Those Who Stand For Nothing Fall For Anything

by halfpromise

Light is a politician. What could go wrong? It's very long (really 3 parts in one) and as AU as you can get. Mention/content warnings: M/MA, alcohol, drugs, emotional/physical abuse, the list goes on. Every bad thing in the world is in it in a satirical way or to make a point of it, it's hugely offensive, and the rest is about men in suits.

35. You Are The Blood

NB Extra long update (in which nothing exciting happens!) to make up for the time it took me to get around to it. Beware of time skips back and forth.

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Chapter 32

You Are The Blood

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No matter what time of year it is, it's always a good time to buy a new kitchen. Treat your family to a tailor-made kitchen suite, designed for you by the experts. Book your appointment today and start the New Year with a new heart to your home. Whether it's sharp and contemporary you're after, or elegant and classic, we'll design the most technologically advanced kitchen to suit every taste and be as unique as you are. It will change your life. Aaaand if you book a consultation today, you'll receive 15% off! With free delivery, you simply cannot lose! Subject to minimum spend in a single transaction charges refer to the value of goods being delivered excludes installation services appliance transactions servicing repair delivery or installation of goods or in concessions. Offer ends on 7th of Janua –

"What do you think of this one?"

"Yeah."

"Which colour?"

"I don't know. Purple," I say, looking behind me to see if my guards are still there.

"Now you're just being sarcastic. Would you rather do this another time? You seem distracted."

"No, I'm not. I just can't get excited about kitchens, I'm sorry. This one's fine."

"Why can't you even show an interest? This is important."

"How is this important? You're seriously telling me that choosing a kitchen is important when I've been in meetings all day about lowering the national debt? Look, Kiyomi, can you just choose, please? I'm getting a headache in here."

I know what you're thinking. You're thinking that I'm depressed, and you'd be right, because I'm in Kitchens Pour Vous. I'm so used to the benefits of delegation that I'm sorry that I didn't ask a PA to choose my kitchen for me. It gets worse though. Because this viewing had to be pre-booked so that the store could be closed off to the general public, it makes us sitting ducks for the sales staff. One of those sales staff cuts in just as Kiyomi's ramping up her berating me for not caring about our upcoming personal kitchen, which, despite the name, still won't be used by either of us.

"Hi, welcome to the Kitchen Pour Vous elite sales department!" a strange woman says brightly, popping up from nowhere to shock us into irregular heartbeats. "May I help you at all? Oh! Good evening, Prime Minister and Mrs Prime Minister! Please let me assist you. I see that you're looking at our state of the art, custom-made 'Andromeda' modular kitchen unit."

"We'll buy it," I say after taking some slow breaths. "Where do I pay?"

"Brilliant! Mr Prime Minister certainly knows what he wants. Please join me in my consultation room and we'll go through your new dream kitchen inch by inch until you're fully –"

"We don't want to go through it inch by inch. Just send someone round to measure it up and do whatever it is you do."

"That's not standard protoc –"

"But it's what we want," I tell her. This blows a few fuses and she gapes for a few seconds, trying to run through training scenarios for difficult customers.

"But we can make your kitchen project easy and help you find everything you've ever wanted even if you didn't know it with our interactive kitchen planner! Edgy and modern to timeless and traditional, we can design the very best quality kitchen for you, and each one handcrafted in our workshops by qualified carpenters who each have over two months experience! You can even take advantage of our patented banana slicer to take home today just for enquiring. We have a selection of two hundred different worktop styles for you to choose from – from burr walnut veneer to a cosmos quartz – each with its own luxurious, unique finish and –"

"I don't care. We'll take this actual kitchen here. Just chuck it in a van and we'll call it quits."

"Darling, I think it's too small for our kitchen," Kiyomi tells me, rubbing my arm while smiling at the saleswoman.

"How about if I give you a free pen? It's a nice pen. Look!" she says, pressing the button repeatedly to show us that it's a bog-standard ballpoint pen. Kiyomi starts backing away from her.

"Thanks. We'll have a think about it."

"No problem!" the insane woman says, off her head on kitchens and possibly some class A drugs. "Here's my card and please take a catalogue. We're open from 9am to 8pm, Monday to Saturday. Please call me as soon as you're ready to get your dream off the ground! I can even do house calls, if that's more convenient for you?"

"Oh God," I breathe out, but my guards must hear me because they start laughing, which isn't what they were hired for. I'm the first one to go, leaving Kiyomi behind to be polite and take the woman's card and an armful of catalogues. We should just buy online. Who needs the stress of having to see things in person anymore?

"Goodbye, Prime Minister! Goodbye, Mrs Prime Minister! I look forward to hearing from you!"

"Fare thee fucking well, what a fucking twatting shitting fuck," I say quietly when Kiyomi rushes up beside me again. "What was that? Was that a real person or a hologram?"

"I don't think you're ready to go shopping for kitchens yet, are you."

"Where's the tool aisle?" I ask her. She looks concerned that because I'm a man I'm going to build a cabinet or knock down a wall, which I'm well within my rights to do and I'm sure that I'd make an amazing cabinet, but that's not what I want. Lucky for me that I prepped myself with a double whiskey before we left. Or a few. I'm not sure – someone just kept filling my glass at the Club because it's Friday.

I spy some drone stacking paint buckets on shelves like his life depends on it. I'm desperate to be unpleasant, yet I still feel a dull pang of sorrow for his situation. He makes a brave show of it, laughing with another drone who walks past him, but he must feel like crying. I want to commiserate with him and say how I'd raise the minimum wage but it would merely be redistribution which would restrict opportunities, fuel inflation, discourage investment, and promote labour substitution. Capitalism's a bitch. Instead, I'm going to exempt more low-income citizens from taxes so that those just over the living wage can subsidise them, and encourage employers to reward staff like him with performance-related bonuses. Or something. I don't know, maybe I should ask him? I'm not on a low wage and I never have been, and my economists aren't either and in fact are paid by the tax payers. People on low wages aren't really their greatest concern. How am I supposed to understand what it's like living on a yearly wage which is less than that fucking kitchen I was going to buy just because I wanted to get it over with? However, my woozy empathy isn't enough to stop my contempt from showing. I can see it happening and am powerless to stop it.

"You! Where do you keep your sharp things?"

"Hi, Prime Minister Yagami and Mrs Prime Minister Yagami! What sort of sharp thing are you looking for? We have a selection of the best quality sharp implements you could wish for under this one roof!" he says perkily. He's been brainwashed too. Why do they have to act like this? I think that now I understand why some people go berserk and kill everyone in the supermarket.

"I don't care about the quality. I just want something sharp."

"Like a… ?"

"A big knife."

"You'd have to be a little more specific for me to help you to the best of my ability by answering just a few quick questions! Firstly, what purpose is this big knife for?"

"To kill myself with. Do you have a suicide aisle?"

"Erm… are you ok, Prime Minister?"

"Just tell me where your knives are."

"Aisle four. But why don't I get you some water instead?" he says. I'm disappointed. Kiyomi does her usual damage limitation act and one of my guards presumably pulls out a confidentiality contract, which they carry around with them now. It hasn't exactly encouraged better behaviour on my part, but this shit just isn't funny anymore. I keep searching for confrontation in unlikely places, for some reason. I miss when I used to write people off as soon as look at them and didn't think of them at all apart from as objects taking up space.

"He's joking. He's so funny, isn't he? Excuse us," Kiyomi laughs, and follows me, because I've wandered off again. I'd feel so much better if I could remember where the way out is. Now that I've realised that I can't figure out where it is, I can't think of anything else. "What are you doing?" she hisses, pulling me into a pretend bedroom which is made up like a big doll's house. She shuts the door between us and the guards but we're completely open to the rest of the empty showroom on the other side of the wall like we're on a film set, and it feels strangely appropriate.

"What do you mean? Oh. I don't know. I'm bored, I think," I whisper to myself. "L had the right idea."

"Don't say that. Don't say it, don't think it, even if you're joking. It's not something to joke about."

"It was just something to say. The world's really rotten if I can't even joke about suicide in this... wherever we are."

"Not after what happened to Lawliet, no. It's insensitive."

"Insensitive?" I ask, turning on her. Oh yes, L killed himself a month ago, officially, unofficially, what does it matter? What right has she to tell me what to say and when to say it? L deserves no sensitivity from me. What she means is that he should be forgotten completely because of the shame of it and we shouldn't mention anything which will remind her of him.

"I've never seen anyone so completely confused before as you are."

"Probably, because I don't know what you mean by insensitive."

"So you do believe that he's dead now and you think that it's funny? You're not still pretending that he's alive somewhere?"

"I wasn't... Yeah. Dead. Yeah. Whatever. I don't want to talk about it, Kiyomi. It's nothing to do with kitchens and, to be honest, I just want to get out of here."

"But when you talk about suicide, it scares me. He didn't mean to do it, and even if he did, it's not something you joke about," she says, and it stalls the annoyance out of me for a second. I thought that. That he didn't mean to do it. I don't know if it makes it any easier to think that he wasn't in his right mind, if he did it at all. I mean, I still feel... No.

"I told you that it was a joke. It was really obvious that it was. I'm not going to commit suicide because you've made me go with you to some world of kitchens at eight at night, although no one would blame me."

"I wanted to get you out of the Kantei. It's not healthy to stay in the house all the time."

"Our house is attached to where I work and it's not like it's easy for me to pop out for the morning paper. It's a full-scale operation when I go anywhere. Anyway, I go out."

"And where do you go, Light?"

"The House."

"Exactly. That's it and it doesn't really count. I just wish that you'd talk about it. When are you going to talk about it?"

"Talk about what?"

"Lawliet."

"There's nothing to say. He's just some dead lawyer and that's a cause for celebration for most people. Did the lights flicker then or was it just me?"

"Just you," she sighs, letting her forearms go limp as she sits down on the bed. I see a brief glimpse of how unreasonable I'm being, but everything still feels like a dream somehow and the lights did definitely flicker then. But I think that she's unreasonable for bringing this up now. She's always prodding at me towards a nervous breakdown but she'll be sorely disappointed. "So now you're pretending that he was just some lawyer? He wasn't anything more than that?"

"I don't know what you're talking about," I say, turning away to pop a caffeine tablet.

"I've made my position clear. I'm not going to leave you no matter what the truth is, but I want you to talk to me and trust me. You don't have to do this alone," she says. She's set this up. She made me come here so that she could interrogate me in a fake fucking bedroom. People are listening. The guards are probably recording this through the fake wall. My eyes shift from side to side like an executive's ball clicker. I remain silent as I make a quick motion for another door of the fake room near me because I'd have to get past Kiyomi to reach the other one, but it turns out that it's a fake door. I could just walk out and around but the chilling humiliation of walking away from Kiyomi would seem like an admission. "Why are you trying to run away from me, Light?"

"I'm not. Sorry," I say hurriedly and quietly so that it doesn't hurt. "It's just that we've been here for hours."

"Fifteen minutes. We've been here for fifteen minutes."

"God, really? It's like limbo in here. Did you see an exit? I've been looking because I can't see where we came in, but I just can't find a door or a fire exit. That's illegal – what sort of place is this? I think we're trapped, Kiyomi, don't panic. I said, don't panic! I've gotten out of worse fixes than this."

"I'm not panicking. Are you sure that you just had the one drink?" she asks, walking over to me and pulling the strap of her handbag over her shoulder. I don't know why she has a bag because there's nothing in it apart from lipstick which is the same colour as her actual lips and I don't understand that either. "Maybe we should go."

Yes, we should definitely try to find a way out of here. I open the fake door to find my fake guards on the other side, my heart now beating with some kind of purpose I'm nearly grateful for. What a perilous place we're in. Why didn't I notice earlier?

"Masuo, you're on reconnaissance. Nakamura, you stay with us. You've got a gimpy leg but you've got a gun and we might need it. Hold on, cancel that. I've got a compass app on my phone. I think that we were facing north when we came in. Don't worry, it's ok, I'm in control."

"The exit's this way," Kiyomi says, guiding me a little way, but then veering off sharply to the furnishings department. "Oh, I do like those curtains. Don't you?"

