Whoo! Finally got around to finishing the introduction and we're beginning to step into canon people!
If you celebrate it, Merry Christmas!
I hope you enjoy this chapter.
Warnings/triggers: Dark themes - sociopath/psychopath - gore - really dark thoughts
._._._.
"Stars, hide your fires; Let not light see my black and deep desires."
― William Shakespeare
._._._.
It doesn't come as a surprise when his dreams are filled with the cries of his Tou-san. Begging and pleading for mercy. Grovelling at his feet. Snot and tears mixing in with warm, glittery, blood.
"Please, son, please don't kill me."
He could listen to that for hours.
"Please."
He raises his fist and, cause to effect, his Tou-san's eyes widen, breath coming in quicker.
"Please don't - don't - "
Kai's imagined this moment a thousand times in his head.
His Tou-san trembles.
"Please!"
His fist drives down.
"Breakfast!" Sachiko draws open the blinds, sunshine floods the room and in unison Kai and Light groan, low and pained.
"Just five more minutes," Kai grumbles into his pillow, trying to push his dream back into place.
"I made your favourite~"
"…Natto with extra brown rice and fermented soy beans?"
Sachiko hums, leaving the room and Kai lays still for a while. Listing to Light slip out of bed, readying himself for the day with a methodical kind of precision. Body moving out of instinct, following a strict ritual only known to himself.
He listens, but all he could think about was the feeling of his knuckles smashing into skin. How his Tou-san's face folded in on itself like an origami.
He felt his body begin to shake and Kai blindly reaches up to cover his eyes with an arm. Breathing hard and steady, forcing his heart rate to slow down.
Fuck. He needed to get a hold of himself.
"Get a hold of yourself for Christ's sake," Light voices his thoughts. "If you act like this for the rest of the day you'll arouse suspicion."
"I know," he growls, taking meditative breathes. Focusing on the way his lungs and ribcage expand and contract with each inhale, exhale. "I'm fine."
"Convincing."
"Piss off," Kai throws his arm off, glaring at Light and slouching out of bed. "I need to borrow your school uniform. Mine's at the police station going through forensics."
"Fine, just don't get any blood on it."
"Funny."
._._._.
Everything was going fine at breakfast. Sayu was chatting animatedly at him about her recent drama starring Hideki Ryuga, and the rumours circulating about Misa Misa, a teen idol, being introduced as his love interest next year.
Sachiko keeps his plate full of his fermented soybeans and brown rice.
Soichiro was even at the table - a rare sighting - reading his newspaper and poking the occasional thumb at Sayu about her distressing obsession on Ryuga. Put in Light's quiet presence by his side - Kai was beginning to feel at ease.
The burning insanity of ferocious hunger that he had awoken with - to feel his Tou-san's blood gush over his face, lick his lips and wash his skin - had finally slinked back into hiding. Cooling down under the sheer normality of eating homemade natto with Light's family. There was no mention of his Tou-san or last night's incident. Everything was fine.
Then Soichiro put down the morning's paper and met his eyes.
"I talked to the school."
Kai set his chopsticks down and wiped his mouth with a napkin.
He was a fool to think last night wouldn't have a domino effect.
"They've agreed you should stay away for a while, to recuperate."
"That's not necessary, Yagami-san." Kai says, forcing his hands to tremble. Just a little . "I'm fine."
Sachiko and Soichiro share a look.
With practiced awareness of people's facial expression and reading the situaiton, Kai immediately understood their worries. He had just killed his Tou-san in 'self-defence'. His Kaa-san was in a coma - unlikely to ever awaken. These incidents were extremely traumatic, one of which he was a witness and victim to. Taking a couple of days off to process is a novel course of action. He should probably also see the school counsellor or get an appointment with a psychologist.
He understood, he just didn't care. Right now Kai didn't have an urge to act like the broken child they saw in him. Not completely, like he should.
