"Excuse me, but, why do you keep looking at your watch?"
"Hmm?" the handsome youth glanced down at her. "Oh, that. Well, you see, it's because…"
The second hand clicked.
"I'm Kira."
And with those words, she was doomed.
Naomi Misora stared into the smiling face of her betrayer. Quite suddenly, there was no more reason for her to remain here talking to him. Her decision had been made. So confirmed, she then turned and walked away.
"Oh, miss," she heard him call out casually. "My cell phone seems to be working now. Would you like to speak to my father?"
No.
A moment ago, that was the only thing she had wanted in all the world, so much that not being able to had frustrated her into seeking out any available means of bypassing her difficulties. Even a kid like this, who claimed much and offered little by way of proof, she had latched onto with a desperate benighted hope.
But just like that, the full weight of her grief had settled in, as if it had only been waiting for the right time to strike. And the former FBI agent realized there was absolutely nothing else to do but end her life in the most capable and isolated way possible.
"No, thank you. I have to go."
She walked away from the enthusiastic boy named Light Yagami without considering anything he had said or done. Nothing mattered except killing herself.
So Light Yagami left Naomi to her unavoidable death, and never gave her another thought for six years.
That was how he remembered it going. And until ten seconds ago, there had existed nothing to cause him to reevaluate his opinion of how their relationship and her life had ended.
The only thing was, Light had a very good memory for faces. Given the right incentives, he would have made an excellent portrait-maker at local carnivals. But in the absence of any such inclinations, instead his keen eye for physiognomy was put to good use envisioning peoples' features while dispatching them with a fatal stroke of the pen. And for this reason, upon looking into the face of the woman who was currently holding him hostage at gunpoint, there was absolutely no denying that she did possess the appearance of the annoyingly astute female he had casually terminated towards the start of his career as Kira.
But that was just plain impossible.
Right, world?
IMPOSSIBLE!
He said that word to himself over and over, while the rest of them chattered mindlessly around him like squirrels worrying over a nut.
When he was done sating his inner sense of reality, the chief of detectives effortlessly fell back into his ordinary state of diamond-sharp multifaceted awareness.
Light glanced around the room from his position on the floor. Being a superb judge of body language, it was quite clear that at present he was the only person who recognized the woman on sight. The rest of them were displaying worry, consternation, cold determination, and in the case of Near (Nate River, don't forget it) calm deliberation. If that was so, given what he knew about the majority of them as investigators, it was therefore highly likely that none of them were familiar with Naomi Misora's face. And even he had been struck by what an especially attractive visage it was upon first meeting her. So with that in mind, being that most of them were (assumedly) red-blooded heterosexual males, had they met her or seen her picture at some point, they would have been compelled by professional hang-ups and primitive reptilian urges to try and learn more about her, at least as far as getting her name and phone number.
And thus Kira reasoned that he remained the only person at present who could attest to her being Naomi Misora.
There. One question resolved. Let us move to another more difficult problem.
Why is Naomi Misora pointing a gun at me, when I had her commit suicide back in 2004?
This had never happened in all his long experience at quietly murdering people.
The boot on his throat pressed in tighter, and Light was seeing red once again.
Being the only person who had not been expected at this turn-out, Misora was confident that in spite of several projectile weapons being pointed in her direction, unless she gave them any overt intentions of provoking hostilities, the detectives in this room were sufficiently curious to refrain from gunning her down, regardless of the fact that she was holding one of their own on the floor.
Please, all of you, she prayed to herself. Just remember the same training I'm betting we all received at some point. Talk first. Shoot later. Give me a chance to make this work, I beg of you.
I'm the only hope you have of surviving.
"Excuse me," the pallid child dressed in oversized clothes (seriously, it looked as though he had pulled them out of the closet of a full-grown man and slipped them on) spoke. "Would you mind explaining to us who you are and what you think you are doing?"
Don't distract me, junior. You're not relevant to what's going on here anymore. I have to keep focused on Kira. Should I ask him to do the honors? Clearly he remembered me, if that look a moment ago was any indication. Unfortunately, I'm the only one who noticed it. He covered it too fast, and they were all observing me during that time. You lucked out again, Light, you thrice-damned god of good fortune.
