Aw, no reviews! Well, hardly any. Jeez, out of 30 people on alert, only a 10th of you review?! That's sad!

I don't own this, and if I did it would probably be a failure, like my attempts to get you people to review:P

---hi!---

"So, Ryuk is watching out for us?" Naeko asked, kicking a rock ahead of her as she walked side-by-side with Light. Light nodded, but otherwise said nothing. "When did you notice?"

"This morning. Ryuk told me about it, because he is always staying behind me. Sometimes I don't know what I would do without him. At least, I wouldn't have noticed, and I wouldn't have been able to tell you."

Naeko smiled. "It's amazing to hear you sound so grateful. Who knew such a person could care so much about a person that doesn't exist."

"Hey, for your information, he exists, but he's dead. I think." Naeko laughed, and Light put on a fake smile that he knew the spy that was watching them could see.

"So, how long do we have to do this?" Naeko asked, looking up at Light. Light met her gaze, and then looked back at the sidewalk.

"I'm not sure…probably as long as it takes for my name to get off the suspect list. Why, are you happy being my pretend girlfriend?"

Naeko punched Light in the arm playfully, a scowl on her face. "Hey, you know I can barely stand being a regular friend. Just be glad I'm not a boy, otherwise I'd have to be your boyfriend. Imagine the rumors that could go around about you being gay!"

It was Light's turn to scowl. "Oh yes, with our class, I could imagine."

"Hey, so, want to come over to my house again tonight?" Naeko asked randomly, changing the subject while she still had the thought in her mind. "You can use my laptop and stuff, if you want. I always delete the history on my laptop anyway, so nobody would know what sites and stuff you went on."

"Tempting, but I think I might have to skip out. I'm not sure if my parents need my help or anything tonight. Plus, they were kind of ticked that I skipped out on supper last night. Maybe I could come over after supper and get something done then?"

"Sounds good to me." Naeko looked up from her shoes to look across the street at the park. "Hey, I think I'm going to stay at the park for a while. It'll probably be a lot more peaceful there than at home. See ya later!" Light didn't even have time to protest as Naeko ran across the street and through the park entrance, all the way across the playground to the swings. Shrugging, the boy continued walking. Maybe it's better this way; the spy will have to choose between the two of us. It they stay to watch Naeko, it'll free me up some time to find Ryuk and hear what he has to say.

Naeko watched Light as he walked on down the street. Opening her book bag, the girl pulled out her Chemistry hardback and notepad, placing the book bag on the ground next to her. Pulling her pencil out from the spiral binding of her notebook, Naeko opened her book to the correct page for her hardback review and started working, answering the questions as best as she could. Only sometimes did she have to look up an answer.

As she worked, Naeko began to get a creepy feeling crawling up her spine. A few times she looked up and caught movements out of the corner of her eyes. Thinking it was the spy Light had been talking about, Naeko shrugged and went back to her work, determined to not let it get to her.

"I finally found you, Naeko." Naeko blinked and looked up at Ryuk, who had just appeared in front of her. Trying to ignore the spy had gotten her to focus completely on her work, causing her to omit any unnatural sounds or movements. Even the cars speeding down the street didn't bother her.

Naeko opened her mouth to reply to Ryuk, and then remembered the spy. Flipping to a new page in her notebook, she wrote the word 'What?' Ryuk leaned over to read it, getting Naeko's game, and then laughed. "Oh, Light was just worried about you, so he sent me off to check on you. You're such a goody-goody, putting your homework in priority.

Naeko tried to hide the frown on her face. Leaning back over her notebook, she wrote, 'Light shouldn't care. I m not a goody-goody! STFU!'

Leaning back as though she were stretching, Naeko showed the notebook to Ryuk with a carefree expression on her face. Ryuk read the message and then laughed at Naeko's attempt at shorthand.

"You know," the Shinigami said, "Light does care, whether he wants to admit it or not. And if you aren't a goody-goody, then why are you taking so much time on your homework?"

