to me with her mouth full and pursed shut from ground-in manners. "Hmmm?"

"Nothing," I say, and she shrugs her shoulders as she continues eating, staring into the distance as she chews in boredom. We're sitting close enough to the bar that the sound carries over to me, and I watch L struggle to be noticed, holding out money in front of him as bartender after bartender walk past him.

"Hi. Could you... Excuse me, I'd like a... Why are they ignoring me? I am here, aren't I? They should pay attention to me and get me a fucking drink when I want one."

"They're busy," Mihael mutters next to him. "Anyway, back to my story. So I said: 'I don't care who you are, I'm going to kick your teeth in.' And he pulled a gun on me, the big pansy."

"Please stop it. I don't like this story. It's too violent for this time of day and I don't think it's going to have a satisfying conclusion because he obviously didn't shoot you."

"I just laughed and said that I don't mind being shot. I've been shot at before and it'd be worth it once I kick his teeth down the back of his throat."

"Mihael, your voice hurts me."

"So I twisted his arm around his back and popped his shoulder. He screamed like a baby. Then I -"

'RIGHT! That's enough. I'm emotionally a bit fraught right now, so stop with the dick comparison story or you'll make me angry, because I normally bypass being upset and go straight to angry," L tells him, pinching the bridge of his nose. As another bartender approaches him, he frantically waves his money at him, but he just walks right past too. "Hey. Hey!" L shouts after him. "I want a drink! You! Hello?"

After a moment of consternation at being ignored, he picks up a blue glass ashtray and smashes it onto the surface of the bar. The sound of the chunks of broken glass cuts through the quartet's dirge for a moment, but doesn't stop them.

"You just broke an ashtray," Mihael points out while chewing on some peanuts and lazily lolling on the bar. "Why did you break an ashtray?"

"I want to be served," L replies.

"And they're going to serve you now that you've broken an ashtray?"

"That's the plan. I want a quiet drink on my lunch break," he says, reaching a new peak of agitation as he speaks. "I want the lunches that other people have, in parks by a stream and someone making me cocktails and taking the seeds out of grapes for me while some strapping young men in very few clothes float along in gondolas nearby. It's not much to ask for. I think it's my right and I've worked fucking hard for the privilege. Instead, I'm here with you and no one will get me a drink even when I'm waving money in their faces. Where are we anyway? This place is shit."

"You wanted to perv on the Prime Minister."

"I didn't. How dare you slander me like that. I'll sue you. I'll fire you and then I'll sue you."

The typical L and Mihael interactions are as boring as they always are, and I can't help but think that there's something more important I have to do, but at the moment this is where I am and I'll stay here. I'm sure it couldn't have been that important.

As it turns out, L's unusual plan of breaking things to get attention seems to have paid off, because he now has the full attention of the manager (he has a suit and a badge, so he must be the manager), who approaches him hesitantly. "Excuse me, are you alright?"

"Oh, hello. Yes, I'd like something with Tia Maria in it."

"You broke an ashtray, sir. You'll have to pay for it."

"Why? It was an accident."

"You broke it on purpose, sir. I saw you," he's told. Oh, the poor bastard should just give up now. L's going to end up sending him to an institution.

"Are you accusing me of wilful and malicious destruction of private property?" L asks him.

"Err…"

"Because I don't think that that covers disposable and gratis products you obtain as promotional items for the convenience of your customers. No, I don't think it's covered by any section of the law. Unless you're suggesting that I destroyed it with the intent of using it to cause actual bodily harm, that is, which you could define as an act of terrorism."

"I never said that."

"Excuse me," I say to Kiyomi, who doesn't seem to notice or care anyway, and leave the table to watch the brewing disaster at the bar from a better position. As I near them, L's in full flow.

"But that's how it's defined by the law and you're saying that I want to cause injury to the public using this ashtray that happened to break while I was sitting here minding my own business and trying to order a drink but being ignored by you and your rude and useless staff."

"I'm not suggesting that you wanted to hurt anyone. I'm sorry that you had to wait but we're very busy at the moment."

"I told him that," Mihael chirps in.

"But you're still accusing me of a crime," L continues, ignoring Mihael.

"No, but you broke an ashtray," the manager says.

"I'll tell you how this will go. If the value of the property so destroyed or damaged is not alleged to exceed some non-applicable figure I can't remember anyway, the punishment is a fine of three times the value of the damage to such property, or by imprisonment for not more than two and a half months; provided, however, that where a fine is levied pursuant to the value of the property destroyed, the court shall, after conviction, conduct an evidentiary hearing to ascertain the value of the property so destroyed. I don't appreciate being accused of such a thing. As a defendant, I have the legal right to gather reliable witnesses in my defence," he says, and finally sees that I'm standing behind him, which he somehow turns into something to help his argument. "Oh! Look, the Prime Minister. And there!" he points towards Mihael, who looks up from his bowl of peanuts with puffed out cheeks. "A prominent member of the Japanese government's press relations, if you can believe that. May I rely on your testimony should this matter go to court, gentlemen?" he asks us.

"There's no need for that," the manager starts blustering as he bows to me. Oh, stop it.

"So you're not going to try to press charges? Personally, I'd warn you against it. Courts don't like having their time wasted and neither do I."

"I just think that you should pay for the damage. Sorry."

"You should be sorry. I'm not responsible for any damage. Also, you have to prove that this ex-ashtray was actually your property and that you have been financially injured by it's departure into ashtray heaven. Can you prove that?"

"But -"

"How much do you want? Will this cover it?" I ask, taking out my wallet and a few notes, but L pulls them out of my hand like I'm a cash dispenser and puts them into his pocket.

"Light, you are not giving this bastard any money, but we'll use that to buy another round at another bar at another time, so thank you. Well, whoever-you-are, call the police with your evidence: a broken ashtray. I don't think that they like having their time wasted either, but maybe they like having their lunch breaks interrupted and they're probably at a loss for things to do anyway, so go on. Before you do though, I need to tell you something: have you heard of the firm Lawliet & Co.?"

"I don't really know about law firms," the man says.

"Oh, of course, you work in a bar, what am I thinking? Lawliet & Co. advertise in all the papers. There are three billboards in Tokyo and there are commercials during the Friday 9:30pm slot on SakuraTV in the middle of that terrible, wholly inaccurate law drama which I admit to watching occasionally because it makes me simultaneously want to kill the cast and crew, myself, laugh, and throw my stereo at the screen. Those kinds of emotions are hard to come by. It just makes me feel alive, you know?

"Uh. Yeah."

"So you've seen the ads?"

"No."

"No? Ok, full page spread towards the sport section on Sundays? The advert with the woman tripping over a shih tzu because of an irresponsible dog owner letting it wander around, shitting everywhere?"

"Oh! Yeah! I know that one, it's funny!"

"Yes, isn't it? You should see the commercial though, because that's really funny. The woman actually trips over the dog and lands in the shit."

"No!"

"Yes!" L laughs. In fact, they both laugh for about ten seconds. It's quite disarming until L's laugh trails off to intense seriousness. "Haaaa... I'm the Lawliet in Lawliet & Co."

"Oh."

"Mmmmm…" L smiles at him. The manager bows several times in succession like he's a wind-up toy, and that, I suppose, is the end of that.

"I'm sorry to bother you, Lawliet-san," he says.

"That's no problem at all. If you could get this broken glass cleared up, that would be nice, because at the moment it's causing a public hazard and I could sue you. And keep your eyes out for our new advert. The next one is going to be about a suspected murder and my law firm proves to the jury that the dog did it." he says. The man bows again and leaves, completely emasculated. I don't think I've seen something as glorious as L is right now, the arrogant, cavernous cunt. He turns to me and I bite my lip from the lack of having his wrapped around my cock. "Was that attractive at all?" he asks. Are you fucking kidding me?

"You've done better," I say coolly, and his eyes flash with annoyance before he turns back to the bar.

"Why am I asking you? You only find your own reflection attractive. Mihael?"

"Comme ci, comme ça," he replies, letting his hand float from side to side in mid-air.

"Don't speak French to me, boy, I'll fuck you up. Ah, failure has such a bitter taste. Well, I didn't have much to work with," he sighs. Then, catching sight of the manager again, now holding a dustpan and brush, he shouts at him. "Hey!"

"Y... Yes, sir?"

"We'll have a bottle of wine too. House red, whatever that is."

"Of course, sir."

"And I don't expect to see a bill."

"No, sir," the cretin agrees, scuttling off. L is smiling at me and looking even more pleased with himself. Oh, fuck me.

"Better?" he asks. He acts the way I wish I could act. And I did once, before the responsibility and boredom set in. Now, with the ordinary citizen, I'm as well behaved as a guide dog for the blind.

"I can't approve of your behaviour in public," I mumble. Some underling sweeps away the broken glass from the bar while desperately trying to be inconspicuous. We ignore him without much trouble.

"Honestly, Light, I don't believe that that wasn't attractive. I'm amazed that you haven't forced me into the toilets already. I was the one saying it and even I'm impressed. Mihael, piss off for a minute or ten," he says, never taking his eyes off me. Mihael sighs, untangles his legs from the rests of the barstool and leaves with his bowl of peanuts so I can take his place while L holds court.

"Well, hello," L greets me belatedly. There's something brazen and lascivious in the way we're looking at each other, but I couldn't care less at the moment. I'm filled with the sense that I've been reunited with a part of me that's been lost for so long that I forgot that it was missing. I want to fuck him into the ground and break all his bones, have a breather and an energy drink, and then do it all over again, put it that way. You don't want to know what's in my head right now. "Small world."

"You knew I'd be here."

"I didn't, actually. It was an informed guess."

"You look really..." I say breathlessly. He looks ok, I'll give him that, but I'm actually imagining him spread-eagled on a rack and me standing there ready to crank the lever like a captain on the deck of a tall ship.

"I know. Depression must suit me," he says dreamily, but sounding tired by my infatuation. His drink arrives, followed by a bottle of wine as a chaser, and he stares into the mirror opposite us.

"Are you on the pull?" I ask, making him snort into his drink. "You've pulled."

"That's the best offer I've had all day from a married man. So, out with the wife for lunch then? How cosy."

"What are you doing this afternoon?"

"I'm very busy."

"Are you?"

