June 19, 2004. Day nineteen of confinement. In the 1800s, Gustave de Beaumont (Comte Gustave Auguste Bonnin de la Bonninière de Beaumont) and Alexis de Tocqueville (Alexis Charles Henri Clérel, comte de Tocqueville) wrote of their observations of the American prison system, and the system of individual confinement used therein: when the day is finished, and the prisoners have retired to their cells, the silence within these vast walls, which contain so many prisoners, is that of death. We have often trod during night those monotonous and dumb galleries, where a lamp is always burning: we felt as if we traversed catacombs; there were a thousand living beings, and yet it was a desert solitude.

You have begun to realize they were right.

Silence—true silence—and stillness—and confinement, these are different things even from the boredom that used to crawl around the limits of your mind, as though you were turning on yourself. In school you had read a book called Nausea, and you had hated it. Was this when you were sixteen? You had read the book and discussed it in class politely and talked about what Sartre (Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre) was doing and all the while the nausea he described was no more nor less than everything you saw around you and felt every inching moment of the day. You hated the book not because it made you aware of the futility and rottenness of existence but because you realized, when listening to everyone else talk, that they did not feel the same. You knew it must have been only because you were smart, accomplished, and in some way special while they were not, but for one instant you'd felt a jealousy that surged through you and you wondered what it would be like to move through life as oblivious as the masses. Just for a moment you'd felt as though you were being swallowed up in plain sight of everyone while they insisted this was either not happening at all or was a broken disturbed function of your mind. Of course, you let none of this come across.

You had thought then that you understood boredom because you didn't remember the last time you'd really been fully free of it, and as you grew older the boredom grew deeper around you like quicksand. Until now you did not realize that it was only up to your knees, now when it is above your head and has actually stolen away everything…

And you remember a passage from the book, a random passage without any significance. But it is the only part you can remember…

The true nature of the present revealed itself: it was what exists, and all that was not present did not exist. The past did not exist. Not at all. Not in things, not even in my thoughts. It is true that I had realized a long time ago that mine had escaped me. But until then I had believed that it had simply gone out of my range. For me the past was only a pensioning off: it was another way of existing, a state of vacation and inaction; each event, when it had played its part, put itself politely into a box and became an honorary event: we have so much difficulty imagining nothingness. Now I knew: things are entirely what they appear to be—and behind them… there is nothing.

You have stumbled out from the ordinary way of things and ended up behind. You have come as close as it is possible to be to death without actually being there, and it terrifies you.

That too-muchness that so tormented the character of Antoine Roquentin in the novel has become increasingly clear to you, and it is not at all a metaphor, as you had once argued. You have noticed, in fact, that the way your blanket falls over your shoulders is anethema to you… it is not that it is too heavy but that it is there at all, that you can feel the threads of them as though each one is lining up to be in your way. You have begun to see that in the night, sometimes the bars are becoming more solid, like they're about to warp in on each other, and you become increasingly aware of the fact that your breath goes in and out consistently, until you wish you could think about anything else…

June 21, 2004. Day twenty-three of confinement. You're going to get out of here soon. You're going to outwait Kira. Kira is an attention-seeker, he won't wait around. You are sitting on the edge of the bed with your face hung between your knees, and you are remembering the story Ryuzaki told you, the one about the multiplicity of time, and you are imagining a chain of events that did not lead you here.

You are imagining that you are in your room at home. The camera above you is not a security camera, it's only a camera, and you are hearing the click and beep as it takes timed pictures… do I look ruined? you wonder.

Anyway, you are going to kill Kira with your bare hands. You're pretty sure he's even in the room with you; in fact, you can see him sitting against the far wall. He looks like L. He is staring up at you with a soft, cold expression, as though he has been carved from clay instead of flesh, and you do not see him breathing. He has no heart. His heart is on the floor in front of him, and it is covered in ants that turn into Dali's Persistence of Memory.

You are in memory. In his memory or yours, you don't know. It's a far desert. But colder than you'd expected a desert to be. Something about the flatness of the far-off sea is disturbing, and you feel like if you walk too far toward it you will find that it is only a pane of glass after all. It is creaking.

You are wearing your moonwatch, because it is created to withstand voids, and the desert is in the apathy of L's eyes. It is a wide, flat bowl and the edges continue into the rest of spacetime, which is bent by your presence, like a spider sitting in a web.

Your watch is melting. There are words on it and it is melting down your wrist and it feels like sharp fire. The sealskin is open. You are sitting next to Kira who is lying dead on a rock and he looks like L. He is naked, like a twig, and bent backward, and he looks like a gorgeous horror, something pulled out of itself like taffy… his heart is in his hands as though he's trying to hide it. He's looking at you.

