PART 13

Yukie took another step forward. Light was trapped and she knew it. She was not rushing to get to him this time, but was creeping slowly, taunting him menacingly, and Ryuk was doing nothing to stop her.

The damn Shinigami is enjoying this!

It was a forgone conclusion Yukie was going to die, but Light suddenly had a concern. She would die in his bedroom and he would have to explain things. Her death would be far more complicated for him than his own death he realized. And then there was L and his suspicions. Kenta Sato died of a heart attack and it was only a matter of time before L sent something to nose around his school for it.

He had limited options, but then he thought of something. The time of death can be altered within the forty-seconds. He wasn't sure what that meant exactly, but he decided to try something and wrote: "GO HOME!" under Yukie's name. Normally a person simply died of a heart attack, but if he could control a person's actions before their demise then Yukie would not die here.

After he did so, he rolled over the bed and avoided a strike as Yukie charged. She brought the knife down in a rage where he once stood and the tip jabbed into the hardwood.

He scurried like a rat back to his desk.

All he needed to do was to wait out the clock, either Yukie would die here, or his addition to Yukie's "Death Note" would kick into effect and she would go home!

And die!

Backing off further, Yukie turned with the knife, her eyes maniac with murder, his rejection of her love for him taken to heart—and if he wasn't careful his heart would be cut out. He got this weird image of his heart pickled in a jar somewhere in Yukie's room.

He stumbled as he hit the back wall and the window there. He thought about jumping out, but even if he could, the time it would take to open his window and tear through the screen would be too timely. And then there was the drop. He's brake his neck.

He looked to his desk, seeing what he could use to bide what time was left on the death clock, and saw the picture of himself and Demetre holding the Tennis Cup he won during the Junior National Championships, and without a second thought he picked it up and tossed it like a frisbee at Yukie.

And a miracle happened. It hit her arm and knocked the knife to the floor. With it, her hand dropped, and Dana's ring also slipped off, bounced, and rolled under his bed. The picture hit the floor with a crash.

"Remarkable shot, Light!" Ryuk exclaimed.

Light grunted vexed. "But with no help from you!" he said back.

Yukie held her wrist, she looked stunned. She said, "Who are you talking to, Light? You know it's not mentally healthy to talk to yourself. Next thing you know, you'll believe you have an invincible friend that only you can see and hear. People will think you're crazy."

Ryuk laughed.

Light knew he wasn't crazy and Ryuk was real!

I've lost count how many seconds have ticked by. Is the 'death clock' close to its forty-seconds? C'mon! Hurry, damn it! I'm naked and cornered by a lunatic. I have to survive. Kira has to survive!

Yukie picked up the knife. "You're not being a very good boyfriend, Light," she said, with a crazed look. "But if I can't have you, then no one will. I killed Kenta Sato with an overdose of adrenaline from my Epipen. It was so easy! Has anyone every thought of that before?" She laughed. "But Kira will get the blame. I saved you from Sato, so you owe me, Light. Stop running away and let us be one!"

"You can forget it, Yukie. And if Kira is watching and listening, I…"

Yukie frowned. "You what? Hope Kira kills me? That's not a very nice thing to say."

"I don't want to die, Yukie," Light said. Then suddenly, he smiled. He had had enough. The 'death clock' had to be close, so it was time to play for the rest. He said, "I want to let you into a little secret" —he raised the Death Note— "and you'll the first to know about it, but you won't be able to tell anyone. I'm Kira! The one everyone has been talking about. And your insanity ends here, Yukie!"

Yukie's eyes narrowed with confusion. She looked at the Death Note, but Light figured she didn't fully understand what he was saying. And how could she? Why would she think he was the infamous Kira?

But before she could utter a word, she suddenly stopped, almost like something invincible hit her.

Light had never seen what happened to any of Kira's victims, but now he was witnessing it firsthand. He didn't know if he could believe it, but it almost appeared the air around Yukie pulsed as the 'death clock' ended. Yukie was standing still, but she didn't grasp for her heart—like a heart attack victim.

She seemed to freeze in place, become statuesque, still holding the knife.

Light felt his heart pound inside his chest. Did the Death Note work?

Her hands dropped, the knife clanged to the floor at her feet, and then she said, "I have to go home now, I have this urgent need to go home now," she said, almost absent-mindedly. She then gathered up her clothes, dressed, and left his bedroom, closing the door behind her.

