In the evening, before you go to bed, you stop by your desk. Ryuzaki, who's in the middle of making a beeline towards his laptop, tugs on you and then turns around, watching as you open the drawer.
"What are you doing, Light-kun?" Ryuzaki asks.
"I was just trying to figure out what I should put in here," you say casually. "I mean, it seems kind of silly to have a desk with nothing in it."
"True," Ryuzaki says. "What did you used to put in it?"
"School supplies," you answer. As quickly and unobtrusively as possible you're scanning the inside of the drawer. Not that you can stop to measure it without Ryuzaki getting really suspicious, but at a glance it seems just the size it should be with the secret compartment taken out. The bottom of the drawer is made of the same kind of wood as the sides, which hold a number of very small indentations, holes about half an inch up, where you'd nailed in a rim of wood to support the false bottom of the drawer. There are similar indentations around the bottom that once held the bracket, and, near the front of the drawer, a small yet very distinct hole going entirely through the bottom of the wood. Cleanly done, with the smallest drill bit you'd had… all together, it paints a very distinct picture. You remember how you'd taken the drawer out, measuring the pieces and nailing them in, creating the secret compartment and the space for the pen cartridge to open it. As if even then fearing what might happen if someone spied on your private thoughts, found that book where you wrote down every name in connection with the Kira case. It's those smaller holes around the bottom of the drawer that stick with you, the pinprick-indentations from a staple gun, where you had created a fire-trap to protect what was inside. The lack of secret compartment shows clearly that Ryuzaki and the others found the diary you'd kept there, but you'd dismantled the fire-trap before giving yourself up: even if Ryuzaki knows how far you'd gone, he's never mentioned it. It's the sort of thing a guilty person would have done, but then, you've always been a completionist.
It reassures you more than you expected, seeing the evidence of the secret compartment there. See, there's nothing hidden here I don't know about.
You slide the drawer shut, and shrug. "Yeah, I guess I really don't need this anymore," you say. "It's not like I'm even in school." You'd missed the end of last semester and you're pretty sure the Kira case isn't going to clear up in a week so you can make the second one.
"That's a broad statement," Ryuzaki observes. "Didn't you say 'at my level, I could miss even a year of school?' Do you want to get rid of it?"
Actually… that's not a bad idea, Ryuzaki, you think. This isn't about the desk. As you've said, it's pretty useless to you now. But what it symbolizes… your life, before all this. Your aspirations in academics. Your desk was the place where Yagami Light, hardworking honors student resided and if Ryuzaki's words point to anything it's that he's aware of that fact.
"Sure, why not?" you say.
Ryuzaki eyes you for a moment, swiping his thumb back and forth across his lip and then pressing against it with the tip of his fingernail. There's a guarded, but distinctly interested look in his eyes that tells you he's paying very close attention to his suspect's behavior. But you knew this might happen when you went over to the desk, and you're prepared for the scrutiny, looking back at him easily. See? I have nothing to hide, L.
"What about when the Kira case is over?" Ryuzaki says. "Won't you need to work on your schoolwork then?"
"Well, I suppose I'll have to get a new desk," you say. You smile at him slightly. "Where's all this optimism coming from, Ryuzaki? The last I knew you were still despairing over the fact that the Kira case might never be solved."
"That's true," Ryuzaki says. "But I like to be prepared for any eventuality."
"And I suppose that's what makes you the greatest detective?" you ask teasingly.
"One of the things," Ryuzaki replies. "The other, apparently, being the size of my arsehole."
You choke, and it turns into a startled laugh.
"At least, I've got a friend who attests to the fact."
/
"Good morning, Light-kun."
"Good morning Ryuzaki."
You lean up, rub the sleep from your eyes and blink at him, yawning. "Any plans for today?"
Ryuzaki pauses the game on his computer and glances over at you. "Not really. You?"
"I dunno, I was thinking about organizing my bookshelf," you say. Right now it's empty; a few books had made it to your bedside table and stayed there, a couple more are sitting on the top of the bookshelf, but you haven't had time to actually sit down and put something inside it. It's a good thing you'd put it off, because it's in a perfect position to be useful now. Mentioning wanting to organize something else in the room will add to the illusion that you're settling down and starting to think of this place as your own.
The long look Ryuzaki gives you makes you think he's probably seen right through it.
You smile at him easily. "Unless you don't want to."
"What did I say about you being amenable?" Ryuzaki grumbles.
"That you hate it?" you ask sweetly. "I don't know, though… I wouldn't want to do something that wasn't okay with you…"
Ryuzaki rolls his eyes. "Fine, we'll organize your bookshelf."
You grin to yourself as Ryuzaki swings out of bed.
He walks over to the bookshelf instead of leaving for the bathroom, standing in front of it with a put-upon expression. You get out of bed as well and grab a book from your bedside table, handing it to him. "Here," you say. "You can entertain yourself instead of just standing there. I assume you actually like all this, since you had it in your library," you say, as you start sorting through titles.
Ryuzaki glances down at the book in his hands. "Yes, I like it," he says.
"I never thought you'd be the type for poetry," you say.
"It's concise," Ryuzaki murmurs, opening the book and flipping through the pages. "Nothing in language better captures the precise quality of the mathematics of the world than poetry."
"Huh. I wouldn't have thought of it that way." You pick up the books, and begin to separate each by shelf, ordered according to subject matter.