"Absolutely, I think they're hideous. I'll buy them for you," I say instinctively. She looks pityingly at me again and pulls me a little further away from Masuo and Nakamura again, which I'm not sure is a good idea now, considering how dangerous this place is. She just doesn't understand the gravity of the situation we're in. It's not her fault. She's had a very sheltered life.

"You don't need to do that, but thank you. This was a bad idea, wasn't it. I just wanted to get you out of the Kantei but you're not ok."

"Of course I am!"

"Let's go home," she says, after squinting at me for a moment like a paramedic.

"But you wanted a new kitchen and they sell dream kitchens here which are handmade by people who've been promoted from the checkouts."

"No, I think that we should get home."

"Don't look at me like I'm being weird, I'm not being weird. Just show me where the exit is and I'll be fine. I just need to know that there's a way out because…" I stop to whisper in her ear so that the guards won't become hysterical, "Kiyomi, I'm not sure that there is an exit. It's like we're on one of those Somalian pirate ships. Don't worry though, maybe if we buy that kitchen then they'll let us go."

She smiles bravely at me, despite her concern, because I think that she understands now that we're being held hostage.

"Fuck the kitchen. Come on."

After linking her arm through mine, she courageously walks me towards what I now see is a massive door with a sign above it saying: 'Goodbye! Thank you for your custom!' Oh, thank God. But now I feel stupid and Kiyomi said 'fuck.' I overreacted, yes, but I'm not sure if you've noticed that I've developed a slight nervousness of enclosed spaces. And open spaces. And crowds. One of my ministers was attacked with a loaf of bread a few weeks ago on a visit and the press caught the whole thing. I sent him a hamper because it was so horrific, and it could have been me. If someone does that to him, what will they do to me? I pull myself out of it most of the time, but it's difficult to do in Kitchens Pour Vous when there are people talking over public address systems about kitchens and you can't switch them off. You cannot switch them off. I'm so close to standing in the middle of the store screaming while people walk around me with their paint buckets, taking absolutely no notice of me.

"You swore," I say quietly.

"Yes, I did."

---

"This will work, won't it?"

"You're asking me? Wow, thanks, L! Actually, don't ask me. You'll have to try it out."

"Couldn't you just tell me? It doesn't matter to you, does it?"

"I don't know why it matters to you."

"If you would've just stayed out of the way like I told you to then I wouldn't have to do anything, you oversized goblin straight out of Moomin-fucking-valley! God, I hate you."

"Wow! Thanks, L!"

"It's not a compliment."

The sound of voices makes my eyes flicker from the sleepy anxiety creeping back and knowing that I have to open my eyes. After focusing in on the darkness painfully, trying to pick out details and seeking him out, I see his face, but I don't scream or thrash out. I just realise quite calmly that I can't wake up and I'm stuck here with him forever. There has to be a way out of this.

"Hi," the demon waves at me.

"Light, look at me," L says. "Not him. Look at me."

"You can see him?" I whisper. Now I know that I'm really dreaming. The demon's laugh echoes through the room, scoring a hole through the air like nails on a blackboard. I cringe, but L points my face towards his, not allowing me to looking anywhere else. I feel like there's a sniper aiming right at me but I'm being forced to look away from it, and how can that ever end well?

"I need you to do something for me. I'm going to give you a book. I'm giving it to you. But you have to give it back to me and say that you don't want it anymore. At least, you have to put it in my hands. Whatever you see and whatever I do – because I might act like I don't want it – you have to do it. Say that you don't want it and give it back to me. That's all you need to do."

"Why?"

"Because I'm trying to help you so that you won't see him anymore."

"With a book and pass the parcel?"

"Yeah, if you like. And then he'll leave you alone. Will you do it? It's important."

"How could that help? That's crazy, L. Have you actually seen the big death metal drummer in the room with us?"

"It doesn't matter, Light, I'll explain later. Will you please do this for me? If it doesn't work then we'll try something else. He won't hurt you."

"Why d'you think that?" the demon wheezes or giggles. My mouth falls open, but L just shakes his head despondently.

"And don't listen to him," he tells me. "Just take the book, but give it back to me right away. Remember to say that you don't want it anymore."

"You could always see him," I say, quiet with the realisation. "You know what he is."

He lowers his face and I want to hit him. Years he's lied to me, telling that I'm seeing things when he knew that it was real all the time. The book is pushed into my hands, but as I look down at it, I see blood on his hands and clothes and just know that it's my blood. He sits back on his haunches and looks almost envious of me, but I don't recognise the book and I try to turn it over, glimpsing only a little white writing on the cover before L turns it back the way it was and holds it there.

"Light, don't keep it. Don't listen to anything he says," he urges me.

"I'm sorry but I think that we should call someone. A… priest or something."

"No, that's not going to help."

"And your Moleskine notebook is?"

"I don't know. Just shut up and do it," he tells me, lets the book go and sits back, not giving me a chance to argue. "I don't want the death note anymore. I don't want to be its owner."

"What are you talking about? You have to explain this to me. Tell me what he is and what he wants," I say, but then the demon screeches or laughs so loudly and unexpectedly that it seems to fill the room and my head, and I have to close my eyes from the sound.

Nothing happens. I look up from how I'm crouching over the book like I'm protecting it instead of myself, but the demon is still there. Everything's the same until I look at L, whose face is free of something which has always been there as long as I've known him but couldn't describe or see before now.

"Hey, you don't have to do what he says, you know," the demon croaks at me, extending a hand to point at the book. "That belongs to you now."

There's a sound of tinkling, chinking metal from the beads on his belt as he moves, and I look at L, who doesn't look to be fully conscious, never mind aware of the fucking monster in the room.

"L?"

"Yeah?" he sighs tiredly. He looks anxious again when he sees me, and rubs his thumb across my top lip. "Light, you look really bad. Is this blood? What have you done to your face? I'll get some water."

"L, can't you see him?"

"See who? There's no one there," he says, staring at how I'm gripping his hand to stop him from leaving.

"You can see him, L, you saw him. You were talking to him!" I shout, but he just seems confused and worried, and I realise that it's about me because he can't see what I can see now. I hold the book towards him, desperate to get rid of it. If I do what he said then maybe he'll see the demon again and I won't be alone. It's something to do with this book, it has to be. "Take your book. I'm not playing anymore."

"I don't think it's mine," he says, just looking at it. "Let me get something to clean you up. I didn't do that to you, did I? It's just a nosebleed, isn't it?"

"Why don't you find out, Light? Open the book and find out what it is," the devil goads me. I'm so angry all of a sudden that L's lied to me and a monster is talking to me about notebooks that I shout at him to be quiet. He laughs while L's eyes just grow wider.

"What have I said?" L asks me.

"L, take your book. I don't want it anymore."

I place his hands around it and let go, wanting to create as much distance from it as possible. The demon makes a mournful sound which stretches until it stops abruptly, as if it's been cut off. At the same time, a feeling passes away from me until it's so distant that I start to forget what it is. I've never felt such a loss of control before, but I can feel memories fading and things changing in me and there's nothing I can do but try to keep hold of them. A noise sounding like the scraping of ice from windscreens gets louder and louder in my head until I can't stand it. It's only when L buckles over that I don't care about the sense that I'm being eroded, and even that in itself is fading. He starts whining at first, but then it becomes a scream. I reach for him uselessly, as it could make any difference, but I don't think that he even knows that I'm there. I feel like I'm angry at him for something he's done but I can't remember what it is, so it mutates into the cold thinking that he has to be quiet, he has to, because he's hurting my head. He makes everything worse and nothing makes any sense. I think about when he's told me that I take on characteristics and find a baseline for normalcy through observation, and I worry that perhaps, if L stays like this, I'll go the same way as him. He curves into a ball; clawing at his head and screaming against his legs, dampening the sound. All I can do is watch and fight against the urge to just lie down until it's over or smother him.

But he stops, now only left with harsh breaths, and he pushes me away. After a moment, he looks up – older, beaten, and sick. What the fuck is going on?

"What do you see?" he asks me raggedly.

"What do you mean, what do I see?"

"Look around you. Do you see anyone in the room with us?"

"No." Oh my God, he has gone mad. I try to remember what we've done tonight, and it calms me to think that we've both taken a mindbender for some reason, even though I know that we wouldn't and we haven't. When that doesn't stick, I convince myself that I'm dreaming, but I know that it's not that either. L said once that when I have a 'Hunter S. Thompson half hour' as he calls them on the rare occasion that I confide in him that I'm experiencing some weird shit, he says that I should listen to Mahler so at least it'll have a dramatic soundtrack. He's one to talk.

"What do you remember? Light, have you ever seen anything strange, like a ghost or a demon?"

"Are you on acid?"

"No," he pants agitatedly, his fingers actually jumping against his leg like he's typing. He's on LSD. God save us all. "I'm just asking you a question, it's just a question, we're having a conversation and I'm interested in your life and what you think like I should be because I love you, I'm completely fascinated by you and I must know, have you ever seen something you can't explain?"

"Er, no. I don't believe in anything like that. Why did you scream?" I ask, but he doesn't answer. His breathing eases, he calms, and it's almost like his bones crack back into place to make him the L I know again, but then I feel dizzy and aching and I don't care about him. I remember the car accident I was in the day before and how tired I've felt since then. How Kiyomi stroked the hair back from my forehead to inspect the stitched back together split in my skin before I pulled myself out of her reach. When L touches me, I let him. I don't mind when he does. I want him to. "God, I feel really bad. You bastard, you dosed me," I say. L's manic episode has become just that, because I can forget about it incredibly quickly when there's something more important to worry about. I dip my head to try to still and clear it, and I see how L's holding a black notepad in his hand, and how tightly he holds it. "What's that?"

"This?" he asks, seeming alarmed as he pulls away from me and stands up from the bed, still holding the book. I've caught him doing something he shouldn't be doing. "Oh, I just write notes in here sometimes. Trivia. What to do when people hit their heads and stuff. I'll put it away now."

"I hit my head?"

"I don't know. I just found you passed out in the bathroom. You don't remember anything?"

"No."

"Never mind. You must be ok now… because you're awake and everything. You lie down. We'll get you cleaned up."

Yeah, he's mad. Anyone else would call an ambulance or have a first aid manual or even google it, but not L. I'm reluctant to pursue it any further though, no matter how weird and funny it is. I'm happier to write it off as 'just L', and sleep, so I lower myself onto my back. My head pulses with pain but passes just as quickly once I'm still, leaving only tiredness.

"You're so strange," I laugh to myself as L walks slowly towards the door. He stops for a second, gripping the doorframe, so I close my eyes before he takes offence to being described as what he clearly is.

"Yeah," I hear him say faintly when he leaves. No kidding.

---

"He disappeared? Just like that? That's… I mean, I heard some things about him, but that's so unprofessional to just vanish from the village like Zatoichi."

"Well, officially, he committed suicide, so I didn't really expect him to tell HR his intentions. Anyway, he'd resigned, so it didn't matter. My arm's going dead, can you get off me?"

"Sorry. Officially though. What happened to him unofficially?"

Sometimes I get myself into situations where someone thinks that I'm contributing to a conversation when I'm not, and this is one of those times. In a way, I want to talk about it, but not to her. It'd be a pointless exercise in self-emasculation if I talked to anyone, which I don't really see the need for. When I'm giving a press conference sometimes, with flags and emblems drooping behind me on sticks, I see myself reflected all perfect and pristine in people's eyes, and I want to laugh at myself. I want to admit to the black-eyed cameras and the millions of gawping faces inside them what I've done and that I should be punished, but don't you dare try to judge me because I will crawl through your windows and kill every last one of you. You are no one and I am everything. You cannot comprehend what I've sacrificed so that you have the lives you have. I don't mean that L was a sacrifice; I mean the chunks of myself which I've cut up over the years and fed to the pigs. When you buy anything, it's a gift from me. It's money I haven't taken from you in taxes. I dream about telling them that, and then I'd probably go back to talking about inflation. Part of me likes the threat of being questioned by someone who's suspicious of me, and when it happens, unless I find it necessary to make an effort to neutralise the question, I usually either ignore them until they change the subject out of awkwardness or I bluntly tell them to shut their face. I wish that there was an easier way. It's like when I'm not sure how to end a speech and I wish that I could just fade out like some songs do.