"I could be persuaded otherwise," he leers, then he turns in his seat suddenly as if to tell me something very important. I'm expecting a proposition, or for him to tell me how good looking I am and that he loves me because my looks contradict the horror inside, but he doesn't. "Light, have you ever thought that every orifice looks like an exit wound from a high-velocity bullet?"

Ok.

"Can't say that I have," I laugh, and he looks very disappointed when he turns back to the bar.

"Oh well," he sighs before he drinks from his glass. I can smell the alcohol and coffee, but I am practically sitting on him by now. I notice a smear of red on the glass and then see the origin: a small cut on his finger. Fuck, I love it when he bleeds. It's proof that he's real and that he's human, because sometimes I wonder if he's just something I made up. No one could be as perfect as he is.

"You cut your finger," I say, taking the glass from his hand. He looks at the small red slice on his fingertip with barely any interest, but I see only cut rubies and droplets. The colour is so intense in the greyness around me, it's beautiful.

"So I did. Can't think how that happened," he smirks at me, and I grasp his hand to guide his gory finger into my mouth until my tongue is alive with the sweet iron taste of it. He opens his mouth as his knuckle bumps over my teeth, and then I realise that maybe this isn't something I can easily explain to anyone who might see me sucking my PR's finger, so I let him go reluctantly.

"Silly boy," he whispers. "You shouldn't have done that."

I'm in so much trouble now. Why did I do that? He slides off his barstool and moves towards me like some kind of slinking carnivore. He always wears the same expression just before he kisses me or punches me in the face. It's strange not ever knowing which I'm going to be treated to and not really having a preference, but I'm becoming so used to it and us that anything else feels as sterile as a bucket of bleach. It's still an expression of feeling, isn't it? He's the only person who isn't impressed by what I am, but I'm rewarded or punished for the things I do and say, and sometimes I act a certain way just to get a reaction, like his attention makes me real.

I close my eyes to ready myself for whatever comes, and he kisses me until I'm half-pressed against the edge of the bar. The taste of his coppery blood dilutes and is drawn back its source, and I don't care who sees. I hope that they do notice and evaluate their own existence, because no one is truly alive except us when we're together. My hands smooth across his shoulders until I find the centre back seam, overlocked, pressed flat and trapped against the lining. I want to take this fucking jacket off and inspect this dreamlike thing.

"Light? Light, what are you doing? We're leaving now."

What does it look like I'm doing, you stupid bitch? Sometimes you act so brainless it makes me feel almost guilty for taking advantage of you, and if I could send you back to your pathetic family, I would, and you could take Kira with you. In fact, I might do that, I'm going to do that. I'll make a fool out of you. People will laugh at you and your lipstick and your legs because I'll leave you for a man with no lipstick and better legs and what does that say about you? You turned me gay, that's what it says. That's gotta sting. I only married you because you were convenient, don't start saying you love me now, am I supposed to have a reaction to that which doesn't involve hanging myself? You're so easy to fool, I just laughed at you the whole time and sometimes I dream of roasting you on a massive barbecue. I only sleep with you because I feel sorry for you and to get you off my fucking back. You're like every woman I've ever known only I think you're different but you're just as greedy and self-obsessed as the rest of them, you're just like my mother, you live through me and you can stick your feminism up your arse, I mean, fuck, you come out with some shit. I'm more intelligent than you, I'm more intelligent than anyone, don't even try. There's nothing attractive about you, you're worthless. I care more about my weekly hair conditioning masque than I do about you, and one day I'll tell you but not now because I'm busy, look at this, get out of my face.

I open my eyes to glare at her while my mouth moves against L's, and I'm being watched not only by her, but my parents, Sayu, Touta, Mikami, Naomi, Raye, B, Stephen - practically everyone I've known on an informal basis, whether I wanted to know them or not. They don't look shocked or at all surprised, just eager to leave, but I'll leave when I'm ready. My leg hooks around L's thigh as I balance on the stool and my hand plunges into his chest; his ribcage opens for me and closes around my arm after I get a good hold of his heart. It's everything I ever wanted. God, it's beating like a trapped bird, I think I'll give it a squeeze. Yes, we're leaving now.

When I close my eyes again, I feel myself being jettisoned like the world has just disappeared and I'm left floating in space. At some point, I must lose L because I can't feel him anymore, and at that moment I open my eyes again to find that I've been transferred from the bar to sitting on a cheap, blue, fold-out chair on an airport runway in front of airline staff and the faceless press in a military line. Everything's in colour now, everything's too bright, but I adjust to it, because there isn't another option apart from curling up and keeping my eyes shut until the night comes. Directly in front of me a speaker I'm not listening to is thanking me for 'taking time out of my busy schedule and coming all the way to share this great moment with her and her staff, but this is a great moment for Tokyo,' etc. It's the opening of a new airport and one seems to open every week, so it's not that great a moment, but I think that I must look very majestic with a state of the art plane and pride of the fleet behind me as a backdrop. Between you and me, this airport is a disaster waiting to happen because the ridiculously short runway looks like it'll make planes into speeding bullets aiming straight towards a sheer drop, a main road and a petrol station, but that sort of thing isn't my concern. I'll just have a speech prepared for when the inevitable disaster occurs.

It's very hot and heavy (the air, that is), and while the woman rambles on, I lean my head back to face the midday sun because I have the strangest feeling that I've just been fucked, though I can't remember it. My mind revolves around sex these days, so this must be what it feels like to be a normal person. I close my eyes for a moment as a blast of air and sound from a plane passing over helps me blank the woman's voice out. I must look very happy to be here and very happy with life. I'm not, of course, but L's sitting next to me like my number one concubine in his suit, and things could be worse. He's my PR and this is very important, PR-wise. I look at him and he looks at me and the woman tells us about how this airport is unique in its devotion to avoiding something to do with climate change and how the newly developed, safe as houses economic engines will spare precious natural resources and lower airfares as a result. It's impossible for this plane to crash, apparently. It's the 'Titanic', and we all now how that turned out. It doesn't matter though because it's the prices of the tickets which people will be interested in. Anything else is just incidental.

I think of L smiling at me like this a couple of hours or days or weeks ago in exactly the same way as he is now - like a dangerously friendly SS officer who might fuck me and shoot me in the head - and I practically fluttered in the moments of heart failure as I imagined myself through his eyes, bronze and bare and prize-winning as his fingers drew a line over the ridges of my spine. People clap in appreciation as a plane speeds along a parallel runway. I see it glide behind L and the force from the engines makes loose, untamed tendrils of his hair fall messily against his forehead and cheeks and make his eyes seem even more piercing, like two telescopes which are trained on another galaxy. "I love you. I hate you," I tell him, and his smile widens, parting his lips. I want nothing more than to suffocate him with my tongue.

But there's a catastrophic crashing sound. It must be that plane. Instinctively, I close my eyes and cover my head until it's quiet and feels safe enough to view the carnage.

L's no longer beside me, I'm not on a runway or in a bar - I'm sitting naked on the edge of the bed in L's bedroom with a dead girl splayed out next to me. I'm not even surprised anymore; that kind of reaction left me a long time ago. Her arm hangs over the bed and blood drips down it and from the tip of her finger onto a pool of coagulated gore on the carpet. I can hear my voice as though I'm shouting back to myself from far away, telling me to wake up, but I don't know what I'm talking about. My legs and forearms are sticky with drying blood and I have to figure out what to do. I don't have much time to consider it though, because L walks in, so I pull the sheet over the dead body because I'm not sure how to explain it yet. She was there when I got here.

"Are you ready?" he asks. He's paying no attention to me anyway. He looks like he's on a searching mission, rooting through a stack of ongoing law files of a spectrum of corporate monotone. I just happened to be in the room.

"Where are we going?"

"You're resigning today, aren't you? Come on, put some clothes on."

"L, I..."

He pulls back the sheet from the girl's face, but not enough so that I can see her, and he looks entirely unaffected.

"Well, that's one way of getting rid of your wife," he says after taking in a bored breath of air, then he drapes the sheet back over her again like she's simply an old sofa under a dust cover. The white cotton ripples over her like sand. "We'll deal with that when we get back. Have a shower, quickly. You've got blood all over you."

He pulls me up to stand and my vision is shaking as he leans towards me, calm and heavy lidded. If I didn't have this face and these arms and these legs and this body, he wouldn't like me so much, because what else is there to like when I'm just an empty box? Sometimes I feel like there's a space vacuum in the intense darkness where my heart should be. The sound of bending metal cuts through the silence like a groaning from some dying beast, and blood drips from my jaw as L dips and curls slowly to lick the side of my face.

"I didn't mean to kill her," I confess. He nods sympathetically but I can tell that he's in a hurry and he'll do and say the most appeasing thing in order to make me hurry too.

"I know. She was in your way and she should have known better. Don't worry about it."

"She loved me."

"Everyone loves you, Light. You can thank your face for that."

"Do you?"

"Do I what? Come on, shower and suit up," he says cheerfully, but stops for a moment of contemplation while looking at the curving form under the sheet. "Maybe we could hide her in the fold-out couch?"

Have I killed the one person I could have trusted for someone like him?

"L, taking advantage of a person's feelings is the most despicable thing someone can do."

"Worse than murder, even?" he asks, raising his eyebrows. "WELL -"

"Why am I doing this when I have all I wanted? Why are you making me do this? How have you done it?"

"You think that I'm taking advantage of your feelings and making you do this against your will?"

"I don't know."

"Maybe, Light, maybe. Small problem with your theory though: you'd have to have feelings for me to take advantage of." He smiles smugly and pulls a suit and shirt out of the wardrobe for me, laying it over what was Kiyomi's face, avoiding the blood which is seeping and spreading through the sheets.

His eyes are so matte now. I remember them once when they were alive, when things happened but they didn't affect us because we were more interested in each other. He might be breathing, but he died when I met him because I'm a terminal illness. Over the years, he's been dying slowly and I watched it happen. I watched it and I enjoyed it because it felt like a victory like no other. My life could have been so much easier. Why did I choose this?

Kira starts crying in the other room and I turn my face in the direction of it. It's a wailing cry with frayed and broken edges, like shattering glass. I stand automatically like it's a fire drill and I know what I have to do without even thinking about it. I have to hold him until he's lulled back to sleep by the slow thud of my heart and the nostalgic scent of his mother's blood, but L puts his hand on my arm.