Naeko pouted and scribbled in her notebook again. 'I don't care either way. I want to give Light as much time as possible—'

Naeko instantly sat up straight. She had forgotten to give Light the death note! Cursing herself, Naeko reached into her bag and brushed her fingers over the hard cover of the death note. At some point during her last block of the day, Naeko had resolved to give the death note to Light. She knew her aunt was nosy and wouldn't hesitate when given a chance to look through her niece's possessions. Not only that, but Naeko knew she was a very careless person and would probably forget to hide her notebook. The death note would be safer with Light, and he would be able to use it as he saw fit.

"Oh, I'm so stupid," Naeko muttered under her breath. Sliding her notebook and hardback into her bag, Naeko stood from the swing and set off to the park entrance and then down the street, Ryuk following her no less than a step behind.

"What are you doing now?" Ryuk asked. This girl never ceased to amuse him.

"I'm going to go back to my house and wait for Light to come over," Naeko whispered back. She had seen a shadow move out of the corner of her eye when she had turned to go down her street. Even knowing that she had a person trailing her pissed Naeko off, and she subconsciously started walking at a faster pace.

"Light told me his plan…how fast did you agree to being his girlfriend?" Naeko stopped walking and Ryuk stopped just before he was about to run into her.

"Shut…up…" Naeko seethed. She opened her mouth to say more, but decided against it. Resuming her fast pace, Naeko hurried down the street and up the steps to her house. Opening the door unceremoniously, she didn't notice the 5 pairs of eyes watching her as she took off her shoes and huffed up the stairs.

"Oh my," Mayako said, bringing a hand to her lips. "She doesn't usually act like that. I wonder what's wrong?"

Sachiko, Light's mother, fidgeted in her seat. "Well, Light, aren't you in that young girl's class? Why don't you follow her and ask her what's wrong? Maybe she's willing to talk to you because you're in her class! If that's alright, though…"

Mayako shook her head and smiled brightly. "Oh, it's fine. I'm so glad you came over today, Sachiko, and you even brought the entire family! It looks like today was just a bad day for Naeko." Light nodded his affirmative, standing up from the couch to follow the girl.

"Yes, well, we know how that goes in our family," Soichiro ground out. The older man had been whisked away from his newspaper, and while Yuki was still at work, he had no one to talk to.

"Papa, that only applies to the men in our house," Sayu said, laughing. She had been quite silent up until then, but when her brother left, she felt like she had to stick up for herself and get involved in the conversation.

"Oh, by the way, Sayu, Naeko was asking about you on her first day here! I think she was hoping for a neighbor girl that she could hang out with."

Sayu blinked. "Really? Did she know about Light?"

Mayako looked confused. "About what, dear?"

"Did she know that I have a heartthrob for a brother? Did she know that he's single? Did she know he's the top in his class?"

"No…she only asked if there were any female girls that were around her age. When I told her about you, she seemed really interested though. Maybe she'd like to be your friend! We just have to see if Light can get her out of her bad mood…"

At that point, Sachiko popped back into the conversation. "Don't worry! If there's one thing Light is good at, it's charming girls!"

"Lucky," Soichiro said gruffly. That got all three females to laugh.

Meanwhile, Light was busy "charming" Naeko. Well, he was going to have to start by getting inside her bedroom first, because she a) had a cd player/radio turned up until she couldn't hear his knocks on the door b) was in the bathroom where she wouldn't be able to hear him if she had the door closed or c) thought he was someone else and didn't want to talk to anyone. Because he didn't know the girl very well, Light was betting on all three options.

"Naeko, open up! It's me, Light." Light knocked on the door once more, his knocks turning more and more into frenzied bangs.

