June 9, 2004. Day nine of confinement.
When you designed your bedroom, you decided you wanted to live in a library.
It is a wonderful room, orderly and relaxing and all your own. There are shelves built into every wall, and your bed with its dark blue comforter is tucked into the middle of it. The floor, along with the shelves, are oak, stained green. Your desk is across from your doorway, and above your desk you put all your schoolbooks, and on your desk lived the series of thick, bright yellow practice textbooks for the nationwide exam, which you had promptly trashed, good riddance, the moment you knew for sure you'd passed.
Opposite your desk in your bedroom is your shelf of science and engineering books, and next to them on the shelf are tasteful storage bins that hold your collection of tools for soldering and making circuits. On the same shelf is your sound-system. On the right-hand side of the room, by the door to your balcony, is your shelf on criminal law and investigation, and on another shelf on the same wall is your section of psychology.
Underneath that is your series on world architecture, and your favorite books cluster by the head of your bed: big, glossy art-books that you can open to any page and fall immediately into beauty. Munch, David, Michelangelo, Mondrian, Klek. From the frantic brushstrokes of The Scream to the classical poses in The Death of Socrates, from the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel with God and Man reaching toward each other—never quite touching—to the baroque sunbursts of Bernini, from the square geometrics of Mondrian to Seissel's dark surrealism, your room is more than a room, it is a collection of worlds.
There was a thumb-turn lock on the door, that you had never used until after Kira, after those few days of terror that hung across you like a lowering cloud, the click of the mechanism reassuring you that you were alone.
Your cell is made of concrete blocks. It is nearly filled by a standard-sized single bed (97x195 cm) whose length takes up three of the six blocks that create your longest wall. From this you deduce that the approximate length of the room is 390 centimetres. The width of the bed takes up just over one block, and the width of the room is three blocks, approximately 194 centimeters, although if you add the corridor to that number it's 388. The open toilet takes up the width of most of one block. The bars separating the cell from the corridor are twelve in number, and those vertical bars are segmented into thirds by two horizontal bars that travel from one end of the cell to the other. The bars are a dark greyish color, and serve as visual novelty.
The camera is no more than two blocks beyond the limits of the cell, because the corridor is two blocks narrow, although it goes off to the left, and out of sight, from where you sit facing the bars. It is a huge, blocky, black camera, this camera, and it is the only thing to look at beyond the bars except for the featureless blocks of concrete wall. The camera is approximately 388 centimeters away from you, or less, when you stand directly across from it.
The area of the visible room, including the corridor, is approximately 1,513 square metres, but the area of the cell itself, what you can get to inside the bars, is approximately 756.6 metres. The area of the triangle that is created by the camera and the furthest points from it is 378.3 metres. If you create an imaginary right-angled triangle using the distance from the camera to the far wall (388) you can end up with a triangle whose base is 195 centimeters and whose height is 388 centimeters. The pythagorean theorem then tells you that the longest possible distance, in this cell, between you and the camera is approximately 1,886 meters, and that only if you shoved yourself into the farthest corner of the bed, or between the toilet and the wall.
These equations are pointless.
December 9, 2003. Dad comes home early, but even as you all eat dinner together, he seems a million miles away. You're certain you know why. The Kira case is exactly the sort of thing he would be put in charge of: there's no way he can be thinking about anything but. He can't know, of course, that you're working on the case yourself; that the two of you are acting in parallel to one another. And you can't tell him. It would be far too dangerous. You want to wipe the furrowed lines from his brow, save him all this heartache. If you solve the Kira case for him, you can. If you solve the Kira case: you'll prove something, too. To him. To you.
"You seem tired, tōsan," you say carefully, watching the line of his slumped shoulders, his eyes hidden behind his glasses. It won't take much to get him talking, Kira's evidently weighing on his mind.
"Well…" dad admits, "this case is a hard one, to put it mildly… it's practically a wild goose chase."
