On the 27th, you wake up before him.
Considering it's 11:30, you don't find it unreasonable to tug on the chain until Ryuzaki finally cracks his eyes open and glares at you.
"Come on, Ryuzaki," you say. "It's almost 12:00, let's get up."
You have perfected a tone of 'reasonable and yet firm' that had served you well for years in school, that had convinced teachers and even other students that you were a person who thought things through and was worth listening to. Despite your recent lack of practice, it ought to be just as persuasive now as it ever was.
"I don't want to," Ryuzaki says.
"The task force will probably get here in an hour or two," you remind him.
He flops onto his back and sighs, staring at the ceiling. "I suppose," he says dourly.
"Seriously, what's your problem?" you snap. You grit your teeth to stifle a wordless snarl. Everything he'd ever done to you was justified by the preeminence of the case. It's one thing for Ryuzaki to act like a petulant jerk, but for him, now, not to seem interested even in the case—?
"If Light-kun were Kira," Ryuzaki begins, and oh, here we go again, "he would know what my problem is."
"Well, I'm not," you say. "So let's get up and actually start looking for him. All right?"
Ryuzaki sits up, sadly huddled, and manages to project an aura of woe without doing anything in particular at all. It's obviously calculated to make you feel sorry for him, but it just makes you more annoyed.
You get out of bed and walk until you hear him stumbling after you as the chain goes taut. See how it feels to be on that end of it, you think with a burst of nastiness.
Unfortunately, Ryuzaki's disposition doesn't improve as the day goes on; and, in consequence, neither does yours.
He doesn't even pretend to look at the case files, but spends all day stacking sugar cubes into various constructions: pyramids and tall towers, mounds and zigzags and stairways and domes.
You log into The Book of Kira through his laptop, scrolling through endless lists of dead criminals and jotting down ideas to cross-reference with the official casefiles. What would really be useful is the ability to sort by different criteria: country, date of death, the crimes these criminals were arrested for, and so on. While you're fairly certain that a few anonymous posts could get a webmaster interested in similar possibilities, you can't rely on grassroots power for something like this. Even if you were able to get the functionality, the data would still be confined to deaths reported by news outlets, which won't include those kept under wraps by prisons. Plus, no one except Sakura TV is interested in keeping up with the death toll, and they tend toward fantasizing and buying into the legend, rather than keeping an unbiased recording of the facts. All the more reputable stations, newspapers, and websites are still afraid that sounding "too interested" in what Kira's up to will imply some kind of support, which would take away from their conservative power base. It all comes down to ratings and ad revenue in the end, really. And so far, supporting Kira isn't a monetary advantage.
Not yet. But if he keeps on going… well, it's really only a matter of time.
You frown, staring at the gothic, black-and-white-themed website—the standard color scheme for Kira fan sites, you'd discovered all the way back in early December when you decided to do your own research into the case. It may not seem like much, but if Kira is really smart enough to foil you and L and the NPA and Interpol… the thought nags at you again, and it's an unpleasant one. Kira is a serial murderer, yes, but there's a large faction that sees him as, well, a god—or at the very least, a revolutionary. If you don't catch him soon, he might end up changing the world in a way you can't even imagine.
(And would that be such a bad thing?)
You take a sip of coffee, curling your fingers around the porcelain warmth. Your eyes feel fuzzy, a burn that borders on pain.
No. There's no use even thinking about sympathizing with him. Even if someone could argue he's doing a service for society by killing off criminals the system should have put to death years ago, he framed you, destroyed your life and pushed your father to a stress-induced heart attack and then a gun held to your own forehead. You can't forgive him for that.
Everyone else is busily at work. Matsuda is out being Misa's manager. Soichiro is talking quietly with Aizawa about the recent deaths. Mogi is methodically typing into his own laptop.
Your tongue tastes sickly sweet, though you'd taken your coffee black. There's the sensation of metal underneath.
You know that, as soon as you find a pattern, you'll gain the upper hand in this game. The problem with finding a pattern is that, until you find it, all you've got is a mass of useless data. As of today, you have 1,586 data-points. And so far, you're not seeing anything new. Maybe you should focus on the murders that happened after Kira's two-week break… something obviously occurred during that time.
"Damn it!" Aizawa says loudly. He presses his face into his hands.
Beside you, Ryuzaki stops stacking things, instead holding his knees. He shifts in his seat, his toes shifting over each other uncomfortably, his grip white-knuckled.
You go back to sorting through deaths.
The chain falls heavy from your wrist.
You scroll through The Book of Kira and try to focus on the numbers, the names and the connections between them, but you find yourself thinking about Kira again.
Why did he frame me? you think. Why go to all that trouble only to let me go?
If Kira is as smart as you believe, he wouldn't have done something like that.
Then… he hasn't let me go.
Soichiro coughs. You clench your hands, nails pressing into your palms. You feel jittery, but your headache hasn't eased. You pick up your mug of coffee again and drink aimlessly.
Nothing makes sense.
You take another sip of coffee. Another, and you've reached the dregs.
The lamps are too bright.
