February 2, 2004. For acing the university entrance exams, you get as a graduation present a mechanical-wind Omega Speedmaster. Known as the "moonwatch," it's the official watch used by NASA astronauts on their missions. It can hold up to extremes of pressure and temperature, acceleration and shocks, acoustics and humidity. Buzz Aldrin (Edwin Eugene Aldrin Jr.) wore it on the very first moon landing, while Neil Armstrong (Neil Alden Armstrong) left his inside the lunar module to serve in place of a malfunctioning electronic timer.
When you were a boy you'd always wanted to fly, and the idea of being an astronaut—seeing what Aldrin called the "magnificent desolation" of the moon and being able to look down at the whole earth as though it were a globe, precious and remote, inspired you deeply.
Soichiro gives the watch to you. Every time he comes home lately he looks more haggard, and since New Years it's been worse. You don't know what's going on in the task force anymore, since the case files on his computer stopped being updated, but you blame Kira. You can't stop looking at the shimmer of plexiglass over the black surface, and every day you wind the watch up and hear the soft click, click, click when you turn it in time to your heartbeat. It is the sort of watch that should be treated gently but you open up the back to look at the mechanism, trying to figure out how to fix the broken chronograph dial.
« No one would suspect an expensive watch of having a secret compartment. You have to cut the open back with the chop saw in the lab at school, add a sliding panel on a spring mechanism, and connect the mechanism to the chronograph pin, sacrificing that aspect of the watch's usefulness. It takes hours of work and the inside is messy but it holds a piece of the Death Note. When you are finally finished all it takes is pulling the pin four times (the number of death) for the compartment to slide smoothly open, and you grin in private amusement at a joke between no one but yourself. Unless it was sent to a watchmaker or taken apart by the police, no one would suspect a thing. Your watch is entirely brilliant and entirely unique. »
—You are not a watchmaker, though, and all you can figure out is that there's something wrong with the pin, but you aren't going to send it to be serviced right after you got the damn thing. It's not as though you need that functionality anyway; the watch still works perfectly fine.
When you were sixteen and Sayu was thirteen she had stomped her way into your room and flung herself moodily on your bed. You had been playing Mario Golf and Sayu sighed loudly a few times before you paused the game and looked over at her, setting down the controls. "What is it?" you'd asked, with the upbeat, helpful patience of a big brother. It was a false front, moreso than usual, and it had been for a while. Perhaps it was just growing up, but you'd found puberty to be a disappointment. Everyone in school was even more obsessed about who was going out with whom, and even in high school your classes weren't particularly difficult. Juku, cram school, was better, since you could take advanced classes there, but even that didn't settle the restlessness under your skin. People your age were finding peers to go out with and talking about their crushes like it was somehow the most important thing in the world. You've dated a few girls, like any decent person, but felt the whole time as though it were the most pointless, boring endeavour; no different from going out with friends except that it was supposed to mean something, as though prettiness could ever win out against intellectual stimulation.
In the meantime, the news just kept getting worse. In 2000, two years ago, the Scymitar oryx (Oryx dammah) became extinct in the wild.
Did anyone else notice how death had become such an unbalanced thing? Did anyone else realize how humanity trampled the world? Laws, and customs, and fairness were a fake, and nobody ever learned. The judicial system would rather a hundred guilty people go free than falsely convict one innocent person, public prosecutors deferred 60 percent of cases in order to pursue only the ones certain to end in indictment, and all to keep their reputations and their jobs, upholding the shining public face of the law with its 99.9 percent conviction rate. Everything your father worked for in gathering evidence and apprehending criminals—all you are working for—so easily tossed aside.
"I can't believe I got a pink belt for my birthday," Sayu said, pulling you from your dark thoughts. "Does kāsan even know what I like?"
She threw the offending item before you, and you couldn't stifle a grin. Sayu would wear belts occasionally but she wasn't a fan of pink, and the metal buckle, shaped like two crossed infinity symbols, was too gaudy.
"Sorry," you said, and when she rolled your eyes you grinned wider. "I bet it would look good on me though."
"What?" Sayu complained, half-laughing. "It's a kid's belt, it wouldn't even fit you!"
"I bet it would. I'm pretty skinny." Just to demonstrate, you showed her, pulling off the belt you were wearing and then threading it through and buckling it, striking a pose.
"Oh my god onichan, you look ridiculous," Sayu said, snickering.
"I could start a fashion trend with this crap."
"Of wearing your little sister's clothes?"
