A/N: Okay, some of these were longer than I thought. Namely no. 10.

Blank Note

06. Cat

Koji was more of a dog person, but he had nothing against cats. Their behavioural mannerisms were fascinating: the way they reacted with their environment on instinct alone and proving to be more reasonable than humanity with all their superior brainpower and free will. Dogs did the same, but there was something more subtle in the cat; it was difficult to attribute things to a size hierarchy as, except for the zoo, all cats found in Japan were a good deal smaller than their assailants.

It was natural; the strong assaulted the weak. It was all too common to come across a beaten stack of bones and fur discarded in a corner, passed by most without notice…and the majority of those who did see did not grant it a second glance. For some reason, such sights reminded him of his brother; it was a perfectly reasonable metaphor in a sense, if rather despondent…and harsh. The difference was perhaps that he was making a name, a reputation, some sort of footprint for himself – but then, most cats found on the street touched someone's heart at some point or other, be that a human or another animal.

What he was observing at that point though was another difference: the cat was still alive, but judging from the situation death wasn't too far for it.

Watching something was always different to simply observing its after-effects. His feet had stopped without conscious thought; waiting, poising…

'Cute cat, ain't it?' Ryuk remarked. 'Aren't you going to do something?'

Koji didn't move, didn't speak. The Shinigami had, upon proving its existence, turned into a rather annoying stalker within minutes, nagging him constantly about the book he had locked away safely in his desk until self-resolve crumbled. It was now in his bookbag; he still hadn't brought himself to write in it even though pen had come close to paper several times. It was always the mind verses heart debate, heart achieving victory while mind reasoned the conclusion: actively taking lives was not a process of maintaining the hierarchical natural order but rather disrupting it. Wars, massacres…they all serves as proof of the fact.

. It was the way things worked, and h had to accept it; rather, he always had had to, being as powerless as any other to change that. But that passivity brought about consequences: he barely got to see his own birthmother for one, but he hardly saw how a Shinigami's notebook would assist with that.

On the other hand, there were other things that culd be – selfishly avoided. Like dying for instance: he could see the Shinigami was serious. His eyes and smirk were mocking, tone teasing with cleverly timed comments that grated at his self-control.

And Ryuk was evidently easily bored, because he brought up his threat again – within twelve hours of dropping the first bombshell. The notebook glared in his hand; survival of the fittest had never seemed so frigid and cold. There was no reason involved; the only thing of higher intellect that impinged was the concept of free will, the ability to do things outside of necessity. It boiled down to the greatest instinct of any living creature: to survive.

A knife flashed up; in a split second, he recognised the face, the woman with ragged curls flying wild. One of his father's clients; she'd lost a case on account that prosecution had been labelled clinically insane and thus avoiding jail for assault.

Perhaps it was a flaw in the system, ignoring the mental state of the victim.

Out of the corner of his eyes, he saw a pen being raised. His mind froze at that; reason – reason had no place in matters of life and death. His own bag fell from his shoulder, notebook and a mechanical pencil conveniently rolling to his feet. Easy to pick up, easy to write with no time to think.

07. Name

Koji was…numb. There was no other way to describe it. Somehow, he had been expecting something more…dramatic. But the woman had dropped to the ground and was dead, but no-one would know. No-one would think it strange someone taking a nap under a tree's shade, until someone would come over and check on her and discover no signs of life.

A heart attack, come and gone and leaving no physical evidence save that of a natural death.

And he…he had been expecting to feel something…else. Instead, his body simply felt cold, as if an ice block had snuck in and removing something stiff from his chest. The sensation was just enough to make him shiver a tad in the Autumn breeze and back away…calmly, not recoiling in uncontrolled terror at the smell of death.

But humans were not as attuned to the scents of the world as animals were. But their memories, their minds, were of a different sort. They had emotions like guilt, regret…paranoia. Animals sensed danger and fled or fought it. Two options: a simple dimer. Humans jumped at shadows and smiled in the face of a snake.

Animals went in a straight path. Humans made webs within webs, creating a nest of twists and turns until one could only continue on, even with the knowledge that their actions had long since spiralled out of control.

And it was like that the pages of the Death Note slowly filled with names, and something in his mind, and perhaps his heart as well, slowly broke apart.

08. Rain

'It would be raining the day Koji finally invites us all to his house,' Takuya grumbled, huddling under the shade of the overhang while Tommy rung the bell.

The 'dinging' sound echoed, followed by nothing. Takuya abandoned the temporary shelter and rung the doorbell again.