"I'm going to kill you," you say, and when you do your words get sucked from your throat.

In fact, you're in your cell again, and you can see the words get sucked from your throat and then bounce glowingly off the walls. You can hear the guard coming past, but he never opens the door. He comes past again, and again. It's only marching feet. And there's a shadow in the corner of the room that reminds you of an overturned umbrella. You're afraid your watch is still melting but when you pull your arm you remember that your hands have actually been clawed to pieces and they don't exist anymore.

So you'll have to think of a different way to kill Kira…

You'll have to pin him down, rip into his throat with your teeth, you decide. This way, he will not go anywhere. If he struggles, if you can taste the blood under the skin, you'll know you have the right one. Soon you'll be out of here. You're going to beat Kira at his own game…

June 23, 2004. "Ryuzaki," you say. You're standing up, leaning against the wall. You've finished your exercises, which seem so much less important now than they used to… "Talk to me."

No answer.

"Has Kira started killing again yet?"

How pathetic, to be waiting around wishing people were getting killed. But you do wish it. You wish it and if you could clear yourself by making sure Kira killed more people you think you might…

"No, Light-kun. You have not," L says.

"I'm not Kira!" You're so tired of shouting this at that far-looking eye. If L were right here you would be able to shake him, and you want to… you want to hurt him…

"You do keep saying that." L's tone is wry. He's going to close the microphone and move on, you know this. But then the silence will descend again for god knows how long, and you can't take it…

"I understand," you say, instead of reiterating that you were framed. "I understand why you'd think that I'm Kira, L."

"So you've also said."

"Well I do," you say. "I don't regret putting myself in here if it protects innocent people, I just think there's more to it than maybe you've noticed…"

"Light-kun is very smart, but he is not the greatest detective in the world."

"That's true," you agree easily. "That's why I thought I might be him unconsciously… you know… in the beginning… but," you add hurriedly, "that's not what I want to talk about. I just wondered, I know why you think I'm Kira, but when did you come to believe that?"

"What do you think you'll get out of this, Light-kun?" L asks. "It won't change your percentage."

"I know," you say. I just want you to keep talking, and you refuse to engage on anything else! You can't say that, though. You know full well how weak that makes you look.

"To be honest," L says, "it wasn't till I got the physical evidence from Amane. But if I had any remaining doubt then, the fact that Kira's kills stopped when you were locked up, well…"

"Oh, yeah," you say. "That makes sense."

"Light-kun is being very reasonable right now," L says suspiciously.

"I'm just trying to see your point of view," you say. "I know you had suspicions earlier, though… based on my psychological profile… when did you decide to pursue me as a suspect?"

"Pursue you?" L falls silent for a moment, then speaks again. "You make me sound like I've been playing with you, Light-kun."

"Oh, you know what I mean," you say. Your muscles are seizing up, so you hobble over to the bed and let yourself sink down onto it and close your eyes.

"It was after I put you under surveillance for five days," L says at last.

"Oh…" you say fuzzily. It's getting harder to think… that mental fog is descending quicker and quicker each day, and you fight against it as though against a riptide. "But you said I wasn't suspicious…"

"I said I couldn't catch you at anything suspicious."

"But then… I mean, surely you were surveilling other people as well?" you ask. "Was it just that none of the rest of the subject pool had the capability of being Kira? How would you even realize that, just from seeing me hang out with my family and study in my room?"

"I also had access to information about you," L says. "IQ level, school records, your placement on the national practice test… that plus your attitude… it seemed…" he paused, before settling on, "worth further study."

"What was wrong with my attitude?" you say.

"Nothing," L says.

"...Nothing?" you open your eyes and glare in the general direction of the camera. "Come on, L, that's bullshit. If nothing was wrong, why did you suspect me!"

"I suspected you precisely because nothing was wrong. Your attitude was perfectly crafted. And it remained so for as long as I have known you, Light-kun… well, until now…"

"You just hate when things are too perfect," you spit out.

"Yes," L says. "That is true. In my experience, it's the people with the most to hide that hide the most."

"Maybe some of us are just naturally perfect," you say.

"Nothing in the world is perfect, Light-kun…" L says. "Not even you."

"But," you say slowly, "what if there was something? Something perfect, in this whole rotten world? What would you do? Would you appreciate it, or would you… would you fucking… break it… just to prove you were right?"

June 22, 2004. Day twenty-two of confinement. You are pulling your wrists and ankles apart from each other. It's called a game, but you never know when you'll decide about it… it just comes upon you suddenly, you really need to keep pulling them until you feel blood trickling down your wrists and ankles.

