It started just two days after the terrorist broadcast and her subsequent mental breakdown, and it began with a shampoo bottle.
She had stopped by the store on her way home from school, with a texted grocery list from Mom. Sayu had just gotten her allowance – she could find a little something to bring home to treat herself, perhaps some chocolate to share with friends, new hairclips, a cute top...
But Sayu was heading through the hygiene aisle, picking up deodorant and soap, when something else caught her eye.
She wasn't out of shampoo yet, by any means, but she found herself stopping in front of it anyway, staring down at the sketched illustration of apple slices on the label. The plastic bottle was clear, the shampoo inside a golden cider yellow, and the cap a springtime green. It was a little too sweet, a touch immature, clearly geared towards girls Sayu's age. As nice as it was, she would've ignored it in favor of something cheaper, usually. But somehow, though it had nothing to do with the morbid, deathly world she was so fascinated by, it reminded her of shinigami.
No, not shinigami, Sayu realized as the bottle was scanned at the cash register minutes later; it reminded her of Ryuk.
Why would she do this? Why had she felt so drawn to something that he would like? She wasn't thinking of it as a gift – he didn't need to bathe, and she had clearly gotten it for herself. It didn't make sense. But all the same, she had done it.
The next day, at school, hanging out with her friends in the girls' bathroom, this question occurred to her again as she adjusted her yellow headband in the mirror. Sayu had used the shampoo the night before, and now she smelled like apples. On a whim, she'd picked the headband to match the scent that morning.
"Tanaka Tetsuo! Really? He's such a dork, though!"
To her left, giggling (one from amusement and the other from embarrassment), were Sasaki Yui and Nakajima Akane, the girls Sayu was friends with in the Drawing Club. Akane was blushing and wearing a pair of plush cat ears, which was unusual, but looked pretty cute.
"Well, yeah, but he's so gorgeous! And he draws those beautiful landscapes, and you wouldn't think so, but he's such a gentleman!" Akane adjusted the cat ears on her head self-consciously. "Don't judge me for wanting him to think I'm cute~ Sayu did the same thing when she had a crush on Sato in middle school! Right, Sayu?"
"Wearing cat ears isn't the same thing as pretending to be interested in swords," Sayu replied, as she absently stared into the mirror.
"Hah! See, it's weird!" Yui teased, and Akane swatted at her as she laughed.
The three of them went about the rest of their day together, but Sayu was quieter than usual, preoccupied, her attention for other things very forced. A very big, obvious thought had sprung up in the back of her conscious mind like a soap bubble, and she found herself desperate to ignore it, to not realize what it meant and pretend she had no idea what was going on. She very intentionally, very carefully, pushed it away. If she deliberately didn't understand it, it wouldn't be true.
But that wasn't how it worked, and she knew it.
Laying awake that night with nothing to distract her, the knowledge that she was trying to suppress rose to the surface, and the bubble concealing it popped.
Sayu had a crush on Ryuk.
Hmm.
Well then.
As she stared up at her bedroom ceiling, she idly wondered if at any point in her life before now, she could've anticipated this.
Probably not.
The biggest problem with this, of course, was that Ryuk wasn't human.
According to him, the very concept of romantic relationships was alien to his species, and it was also forbidden on pain of torture and death. He was the specter of mortality haunting her brother, the serial killer, and she was a closet genius, informally diagnosed sociopath, and self-ascribed nihilist currently struggling with a moral crisis. And in addition, Sayu was a teenager, who had been on a date exactly once, and Ryuk was a supernatural entity who had been around to witness World War One. There couldn't possibly be more barriers to her expressing her feelings, and by all accounts, it was probably for the best that she carried on as normal, and pretended they didn't even exist.
Sayu remembered her crush on her classmate, Sato, in middle school. She had never had any clue what he went on and on about when he nerded out about sabers and rapiers and fencing techniques, never felt inclined in the slightest to do any research on it herself, but he had been so cute, and so breathtaking when he was passionately expressing himself – her heart had beat so so fast, and she had wanted to do anything, absolutely anything that would make him notice me, please please notice me, look at me, come near me, hold me, compliment me, see me, notice me -
Ryuk wasn't cute, not in the sense that she had ever heard her friends talk about boys. But breathtaking? Absolutely. A mystery, a wonder, a marvel in his quiet cleverness, a bridge between her and the unknown, someone so different and so exactly like her in many many ways – constantly underestimated and undermined by others, but utterly unique and so, so bright and insightful. He shone like a star, and didn't seem to see his own radiance.
He didn't see himself the way she saw him. Sayu wasn't sure that anyone saw him the way she saw him.
But why him? Why the ink-black angel of death that had descended from the sky to haunt her? Why not literally anyone else? Her choice in crushes had always baffled her, and this was new territory in so, so many ways.
Was it because he was the first person to meet her in person and recognize, even praise her brilliance? The first to truly understand her in a way that even she herself couldn't? She could see how that might endear and enamor him to her, but he was still, by every culture's definition, a monster. So why did she feel this rush, this attraction, this want to have him look at me, look at me like you look at apples, look at me like I'm the thing you adore most about this world, reach out and touch me, smell me, hold my small face in your giant hands, let me lean against your wings, let me put my head on your chest and listen for a heartbeat that'll never start, put your hand on my throat and feel my pulse -
And Sayu awoke with a start to her alarm the next morning, feeling a little flushed.
Somehow she found herself washing her hair with the apple shampoo again. She tried to tell herself it was just to use it up, since she'd already bought it, but she'd had very little practice lying to herself, and it showed. She tied it up with a red elastic band.
It was a normal day at school, and an equally normal time at her club meetings. Today there was some open rink time at the community center, and Sayu thought it would be good to get some practice in.
She called her mother and left her a message, telling her where she'd be, and a short bus ride later, she was standing at the entrance to Tsumetai Skating Rink. Sayu kept her skates in her locker there, and with a short change in the locker room into a pair of leggings and a sweater, she was ready.
The air was cold, of course – the rink was surprisingly empty, except for a couple of moms and their child on the opposite side, teaching the little one how to skate. Sayu resolved to stay on her end of the rink unless they came up to talk – it had been a while since she'd had some alone time for this, and skating practice often helped her think.
A quick jog, a few stretches, and then she was finally ready.
After lacing on her skates, Sayu kicked off into the rink, a cold wind breezing past her face, and as if by magic, all her worries seemed to melt away, flowing freely away from her mind. Her thoughts were replaced with the memory of her practice list, the very concepts of death and doom lost in movements she ought to have been doing more often.
(Reasonably speaking, she ought to have had a spotter, but a public place like this was never deserted enough for Sayu to consider it worth it. If she hurt herself, she was hardly alone.)
Breathe in. Lean forward. Push. Glide. Stand. Breathe out.
Even if Ryuk returned her feelings, the risk of discovery was too great. Any change in their behaviors wouldn't go unnoticed by Light.
Breathe in. Lean forward. Push. Glide. Stand. Breathe out.
And it was highly unlikely he could even return her feelings anyway. She was a teenager. A human teenager, with a silly crush on someone far too old for her. Far too powerful. Far too frightening.
Breathe in. Lean forward. Push. Glide. Stand. Breathe out.
No, she couldn't, she wouldn't say anything. It might drive him away, and then where would she be? Alone again. Forced to watch the terrible, tragic farce her brother's life has become play out until Ryuk decides he's had enough. Her heart broken. There was nowhere else it could go if she let this keep going. Heartbreak was the only thing this situation could possibly bring her. How pointless.
Breathe in. Lean forward. Breathe out. Push. Breathe in. Glide. Stand. Breathe out.