"We haven't got time for that. Get yourself ready. We're leaving," he says, then heads out of the room, passing Watari, who's standing over Raye, dead by the door, just like the very last time I ever saw him. They both turn to stare at me, and from the corner of my eye I see Kiyomi turn her face towards me under the sheet. I hear the cracking of her neck and I want to scream, but before I do, the demon materialises in the doorway by the door.

"You did this," I say to it with difficulty, because it feels like something is tight across my chest, preventing me from even breathing. The light doesn't touch him and he looks completely flat like a projection, and he smiles at me, although I'm not sure if he's capable of any other expression. In him I see the ravenous joy of one human being killing another mindlessly.

Kira starts crying again and the pitch changes with hysteria until my ears start ringing. I think that my ears are like hanging drops from a glass chandelier and might shatter from how the cries become a crashing, crunching echo which intensifies until I can't stand it any longer and close my eyes to it.


Everything feels heavy and aching with reality when I open my eyes again, and I'm inside a car. We must have crashed, though I don't remember the crash itself and I don't know how much time has passed. It feels like hours since I was in that bar with L, and I wonder if I ever was. One side of my head feels numb, and after touching it, my hand, in vibrating double vision, is covered with blood. Each time I blink, I close my eyes for longer than I intend to. All I see is the corner of my window and the blue sky. My driver is slumped to one side in front of me and the windscreen is cracked in increasing circles around a hole like a puncture wound. What I'm seeing makes no sense to me – that I'm here, that this happened. This shouldn't happen to me.

I hear a groan beside me and turn awkwardly to find Watari, drooping in his seat. The inside of the car feels crumpled and compacted somehow, and blood burns the back of my throat. Watari's dying. Everyone around me is dead or dying and maybe I am too.

"Watari?"

"Cursed... we're cursed," he says. "It was worse waiting for it... but now that it's here..."

"Watari, tell me who killed Raye." The question comes automatically. It's the most important thing. Watari doesn't answer and I can just about slap his leg with the back of my hand from where I am, flung to the opposite side of the car. "You better not die before I'm done with you, Watari. Wake up!"

He laughs, but the laughing makes him choke and gurgle and he can barely talk. It's more of a whisper when he does speak. "You saw the man who shot Penber, but he wasn't the murderer. I know... I knew..."

"What the fuck does that mean? Tell me what you mean!"

The stupid bastard doesn't answer me, he's silent, so I strain further to see him. There's blood dripping from his open mouth onto his lapel in a long, saliva tainted string, but he's looking at me, with his head lolling on his shoulder. I start to say his name again, but he's not breathing. He's not breathing.

I thought that it'd be gratifying to see someone die in front of me, actually die right beside me. I miscalculated. I should have given Watari more of my time, but he told me enough. How was I to know that he knew anything about Penber when he never even knew where his house keys were.

While sitting in the car next to a dead man, a breeze moves through my hair, lifting and separating it like vines out of my eyes, and I've never known a peace quite what there is in this wreck of a car. Just me as the last man with only the sound of birds outside and air whistling by me. But suddenly there's a thunderous boom and a flash of brightness from the window behind Watari. I think of cameras - that people are taking photographs of me dying - but it spits and crackles and the light rises into a large torch of fire, making a silhouette of Watari. I start to panic, clenching my teeth and struggling to arch myself from how forced I've been in my seat, like the G-forces are still pressing on me like another echo, like the noises of crunching metal I can still hear.

"D... Dammit."

I unclip the seatbelt as the fumes of the fire reach me – a mix of petrol and burning rubber. The sunlight is dimmed by some artificial eclipse and the inside of the car is now dense and choking grey. Adrenalin rushes through me and I go from a dead weight to a maniac, because I don't want to die here and I won't die here. I convince myself of that, but I can see the fire spreading and the headlines in my mind's eye. And me with stretched, desperate fingers reaching out for my future, even in death. Me, charred in a black body bag the same colour as my skin. When my body is identified, I'm just tanned black leather, scorched. Parts of me are ashes. White teeth trapped and grinning with pulled back, thin lips and with just patches of bruised rosy flesh remaining to show that I was once human. Like a patchwork quilt. Like...

The door lock pops.

A glint of wet pavement shows through the slit created between the door and the frame, and I push with my shoulder, shrugging off the seatbelt which is still clinging to me like it doesn't want to let me go. With one hard shove against the door, I fall onto the ground. The damp, sharp tarmac-coated surface catches and cuts through my jacket and pulls it from me as I drag myself out of the car. But it's not the road - it's glass. It cuts into my hands and splinters slice and dig under my nails, but I don't feel it, I just know.

Dragging my legs behind me - the useless, asleep, shaking things - I think that I must look like a soldier trying to stay out of the sights of a sniper. When I'm clear from the car, I smell burning rubber and see the now thick black smoke rising over the roof. Watari's dead. His staring eyes gaze at me from inside the car, and I force myself to stand. Then I see that the red car that hit mine is on fire and that the inside of it is now completely engulfed. The car looks familiar to me, but I can't see the driver, only the dark outline of a person in the driver's seat against the flames. Again, I compare this to a warzone - it's my war. Symbolically, I think this scene I see represents my internal life and struggle, and I think it's funny how I feel so leisurely that I can indulge in thoughts like that now when I'm the only one left, surrounded by crunched and folded metal. I need to stand at a safe distance to watch this, and with every minute that passes I'll feel more alive. I might phone the emergency services, or I might just watch.

The front of my car is shredded with a gaping wound letting it's engine innards trail all over the ground around it. I'm stunned with the brutal beauty of what I see and the feeling that I survived for a very important reason. I cannot die. If I died, the universe would collapse in upon itself. Then there's movement from the passenger seat and I lunge at the door without thinking. What a stupid fucking thing to do.

"Get out!" I shout at my guard, who's dazedly looking at my driver next to him. "What are you doing? Get out!"

He starts unbuckling his seatbelt as I leave him, and the flames feel too close as I run around the car to drag the driver out. The side took an impact too, I can see that, because Watari's door is catastrophically dented like a meteor hit it. No wonder he died.

I have to pull hard on the driver's door because the metal of the wing has folded like paper around it and wedged it shut. When I open it, the blood inside looks almost cartoonishly red, but people always bleed like a pig from the head, it doesn't necessarily mean much, he's just being dramatic. But I do think that he's dead until I yank him free from the buckled wreckage - until he screams. His legs were trapped by the footwell and look as mangled as the the car does, and flail uselessly from side to side as I drag him clear. My guard hobbles over and helps me, for what use he is. I'm doing all the work here and I don't think that's fucking fair. People are so useless.

"Phone an ambulance," I tell my guard. Orders are something he can understand because he was born to follow them. I sound strangely calm, considering, but I've never understood why people shout when there's no need. I should handle this as calmly as I can and then sue the fuck out of whoever that bastard was who owned that red car. Well, his insurance company. I don't think I'll get much out of him now. If he hit me on purpose then his death is justice, if it was an accident then he should still pay me compensation.

My guard's phone light up as he dials and it's bright against the dark grey air. He collapses to a seated position on the ground next to the driver with the phone pressed to his ear while I stare at him and then my car catching fire. I could have been still in there. They'll probably say: 'If you were sitting just five millimetres to the left then you would have been out for the count and probably dead, Mr Yagami,' and I should be renewed with a new thirst for life. Kiyomi will probably start some charity for supporting women whose husbands were nearly killed in car crashes.

Watari must be catching fire now. His blood must be bubbling and boiling. Good.

A few feet away from me, at the side of the road, there's a discarded apple core speckled with ashes and dirt.


Nearly every firefighter, paramedic and police officer seems to have descended upon me, and I really don't think that all these police cars are necessary. It's food for thought, because this is such a waste of public services. As well as them, Kiyomi arrives, and the clacking sound of her heels sets her apart from all the practically-minded people here with a job to do. I watch her scan the cars and grab the arm of a firefighter to question him. Her eyes follow where his arm points and she runs towards me. She's not made for a place like this. It's as bizarre as seeing a woman in a wedding dress run across a battlefield.

It annoys me that she wraps herself around me in some kind of wrestling hold as she cries into my chest, and I feel very detached from her and this whole thing, because it's just a very realistic theme park ride now. Kiyomi holds me tighter and tighter and squeezes out every ache and pain which until now has been dormant, and my general discomfort makes me hold her away from me. Her face is shining with tears. Some people look so much better when they cry. Women especially. Some look ugly whether they're crying or not but Kiyomi looks just as I would want her to in a perfect world. She is getting beyond it now though. If she doesn't stop soon she'll have puffy eyes for days.

"Kiyomi. Kiyomi. Pull yourself together," I tell her, gently shaking her by the shoulder to make her pay attention. She wipes her eyes and sniffs onto the cuff of her sleeve.

"I'm sorry. Are you -"

"I'm fine."

"Akane saw the smoke and I knew, I just knew..."

"You're clairvoyant now? You could have given me a heads up, Kiyomi. Look at my car."

"Stop it," she says, sounding almost pained that I'm not taking her seriously. My poor Cassandra the seer foresaw the burning of Troy and no one believed her because she is a woman. "I knew it was a bomb, I knew it would happen-"

"No, a car hit us. That one. I could have been killed by a fucking Honda Accord saloon of all things." How do I know what car it was? I hardly saw it before the crash, but now I recognise it?

"It wasn't a bomb?"

"No, there wasn't a bomb. Where's Kira?"

"He's with Akane."

"You shouldn't have come here, Kiyomi. Go back to the Kantei," I tell her. She smiles and I know that she won't leave until I do, and I want to find out whose estate I'm suing.

"Oh, Light, your hands," she says quietly and starts crying again at the sight of them. She puts her arms around my neck and I examine my raw and bloodied palms over her shoulder, and the small glass shards shining and standing proud of the skin. Some paramedic looked at them but seemed more concerned with shining a light in my eyes and asking me where it hurt. Nowhere. Everywhere. I feel nothing, only cold, and for a moment I think that maybe I died in that crash and that I'm nothing but some spectre who can't accept that he's dead. "You have to leave politics," Kiyomi blubs into my shoulder.

"God, not another one who wants me to leave," I sigh. She tucks her face into my chest while I look over the dispersing smoke hovering over the wreckage now that the fire has been put out.