You're lying on the floor and the cuffs have bitten into your wrists and ankles again, you hate when that happens… and you're somewhat concerned, because it seems to be happening more frequently. You feel like maybe, when you're asleep, the guard is sharpening the insides until they become like knives.

You need to come up with a way to get L's attention. You open your mouth and start to sing a nursery rhyme…

Teru-teru Bozu, Teru Bozu

Do make tomorrow a sunny day,

Like the sky in a dream sometime.

If it's sunny I'll give you a golden bell.

Even with your eyes open, you can see the light, the sky that really does look like a dream. That's nice. You feel certain that your singing is actually changing your surroundings… it isn't just the sky but even the smell of the grass, and you can hear music behind your own singing, although it doesn't match. It's much more interesting than whatever was happening a moment ago, however…

Teru-teru Bozu, Teru Bozu

Do make tomorrow a sunny day.

If you make my wish come true

We'll drink lots of sweet sake.

You are looking up at the camera, though the camera is moving around, getting bigger and smaller. That's just L trying to hide from you, however. You know you're managing to annoy him. You're the only one who's ever managed to give him so much trouble, and this is why…

Teru-teru Bozu, Teru Bozu

Do make tomorrow a sunny day.

But if it's cloudy and I find you crying

Then I shall snip your head off.

You laugh. It's not the right kind of laugh, in fact it's much too big for your insides. It actually crawls out of you, leaving your skin open behind it. That starts to make you worry. "Come on Ryuzaki, talk to me," you say. "Kira's started killing again, right? Please L. Or tell me about…" you fish around for a possibility, you're sure you know what would catch his interest but your mind is stuck on a tall mountain and you're at the bottom, and you know you'll never be able to climb up it in time, before the camera gets swallowed by the wall again.

Now you're crying, and that's worse. "I don't want to cut my head off," you say.

L doesn't answer. He's probably not even there. You're pretty sure you're alone.

No. You're just outwaiting Kira, that's all. That's all you have to do, and you're perfectly capable of it…

July 9, 2004. Day thirty-nine of confinement. The first thing you realize when you wake up is that you're going to be stuck here for the rest of your life and you can't move. Your breath is going in and out of your chest, but panic has stilled your limbs like something was sitting on them, and you can't figure out whether keeping your eyes open or closed is worse. Either way, you can see yourself in the other corner, because of the silver mirror. You know the silver mirror isn't actually there, so you're trying to ignore it. Unfortunately, it is just so horrible that you can't help glancing over, and when you do, you see yourself just sitting there, with a glazed, blank expression… you are banging your head dully against the wall, and you are shivering and sweating at the same time, but you don't seem to realize it. You want to tell the other you to stop, but it's just a mirror and it's not real.

That doesn't change the fact that you'll never get—no. It's simple. All you have to do is outwait Kira. But how can you outwait Kira when you've got this horrible itch between your shoulderblades?

You've fallen asleep outside your bed again, so you sit up and try to lean back against the side of it until the metal rim presses against your back, but you can't reach the itch.

It is the worst itch you've ever experienced. You're tempted to bite your tongue off just to get rid of the itch, that's how maddening it is… you're tempted to confess to being Kira. No. That's stupid. You're not giving up because of an itch. This is all part of Kira's game. He's probably gloating at you right now… he probably sent this itch to torment you… well, you won't let on about it.

You grit your teeth and stare at the floor, breathing in for three counts, out for seven. You won't let Kira see you defeated, even by this…

It is so much effort to keep sitting up, though!

You want to climb back into bed but you can't figure out how to stand up and get yourself there… you're sure it didn't used to be this complicated… your thoughts just keep scattering. Whatever. You don't care about the bed anyway. You'll just lie down on the floor.

So you do. You see? It's nice and cool down here. You can probably stay like this until Kira gets bored of you and takes the itch away. All you have to do is look unconcerned. That's fine. You're good at that. If only it wasn't still there!

How long has it been? You wish you knew, but there isn't a clock.

"Ryuzaki," you say. Your mouth is dry. "What time is it?"

He doesn't answer. He doesn't even open the connection. Oh, right, that's information you could do something with… it's not part of the rules… you just wish you could remember what the rules are.

The important bit is you aren't going to give up before Kira.

"Can I have a drink of water?" you say after a moment, slyly.

Now the microphone connection has been opened!

"Light-kun's breakfast will arrive in seven minutes precisely, and there will be water with it."

So it's seven minutes before breakfast time! You've tricked him into revealing it, and you're extraordinarily proud of yourself. In fact, even the itch disappears, and everything goes vague and floaty.

"Thank you, Ryuzaki," you say humbly. "I can't wait."

This is no problem at all, you remember. I asked for this, didn't I? I'm doing this to prove my innocence… and I will win… no matter what it takes!

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