When you are thirteen your family goes on holiday to another country. It isn't the first time; but it's the first time you're going somewhere other than France to hang out while dad spends most of his time at an ICPO conference. Out of all the sights you would see, the strange people and cultures not your own, the buildings spelling out a history on different foundations, monuments of the masterful and the strange, and the climates and flora you won't wholly recognize—what always strikes you as the moment of your fullest awe is when, after shuttling into the airplane and waiting for what seemed an interminable time, Sayu's complaints in your ear as she fusses to your mother, the great, immoveable thing begins to judder and roll, picking up speed. From your seat by the window you peer out, face almost pressed to the rounded glass, watching the runway and everything on it move by faster and faster, as though outside a bullet train, and then faster still, and in the span of an infinitesimal and yet recognizable moment, the loud, shuddering rolling force of this mass of metal, an ungainly thing, is suddenly floating, unconnected from the Earth—and like the moment when, on a swing, you reach the highest point, your stomach flips. You watch, unwilling to blink and lose a single instant of the image, coasting higher and higher. In barely a minute the airstrip grows smaller beneath you, and then there is the city from above, an incredible mass of buildings and streets packed in between great shining arms of water. First they are houses and streets that might belong to a miniature train set, all moving and bustling without a care as to anything above, and then they are smaller still, and you see the shape of the ground as bright swathes of color and shape. And then, over the edge of the islands, you move farther still, your ears aching at the pressure and sounds going indistinct. You move up through clouds and then above them, above until all you can see below you is the coiled, dragon-like surface of white and the air, with the sun above you and nothing but blue on all sides.

You are floating on an impossibility.

Yes, you know all about how planes work—about air pressure and speed, and the shape of the wing to pick up the force and harness it. Yet all this means nothing in the face of truly existing cupped against the curved horizon of the world.

October 16, 2002. This year, in response to widespread classroom disruption, stress and suicides, the Ministry of Education has eliminated thirty percent of the school curriculum to make time for group work and imaginative endeavors; suddenly you have an entire free Saturday every week. You hadn't realized how much of a lifeline that work had been—though at times it approached mind-numbing busywork—until it took up that much less time; your classes in juku have already covered most of this year's curriculum, and so in school you daydream while the snail's pace of regular classes slows to the pace of nails scraping down a chalkboard. At age sixteen, you sit in your usual spot by the window and, staring down at your textbook, are hit with a sudden and unwelcome sensation that cannot be named. It is as though the rest of the world is there, and you are here, realizing that nothing is ever going to change. You don't even know what it is you want to change, except everything, everything.

To your right, a spitball arcs its way toward one of your unfortunate classmates, and you hear a small huff of laughter.

Strike that. You would gladly create a world without somebody like Sudou. All week he's been bragging about his new gameboy, a white "Play It Loud" edition that he somehow got his hands on, and today he even brought it to school to show off to his friends and hangers-on.

At least that's what he says. It's not quite recess yet but when it is, there'll apparently be a great unveiling.

You glance up at the clock. Quite soon, presumably.

The bell rings, and most people hightail it; but a group stays hovering excitedly around Sudou's seat. "Ladies and gentlemen… here you have it…"

You stand somewhat back from the mass but take a look as he holds up the console and describes it to general awe and compliments all round. So it's true; Sudou got his hands on one. Around you, there are expressions of envy, even jealousy, but all you feel is disgust. Here he is, showing off something like this, when he's the last person who deserves it.

You put it out of mind. Pretty successfully, too. It's not till the end of the day when it comes to mind, and it's because you see the console peeking out of Sudou's half-opened backpack as the jerk lets it slide to the floor near his locker, turning his head to jeer at Ryo, who's freezing and hunching over at the fact that he's been noticed by the bully… yet again.

For a second, Sudou is striding over to the cowering kid, converging with his friends like a pack of sharks, and his backpack is unguarded. Half a minute maybe. Maybe less. You don't think. You barely even realize you're bending down to snag the gameboy out of his backpack until you've already done it; tucking it nonchalantly into your jacket and walking on, your own backpack slung over your shoulder.

What the fuck am I doing? Your mind is screaming at you. This is theft!

So what? you think.

But what are you going to do, keep this like some kind of demented trophy? Evidence? If anyone found you with it you'd be ruined…

Your hand is sweating against the hard plastic, and for a minute you're tempted to run back and put the gameboy where you found it. But it's much too late to do that and not be noticed. The only thing you can do is keep walking. You scan the hall, and when you catch sight of Yamamoto and Minato waiting to walk home with you, you feel like you're about to drop the console, have it hit the floor in front of you so everyone will see the crime you've committed. But instead, you walk over to join them, and say easily, "hey, turns out I won't be walking home with you guys today, I've got to run an errand for my father."

"Okay, see ya!" They part from you, and you're on the steps of the school by now and you still haven't been caught.

You can't walk home. But there's another place…a place you go when you're looking for solitude. The abandoned pool. It's far enough from school that no one goes in there to hang out–well, okay, except for the occasional drug addict. You'll be safe there.