I hear someone say my name and turn my head to see L standing a few feet away from my side. I smile tiredly as soon as I see him, and I know then that I just want to get in his car now and go back to his house, tweeze this shit out of my hands, have a bath, and go to sleep in his bed. He'll read and I won't be angry that he's reading instead of paying attention to me, like I was the first time he did that, because no one had ever done that to me before. No one had ever chosen a book or the TV over doing something to me instead. He's home to me now and it literally takes a car crashing into me to make me realise that. I'm tired even though I never saw battle. I wonder if the things I think matter do actually matter, and decide that they only matter if I choose for them to have meaning.

He looks like he doesn't really know what's going on, though I'm sure he's already worked it out and that's why he's here in the first place.

"You were in that car? Light, what were you doing in that car?" Obviously he hasn't worked it out and I give him too much credit. His voice is quiet from shock and he looks worse than when Stephen died, or when his father died, or when he ran out of mints that time at 3am and we got into an argument about how I didn't have food without nutritional or social value in my apartment.

"Watari's dead," I say. There's little reaction to that. He doesn't really care, like I don't really care, but Kiyomi pulls away from me and apparently cares. She has known him since she was a little girl, I suppose. That warrants a moment of reflection.

"He's dead?" she asks. No, Kiyomi, I was making it up.

"L, find out who was in the other car. It drove right into us. It was red but it's..." I pause, looking at the blackened pile of smoking metal it is now. "Well, it's not anymore."

Instead of leaping into action, he walks over to me instead and pushes back the hair from my forehead. My eyes squint from an electric, searing pain which spreads right over the left side of my head. Thanks, L.

"You're bleeding," he says in his matter-of-fact way. Am I? Good. Lick it, suck it.

Kiyomi panics over the blood and for some reason looks to L to offer her reassurance while he inspects wherever the cut is on my head. I love his voice. He makes me think of places where no man goes. Granite rock formations covered and shaded with painfully green, delicate leaves which would crush underfoot, and rivers cutting a path right through it all to reach the sea. I close my eyes and almost see this place I imagined from his voice, forcing out the meaning of what he says for a second, because what he makes me feel seems so much more real than car crashes and bleeding heads. I raise my fingers to my forehead though and pull them back to see fresh blood on the already rusty stains on my hand. Kiyomi gasps and covers her mouth. Oh. I knew that I'd bumped it, but I didn't know it was that hard. The roots of my hairline are soaked in blood.

"Oh shit," I sigh, and wipe the blood on my trousers because they're fucked anyway.

L shouts for a paramedic, which I don't think can be that necessary. I didn't even realise my head was cut and it'll only be a graze or something minor, but the same woman I saw before rushes over to me, armed with her trusty torch which she's desperate to shine into my face again. My hair covers a multiple of sins and she's useless. Half my brain could be falling out and she wouldn't have noticed.

"His head's bleeding. Do something," L tells her.

"Stay still now, Prime Minister," she says, switching on her torch like it's a flick knife.

"How many fucking times? I'm ok!" I protest, but she completely ignores me and looks at my forehead, pressing the dead centre of the source of pain unforgivingly and making it worse. I hiss and Kiyomi goes into meltdown.

"Oh God, don't let him die!"

"Kiyomi, will you shut up?"

"I think you're ok," the paramedic informs me. "Didn't I tell you to go to the ambulance to be checked over? You're still standing here. You need a few sutures and tests, so do what I told you and go to the ambulance." I don't know why she thinks she has the right to chastise me like a matron and tell me to do anything. She's just a glorified paediatric nurse on tour.

"No."

She rolls her eyes at me and looks to Kiyomi. "Make sure he gets to the hospital," she tells her, and thankfully leaves. Kiyomi whines at me, but I can feel the metal core of her being strained by my obstinacy.

"Light, please."

"No, it's a waste of time. I'm -" I start, but L stands in front of me and cuts me off.

"Light, go to the fucking hospital or I will drag you there by your bollocks," he says. He's not messing around, he'd probably do that. Maybe I should get checked out by a professional. I'm sure there must be someone at the hospital who knows what they're doing.

"Find out what's going on. Find out what happened," I tell him.

"Yes, yes, just get in the ambulance."

"I don't want to go in an ambulance."

"What? Do you want an ice cream van to take you?"

"I'd just rather go in the car."

"Tough. I'd describe your car as being off the road at present."

"It's a write off."

"Exactly."

"I have other cars."

"Yes, but you're going in the ambulance."

"I'll take the Lexus."

"You're not showing up at the hospital in the Batmobile, Light, come on, this isn't The Fast and the Furious. Anyway, the road's blocked and I'm not calling a limo service or a horse drawn carriage for you. Go," he says. I back down.

"Call me with any news... Oh, and get me a new phone."

"Why? Where's your phone?"

"It was in my jacket. My jacket was in the car," I sulk, and we all look at the smouldering mess which was once my car. "I want a HTC One in black with a... No, they're Taiwanese, aren't they. Errr... I'll have a Sharp Aquos FullTouch 933SH... No, the camera on that is ugly. I'll have a -"

"Will you get in the fucking ambulance?" he shouts. Kiyomi jumps from the order and starts leading me away quickly, but I look at L until it's not feasible to anymore. He watches me, and probably continues to watch me until I'm shoved into to back of an ambulance. He'll get me a shit phone, I know it.


I've been set up in what must be a kind of presidential suite at the hospital. My father calls Kiyomi while I'm getting stitches (not sutures – fucking stitches!) and Kiyomi gives me the phone. He asks me if I knew that there'd been an accident near the Kantei, and I say that I did know because I was in it. I'm fed up of telling people that I'm ok.

So, within the hour, I've seen a lot of doctors and nurses, the head of the hospital, my guards are swarming the building like flies, Mikami and Naomi, my parents, Sayu and Touta – the whole goddamn world. L must have released a press statement, because my involvement in the accident comes on the TV as breaking news over an hour after it actually happened. The doctors shoo my family out of the room to 'let me rest', which is the nicest thing anyone's done for me for a while, but I insist that as soon as my PR arrives, he's to be brought to me. He arrives about hour after that, when I'm at my most despondent because I've just realised that as much as this looks like a hotel suite, there isn't a mini-bar.

"Should you be walking around?" he asks, pausing at the door for a moment before dropping a bag on my empty bed which is far too hospital-like for me. It has those rail things at the side to stop you falling out, for fuck's sake. I go over to see what he's bought me, and he's bought me a HTC One. What did I tell him? They're Taiwa-fucking-nese! And it's white. Hopeless man, except that he probably did it on purpose. "I'm pretty sure that you shouldn't be out of bed," he says.

"You got me the wrong phone."

"Shame. Get into bed."

"Why? Are you going to sex me up? I have to walk around, it prevents blood clots."

"The doctors think that you're at risk from blood clots?" Panic stations. His eyebrows speak of there being a fire on the bridge, everyone abandon ship.

"No, I read an article about it," I answer, unboxing the phone anyway because I don't have a choice but to use it now. The one thing I asked him to do and he buys me a phone which supports foreign industry. "Watari is dead, isn't he?"

"He's dead," he nods. "Shizo and Nakamura -"

"Who?"

"Your driver and guard. Nakamura's got a leg fracture but other than that he's ok. Shizo's in surgery but the prognosis is good."

"Who was in the other car?"

"Get into bed now or I won't tell you and I'll never sex you up again," he says. I sit down heavily on the bed, which is as much as I'm going to do for now, and breathe out a long breath as L stands in front of me with his hands in his pockets. I just look down at his legs and shoes in front of me, a stark contrast to me in my hospital gown. My legs look good though. He's wearing Salvatore Ferragamo three-eyelet Oxfords in polished calfskin with a seam toe cap. Ferragamo run very narrow but they always fit L and that's fucking annoying because even I have to wear a wider fit. I have perfect arches and a chiropodist and several other people have complimented me on my feet. They're not fat feet and hate the insinuation that they are by a dead Italian and his fucked up sizing system. I don't know though, if you want a real Ferragamo then best save your money and steer away from this glued together shit and stick to the Lavorazione Originale or Tremezza lines. Of course, L doesn't care, he just buys whatever fits him. I don't think that he owns a pair of shoes that aren't black.

"What did the doctors say?" he asks.

"Waiting for the results but I'm -"

"Yeah, you're fine, you said. What happened?"

"I don't know. Fucker in the red car coming in the opposite direction just crashed right into us."

"Did you lose consciousness?"

"I don't think so," I lie, because I'm sure that I did. I must have. I had three very realistic dreams and L was in all of them, but there's no point mentioning it because if he tells the doctors then I'll probably have neurologists doing scans of my brain for days.

"That's good," he says quietly. "Where were you going, anyway?"

"We were going to the Kantei. I gave Watari a lift because he wanted to speak to me."

"Why couldn't you have talked in the House?"

"He wouldn't say. He just said that it was important."

"What did he want to speak to you about?"

"The curse. He said that he knew who killed Penber."

"Light, will you just..." he says with a raised voice, only to break off suddenly and take a few steps around the room. "You have to leave this Penber thing alone. We don't need this right now and you know who killed him. Will you let it go?!"

"No, the cabinet office ordered it. It was just like you said."

"I didn't say that."

"Please, you all but said it. They all gave it the go ahead." God, I wish they were all dead. If they were dead it would be justice and I could be happy. They're disgusting murderers and they should die.

"The Lady had the final say, that's obvious. Of course she would have had final say," L says.

"The whole cabinet office did it. I don't know whether to report them to the police or have them killed and skip the waiting and the cost of a trial."

"Light, if you have them killed then you'll be just like them."

"What they did was wrong and they should pay."

"Yes, but not by your hand. You're not a murderer."

I think on that for a moment and wonder if it'd make any difference to me if I did have them killed. I think I'd be content, or as near to it as I could be. But maybe I'd start and never stop. I'd find people everywhere who are only fit to die and I'd hand out death until I became death. If my reasons are just then would that still make me a murderer? I rub my head unthinkingly and my stuck back together skin stings. The local anaesthetic must be wearing off.

"Now that Watari's dead, I have no proof. Even if I testify, all it would be is hearsay," I sigh.

"Don't kill them. If you do, you won't come back from it."

"There's no need to be so histrionic. First thing tomorrow, I want you to start drafting a plan of action to change public perception towards the opposition being the source of the curse. Nate River."

"No."

"Yes. When people see or hear of the opposition I want them to be irrevocably linked with the curse. Watari's dead and I could have been killed, it makes perfect sense to blame them."

"You don't know if it's true though."

