Light's first few days as a university student were apparently far more eventful than he let on.
Ryuk had confirmed there were no audio bugs, which came as a relief to Sayu, but according to an excited and invested shinigami, L was closer on Light's tail than ever before. The detective had come to To-Oh himself, under the name Hideki Ryuga (which Sayu found grossly insulting to the star himself) and was trying to provoke Light into making a mistake.
"I'll bet my entire Sailor Moon collection that he won't last a day," Sayu stated grimly as she tossed Ryuk a Golden Delicious apple out of her bag. She wondered if this made her an enabler, but there didn't seem to be any bad side effects to the apples themselves. "Light loves to brag, he can't help himself. It's like a compulsion."
"I dunno," Ryuk said thoughtfully as he bit the apple in half, swallowing a massive amount in one gulp. "He seems pretty good at keeping his cool so far. Maybe he's learned something?"
"Maybe, but he's attracted the full, personal attention of L. Light's an attention whore and a narcissist, he'd probably be giggling with glee well before now if he didn't think it was beneath him. It's more than just him making mistakes in covering his tracks, he wants people to follow his trail of breadcrumbs so he can feel clever and admired. If he really didn't want to be caught, he wouldn't have created this whole persona in the first place."
"Yeah, I kinda got that impression from him already," Ryuk commented, slurping the juice from the exposed side of the apple with his tongue. Sayu mentally measured it until he pulled it back in his mouth with the apple. As wide as my hand, and nearly fifteen centimeters long, at least. It should barely fit in his head, assuming it doesn't purposefully defy physics somehow. "He's gonna be bored if he wins. Whether he knows it or not, he'd probably have more fun trying to play mind games with L while incarcerated than he would in a world where Kira reigns supreme."
Bile rose in Sayu's throat. "That's if they let him live."
Ryuk was lost in his own thoughts, ignoring the complicated feelings she clearly had about this. "Either way, I'm going to be the one that eventually kills him, but I'd rather he doesn't prolong it in such a way that it gets stale. I sure hope he doesn't end up going in a boring direction; if the game ends so early I'll be -"
"Leave."
Sayu wasn't sure what part of what he'd said had loosened her tongue, but she was clutching her covers in her hands, her knuckles white, tears gathering hot behind her eyes, her throat dry and her stomach churning.
Ryuk looked down at her in surprise, eyes glinting from red to a surprised, owlish yellow. "What?"
"Just go. I don't want to talk to you right now." Her hands were trembling as she stared up at him, trying to hold back the crying fit that was sure to come. "Maybe not for another few days."
Sayu couldn't tell what he was thinking from his face, seemingly blank as it always was, but he silently obeyed, retreating awkwardly upward to the ceiling, and he floated away just like a balloon.
With him gone, she buried her face in a nearby pillow and let the tears flow. She was careful to keep her sobs quiet as she clutched it to her, until she had no more crying left in her.
Sayu turned back over, laying on her side, staring out the window at the sunset turning the sky a bloody red. Too readily, she could see the inevitability of her brother's death playing out before her mind's eye. All it would take would be a few, swift strokes of a bone-white pen held in slender black fingers, and Light would vanish.
She'd already known Ryuk wasn't human, couldn't understand some fundamental human ideas, like familial attachment or the fear of death, but it was startling to receive a reminder of it this way. A reminder that for all that she liked him, for all they had in common, there was such a large gap between her understanding of feelings and his. As scientifically rigorous as she tried to be, there were things about being human that she took for granted, that Ryuk had never experienced or perhaps even observed.
Sayu felt her temptations tugging her in several different directions, and she closed her eyes as she focused on naming and categorizing them. The first told her she wanted to push Ryuk away and never see him again, but that was an impossible desire to fulfill. The second wanted to ply him for all the knowledge she could get, try to stall or prevent Light's death sentence.
But would it be enough? Enough to put off just one of the consequences of her brother's actions? Enough to keep him safe from the supernatural terror that now dwelt in her home, yet remain unable as always to shield him from the judgment of L, the police, and the world? Enough to stay the hand of the reaper, but not his own, as he plunged further into this madness, into his self-absorbed delusion? Would it be enough to truly be her brother's keeper?
No, Sayu knew, had always known, that it wouldn't. She regretted refusing to see how powerless her situation was until now. She rose, swinging her bare legs to dangle over the side of her bed.
Her third and final want was to make Ryuk understand, somehow, how his and Light's game was affecting her, and sort things out for herself if it turned out he just wasn't as invested in her friendship as he was in being entertained by Light's deranged ambitions. This seemed like the most realistic goal, given that she wasn't sure if saving him was even possible, and trying to ignore Ryuk for the rest of time would make her life difficult, and she would lose the one person she'd ever really gotten close to. And after all, weren't you supposed to be honest with friends?