Giving up, Light turned his back to the door and slid to the ground, letting his elbows rest on the tops of his knees. He planned on catching her the next time she stepped outside her door, and if she didn't feel like leaving her room he would try again in a few minutes. Even so, waiting in an empty hallway was a little better than listening to his mother and neighbor giggle and laugh.

"Naeko…" Light grumbled. What a pain! This uncut girl was going to take years off of his already shaved and valuable life!

"You're acting like a lovesick puppy. Come on, get in." Light turned and looked over his shoulder at a very clean and wet-looking Naeko. A Naeko that was only wearing a towel. Light could feel his cheeks heating up before he reined in the color.

"Did you just get out of the shower?" Light asked as he stood. "Not that it matters, but—"

"Yes. I took a shower. Do you have a problem with it?" Light shook his head "no" quickly, and Naeko sighed.

"My book bag is on my bed and my laptop is underneath the bed. I should already be logged in on the computer, but if not then type in "YouAreInOver" and the password should come up." Naeko opened her closet door and searched through it before sighing and pulling out a little pink dress with a cherry blossom tree stitched in the side. It was actually cute in Naeko's opinion, once she got a better look at it, but it was still a dress, and Naeko had a policy against dresses.

While Naeko was in the bathroom changing, Light did as he was told and opened the laptop from under the bed. The laptop was an older model and took forever just to get to start up, but finally it was at the login page. Light was glad to see that the username and password had already been input and all he had to do was hit the enter key. Once Light took a better look at the username, though, it hit him.

Naeko likes yaoi? Well, that's surprising to know. She doesn't seem like someone who would watch a lot of anime. I wonder if she thought up this username all by herself? It sounds original, but who would think that a girl like Naeko would support gay pride?

Naeko stepped out of the bathroom only a moment later. She was wearing the dress and now her hair was pulled back into a low ponytail. Light watched her as she crossed the room to where he was at.

"What? You didn't even get the note out? Jeez, are you really good for anything?" Naeko grumbled to herself as she rummaged through her back pack.

Light pretended to ignore the girl's comments and asked, "Why are you calling it a note? And what is up with your username?" The second question just sort of popped out f his mouth, but Light found himself really wanting to know.

Naeko was immensely quiet for a minute or so, while she was shuffling around in her back pack. "My aunt is one to snoop, and I don't want her to overhear my talking about a notebook I named "death". Also, this laptop is my sister's. She made a username for me too, but I forgot the password after I got into the habit of using her name. She had a bunch of family pictures saved to one of her files, and whenever I felt lonely I liked to log onto her name and look at them." Naeko laughed quietly, and handed Light the death note without looking at his face. "My sister always did like to create imaginative names and mottos. One Christmas, each family member got her a teddy bear, and she lined them up and gave them names that started with the letters y, a, o, and i. She really was an anime otaku, and she even let me watch a few episodes of my favorite anime when I couldn't get to bed. She and I would curl up together on her bed and she'd start the anime, and our parents would never know."

Naeko sighed, taking a deep breath. "But, that was a long time ago. I can hardly remember anything from that time."

Light sat in silence with Naeko until they were startled by a knock on Naeko's door. "Oi! Lover birds! Mom says it's time to go, Light!"

"Tell her I'm staying to work on homework!" Light shouted back. He hid the death note under Naeko's bed incase his sister had the gall and guts to walk into a stranger's room without permission.

"Can't you work together tomorrow? We're coming back over for dinner, because Mr. Yuki is going to have the day off tomorrow."

"Light, just take it with you," Naeko whispered, motioning towards her bed and the hidden death note. "I'm not going to use it anyway."

Light looked dubious for a moment, but then gave in. Whispering back to Naeko, he said, "I can't sneak it out of here because I don't have anywhere to hide it and my coat is downstairs. Just bring it to school tomorrow and I'll take it then." Naeko nodded her agreement and stood up from her bed, leaving her computer open and the death note hidden under her bed. Before Light could leave the room, though, she stopped him with a hand on his arm.

