January 17, 2004
The month of January is a mild one in Tokyo, where light coats are often paired with hot chocolate and late study nights.
Sneakers hit the ground with renewed vigor as Misa fastens her pace, the breeze cooling her sweaty skin, blonde strands having escaped her previously neat ponytail and now stick to her forehead viciously.
Running at least a few mornings a week was a habit she had picked up during high school, one she had lost when entering college.
As proven by those seven pounds she had gained in the last few months - coincidentally when Kira had made its apparition and she had gone to that godforsaken party with Nami.
The two things had one thing in common: Light fucking Yagami.
So, against all reason and despite the second one not being his fault in the slightest, she blames him for those admittedly not-all that-bad pounds she had accumulated. History had a habit of proving humans to be quite petty, over and over again.
Mistake after mistake, grudge over grudge.
Far from her to break away from tradition.
I'm allowed to be a bit vain, she reasons, thinking of the striking eyes and elegant features she saw in the mirror this morning, it is soon followed by a brief admission of her own conceitedness - there are far worse things to be than conceited.
Pretty had its perks, and since she would not be enjoying them forever, Misa was quite intent on making the most of it.
Her legs push harder, muscles clenching and heart-thumping strongly in her ears.
(pretty is not solid, it is not fair)
Maria would've laughed, this type of reasoning dangerously close to some unpleasant memories- stereotypical mean girls in high school, she would have dismissed with a bitter smile and arrogance.
(what's pretty worth if your head's only filled with air?)
Now that she thinks about it, Maria was an awfully bitter little thing, to the point of being blinded by it and not seeing the full picture or past what others' let her see.
Misa likes to think of herself as the best parts of Maria only. The few she could think of - a woman did not end up dying alone for no reason, after all, at least now she has a list of things to avoid doing.
She's getting pretty damn good at separating the two, isn't she? Maria. Misa.
Misa inhales sharply, running shoes squeaking as she comes to a halt as pavement shifts to the rougher texture of asphalt. The sun is just starting to rise as seven o'clock in the morning nears, cars filing out the busier streets she stays away from. She makes a turn in direction of the parc, the one that she always uses to go back home.
This habit of hers is something she promises to not lose again, one would be surprised at how much it helps to clear her head. Her cheeks flushed, she slows down the pace and closes her eyes briefly for sunlight to hit her fluttering eyelids.
Sunlight is everything she appears to be, radiant and cheerful and honeycomb-yellow. Scorching liquid gold.
Running makes it easier to deal with her sometimes packed schedule, from her schoolwork to the part-time job she still had going on - despite having reduced her hours quite drastically, everything in between.
(numbers that bleed, that flow like a river)
The headaches are a very real and very annoying thing she has to deal with almost on a daily basis. It sucks.
(names of strangers she pretends to not know, names she forces herself to forget)
(those names have never been given to her, she has no right to them)
Misa stops and gets another glimpse of sunlight from in-between Tokyo's towering buildings. Hands on her knees to support herself better, she struggles to regain her breathing. Too fast, too long for someone who hadn't ran for a while.
It's the best she has felt in the past few months, blood pooling underneath the pale skin of her cheeks and sweat dripping down her forehead to be cooled down by the light breeze that hits her face.
(she feels alive)
Moving and breathing and living-
The blonde walks the rest of the journey to her house, aware of the eyes of those who are awake on her figure clad in convenient, but not quite considered appropriate clothing.
She doesn't particularly care for the opinion of the old women of her neighborhood stuck in another time. Sensing something less than a pleasant sensation taking ahold of her, she turns her all-seeing eyes to the trees framing the street she's walking on instead.
Every shade of green is kept somewhere in the back of her mind, every shift and dip in the foliage caused by the wind.
It's just as she enters her house that a fleeting thought crosses her mind, I wonder how Misora is doing. The thought is brief and if she has no definite answer, she does have an idea, a smirk crosses plump lips.
Yes, she's sure the woman, she has placed something not quite like trust but perhaps her faith into, is doing just fine.
Naomi Misora is not doing well.
She is actually having a frankly horrible, terrible time dealing with the shit-show that has become her life.
See, the practically-a-widow did not get her previous standing in the FBI easily or without effort - tears and blood and sweat were involved, lots of it.
Maybe that's, paired with her incredible investigative ability, what causes her to become so deeply involved with her previous cases, obsessive some might say.
Those people have not seen her working - or well trying to do so without an organization backing her up, on the motherfucking Kira case. If they did, they might reconsider the term obsessive and instead go for neurotic freak or hysterical bitch.
Naomi has drowned coffee after coffee, tracking all those who had been on that godforsaken bus with Raye by word of mouth alone.
But well, without a list of the suspects, what could she do? Come up to that elderly couple or that teenage girl and ask if they had by any chance been shown an FBI badge, three days short of a month ago. She might as well smile and try her luck with an oh would you by any chance happen to be Kira?