You have so much you could tell him. In the notebook you've begun to keep, you've written down names of suspected Kira victims, along with terse explanations of your reasoning. You've already begun to single out a pattern. You could tell him—and maybe you should. But instead you wait, silent.
"But…" your dad continues, "the person in charge of the investigation did say today that judging from the estimated time of death, the killer is probably a student…"
So L's seen it too. He's good—he might be able to catch Kira, eventually. You can't let him, though. Ever since you'd seen that gothic letter on the TV you'd known you couldn't. L is as bad as Kira, just as amoral and capricious as the self-styled god, and the world needs a human to slay these monsters.
"I really don't think this is a subject for the dinner table," mom says pointedly, and that ends that discussion. But you've got what you needed to know.
Still, there's a sick feeling in your stomach, and you no longer feel like you can eat: you're not sure you can bear to see what this case makes of your father, in the end.
December 12, 2003. As though to taunt the investigators with his source of knowledge, Kira has acted, killing twenty-three criminals on the hour for the past two days. You see the results appear on your dad's computer, and the diary in your desk drawer seems to weigh more heavily than ever. How, exactly, did Kira know to taunt the investigators? He must have an in with them. Some connection in the police force. If he does, your dad's not safe—and neither are you. If Kira finds out you're investigating him—if he finds out that you discovered the same thing that L did—he might see you as a threat. And you do not want to find out what Kira does to the people he deems threats. The best thing to do would be to burn your diary, give up the whole case, pretend innocence. But wouldn't that make you just as bad as an accomplice? If you had the capability to act, and instead did nothing?
No, you can't burn the diary. But it needs to be safe from anyone who might search your room: there's no other way you can protect yourself. It's too easy to build a fire-bomb in your desk drawer, and to build a hidden compartment to hide your notes on the Kira case: a simple circuit, ignition, gasoline.
Kira will not get a chance to kill your family.
You won't let him.
June 10, 2004. Day ten of confinement. Aizawa unhooks the cuffs from your wrists and unstraps the strap around your ankle, and steps back outside the door, and locks it. "One hour," he says. "Keep moving."
You rub your wrists and ankles, flex them, and then begin to jog around the room, staring at concrete on every side and Aizawa standing beyond the bars with your bonds in hand and the key in his palm. Even his dark skin is washed out and sickly under the halogen bulbs. He doesn't speak, just stands with that camera above him squat and silent, L's eye into the room, and you wonder if the officer is conscious of the fact that he always makes sure to stand in its blind spot. You jog from one end of the room to another and then stretch your legs, and Aizawa glances uneasily at his watch, and you can hear it, his breathing: another living thing beside you.
"Time's up," he says at last. "On your knees, hands behind your back."
He doesn't step inside until you're kneeling, and he hooks the cuffs around your wrist and tugs the strap around your ankles, and then he's locking the cell door with a jangle of the key, and you can hear his heavy footsteps fading away.
June 12, 2004 Day eleven of confinement. You'd had so many books in your bookshelf. On the psychology shelf alone, you'd had Children's Psychoanalysis, and The Psychological Birth of the Human Infant: Symbiosis and Individuation by Margaret S. Mahler, Guide to Group Psychotherapy, Adolescence and Psychotherapy, Inner World and Outer World (1 and 2), Basis and Space of the Mental World, Introduction to Behavioral Analysis (1 and 2), Integrated Praxis Manual, Stress and Emotion by Richard S. Lazarus, Pragmatics of Human Communication by Paul Watzlawick, and Intrusive Thoughts. You wonder how many books you could fit in this cell, but you think uneasily that the books would moulder away once put in here. You would not like to see them in horrible stacks on the concrete floor, in the cold, and you would not be able to read them easily anyhow, with your hands behind your back.
You're sure you could manage, though. You could lie the books on their spine, on the floor, and turn the pages with the edge of your cheek if you had to, and maybe then you'd be able to see something other than the concrete block walls and the concrete floor and the white bed with its single sheet and the flat pillow and the lidless toilet and the camera no more than 1,886 metres away.
"Light-kun, how long have you suspected you might be Kira?" L asks, unyielding.