Staying at home while Light goes to school - Light, my impulse buffer - sounded undesirable. It sounded boring. With the way Kai was at the moment, he might just set something on fire to keep himself entertained.
Unlike what little this house had to offer for his entertainment, school had people he can play with.
Kai just had a traumatic experience, he could get away with anything right now. This wasn't an opportunity Kai could just pass up on. That would be against his very nature - it would be tragic.
And he could always chock up his lack of appropriate response to 'lingering shock.'
Oh Yagami-san, it just doesn't feel real.
Sounded about right.
._._._.
They call him brave.
Kai assumes Soichiro was taking about his grin-and-bear-it attitude when he repeatedly denies his and Sachiko's request to stay home for a couple of days.
"I need to feel in control," he tells them.
"You need to process," they say.
It goes on like that for a while.
In the end they cave.
Kai must have looked admirable, to see such a mature attitude as a so-called victim.
Throughout the entire spiel, Light eyes him as though he were looking at him for the very first time. And he has no idea how to react to that.
._._._.
When it came to social etiquette, a feeling of belonging was never especially important to Kai. This was because it was all too easy to enter and manipulate various social groups. Take it the populars, the otakus, the poor, the goths, the gangs, the extroverts, the introverts, the outcasts - he could play anything to their tune. He could be anything they wanted him to be.
In return, these groups gathered him access to things and places he never thought possible. His favourite example is the 'gangs': they exercised his abilities in lock-picking, car jacking, and extracurricular activities that would make many a mother clutch their pearl necklaces.
Point being, despite being in their good graces, Kai never had a place he'd immediately run to during lunch hours. When he got bored or the need to do something exciting hit him, he'd turn to the appropriate group and blackmail someone into entertaining him. This usually worked with leverage he got from either being too nosy, money he'd pickpocket'd off of some unlucky bastard in the street on the way to school, or as he's found recently, offering homework/assignments (lately he's decided to make it into a little business of his).
They had a give and take transaction. Very clean, very simple.
Alas, after so many years of going undetected in his merciless reign of blackmail and easy profit, somebody's felt the need to blow the lid.
Class President Ari, you snitch.
Catching the small athletic build of a black-haired girl across the school's front lawn, Kai inhales his cigarette. Keeping the smoke in for a second before exhaling through teeth.
The things he could to do to her with a knife…
"Bitch," he mutters, leaning against his school locker while Light changed shoes opposite him. Kai's eyes meet his, and the message was clear.
Don't do it.
He presses his lips against the cigarette again - smirking around it - inhaling, the little bud burning bright orange and, very deliberately bending down to blow the smoke at his face.
Light stares back unfazed.
"Ooh, is she your snitch?" Hisoka asks, raising his bulky camera around his neck to snap a picture of her. "How'd you find out?"
Kai straightens at his sudden appearance and appraises him for a moment.
Hisoka was an aspiring journalist and a year below him. He was also apart of the school's newspaper and currently working undercover on the 'selling assignments for money' story. Passing him information about the school's progress on tracking him down.
If somebody got too close to the truth, Hisoka or Ushio - somebody else in on the little 'secret' - would quickly spin a wild tale to throw them off track.
"Maa, somebody owed me a favour," he shrugs.
"Gang connections, eh?" Ushio saunters over, his tall legs filling the space between the hallway's door and lockers in one easy stride. "You need to teach me how to speak their language, Kaito-kun. They could get me places, if you know what I mean." He flashes him a charming smile, similar to Light's but without the emptiness behind it.
Kai likes Ushio, he was an enigma. The school's prized archer, someone who teachers speak highly about - oh that handsome young man? He's going places - but also their loneliest outcast - it's a shame he doesn't have many friends though.
He was a contradiction wrapped neatly in another contradiction.
Kai had stumbled upon him during a spat of extreme risk-taking behaviour last year. Light had a tennis tournament in another part of the city, so he was out of school for two days, leaving Kai with nobody to buffer himself against his most violent impulses. To make matters worse, he was having one of those 'bad days'. His Kaa-san brought home another rich narcissist who threw him out of the house, so he hadn't slept, hadn't eaten, and was ready to start a house fire with the zippo lighter he had stolen from one of those Seven/Eleven stores.