Despite this, she hasn't quite resolved herself to trying to contact L or the Task force again - she would rather find something to back up her theories on Kira's abilities before she tries to do so.
In other words, pride makes her just a tad bit bitter.
Weird, since she has been stepping on that pride of hers quite a few times recently - from agreeing to quit the job she loved so much for marriage, to admitting herself to be an almost overly emotional person.
She's hit a wall, for maybe the first time in her brilliant career ever since the L.A. BB murder cases, Naomi Misora has hit a wall.
Huh, she blinks, that's weird, I haven't thought about that case in forever.
The BB murders had her hit a wall alright, but in a far different way than what she's facing right now. Perspective, she remembers, is everything.
Even now she remembers the sting of anger she had felt back then, the burnt of her wounded pride. How the investigation went smoothly, too smoothly, how she had been spoon-fed clues and deductions. The LABB murder case was basically her doing 2 + 2 only to come up with 5.
BB much like the case named after him, had never made sense, the rare glimpses she had caught of the man underneath all of the makeup and layers of fake personalities.
The Kira case, however, she's just missing too many variables to come up with anything remotely sound of mind. Ugh stupid psychopaths, always making her life difficult.
Wara Ningyo and weird names, they play around in her mind briefly, the FBI agent stops suddenly, looking at herself in the mirror of the hotel room she's still living in - greasy hair and the crumpled fabric of her shirt under the leather of her jacket and dark circles under her eyes.
Wara Ningyo and weird names, it's unrelated to the current case she's trying to crack and still just as crazy as she remembers them being a year and a half ago.
It might just give her an idea.
Somewhere else altogether, two far too brilliant boys meet face to face for the first time. A brief glance is exchanged between the two from far away, nothing out of the ordinary.
(there never was, one will laugh - just humans doing their thing)
Destruction, love, building cities on the bones of children, people coming together to pray for something better. But well, we've already heard of that story haven't we?
One boy disheveled, one polished glass. Both similar in ways the world will never understand, soulmates, a dead little girl would say with dead eyes far too wide for such a pretty face.
And so the glance stays just that, a glance of no importance, easily disregarded even by the two smartest men in the world.
The ground may as well just come apart from underneath the feet of those standing upon it, for things do not always change and this, this right here is no different than it was once upon a time. Just like then, it's a spark - one that shakes the world to its very core.
(if they could play games on either side of a screen, none was prepared for that quite unfortunate meeting, fated or not)
They could light everything up in flames, they might as well have.
January 21, 2004
Her mouth purses, finger playing with the fine jewelry hanging from her earlobe.
Her essay's not going to write itself she knows, however it will clearly not be her writing it tonight either. So, Misa sighs heavily and closes her books in favor of brewing herself some coffee before trying to work on some papers for her other classes.
She grins to Gelus, the porcelain cup heating her hands as she walks back up the stairs. "Do you ever feel like you've done some horrible things in your past life to suffer like this?" her coursework was nothing to sneeze at, classes not quite as easy as they were before.
It's a blessing in disguise, at least now she's actually interested. Boredom is one dangerous thing, as proven by Ryuk and Light.
(weird how here, it was not temptation that made one bite into the forbidden fruit)
"You have no idea," she kind of does but well she's not about to say that. Rem is somewhere behind her, silently listening to the two.
The female Shinigami doesn't show up often and when she does, she prefers to keep quiet, Misa's pretty sure Rem is warming up to her, however, not that she'd say it out loud. Well, as much as a being of the God of death's caliber can warm up to someone - to a human nonetheless.
(just a desperate need for entertainment, for change)
The blonde would like to think they've bonded over their mutual contempt of the human race and chick flicks.
Rem would most probably strike her dead if she could hear the girl's thoughts, Misa almost laughs. Right, her eyes flicker to the half-done paper she had left on her desk, I need to get back to work.
Except she doesn't, because there is a man sitting on her bed.
There is a man sitting on her bed.
She doesn't move even as Gelus visibly tenses - stitches straining as if something was coming alive underneath the patches of fabric, her parents should get back home soon. She doesn't want to make a scene and so she simply looks at him. Unbothered by her lack of reaction, he wiggles his fingers in her direction as a greeting.
Her heart is beating painfully hard against her ribcage and shit she's unarmed and he's clearly bigger than her -
"Misa get away from that man," Rem's tone is low, more serious than she has had the chance to hear the Shinigami be in the past few weeks that they've known each other. Misa does not move, feet stuck to her position in front of her room's entrance.
Then, everything stills.
Against everything in her that tells her to run far, far away, Misa smiles something bright and friendly, the smile one would use to greet an old friend. Not someone having broken inside her home, she knows for a fact that her window was locked earlier oh damn it all to hell.
(run little red, run)
(your hood won't protect you from those fangs of his)
"Can I help you?" her parents raised a polite child, after all. She's half a breath away from asking the man if he'd like something to drink, she doubts that to be a healthy reaction. Oh well.
He throws his head back and laughs.