"It doesn't have to be true. I'm using what I have. I can deal with the cabinet office myself and I'll let the curse take care of the opposition for me. Doesn't that make perfect political sense to you?"

"If you were staying, it would, but you keep saying that you're resigning, so it's more like you're doing it out of spite."

"If I'm to come back in a couple of years, I need to get rid of Nate River."

"Nate River's not going to be a threat to you."

I hum disbelievingly, and then I hear my dad's voice outside. There's no reason for him to be here still. "Oh God, is my dad still outside?"

"I saw him when I came in. The whole Yagami clan is out there."

"I can't deal with them at the moment."

"Visiting hours are over, they won't be allowed in now."

"You got in."

"Yeah, but that's me, I'm special. Are you sure that you're ok?"

"I'm just tired," I smile weakly, but hear my assigned doctor's voice who patched me up. His voice joins my father's in conversation. "Fuck, hide," I tell L, but he's already running to the bathroom and locking himself in.

"Good evening, Prime Minister," the doctor says as he comes in. He doesn't look at me; he's flipping through sheets of paper on a clipboard.

"Yes, it's a great evening, I've had a fantastic time. Can I go?"

"No, you'll still have to stay in overnight for observation."

"Thanks for the invite but -"

"It's not an invite."

"Well, I still can't stay."

"Oh! Your tests came back clear for smoke inhalation. How do you feel?"

"Fine. Perfect. I could run a marathon."

"No coughing or chest pain, shortness of breath, wheezing, vision problems, dizziness, nausea?"

"No."

"Good. Well, we'd like to do a few more tests in the morning, just to make sure."

"How many times do you have to make sure? If I wasn't feeling ok, I'd tell you, but I feel fine. I just need some ibuprofen and I'm good to go."

"Prime Minister, you suffered a not inconsiderable knock to the head and were exposed to some pretty noxious fumes. There are risks involved in that, like delayed shock, or a bleed on the brain, fluid on the lungs, infection, respiratory failure, brain haemorrhage, pulmonary embolism..."

"You're making some of those up."

"No. The human body is an extraordinary thing but a lot of things can go wrong. If I said that you were good to go, I wouldn't be doing my job very well now, would I?"

"I'm not nauseous. The symptom of a bleed on the brain is nausea, right?"

"Not always. Leave this to me. You do your job and we'll do ours, and we say that you need to stay in overnight."

I sigh loudly and cross my arms. "Alright."

"Thank you. Your family is outside. I could let you see them for five minutes, but then you have to rest."

"Tell them that I'm asleep."

He clips his pen back into the pocket of his white coat and checks his watch. "Ok. Have a nice rest now. A nurse will check on you later on to see if you're asleep. If you're not, God help you."

He leaves and I hear him mumble outside to someone. Idiot. L cracks open the bathroom door and inch until I can just see his finger curve around the edge of the door and a big eye scanning the room. He looks like something from a horror film.

"It's alright, he's gone," I tell him.

"I'm going to leave you to sleep," he says, walking back over to me.

"I don't need to sleep. It's too early."

"You heard the man, and you told me yourself that you were tired. You're going to sleep." He starts buttoning his coat and I don't want him to leave yet. If it wasn't for someone ploughing into my car, I wouldn't be here – I'd be at L's and L would be telling me what he's found out. Whatever that is.

"L, thanks. You got me the wrong phone, but thanks. Were you worried?" I ask. He ties the belt of his coat around his waist and doesn't look at me, so I smile.

"A bit, y'know," he mumbles quietly.

"What have you told the press?"

"The bare minimum. Don't worry, it's been dealt with."

"Have you told them that Watari's dead? They haven't mentioned it on the news yet."

"No. We'll leave that for tomorrow. He was a old man, Light, they're not bothered. Find a new deputy in a few days when you're better. Did you get sutures?"

Oh my God, don't talk to me about sutures.

"Fucking. Stitches," I say emphatically. "That bitch lied."

He smiles and sits down next to me, taking my new phone off me to set it up, because I haven't got past the unboxing stage yet.

"Don't do that to me again," he tells the phone, but I think it was meant for me.

"I didn't do it on purpose."

"I know. I'm sorry. I just don't know what I'd... Get out of this as soon as you can, please. Resign if you have to, I don't care now and I won't stop you. I want us both out of here."

"This didn't happen because of the job, L. It wasn't the curse. Some bastard just drove into my car."

"It was Culture," he says, entering my phone's new number into his own. That's how I knew the car! I knew Culture had no clue about spatial distance but I didn't know he was such a shit driver.

"Culture?"

"Mmmm. Culture was driving the car."

"And he's dead?"

"Yes. Do you see now that it's all because of the job? If you can't see that then you really did hit your head hard. This is enough. Leave. Never go back. Neither of us will ever go back. Promise me that it's the end now."

"Ok."

"I mean it, Light. No more procrastination."

"I heard you," I say grumpily, and he hands me packet of Marlboro menthols and a plastic lighter from his pocket. Well, that's a really kind thought I wouldn't have expected from him. He must have realised that my case and gold lighter were also in my jacket and are probably a puddle of molten metal now.

"And I don't want to see you in work tomorrow," he tells me. I light a cigarette before I argue. The smoke reminds me of a foggy sky over two crashed cars.

"L, that's stupid -"

"Shut your face and do what I tell you," he snaps, also slapping the phone down onto his leg in quite a scary way that makes me imagine what he could do my ribcage if we were wearing bearskins and living in a cave.

"I like it when you're bossy."

"I like it when you listen," he smiles and pulls me towards him. I watch my phone fall off his leg onto the bed and then I wonder how we fit together so well, like two parts of a whole, designed and built to work together. His head fits against the side of my neck and our chests flare flush against each other as we breathe. He really was born for me. He might not be what I would have designed for myself, because he's weird looking and strangely beautiful, but I wouldn't have anything else now. I just wish that he loved me as much. The scale is slightly unbalanced, he still reserves the right to leave when I couldn't now even if I wanted to, because whatever identity I have now, though private, is because of him. Even though no one knows how I watched him walk around a bookstore once like he was a painting come to life and the most captivating thing I'd ever seen. He doesn't even know that I watched him and thought that about him. It was a long time ago. I just shouted at him for taking such a long time. Even though when I was lying in a crashed car, I dreamt of him. I still don't really understand it, but I think of the apple at the side of the road after the accident and what it means to me know. If my heart was an apple, he'd be the worm inside it. Maybe that's what it means. Two people who couldn't feel anything for anyone fall into traps set for each other and it's a source of eternal anger at the loss of true freedom. I like it when he's quiet like this and we're speaking to each other without speaking and I can think of these things. It reminds me that I'm doing the right thing.

"God, I'm such a fucking idiot for you," he says. His voice cloys against my neck from the upset. I know that feeling.

"I wanted to see you tonight," I reply sadly and uselessly. Then I'm reminded of why I was going to see him tonight. "Hey, you were going to tell me something about Penber, weren't you?"

"Light, for fuck's sake, that doesn't matter now," he huffs and pulls away from me. "Stop with this Penber thing. I mean, look at you. You're fixated on it even when you're in the hospital with a broken head."

"I don't have a broken head."

"Yes you do. I don't know what's wrong with you, you're just obsessed with things that don't matter. I don't even know if medication would fix it now, I think it's just who you are and I'm stuck with it. Christ, you're just -"

"Did you find something?" I interrupt him, and he rubs his nose in annoyance. Get to the point.

"I found his desk and there are some papers in it. It's at my house."

"Bring me the papers now."

"No. When you're better, you can look through the desk yourself. I don't want to."

"You haven't look at what's inside? That's not like you."

"It doesn't interest me. I saw that there were papers, but let's get this clear for you: I don't agree with what you're doing. Penber might have died because of whatever's in that desk, and you should leave this alone. I got the desk because you asked me to, so you can find out what you need to know because it's so fucking important to you, but don't do anything with what you find, if you find anything. Just prove it to yourself and be content, because you don't need to prove it to anyone else. It won't make things right, it won't bring Penber back. All you'll do is cause huge distrust in the government and upset Naomi, and I don't think you want to do that."

"Naomi deserves to know. She wants to know, she just can't find out herself."

"I think she deserves to get on with the rest of her life now and so do you. Value your life, because there are lines that even you shouldn't cross."

"I do value my life," I say. I do, it's all I have, but I'll sacrifice it for the right thing, I think.

"Am I not enough for you?" he asks, sitting back stiffly. Oh, fucking hell.

"L."

"Because it's like you keep finding reasons not to leave, and all this with Penber. I'm pretty jealous of a dead man at the moment, Light, and it's not very pleasant because I can't even ease myself with thoughts of him dying because oooh, he's already dead."

"You didn't want me to leave a while ago!"

"Yes, because I thought you'd be unhappy if you did. With a choice between you being unhappy or dead though I'll go with the unhappy."

"Right, but I've always wanted to know what happened with Penber and this is my last chance to put it right. Look, don't try to guilt me into doing what you want. You're everything to me and you know it."

"That's what B said, but not enough for you to forget about Raye Penber."

"Things don't work that way. I can't forget about everything else that's important just because of you. That'd make me an idiot."

"Ok," he breathes out. "Let's say that I agree with you, but if I mean as much as you say then you'll leave this alone for me because I'm asking you to."

"I don't know, L."

"Light, I don't want to have to take this out of your hands, but I will."

"How can you..." He'll destroy the desk. I picture him setting it on fire outside his garage and watching it burn until only the bones of truth lie in cinders and ashes. He'll do that and I'll never forgive him. I'll lose the two things which are most important to me at the same time. "No, no, don't do anything. I just need to know."

"If I can't trust you not to do whatever madcap thing you want whenever I'm out of the room then you leave me with no choice. Knowledge alone can be justice. You don't have to take revenge and make sure everyone knows about it," he says. My eyes widen because he knows. He knows there's something in that desk which could blow everything apart and I want it.

"You have looked inside the desk, haven't you? You know what's inside."

"I'll call round in the morning," he tells me as he stands up. He's had enough and I don't want to push him into doing anything to that desk. I'll leave it, and tomorrow I'll make him trust me so much that he can sleep, and then I'll find out everything I need to know.

"L -"

"And I'll get you another phone. Use this one for now and tell me what you want when you wake up. Do you want me to get you breakfast from somewhere and bring it in? Are you on a health kick still? Don't have fish for breakfast again, it's so boring."