"Light, would it help if…I wrote down some names…like if you were to find a spot where the spy could easily see you…if I wrote the names during that time…"

Light had to lean in to understand Naeko's muttered fragments. Stepping closer to her so that they were touching, he patted her head and said, "That would help a lot. I'll go for a walk later, around 8. If you could start writing names around that time, my name might possibly go down on the suspicion list." Naeko nodded, and Light gave her a small smile. Leaning down, Light gave the girl a small kiss on the forehead before he turned and opened the bedroom door, leaving her with only a small wave.

Naeko, still in shock from Light's kiss, felt her lips curl up in a smile. She could hear Sayu and Light talking as they walked down the hall to join their parents at the bottom of the stairs. The smile faded, however, when Naeko thought about what she had volunteered to do.

Can I really do it? Can I really write in the death note? Naeko pondered these thoughts as she reached under the bed to get the death note. Sitting down on her bed next to her computer, Naeko flipped through the death note's pages. Light hadn't even filled up half of the pages. Would she even be there to watch him write in the very last name?

Shaking her head, Naeko placed the death note under her mattress. Brushing her skirt to fix the crinkles, she left her room and headed downstairs. Walking into the kitchen, Naeko was greeted by her aunt.

"Ah, there you are, Naeko darling. What were you and Light doing upstairs?" Mayako gave her niece a girly giggle and went back to looking at the newspaper she was holding.

"Nothing, really. I made him wait a while because I was cold and took a quick shower, not even thinking that he might come upstairs to visit me. Actually, to be honest, I didn't even realize we had visitors over!" Naeko put on a false smile and laugh as she sat down at the kitchen table. Catching a glance at the oven's digital clock, Naeko noted the time. It was 6:35. She still had an hour and a half to prepare herself emotionally.

"You know, it'd be great if you two hooked up," Mayako said, not even lifting her beautiful brown eyes from her paper. "You and Light really make a great couple, too."

"Oh, Light didn't tell you?" Naeko asked. She didn't exactly want to be the one to tell her aunt she and Light were in a "relationship", but it would be a good excuse for them to be close. Not only that, but if Mayako slipped up and told one of her other friends about her and Light's relationship in front of the spy, Naeko would be able to create alibis for the both of them. "You see, he asked me out today, during lunch. It was surprising, really. Totally unexpected." Well, at least that part was true.

Mayako actually looked up from the newspaper this time, her eyes wide. When the newspaper bent from being held in an awkward position, Naeko could see that her aunt had been reading a low-fat recipe for some sort of miso soup that Naeko had never heard of.

"Did he really ask you out? What did you say? You didn't reject him, did you?" Mayako's tone became more and more frenzied even though the woman was sitting stock still in her seat, and Naeko had to calm her down quickly.

"I didn't reject him; I said yes! Light's a nice guy, and I figured I could give him a chance!" Mayako sighed in relief, and Naeko was sighing on the inside. Where had that cheesy crap come from? Well, if it made her sound more convincing…

"Okay, good. I was going to say, if you had given up a chance like that, I would have had to take you to the doctor to get your brain checked!" Mayako laughed and Naeko chuckled, amused that her aunt could only ever think about boys even though she was already happily married.

Naeko looked over at the clock again and noticed that it was only 6:52. She had barely been able to kill any time. Mayako caught her looking at the clock and asked, "Something wrong? Are you waiting for something?"

Naeko blinked and shook her head no. "Nah, I was just trying to think of what shows were on at this time. I don't really want to work on homework right now. Speaking of shows, is Uncle Yuki going to be home before his favorite show comes on?"

Mayako glanced at the clock and then stared up at the ceiling. "No, I don't think so. He said he'd be getting home super late, but he didn't ask me to tape the show or anything. Could you be a dear and set it up to tape for when it comes on?"

