incidental music background music for a play, movie or television show
Light is curled up on the couch with a translated copy of Moby Dick while the television plays the last of its insipid children's shows. Sayu, five years old now, is enthralled by them, grinning and chewing on her thumb. Light is waiting for them to be over.
The show ends, and Sayu wanders away, disappointed, to harass Sachiko in the kitchen. Light presses a series of buttons on the remote control, and the channel changes to NHN. Without looking at the television, he goes back to reading, the serious voices of the newspeople a more soothing backdrop to his reading.
He doesn't notice what they're saying until he hears his mother draw in a hissing breath through her teeth. He hadn't even realized she was there.
He looks up at the television.
"...in an attack by unknown perpetrators. Poisonous gas was released last night into the Kaichi Heights neighborhood in the Matsumoto ward, Nagano prefecture. So far six people have been reported dead..."
He stares at his mother, who in turn is staring at the television and frowning. "Mom?"
She blinks, and looks over at him. The expression of concern doesn't fade. "Yes, dear?"
He doesn't feel frightened, exactly, but he feels very small. "Who would do that?"
Sachiko crosses the room and smooths his hair back from his forehead, bending down to drop a kiss on it. "I don't know, dear. The police will find them, though."
Light has never doubted that. That isn't the question. "Why would they do it, though? What do they get from it?"
"I don't know," Sachiko repeats. After a moment, Light nods, and Sachiko gives him a pat and returns to the kitchen, switching off the TV on her way out of the room.
Concentrating on Moby Dick becomes difficult, and eventually Light closes the book. Six people have been reported dead, he hears in his head again, and he wonders who those six people were, and who chose them for death, and why. If anyone chose them; if it wasn't just chance. And Light suspects that it may have been, which is such a horrible thought he finds himself hugging his book to his chest. If it was just chance, then where's the justice his father struggles for? Where is the sense of fairness he's been taught to uphold at all times? If it was chance, what's to say it won't be his father next, or his sister, or him?
He sets his book carefully on the coffee table and follows his mother into the kitchen.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: The idea behind this one is like… ominous background music. Yes? Yes. Thank you, Vashtijoy, for this idea.