Even Mogi, who is doing nothing but sitting innocuously in front of you, seems to be taking up so much space it seems to scrape its way against your skin.
You stand up and look Ryuzaki's way. "I'm going to get another cup of coffee," you say. "Can you get up?"
He shuffles to his feet, sliding his hands in his pockets, and you make your way over to the small kitchenette. With the wall between you and everyone else, you stare heavily at the coffee machine and try to remember how many cups you've had today.
You can't remember, so you open another packet. You stare back at the coffee machine, suddenly uncertain about the next step to take.
Ryuzaki takes over the task without a word, practiced and deft. The smell of coffee brewing pulls some of the leadenness from the air. You are horrifically, pathetically grateful.
"Thank you, Ryuzaki." Your voice comes out high and eerily cheerful. You're certain you'll find Kira again soon at this rate. You smile at Ryuzaki, touch him on the shoulder and then let go. Everything's fine.
You want to keep touching him on the shoulder or perhaps curl up on the ground and go nowhere for a very long time. Your smile makes your cheeks ache, and you don't know why you're happy, but it scares you. You're acting like Misa.
"This isn't so bad, I guess," you say. "Now that we're all on the case together, I'm sure we'll have a breakthrough soon!" That, too, sounds high-pitched and inane.
You stop talking.
Ryuzaki finishes making coffee and pours it into a cup. You take it from the counter, burning your tongue on the first, scalding, sip.
/
You spend a few hours focusing on The Book of Kira and trying not to think about anything else.
At seven, a cheerful commotion in the hall signals Misa's return to the connecting room, and then Matsuda lets himself in, looking tired but excited, completely missing the general feeling of dourness pervading the task force. "Hey, guys!" he says.
"Hello, Matsuda," Soichiro says.
Mogi moves a stack of papers off a chair so Matsuda can sit down, which he does with a smiling, "thanks!" He looks around. "So, how's the case going?" he asks.
Ryuzaki stands up abruptly, and everyone stiffens and looks at him in interest. Without taking any note of them, he walks quickly over to the bathroom, steps inside, and shuts the door between you. Because of the chain, there's nothing you can do but stand awkwardly outside the door.
He doesn't come back out.
"...Is… Ryuzaki okay?" Matsuda asks worriedly.
Everyone's looking at you, for some reason. When did I become the "L expert?" you think ungratefully, conveniently forgetting that it only makes sense they'd look to the one person in the room who's as smart as L and has also been handcuffed to him for the past five days. …And also that you've specifically been trying to play up the friendship between you guys, so the rest of the task force will start considering you and him a duo, with you as the voice of reason.
Probably forgetting all that because, to be honest, you aren't feeling very much like the voice of reason at the moment.
"He's fine," you say, smiling.
It's ridiculous, because after a bit of an awkward moment, they take you at your word, despite the fact that Ryuzaki (who is usually fairly communicative in his own weird way) is still holed up with a literal door between him and everyone else.
They go back to the case after a while, and you get someone to hand you your own case files and L's computer, so you can continue your research.
This remains the state of things for the rest of the evening, and it's only when everyone is gone and you've finally decided to go to bed that you knock softly on the bathroom door.
"Listen, Ryuzaki," you say. "I'm going to come in and get ready for bed, okay?"
Fortunately, there's no lock on it, so he can't exactly barricade you out. (You think about just curling up against the door and falling asleep but—
But that's something Ryuzaki would do, not you. You've found it useful to remind yourself of things like that… 'If Ryuzaki would think it's reasonable, it probably isn't.')
You come in to find Ryuzaki huddled on the tile, still holding his knees tightly. He looks, you think, like a spring that's been coiled in as far as it can go.
There's a second toothbrush now, and you hand it to him with the toothpaste already on. He gives it a look of deep disdain before standing up and brushing his teeth, turned away from you the entire time.
You wouldn't mind his silent treatment or his obvious anger at you if you could only figure out what he's actually mad at you for.
Is it just because I woke him up this morning? you wonder. If anyone would hold a grudge all day just for that, it would be Ryuzaki. Okay, one possibility. But you feel like it's more than that too. After all, what had Ryuzaki said? "If Light-kun were Kira, he'd know what my problem is?" It's definitely something about the case, then.
He's mad you didn't turn out to be Kira, that's what!
He's sulking about it.
Oh, come on.
"I know you're having a hard time, Ryuzaki," you say with a tone of sympathy, "but the task force is counting on you to lead the Kira investigation, not ignore it."
He doesn't answer.
"You said you would do whatever it takes," you say, some irritation bleeding into your voice. "But to be honest, I feel like I'm the only one who's actually pursuing anything!"
Ryuzaki hunches his shoulders a little more, and then sighs. He meets your gaze through the mirror, and you notice suddenly that the bags under his eyes are even larger and more purpled than you remember them being, that his skin is not just sallow but positively ill-looking, and even his cheekbones seem more pronounced, his face not as soft as it used to be. Has he lost weight? You wonder, disturbed, if he's suffering from some kind of disease, and then realize that the reason you hadn't noticed the change had been because everyone on the task force had had a similar change, including you. Okay… everyone but Matsuda, who seems just as usual.
