Sayu had missed the broadcast that the second Kira had supposedly sent in reply to L while she was practicing – not that she had particularly wanted to, but having to hear of it after the fact was irritating, as Ryuk couldn't give her the full picture, and her mother hadn't recorded it. The gist of it seemed to be that the police had refused to work with them, and they had issued threats in return. But there was something else to worry about.
Light had confided in Ryuk that he planned to try to 'use' the other Kira to kill L and act as a scapegoat. To a point, this actually kindled some hope in Sayu – the authorities by and large seemed too scared of Kira to fight him without L, and if Light succeeded in either one of these things, it would mean her brother was all the safer. Her real fear, was, as always, that Light would do something arrogant and stupid, which was almost a given at this point.
She lay awake that night, smelling apples, grim thoughts churning in her head.
Another day, another broadcast, another reason to strangle Light in his sleep before he got himself executed.
A new video, this time higher quality. The background was full of sparkles, playing off the double meaning of the name. "I am Kira. The true Kira. The creator of the video shown on Sakura TV is a fake."
For God's sake. Sayu prayed this was another copycat.
"At this time, I will show leniency to the person claiming to be me by assuming he only did so in an attempt to help me achieve my goals."
It sounded like Light. It sounded far too much like Light. Her older brother was giving her gray hairs before she was even twenty.
"However, killing and threatening the lives of innocent police officers goes against my will. It only causes chaos, and interferes with my desire for people to understand my purpose."
Sayu snorted. Like killing FBI agents didn't cause any chaos. "If the person who claims to be me sympathizes with my goals, and wishes to assist me, then I ask that they first try to understand my will. If they do not heed my warning and continue to act in this manner, I will be forced to pass judgment on them."
This was its own form of terrorism, but at least this time it was targeted at the copycat. That didn't mean Sayu was happy.
"So, uh, that whole thing was actually L's idea."
"Say what now?"
"Yeah, he recruited Light to help him 'catch Kira.' They're staging messages from the real Kira to get at the second one, and Light thinks L is gonna try and use this to see what Light's gonna do and if he can get dirt on him – it's gotten really complicated really fast."
Sayu rubbed her temples. "Far more complicated than it needs to be, at least. Showoffs."
"Light seems really pleased."
She threw her hands in the air. "Of course he is! He's gotten to make his first public announcement as Kira with the seal of approval from L. He must think it's his birthday."
If only he would stop treating this like a game. Light may never have had much of a childhood, but why couldn't he see that there was so much more to this than just him and L playing cat and mouse? Why did he have to have a child's selfishness?
"It's official, the second Kira has the eyes," Ryuk said as he sniffed an apple pastry she'd gotten him from a bakery down the street after school.
It had become their latest habit for Ryuk to come report to Sayu after Light's meetings with L. She appreciated it, even if all they seemed to talk about these days was Light and his dumbass decisions. It was all she could really bring herself to talk to him about without verging into dangerous territory, feelings-wise. "He wants to meet with Light. He mentioned 'showing each other their shinigamis' as a way of confirming identities, and L flipped the fuck out."
"L did? But as far as he knows, shinigami are myths..."
"Yeah, but Light mentioned shinigami in his secret message to L." Sayu threw her head down onto her desk with a thunk. "Don't worry, he covered it up by suggesting that it was just a way of referencing the power to kill. L seemed to buy it. Still seemed kinda freaked out at the idea, though."
Sayu lifted her head up with a sigh. "Be glad you don't have siblings, Ryuk, they drive you crazy."
One night, Light and Ryuk returned home, and Mom asked where Light had been disappearing to.
"I have a girlfriend now, Mom." Light's face and voice were too confident for that to be the truth. Ryuk's chuckle confirmed it, even if Sayu hadn't known where they'd been going all this time.
"Whoa, what? Light has a girlfriend? How?" Sayu mocked over her bag of chips.
"Oh come on now, I'm eighteen years old and a university student, of course I do." Light began heading upstairs, and Sayu rolled her eyes where he couldn't see. "Good luck to you too, on that front, Sayu," he added in a teasing voice.
A blush rushed unbidden to her face. "I – but – I don't need any luck for that yet!" The fact he'd unknowingly said it front of her crush made it so much worse.
"Aren't you going to have dinner, Light?"
"No thanks, I ate at the hotel."
Ah, a chance to divert it back on him! "Oooh, a hotel, how scandalous!"
Up in her room after dinner, Sayu groaned into her pillow.
It had almost been like when they were younger again, playfully teasing each other about nothing. Almost made it easy to forget that everything had changed.
"He's looking for the second Kira in Aoyama on the 22nd." Sayu jumped as Ryuk came floating through the wall. "Sorry."
Sayu waved it aside. "It's fine. So he's meeting them?"
"Not meeting them, apparently he doesn't want them to know its him."
"Shocking, he's finally making a smart decision for once."
There was apparently no luck in Aoyama, or the other place L suspected the second Kira might be, but the copycat claimed to have found Kira anyway.
The police were on TV during dinner, offering to reward the second Kira for turning the original in. Sayu hoped that the second Kira didn't actually know. They certainly didn't seem smart enough, and the Tokyo was an awfully big city...
The doorbell rang. Sayu went to answer it.