"Ever since you started suspecting me," you say. From some angles, it's even the truth.
December 20, 2003. You are certain you're being followed. You hadn't been sure until now, when you'd gone on this date with Yuri to prove it. Penber showing you his FBI badge, after you'd written that note to her: about how she shouldn't worry since your dad's in the NPA, how you were confident you could defeat the gunman with the self-defence moves he'd taught you (complete bullshit, really, but who else was going to act?), is as good as a confession, and your heart turns to ice as you see Penber's ID, realizing at once what this means: L's using the FBI to probe the NPA.
You shouldn't have seen this ID. Even if L was doing nothing more than a cursory investigation of the families of everyone in the Kira Investigation, if he finds out you've discovered Raye Penber's name and face… this could be bad.
No. It's fine. You're innocent—you have nothing to hide.
The bus-jacker is disconnected from reality. Raving about a monster. Stopping the bus, running into oncoming traffic. 11:45.
When it's over, you leave the bus, avoiding a glance at your would-be killer now dead on the pavement in front of a crashed car.
"Hey," Penber says to you, uneasily.
"Yes?" you say.
"I'm actually in Japan on a top-secret mission and if the Japanese police… well…" Penber trails off meaningfully.
You pause. Allow your racing heartbeat to slow. What's one more secret? A god must be on your side, and you won't turn down good fortune, even if it's at the hand of death.
"I understand," you say. "I won't tell anybody about meeting you. That includes my father of course."
Penber gives you a nauseous smile. "I'm out of here, then… don't want to be around when the police arrive, so…" and he hurries away with his briefcase, chased by his own guilt.
I don't want the cops to find out I've had contact with an FBI agent, either, you think, watching him go. If my father found out, L would definitely hear about it.
June 13, 2004. Day thirteen of confinement. Kira is more patient than you expected. You don't like to think about it. You try not to think about anything. When you wake up, and your situation crushes down on you like a boulder you say in your mind don't think about it and when you sit up and swing your legs off the small bed you say in your mind don't think about it and while you stare at the way the lights on the ceiling buzz and then close your eyes to watch the spots dance in kaleidescopic patterns you say in your mind don't think about it and you don't think about it. You don't. You are in here to prove your innocence and you'll get out, and that's why you can't think about it because if you thought about it you would think about dying.
"When did you first begin thinking that violent criminals deserve to die?" L's voice cuts in, harshly, like an echo, or even the cause of your disturbing thoughts. You understand what he's doing; L's always been fond of the Reid technique. It doesn't make it any easier to take: just give me one answer, one easy answer, nothing to do with Kira, just your motivation, let's go from there. It would be funny if your heart didn't beat so loudly in your chest, if his words didn't echo in your ears: die. To die. To let die, to deserve to die.
"I don't know," you breathe out, a whisper that the microphone in its mechanical omnipotence must surely hear. You rest your head against the wall and think: it would work if I had anything to tell you. Don't you know that?
L, I'm so tired.
"It's hard to remember," you say. Your gaze drifts away from the camera, fixes on the bars and the rough concrete. For a terrible instant you want to say I'm Kira and end it all, but you know it wouldn't be the end. He would just keep pushing for details until he found out your confession was a lie, and then he'd never believe you again.
The Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners was adopted by the First United Nations Congress on the Prevention of Crime and the Treatment of Offenders in Geneva, August 30, 1955 and approved by 1957, and as the title would suggest they cover the standard minimum conditions accepted by the UN for treatment of prisoners. However, L has not, you think, kept a register of when you were imprisoned, as the United Nations recommends. He has not given you a cell with windows, although you think there is a window or other opening to the outside somewhere in the corridor, since there is an occasional draft. He has not provided you with new clothing, although once a week the clothes you wear get washed while you wait in uncomfortable nakedness. He has, at least, provided good food consistently, such as you might get in any Japanese prison, and drinking water, at mealtimes and at your request. He has given you three spaced-out hours of exercise per day, two more than the norm, but not in the open air. He has restrained you hand and foot for longer than strictly necessary. You are allowed no news and no contact with the outside world, and no books. You have no work, no remuneration, no legal aid.