This time, they got an answer. 'I'm coming already.'

The brunet giggled at the annoyance in his best friend's tone, then blinked in surprise as someone suddenly opened the door and shoved a pile of towels into his arms. A short-haired, blue-eyed someone who could so easily have been mistaken for Koji after a hair-cut if it hadn't been for the darker eyes and the...well, he could only describe the demeanor as being less assuming. If he had met the boy in school or around the district, chances were he would not have given him a second thought.

'Koji's being overly shy,' Zoe giggled, rubbing her arms in an attempt to settle the goosebumps on her skin. 'If a little rude, leaving us to invite ourselves in.'

Koji appeared at the top of the staircase at that point, proving her wrong as he had his usual ponytail of hair and was dressed that matched each other far better...but also came off more formal-looking.

Koji, for his part, noted the open door and the towels and muttered for them to come in and dry off before disappearing through a doorway. A brief and muttered conversation later he returned with robes they could change into and all but shoved Zoe into the study.

But they were all dry and warm soon enough and their clothes were drying by the heater after their encounter with an unexpected monsoon. And they were sitting around the living room with the TV blaring in the background.

'Hmm, I thought the Kira guy was far gone.' JP gave the screen an odd look as the reporter babbled of "unexplainable" deaths spreading from Shinjuku. "Spread" as in only a few, barely to consider if Kira's legacy hadn't remained.

'Shinjuku?' Tommy repeated. 'That's not far at all.'

'Speak for yourself,' Zoe muttered, pulling her robe more firmly around her. 'I live in Shinjuku.'

Koji snorted and switched the channel. Soccer came on. 'They'll blame any death that can't be explained on Kira. He's pretty much nothing but an urban legend at this point.'

'Says the master analyst,' Takuya joked.

'But Koji's got a point,' JP said. 'Tommy might've been too young to remember but you rest all recall that widestream panic. And when Kira suddenly vanishes off the face of the planet and within a couple of years crime rates are back to normal and he's practically a children's bedtime tale.'

'On a wide scale, Kira accomplished nothing,' Zoe surmised. 'But you have to wonder what happened to all the people closely involved. And his family and friends? I mean, it's so...well, sad in a sense. If your child started murdering like that –'

'You can't sympathise with that until you have a mass murderer as a child,' Koji interrupted, a tad snappishly, standing thereafter. 'Let's go eat.'

Silence followed him out of the living room, but his voice floated back soonafter. 'I'm not sick Ni-san.'

To others understood the statement when they found four plates and small bowls for rice set out at places on the table, with the fifth only containing a medium sized bowl of soup.

09. Laundry

The sound of paper scrunching made Koji check his pockets once again. The carefully searching fingers however found nothing in their depths, and it took him a moment to realise the sound had come from the cloth tag and not a scrap of Death Note he had left lying around.

He sighed, closed his eyes and counted to ten.

I really need to stop doing this.

'Something wrong?' Ryuk asked curiously.

'Just go get an apple and shut up,' the black-haired teen snapped back.

'Well, your parents are down there, but if you insist –'

The Shinigami made to float through the wall.

'No,' Koji snapped, half-freezing at what his parents would think if an apple floated away from the fruit bowl before their very eyes. 'Just…just shut up.'

Ryuk cackled. 'You know,' he said conversationally. 'I changed my mind about you. You are entertaining.'

That was a small relief.

He hurriedly went threw the pants into the machine before searching the pockets of his jacket. Ryuk watched, silently finishing his statement. I have a feeling though I'm going to get bored of you a whole lot quicker.

Maybe it was because the world had shrunk. Or maybe it was the boy himself thinking smaller than Light.

Either way, it would be entertaining while it lasted, and he intended to savour every bite.

'About my apple..?'

'Shut up!'

10. Umbrella

The news blared on the laptop screen and Koji watched it silently, form somewhat tense. Perhaps, he thought, the couch downstairs would have been more comfortable. He could have enjoyed the wide-screen television in the living room. He felt however he needed to see the next article alone…or rather, the sensation of watching such things with other people was enough to make him seriously uncomfortable.

'…and world famous detective L has been called in…'

Blue eyes stared unblinkingly at the screen.

'…a copycat Kira…or perhaps Kira was never dead after all. But this new wave of deaths have only struck of Tokyo's 12 district wards, making people wonder if this is a devastating but small-scale attempt to revive the legend of Kira or Kira himself simply regaining his second wind…'

'Second wind?' Koichi's voice suddenly spoke up from behind, prompting Koji to jump and consequently bump his shins under the desk.