Since he had no place to go he was early for school - isn't he just a model student? - and heard noises coming from the gym. Bored out of his mind and needing a good distraction, Kai goes to investigate and witnesses their resident star outcast shooting arrows into a circular target. Situated in the bullseye was a very much holed out picture of a family photograph.
Domestic troubles? He had wondered in a sort of companionable bitterness. It was tangier than the honeycombed, homicidal one he had with Light.
[Not that he could ever dissect or put a name to what he had with Light in the first place. It always changed - but there was this devotion. This selfish, intense desire that tasted like his cigarettes. He needed Light to function. To keep him stable enough to remember what was right and what was wrong.]
So he intruded on Ushio's one-sided family dispute with mobile pointy objects and got the lanky kid talking. They traded family problems: Ushio developing this worried sort of look about him when Kai casually talks about how his Tou-san used to hit him before going to jail, and his Kaa-san was a leeching whore who worked off of sex. In turn Kai learnt about Ushio's family's expectations of him, how he was never enough to his narcissist of a Tou-san. That with his lack of popularity and interest in the same gender, he was sullying his name. And how his Kaa-san constantly nags him about working towards the olympics instead of playing computer games.
Unintentionally, by finding someone interesting to intern as a 'Light', Ushio had taken the heart to heart as an open invitation to being a friend. The kid didn't leave him alone that day and Kai didn't have it in him to oppose it. The itch under his skin to burn something was being mis-directed to the back of his mind with Ushio's talking.
The kid had issues, Kai could relate.
[But he was becoming a bit of a burden lately. Constantly looking to take up Kai's time in useless activities such as playing mindless soldier video games and watching predictable television narratives. He was beginning to get greedy and outliving his utility of being a fun distraction.
No matter, he'll soon be disposed of and routinely replaced.]
"I'm not using my blackmail material to get you into any clubs, Ushio-kun," Kai turns his attention back onto Ari. The girl was braiding her wet hair at the back, having ended swimming practice for the morning. Next she'd go to her locker, apply her watermelon flavoured chapstick in the little heart-shaped mirror she pinned to the door and meet up with her best friend in class. Then she'd organise her panda pens on her desk to the left hand side - she was a lefty - ascending in size. He knew more. He knew things he had business of knowing.
He wasn't allowed to stalk people, but he couldn't help himself from taking a peek. What harm could knowing do?
I could find the perfect opportunity to corner her and take that pretty little braid by my hand and -
Kai takes a sharp drag, nicotine rushing to his head and calming his mind.
"I'm sorry."
He forces his eyes to Ushio. The boy's expression showing signs of concern, caution, and sadness. A lot of those looks were being thrown his way this morning.
"I heard…coming into school, I heard some people talking at the gates and…"
"Aah," he tips his head back, blowing smoke upwards. Just near the smoke detector. "Don't worry about it."
"So it's true?" Hisoka bursts, the smaller boy dropping his camera. It thumps heavily around his neck. "Kaito-kun you-you - your Tou-san…"
Kai nods silently, watching the way Hisoka and Ushio go through the motions.
Light closes his locker door loudly in the chilling silence.
"And you're at school?" Ushio practically whispers. "You just kil - you just went through that, and they're making you go to school?"
"Nobody's making me do anything," he flicks ash to the ground. Staring at them unblinking. "And just to be clear," making sure his voice was loud enough to carry to other students. He'll be damned if people started making rumours. "I - I killed my Tou-san in self-defence. He came at me, I punched his ticket. The man was an abusive asshole, it was only a matter of time before something like this happened." Kai looks up again, pretending to have difficulty swallowing the next few words. "It was only a matter of time…only a matter…" He coughs and throws a wonky smile at his 'friends'. "Sorry."