(Not that she'd ever really obeyed that maxim with her human friends, but this was different situation, which required different tactics.)
A knock sounded at her door, and her mother's muffled voice came through. "Sayu, dinner's ready. I've made hotpot."
Sayu quickly wiped her tears away, checking her eyes in the mirror to make sure they weren't too red. "Isn't it way too early for hotpot? It's almost summer," she called out.
She heard her mother huff through the door. "Well you clearly haven't been outside, then, it's freezing." Her voice faded as she moved away from the door to the stairs.
"Okay, I'll be right down!" Sayu answered, slipping off the bed to stand. She checked herself in the mirror one last time, and headed downstairs.
The very next day, her father had a heart attack.
Her mother hadn't called the school, had waited for Sayu to come home, and told her about it then. Seeing her expression, Mom had hurried to put her arms on Sayu's shoulders and reassure her. "He's fine, Sayu, he's just fine! The doctor says its just stress – he's going to be on bed rest for a while in the hospital, but you can take the day off school tomorrow and come visit him. We didn't want to alarm you or pull you out of school today for no reason."
She had collapsed and sobbed into her mother's shoulder, clutching her sweater tightly. Mom had hugged her back, rocking her back and forth with soft assurances that everything was going to be all right.
If it wasn't one thing, it was another. In that instant, Sayu had truly dreaded the worst, that Light had truly murdered Dad, just because he was in the way or maybe just because he could – but it was fine, Dad was fine, Light was fine, nothing was wrong.
Except for the fact that her father had just had a heart attack from the stress of trying to catch the mass-murdering serial killer living under his own roof. Somehow, that didn't exactly inspire optimism.
As Sayu sat at her desk, trying and failing to focus on her homework, a voice softly called out from one of the corners of her ceiling, "Sayu?"
She looked up, and there was Ryuk, warily peering down at her. "Is it okay to talk to you now?"
Sayu took a deep breath and leaned back in her chair, rolling it back as she did. "Yeah. Come on down."
He floated down, sitting crosslegged on top of her desk. "L and Light went to visit your dad in the hospital." There was no apology, nor did Sayu truly expect one. Ryuk probably wasn't even sure what he had done wrong.
"I didn't even hear Light come home. How did he react to the news?"
"...He was pretty shocked. The three of them had a discussion about Kira – L still thinks Light is a suspect, but your brother said he was willing to go under some kind of house arrest to prove his innocence."
"Sounds like he's got some dramatic scheme in mind. Did L take him up on it?"
"No, he says there's no need right now." Ryuk paused. "He seems to like playing mind games with Light, too. Light offered his own profile of Kira to try and throw L off the scent, and he picked out you as an example fitting that profile."
"L accused me?" Sayu was surprised more than anything else – given the detective's high opinion of her brother, she wasn't sure whether to take such a suspicion as flattering or insulting.
"I think he did it more to bother Light than anything else. It worked, too – Light flipped his lid at him for saying that in front of your dad in his condition. None of them actually think you'd be capable of it – your dad said if you had the power to kill like Kira, you'd probably have done it to someone you didn't like, and then cried about it."
Now that stung, hearing that her father thought she was capable of doing such a thing, even if he thought she'd regret it. He'd probably meant it as a joke, but jokes meant a great deal more than the one telling them often thought. Did it make it better, or worse, knowing that he wasn't necessarily wrong, even if it wouldn't quite be the way he pictured it?
"What was the profile Light came up with?"
"Eh? Oh, he said it would have be an idealistic, purehearted wealthy child." Sayu snorted. "Yeah, I know, but neither of them argued that you weren't."
"Well, it just goes to show that they don't know me that well anymore." She stretched, and to avoid the sorrowful line of thinking she was about to go down, she added, "What does Light think of you disappearing now and then?"
Ryuk shrugged. "He thinks I just go around spying on you guys. I think he's glad to be rid of me sometimes – he enjoys having a witness around when he's got a plan, but when he's just writing names or doing ordinary stuff, he prefers privacy. I like that I don't have to tail him that closely – I'd get pretty bored."
"I find it strange that he dismisses you so much, considering what you are. I would've thought he'd be more wary of your movements."
"He knows I'm not in this to interfere in any way."
"And he trusts that?"
Ryuk stood, looming over her. Sayu, completely enveloped in his shadow, started in surprise. "And you don't?"
She raised her gaze to meet his blood-red orbs. "I do. But I'm not so foolish as you think that you're incapable of taking action. You do meet with me without him knowing, don't you?"
For a moment, he was as still as stone. Then, he moved, sitting back down on the floor to be eye-level with her. "Kyeh-heh," he chuckled. "You've got a point."