"You choose something then. I'll go to sleep now," I say huskily just before I untie the hospital gown fastening across my shoulders so that it falls off my arms and down to my waist. Trying to win him over in such an obvious way brings out every ache in my body, but I have to do it. I have to make him want to believe me. I'm available for anything, even now, and he can do whatever he wants as long as I get what I need at the end. It's over the top and he won't be fooled by it, but he likes it anyway. He looks me up and down, appreciating the blooming bruises on my chest and wishing that he caused them himself. "You running all these chores for me will look strange.".

"I don't care what it looks like. Who else is going to do it for you? Who else is going to put up with your sense of entitlement? No one except me."

"And why do you put up with me, L?"

"You know why."

I smile as I lean towards him like his answer is what keeps me alive. "Remind me," I say. He doesn't answer immediately. I think he knows that he's being had, but he still doesn't care.

"Because I love you, you little shit."

There we are. I rest back on the pillows again and drag on my cigarette like we've just had sex. To be honest, I'm astounded that he hasn't jumped me already.

"See? Honesty doesn't kill you, you lanky bastard."

"Here's some more honesty for you then. I won't hesitate to burn that desk if I don't 100% believe that you're going to be sensible. And I'll do that because I love you, otherwise I'd just hand it to you right now."

"Don't burn it yet," I say, tapping my cigarette onto the floor like I couldn't care what he did to the desk. "It could be interesting. We'll go through it together."

"Yes, but you might do something stupid with what you find. That's what worries me."

"I won't do anything stupid. I'll do whatever you say. You're the greatest man in the known universe, why would I go against what you say?"

"Oh, I wish I could believe you," he says bitterly. His eyes are heavy as he looks at me. "The flattery is overwrought, by the way. I've had too much excitement in my life. I just want it to be quiet forever now, and I want you to be there. I know it sounds boring but that's my sales pitch."

"It doesn't sound boring at all." It does.


He doesn't come to see me in the morning, but everyone else does. When I realise that L's not going to turn up, I ask to be discharged after my tests come back with the same results as last night. Sleeping at the hospital was fitful, so I have a shower and go straight to bed when Kiyomi and I return to the Kantei. We're in an identical car to the one I was in yesterday and I'm in the same seat. Everything's so similar and yet different when we pass the same spot where I crashed and I stare at the dark patches on the road, the sand soaking up various substances, the tiny glistening shards of glass like stars on the tarmac.

I have a dream that I walked into the cabinet office for a meeting and shot all the remaining leading members of The Lady's cabinet office one by one with a revolver. When I stopped to reload more bullets, the idiots just sat there dumbstruck, waiting for me to continue. It's very realistic and very gratifying because it feels like something I have to do to see justice exacted. The time it takes to become a serial killer is less than thirty seconds.


Kiyomi lets me waste an entire day and wakes me at six o'clock. She's ghostly white and breaks news to me gently but torturously slowly. All the founding members of my cabinet office passed onto me from The Lady's clique - the guilty - have all died of heart attacks. Somehow, I'm not surprised. Explain that.

After I'm dressed, I sit in the living room drinking tea and watching the news while Kiyomi bobs Kira on her knee to jolt the impending cries out of him before he starts. There's no word from PR, but the media have the news and are running some kind of panicked campaign blaming everyone in sight without actually stating anything implicitly, particularly pointing towards an internal or foreign conspiracy (they can't decide which) to destroy the country's government. It's run alongside reminders about the accident which killed Watari and injured me, and L must have released a statement about the deaths, purportedly from my sickbed, which sounds so like something I'd write that I'm confused as to whether I did or not. At least I'm being seen as a victim now who narrowly escaped with his life. No one knows what's going on so everyone's a white canvas just waiting for me to tell them what to think. I can use this.

There are bruises all over me and my bones groan, but I think it's worth it.


After phoning the PR department as soon as I heard the news, Mihael told me that L also sent out a standard press release which urged people to be calm and promising further information as soon it's available. That was as much as he could do until he was able to speak with me, he'd said, so he went home at his normal time, leaving Mihael and the department to reiterate his statement to everyone who calls. At seven o'clock, I leave to go to L's house. I'm perfectly calm until he opens the door and I'm suddenly pissed off as soon as I see his face. It might be because of his choice of clothes, actually. A white long-sleeved t-shirt and jeans. He looks like a fucking misfit.

"You didn't come to see me at the hospital," I say when he opens the door and greets me with silence and a blank expression. I'm angry and unsure and why does it always have to be this fucking way with him?

"I tried but there were too many people there. I didn't have a chance of getting anywhere near you. You've heard then?"

"Yeah. What a terrible tragedy to befall us."

"Terrible," he agrees.

"Mihael said that you needed to speak to me about it."

"It could have waited until tomorrow. Are you sure that you should be... you know, walking around?"

"I'm not going to bed for no reason. Are you going to give me a reason to go to bed?"

"I'm glad you're so happy that your cabinet office has been decimated."

"Yeah, about that - we need to talk about it tonight because I'll hold a press conference tomorrow morning. I was just wondering if there was anything wrong, because I haven't heard from you. I brought something from a restaurant," I say, lifting up the bag as proof. "Are you going to let me in?"

"Oh. Yes. Sorry," he says, stepping to one side to let me pass. "You got a takeaway from a restaurant?"

"I had someone pick it up for me on the way here. It's supposed to be cold, which is just as well, really."

"I... I got you another phone," he tells me, and reaches under the coat rack to pull out yet another bag from the phone shop. He must be their favourite customer. I can't believe that he actually got me another phone, the stupid bastard.

"Thanks. Put it down," I say, walking up to meet him. He looks very puppy-like as I rub his back and he practically folds himself into my chest.

"How are you?" he asks.

"Good as new. Ok, the plan is that we eat this, fuck around, talk about the shitstorm for ten minutes and that's it."

"Is that in descending level of importance?"

"Yeah."

"Light, you do know what happened, don't you. How they died? Did Mihael tell you?"

"He didn't tell me anything that wasn't on the news. Seems like divine judgement, doesn't it? If I was mad, them dying could make me believe in this curse thing."

"At the same time."

"What?"

"They died within minutes of each other, all of heart attacks, and they were all in different parts of Tokyo at the time."

"Really?"

"Apparently so. It hasn't been released to the press yet, so we just stayed vague. Better it sounded like an accident than what it actually is. Just saying, because if you're giving a conference then you shouldn't try to play it down. You can't play something like that down. It'll have to come out tomorrow. The police will launch an investigation."

"How could they have died within minutes of each other? All of them dying the same way at the same time."

"It's like Stephen," he says. From his profile I can see how worn out he is. Dull and tired from being assaulted by PR nightmares. "Someone made an example of them."

"Someone?"

"Or something."

"L."

"I'm not saying anything."

"You still think it's me, don't you."

"No."

"L, when I got back to the Kantei I had a dream that I shot -"

"Don't," he says, closing his eyes. God, he knows. He does know, he just doesn't want to hear it from me because that makes it real, but he knows. My anger over his stubborn grasp of ignorance makes me rattle out what happened so he can't ignore it anymore. Part of me wants to tell him the truth and for him to be disgusted and turn on me, part of me wants him to tell me that it doesn't matter.

"I shot them, and when I woke up, they were actually dead."

"It's a coincidence."

"No, it isn't."

"Maybe you're psychic then, Light," he mumbles. He opens the brown restaurant bag and tips the plastic containers so that the food loses all shape and becomes a sludgy mass which rolls and slides around inside. "I don't know what wine you're supposed to drink with this."

"L, will you listen to me?"

"No, I won't."

"You just don't want to believe it!"

"That's right, I don't."

"But that's no use to me, that's not helping me! Who do I talk to if I can't talk to you?"

"No one," he says harshly. He looks at me harshly, speaks to me harshly. If he doesn't want to admit it then it must really be true. "You don't think these things. You will not let yourself think these things."

"What if I am the curse and I can't control it?"

"No, you stop that. Listen, you are not to blame. I'm sorry if I made you think that I blamed you. I'm just really sorry. About how I've been. It's one of those times when I fuck up and when I actually think about it, I realise how much of a shit I am. And it's stupid, really. Blaming you for things is very counterproductive, as good as venting feels at the time, because then you go and I miss you and you get involved in fatal car accidents. Fuck, what is this shit, Light?" he asks as he pops open one of the containers.

"I don't know."

"Should we eat it when we don't even know what it is?"

"The 'Where to Eat' guide says that the chef at that restaurant is the best in the country and he's got a degree in physics. He made teriyaki venison with a cryogenically frozen rosehip compote and it won an award. I'm sure it's ok."

"I'll take your word for it, but I think we'll need a lot of wine," he says. I follow him into the kitchen where he's picked out plates.

"The accident was only fatal for Watari," I point out, going back to our previous conversation.

"You could easily have died. Easily."

"I didn't though. I got out with barely a scratch, but I wanted Watari to die. Right before it happened, I was willing him to die. One of the last things I said to him was that I was going to have him executed. Coincidence?" I ask. My hands start shaking and L turns his face to watch them shake for a minute, but he doesn't say anything. I nearly killed him with my bare hands and I've wanted him to die. Maybe he's realising what a mess he's in. "I said that, and it was almost like Culture aimed right for him. Like I'd told Culture to do it. Everyone else survived, I survived. Don't you think that the curse, if there is a curse, would wipe us all out since we were there? Why didn't I die?"

"Because it was an accident," he says firmly. "Why would you kill Watari?"

"I'm sure that you can think of a reason. The same reason that I wanted the other bastards in the cabinet office to die. Because they killed Raye."

"I don't think that you had anything to do with it. You wouldn't place yourself in that situation. And, like you said, it's impossible. No one can kill people like this."

"Maybe I can. Maybe I did it as a double bluff so that I could be blameless in your eyes and everyone else's eyes. I placed myself at the scene of the accident so that I couldn't be responsible."

"No. No, I don't believe that."

"So you don't think that I killed Stephen and everyone else then? Am I absolved?"

"I shouldn't have blamed you. I shouldn't have said the things I said, and you shouldn't have taken any notice of me."

"When in doubt you go back to treating me like some errant servant of yours that you can't part with because I make the place look so decorative and I'm an easy fuck," I spit out at him. I'm not shaking from shock now, I know that. I'm shaking from anger and hatred.