"My name is Naomi Misora." She spoke clearly so as to avoid any calls to repeat herself. "Six years ago I was a retired FBI agent living in Japan when I became involved in the Kira case. I made some investigations, and went to the local police headquarters in an attempt to contact the Kira task force, to offer my services to them. It was there that I met Light Yagami."
Misora twisted the heel of her shoe on his neck, partly out of malice, and mainly because she had noticed Light about to speak. In her opinion, it would be best to put that off for as long as possible. This silver-tongued devil was not to be taken lightly in terms of persuasion, that she knew all too well.
"At the time I had no inkling that he was Kira. I had gone there intending to contact his father, Suichiro Yagami, whom I knew had been assigned to L's unit. The officers on duty at the reception desk denied me access to the man, but did confirm that the teenager who had just walked in was his son. I approached Light, and asked for his cooperation in meeting with Chief Yagami."
They were all staring at her with rapt attention, none of them daring to interrupt, even the bug-eyed junior detective. Good. The more they listened, the less they questioned. She needed at least the appearance of having reached them for this to work.
"During the course of our conversation, I originally offered him an alias, but eventually he managed to corner me into admitting my true name to him. After I did, he wrote it down on a piece of paper. At that point, I suddenly and quite unexpectedly decided to commit suicide, and did so less than 48 hours later."
That last part really got them. She could tell by the stricken looks that passed over several of their faces. Who else but these people could listen to such a statement and not automatically condemn her for a lunatic? Assembled here was the largest collection of Kira experts in the globe. They knew apparently enough about the facts of this case to understand what such a decision must signify in terms of justifiable reason. Now, let's see how long this can last.
One of her countrymen, a man with a permanently angry look and a scraggly goatee, cleared his throat without lowering his gun a fraction.
"Miss Misora, are you telling us that you have been dead for the last six years?"
"Five years and nine months, actually," she responded in a prim voice. "I've been active again for the last three months."
"That…"
They all looked down at the young man pinned beneath her boot who had just spoken.
"That doesn't make any sense," Light Yagami snarled through clenched teeth. He watched her with eyes that might been bright with pain, or madness, or the vilest hatred anyone could imagine.
Misora returned the look with an unfazed one of her own.
"No?" she inquired softly and removed her foot, but kept the gun trained on him.
Kira did not rise, remaining in his unusual state on the floor. Apparently he had not been able to deduce her intentions for coming here to a sufficient degree to be certain moving would not provoke her into shooting him. Instead he remained with his legs tucked beneath his chest, trembling and wiping dirt from his mouth. Get used to it, you bastard. It only gets worse from here.
"Just what kind of bullshit are you trying to foist off on us?"
His voice was low and harsh when he spoke, almost like the growl of a dog. It sent an unpleasant shiver down her spine. Totally at odds with the pleasant demeanor she recalled from six years ago. Perhaps I'm getting to him faster than I thought. Who can say how a mind like this works?
"I don't know how you learned about this meeting, or who you really are. 'Naomi Misora'? That's a name I can honestly say I've never heard before. And of course you also claimed to be ex-FBI. A foreign institution, that's a very nice touch. I have to wonder how many female Japanese federal agents there have been in the United States for the last ten, twenty, or even one hundred years. Probably no more than fifty. It shouldn't be difficult to weed through their files to determine if you are at least whom you say you are."
"But as for this rubbish about meeting me back in high school…" He moved into a more comfortable position. "… it should be interesting to hear how you intend to prove this little story to anyone."
An ugly sneer twisted his lips, and the narrowed eyes thrust daggers at her heart. Against all her inclinations and reason, Naomi felt a thrill of fear. Probably derived from the realization that she was currently facing down the greatest serial killer in human history. There was a certain professional excitement to all this, wasn't there?
"Did I perhaps sign my name as Kira for you prior to the suicide impulse taking over? Or maybe we took a picture in a photo kiosk to commemorate the occasion? Please, I'm absolutely dying to hear what proof you have to support this allegation."
In response, she cocked her head at him slightly, and hefted the pistol so its target point rested between his eyes.
Light shut up very quickly, and the other officers once more confirmed their aim upon her center of mass.
Misora stared at him, studying the face of a killer.
