Above her, there was a pale, inhuman face, sticking out of the ceiling. Its smile was full of terribly sharp teeth. Sayu swallowed, willing her pulse to calm itself. "Hello."
The face began to lower itself from the ceiling, a neck, shoulders and wings following. Sayu stood up out of her chair and backed up a ways as the creature descended and finally crossed its legs, floating upside-down and looking at her with eerie yellow eyes.
"You can see me. You shouldn't be able to see me." Its voice is deep, and alien – there are no layers to it, like they do in the movies to make it sound strange, but its more chilling than anything Sayu could have imagined. "You must know about the Death Note, then?"
Sayu could only nod, her voice caught somewhere in her throat. The creature continued, its tone turning curious – an oddly human touch. "How? Your brother took a lot of precautions to keep it hidden. Even I was impressed. Are you a family of geniuses?"
Sayu managed to find her voice again, though barely. "Something like that." There was a pause, and they carefully studied one another. Her eyes glanced over his jewelry, the clothes sewn into his skin – was it all real, she wondered, or an illusion to cover up something malevolent and incomprehensible?
He (for it was easier for Sayu to think of this being as a he) broke the silence. "What are you going to do, now that you know Light is Kira?" The creature's eyes flashed scarlet as he leaned forward, unnervingly focused; Sayu could see herself reflected in his pupils.
"Nothing," she said, her voice much calmer than she felt. "I'm sad Light thinks he has an obligation to kill people, but otherwise I don't care." And wasn't that strangely freeing, to say that? That she cared about her brother's mental health, and other people's lives meant nothing to her? The human right to life was just a social construct, after all, the only real consequences murder had being the grief of loved ones and the guilt of the person who committed the so-called crime. It took a toll on the soul, if such a thing existed, and Sayu ddin't want that for Light.
The creature was silent as he slowly turned himself upright to look at her properly. "Interesting," he said. Sayu hoped that was a good thing.
"I suppose Light was right, about humans hiding their real selves from each other." The creature cocked his head to the side. "My name is Ryuk."
"You are, ah, Mister Ryuk?" Sayu asked, recalling a little of what she had learned about gendered English honorifics.
"I suppose. I don't have a family name – I'm just, well, Ryuk."
"It is...interesting, to meet you, Ryuk-san." Sayu couldn't bring herself to honestly say it was a pleasure. "May I ask why you're following my brother?"
"Oh." He tilted his head. "Well, I have to now. You see, the Death Note was once mine, until I sent it to the human realm. Now it is his, because he was the one to pick it up. I must follow him until the day he dies."
Seeing Sayu's expression, Ryuk seemed to realize this wasn't a helpful explanation. "I'm a shinigami," he added, equally unhelpfully.
Sayu sighed and sat back down. He didn't seem to be an imminent threat for now, thought it would probably be unwise to discount all danger. "Is there maybe a beginning you could start from? What a shinigami is, what a Death Note is, where you come from?"
In the end, the full story that he gave her wasn't much in the way a real explanation. After he left (which was after she wrung a promise to return and talk to her later out of him), Sayu was left in bed, staring up at the ceiling, mind racing and fully in the knowledge that she would be getting no sleep whatsoever that night./
Were shinigami an alien race? Were the Death Notes advanced technology or just magic? How did they work? How long had the shinigami been living parasitically off the human race? There were too many questions which bore looking into – she had to dig out a notebook and write them all down as they came to her (in code, as it always was with things she couldn't afford her parents knowing about) and by the time she stopped to rest, her hand ached.
Too many questions, most of them about this supernatural occurrence – but as well, she still worried about Light. Should she stop him? Out of duty to her brother, if not to society? He would end up going to Mu no matter what she did, and it might end up being against his will, and Sayu's complicated and atypical sense of morality only complicated matters. She almost envied Light for his simplified view of ethics – to him, it really was that easy to make a decision.
She would never personally kill someone, unless they were threatening the safety or happiness of her or someone she loved. The potential for self-torture was too great. It might be easy for Light, she supposed, considering he didn't seem to view the people he was killing as innocent, but did it really matter if they were or not? They were as human as he was, as anyone they knew or went to school with. Would he kill his own family if they committed murder?
Too much, too many thoughts flying through her head, too late at night to be dealing with them; more than ever, Sayu wished she had someone she could talk to about all these ideas, someone closer than just a friend, someone at her level of intellectual and emotional distance from others, someone to reflect her view of the universe off of to see if any of it made sense. She wondered if Light ever felt this kind of loneliness, or if he was satisfied, even proud of the fact that he was so unique. As arrogant as that perception sounded, she almost hoped the latter were the case. The former was so crushing and dreadful she could hardly stand it at times.
Sayu, having just confirmed that there was an afterlife, wondered if maybe she could just wash her hands of these earthly concerns once and for all. What were the qualifications for getting into Heaven? Somehow, she doubted Ryuk knew, and Sayu suspected she might not even meet them. Besides, there were just too many questions... God, why her? Why Light?
She turned over and shut off her nightlight, trying and failing to banish her thoughts and get to sleep. Things always seemed better in the morning, but that was only the case if she was rested.