May 10, 2004. It's Monday. Fourteen days since the last message from the "Second Kira," and there's been no leads since. Even the task force is dispersed; only a few people at headquarters right now—Aizawa, and of course Ryuzaki. And yourself. Technically, there had been no need to come here today, but you've gotten into the habit of going to headquarters after class and working on your homework there. It would be easier to concentrate at home—you know that. But you can't help the feeling that if you stop showing up for any amount of time you might miss an important breakthrough in the case, and you've gotten more and more on edge about it. What is the fake Kira up to? When will he send another message?
You finish your homework and sigh, looking up. You recall, vaguely, that your father had gone down to the lab again an hour or so ago. Aizawa is sitting at a table near the window, going over details about where the "Second Kira's" tapes had been sent from, as far as the police have been able to establish, trying to triangulate some kind of pattern.
As for Ryuzaki, he's lining up gumdrops in the fibonacci sequence.
"I wonder what the 'Second Kira' is doing," you mutter with tired annoyance.
"That is the question on all our minds," Ryuzaki says, holding a red gumdrop between thumb and forefinger. He moves it to hover over the end of the spiral, and tilts his head as though considering how it will look when he puts it down.
"You don't get tired of just… hanging around and wondering?" you ask, leaning forward with your hands on your knees. You watch as Ryuzaki finally makes a move, definitively adding the red gumdrop to the end of the spiral, and then peruses the pile of sugar-covered candies beside him for the next likely color.
"It's the nature of detective work," Ryuzaki says casually. "'hurry up and wait.' We've hurried—now…" he rolls a blue gumdrop into the center of his palm, "we wait." He gives you a knowing look. "You've worked on cases before, Light-kun," he says. "Surely this is no surprise to you."
"No, I understand," you admit. "I know this is only to be expected, but still—it feels like we can't do anything but watch and let the 'Second Kira' make the next move. He's the one with all the power right now…"
"Because we're only observing?" Ryuzaki says.
"Yeah, I guess."
"I take it, then, that you understand observation as something fundamentally passive. Am I wrong?" He looks at you with wide eyes. "Most people do," he says. "And yet, the 'observer effect' is named for a reason."
"You mean in quantum mechanics—or in general? Either way that's just a physical process based on the apparatus used for measurement, which has to disturb the 'non-observed' state by interacting with it. Just looking, or waiting, wouldn't do a thing."
"Ah—but can you ever actually 'just look?' Well…" he pauses, "even so. In observing, you enter into the system. You act upon what's already there and force it into a certain state through measurement. The quantum-Zeno effect… the quantum anti-Zeno effect… the double-slit experiment… or take something on a larger scale—the thermometer that has to give up energy in order to record a temperature, changing the temperature of the body around it."
"Are you saying we've forced the 'Second Kira' into a certain pattern of action? Wouldn't that just be because of the fake Kira message? This waiting…"
"This waiting is also a measurement. Now that the Second Kira is aware of our actions, he already responded. A system changing through measurement. We were given a strange message involving shinigami, and didn't respond. Now—what can the Second Kira do? He will feel the need to act."
"Pressuring him into a response through inaction?" you say wryly.
"Precisely. Now—in that case, who really has the power? The observed—or the observer?"
"Both," you say.
Ryuzaki smiles; a quick, fleeting thing on the corner of his mouth. He puts his blue gumdrop down and looks at the spiral in front of him.
"Did you know," he says casually, "female Praying Mantises, who were once thought to eat the males while copulating as a matter of course, actually do that only in 25 percent of cases in the wild? The difference is…" he sighs, and hugs his hands around his knees, "stress, from being observed by a researcher. Well, that and being hungry," he adds, and pops a gumdrop into his mouth.
« April 5, 2004. You know the feeling of being outplayed. Am I afraid? If you are, that only fuels your anger. You don't fail. You can't fail, not in this, but L's won another round; just like the first time you faced each other over the computer screen. He wants to sentence you to death and you want to murder him… and instead you have to sit there and play his game. And what's worse, your ruination arrived in such a casual, laid-back manner, as though it was nothing. This maybe-L, this "Hideki Ryuga." By telling you who he is, you can't kill him. By making himself vulnerable to you, he assures his victory. It's so backwards, and yet the plan is perfection itself!