"No," Ushio shakes his head, deep frown on his face. "Don't be. Sorry for asking."
"Yeah, man." Hisoka awkwardly scratches the back of his neck, looking flighty. "And don't apologise, it's unlike you."
He looks over Ushio's shoulders and winks at Light, who was staring at him weirdly again. Cocking an eyebrow in question, Light just shrugs and tugs on is bag.
"I'm heading to class."
"Oh!" Hisoka takes the window to change subject like a drug addict to heroin - ironically.
[Kai had come upon Hisoka by catching the boy a couple months dosing himself on his sister's stolen adderall in the school bathroom. After a moment of contemplation and curiosity, Kai asked if he could try some.
Hisoka had stared at him and wordlessly offered the little white bottle.
It was an interesting experience, and happily not within the boundaries of his rules. That didn't stop Light from making him throw up despite having already digested the pills, though.
The look of intense disappointment and disgust on his face was enough to make Kai never take drugs again. It somehow stung in ways he's never felt.]
Kai stays by the lockers for a moment, smoking and thinking. Light's seen him manipulate people before, sometimes he's even joined in on the fun. But those looks he was giving him…
As though Kai were a Matryoshka doll he's only just opened.
._._._.
The rest of the day was, as predicted, full of sympathetic eyes and softly spoken words. Some people avoided him, unnerved by being in the same room as a 'murderer', but most were empathetic to his plight. This reaction was most certainly coming from him being Light's best friend - the most popular kid in school. If he weren't, Kai believes he would have gotten a much more negative response.
It doesn't matter. Kai ignores them all. Filling his time thinking about Ari instead of his Tou-san. Throughout class, he couldn't stop staring at the back of her neck. The thin braid hiding bumps of her spine. A place he detachedly imagines severing her spinal column with. Slicing the two tendons connecting her skull to the collarbone. His knife sinking into her unblemished skin before she even knew what was happening.
Such an elegant way to go.
He imagines it would be a very different feeling to the aching soreness of knuckles against skull - unconsciously flexing his right hand. Bruises had manifested over night, purples patches surrounding healing scabs. He looked as though he had picked a fight with a brick wall and lost.
When fantasising loses its charm, Kai spends the next hour filling himself with vindication from seeing the glances of fear people give his hand. The horrid proof of the rumours. The evidence of his ability to take a life. Kai had crossed their little line of self-righteousness and instilled a feeling of weakness and bone chilling terror. Oh sure, they were sympathetic - but they were also very, very afraid. Of what he was capable of. They thought they knew, but he's crossed the line. He's in the darkness now where they're in the light.
And they can't see him.
They don't know him.
And it was everything he's craved of having. People afraid of him, letting him know he was the one in power and control.
His Tou-san dying was the most interesting thing he's ever done.
._._._.
It was snowing by the time Physical Education had rolled around, so instead of playing cricket outside like Maeda-sensei had planned, they move inside to play basketball.
Kai sits off to the side next to Light in the hall, people running about infront of them, panting and shouting like a pack of mindless animals. Sneakers screeching on the freshly mopped wooden floorboards.
His focus was solely on Ari though. The girl was refereeing with sensei on the sidelines. She was wearing the school's sweatpants and jumper. They looked big on her small athletic frame, swallowing her whole.
"Have you thought of ways to kill her yet?" Light asks in a dry tone, gaze on the match.
"Asphyxiation."
"She could scratch you while struggling."
"I'd cut her nails."
"Hmm, you said you'd do it with a knife next time," Light looks at him now, extremely curious and eyes piercing. "Where would you stab her?"
"I'd - " he stops short, feeling a quiver pass over his skin. Talking about it felt private. Felt wrong. "I'm not sure yet."
Light inhales sharply. "The truth, Kai."
"It is."
"Kai," he drawls.
"I'm thinking the pancreas."
"That wouldn't kill her."
"Who said I wanted to kill?"
Light snorts.