I keep my eyes closed but know that she's rolling onto her side to face me because she makes such a racket doing it. Her interest in what could launch her into the stratosphere of Z-list celebrities for fifteen minutes if she was stupid enough to plot an exposé is made very obvious because she doesn't know how not to be. She always looks at me as though I'm a regular oil field and she's expecting to strike a fountain of black gold soon, like there's nothing at all wrong with trying to milk me for information like she's Mata fucking Hari. Sadly for her, she's not Mata Hari, but despite her intrusive questioning, she's clever enough to be loyal to me. That's only because she's stroked her ego into thinking that she's an indispensable lynchpin of my PR team, so I do this occasionally to keep her feeling that way. Her one talent is acting as a stand in for written statements and answers to press questions so I don't have to unless they're important, in which case I'm semi-involved. She's quite proficient, having studied my writing style and keeping an indexed filing cabinet full of my stances on issues to refer to. She's vain and models herself on Kiyomi, as most women here do now. As my wife, they must think her a good role model. They wear cheaper versions of her clothes and have similar haircuts, but they still wear The Lady-esque 'statement' (meaning: huge) jewellery, only sort of budget imitation Chanel plastic versions. Mai reminds me how much I value Kiyomi, and in a strange way is preventing me from straying in an active way, in the unlikely event that I'd want to. I was worried that I might do that because that's what people do in films when they're dumped or, you know, someone dies, but the thought never really occurred to me. Everyone's just as boring as they always were and nothing has changed.

I'm sure that Kiyomi would understand about Mai, because it's for work and not really my fault. Women read romance into everything and it's their ruination. They throw themselves at you when all you did was smile in their direction but not at them once or twice. Honestly, sometimes I feel like I should wear a sack when I walk through departments to save these women from themselves and save myself from trying to figure out how to deal with the unwanted attention. I need to put people down in a politically correct way so that they'll have more respect and loyalty to me, work harder, and berate themselves for bothering me. It's a nightmare, I can't tell you. I'm just constantly fending off women, I don't know what's wrong with them. It must have always been that way but I've only recently realised that I've become the political equivalent of that man in the Diet Coke advert. Kiyomi says that it's funny because I represent men and this is retribution for millennia of sexual objectification of women, and on and on that broken record goes.

"Lighty, are you awake?"

"Unfortunately."

"Well? Is he dead?"

"Probably."

"Meaning?"

"They say that he's dead."

"But do you believe it?"

"They found a body. There was a funeral for the body. I guess that means that he's dead."

"You don't sound very sad about it. I was told that he was your friend. Is that why his bonuses were so high?" she asks, coyly twirling a length of her hair around her finger. When women try to be seductive and glamourous, I've noticed that it consists of looking like a particularly vacant duck.

"No, it was because I used to just pay him, and now I have to pay five people to to oversee a department which he was in charge of singlehandedly."

"Yes, I've heard how wonderful he was. He makes me feel ill, really. 'This never would have happened when Lawliet was around!'" she adds in a gruff voice, which I'm hoping is just an impersonation of any one of my MPs, male or female.

"Who said that?" I say. Since she's looking away from me, I take the opportunity to wipe my mouth of her war paint and saliva onto my hand and smear it onto her hitched up skirt. I think she takes it as an affectionate nudge, because she turns back to smile at me in a duckish way.

"The Environment Secretary, just after I slapped him for putting his hand on my leg, like you just did; no one important. Does it make you angry? That he did that to me?"

"Not really."

"But that's because you respect me enough to know that I can look after myself, isn't it. You're fighting against jealousy and unbridled testosterone."

"No."

"Oh. You say that, but if you were there, I know that you wouldn't have been able to stop yourself from punching him. Anyway, was it an inside job, the Lawliet thing?"

"What?" I ask, opening one eye to look at her. She shakes the silk spaghetti strap of her camisole from her shoulder and smiles stupidly, like that's going to make me reveal details of a Bay of Pigs invasion.

"Come on. He was a scapegoat, right? It's ok, I've seen it all before with people who knew too much, so it's not going to shock me. Someone's head always has to roll, and your Penber report was quite suggestive. He took on too much responsibility and did all that shady work for The Lady. It just makes sense."

"As far as I'm concerned, he wasn't involved. Those rumours were quashed in the inquiry."

"By you, yes, but he was dead by then and the damage had already been done in your report. If he'd lived, he'd probably be in jail and he'd have so many secrets. He'd write one of those prison diaries. If he was in jail, what would he have to lose? The last thing you'd need is a possible loose cannon, so a wet disposal would be the only option."

"He wasn't assassinated, Mai."

"Maybe, but secrecy breeds conspiracy. Are you going to tell me that it wasn't your report now?"

"No. It was my report."

"Did he seem depressed, like you said? Someone who's going to do something like that is going to seem depressed. No way out. Trapped. Politicians out for blood. The NPA breathing down his neck. It's so John Le Carré!"

"You can never be quiet, that's the problem with you. When people feel insecure, they overcompensate by talking too much, have you noticed that? It's what you do. Can we quit the pillow talk and get on with the questions from The Times? I have a meeting with Education in twenty minutes."

"Keehl said that Lawliet had a phobia of drowning, so why did he drown himself? It's like me deciding to kill myself by falling on a bed of hypodermics. I'm scared of needles, you know."

That's so fascinating that I sit up to zip up my trousers and find my tie. She never lets go of things, which is why I'll have to find a way to get rid of her and destroy her reputation so that no one will listen to her, even her own mother. It's like she's trying to find tips on how to avoid what she thinks happened to L from happening to her.

"Lighty, Lighty, come back," she whines, pulling me back down by my shoulder while she quickly rustles some papers to try to placate me by actually doing her job. "I'm sorry. It's the journalist in me talking. I know that you're too nice to do something like that. The cabinet probably went over your head."

"Excuse me?"

"We'll go back to the interview, question twelve. Prime Minister, tell me about you. People want to know all about you."

"Is that how the question is worded? From The Times?"

"They want to know what you do when you're not working."

"No comment."

"Lighty lou… Obviously, we can't tell them the truth. We have to keep this clean, but people want to know what interests you have which aren't political; what your hobbies are, what books you read, what your favourite film is. We might be able to work out a deal with a publisher so that you'll get a cut of the sales spike if you pick an obscure title. I'll look into it. But who's the real Light Yagami who writes the manifestos and sticks to his promises. People don't understand it, Lighty. Politicians don't do things like that. Light Yagami. Just who is he?" she asks the ceiling. It is one of the great mysteries of the world, I know. I'm beloved by men, women, children, and household pets alike, yet none of them know a thing about me.

"Why does it matter?"

"It's the number one question. Every man wants to be Light Yagami and every one wants to know what makes him tick."

"Really. Still?"

"Of course they still want to know. You're the most powerful man in the country. You have to give me something here. This is supposed to be a personality-led article. Just make it serious enough for the over-fifties and cool-hip-hop-nic-nac-paddywhack enough for the under-thirties to keep the demographics interested, ok? Oh, and I think that we should say that you had a few lower class jobs before you went into politics, like a postboy or something? Say how difficult it was for you to make ends meet then to make the working classes think that you're one of them, you know?" she says. Right. Being one of the people and at one time impoverished is all the rage now. I haven't quite given up on my intention to leave soon and let her write this article by filling in the gaps with some bland shit and occasional surprising but inoffensive oddities, but a fucking postboy? I think that someone might realise that I went into politics straight from university and never worked before then because I didn't have to and actually had, by most standards, a privileged life. I sigh as I start tying a Balthus knot in my tie. I'm the only person I know who can do this without a mirror. Does that count as a hobby?

"I don't know who Light Yagami is, but I wish that I was him sometimes."

"Silly," she says, slapping my back light like Kiyomi does. I need to command some respect here without creating bitterness. "Just say something revealing. Who is Light Yagami?"

"Light Yagami is who you see in the papers and on the TV. Do I really have to try to convince people that I have a personality? They see me first and then my suit, in that order, as it should be. They don't care about anything else. My personality's not important even when I'm campaigning," I reply. Due to my complete blank about how to answer such a stupid question without reverting to a personal statement format, I'm filled with anger about that blankness, and direct that anger silently towards Mai. All I can think of saying sounds uninterested and uninteresting, and, most worryingly, it sounds depressingly honest. I wake up, I put my suit on and I'm Light Yagami, but he's a figment of imagination who goes by my name. I don't have a personality because it's safer not to have one. I don't have any pastimes because they're boring. My work actually is my life. Everything I do isn't appreciated as it should be, and sometimes I might as well be a wooden and silent figurehead of a ship for all my MPs expect of me. I wanted to change things but there's always something in my way, like I'm fighting through a tangled forest of weeds and thorns, and I don't know why I do that much anymore. Out of habit, I suppose. "Tell them that I'm a bastard, Mai. I'm a bastard and I hate everyone."

"You like me though, right?" she laughs, putting her interview questions on my chest as she leans on me. She's way too close to my face.

"Not at all."

"Lighty."

"Not at all. You call me 'Lighty' and that's very, very annoying. I don't like you, but you're in love with my job and I can use that. You'll write what you think people want to hear me say; that I play guitar or something like that."

"Do you play guitar?" she asks, writing something down on the paper. On my chest.

"Do I fuck. Next."

"Question thirteen… Oh, it's about the flooding and dredging concerns."

"All flooding questions will have to go to the Environment minister until next Friday when I sack him and officially oversee that issue."

"Are you?! That's brilliant news!"

"Yes, confidentially, until next Friday, it's brilliant news. Until then, say that I have every faith in him to resolve the problem. I recognise how important it is and I'm keeping a very close eye on it. That'll scare the fucker," I say. I don't know why she's laughing, but then she kisses my shoulder quickly and leans on her hand to gaze down at me some more, which is quite worrying. "What?"

"Don't you think that you're taking a risk, being so honest with me?"

"It doesn't matter what I say to you."

"Doesn't it? Maybe I'll just write exactly what you've said. The truth is more interesting."

"No, your job is to lie; that's what press relations do. There's no point in being creative, anyway. I have four witnesses on standby at any one time who'll swear in court that I was with them if I tell them that I was, and one of them is my wife - your favourite person."

"She's amazing."

"And you aren't. We never met here today, you never asked me any questions, and I've hardly spoken to you since you've been working for the Press Office. Don't contradict that."

"Don't be mean, Lighty. It gives me heartburn."

"I'm just saying don't even think about it. I can make your life untenable if you do anything other than what you're paid to do, and you know it. Plus, you like sleeping with married men, especially important ones. That's a problem of yours, isn't it. Sleeping with the Prime Minister makes you feel irresistible and important, but don't forget your place if you want to keep some semblance of a life. I'm not doing this because I want to and I'm not doing it because I'm bored. I'm doing this because I can't be bothered to answer stupid questions - I want you to. And maybe I'm a little bored."

"So, is that what happened to Lawliet? He wouldn't do what you told him to and you made life untenable for him?"

"I didn't help, put it that way. People who let me down tend to regret it," I say, surprising myself with how cold I sound. It doesn't bother her though, because she climbs on top of me so that her 'Kiyomi cut' hair sweeps into my face for a second and nearly blinds me. Bitch.

"I love you," she says, and I roll my eyes, mostly because she's pecking kisses all over my face. God, not again. She makes my skin want to crawl off my bones. She starts these things but then expects me to do all the work when I didn't want it in the first place.

"No you don't. You're confusing it with admiration of my status."

"I love you, I love you."

"Shut the fuck up."

---

I look for those with weaknesses and something I can use. Everyone has at least one, and in this case, Hishida's is drink and attractive men. I have drink and I'm an attractive man, so it's a perfect combination for him, really. To put him at ease, I've taken him on a tour of the House and Kantei and alluded to how he could have influence here. My government could use someone of his expertise to advise them, I tell him. I generally blessed him with my attention and grand rooms with high ceilings until his confidence was properly inflated. I plied him with mixed drinks and now dinner in one of the best conference rooms near my office, which has an excellent view, and had classically minuscule portions served to keep his blood alcohol level high. He was introduced to Kiyomi and she joined us for dinner, as did Mikami, to add his legal understanding which backed up mine, but neither he or Kiyomi were necessary. I really only invited them to give Hishida more nice things to look at, and Kiyomi must have an honorary master's degree in hostessing by now. All the ugly people were hidden away today for his guided tour so that it would become a fairy land of possibilities for him with no duffers.