"Wow, now that was unexpected," Ryuk remarked. "What did you write down in the Death Note that would stop her in her tracks and override her killing instinct?"

Light quickly followed Yukie. He wanted to make sure Yukie left his house. Ignoring his nakedness, he ran after her, and saw Yukie open the front door, and close it behind her. The moment he saw it, he locked the door, and slipped down to his knees, breathing out a heavy sigh of relief.

The message under her name had worked, he could direct a person before their death. That was very valuable information he could use for later.

Ryuk chucked slowly. "Now that was exciting," he said. "But I thought you wrote her name down in the Death Note? Forty-seconds passed. Anyone's name written down is supposed to die."

Light nodded. "That addition to her note saved my life, Ryuk," he said, "and it should work again. The Death Note can be manipulated in how a person dies. Sato's killer will never be brought to justice in the conventional sense, but now he can rest in peace. Kira will bring it!"

"You may not have killed Sato, but once Yukie dies, L will be after you," Ryuk said. "You may have just brought more trouble down on your head. What will you do now?"

"It had to be done or I would have been the one who died," Light said. "Yukie is a psychopath! And what will I do now?" He stood, proud and confident. "What kind of question is that?" Light clenched a fist in the air. "This only strengthens my resolve to purge evil from the world. And with the Death Note, I'll change it for the better. It's people like Yukie that assuredly deserve Kira's divine judgement!"

"I can't wait and see what you do next," Ryuk said, with a chuckle.

Two days later at school, there was an announcement over the intercom about Yukie's death that took place over the weekend.

Light sat at his desk in first period and expected to hear she had died from a heart attack after what had happened on Friday, he had been shaken up by it, but later calmed before his parents came home from dinner. And yet, it surprised him that her cause of death had been accidental. She had been hit by a car, he later found out when rumour began to circulate through the school.

Light had specifically written that Yukie was to "Go Home!" But from eye-witness accounts and from news media platforms, she had run into traffic on her way home, and got run over. No one else was hurt. Had his command been so direct that Yukie ignored all rules of safety?

It got Kira off the hook for her death in any case.

He'd have to conduct some more tests whether or not he could manipulate the method of how a person could die with the Death Note. Perhaps write the cause of a death first and then a name?

The gangbanger biker, having him chase that girl into on coming traffic on his motorcycle outside the convenience store, writing it in the Death Note—I thought it was just a fluke. But now it has worked twice. I'll try it on some criminals tonight, those in prison, and see how far I can stretch it.

Later that day, at lunch, Demetre joined him in Light's last classroom, sitting in a desk next to Light's.

There was an atmosphere of fear at the school now and new websites were popping up everywhere asking Kira to 'kill' people who they wished dead. There were even verbal threats from people at school who were being bullied by others that they would write their name down for Kira to kill if they didn't stop.

Everyone was a little edgy, except Light. And he would never agree to kill anyone just for bullying.

"Weird, don't you think?" Demetre said, eating his bagged lunch. "This Kira seems to be on the uptick, more criminals have died in the last two days than in the last two months."

Light gave him a sideways glance. There's a reason for that, Light thought.

"You okay?" Demetre asked. "You seem—distracted."

"Distracted?" Light shook his head. But maybe I am. He wished he could just go home and write down more names in the Death Note, he didn't want to waste any time. Still, L was on his tail, and he had to pace himself. L didn't know where exactly Kira was in the Kanto Region, so he had the advantage. That didn't make he didn't need to be cautious.

No one knew that Yukie had visited him on Friday and he wasn't going to tell anyone. He was still shocked by it, but he would keep it secret.

"I'm just down, I got a B+ on my latest sociology paper," he said, and yet it wasn't a lie. He did.

Demetre laughed. "Is that all? Dude, you're the smartest guy in school," he said, then said, "Well, the second smartest." He smiled. "You never could beat me at chess."

Light eyed him. "I'll beat you one day, Demmy, and then you'll kiss my shoes." Light bit down on the sandwich his mother made him this morning like a ravenous animal. "But we'll friends," he then added, smiling. "So, instead of kissing them, you can use shiner."