Safe—but for what?

You unzip your backpack and stuff the gameboy inside, then hoist it back on your shoulders. You'll think of it when you get there.

When the walk is over and you've sneaked inside, you still haven't managed to think of anything. You sit down against the wall, still tiled in grimed-over shades of blue and green, where the filtered illumination from the windows is a bit brighter, and pull out the gameboy, turning it on. It's got a Pac-Man cartridge in it already, so you start idly playing as you think about what to do. It is pretty cool, you think. This is like, a limited edition and everything. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad to keep it…?

But no. That really would be theft.

You steer him through the maze, eating dots and avoiding your pursuers, your fingers pressing at the controls. One level. Another. Another. You're putting it off, you realize, sighing—the longer you sit here, the more you don't want to get rid of this.

But it's the right thing to do.

After all, if you don't keep it… then this whole thing was justified.

You place it on the ground beside you.

It should be a hard decision to make, you reason; justice usually is. You stand up, look around the room for an available piece of rubble, and then, picking up a bit of fallen concrete, you walk back over to the console. The End Game screen is lit up. For a second, you stare down at it.

I could still change my mind…

No, you decide. You let the piece of rubble fall, wincing at the cracking sound it makes and the chalky dust that gets onto your shoes. You bend down, hoist up the piece again, and take a look at the now-broken console. You get a better grip on the piece with both hands, bend your knees, and swing downwards.

Again, and again, until it's a mass of shards and wires, broken, useless, and belonging to nobody at all.

Surprisingly, it doesn't bother you a bit, after that.

August 28, 1999. As you look over your equipment one last time and prepare to walk onto the playing field, your coach stops by you for a moment. "Excited about this game, Yagami-kun?" he asks.

"Of course, komon." Yes, everything's in place—you stand up and grin at him. "I'll win."

"Confident, but what else can we expect from you?" he laughs, then says more seriously, "I know I've mentioned this before, but there will be scouts in attendance. If you wanted, you could gain a scholarship to any high school, or even go professional."

"I'll leave the scholarships to people who need it more," you shrug, "and anyway, I'm planning to go into the NPA."

"Are you sure?"

You stare at him. "What?"

"You could be really good. Famous, even. I don't say this lightly. Not everyone has the abilities and drive that you do."

This you've heard too many times to count. "Sorry, komon, but my mind's made up."

"Ah," he sighs, a little ruefully. "Following your father's footsteps, huh? Well, I'm sure you'll make just as much of a dent there. The tennis world will lose a star, but I guess we'll be all the safer for it. I wish you luck, Yagami-kun."

Following your father's footsteps, huh? You walk out onto the court. A bright late-summer day, and your feet sink into synthetic grass covered in sand. So what of it? You want to solve cases. You feel the need for it tug into a place deep in the back of your chest; of course you could be brilliant as a professional tennis player. But you would be nothing but a shining thing for everyone to stare at. You would rise above the world by turning your back on its suffering. You have a talent, and with that talent comes a duty—a duty to justice—

And when the first serve comes and you take off, your feet flying across the soft surface, your mind expands, clears, everything becoming open and beautiful. In this place, in this moment, you are so deliriously yourself.

The hundreds of thousands of people of all classes and ranks crowding past one another—are they not all human beings with the same qualities and powers, and with the same interest in being happy? … And still they crowd by one another as though they had nothing in common, nothing to do with one another, and their only agreement is a tacit one: that each should keep to his own side of the pavement, so as not to delay the opposing streams of the crowd, while it occurs to no man to honor another with so much as a glance. The brutal indifference, the unfeeling isolation of each person in his private interest becomes the more repellent and offensive, the more these individuals are crowded together within a limited space. —Die Lage der arbeitenden Klasse in England (The Condition of the Working Class in England), 1845, by Friedrich Engels.

November 28, 2003. You are in your English class, ignoring the drone of voices and the passage in the book in front of you. To be fair, you've already read through the text twice on your own, and if you were that kind of student, you'd probably have progressed to doodling in the margins by now.

Instead you merely stare out the window. You don't remember the last time you've really enjoyed anything. There's no moment to point to and blame for the fact; it's just a kind of slow greyness that has crept up on you. You're busy of course. The stress of graduating. It is the answer you would give anyone who asks (not that anyone asks). Light Yagami is put-together. He does not have problems. (It does not feel like stress.) It feels like everything is easy, has been for too long. No, worse than that—predictable. Boring. Something like a restlessness under your skin. An ache in the dead of night. The world is rotten, and yet everyone keeps going, day after day, as though they aren't living in a universe fundamentally flawed; one where bad things happen to good people and they put it on the news. No one ever talks about the victims, it is the killers' crimes that fascinate, though they are despicable. And like a snake eating its own tail, the government that catches them kills the killers. The grey sky is stagnant.

You keep looking out the window, as though waiting for something small and black—a bird, opening its wings—

.

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