A bottle-blond beauty in a skimpy lolita-goth getup was on the other side, and Sayu felt very ugly by contrast, answering the door in her pajamas. Who goes out this late, to a suburban neighborhood, dressed like that?
The unfairly gorgeous girl bowed politely. "Good evening, my name is Amane Misa. I'm sorry to disturb you, but Light left his important notebook at school, so I brought it..."
Sayu was frozen for exactly one second...
Her walls snapped back up, and she mentally slapped a mask onto her face. She didn't exist.
Yagami Sayu was answering the door for a friend of her big brother's. He'd left his notebook at school, his friend was here to return it.
"Oh, just a moment!" Sayu called to Light up the stairs. "Light! Your friend is here to drop off your notebook!"
Light came down swiftly, and stared at the woman, going out to the front porch and shutting the door behind him without saying a single word.
Sayu let out a shaky breath.
That had to be the second Kira. The mention of the notebook might have been a coincidence, but Light's reaction on seeing the stranger confirmed it. That was no friend from school.
After about a minute, they both entered the house together. Sayu wasn't sure why she hadn't run away up to her room yet – perhaps she was fascinated by the train wreck her brother's life had become. Maybe she had been afraid that that would be the last time she ever saw Light alive.
Light nodded to Mom. "Mom, she came all this way, could you please bring some tea up to my room?"
Mom had a strange expression on her face herself. "Sure. Welcome to our home."
Sayu found herself and Mom staring at the two of them as they went upstairs. Something in Mom's eyes while they did so was... wrong.
This whole situation, the second Kira, Light inviting her in, that horrible expression on Mom's face - she couldn't stand it, she had to defuse the tension somehow. "Hey..." she whispered, "Do you think that's Light's girlfriend? I can see her panties..."
Mom shook her head and scoffed, but there was the ghost of a smile on her face as she left to go prepare the tea. The alien look in her eyes was gone. "Of course not, Sayu – and that's not funny! Don't be so rude."
Sayu had no desire to risk eavesdropping, so when Light, Ryuk, and Misa finally emerged from her brother's room at 11:30, she had no idea what the subject of their conversation had been.
"She seems nice enough," Mom muttered as she washed the teacups vigorously. "Even if she does dress like... That."
Sayu couldn't bring herself to say anything. It says so much about how little our family knows one another, she thought, that neither Mom nor Light can suspect each other of being murderers.
At one in the morning, when her room was dark, Ryuk came to see her again.
He didn't say anything at first, just stood in the corner like a ghost in a horror movie. "Ryuk?" Sayu prompted. "What happened?"
Ryuk slowly sat down on the floor. "Learned some interesting stuff, that's all."
"Like what?" He was clearly lost in thought, unnaturally still, like he always was when he was thinking. Most humans would fidget, but he never moved. Just stared at nothing the whole time. Sometimes he stared at her instead – was it weird that she found that more palatable?
"That girl, Misa, she has her own shinigami. Her name's Rem."
Her. Something about that put a lump in Sayu's throat. Don't be foolish! Romance is forbidden, and they can't feel things like that anyway – there's no reason be jealous!
"Rem said that if Light tried to kill Misa, she'd kill him." He curled his hand into a loose fist. "Never occurred to me that a shinigami could care that much. To kill for a human."
Sayu swallowed. The lump remained, but she suspected it was for different reasons now. "You've never felt anything that strong?"
Ryuk didn't answer for a few moments.
"No." And he didn't say anything more after that.
She swallowed again. Still there. "Um. How did she find him?" Her throat was hoarse, her voice quiet. He would think it was about Light, and the second Kira. Misa. It wouldn't be untrue, either.
"The eyes. Apparently, humans who've made the deal can't see the lifespans of other humans who own Death Notes. She spotted him in the crowd."
Her throat was so dry. Why didn't Sayu keep water bottles or juice in her room? "Just the owners?"
"If just touching it affected you, she would've said something to Light. She's obsessed with him."
The lump was slowly easing away. Ryuk seemed more relaxed as well, talking about something they were more removed from. Or, at least, something Ryuk was more removed from. "Like stalker-obsessed?"
"I don't know enough about human feelings to have a real opinion, but she said she was in love with him. With Kira. Told him she'll do whatever he tells her to, that she doesn't care if he's just using her."
The lump came back with a vengeance, and a bitter taste entered her mouth. "And is he? Going to use her, I mean." The girl was mentally disturbed at the very least, Sayu could think of nothing else that explained her behavior. If Light was willing to take advantage of a vulnerable woman's feelings, he'd clearly changed much, much more than she'd thought.
Ryuk was quiet, shifting. "Are you sure you want to know the answer to that?"
A short, barking laugh erupted unbidden from Sayu's chest. He'd learned fast enough. "Well, that tells me exactly what the answer is, doesn't it?" She crossed her arms, looking down at her feet. Good God, Light. "Well, at least she has a protector. Let's hope Rem starts with giving her good advice."
"She is a shinigami, I wouldn't count on it," Ryuk muttered.
"A shinigami who loves her. I think that makes the situation a little different, doesn't it?"
He was silent another moment more. "Maybe you're right."
His face was a blank mask, and Sayu wished, desperately, to know what he was really thinking. Her throat was too dry to ask. She should definitely start keeping apple juice in her room.