fermata hold or pause
By and large, nursery school was a disappointment, so Light is glad—excited, even—when he graduates to first grade. The graduation ceremony itself is humiliating in its fake solemnity, in the indulgent smiles he sees the schoolmasters hiding as they hand the restless students their "diplomas". It's good the school is so small, he thinks caustically; if the class had been any bigger, Light suspects the other children wouldn't make it all the way through the ceremony.
But it doesn't take long—not nearly as long as nursery school took—and he clings to Sachiko's reassurance throughout. You'll like school better once you get out of nursery school, Rai-chan. It's much more serious. He clings to his little kernel of hope while he watches his father hang his diploma on the wall—no more games all day long—and while he and Sachiko go shopping for school supplies—no more going over everything three times.
He frowns at his mother when she teases him, asking if he likes his new grown-up notebooks, but the night before he starts at his new school, when she's in another part of the house, he opens his bag and stares reverently at them. They're elegant, with muted covers and simple, lined paper inside. They represent the invisible but very tangible line he's crossed, and now that he's in the real world, the possibilities are limited only by what he can imagine. And he can imagine a lot.
And then, the next morning, as he sits in his new classroom ready to take out his beautiful clean notebooks and fill them with knowledge, his teacher smiles at the class and says, "Now, before we review what you learned in nursery school, how about we play a little game to break the ice?"
After school, Sachiko greets him with a proud smile. "How was your first day?"
Light, whose mask hasn't slipped once, smiles back. "It was great."