"You are dying to know, aren't you, Light?" She smiled then, a fond, gently teasing lift of the lips that left him speechless at seeing it being directed at him from one of his own victims. "You're more afraid now than you've been in the last five years, and it has nothing to do with evidentiary proof or the court systems or even trying to preserve face in front of all these people. But I think you should let me do the talking from now on."
She then knelt beside him, and removed her other hand from the coat. What she held in it caused everyone else in the room to doubt their senses.
It was a ball-gag.
The type you buy in S&M shops.
Her nemesis' mouth fell open in surprise.
As soon as it did, she then proceeded to stuff the rubber sphere in between his teeth, and looped the elastic band back over his head, letting it snap into place with painful security. Light winced, and he automatically reached to remove the impediment. Before he could, however, the gun was pressed firmly against his temple. A slow shake of Naomi's head let him know that further attempts would be met with extreme resistance.
Shaking with fury and humiliation, the hunched coordinator submitted to this treatment, his forehead touching the concrete in an apparent attempt to hide his indignity as much as possible. The other people in the room were still too shocked at witnessing such a scene outside of the entertainment industry to have voiced any protests.
Returning to her full height, their enigmatic intruder took in the sight of him silenced at her feet. Light was restrained and essentially removed from the others' attention. Now was the time for the most dangerous stage of the game. With this in mind, Naomi began her group interrogation.
"Would anyone care to tell me what made the Kira case so much more difficult than traditional murder investigations?"
The shaggy blonde boy made no reply, which apparently preempted any of his cohorts from voicing their own inferior estimations. From the Japanese, however, a big blocky square-jawed man lowered his pistol a fraction and spoke calmly.
"He kills using non-traditional methods."
"Thank you." The proclaimed Lazarus turned her attention back on her prisoner. "From the beginning, it's been apparent to everyone in our society that Kira uses methods that fall outside the normal bounds of human awareness. Some proclaim that makes him a god, and so he should be left to his own devices without human interference. But everyone in this room has learned that his power in fact stems from a book. A Death Note, you call it. And in addition, there are certain limits to his power."
Naomi raised her voice without taking her eyes off Yagami for a second. "Are all of you aware that pages and pieces of pages torn from the Death Note remain as lethal as those still contained in its binding?"
There was no spoken confirmation, but neither were there denials. Might as well assume that meant the thought was not averse to their minds.
"Are you also aware that the person writing in it is able to control the actions of those he has determined to kill?"
"YES!" That was a fresh-faced Japanese who looked to be about her age. "That's what L said around the beginning, he said the messages written by some of the convicts who died in prison were actually sent by Kira through them! He knew it, even back then!"
Misora blinked, and then nodded in satisfaction.
"I suppose he would have. L always caught on to things quickly."
She was just about to continue, when one of the other natives to this island spoke up quickly.
"Naomi…"
The woman in question glanced over at him. It was the sullen-faced man again, only now there was a look of wonder staring out of his eyes. As if something absolutely miraculous had just dawned on him.
"Misora."
Everyone was watching him now, except for Light, who remained unmoving where he lay. The speaker blinked, and said in a shaky voice, "I remember now. Those FBI agents who died. One of them had a fiancée. Ukita…!" He swallowed thickly, as though choking down painful memories, then spun and addressed the boyish member of their group. "Matsuda, don't you remember? A few days after they died, Ukita was manning the phones at headquarters, and he patched a woman through to your dummy cell phone! L took the call. It was the fiancée's mother, wanting to report that her daughter had gone missing. L seemed to know her, the daughter, not the mother, and her name was…"
A light dawned in the younger one's (Matsuda) eyes.
"Naomi Misora," he whispered.
Everyone went back to staring at her. Only now, those two men had lowered their firearms without even seeming to realize it. Glancing back and forth between them in a puzzled manner, another one haltingly did the same, apparently not having been privy to that particular conversation but respecting his allies' judgment. At about the same time, the last member of the Japanese detectives' party let his sidearm drop. Who could tell what convinced them. Perhaps it was the mention of L, the man who even now continued to astound and mystify his chosen few. There was something almost magical about that name for them, lending credence to any story, no matter how far-fetched. Now it was only three people drawing a bead on her, but somehow, it did Misora's heart good to know that none of her countrymen were willing to shoot her at a moment's notice.
Down in the dirt, something absolutely horrific flashed over Light's face, only to be replaced with calm dignity in the next second.
