(A/N: Written for 52flavours; theme - "Five shades of white".)
I. As a child, Raito has never really been fond of colors. His classmates like shades of purple and blue and rainbows, and his classroom walls were toned with pastel hues, but Raito prefers white walls--not the ones whose paint is chipped and surface is cracked, but the kind of white that is immaculate and impersonal.
Raito also likes black. It's just as strong as white, but different. Raito always writes his notes in black. He likes the contrast of paper and ink, and the way the facts stare at him cleanly and boldly.
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II. His friends like pointing out faces and animals among the clouds, those cotton-candy shapes that become the canvases of imagination. To Raito, they were just wisps of condensation.
What Raito does like looking at are the stars, silver and white like little diamonds against black velvet. He's heard that if you make a wish just as a star shoots down the sky, it will come true.
Raito is only seven, and he doesn't know what he wants. One night, though, he thinks that maybe what he wants is a better world, so he stares at the sky from his bedroom window and waits for a star to fall.
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III. Raito plays tennis. It's not really much different from all the other sports he's played--the only things that change are the rules, the courts and the equipment, but it's always about winning.
Raito knows that this will be his last match--he's won enough times in tennis to know that it's time to move on to other things. His opponent's shoes skid against the ground as he desperately returns Raito's drop shot, but the ball lands a few centimeters outside the court.
The referee declares the champion: Yagami Raito, six games to love.
Raito looks at the white line that stands between in and out, wonders if there's an invisible border like that in real life and if he's ever going to cross it.
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IV. Raito once received an anonymous present when he was in his last year of high school. What was different about this one was that it wasn't the typical love letter or chocolate or watch that he usually got from his admirers. This one was a miniature sculpture of himself, each detail painstakingly carved into white marble. He'd held it up to look for any clues about his benefactor, and found it cold to his touch.
It still sits on one of the shelves in his room. Over the years, it had started to weather.
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V. L had presented Raito with a board of checkers. They never got to finish a game as it lasted throughout midnight and Raito needed his sleep.
That night, Raito dreams of checkers. The board is clean and there is only one piece left. Below it are two-dimensional squares of black and white.
This, a disembodied voice says, is the world of Kira.
Kira's world. Raito's world. His world.
When Raito wakes up, he realizes that he's smiling.