No. It's not just that. He's making fun of you. Of all you had to work for, of all you are. Showing up here with the same top grades, wearing these battered, casual clothes and that absentminded act, like whatever you can do without flaw he can do without even thinking. You felt it while you sat beside him through the whole interminable opening ceremony, and when you rode the subway back home, the feeling rose in you while you held yourself in check by sheer will. I'm just an absent commuter, lost in thought. You had to remind yourself of that constantly, and hold as still as a statue so that you wouldn't shake.
When you get home, you go straight to your room and turn the lock in the door, sitting at your desk and trembling with rage. He's pinned you down with nothing but his words and his eyes. You think you might be terrified, and you want to strangle him with your bare hands.
You slam your elbows on the desk, rake your hands through your hair and make an insensible noise, a growl or a scream of everything you can no longer hold back.
"He got me!"
Ryuk's hovering behind you a little diffidently, obviously put off by this display. Of course he wouldn't understand why you feel this way. He wouldn't even realize the brilliance of L's plan, he's not smart enough to put it together—and even if he was, he has no pride.
"He got you?" Ryuk echoes.
"That damn L…" you lower your head to your desk, your hands clenching into fists, and glare ahead sightlessly, glare ahead at wherever L currently is now, probably smirking at how well he's managed to trap you. "I've never been so humiliated in my entire life!" »
June 11, 2004. Day eleven of confinement. Lunchtime, and Aizawa unlocks the door of your cell and places the food onto the floor in front of you. For a moment, he meets your eyes and looks as though he's about to speak, but then closes his mouth, a furrowed frown across his brow. He steps back out of the cell, closes and locks it, and then walks off down the corridor. He'll be back in an hour or so to pick everything up.
There's a bowl sitting on the tray. There's a cup of water, and there is even a spoon, set there purposefully, mockingly. Not by Aizawa, but by L. Your hands are cuffed behind your back and you can't hold the spoon. You can't even pick up the tray, but instead have to kneel and twist yourself down, your hair falling into your eyes, while you open your mouth and pick up bites of fried fish, rice and radish with your teeth and tongue. No matter how much you try to tilt your head, it gets on your nose and chin, and the longer it takes you to eat, the worse the pain in your shoulders gets. But that's nothing. Your fingers clench unconsciously as though they want to move, your legs ache and want to run, you want to knock L down and drag him into this cell yourself so he can go through this in your place. Mechanically, you eat, trying hard to put yourself somewhere else—anywhere else. Sometimes you can manage it. You lean over the cup of water and lap it up with your tongue, as much as you can get, which is about half of its actual amount. The cup is taller than your tongue, that's why. At some point it's physically impossible to come in contact with the water in it. You know this, and L must know this too.
The cup is a taunt, but mentioning it would be worse. He might give you a dog bowl. He might say it's just to be helpful, that he didn't realize how you were suffering. You don't put it past him, and so you can't mention it—any of it. You hope that no one on the task force is watching. Especially your father. But considering you have gone through this thirty-one times, including now, the odds are that they have. That even if they haven't yet, they will.
When you're done, you try your best to wipe your mouth off on the knees of your slacks and then wait for Aizawa to bring the tray back out. As he leaves again, locking the door, and you hear his footsteps echoing down the hall after him, you sit stooped on the floor, hiding your expression behind your bangs, like somehow, seeing the world through the red-brown tint of your hair is almost as good as seeing it from behind a wall—like you aren't here.
But you are. And your stomach is so tight with tension you feel ill.
The more you realize it, the more nauseous you get, and the more you try not to be sick, the sicker and more lightheaded you feel. At some point you can't control yourself anymore, can only lean sideways so that when you heave up every single disgusting thing you just ate it doesn't land on your clothes, but in a stinking pile beside you. The smell of it is awful and it makes your stomach feel even worse, and the insides of your mouth are coated with it, and your throat feels rubbed raw. Your face is a mess again, and you can't do anything but rub it on the knees of your pants again. Bits of half-digested food stick onto the black cotton.
You want to leave this place, you want to leave yourself, but all you can do is get up and shuffle away from the mess and hold yourself, unprotected, on the thin pallet, curl up like you could make this all go away if you only tried hard enough.
.
.
.