"It helps that Emily Dickinson would also rather stay in her house than go outside."
"So she was a recluse like you?"
"She'd lower sweets to the neighbourhood children from her window. Using a basket."
"That is pretty weird," you say.
"How about this one?" Ryuzaki says, and continues in a low, even tone, switching language to read the English text in received pronounciation. You've noticed he uses this theatrical, place-less British accent whenever speaking English; the parallel of his almost-perfect standard Japanese. "Death is like the insect, menacing the tree."
"I couldn't think of a better poem to start the day with," you say sarcastically.
"Competent to kill it," Ryuzaki says, "but decoyed may be. Bait it with the balsam, seek it with the saw," you turn your head to glance at him as you crouch down to start fitting books into the shelf. "Baffle, if it cost you… everything you are," Ryuzaki continues. He sits down beside you, his back against the bookshelf frame, and stretches his legs out against the ground. "Then," he says, "if it have burrowed out of reach of skill—wring the tree and leave it." He places one finger against the pages, keeping his spot as he lowers it to his lap and recites the last line staring into the distance. "'Tis the vermin's will."
"The most amazing poem about termites I've ever heard, personally," you say.
"Sometimes I think I'm that tree," Ryuzaki says, switching back into Japanese. He shrugs. "Sometimes I think you are."
"I think the idea is that we all are," you say, in a kinder tone. "It's about when we should value life, and when we should give it up, right? Like that there are some situations in which death could be a mercy—with terminal illness or something."
"Yes, that makes sense," Ryuzaki says. He puts the book down on the floor and hugs his knees to his chest. "But even though I understand, I don't understand."
"That just means you don't have a terminal illness, Ryuzaki," you say. "You've got your entire life ahead of you."
"If Kira doesn't kill me," Ryuzaki says.
"Yeah, okay. But still. Not understanding entirely is a good thing."
"You say that as if you understand it," Ryuzaki asks, turning to look at you. You freeze, your hand on the spine of a book, and look down to hide from the way those eyes strip you down clean to the bone.
Termites in a tree.
"No, why would I?" you say at last. But you've spent too long without answer, and there's something unconvincing about the words even to your own ears.
Like a flash, you'd remembered that first week Kira had killed.
You'd barely ate. Barely slept. It seems overdramatic to say so now—after all, you weren't a criminal—but you'd been so sure you were about to die. The memory is as palpable as a taste; like blood. Fear was much too simple to describe the conflicted upwelling of emotion that had taken you up and haunted your silent moments. I should do more with my life, you'd thought, frenetically. Over and over. And: I should have done more with my life. In a strange sense, you'd felt as though death had already crept into your heart; numbered how many beats were left. The countdown had lasted for five days, and then you'd realized…
You had something to fight for.
You were alive.
You don't think of yourself as a coward, but you would never be able to commit suicide. Even if you had to, if it was the only logical, merciful situation; if your honor and pride demanded it. You can go through anything, in life, by telling yourself it's temporary—that you'll get out of it someday. You told yourself that all through high school, clinging to the idea of becoming a member of the NPA as though it could fix the pointlessness of your existence. You'd told yourself that through the Kira investigation as L's net closed closer and closer around you, and you'd told yourself that in the depths of confinement. All I have to do is outwait Kira. You're still telling yourself that now. Creating, in your mind, a hazy but powerful future where Kira is gone, where everything that you've lost will be returned to you.
But death isn't temporary. And you don't believe in anything after it. It's just the end. "Decoyed may be," but not forever.
Except, if you managed to change the world… well. That would be something. Right? Immortality.
Almost.
/
When the Kira case is over.
It's the first time Ryuzaki had brought that up. As though, until now, he's been acting in the moment, as though the Kira case might go on until the end of both your lives…
And who knows.
Maybe it will.
But if it doesn't—if Kira is as temporary as anything else. What will you do, after that?
What do you want to do?
It's not something you should think about.
You're not sure it's something you're capable of thinking about, not yet. And surely you know the answer: you'll buy a new desk to do your schoolwork. Go back to college. Get into the NPA and live your life, but with your name made famous as the one who, with L, solved the greatest case in history. It's your future after Kira as surely as it was your future before Kira, and this detour is merely that.
An anticlimax, you think, the thought sitting sourly on the back of your tongue. How could you be happy living as anyone else once you'd had a taste of godhood? How could you bear to slog through anything simpler, anything that doesn't open the walls of reality, when you'd gone up against powers that can kill with a thought? Is this what I'm supposed to live with?
It always has been.
It always has been, but now you've met L himself. You've seen both sides of Kira: the faceless murderer, and the man who commands the law as though it was his to write. Even if I hate Kira, you think, and you do, you do—I understand.
/
In the dream, you are in your house, and it is empty. Somehow, while you were looking the other way, dad and mom and Sayu had slipped out, leaving it silent and still. You climb the steps to your room, and stare for a long moment at your door. Shut tight.
You put your hand on the knob. Lift your door a quarter inch—no one's been inside. The paper flutters to the floor. You step into a small room that is barely recognizable as yours.
It has your desk in it, of course, with your TV on top; and your bed with its simple blue quilt. But the bookshelf along the wall is missing, and when you walk into the room and look at where it had been, you see that the books are gone, too.
Every single one.
.
.
.