Her pulse was beating faster, but the gunwoman forced herself to think and act calmly. Like L. Be like L. Look at them all, find out what they know and what they want to believe. I have to let him still think that there's a chance he can get out of this.
Wait.
Something I personally would like to know first.
"Excuse me… Matsuda, was it?"
He perked up at hearing his name, like a puppy. Honestly, was this guy an actual detective?
"There's something I need you to tell me."
"Uh, sure." Matsuda peered back and forth between his colleagues, as if looking for disagreement. When none was forthcoming, he volunteered, "Ask away, Mi…Misora."
It was hard to ask. Much harder, knowing that her worst fears were about to be confirmed. But this was necessary. For her.
"Will you tell me how L died?"
It was in their faces. All of the Japanese investigators, and somehow that let her know that they had indeed not only been permitted to meet L as she never had, but also worked with him closely enough to develop a profound appreciation and respect for the man who bore the title of 'World's Greatest Detective'. There was nothing else that could have made them look so sad. Or ashamed.
"It was…a…" Matsuda grimaced, and suddenly wiped away tears.
"Heart attack."
The one who spoke was the fellow with the goatee. There was something curiously bitter about his profile as he looked away from them, like this line of questioning was stirring old troubling memories.
"He died of a heart attack right in front of us. There was nothing we could do to save him." He continued in a tight, strained voice. "Light… held him in his arms as he left."
Something struck Light's neck, and he flinched.
Looking up, he saw tears running down the face of the dead woman watching him.
She sucked in a breath, and let it out.
"I'm glad."
Several of them stirred at that.
"I'm very glad… that it was quick. I'm glad to hear that you were all there for him in the end, and that he didn't go through what I had to. In that, at least, Light showed him mercy."
Naomi steadied herself.
And then she spoke the truth that had killed her years ago.
"A heart attack is not the only way Kira can kill."
Her attention flickered up a second after making that statement, to try and gauge their reactions, before settling back onto Kira. She couldn't tell how many of them were surprised at this revelation, if any. It was kind of dispiriting to think that they all might have figured that out and remained alive in spite of it. Just what was it about me that made it necessary to kill that day, you heartless bastard? Light stared up at with her frigid revulsion. That's right, keep still and listen. I'll give you what you've been waiting for in just a second.
"I figured this out as a result of my investigations ten years ago. My fiancé was assigned to track a Kira suspect before his death. One day upon returning home, he told me that they had both been involved in an attempted bus-jacking. The perpetrator was killed in a hit-and-run while fleeing the vehicle. Neither our suspect nor his tail apparently stayed to be interviewed at the scene. At the time, I didn't really consider that as strange. What did strike me as odd was that a criminal would die in such an unusually convenient manner right next to someone suspected of being Kira, the avowed slayer of criminals."
"After my fiancé's passing, I put two and two together. Another thing he had mentioned was that in order to keep his target from trying something foolish in that hostage situation, he had been forced to reveal his name and identity. I think that's what Kira was after from the start. The whole bus-jacking was set up to reveal this information to him. Only the obviously guilty man died that day, and because of that, I realized that it was too perfect to be random. No suspicion was aroused by the facts, but if you looked beyond the facts and considered the results, then you could see a careful organization at work. Kira controlled everything that happened, through the death of a single man."
"Death is Kira's forte. He confirmed this much, when Light here sent me off to commit suicide."
Several of the men grimaced, or swallowed involuntarily. But Naomi still only had eyes for one person.
"Would you like to know how I did it, Mr. Yagami?"
And in response, he smiled up at her around the gag.
On the day of January 2, 2004, Naomi Misora went back to her apartment and sat down in a chair to decide how to kill herself. Somehow she could not abide the thought of her body ever being found, so it had to be done in a manner that would dispose of her remains and prevent exposure or identification. In addition, it must happen sometime in the next two days. This was absolutely essential.
With casual indifference, the beautiful young woman plotted her own demise.
The gun was out of the question. It was loud, and messy. Might attract attention eventually. What about strangulation? Possibly, possibly. But it still left the matter of the body. Ah-ha. She could use sulfuric acid. But how would she go about acquiring the necessary amount? Perhaps back in the United States it would be a simple matter, but here in Japan was different. And she could not run the risk of losing all that time in air travel.