As discussions turned to the bank, Hishida became increasingly coy, but I could sense how close I was to securing a deal. I want a state owned bank based on my own statutes which offers better rates but which would still bring in a lot of profit to be reinvested for the country's welfare. I want his bank, but I don't want to pay for it. I want to seize it entire – all assets, staff, property and all. If you even it out, it'd probably work out to be around the sum he and his father before him owe this country in taxes. I arranged for myself to be introduced to him when I noticed that his shares had been falling steadily, only for a sharp and sudden lift, which I investigated and found that the cause was due to private and highly illegal investment from dubious sources, if I chose to believe rumours. Now, I could either blow the whistle on this, destroy the bank, and rid several thousand people of their jobs and cause yet more people to lose their savings, giving me no option but to bail the bank out, or I could make it into a positive. I took over a declining country which I've contrived to improve and stabilise. It's not good enough though. It's never good enough. My party are renowned for being ineffective, and there was a period when I felt that I was losing control of my cabinet when they started running around like headless chickens as a reaction to some of my more revolutionary 'socialist' ideas. Getting involved with the banking system might be one of them, but they lack the mental agility and instinct required for seeing that we can't just rest on our laurels. You only have one chance in politics and it has to be a continuous storm of improvements. That's the way it is. A year ago, there was a bitter piss poor attempt at a coup by my Head of Agriculture after I'd fired him. A leadership vote was held after an aggressive campaign on his part. My support wasn't assured because of the aforementioned temporary terror at my reforms. I really missed L's PR and whip strategies but I sat back and waited, thinking that to appear worried, chasing votes, wouldn't do me any favours. My quiet desperation for a majority was such that I had a terminally ill MP brought to the House in an ambulance for the vote though. He agreed, obviously, as one of my staunchest supporters. He called me The Boy King and predicted my rise to power years ago, which might have had something to do with the blow jobs I'd given him in his Rolls Royce when I was a Junior Minister. All in all, his sacrifice was much appreciated. I won by one vote, he died a few days later, and I sent a wreath of orchids to his funeral service. It wasn't the majority I was looking for, but it got the job done. Ex-Agriculture retired from politics in disgrace and all that supported him really, really regret doing so. Apparently, it was just to 'frighten' me out of my 'sense of regality', whatever that meant, but it only made me more determined. It had no effect on me other than now I'm more suspicious of my MPs, thinking that they're all looking at my crown and plotting how they can take it.

So, I've been dancing around Hishida for months leading up to this. I think that he's aware that I want his bank or at least shares in it, but he probably thinks that it's as a personal investment, like I'm one of his Yakuza friends. I have two contracts; one which would annihilate him and some would say it's insane of me for thinking it a possibility, and one which is more reasonable but not as beneficial to me. As time goes on, my confidence in the destroying contract increases. I ask him to sign with me today so that we can start our business relationship without actually discussing the terms, so he seems very muddled about what I'm proposing.

"My bank's not for sale and I don't need a bailout," he laughs, slurring madly.

"I wasn't suggesting one."

"Sorry, I thought that was what you were leading to. Anyway, I couldn't possibly make any decisions about shares without legal looking over it and discussing it with the board. Could you pass the wine?"

"Of course. Mikami, pour Hishida-san another glass of wine," I say, propping my chin on my hands as I watch him gulp the wine down. He needs another. "I apologise. I thought that I was talking to the owner of the bank and that you make the decisions."

"I do."

"But you can't without talking to dozens of people first? That's false advertising. I had my legal team go over this and it's very fair. We'll take care of everything. It is very fair, isn't it, Mikami."

"Very," Mikami agrees. He doesn't know what's in the contract. Hishida looks blearily at him and then back at me like he's found himself in a sweet shop. Doing him the great honour of pouring him another glass of wine myself, I glance up at his ecstatic face.

"So, you can trust me. I'm the Prime Minister. I'm hardly going to do something untoward. Let me be frank about this. Because we're friends, aren't we?"

"Most definitely."

"I'm in sales at the moment. I'm currently nominating individuals for life peerages in exchange for donations or contributions. Should it clear through the appointments commission, which it will, some people will have a lot to gain with very little investment. Influence you just can't buy, but you can today only. If you come back tomorrow, the offer won't be on the table, because I have people lining up for consideration. I need a decision from you today."

"How interesting."

"I think so. So, say someone contributed through cash donations to the party or, as in your case, a deal with your bank, we could come to an arrangement as to your induction into what would be a part reinstatement of the House of Peers, in effect. I'd nominate you personally, so you'd be a shoe in," I say. He's not really listening to me though. His drink swirls in his glass, he drinks it, and then swills it around his mouth like mouthwash as he eyes me intently. If I was younger and my position not as it is, I might have been tempted to back the hell away from this, but no one would have listened to me anyway because I had no power. Power can be so destructive if it's in the wrong hands.

"Prime Minister, I hope that I don't offend your wife by saying this, but I'd love to see you without your suit. Do you ever take it off? I don't think I've seen a photo of you in anything other than a three piece suit, even in pap shots."

"I don't do waistcoats, you must be mistaken. I find them rather… restrictive."

"Oooh, tell me more. I'd pay good money to see you without a suit," he says. I feel his hand under the table rub my knee and I sit back to look at it to remind myself of just one of the reasons why I fucking despise him. Kiyomi sees it too but pretends that she hasn't, and I smile. It's actually exactly where I wanted him to take this, because it's so much easier to dupe someone with a distracted agenda. I admire his arrogance in thinking that he could make a bed notch of a Prime Minister, but overall, I'm disgusted. The more he drinks, the more forthright he becomes in his lechery when I encourage him with carefully chosen words, and I've had to put up with this shit for months. When someone compliments me, it doesn't surprise me, but on the other hand, I lose any small potential respect I might reserve for them until that point.

"I'll take my jacket off if you sign this. That's a start, isn't it?" I suggest, pushing only the signature portion of the contract towards him on the table until he falls back into his chair, ruddy-faced and thrilled. He laughs, arrogantly pleased with himself.

"It was only hypothetical. It'd take a lot more than that."

I continue to smile as he laughs and glances down into his glass like it's a magic eight ball. Offering him more to drink at this point would look insultingly suspicious, and besides, I want his signature to be legible. I'll just have to hope that his dick is more awake than his brain.

"Ah, yes. I've heard about what 'more' is with you. My wife read an article out to me about you the other day. What are the claims? Sexual harassment of your staff? The press are just terrible, aren't they? Trial by media must be so stressful."

"Innocent until proven guilty," he replies, wagging his finger.

"That's what Kiyomi and I were saying, weren't we, Kiyomi," I say, but she petulantly tosses her napkin onto her dish instead of answering. "Are you going to court about it?"

"No. Just some Ainu driver with an imagination, so I paid him off. It was overblown," he says stiffly. "I'm really not that demanding."

"I'm disappointed to hear that."

"Well, I have to think of my reputation," he nods smugly.

"Hmm. I know something of that, myself. I think that we should talk in my office, don't you?"

When I stand, everyone looks at me in surprise. I'm not sure why. Slow and subdued, Hishida stands and follows me, walking behind me towards my office. I give a pointed look at my secretary as I open the door to let Hishida go ahead, and her eyes follow me – the rest of her face obscured by her computer monitor. She's seen me take several people into my office over the last year or so, all infamous for one reason or another, and all dulled with drink and hope. All go in confident and smiling and leave pale and shaking, knowing that there'll be all kinds of legal notices dropping through their letter boxes that week and their lives as they know them are over. This one's easier because his greed is for me more than for money. I don't expect this to take long.

After closing the door, I turn away from Hishida and take my jacket off, hearing him loudly sigh when I do. He must be right about those lurid stories about him being overblown if that's all it takes. I walk past him to sit on desk, and after some contemplation, he pulls a chair up and sits in front of me, and he's only surprising in how lazy he is. I lean back, recoiling but hopefully not too obviously when he runs his hands up my legs and sticks his face in my groin. Yes, he does. But I have the contract in my hand, turned to the important page where the dotted line is, and use it to block myself from his face so that he looks up at me in confusion.

"I've left my glasses somewhere," he says, bored and squinting at the print. I know that he did. He left them on my living room coffee table and I have them in my jacket pocket. "What are the terms?"

"Very favourable. I'm going cheap and everything must go, Lord Hishida."

"Oh, I like that. Lord Hishida. So I sign this and you get, what? 10%? How much are you willing to invest?"

"Something like that."

"I can't do more than 10%. So shares were 54,700 yen at opening –"

"They're 56,300 now."

"That's honest, Prime Minister. With a 10% share, you could be on the board of directors. I would see a lot more of you then, Light. May I call you Light?"

"No. And, yes, I am honest. It's all there," I say, tapping the contract where he should sign if he knows what's good for him.

"You're not planning a hostile takeover, are you?" he laughs. I lean back a little to touch the line of my belt.

"Ha. No, not hostile. I wouldn't know where to start. Besides, maths isn't my strong point, so what would I do with a bank? It all goes over my head, I'm afraid." My maths teacher said that I was the most gifted student he'd ever had the privilege of teaching, and I thought, well, yeah, obviously. I scored 99%, and I'm sure that the only reason I didn't get 100% was because a fuckwit marked it. I didn't challenge it, but now I wish that I had. The unfairness annoys me sometimes. "God, my trousers feel tight after all that food. I'll have to go to the gym or something."

"Or something. So, are you as honest with your wife as you are with me?" he asks, causing some friction on my thighs as he rubs them. I try very hard not to wrinkle my nose and punch him, choosing to smile carnally but comfortingly instead when I hold my pen in front of his face. I'm perpetually amazed by my acting abilities, and he's so starstruck that he quickly signs the contract. My smile spreads and heats my blood as he scrawls his life away unthinkingly, because it's as easy as that. When he drops the pen on the floor as a follow through from the final oblique and sweeping flick, I pull the paper away and look at it above his head. He immediately buries his face down again so that I'm treated to a stunning, shining view of the bald patch where his combover has become dislodged. His hands pull at the front of my shirt, which is all so very familiar somehow, and that's partly why I put an end to it and stand up suddenly. His chair rolls backwards on its castors when I knee the seat of it between his legs before I walk towards the window. He's still bent over with his legs stretched out in front of him, and it takes him a few seconds to realise what's happened and let out an aggrieved vowel sound.

"I must say, this is more than acceptable. On behalf of my country, I thank you for your good sense," I tell him, reading over the key phrases of the contract. It looks far more beautiful in the glare of full daylight. I wonder how I can get so much enjoyment out of destroying someone, but they always deserve it. Cosmic ordering or karma just doesn't do the job well enough and I have to step in, that's all. Here's me thinking that I've made everything perfectly clear for him, but he still doesn't get it and just hums and rolls his chair towards me, so I step closer to the door and let him see the full repulsion I have for him. "I'm not interested in your faggoty ways, you perverted son of a bitch."

"What?"

I turn back to him only because I can't stop myself from glorying just a little bit, and use the contract to fan some cool air onto my face. The only way that this could be better is if he was L, because I wish I'd said that to him when he first walked into my office instead of wasting years of my life flattering him for no reason.

"You should really read things before you sign anything. Try to remember your glasses next time. I'll have this faxed over to your legal department."

"What have you made me sign?" he asks.