'You could apologise,' the younger twin grumbled a as the screen shifted to weather reports, a small umbrella suggesting there was a forecast of rain.

Koichi gave him a look that clearly spelt: 'what for?'

'Why are you sneaking in here anyway?'

'I was wondering what you thought of Kira,' the elder twin replied.

'Geeze.' Koji did his best to keep his voice level. 'No-one speaks about him for years, and then Tokyo' in n uproar and Kira's name's on everyone's tongue after a few unexplainable deaths.' Inside, his heart was pounding at those words.

''Kira' was just a name given to one who uses a Death Note to kill,' was the explanation the other gave, as though that somehow explained everything.

Which it might have, if Koji's train of thought hadn't frozen on "Death Note."

'Death Note?' he repeated, a tad faintly.

'Teruo,' Koichi responded.

'Uhh…' Sometimes, Koji wished his brother would afford a little more information than was strictly necessary. It did however hold its own appeal; it was rather like solving a math problem directly rather than weeding through words. There were times though where he would rather not have to think.

'Teruo…' Teruo was one of Koichi's classmates, and on top of that one of his group members. If memory served him correctly, he was also very good at getting his hands on information that wasn't normally accessible to the public, so when coupled with Koichi's uncanny ability to see things in a different light and therefore put puzzles together in a convincing manner even while lacking all the necessary pieces, along with the third member of their team and her aptitude to dialogue (which not only assisted in portraying ideas more clearly than the two boys would manage on their own but also in doing the talking whenever it was needed).

Although such group dynamics didn't exact encourage any of them to change.

'Don't tell me you guys were assigned Kira as your group assignment.' If that wound up going public – and from that team it was a possibility in the near future – Kira would go from being a legend to being a fairytale.

If only the proof to the contrary wasn't locked in his top drawer…

Koichi made a noise of agreement and Koji resisted the urge to bury his face in his hands. He didn't think he wanted to see how the story came out under their tutelage. Or how Koichi would react if –

'You want my opinion of Kira? The…original Kira?'

Koichi nodded.

Koji closed his eyes. 'All I know is that he started off killing criminals and then skewered off. It makes me almost think of him as a child; the world is just too big to change like that and it's almost as if he's trying to justify…continuing.'

'Mmm-hmm.' The nonchalant agreement again. 'A holistic thinker then, but I can't help but think he may have been logically orientated underneath that.'

Koji swivelled around on his desk chair, glad that Ryuk was too busy watching the exchange to distract him. The conversation was unnerving enough, particularly considering who it was Koichi was trying to profile against him.

Although he did recall Koichi informing him at some point that he was a reductionist thinker, so that was a blessing in disguise.

'What makes you say that?'

'I don't see any other reason why someone would write a name in there…and continue to write in such a widespread manner…' Koichi closed his eyes. 'Unless of course there was someone or something else influencing…like Shinigami…' His voice had taken on the quality it did while thinking out loud and the elder twin drifted off with thoughts, carrying them away to note and expand upon.

Ryuk cackled after his departure. 'He hit the button on the nose. Your brother's a smart one.'

Koji just watched after him.

'How much more do you think he knew but didn't tell?'

That was a dangerous thought. And he was already in a dangerous game as it was.

'You know, the only reason the original Kira didn't write his sister's name in the Death Note was because it would have exposed him.'

Koji's blood chilled at that. Could it really come to..?

He shook his head. No. That won't happen.

He took a pen from the cap holder and uncapped it, sticking the tip in his mouth. Unhygienic, but it was a habit when he was thinking deeply. His homework was still spread out on the desk; the Death Note was still locked beneath. His calendar grinned from the computer screen – when the figured out what Takuya had done with that smiley face would be the first thing to go – and beneath it, the time.

A far cry from thirteen days. He had to wonder if there was a point to that rule; flies collected where flesh was laid after all, and once one domino fell the rest followed.

Should it be so simple? Writing names? Killing? Part of him was terrified; it was all going to catch up to him. He knew it. He should never have picked that damn book up in the first place.

But the rest of him was self-preservant. He had to keep going. And the knowledge of being boxed in told him he had to expand his area.

To people he didn't know…

Maybe the original Kira's idea wasn't as childish as he had originally thought. Maybe that justification, that aim, had come about through different means.

'And in tomorrow's news, serial murderer…'

People had to die for others to live. And those people did deserve to die.