Wait. Perhaps the method of self-termination could be put on hold for a while. Naomi already knew she had to do it. The question remained: how do you kill yourself and hide yourself all at the same time?
The veteran investigator pondered. She was perfectly familiar with a certain individual who had managed to attempt suicide with the intention of being mistaken for a murder victim. Surely that person could come up with a solution for this! Unfortunately, he was serving a life sentence, and once again a meeting would require a continental plane trip. Scratch that resource.
Time was running out. Think.
I could have myself eaten by wild dogs. But there is no guarantee they would finish my body completely. The leftovers could be found. Or maybe I could wander into a construction site and throw myself into a pool of quick-drying cement. No, that plan requires me to do it in daylight, the workers would be bound to notice me. If only I could hire someone to dispose of the body when I'm done, but that goes against what I need to accomplish here. No one can ever find me.
So then, I should go out to sea on a cruise, weight my feet down and throw myself overboard. Except the weights might come off, and my body would wash up somewhere. Not so far out, then. Go down to the docks, and… tie myself to one of the struts of a pier. Drown myself. No one ever looks below the waterline there. But if I was below the waterline, how would I tie myself to it? Ropes would eventually rot. And nailing myself to the post would have the same problem. Eventually the flesh would deteriorate and my corpse would float free, to possibly be discovered.
This is actually harder than one might think.
All right. The question that really needs to be answered here is location. I have to kill myself in a place that no one would think of looking. So what are my options?
The ocean is out. Unreliable.
Throw myself into a live volcano. And how am I supposed to locate and reach one of those in less than 48 hours? That's rejected.
All right then, a more modern form of immolation. Find a funeral home, sneak into their cremation center, and vaporize myself. No, wait, those systems are designed so as to avoid exactly something like that happening. Denied.
Launch myself into outer space. Ridiculous. Get serious here.
Go to a garbage dump, lock myself in an abandoned refrigerator, and tie a plastic bag around my head. The flies would never be noticed there. No, the police look in places like that for bodies regularly, you know that. One good corpse-sniffing dog and I'm found.
Focus, focus, focus.
Nothing's coming to me.
All right, then. Change the question again. If you are thinking of a place where no one would expect to find a body, perhaps what you need is a place everyone would look for a body, just not yours.
A hospital morgue. Break into one at night, overdose, tie on a 'Jane Doe' toe-tag… They fingerprint those people, don't they? Destroy my fingerprints? Pull out my teeth? Nothing I can do about DNA. Modern forensics would identify me in a heartbeat.
Funeral parlor? Already thought of that.
Cemetery. Go there, dig a hole… can't bury myself, not without assistance.
Find a hole that's already been dug, and climb into it? No, wait, that's American-style funerals. In Japan we cremate people, then bury them. Saves space in the cemeteries.
But hang on…
In European graveyards, there are things called mausoleums, right? Small structures built to house one body. If I could find one, break in, hide evidence of my entry, zip myself up in a body bag, kill myself, it's a done deal. No one would look for a body where they know for certain one is supposed to exist.
How would I hide the evidence of the break-in?
For that matter, where am I supposed to find a European mausoleum in the Kanto region?
Are there any European cemeteries to be found in this prefecture?
Think. This feels like my best bet.
Wait.
I believe so.
Yes.
We went there once before. On a sightseeing trip.
It's not in this ward. It's in Minato. And its name is…
The Aoyama Cemetery. Our country's first public one.
That's where I'll find what I need.
Perfect.
Later that night, Naomi Misora went investigating in a national landmark for the dead. Having been several years, it took her a while to remember where she needed to go in the shadows to find what she was looking for. This was best done under cover of darkness, to arouse no suspicions. A small pen-light and black clothing which she had in abundance, combined with a clear sky, allowed her to navigate through the burial grounds without anyone noticing.
At last, the determined suicide came upon what she sought.
A large, rectangular stone coffin, raised above the earth.
The tomb and final resting place of Hugh Fraser, 19th-century ambassador to her country from the tea-loving British Isles. A foreign diplomat, enshrined in the manner of his native land on Japan's blessed soil.
No one would ever disturb her here. It was a piece of history. Untouchable. And best of all, virtually forgotten by modern man. Who cared about some long-dead foreigner? Just another corpse, after all.