"You know that I don't think that," he says, putting plates onto the worktop. "I mean, you're decorative and you're an easy fuck, but that's not why I treat you like shit."

"No? But it's how you treat me. I'm a murderer, I'm a coward, I abuse you and forced you to leave Stephen and come back to me. Then I killed him, like I killed everyone else, because I hated him. You don't know the thoughts I've had, L. You don't know the things I see. And because it doesn't suit you to believe that I really am a murderer, you just ignore all the proof."

"There is no proof," he says, plopping the food onto the plates so it spreads in a disgusting mess like raw offal. "This conversation is over, Light."

"I hate everyone and I want them to die. The world can't be saved by political bills, it can only be destroyed. Then it will be a utopia. A world without man."

"Light, don't. Please." The words are muffled because he covers his face with his hands. I'm breaking him. I'm finally breaking him.

"That's what I've always felt – that there is no salvation. But I met you. I met you, and I wanted to crawl inside you and live in your veins. Did you know that? Aren't you scared, L? That's not love, is it."

"It is to me," he says. Now his hand shakes as he drinks from his glass and tries to pull himself together. How can he think that? "Who the fuck can say what love is."

"How can you just accept what I've done and cover it up and serve pretty statements to the press? That makes you as bad as me. It makes you worse than me."

"It's my job. Things are simpler when you don't let emotion get in the way of what you have to do."

"So you're not doing this for me then? You should report me, L. I'm sure you'll find someone else to sleep with. Hell, you found one a few months ago without any trouble, and you said you were happy with him. You're not happy with me, look at us. There's B. You could always have B. B loves you. He's mad too, like me. There are plenty of men like me."

'Shut up!" he shouts, but it only takes a few seconds for him to calm down again to his icy way of speaking. "There's no one like you. We have to stop now. I feel really shit, I can't take this from you, and this food is going to start growing legs if you don't eat it soon."

"What's wrong with you?"

"I just don't feel all that great," he says, pushing his hair back from his face. "It's been a long day."

"I'm making you ill."

"No. I just can't hear all this from you anymore."

"I am. I'm making you ill. I make you do things you wouldn't do, I've made you the way you are. I got rid of B, I got rid of Stephen -"

"No, Light."

"And you have the fucking gall to say sorry to me with mobile phones? What the fuck is wrong with you, L?"

"I am sorry. Words don't seem like enough."

"Why? Because I needed you on side and you flipped out on me?"

"I was... I was upset."

"Yeah, about Stephen, not about me," I tell him as he walks past me carrying the two plates. I follow him and watch him set the plates on the table.

"That's ridiculous," he says. "Eat your cold whatever it is."

"You cried about Stephen. Literally cried on my shoulder. I nearly threw up."

"I didn't cry."

"Are you kidding me?" I laugh.

"Look, are you going to have some grace and let me cry over whoever and whatever the fuck I want to?"

"No. Why did you start spreading rumours that I was depressed when I asked you not to?"

"Oh, that. I wanted it over and I wanted your attention, to be honest with you."

"That's not the way to go about either of those things."

"I know, and I am sorry. About the other night as well. I was too rough with you."

"I'm not complaining about that."

"I know. You should do though. I would. I keep trying to find your breaking point but I can't."

"Why? Why do you want to find my breaking point?"

"I don't know. And it's not you who makes me do it, not intentionally. Anyway, I've decided that you don't have a breaking point and I'm giving up the search. Light, I'm sorry for everything, ok? Can we just start again?"

"You're sorry a lot," I say, and we sit next to each other at the table. I'm surprised that despite an argument which ranges from murder and how I think that he's in love with Stephen because he's dead and can be whatever L wants to make him, that none of that held up dinner.

"Lately, yes."

"Have you been drinking?"

"One."

"Keep it to one. I don't want an alcoholic around." He doesn't reply, just squeezes his eyes closed, but I start eating and he starts pushing the food around on his plate. It becomes my sole focus while I shovel food into my mouth without tasting it or noticing anything about it. All I can think of is his downcast face as he moodily swirls the sticky rice mess around in a never-ending circle. Eventually, I snap. "L, if you don't eat that, I'll stuff it down your fucking throat. Don't become one of those awkward people you have to look after like a baby."

"It's just that I've eaten already," he says apologetically.

"Oh. You should have said."

"I saw Stephen's sister today."

"She came here? I thought he was, y'know, sent back to them."

He breathes out a short laugh and places his chopsticks on the edges of the plate. "I think she wanted answers and to go through his things to decide on what to take back."

"Did she get answers?"

"The US autopsy results were the same as the Japanese one."

"Heart attack?"

"Yes. His grandfather died in his forties, the same way, so Stephen's dad thinks that it might have been inherited."

"Well, at least that's something."

"I shouldn't have blamed you, Light. I don't blame you. I was just shocked by it and I made his last few months pretty miserable, but I didn't know that he was -"

"It's ok."

"No, it's not, and I'm sorry. Not that it changes anything."

I really am forgiven for all sins, it's amazing. I chew like a cow and a thought comes into my head - the most important thing now, beyond every death and every betrayal. Where's the desk? Where's the desk?

"Don't worry about it," I smile. "We're ok. So, what have you been doing?"

"Working."

"Apart from that."

"Sleeping."

Alright, he's depressed. In my experience, there's only one cure for that. I put my chopsticks down and for all the world I'm the most cheerful man on the planet. "Hey, let's have that fuck, eh?"

"You've just been released from hospital."

"Yep. And now I want a fuck."

"Now?"

"No, next year. Are you done?" I ask as I stand. He looks up at me with his wide eyes, completely thrown.

"Why? Do you have to go soon?"

"I can stay overnight."

"What did Kiyomi say?"

"Who cares? Are you saying thanks but no thanks?"

"No, I just want to know what you said to Kiyomi to explain why you're here."

"I told her that I wanted to get laid, L. What do you think?"

"Don't be sarcastic," he sighs, turning back down to his plate.

"Ok. I said that I needed to discuss what's happened with you and come up with some strategies. She understands. And she believes in all this 'men retreat into their caves' shit, so she was fine about it. Are you saying no to me?"

"I'm not saying anything."

"You just want to stare at your plate instead?"

'Well, you got me this... Alright. Let's go."

"No. It's ok. I don't want to force you or anything."

"Don't be offended, but it does feel a little forced."

"Oh, I'm sorry. We can't have things being forced on each other, can we," I say. I sit down again and L just watches me as I start eating again.

"What do you mean by that?" he asks eventually.

"However you choose to interpret it is fine by me. Sorry. I thought it was what you wanted."

"Do you think that's all you are to me?"

"Yes."

He continues to stare at me while I stuff food into my mouth aggressively, because I refuse to be affected by this. After what seems like an eternity of being stared at, he stands up and goes into the kitchen, but I continue to eat my dinner like nothing has happened and nothing is wrong. The multitude of problems we have, which all boil down to our distrust of each other, despite assurances - all of that is always present. In the end, I can never trust him and he can never trust me. He hurt me in such a base way and knifed everything which I relied on as a support. My ego is in tatters because of him, and I rely on his affection like it's a ballast in stormy weather. Whatever he says now or in the future can't take away the things he said to me in the months after we met again, because he meant them. I force food into my mouth and hardly give myself time to chew. I do that until my stomach lurches from it and my throat refuses to allow any more to pass by it and it lodges in my chest. Then I push the plate away and place my forehead on the edge of the table, and I stay like that. The coolness of the polished surface eases the tension from my head.

After I don't know how long, fingers reach around and massage the back of my neck in firm circular motions under my collar.

"Are you ok?" L asks me, and I breathe in as I lift my head from the table.

"Yes," I say. He sits next to me and watches me pull back my plate to resume eating, even though I don't want it. I must have my 2,500 calories a day. "You're going to watch me eat?"

"Do you mind?" he asks, and I shake my head. I'm so sensitive to being watched, but I've been watched for as long as I can remember, and L has stared at me like the neighbourhood watch since day one, so I'm used to it. If people stopped watching me now I'd probably get stupidly depressed and anxious and question my purpose in life.

While I'm eating, he lifts my arm closest to him out of the way so he can nuzzle his head in the crook between my shoulder and neck. It's only then that I feel like I don't need to eat this shit. "Light, You're more to me than that," he tells me. Oh, sex. Yeah, I know that. Sometimes I wonder whether there's anything more to us than the occasional angry fuck, but if it was that simple then it'd be so easy to walk away. I wouldn't get upset with him because I wouldn't care enough, we wouldn't miss each other – we'd just find replacements or live with what we have.

"I see."

"No, you are. If it was just that -"

"You would have left years ago," I say. Oh, wait. He did that. "No, I think you like me besides that now. I didn't mean anything by it, really. It's just car crashes, fires, death, near death, hospitals, you. Have you spoken to B?"

"No."

"Not even after Stephen died? You should call him, L."

"Why?"

"You'd normally speak to him if something like this happened."

"There's no point," he says. My hand finds itself on his head and I don't know why I feel like he needs comforting or why he's letting me, for that matter.

"He won't be angry now."

"Can we not talk about him?"

"I didn't realise that he mean't so much to you."

"B?"

"Stephen."

"Oh. No, neither did I."

"Do you feel responsible?"

"I just feel like it shouldn't have happened. I don't know. I shouldn't have argued with him."

"What did you fight about?"

"Just things. The same old things. I don't want to talk that either, if you don't mind."

"Ok... Tomorrow you'll start with the poison pen letters, won't you?"

"Against Nate River?" he asks. He tries to pull away from me but I keep him in place and he doesn't fight it. I think the beat of my heart might drum the sound of battle into him and he'll stop being so fucking obstinate.

"Yeah. I don't care how you do it, just set the ball rolling."

"I don't know, Light. Haven't I got enough to deal with?"

"If we don't take advantage of this situation then all those deaths will have been in vain. All those loyal Blues who would have loved to have see a perpetual leadership. What a legacy that would be for them."

"What? But you're resigning."

"When I come back I want the coast clear for an easy win."

"River's socially inept and looks like a Mr Whippy. You don't need to worry about him," he says.

"Come on, L. It's one thing and you'll probably enjoy it. Anyway, shall we watch a film."

"No."

"You like films."

"Not not. I don't identify with anyone anymore, and that's the whole point of films: that you learn about yourself through them. I have nothing left to learn."