"I'm experimenting." Kai shrugs. "Let me fantasise."
"Don't lie to me," Light practically growls, leaning in and Kai can feel the heat of his breath flush against his neck. "Don't lie. To. Me."
Kai's jaw clenches.
"I know you," he whispers intensely, and something tightens in Kai's chest. "I know everything about you, Kai. You should know that." The hairs stand up on the back of his neck. "And I know, despite that little black heart of yours and that hunger to destroy - to ruin, I know you don't like torture. You find it unnecessary."
Kai lets out a chuckle - mechanical sounding but some kind of attempt to unleash the odd sensation stuck in his lungs.
"So tell me the truth, Kai," Light, impossibly, leans further in. They were lucky everybody's eyes were on the game because Kai could feel Light's lips brush against his ear. "Tell me."
What would he do if he declined?
Kai's lips stretch into a cruel, unnatural, grin. "No."
Light freezes for a split second before laughing softly. "No?" He withdraws and Kai finally turns to him. Their eyes meet.
"It's a secret," he winks.
"I like secrets," Light says, gaze heavy. "Feel like telling me sometime?"
"Maybe," maybe I'd give you a demonstration.
His eyes slide to Ari and back again.
Light reads him like an open book, developing this sort of disapproving look his face. "It doesn't make sense to attempt something so risky. You could get caught." Always the rationalist.
"Aah, would I really, though?" Kai challenges. "I haven't so far."
"You got lucky."
"I'll be prepared this time."
"Don't," Light's tone his hard. "You know the rules."
Kai feels his face twist into a scowl. "Fine."
"Kai, you know I'm right."
And he does. Not breaking the law and rules were logical. There was too great a risk he would get caught.
But Ari impeded on his relationship and liability with other students. He wants to take her down. He wants to ruin her and replicate what he had with his Tou-san. That intoxicating, rushing moment of life and control and other things blended together into a chaotic calm.
With great reluctance, he says, "I know."
._._._.
The streets outside of school were loud. Impatient. And crowded. Kai stands off to the side, away from running students as they steadily disappear out of school grounds. Identical brown blazers and colourful scarfs blending pass him in a haze. Kai leans against the cool metal gate, Light's red jumper underneath his blazer providing appropriate protection from the chill of snow and icy breeze. He stretches an arm out, loosening the tight fabric of the jumper. Kai was very fit, his muscles hard from use, leaving barely any area for fat to be seen. Where Light, well, he had muscle - but the kid was mainly skin and bones.
Kai resolves himself to never borrow Light's clothes again. They were tight.
Glancing back, eyes searching, Kai grumbles around his cigarette.
Light was talking longer than usual.
He had been, daresay it, distracted during history. Of course, that might be because Light is genuinely terrible at that subject - despite his top notch scores. Though Kai has a feeling that wasn't it. Something had peaked his interest - Light had this expression about him. The one he got that one time during science class when they got to dissect a bull's eyeball.
The sun suddenly peaks through the clouds and shines in his face. Kai screws up his eyes, stumbles back and swears loudly. The cigarette slips from his lips and sizzles to death on the snowy ground beneath him. Red bud fading to ash.
"God dammit."
Squatting down, Kai picks it up between his fingers and stares at the sodden stick.
Glaring up at the sky, squinting as he does so - he asks, "Really?"
A tall figure blocks the suns pathway, and Kai blinks before groaning. "Maa, took you long enough."
Light extends a helping hand, heaving Kai up. "I got sidetracked."
"What could possibly sidetrack you other than a dead body?"
"This," Light waves up a what looked to be a black notebook. Kai doesn't recognise it.
"Did you steal that?"
Light snorts. Offended by the notion that Kai would think he'd steal something so dull. "No."
"Then where did you find it?"
"I saw it fall from the roof during history, look," Light steps besides him and shows the cover - it's leather, nicely made and real to the touch as Kai traces the English wording.
'DEATH NOTE'
"Huh."
._._._.
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