Truly perfect for her needs.
She didn't do it that night. Instead Misora took the time to examine the requirements for such a task.
The lid of the tomb was heavy, but with proven strength and possibly some leverage from a crowbar, she could hoist it off enough to slip into the confines of the box and then slide the top shut over her. Hopefully there would be enough room, but it certainly appeared large enough from the outside. But continuing: sometime in the last century, a sealant had been applied to the cracks beneath the lid to prevent anyone from casually desecrating the monument's contents. The former FBI member took a sample of the putty used, with the intention of finding a suitable replacement from a local hardware store tomorrow. Once the proper cover-up had been achieved and she was safely ensconced inside, a sufficiently large quantity of sleeping pills, combined with the lack of oxygen, would see her safely dead within a matter of minutes.
It was as neat and tidy a way to kill yourself as could possibly be found.
The following night, with several hours left before her deadline, Naomi arrived around midnight. With tools she had purchased, the fixative was removed and carefully collected, so as not to leave signs of tampering. After almost half an hour of struggling and careful application of a towel-wrapped crowbar, the top of the sarcophagus was levered up and pushed to one side with much sweating and straining. Her limbs were energized by a compulsion that did not balk at any mere mass of weight. It was the impetus of someone focused entirely upon one goal.
Fortunately the stone did not crack from her efforts. After finally managing to get the cover completely raised out of its recess and scooted slightly over, the diligent death-seeker then went about applying a carefully sparing amount of the sealant she had brought along. No sense overdoing it and letting this stuff go squishing out of the sides to be noticed by anybody passing along. This way was clean and virtually invisible. Once she was assured that no odors would be escaping from her deathly bed, Naomi then climbed inside.
There was plenty of space for herself and the ancient coffin within. Reaching up, with a great deal of finger-straining and palm-scraping, she finally managed to maneuver the stone lid into once more sliding over its intended place.
The relief at knowing that she had accomplished such a splendid task hardly lasted a split-second. Now free of all concerns at being disturbed at any future date, the lovely lady popped open a prescription pill bottle belonging to her fiancé, poured out the determined amount of required effectiveness, and washed them down with a swig from a small water canteen she had brought along for this purpose.
She closed her eyes, relaxed, and went to sleep.
Long before the dawn came, Naomi Misora's heart had stilled forever. One more unwitting victim of Kira's to fall on that day, unnoticed.
And thus at last was the slavish compunction of the Death Note fulfilled.
"You…"
The shortest member of the Kira Task Force seemed to lose his voice for a moment. When he found it, there was something akin to grief in his words.
"You can't… expect us to believe that, can you?"
She gazed right back at him.
Her face, her body, her stance. It all seemed to say one thing.
Believe it.
The doubter shook, covered his mouth and collapsed, vomit spilling out through his fingers.
"Ide!" His large comrade went down on one knee, placing a hand on the trembling shoulders. Ide had closed his eyes, but after a moment he held up one hand, as if to reassure them all that he was fine.
Fine?
No. None of them was feeling 'fine' at this point.
It was a ludicrous tale, filled with inherently irrational contradictions.
But they believed it.
Maybe because after years of shinigami, Death Notes, and unexpected violent heart attacks afflicting people right in front of their eyes, they were willing to believe a person could be compelled against their will to commit suicide.
But still…
"Miss Misora." Her most troubled viewer, the angry fellow, spoke while wiping a damp sheen of sweat from his stubbly cheeks. "I believe you are who you claim to be, but…"
He looked around, at the Americans, at his associates. And finally, he looked at Light. A glimmer of savage frustration burned in his gaze, and the man swung his head to the side, shouting at the top of his lungs, "EVEN IF WE BELIEVE YOU, IT DOESN'T CHANGE ANYTHING! HOW DO YOU EXPECT TO PROVE A STORY LIKE THAT? IT'S IMPOSSIBLE!"
His despairing cry echoed around the vaulted ceiling.
Alone on his perch, the shinigami laughed, delighting in the performance going on below.
"Aizawa's right."
The calm, broad-chested one seemed to take his turn at speaking. He crossed his arms, tapping the gun still in his hand against one forearm.