I'm not worried about L exactly. He's on a downer, but I am too and there's nothing new there. Where I can switch myself out of it if I feel like it, he's always been one to embed himself for the sake of it and not to deny himself anything, even sadness, then strike out, ruminate and despair quietly and I can't get a word of sense out of him. I'd almost prefer it if he was out of control and irrational instead. I don't ask him about the desk though. I'll look for it when he's asleep, because it's probably in the garage next to Stephen's boat. I keep picturing it waiting there in my mind. I itch to get to it, like it's a lamp which holds a genii, but I sit with L instead, and we're suddenly middle-aged; reading, not reading and talking about boring shit. Despite that, it's not boring, although it should be. I think it's strange to seek this and prefer it to anything else I could do. But I never was a socialite. I'm a natural at it, but it was always exhausting and I ended up wanting to murder everyone in the room.

Because I feel filthy even after the shower I had once I got back to the Kantei, I think whatever it is needs to be soaked and scrubbed and forced off my skin before I feel clean again, so I run a bath. While I wait, standing over the bath to watch the water gush into the whiteness, I have a cigarette, and a flake of ash falls into the perfect water. It's only after a day or so after losing things that you realise exactly what you've lost, and along with my jacket and phone, I did lose my gold cigarette case and lighter. They haven't been returned to me, anyway. I lost my briefcase and everything in there. They're all important things and I can't help but think that I'll mourn their loss a lot more than I've mourned the loss of any living person. Who knows if there's something wrong with that or not.

The steam clouds the mirrors and the tiles and dampens my hair as the curl of the bath edge fits along the back of my neck. My arms hang over the sides, and I think that I must look like a painting I saw once of a French leader from the revolution who was stabbed to death by some mad royalist woman when he was in the bath, and I consciously try to replicate what I remember of it. L, the font of all knowledge and a good 15% of my own, had a postcard of it stuck to his fridge for a while a few years ago, which is where I first saw it. It had a some words in French written on the back of it and was signed from B, even though I didn't know who B was then and never thought to ask.

"I killed one man to save a hundred thousand," L says from the doorway.

"Hmmm?"

"Charlotte Corday's reason for murdering Marat," he explains. That's it. That's who I'm thinking of. Synergy flashes between us and it's fucking weird to share the same thoughts.

"I was just thinking of that. B sent you a postcard of a painting of him once, didn't he?" I ask him. I gaze up at the ceiling at how the steam glides around the light. It can't go higher, it can't escape, it can only settle and change form.

"Ha, yeah, he did. He was a bit of a morbid fucker."

"Was?"

"Well, I don't think I'll see him again now."

"Why not?"

"He doesn't forgive," he says. I think on that for a minute, dead in the bath apart from my mind whirring and thinking and possibly regretting. But if L doesn't see B again, it's either because he was too weak to oppose me, secretly wanted to get rid of B also, or didn't care. He has to take responsibility; he's a grown man. It's not my fault.

"What did he write on the back of the postcard? It was in French, wasn't it?"

"Oh!" he laughs with the remembrance. "He wrote: 'My great unhappiness gives me a right to your kindness.'"

"That's sounds like B."

"It was something to do with the painting," he tells me. "Do you want a glass of wine in there? Make a night of it."

"No, thanks."

"Alright."

"Do you think of him?"

"Sometimes," he says before he leaves, and his answer drifts behind him like a sea mist after he's gone from sight. I think of B more than I should. I wonder if he's killed anyone yet. I think that I have.

As I lie in the water with the steam condensing under my chin, the stillness of the house makes me close my eyes and accept the almost floating feeling. Very gradually though, I hear a slow, faint, grumbling sound. Pipes, I think, because L has underfloor heating in here, but I can't ignore it somehow, and turn my face towards the open door. The tension builds in my shoulders as the noise grows louder, and then I see a red ball roll along the floor of the corridor outside, stop, and turn ninety degrees to continue its path directly into the bathroom, across the tiled floor, towards me. I watch it until it hits the side of the bath and stops just beneath were my hand hangs. Not again, no. I only hear the sound of the water when my eyes are closed, but the more I try to overlook what happened, it has happened, and I'm so angry that it will never leave me alone. It's haunting me until I don't know what's real and what's a dream anymore. My fingers glance over the skin of the apple, then I grab it in my hand.

"Fuck off!" I shout as I throw it at the wall. It hits a large mirror and smashes it. Glass slides in large and small curving shards out of the frame and slowly drop onto the floor, and I hear L running through the house. L or something else. I wouldn't be surprised now, whatever it was.

"What happened?" L pants as he stops himself by gripping the doorframe. He looks at me with the first bit of life I've seen in him all night. His eyes shine like pieces of that broken mirror when he's frightened. "Are you ok?"

"Yeah. Sorry," I say calmly, sinking slowly back into the bath and looking at the broken pieces which still hang inside the frame.

"That was my father's mirror."

"God, is it?"

"Yes. I never liked it," he smiles, like I've done him a favour.

He leaves then, and comes back with a dustpan and brush like man at the bar. I don't know if that happened or if I dreamt it now. "Coming in here and breaking my heirlooms. Whatever next?" he tuts and sweeps the glass against the wall. I watch him defensively when he finds the apple and picks it up, and I try to decipher what he's thinking. What conclusions is he coming to when he looks at me in confusion? But whatever he thought must be pushed aside as he sets the apple on top of the pile of glass. What will it take for him to confront these things? I pull myself out of the bath and stand there dripping like a waterfall over a cliff face before walking out of the room, grabbing a towel as I go.

"I don't like apples," I say, leaving L crouching on the floor by broken glass and my footprints on the floor.

He follows me into the bedroom, I can sense him there behind me – the force of his presence was always hard to ignore. When he walked into a room, it was always hard to ignore him. Not because he was so incredibly aesthetically pleasing to look at that it was impossible to do otherwise, because that's why people look at me, I know, or because he burst in dancing and screaming for attention, but because something about him was commanding and assured and calm and volatile all at once. Am I going mad or have I always been mad? Am I going mad because of him or despite him? I can hardly remember a time when he wasn't there. I was always just waiting for him from the day I was born.

"I need to speak with you," I say, taking him by the arm before he tries to avoid the overbearing wrongness in the air. He doesn't resist me dragging him into the most constrictive place I can think of. There's a walk-in cupboard in his room which is meant for shoes, but he's abandoned it and it's now just empty shelves. Maybe he's frightened that I'll go ballistic if he does resist or question me. Honestly, I'm not sure if I wouldn't.

"Do we have to talk in here?" he asks as I shut the door. The light bulb has long since died but the odd LED light on the shelves make for an eerily lit space around us.

"Shhh."

"Why do we have to whisper?"

"He might not find me in here, I don't know. He can probably find me anywhere. He follows me around."

"Who?"

"Did you notice anything else that was strange about the deaths?"

"I'm getting used to them now," he says dismissively. I stare at him and he looks downwards so that his eyelashes brush his cheeks. "There were more than usual."

"Eight. All at the same time, and all were The Lady's key figures."

"Yes, I noticed that."

"It's almost like someone has discovered something and has taken vengeance against them, isn't it? It's the plot for a ronin film."

"I haven't really thought about it."

"Liar."

"We've spoken about this, Light. It was nothing to do with you. That was the conclusion, and I'm not exactly sorry to see them go anyway."

"I killed them," I tell him desperately. It has to be acknowledged by him. I could work this out alone but I can only see one resolution.

"No you didn't."

"L, you know it was me. Watari told me that the cabinet office during the Lady's tenure ordered Raye's death. I'm not joking, L, I'm not being dramatic," I say as he tries to leave. "When he told me that, I wanted him to die. I promised him that I would kill him, and what happened?"

"Light, stop it. You've told me this."

"He died. And today, eight people died of heart attacks within seconds of each other."

"Please stop it," he tries to hold me but I hold his arms straight to stop him. I want to be heard.

"L, stop ignoring the truth. You know it was me, you've known all along. Explain it. Explain in rational terms how that happened - how all those people died."

"I..."

"I think I must do it when I'm asleep. I see things. I have done for years. I have dreams and he comes to me."

"Who does?"

"Death comes to me."

"No."

"You know that I see things!"

"It's nothing. You're just stressed and tired -"

"No! No, I'm not stressed and tired, I see him like I see you! He's real and he kills for me!" I say, trying to keep my voice down. L shakes his head and I'm so angry that I push him against the wall for being so dismissive of me. "I'm a murderer, L. You're right. I'm the curse. I hated Jeevas and I killed him. I hated Stephen and I killed him. I killed Watari and all those people for what they did to Raye because they didn't deserve to live."

"No, no, it's not you. You have to calm down."

"L, it's one thing lying to other people but when you lie to yourself it's unforgivable. If you forgive a murderer, it's unforgivable."

"You're not a murderer," he says.

"Not one you've ever seen before," I whisper viciously, and he recoils from me. I'd tell him not to be frightened of me but if I was in his position I'd probably be exactly the same. How could someone as logical as him think that I'm anything other than a raving lunatic? I'm not though, I know it now. L saw the apple, so it wasn't in my mind. I broke his mirror with it. Every time I've seen those things they've been real. The demon is real.

And the demon appears through the closed door now. His face first, and the rest of him follows. He's lit from below and looks like a horrific corpse who has been encased in lead-like ice for hundreds of years, and even though I know his face well, it never stops being terrifying to me, and my mouth falls open as I look at him.

"Light, what are you looking at?" L asks me. I can hear the fear and sadness in his voice. His perfect creation is not so very perfect.

"He's here."

"Who!?"

I reach for the door handle behind the demon and pull open the door suddenly, hoping to hit him with it so we can escape, but it simply passes through him like I pass through his arm as I charge through. Sure that he'll follow me, I run back towards the bathroom, pulling L behind me, but he stops dead in the corridor and the demon passes by him, floating towards me and laughing. I back up but he shows no interest in L, only me, so I run into the bathroom. I pace around the room as if an escape hatch will suddenly open up to me, but there is no escape. L shouts my name through the door, the doorhandle turns manically and fills the room with a thudding noise.

I fall to my knees in the middle of the bathroom, grasping my head, and I've never felt so helpless, now that I'm completely at the mercy of a monster that no one else can see. As I look down, spots of blood appear on the white tiles and a shadow is cast over me. I look up and see the demon, coal black against the blinding whiteness. His smile widens and gapes and L's shouts fade into the darkness. I remember nothing.