"Hey, as long as no one knows where it came from…"
You've always looked good in the colors of the sun.
L's plan to stalk you through your college classes actually lasts only two weeks, the great detective vanishing back into seclusion on April 18th, 2004, when Sakura TV airs the Second Kira's tape and it's discovered the copycat only needs a face to kill. It's not till the 24th, though, that you see the tapes, and even though you hate Kira, it's hard not to be angry on his behalf when this impostor is so obviously muddying his ideals and all in all coming across as a complete amateur.
April 16, 2004. It's Friday, after your last class of the day, and you want to get home as soon as you can, but Ryuga has fallen into step beside you. "You're in a hurry, Yagami-kun," he says.
"It's the weekend," you remind him.
"And, like all students, you're very excited about the prospect," Ryuga says drily. "I understand. Are you planning to go out with friends, or to work on some hobbies?"
"I'd help with the taskforce, if there was anything I could do," you point out. "But as far as I know there hasn't been any movement in the case. What are you planning to do?"
Ryuga ponders for a long moment, actually stopping short to stare blankly ahead of him. You walk on a few more paces and then catch yourself, turning back and waiting.
"...Eat strawberry shortcake," Ryuga says, with an air of having decided on something extremely important. He starts up walking again at a fast pace, and you hurry back into step, feeling annoyingly as though you're the one pathetically trailing after him, and not the other way around.
"What, all day?" you ask, with a laugh in your voice. It's the fake kind of laugh; the kind of laugh that ought to tell Ryuga you're condescending to him.
"Nonsense," Ryuga says. "It does not take all day to eat strawberry shortcake."
Ryuga—if he really is L—is smart enough to pick up on the glaringly obvious, and if you were forced to guess, he's lived in Japan at some point in the past. Even if he sometimes seems to truly miss social cues, he'd have to be illiterate not to pick up on color-coded, gendered marketing in restaurants and grocery stores.
Honestly, it doesn't matter if you've met a few women who aren't into desserts (even your own sister), the point is, liking them is a women's thing and yet Ryuga plays it up. You honestly couldn't care less if Ryuga secretly likes cake, but to ask him point blank what he's planning to do tomorrow on the weekend and for him to announce this… there's no way he wouldn't realize this sounds immature, freakish, and effeminate. What does he think his play is here…?
"So?" you pry. "What else are you planning to do?"
"Yagami-kun is very interested in my plans," Ryuga says smoothly.
"Admit it," you say, with some glee, "you're just going to go back to wherever it is you hang out all day and do absolutely nothing."
"Then we are in the same boat," Ryuga admits.
You're actually busy this weekend, busy « writing in the Death Note » resting and sleeping in, but it's not exactly like that would impress him.
"Yeah, I guess."
Perhaps it shouldn't be a surprise that the next day at the ungodly hour of four o'clock, he calls your personal cell.
"Ryuga," you say, with feeling, "I hate you."
"This is the perfect time to go into the city," Ryuga says. "Traffic at this hour will be greatly reduced."
You roll over, squinting into the early morning glare between your drapes. "I'm not going into the city with you."
"...Because you're Kira?"
"Because I'm tired."
"You're also awake," Ryuga points out. "And I'm new to the area. I need someone to show me around."
"You're kidding me."
"I'll meet you at the station," he says, and hangs up.
« From the corner of the room, Ryuk is laughing at you. You bury your face in your pillow and stifle a scream.
"It seems like L's taken a fancy to you," Ryuk says.
"The only thing he's taken a fancy to is seeing me tortured by sleep deprivation," you growl. You stand up and grab whatever clothes are nearest, too tired and angry to care too much about the impression you'll make, and lock yourself in the bathroom for a record six minutes to get ready, not even bothering to brush your hair. Then you sit down at your desk, carefully pry the false cover off your Death Note with your pen cartridge, and, turning the TV volume off, play back the news you'd taped yesterday. Even one or two names will make this whole horrible turn of events worth it. There's a kind of calming satisfaction in knowing your perfect penmanship will wipe out another bit of the rot from the world. You set the time of deaths for two criminals for later today and tomorrow, respectively. »
On the train, you and Ryuga decide to go to the National Museum of Nature and Science. It's free for students, after all. There's a special exhibition on video games and digital science which you go to first, « Ryuk literally bounces with excitement and starts begging for the gameboy advance SP. The silver version. You have a terrible feeling you'll have to actually buy it for him » then one on the science and art of Star Wars, which Ryuga insists he's never seen.