"You've just handed over your bank to the state. Well, I've seized it, really. Since your family avoided paying substantial taxes over the last few years and 30% of the shares were sold to the mafia in exchange for stabilisation loans because you were disinclined to pay for things yourself – which you've just admitted to by signing this, by the way – I'm just preventing the collapse of the fifth largest bank in the country. Did you think that you could carry on siphoning money and declaring losses until the state would have to bail you out? Because I'm not bailing out any banks, and I'm not reimbursing the mafia for your fuck ups. They've lost everything, I'm sorry to say. I don't suppose that you read my manifesto. No matter. It didn't get much press, but one of my proposals I subsequently passed as the caretaker of this country allow me certain governing powers if the economy is jeopardised in this kind of situation. As a bank, you signed a code of practice, didn't you? Didn't you read that either? Anyway, the new laws also allow the Treasury to reclaim avoided taxes retrospectively, so based on that, I'd say that you're fucked. It would be a financial catastrophe if I didn't intervene before you went into receivership, so I'm going to nationalise it to reclaim some of what you owe me, and you owe me a lot of taxes. Don't worry though, voluntarily conveying the bank will look relatively good for you. The courts might go easy."

"Wait, you can't do that!" I says, stumbling as he stands. "That's all I have left. There are people after me – I owe them money. They'll kill me if –"

"Why should I care what happens to you? If the people are the shareholders, you could try to reimburse them with anything you have left, if that's the problem. Although I don't think that you'll have anything left."

"But all my money is tied up with the bank. We had refits."

"Oh dear. I don't entirely believe you, but I can understand your anxiety. I'm not sure how well the Yakuza will take to the idea of losing their equity because you're effectively bankrupt."

"You can't just take my bank! It's been in my family for generations."

"And you've just given it to me. If what you say is true, perhaps you should make your way straight to the police to report your fears. Or better still, I'll have them come to you. You should be careful what you say about me though; don't start telling tales, because the chief is a friend of mine and I raised the basic wage for those in law enforcement. They won't have a bad word said about me and they can get nasty, so I hear… Get yourself together, man. Your flies are undone."

"The Yakuza will kill me. They'll kill you," he says, still drunk and now depressingly so. He whimpers as he falls to his feet.

"Not if I kill them first. I know who's involved and they'll know I too when they're busted. You never know, things might happen to them while they're in custody, say by suicide or as a result of a prison fight or attempted break out. It's a double hit for me. For anyone left, then I think that if they come after anyone, it'd be you. It's been a secret service operation for a few months, I'm just taking the opportunity to clean the streets like any self-respecting Prime Minister should do. Look at it this way, if you're going down, why you should you bring innocent people down with you? That should be balm for your soul. Oh, and you're responsible for any costs as a result of this transfer of ownership, which I suppose that you can pay for with that hefty bonus you gave yourself this year. Everything's covered in this. If you're let out on bail, I'm sure that my legal team will go over it with you. Thanks again."

"Please help me."

"No, I don't think so. Goodbye, Hishida."

"Wait!"

When I look back, he's standing in a sweaty combat position and holding my letter opener. I thought that I'd got rid of that thing; it's far too dangerous.

"God, don't be stupid," I sigh wearily on my way out of the room.

I pass the contract to my secretary and she rushes off to Legal to have it dealt with without being told to. Another secretary lets out a little shriek and Hishida bawls out my name like a primal scream, but I don't turn around. Five of my security guards run past me into my office, and I hear the thuds of what I can only presume are chairs or Hishida being thrown around. Everything's so methodical and clockwork now.

It's hilarious hearing him being dragged out of my department to wait in custody for the NPA to collect him; he has such a temper. He rambles on about how he's not a faggot, he's a human being, and how I won't get away with 'this' because it's not legal, etc. All counts that I differ on, but it doesn't matter. I can do anything I want now. Once back at the table, with Mikami and Kiyomi as stunned as when I left them, I fall contentedly back into my chair. Their stares and silence don't annoy me much because presumably they're just in awe of me, so I'll eat a breadstick until the last course arrives.

"Did I miss anything?"

---

I'll skip some parts, but I might come back to them later, if I feel like it. Now, I didn't buy into the funeral at all and thought that the whole thing was based on a hastily made conclusion, but because Kiyomi insisted that we go, I went for a change of scenery. L's mother was there, which should have been a laugh, but instead I had to listen to her tell me about her 'dead' son, based on the version of him she knew when he was growing up. She was distraught with all the 'parents shouldn't have to bury their own children' shit. I don't know who else she thinks should have to bury them. Only because she was so upset, I couldn't tell her that he'd faked his own death because he was a coward and the most unpleasant person you could possibly meet. While we were probably burying a perfectly decent man, it wasn't her son, because her son was most likely fucking thirty cabin boys on a ship off the Canary Islands at that very moment. I also couldn't contradict her description of a peerless man by telling her how he hit me over the head, amongst other things, and arranged the death of one of my friends. Basically, she described someone completely unrecognisable to the person I knew, and if she hadn't told me who she was talking about then I wouldn't have had the vaguest idea. I did find the whole drama strangely cathartic though. Anyway, she told me that the executor was at L's house, so I thought that I'd go down there to beat some information out of them, because L wouldn't let anyone take his money. If he was dead, he'd probably be buried with it and wouldn't need an executor. So, I drove myself over there after getting changed, ashamed that I hardly had to look at the road because I knew the journey so well. I needed no condemnation from anyone, because I could heap it onto myself better than anyone else could. I tried putting myself in his position as someone given promises by a person who'd choose his job over them any day, or that's what it must have seemed like to him, but I couldn't understand what his problem was. I think that I treated him ok. Sort of. I did everything I could have done. It was stupid attacking myself, but I didn't think that I was at fault, really. It's not easy being sensitive.

For some strange reason, I blamed the lake. I wanted to drain it and fill it in with concrete like my anger when I first caught sight of it. Sludgy, grey, and hardening in my veins. Then all these images came into my head because my imagination had decided to go on a kind of self-destruct mission and I was too uninterested to stop it. Still, I found myself idly wondering if it was dark when they found him. Apparently, he'd put stones in his pockets to weigh himself down. But I didn't believe that he'd done that, so I pushed it out of my head. I needed someone to blame for 'mental anguish' and the trouble he'd caused me, and I blamed just about everyone else but him, ranging from Kiyomi to Mikami to L's mother to the doctors. No one that I could sue, so anger just built up in me and found a home with other like-minded feelings. You wouldn't have known how lost I was if you looked at me. Somehow I found it easier to blame myself rather than him. I found it easier to blame a lake than it was for me to blame him. But no, despite this, I didn't believe that he was dead. It was just what the official line of thinking was and it gets to you after a while. If I didn't go along with it then people would get suspicious, and I find that I'm very proficient at convincing even myself if I'm not careful, so I'd flip between both theories. My feelings towards him also changed with a frighteningly illogical violence from minute to minute, though most of the time I wouldn't think of him at all.

The door was open, so I let myself in. The house was so fucking quiet and it smelled of him – hitting me with warmth and tannin and some strange sweetness which I'd nearly forgotten – but I just became more devoid of feeling than I had been. I breathed in, saw the bowl for keys on the console table by the door and thought: 'I'll take that.' A pair of his shoes were on the floor where he'd left them, but don't worry, I didn't want those because I thought that he might need them when he got back. And why would I want a pair of someone's old shoes, for fuck's sake? One was on its side, messily cast off, broken in to near destruction at the heel from how he'd peel them off his feet with his toes. They made me want to smile. And on a rack nearby, my house slippers were where I'd left them – straight, together, and neat. I hated them. You'd think that I would have come to my senses but I hated that I didn't love him any less.

There was a noise within the house and I thought for second that it was him. I stood there waiting and hoping while my head was telling me not to be such an idiot. I think that I called for him, I can't remember. Everything hurt, for some reason, and all I wanted to do was cry or die, one or the other. But I never cry, and I certainly won't die.

"You're looking very casual today, Prime Minister. And I so hoped that I wouldn't see you again," a deep voice said. I looked towards where it came from and a man with dark hair, not quite as tall, not quite as thin was standing in the doorway of L's office. It wasn't him; it was his executor. I wasn't surprised to see who that was, but I was surprised that he wasn't at the funeral if he was in the country. He looked like he'd been crying, probably in fits and starts, but then he usually looks like that. I also recognised his clothes, which fit too snugly in all the wrong places.

"B."

"What do you want?"

"Nothing, really. I heard that you were here. You're wearing his clothes?"

"It helps me. It also saves me from going to the dry cleaners. Did you go to the funeral? It was just a mock funeral for all you fuckers who say that you were his friends to make yourselves feel better. He wasn't in the box. That was dealt with last week. I hope that you all had a lovely time and did a lot of professional circulating. I hate funerals. Why are you looking at me like that?"

"I was just thinking that if I squint my eyes a lot, you look a bit like him."

"That's the nicest thing anyone's ever said to me," he gasped.

"Well, there's a lot of imagination involved and my eyes have to be practically closed," I clarified, glancing around the room awkwardly, wincing at all the half-packed boxes and the emptiness in progress. "Do you mind if I have a look around? I won't take anything."

"I suppose so. I found some of your things, I think. Yours or Stephen's. They're in black bin bags by the road. Everything here's L's, so don't touch or I'll slap your face."

"You're packing up his things?"

"He wanted the house sold. He wanted everything here sold, but I don't know what to do with the other houses because he wasn't specific. I'm getting legal advice about it."

"So you're going to sell everything."

"It was in the will and very dramatic. Along the lines of 'and salt the earth, let nothing remain,' except that I'm putting some things up for auction next week. You can take this as a viewing opportunity, if you want," he said, and slouched into L's office, leaving me with full rein of the rest of the house. I scratched the side of my face quickly to kickstart myself into moving, walked a few steps, determined to get it done and get out of there, but stopped to lean on the back of one of the dining chairs and close my eyes to steady myself. It was so strange to me how ill I felt from being there and seeing B, and realising that L probably wasn't going to come out of the attic to tell us both to fuck off.

After a moment, I steeled myself to go somewhere. I looked into the kitchen and the door to the garage was open, so I glanced inside. It was strange seeing it flooded with light, and now I could see that Raye's desk was still there, Stephen's boat was still there, covered up, and beside that, crates of apples were piled up. I didn't think much of it and moved on. I felt like I was sliding down a slope and hitting the sides constantly.

The reason I went there that particular day is so misty to me, like a siren called me. I felt compelled to be there rather than for any other reason I'd used to excuse it. My memories flicked back to the last day I'd been there, and I hated myself for how quickly I'd jumped out of bed, how I didn't say anything to L until he asked me if I wanted coffee after my shower, and how I'd been so quick to leave. I didn't even ask him if he'd wanted to come with me to the House to hear me announce the inquiry. I could have done. Maybe if I'd acted differently at any point that day, things would be different. He probably would have thought to have asked for a preview copy of my report, and then everything would have been cancelled. He'd still be here now.

"Are you going to stare at that bed all day? You're a mess, aren't you. You should speak to someone," B said from behind me.

"Ha," I breathed out, dipping my head. "But there is no one."

"If you taking anything will mean that you leave sooner, then you can," he said in a dull tone, and walked off again, but I followed him. Even then, he resented me.

"What are all those apples for in the garage? I didn't think that he liked them that much."

"No idea, don't ask me. Are you taking time off work?"

"Just a half day."

"You should take some time off."

"And do what?" I asked, looking up at him and his blank face. Only the redness around his eyes gave him away in the slightest, and he had a certain numbness which I recognised. I don't know if he felt the same slight bond I felt with him. "Thanks, but I can't."

He shrugged his shoulders lazily, because he didn't really care. "It's up to you." Suddenly, I wanted someone to talk to about it. About L. Everyone avoided the topic like he was a taboo. I didn't want to talk to them or people who didn't know him, and that's still the case. It suited me fine most of the time, but at that moment, I wanted to talk about him.

"He said that he killed all those people. You know, the 'curse'? He said that it was him."

"The more I hear, the more I think that he wasn't well at the end," he replied. He gave away no emotion, sitting cross-legged on the floor, surrounded by boxes. There was a pause while he ripped a length of brown tape with his teeth. "He wasn't taking his medication, was he. You don't know, but I've been expecting this for a long time."

"You believe that he's dead?"

"I know that he's dead," he said with an odd cheerfulness. "You don't? Don't be idiotic, Prime Minister. I just wonder what pushed him over the edge. Why do you think he did it?"

"Why he left? He… I found out that he covered up the death of a politician, years ago. I don't know. I've stopped looking into it but there's going to be an inquiry. So he's not with you?"