The United Nations and L do not see eye to eye.
June 14, 2004. Day fourteen of confinement. You have a headache and it is terrible. The cold presses through your skin and round and round in your stomach and you can't think; you have nothing to look at with your eyes open and with your eyes closed you hear too much: the noise of your breath and your heart beating and the air, the air moving and so you hate closing your eyes. But when you open your eyes you see the cell and you see the way the walls seem to sway, drunkenly, in and out, and maybe close in on you, and you lie on the bed for a long time while your legs ache and then you slump to your feet and lie on the ground while your shoulders ache and you press your cheek against the concrete which is cool and unyielding and pretend that the camera is gone, and then you open your eyes again, just to make sure the camera is still there.
« December 10, 2003. You had gone to sleep last night with Ryuk lying on the bed beside you, his presence a slight depression in the mattress no warmer or colder than the surrounding air, and with no inhale or exhale of breath. You wake at 6:00, as usual on a school day, and it is Wednesday and Ryuk is on the ceiling like a lizard, and although you do not make any sound he knows the moment that you wake.
"Any plans for today, Light?" »
June 20, 2004. Day twenty of confinement. You do not like the way things are moving and slowing and worse than that you hate the way you think you can feel your brain being crushed dry by boredom. If it would do any good you'd say it: L, I'm Kira. Maybe he'd kill you then. But he wouldn't. He'd want to know how you killed, and you don't know because you aren't Kira, and the creature that scrapes its nails against the bars is making a terrible racket, and you might be able to catch it out of the corner of your eye, but you can't; it's just the racket always behind you, and kaleidoscope-patterns coming from the camera, and the walls getting smaller and smaller until you are sitting with your face pressed against your knees and you don't know when you'll get out of here. You don't know. It's been twenty days and Aizawa looks at you the way Raye Penber had, like there was guilt in him, and yesterday you had gone so far as to ask him about your father but he had only answered, "I'm not allowed to tell you that, Light-kun. You know that."
I know that, you'd thought; you just hadn't cared. So what if it made you look guilty, or innocent. If you knew how Kira killed maybe he would kill you, but you're not a threat and so all you can do is rot alive. Oh god, you don't want to rot alive.
January 5, 2004. Since the new year, no details whatsoever of the investigation have been entered into your dad's computer. That and the fact that nobody was in the task force the other day, indicates there's been some major changes… was that under orders from L? you wonder sickly, as you sit down in front of your desktop. Either way… you need to make sure your computer is clean, no matter who looks at it… no one can know you'd ever had access to information from the task force.
June 23, 2004. Day twenty-three of confinement. When you are done with your third hour of exercise, in preparation for the night, Aizawa puts the leather strap around your wrists, instead of the handcuffs, and he puts the strap around your ankles and when he moves to stand up you are making a strangled, horrible noise deep in your throat, and he pauses with his hand against your shoulder and says: "Light-kun?"
"I'm sorry," you say. What the hell am I apologizing for? "Please, Aizawa-san, can you stay for five more minutes?" You're so tired that the world seems to float around you and you are too tired to care how pathetic it makes you sound, and even when he says 'no I can't,' it'll be one more thing a real human being spoke to you, and one more second where he might keep his hand on your shoulder.
But he doesn't say 'no I can't.' He doesn't speak at all, but just rubs the palm of his hand across your shoulders and back. He must be uncomfortable kneeling on the concrete floor but he doesn't get up, for five whole minutes, and when at last he gets up and steps outside the bars you realize you are making that horrible noise in your throat again, only it gets tangled up in "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, thank you," and you don't know how to tell him how much this means.
"Light-kun, please don't thank me," Aizawa says quietly, and you fall silent as though he'd pressed a hand against your mouth. His eyes widen, the guilty lines around them deepening, and he walks away, leaving you on your knees.
.
.
.