"From the beginning, we've been faced with something that didn't seem to fit into our views of a modern, stable world. What kind of a universe is this, if people can just be made to die without any indication of how? It's the sense of not knowing that has always been our greatest enemy here, pushing us to just give up, let it go, run away before we come face-to-face with something that could very well cost us our sanity."
Shuichi flinched, and looked away guiltily. "Dammit, Mogi, how long do I have to keep apologizing for leaving?"
"I'm not singling you out, Aizawa," the detective called Mogi continued. "You acted without our knowledge, and I can't fault you for trying something different. When you're faced with the possibility that a teenage idol-star is a serial killer, and your own boss might be something even worse, I won't deny, some mornings waking up I had to wonder if I could go on existing in a world that permitted such things. If I ever found out the truth, maybe I'd be the first to eat my gun. Who knows?"
There was a thoughtful cast to the Japanese investigator's face. Misora recognized it, so she did not try to interrupt, no matter how urgent a factor time might be. This might be exactly what she needed.
Mogi took a deep breath, and let it out. "We all came here today hoping to put a stop to Kira for good. Near told us it was Light, just like L did years ago. I'm not going to ask for anyone to offer proof just yet, although that time will come, believe me. I think…" He gave a short shake of his head, and looked directly at Misora once more. "I think what we all need here is a little more information to help us understand, and it's only fair to start with you telling us how you can claim to have successfully committed suicide six years ago and be talking to us here today."
She felt them all watching her now. The SPK, the Task Force, even Yagami. But it was only this last person she sought out now.
He had the outward appearance of calm. His arms were folded beneath his head, and in spite of that ridiculous contraption stuck in his mouth, there didn't appear to be a glimmer of self-consciousness in the demeanor of the lead investigator. Light's bearing was as unconcerned as a man sitting in his own home with the radio on, reading a magazine. The hazel orb returned her stare with casual nonchalance.
"You're more right than you realize, Mr. Mogi."
Naomi regarded the prisoner with a decidedly smug cast.
"If you're going to do something, you really should have all the available data you need to see it done right."
She then squatted down, wrapping her arms around her knees and tilting her sable head off to one side to study the twenty-something in a business suit.
"How many times did you get away with it, because you knew something that nobody else did? How often did you laugh to yourself, alone in your room, gloating over having access to information that the rest of us would pay dearly to hold? Did it amuse you, to think of how society handed you everything you needed to commit global genocide without any consideration of it? Just what the hell made you so goddamn sure of yourself, huh?"
Misora's voice was shaking with the intensity of her emotions, in marked contrast to her motionless tormentor. He gave no evidence of being disturbed at all. At the sight of this, the avenging angel had to reign in her justified wrath, resisting the urge to strike the monster or shoot him or spit in his face. She remembered a murmuring, laconic voice heard years ago over a digital feed. That one had never allowed his feelings to get in the way of his duty, and had advised her to obey the same precept.
"This is it, Light," the reincarnated detective told him softly. "This is where you find out where you went wrong."
He didn't even blink. The expression on his face might as well have been saying, Go ahead. Enlighten me. Not that I really care, I'm just curious. Such strength, even gagged and humbled on the floor. Seeing him so confident and self-assured, she could finally understand how things could have gotten this bad, for this long.
Naomi knew that type of strength. She had met it before.
And she had beaten it.
Because in the end, strength doesn't solve all problems. Sometimes what you really need to do is sit down, and think. Find the one thing that explains the questions which are plaguing you. And in this case, just like back then, the answer was something unexpected, but reassuringly good. Something you gave up, Light, when you first took an innocent life. He knew it, long before you did. He told me so.
It isn't about power, Light.
The thing you lost to was kindness.
"You want to know who saved me?"
They were all tense with anticipation, not even daring to breathe for fear of missing what was about to be said. Even Ryuk leaned forward, his natural curiosity egging him on past anything resembling a removed disposition.
This was going to be so good. Naomi Misora paused, relishing the satisfaction of what she was about to reveal, what had been made clear to her in the whispered voice of a dead man.
"It was Raye."
From his position on the ground, one eye widened slightly. Recognition.
"Raye Penber. The decent man I loved, and you murdered. It's because of him that I am here to put an end to you."
"It's something I forgot to tell you, six years ago…"
To be continued…