"Do you see him anywhere?"

"I mean, is he with you in France? Or somewhere else? You can tell me, B. I won't do anything. I just want to know."

"You want to know where he is?"

"Yes."

"Try Tama cemetery. But it was an inquiry that did him in? That's so disappointing, L, I'm ashamed of you. He was always such a drama queen. So, you dumped him in the shit and he did this to avoid all that boring legal stuff. Figures."

"I didn't dump him in the shit, but he must have left because of the report. He didn't say much beforehand, just crazy things. I didn't know that he was involved in Raye's death until after the report had been given out. I mean, I thought that he was, but I…"

"Didn't want to believe it?" he asked, calmly strapping down another box of L's life. Of my life. "But it's your fault."

"No! I told him at the time that nothing was going to happen to him."

"You just told me that he covered up an assassination. Is that what it was? That doesn't surprise me. Still, I don't think that he'd have much chance of nothing happening to him. You drove him to it."

"It wasn't my fault."

"But it was your report. You fed him to the press; that's how he'd see it. It doesn't sound to me, from what I've heard, like he had many options left."

"No, B, that wasn't how it was at all. I was… undermined."

"How does a Prime Minister allow himself to be undermined, I wonder."

"It doesn't matter. We were going to sort it out that day. I was going to resign, I'd left Kiyomi, I had a divorce lawyer. We had plans," I said, gushing words and regrets onto B, and all out of context, never the whole story. My eyes stung and I was saying too much, so I turned back to him with a complete change in topic. "So, how long are you staying for?"

"Another week, maybe. Until this is sorted."

"What about the firm?"

"He left everything to me. I'm just going to be a very silent partner. Practically dead as long as they send me cheques regularly."

"He left everything to you?"

"Why? Do you think that he'd leave you something? He didn't. Otherwise I'd be obligated to notify you."

"I didn't expect… But we bought a house. We paid half each for it."

"You vulture! Trying to steal a dead man's house!?"

"I'm not. You can keep it. I just wanted you to know that I tried. I was serious."

"There's nothing to suggest that you part-own anything apart from your word, which means zippo to me," he said, making a zero of his thumb and forefinger. "Nul points, Prime Minister Turdface. All his estate was in his name and you're not mentioned anywhere. Are you really going to contest it?"

"I don't give a shit about the fucking house! I don't understand how it's come to this. He's not dead, B."

"I do love a good old fashioned delusion. That's a coping strategy of the temporarily insane in moments of stress or bereavement, but you're insane all the time. I can only presume that you didn't intend to kill him, whatever happened, so that's why you can't accept the truth when it smacks you in the face. You could have had an episode and drowned him yourself, but you don't realise that yet, so you're falling back on the old Gilligan's Island Syndrome. I'm still not sure. Look, I have things to do. Do you want to take anything? Oh, do you have his phone, by the way? The police couldn't find it and it wasn't found with the body." No, because the body wasn't his, I thought. And yeah, I had his phone.

"I'll wipe it and send it to you, if you want. I have to wipe it."

"Ah, you wanted his phone to get rid of any links to yourself. Your dirty little messages? I should have known."

"Why are you being like this with me?" I asked, though I don't know why I expected anything else.

"Because you're here. Everything that happened is your fault. You're the reason he's gone and you come here like you own the place. You're not sorry; you just want to make sure that nothing comes back to you."

"That's not true. So he's really not with you? You don't know where he is? The body they found – it wasn't him, you know."

"You saw the body?" he asked suddenly, looking up at me for the first time to confront with a crazed expression, so I gulped. It was like being in a house with Norman Bates.

"No, but it couldn't have been him. There's nothing to prove that he's dead, B."

"Except that I identified his body," he said, and went back to packing a box. I was stunned into silence because, from what I knew, everything was based on an identification from one of my security guards at the scene who'd only seen L twice, and L's jacket, which was found in the reeds a few days beforehand.

"I... I didn't know."

"It was definitely him. Did you think that they'd release his body to me if they weren't sure? Like, 'ummm, well, it's a man's body and we're looking for a missing man, it could be him, it might as well be, I'm cold and want a cup of tea, I can't be bothered anymore, let's just say it's him'? It doesn't work like that, dearest. They needed a formal identification, and I was here for that. And his dental records were sent for independent comparison, if that makes you feel any better, because I had a bit of trouble believing it myself at first."

"I never heard about any of this," I said, and he made a sort of high-pitched giggle and went to the kitchen, leaving me standing there feeling like the house was falling down on me. It does seem mad now, looking back, but I was convinced that there had been a mistake. I'd hoped that he'd admit to me that L wasn't dead, or at least that he had doubts. I never really believed it. I thought that L's brothers just wanted the case closed as soon as possible to see what they'd get from his will (which was nothing. I know because L had told me), and B had everything to gain from going along with L's plans, perjury aside. B was the sole beneficiary. Throw in an added bonus for him that L was actually alive and, I would presume, dependant on him, of course B would play along. That wasn't what I was getting from him though, and my lack of interest or knowledge about the body was starting to make me look incredibly stupid and negligent. I just never took it seriously. I was convinced that L would be found alive somewhere. Finding his escape route was what I focused on, not jackets and bodies.

So I stood there while my theories were being silently dismantled. When B reappeared carrying some dishes, he took up exactly where we left off.

"Why should you know? All it took was for me to identify him, and that was it, done. Do you want to see his death certificate? Death by drowning."

"But why would you not think that I'd want to know?"

"Did you think that you had any rights? If you'd really wanted to know, you could have identified the body yourself. You knew him, and you're the Prime Minister. It must count for something."

"I couldn't. I tried to go but I was... ill."

"Oh? Were you feeling a bit poorly? What a shame. Well, I didn't tell you because I don't trust you. Cold reasoning or blind refusal to accept facts helps a person get through a time like this, but I guess you know all about that. L was always saying that you were trying to change things, but yours is the most corrupt government I've ever heard of. L's just another person in a long line of people you've killed off. Am I right in thinking that you were the last person to see him alive? It makes me wonder what you did to him."

"What? I –"

"He was terrified of the water and you knew it. I struggle to sympathise with you. Now you're here with all this 'mew mew mew' when you're the reason L's dead in the first place. I think that you should go and leave this alone. Leave him alone. Content yourself with the knowledge that he won't be confusing you again. Set your ship straight to port, Prime Minister."

"I didn't do anything! I came here to help him and he hit me – he knocked me out. When I woke up, he was gone."

"He hit you? A likely story. And what about his hair?"

"He cut it. Before I arrived. He said that he wanted to change."

"L wouldn't do that. I think that you're responsible for that as well, but I don't know why you'd do it. Sometimes it's futile trying to understand the hopelessly unhinged. I've got a photo here somewhere of him on the viewing table. Do you want to see? It might help," he said happily, pulling out his phone. Fuck.

"You sick bastard. You have a photo of him after he died?"

"Ah, so you've accepted that he's dead? That's progress."

"No, he's not dead."

"Oh. That's not progress. Have a look at the photo. Relax, it's just of his hand." He smiled at the small screen, tilting it and lining his hand alongside it as if to mimic the pose, and I looked away from him. A breath shuddered from me and I took a few stumbling steps backwards until my back hit the door. "They looked just perfect, not dead at all, but they were cold; perfect for making pastry. Do you want to see? Don't worry about me, I can handle you if you go manic. You don't want to see? But you don't believe me. I thought that this might prove it to you and make you feel better. I'm not into that softly softly approach."

"Make me feel better?!"

"Confronting issues is key to emotional recovery. Or you could just get drunk forever and ever until your liver gives out."

"You want him to be dead."

"Why would I want that? He was my best friend. I'm just not blind to the truth like you. You want hard, irrefutable facts and you want to see them with your own eyes and do your own little tests until you're satisfied poking and God knows what, but I'm afraid I can't help you there. I have this photo though, or is that all a little too unsavoury for you? I'd hate for you to feel poorly again. You must have such a delicate stomach. You know what I think? You should forget about him, me, everything. Go back to your little macrobiotic family and your job and draw a line under all this. Just go away. I wouldn't have you soil his memory for me for anything. Not by you – you're disgusting. But, speaking as a psychologist, I'd advise you to get some help. You seem to be plagued by numerous psychiatric disorders and now guilt I'd say that you're just clinging on aren't you just clinging on by your teeth but one day you'll go bang because who's going to care about you now I don't mean Light Yagami the Prime Minister son husband father I mean you the real you who's going to put up with that? You can never truly be yourself again. Not that that's a bad thing, because the real you is like toxic waste. But I wouldn't trust you with a gun at the moment, no I would not. Still, if you want to skip the grieving process and do everyone a favour, then you know where the lake is. Tried and tested method."

His words seeped into me like poison, breaking down all the hollow optimism I'd wrapped around myself since that day. I wasn't much more than a buckled, depth charged wreck at the door, breathing haphazardly like I'd been deprived of air and I didn't care if he saw it. I hardly noticed him walking towards me and leaning into my face, examining me like some roadkill he was responsible for.

"Light?" he said, and in the softer tone I'd only heard him use with L sometimes. It was also the first time I could remember him using my actual name and not 'Prime Minister' or a rich variety of insulting nicknames. I looked into his face scathingly, hoping that he felt burned by my hatred for him, but it seemed to have no impact at all. He said perhaps the most shattering thing he could have said. Everything he'd said before were just words, but with the kindness in his eyes and voice, it felt like the end. "I understand now. I'm sorry for your loss."

And I left. I practically ran from the building like it was on fire and once I was back in my car my hands shook on the steering wheel. I found one of L's old sweet wrappers in my car ashtray when I pulled over, so I threw it out of the window and then regretted it. It was littering. Then the possibility hit me for the first time that I wouldn't see him again apart from in grainy photographs or in the background, unfocused, in press footage. I had little to show of his existence or his effect on my life, so it was like he'd disappeared completely, and I was so frustrated that a fucking sweet wrapper suddenly held all these memories and emotions – it was pathetic. I'd thrown it away with no ceremony, only shaking hate.

But B was right. I started my car again and went back to the Kantei like nothing had happened. I went to my office and since then I've worked like a machine that doesn't stop until it breaks down and thrown on the scrap heap, like everyone who has sat at that desk before me.

---

I have a book in my hands and it's beautiful. Deathly black against the whiteness that surrounds it. Never has there been a book like this. Like a religious text, it kills; not through inspiration, but by a name clearly written within its pages. It didn't corrupt me into doing this, but it gave me power to do what I always dreamed of; to do what one else can. I wonder where it could take me. In it, I see justice – not just changing the world from within like this, on this tiny island, but as a god. His name is written alongside all the others who died for my world, and it's an honour for them. I close the book and walk back to him. I have so little time of him left to me.

Between these rooms I feel that perhaps I've been too impulsive, like he always told me to be, and I stand and wait for words which don't come. He grips the table and I rush to him before he hits the floor, because the greatest compliment that I can give him is to let him die in my arms. His life was his, his death is mine, and so he's mine forever. That's winning. And somewhere, when a shaft of sunlight casts its eye across the overlooked lakebed, his shorn hair moving sleepily in the water is the only thing that's alive there.

He turns his head towards me slowly, his hair longer again and moving like ink in water, and I realise that I'm underwater too, held down by weights. I struggle against it, but then acceptance and a kind of peace comes. I resign.

His lungs are so full of water that there are no air bubbles when he speaks. He looks at me like he still loves me. Like he doesn't blame me and I'm where I should be.

"Kiss me before you go?"

---

Then I wake up like I've been hit in the chest. My body has completely seized from shock, though I've had this dream before and should be used to it by now. Why can't I dream of owning a ranch of pink ponies like other people do? My heart is crushed like a paper bag, tiredly crunching and wheezing as it inflates and deflates. It's not doing that at all, of course. I've just had a health check for insurance purposes and I'm in excellent order. No, it's all psychological.

I think I'm more shocked by how hazy his image seems to me now, like I can't even remember the details subconsciously. Inside, I think I'm screaming, but I make no sound and it doesn't wake Kiyomi. I can't even remember why I should be screaming.