"You've got to be kidding me," you say. "Everyone's seen Star Wars. Surely you saw it when you lived in Britain…?" you add, blatantly fishing for more information on his past.
"I was too busy playing tennis," Ryuga says blandly. He looks, unimpressed, through the costumes and concept art, the detailed matte paintings and revolutionary CGI technology, and says, "anyway, it doesn't look that interesting."
You're fuming when the two of you leave the exhibit. Not because you're any particular fan of Star Wars, but just because of Ryuga and his annoying habits. It's nearing lunchtime, and you haven't even stopped for breakfast.
You try to think of a way to tell Ryuga this will never, ever happen again. Maybe you need to make some college friends after all.
Of course you end up near the dinosaurs at one point. Their skeletons are primordial things, looming over you and everyone else. « It might be grand and unsettling, if you hadn't had Ryuk constantly looming much closer for four months. The shinigami makes faces at the dinosaurs and flies up round them while » Ryuga stares, wide-eyed. He puts his thumb against his teeth.
"Did you know, some people think dinosaurs had feathers…" he says, apropos of nothing.
"That would definitely be strange," you say. You can picture it. Actually, it wouldn't be half bad.
"I assume you want to go to the exhibit about space development in Japan," Ryuga says, tearing his gaze away from the ancient bones.
"Not really," you say.
"Nonsense," Ryuga says. "Only someone who was interested in space development would wear a moonwatch. Unless you're just a watch connoisseur—?"
You move one hand, aborted, to your watch, self-conscious for a moment, and laugh. "You got me there. Yeah, I'm into space stuff. We might as well take a look at it."
Halfway to the exhibit, Ryuga says, "oh. I see."
"What?"
"Now I understand Yagami-kun's anger when I didn't like Star Wars. 'A long time ago in a galaxy far far away…'" he quotes the plaque that had explained the plot to those few people who'd grown up under a rock, like Ryuga.
"That's just a movie," you say. "It has nothing at all to do with astronauts."
You are still trying to convince him of this when the two of you leave the museum to find somewhere to have lunch, though your passionate defense of the difference between serious science and cowboy movies in space don't seem to make much of a dent on his insistence that he's discovered a new facet of your personality.
"I'm surprised," you say jokingly, when Ryuga actually goes for sushi, "You're not in the mood for dessert?"
"No, I am," Ryuga says, around his bite of rice and fish that he carefully dabs in wasabi, "but it's not every day I know the sushi is trustworthy. It seemed worth commemorating."
"I think a lot of people would be offended, hearing that."
"Oh. I just meant gluten disagrees with me."
"Huh?"
"Food with wheat flour in it," Ryuga explains. "Bread, pastries, cake, noodles that aren't rice noodles, you know. And soy sauce…" he adds, with a sad sigh. So soy sauce has wheat in it? Maybe that does explain a lot about Ryuga's weird eating habits, people put soy sauce in pretty much everything.
"But didn't you say you were gonna eat strawberry shortcake today…"
"Private catering," Ryuga says. "Different recipes. Just in case you were wondering, I said 'disagrees with me,' not 'gives me a deadly reaction,' so you can't get rid of me that easily."
"Come on, you seriously think I'd consider poisoning you?" you complain.
"Mm, you're the one who brought it up," Ryuga says. He raises a finger. "Wait a moment." He roots around in his pocket and pulls out a phone, which baffles you until halfway into the conversation. When he hangs up, he announces that one of his contacts has discovered a theater doing a marathon of the trilogy this afternoon.
"You didn't seriously use up investigation resources on finding out if anyone was showing Star Wars today," you say, because you have to. Ryuga doesn't answer, because of course he has. So you go.
He buys tickets for both of you at the gate, and you start to realize you've spent all day in his company at this point. It surprises you, because you'd almost expected to spontaneously combust of resentment if you'd ever had to spend any prolonged period of time in his presence. You hate him with an incredible vehemence, but somehow the hours have still flown by faster than they had since « you were first writing in the Death Note » the Kira investigation first started.
Your seats are at the very front of the theater, and Ryuga toes off his shoes immediately and crouches on the seat. In the dark, no one is paying you any mind, no one is paying attention to Ryuga's weirdness and so you don't have to care about it. It doesn't really bother you, when you are alone. Sometimes even when you aren't alone, hard enough as that is to fathom. Ryuga has a way of making you forget why you spend so much time thinking about how society perceives you, as though there wasn't a need to be perfect.
As the yellow words begin to scroll across the screen, you remember, suddenly, that you'd never ended up brushing your hair.
.
.
.