Naeko nodded and stood up from her chair. Walking into the living room, she turned on the TV and immediately started at the message on the screen. It read: "Kira, I know you're out there. I have my suspicions, also. I wouldn't try anything tonight, if I were you. Signed, L."

Naeko stared at the television for a while, blocking out the voice of the news reporter. The message stayed on the screen for a long time, until the clock stuck 7:00, and the screen changed to that of a weather forecaster and his board.

"Tonight we'll be experiencing light showers and temperatures in the low 50s, which is surprisingly high for the oncoming winter weather…" Naeko blocked out the weather forecaster after a while too. After searching for and finding the TV remote, she started up the DVR and set an alarm for the channel that her uncle's show would appear on. Once she saved the alarm, Naeko turned off the TV once more and slowly walked up the stairs, hoping that her lagging feet would take her another hour to get up the stairs. Although she wasn't looking forward to it, Naeko wanted the time to fly so that she could drag out the death note and test it herself.

Although the idea of the death note sounded cruel and unusual, Naeko couldn't help but wonder. She wanted to try it out to see if such a flimsy pad of paper really had the powers that Light had described it with. Only then would she believe if the notebook was true or if it was really just a joke. Earlier, looking back at a few of the names in the notebook, though, Naeko had remembered a few of the criminals' names that had been on TV, reported dead for unexplained reasons.

Naeko entered her bedroom and immediately flopped down on the bed, her desk lamp already illuminating the room and giving it an eerie glow as a contrast to the dark that was seeping in through her window. Pulling her sheer curtains to the side with her toe, Naeko cast a glance outside and winced at the raindrops on her windowpane. Could Light convince his mother that he could take a walk in that sort of weather? Ah, well. There was nothing she could do then. The best she could do was to watch from her window and wait to see if Light would exit his house, even though it was a bad angle and she wouldn't be able to see much of her neighbors' front door.

Naeko laid on her bed for much of the next hour, wasting time by thinking about random thoughts, none of them necessarily relevant to her task on hand.

At 7:57, Naeko broke out of her daze long enough to look at her digital alarm clock. Reaching under her bed for the death note, she picked up the cursed book and took it over to her desk, leaving it closed. Then she pulled her chair up to the window and waited for some indication of Light leaving his house. She didn't have to wait long, however, because a bright light suddenly lit up the front steps of Light's house, and then a shadow appeared in the light. Naeko had to squint, but when the figure closed the door behind them and started out into the rainy night, she knew it was Light.

Pushing her chair back to her desk, Naeko focused on the cover of the death note. It was plain, with only the white letters to decorate it. Flipping open the pages, Naeko slowly grabbed a pencil from a cup near her desk lamp and found the page Light had stopped writing on. Tapping on her laptop to get it out of sleep mode, Naeko quickly started up the Internet program she had and searched for a list of wanted criminals. Finding a decent sized list, Naeko remembered the death note's rules and focused on the each criminals' faces as she wrote down their names as listed on the screen.

The only sound in her room was the scratching of the pencil lead and the rustling of the paper, occasionally the sounds of her fingertips moving the page down to find more criminals. Naeko didn't even look at their crimes, because in the index of the page she had found, there were criminals rated by their degree of wrong-doing. Starting at the highest and going down, Naeko felt herself numb at all thoughts of what she was doing. She wrote and wrote, until her hand began to cramp and she leaned back in her chain to stretch. Looking back at her work, Naeko narrowed her eyes at the completely full page and a half she had written, using her tiniest script.

"What have I done?"

---X---

Wow, that was…long. For me, anyway. 4,250+ words in this chapter alone, by the way. I found the word count toolbar option, and now I can't stop using it! XD It's quite addicting, that's for sure! Now I can work on my other stories, thank god! I really wanted to get this chappy done, though!

Please review, you know I love it when you do! XD Hey, that rhymed!

EDIT: OMG I am such an idiot! I uploaded the chapter last night, but forgot to update the story! So, sorry you had to wait an extra 10 hours or so! XD