---

Mikami was sacked, but between Naomi and Kiyomi's pestering and then with Sayu and Touta wading in, I reduced that to a six month suspension as long as he said what I wanted him to say at the inquiry. He knows that I hate him and he's lost my trust, but he's still around, grovelling and buying me coffees which I don't accept. He sends me memos sometimes asking me to meet him in the Club for a drink after work. I tell him that I'll be there, but I never am. I still have trouble talking to him because of his treachery but he's still useful for appearance sake and it's easier than battling against Kiyomi, who doesn't want her social circle disrupted because of some 'oversight'. No one mentions L apart from Mihael sometimes, and even he's learned not to. I offered him a position in PR, since L left him unemployed and he knows far too much to be let go. Mai is the only one who doesn't know enough to let her curiosity be hampered by respect or good sense. Kiyomi only occasionally refers to L as 'him' or 'he' bitterly, and only when questioning me on my mood or when I fail in some marital way. She knows now. I don't know when she realised, but she asked me not long after word came through that L had been found. Because I never denied anything, like an ugly political secret, she just accepted it as a fact. She won out in the end of the battle of the sexes, so I don't suppose that it bothers her much. We've been getting along much better since.

But about what happened that day. It was three years ago, so my memory might fail me and I either look back and see things as worse than they actually were or with a blurry glow around the edges.

After I came to again and L wasn't there, I staggered around from room to room with a banging and bleeding head knowing that I wouldn't see him again. I don't know how I knew that, but when I found his phone and wallet and then his passport where I'd hidden it beneath the sofa it was practically proof to me. How could someone as useless as L get by without those things? The glass door in the bedroom was open, the breeze licked at the tapping blinds, and that was the only noise in the house. It was the most peaceful moment I'd experienced for a long time. In fact, I can't remember ever feeling that way before. I knew what the scene looked like, or what it had been made to look like. Whatever had happened, I knew that it wasn't just going to be a case of waiting until he came back, because something told me that I'd be waiting a very long time. I took his phone because there was potentially damaging information on there, then I packed my bags and went back to the Kantei once my security had arrived with a fucking doctor. L must have sent the message they said that they'd received from me as some last gesture so that I'd live to fully experience the humiliation, but I was very calm about the whole thing. It's offensive to me that he thought that he could possibly kill me with a small Barbara Hepworth sculpture. I said a big "fuck you" to L and the empty house before I left.

I wasn't that concerned for the first few days until it was mentioned in the press, and I read it like it was just another story. The tone was disinterested, and the feeling of it was that its purpose was only to fill up dead space. It wasn't until weeks later that Kiyomi had a call to say that police divers had found a body in the lake. I'd had my security team and some private investigators I'd hired help the NPA – checking with taxi firms and airports and making sure that they did things properly – but in the end, it still came back to that lake, and all I was left with was a big bill to pay which I could hardly put on expenses. Before the body was found, I felt quite detached from whatever people suggested reality was and made up my own version of events. Afterwards, things were neither positive or negative, it was just how it was and I felt very little about it at the time, because I'd half-expected him to leave, just not like that.

It wasn't until a day or so after he went missing that I'd thought about what he'd said. I started writing down every word – analysing it, finding messages in the words he chose and how he said them and hating myself for not seeing the fucking obvious. I think about him saying that he killed Stephen and River and Watari and Jeevas and The Lady and everyone else who died from the 'curse' since it first started, about how he almost killed me, and that he was responsible for Raye's death. I can't make sense of it though, because how could you write down the particulars of how someone would die and make it happen just through that? That's my stumbling block. That's how I know that he was mad at the end. I think that he felt some guilt over Stephen's death and because I was throwing everything away for him, so he reconciled that with himself by imagining that he'd killed people for me, to equal the devotion. There are some things I'll never understand, and even if he was here to ask I probably wouldn't get any closer. The easiest, most realistic view is that he was an insane depressive who killed himself for illogical, fantastical reasons during an unmedicated psychotic breakdown, but I know that wasn't him. What he said was the truth and somehow it makes sense. I can, in some way, believe that he was the curse. No one else could do it as well or for as long as he could. Apart from me, maybe.

My reaction to the news was plain and very stupid denial, and then I was sick in the toilet – because of some bad lobster, I might add. I was going to drive to the lake to identify the body myself because there had clearly been some massive fuck up there confusing L with any old body they'd found. Honestly, L said that in the summer, if you went for a morning walk out there with 'Peer Gynt' on your iPod and joy in your heart at the wonder of nature, you'd be tripping over dead bodies everywhere within five minutes. Ramblers use them as path markers, like they do on Everest. There were massive clean ups twice a year during 'peak season,' which annoyed L, because he'd be eating his breakfast and they'd be fishing someone out of the lake. It made his waffles hard to swallow. I didn't think that L would do something so boring somewhere so conventional and I was on my way to prove it, because Kiyomi was getting on my nerves with her 'why would he do something like that? How many more people are going to die?'

So, picture the scene. I was on my way to the door wearing one of my less good suits. That doesn't matter, but I think that it expresses something about my state of mind and health. But I didn't make it as far as the door. I was overwhelmed by a sudden sickness, ran to the bathroom and threw up my guts into the toilet until my throat burned and I nearly passed out. It was like how people describe botulism, only worse. Those bastards don't know how I suffered. Anyway, Kiyomi found me dying on the bathroom floor, and I remember it in the same daze I experienced then. L wasn't in my mind at the time because all I could think of was trying to find some way to stop feeling as terrible as I did. My mind was empty like the rest of me was, so I just lay on my side and hoped that it would pass. Some unprecedented disaster had happened and I was powerless to do anything.

I remember seeing Kiyomi's feet in the doorway and her voice asking me what was wrong in a confused little girl voice. She must have stood there in silence watching me trying to breathe, because I couldn't reply, but then she shouted at Akane or someone to go away when she was asked if a doctor should be called. She locked us in the bathroom, knelt on the floor and placed my head on her lap. I thought that she'd poisoned my lobster even though I had come back to her, for all intents and purposes. Her sense of injustice is very well developed and her ambition might have made her think that having a dead husband would help her career after all. I don't know what I was thinking, but I don't trust anyone. I couldn't even raise enough strength to call for a doctor myself, so we both just waited.

Eventually, she kissed the side of my face and said: "It was him, wasn't it." I couldn't reply to that either, and the next thing I remember is waking up in that same recovery position, but with Kiyomi's jacket folded beneath my head. I was practically back to normal by then, so I stood and found her sitting near me against the wall. She was watching me from there with bloodshot eyes, so I told her very calmly that I was sorry, I didn't know what happened but I felt better. We both knew that it was a lie. By then I was convinced that she had kept me in there in the hope that I would die and that she was disappointed that I hadn't, but I offered my hand out to her and her hateful look of the betrayed. She took my hand, stood and put her arms around me, which I wasn't expecting, and said: "Why didn't you tell me?" I haven't eaten seafood since.

And that was the last we ever said about it, really, because I refused to talk about it. I wish that I'd had the presence of mind to try to salvage the situation and blame the lobster, but it was too late. I'd done too much and ploughed too many resources into a search operation which I'd become obsessed with to deny anything, because she'd know that I probably wouldn't do that much for her or Kira, let alone for a PR who was due to be questioned by the NPA. I'd hidden everything so successfully from everyone else that I don't know if her understanding and attempts at quiet empathy made things easier to live with or more difficult. So, if I'd done anything to be forgiven for, she forgave me and possibly liked me more as a person. Women like imagined chips in the armour in their partners. Of course, they'd rather that they were the source of vulnerability, but she doesn't seem to mind either way.

Then there was the funeral and B, which is when I took a downturn. Before that blip, I was doing well. It was only a short blip, but in that time I thought of nothing else but L. I continued looking into his disappearance myself for months, trying to find some proof that he'd just left the country, and ignored what B had said about his identification and the dental records. I had B under observation in France, but that came up with nothing. I just could not accept it. Not that long ago, I called B to ask him for something of L's. He was in my mind again for some reason and I must have sounded like a junkie craving a hit, but B said that I knew that I didn't really need anything. I got angry with him and said a lot of things I shouldn't, but he has a gift of having so little presence either on the phone or in person when he chooses to that it was like I was just talking to myself. I hated everyone and everything that day. Then I realised that he was trying to help me. He made me see that I was acting like a madman trying to reassemble their icon through whatever they can find, although it wasn't that. Sometimes something would happen and I'd think 'Oh, I'll ask L,' but he wasn't there to ask. If I'd called him, his phone I kept charged would ring in my desk. I'd forget through work and when I was reminded it put me in a terrible mood until I forgot again. I mean, I knew he was gone, but it wasn't real, if you know what I mean. He still seems like I dream I had or a nightmare that never really happened. I know that I was and still am the biggest bastard that ever lived, but I think that I'm becoming more worthy of things I never appreciated until now, and I wish he was here to know that. I just wish that he was here. There's a strange wisdom and calmness from accepting that I have no way of controlling or altering what happened, but it doesn't get easier, it never passes and leaves me as I was. Through him and through knowing him, I've learned to see that some things I thought mattered, turned out not to matter at all, but work still keeps me occupied, regardless. I remember what he asked me to do – to be a good leader and do the right thing, to make the belief he had in me to be well placed – so I'm trying to do that. I accepted his death with hate which morphed into romantic nostalgia for a time and then straight back to hate again, but I'm totally passive about it now and rarely think of him at all. It's been three years since I last saw him and I'm completely fine about it.

What really helped was Kiyomi's crisis two years ago when her mother was dying. Very slowly. Kiyomi practically lived at the hospice because her other sister unsurprisingly found that she had to move abroad, and she was constantly crying when I did see her. I didn't really have the time for overseeing her constituency duties and the whole thing was irritating, so I decided that something had to be done. Two months had gone by and the old woman was still clinging on. She treated Kiyomi like a servant and caused a lot of trouble with the nursing staff for an unnecessarily prolonged time, so I had a quiet word with one of the doctors there and we arranged a peaceful resolution to hasten her making her peace with God. As I'd anticipated, after her mother died in the night, Kiyomi's mood dramatically improved in the days following and we could all go back to working out what normal was. There was an equality in our idiocy for allowing people to use us, and that made us close allies. I'm not sure if it's what marriage is supposed to be all about, but it's better than I expected.

L said that he'd see me later, and I think about that a lot. I did, anyway. I try not to think about things I can't reason out, but sometimes, and for the most stupid, insignificant reasons, I miss him so much that it pulls the air from me. I miss him like you'd miss air or water. An almost physical pain of loss but constant and thumping like blood in my head which wouldn't cease until I thought that, yeah, I'd see him later. But I don't believe it, really. I can't, and it sucks big, hairy, massive balls. I couldn't understand why I'd need to believe that I'd see him again just to comfort myself. I'd rather have felt nothing. So, as I say, I don't think about it now. Everything worked out for the best, I suppose.

---

Kiyomi marches in laughing, wearing a Reiss suit and with a dazed look on her face. I should ask her what's wrong but I'm in the middle of reading an article on global warming.

"You'll never guess what she's just said about you," she says, breathless and visibly shaking.

"Hmmm?"

"She's saying that you're having an affair." Mai, you're so stupid, you're going to have to die.

"What!?"

"Akane. That's what she's just said. That she's having an affair with you." Eh? Oh. Yeah. But fuck, that was ages ago and the lights were off because I definitely wouldn't have done it if they were on. It was a minor mishap and only the once - literally, bang, done - ten minutes, tops, because I was back in my chair in time for 'The Week in Review' on the politics channel straight after. Since when did that become an affair? She took advantage of my good nature. Kiyomi was out with Kira somewhere and I was very angry at the time. It wasn't my fault.

"Poor girl," I sigh.

"I just asked her about the state of Kira's room and how she bought him a burger on the way back from school. A burger, Light. It's all around his mouth, you should see it. She poisoned my baby."

"My God, what was she thinking?"

"I don't know, so I asked her and she came out with this story that she's having an affair with you, like that's a reason she gave our son a burger. Can you believe it? Did you know that she has photos of you plastered all over the inside of her wardrobe door?"

"Really? News to me," I laugh, and carry on reading the paper.