Demetre chuckled, enjoying his own lunch. "Friends forever, unless you do something stupid," he then said out of the blue. "We get into a big fight and become estranged or something like that."

Light looked at his friend strange. "Where did that come from? And what could I ever possibly do to you for that to even occur?"

Demetre shrugged. "Never mind, forget I said it. So, what are doing after school? Wanna hang out? You study all the time and you want to be a cop like your dad, but we all need to get out of our heads every once in a while. There's this excellent arcade just down the street that just opened up with all these classic video games. And I could really use a friend right now. I need a little distraction from my thoughts. I'm missing Dana a lot lately. We three were so close."

"Sure," he said sympathetically, putting a hand on Demetre's shoulder. "I miss Dana, too." Plans to write in the Death Note can wait, I'll give those criminals I choose some reprieve from their up-and-coming death sentence, he thought. His friend was important to him. Demmy had been there when Dana left and helped Light, now it was his time to reciprocate. "Or, would you rather to play a game of chess?"

They both laughed.

It was later that night after Light got home from the arcade, playing old video games was actually a good distraction, he went straight to his room and looked for Dana's ring. After it had fallen off Yukie's finger, it rolled under his bed, but after a day or so he still couldn't find it.

He sat up next to his bed. "It has to be here, it couldn't have rolled far," he said. Ryuk was with him, leaning over his bed. Light looked up at the clownish Shinigami. "Have you looked?"

Ryuk nodded. "I couldn't find it either," the Shinigami said. "Like an energy string, swallowed up in the cosmos of space, vanishing without a trace. Just like your girlfriend, Dana."

Light frowned hard, his brow folding. That comparison was uncalled for, he thought. "Everyone knows things just don't merely vanish, especially energy. It's displaced and moves elsewhere. The ring, perhaps, rolled into a small crevice that I can't see and is sitting in a gap in the floor unbeknownst. I'll have to move my bed and look, but I'll do so later. I have to be somewhere in fifteen minutes."

He got up and then sat down at his desk. After the encounter with Yukie, he felt frustrated. Dana's ring was missing and the framed photo of himself and Demetre was cracked, the glass split right down the middle. He could get the frame replaced, but the ring was invaluable.

"Light! Don't you have Cram School tonight?" his mother's voice suddenly bellowed up the stairs.

"Be right there!" he called back. "I'll look again for the ring when I come home," he then said softly. Ryuk nodded. "Or you can keep looking while I'm away that would be helpful, Ryuk?"

Ryuk shook his head. "Not my problem," he said. "I don't play hide and seek. On a side note, you were lucky with Yukie getting killed before dying at home. And someone phoned in an anonymous tip about Sato's murder—about the possibility of something else being used on him in place of a syringe. The police are investigating it and that Kira has been cleared. They're calling it was simple an act of murder."

Light grunted an acknowledgment as he gathered his book bag and a light coat. "Yes, I wonder who could have made that tip, it certainly wasn't me. I may never know. Anonymous tips are labelled differently and it isn't in my Dad's files, I already checked. But no one is truly anonymous these days," Light added. "In any case, I'm absolved; Kira is absolved."

"But L will still be hunting you, Light. What are you going to do about him?"

Light smiled wickedly. "Play with him, of course," he said. "Yukie's murder opened up a whole new way of using the Death Note and I intend to use this knowledge to its fullest. Kira will continue to kill criminals and I'll add a little fun into the mix. You want to be entertained, right? Well, get ready for it."

"Oh, I'm looking for to it!" Ryuk said, rubbing his hands together.

Light left his room, but has he descended the stairs he recalled something he read from one of his text books in sociology class which he pondered.

It was something Friedrich Nietzsche, a German philosopher, who lived in the later half of the twentieth century; he said: "He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby become a monster. And if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will also gaze into thee."

Light knew the difference between right and wrong, but he had just written one of his fellow students name in the Death Note, despite it not being the direct cause of Yukie's death. He had a moral compass, a set of beliefs, but it's said once a line is crossed it becomes easier to walk across it further.

But Yukie was sick, and that's what he was purging the world from. She would have killed him.

If I didn't act, then Kira's new world would never come to pass and that would have been criminal!Sacrifices need to be made. If someone tries to stop meg—remaking the world better for everyone, including L—then they are evil and need to be purged from it.

The world was rotten.

And Kira was its saviour!

END