"As if you'd look at her twice. She needs a brace and you can't stand her. She'll have to go. This is just the last straw."

I agree and call my security to bring a confidentiality contract while Kiyomi rants about how our until recently highly prized nanny should be marooned on an unpopulated island. There's no other option, I say, and nod my head throughout. Then, unwisely, because she is the definition of unwise, Akane steps into the room arrogantly and looks to me for back up. She's looking in the wrong place. Kiyomi walks to Akane and whispers sweet horribles to her, which Akane replies to, probably equally horribly. It's kind of entertaining in a non-violent cat fight way. I wish I could hear what they're saying, I really do, but my papers make too loud a rustling sound and I don't want to seem interested. It ends in slightly raised voice, anyway, because Kiyomi tells her to pack her bags and then Shizo arrives to chuck her and her fake Louis Vuitton's in a van. Again, I do nothing, even when Akane calls my name questioningly, like she expects me to contradict my wife in any situation. Imagine if Kiyomi knew about Mai, I think, and bite my lip. I just about got away with L but that's because he's dead and was a man, so somehow Kiyomi doesn't see it the same way. It was all backslapping and Saving Private Ryan brotherly love. I'm not sure when I suddenly turned into a roving husband and started feeling guilty years after the fact. It's really ridiculous. It's not even like I have any interest it; it's either for work or something to pass the time and everyone does it, so I don't see why I should be held accountable.

The room is rather atmospherically brittle and murderous now. I wish that L was here to witness this. I could have replaced him ten times over, but I have to be restrained – Prime Minister and all. You can't cross a prize winner with any old thing with a big mouth. Speaking of, Akane eventually storms out, slamming the door like an aggrieved teenager, and Kiyomi follows her, possibly to scratch at her eyes, who knows? Who cares? My manicure is holding up very well, I must say.

Kiyomi's voice is calm and assured against Akane's shrill protestations about how I love her, I never loved Kiyomi, Kiyomi is a terrible mother, I deserve better, and all the rest of it. Unfortunately I inadvertently planted most of that in her head by giving her one in Kira's bedroom, off the cuff, two years ago. It didn't make any impression on me and, honestly, I'd forgotten all about it. She was just there and she has this shy virgin, prudish way about her that needed to be knocked the fuck down, but I hardly touched her and I've kept well out of her way since. I can't even remember her surname and couldn't tell you anything about her, even though she's lived in my house for nearly four years. The master always shags the nanny, everyone knows that. And so my sexual renaissance continues. No one would listen to her. I've seen how far I can push people and the press, and it's surprisingly far. My frozen reputation precedes me and how on earth would I find the time anyway? Her buck teeth would make her story sound preposterous. Even Kiyomi doesn't believe it.

"I'm… Just the nerve of the girl!" Kiyomi says once she's back, and I blow some bewildered air out of my mouth as I turn a page. A few minutes later, after listening to Kiyomi blather on, Kira comes in (I know that it's him because it takes him so long to turn the door handle. His hands are permanently covered in sticky stuff, but it's ok, I have anti-bacterial wet wipes), slightly tearful with his school satchel which has nothing in it. As an attempt at diversion during my infamous 'blip,' I tried spending more time around my son. I was trying to force some paternal feeling from myself but ended up just looking at him like he was an alien until he was slightly coherent. On closer inspection, his simplicity and intense happiness at being alive was mystifying to me at first, but I adjusted. I've taken him on as a fatherly project, but he's naturally messy, lazy, obstinate, and doesn't appreciate my efforts, so it's hard work. I won't say that everything changed for me. I'm not a natural father, but I stopped seeing him as a mistake. I guess that I'm fond of him now, but there's not much to say about it, really. He looks like an iPod Nano version of me, only very short and covered in grass stains. There's no Kiyomi in there at all, I think, apart from his habit of carrying empty bags, but that's probably because her features are quite weak and my genes bullied hers, appearance-wise. His personality is a complete mystery to everyone. I question him on his treatment of his 100% wool trousers but he just smiles like I'm making a joke. What do I do now? Is this grounds for corporal punishment? I need a manual for this.

"Where's Akane going?" he asks. Kiyomi seems surprised to see him and kneels down to tell him the news while picking pieces of who knows what off his t-shirt. I hoped that I'd never see a son of mine wearing clothes like that, but then I hoped that I'd never see a son of mine at all.

"I'm afraid that she's leaving us, Kira," "Kiyomi tells him.

"She's deading? She's crying but she doesn't look deaded."

"No, but she's –"

"Yes, Kira, she's well and truly deaded," I say, flapping another broadsheet open to hide my despair. I try so hard not to correct him on all his mistakes because a child psychologist told me that it could cause untold psychological damage and that it's a ready-mix for a despot with an Oedipus complex. Besides, Kira never looks so sad as when I point out his mistakes. It makes me feel like such a worthless piece of shit.

"But I like Akane," he says, clambering up onto the sofa next to me.

"The god of deading doesn't really care about whether you liked her or not, sadly. Don't worry though, we'll find you another one. Pull your trousers up at the knee or you'll wear them out. You've ruined those already but it's good to get into the habit. Now, tell me what you learned at school today."

"I sang a song and I made a picture and I had some milk. I like milk."

"Is that all? They didn't teach you anything? Right, that is it! We're getting you a private tutor. Fuck this public education system shit!"

"Fuckshit!" he shouts happily. Ooops. Kiyomi's not going to like that, and on cue she comes running over like the cakes are burning.

"Light! For God's sake, he's only in playschool! Kira, you must never say words like that. They're Daddy words. Be a good boy."

"Your mother's right, Kira, you must never say words like that," I say distractedly, because I think that I can hear the phone in the living room. "Is that the internal line? Could you get that, Kiyomi? I have to read the papers. If anyone wants me, I'm in a meeting."

She huffs a little but she goes, so Kira jumps off the sofa to run around the room like a maniac and climb onto my office chair, so I take the opportunity to carry on reading for a few minutes.

"Who are they? Are they politics?" he asks.

I glance up to see what the hell he's talking about, and he struggles to turn around a framed photo to show me it from a distance. He must have found it in one of my desk drawers and I'm shocked to see it, especially in his hands. I haven't looked at it for years and I forgot that it was there.

"Did I say that you could touch that, Kira? Did I say that you could touch my things? Your hands are dirty, you'll..." I feel like shit. I know that he's a manipulative little bastard but he looks so upset by the tone in my voice, and I realise that what I'm saying is through gritted teeth. He holds the frame to his chest with one hand while he wipes the other on his trousers and I feel really shit. Get a grip, Yagami, he's a child, he's your child. "He was someone I knew once – the man with the black hair. The other man is his father. Put it back where you found it, please."

"I don't know them," he says, like he knows absolutely everyone in the world. I watch him while I'm pretending to read the paper and see him pouting and turning the photo back around so that he can look at it more closely. I clear my throat. Put it back in the drawer.

"You met him when you were a baby."

"I don't remember. What's his name?"

"Larsen."

"That's a funny name."

"You can call him L, if you want. That's what I used to call him," I say timidly. Why am I talking so quietly like he's a secret I'm ashamed of? Oh, yes. Because I am ashamed of him.

"ERUUUUU! He looks happy. Can I meet him?"

"No. He's not here anymore."

"He's not? Like Grandma? Is he deaded?"

"Yes."

"How did he deaded?"

"Because he was sad."

"Can you deaded from being sad?"

"Sometimes."

"I'm never sad!" he tells me proudly. I don't have anything to say about that. "Why do you have deaded people in your table? Why's Eru in your table?"

"I don't know."

"Does it make you sad?"

"I'll always be a little sad."

"Why?" he asks. I have to think about it for a moment, about how to be succinct and understandable as possible to a child who can't even tie his own shoelaces and who I don't want to talk to about this, ever. I don't want to questioned about it again.

"Because I miss him," I say, and he screws his face up at the picture

"Why?"

"I just do."

He still can't understand but stays quiet about it. After a while of looking at the photo in confusion, he starts rummaging around in his pocket for something. I think that maybe it's for crayons so he'll draw on the glass and I know that I'll let him do it and get some absurd satisfaction from the defacement. Maybe I'll join in and go mad scribbling out L's face with a furious black crayon, blotting out the only real thing of him that's left until he is truly gone. But Kira pulls out a toy plane. I'm disappointed. I'm used to it. "Do you think that Eru would like my plane?"

"Yes. I think that he'd love your plane," I say after a few moments of silent conflicting feelings. I have no idea what he's talking about, but it's strangely touching in its childishness. Kira sets the picture frame flat on the floor, takes a little toy plane out of his pocket and places it on top of the photo. He looks at it, almost like he's expecting L to say thank you, then runs over to sit next to me. "Did your mother give you that plane?" I ask.

"Yep."

"Because you were a good boy?"

"That's what she said, yep."

"Were you were a good boy?"

"Nope!"

"No, I didn't think so. What's 'good' anyway?"

"Being quiet and not making a fuss."

"I wasn't actually asking you, Kira."

"Who were you asking?"

"It's rhetorical... Never mind." I give him a pen and the blank side of a memo in the hope that he'll be quiet for a while so I can finish this paper. "Draw me a picture," I tell him.

"I'll draw you my friend," he says, sticking his tongue out with concentration.

"Who's your friend?" I ask. Going from what he's drawing, apparently his friend is a giraffe.

"Kim."

"Oh."

"She's six. She's old… Is Eru your friend?"

"Yes."

"Even if he's deaded?"

"Yes. He'll always be my friend."

And that's the end of that. I put the paper down on my lap and sit there looking at the plane on the photo on the floor some way away and wonder what I should do with it now that I'm reminded of it. I can't see the actual photo because of the light shining off the glass. Maybe I should get rid of it.

While rubbing the centre of my forehead slowly, I exhale and close my eyes. When I open them again, I turn to look at what Kira's drawing with no interest, and then I catch sight of Kiyomi in the doorway. We look at each other for moment, and I'm the first to look away.

"Kira, make a start on tidying your room. I need to speak to your father," she says. Kira and I look at each other in mild panic for completely different reasons, and then he wails and humphs as he's practically pushed out of the room by Kiyomi. She shuts the door, and when she turns to face me, I can see how anxious she is. She's probably gone quite pale under all that foundation. Oh God.

"You're... you're not pregnant, are you?" I ask.

"No." Thank fuck for that. She smiles nervously, like it was a really unbelievable idea, anyway. It must still be really bad news though, because she sits down next to me.

"What then? Oh. My father's dead."

"No!"

"My mother's dead?"

"No. Light –"

"Sayu's dead? Who's dead?"

"No one. That's kind of the point. Um… That was Security."

"Is someone in Security resigning? That's not all that terrible, Kiyomi. Either someone's resigning or they've found a bomb under my car."

"I don't know whether it's terrible or not. They've just had a call from the Chief of the NPA that… they've found Lawliet."

Well that's just stupid, but my heart thumps, just the once, like it hasn't for three years and it's a bit rusty. I knew it. No, they mean that they found him in the lake years ago. That's old news. Their admin department is shit, isn't it?

---

A/N Disclaimer: I think I've set a precedent with all the legal/illegal/bank/government/business/taxes stuff in this. What is realism? It's based on the Northern Rock takeover but I don't think that the government actually wanted it in reality while Light goes out of his way to get his bank. Don't shout at me, people who know about that kind of thing.

Sorry this took so long (I got a puppy and dammit I'm just lazy), that it wanders, and that it's overrunning by a lot. It's hard to find a balance between sads and 'fa la la I don't care! Let's do some dastardly bastardly things!' but since this whole thing is AU I settled on him not understanding what happened or his feelings and sometimes the cracks show but he's trying. He's also still a sod.

And I don't know what's going on, but I want a nice goodbye for these two shitheads and for people who want a happier ending (than I had intended) to get one, especially because the world news is so depressing right now. I might post my original ending sometime after this is finished because it might have more merit, but who knows tbh. My guesstimates about when, why, and how long are always completely off the mark. I'd put money against whatever I say, but I'll try very hard to wrap the whole thing up and mark it complete within the next month or so. Huge thanks to people who've reviewed or who I've spoken to since the last update. Extra thanks to K. x