It's stress. Chronic, horrible stress, and probably sleep disturbance from being handcuffed to you. That's an easy enough guess to make, considering your own sleep has been disturbed for the same reason. You haven't slept consistently through the night all week, and it's not as though your sleep in confinement was particularly better.
You take a deep breath. You're Yagami Light, investigator. You've got this.
"Sorry," you say easily, with a small, forgiving smile. "I guess I'm just a bit wound up. I know you're as concerned about the case as I am."
Ryuzaki gives you an unimpressed look.
You go to sleep disgruntled, and the sound of fake rain from Ryuzaki's computer follows you into your dreams.
/
You wake up before Ryuzaki again.
This time, you reconsider rousing him, so instead you lie around, waiting for him to get up, and getting more bored by the minute.
If it weren't for these damn handcuffs—!
You fiddle, unconsciously, with the ring around your left wrist. It's wide enough not to chafe or bite into the skin, although what with the amount of times the chain gets dragged about there's still a lot of bruising in shades from sickly puce to indigo, though you've tried to keep your sleeve tucked into it most of the time so the metal doesn't hit your wrist. That's par for the course, though, and you find yourself noticing more the fact that the bruises on your right wrist have actually begun to fade. You press down and feel nothing more than the vaguest pulse of protest, nothing like actual pain. Soon, no one will even know it had been there at all… it will be like your confinement had never happened. Except for a few, very thin scar-lines where the cuffs had occasionally bit too deep, but those are almost the exact shade of your skin and mostly unnoticeable.
Perhaps then, you, too, will be able to put Yagami Light, suspect, behind you.
You don't want to think that it's left any kind of deeper mark. You don't want to think that L has changed you that much, although you know he has. Wasn't this what you were thinking, when you drove away from your mock execution? That your past self was so far away you could barely recognize it, let alone catch hold of it? There's no way in which the child you were before would be useful to you now, and so you're not sure why it's nagging you like this. Maybe it's your question of pride again… you'd had much to be proud of, once. You were top of your class. You'd scored number 1 on the national entrance exams and gotten into Todai, the most prestigious university in all of Japan. You were well-liked by your classmates, you had friends and girlfriends and a bright future ahead of you. Maybe you didn't want any of it, but still, you had it.
Then along came Kira and L… you'd become a suspect and then the suspect; you'd dropped out of university and gotten locked in solitary confinement for two months, and now there's only one course left for you. You have to find Kira, and destroy him. You have to see him dead, or you'll never be free again.
The weight of the chain on your left wrist pulls down, and it presses cooly against your elbow and side, a relief in the stifling summer heat.
Your thoughts are uncomfortable and strange to you; nothing seems to match up the way it's supposed to. If Ryuzaki would only lead the case like he should be doing you wouldn't have to think of any of this; you wouldn't be thinking about your life choices at (you check the time) one o'clock in the afternoon. I used to get up at six. The thought is unwanted, and you press your lips flat, running a hand through your hair.
This kind of second-guessing is a luxury you can't afford. You are no longer an affluent child. Instead you are something else, something that doesn't conform to any accepted definition, that doesn't gain any accolades. You will always be L's equal—that doesn't change—and if you catch Kira you will be a hero. So Ryuzaki needs to get his act together, and quickly.
You're just not sure how to make him.
/
Today, when the task force arrives, Ryuzaki makes an announcement.
"The new headquarters will be available to move into by the first of August," he says, in his usual no-nonsense tone. "So, until then, I've decided to take a break from the case."
"Perhaps that's wise," Soichiro says, sounding relieved. "It will be easier to start fresh there if we've had some time off. I hope you don't mind, however, if I continue to go over the evidence for the next few days."
"By all means, go ahead," Ryuzaki answers, pouring himself a cup of coffee. Some of his energy seems to have returned, along with his manner, and everyone in the task force seems put at ease by the fact.
"I'll keep working as well," Aizawa says after a moment. "I don't think I could stop now in good conscience," he adds, with a glance Ryuzaki's way. Ryuzaki just stirs a pile of sugar cubes into his coffee, and takes a sip.
"Very well then," Soichiro says, looking toward Aizawa. "We'll work together."
"And I'll make sure to keep an eye on Misa Misa!" Matsuda exclaims.
"Thank you, Matsuda-san," Ryuzaki says.
Mogi just glances up from his case file and then goes back to looking at it quietly. Fortunately, no one really expected him to respond, so the matter is settled.
Ryuzaki grabs a pile of crossword puzzles from under the coffee table and begins filling them out with a pencil, pausing occasionally to think and push the end of his pencil against his teeth.
You open up Ryuzaki's computer—this time it gains only one momentary sharp look—and begin scrolling through deaths.
The rest of the day passes quickly enough; the only difference being that it's only seven when Ryuzaki gets up, says a soft "goodnight" to everyone, with assurances that they can stay as long as they want, and tugs you into the bedroom, closing the door between you and the task force. He flops down on his stomach, limbs askew on top of the rumpled covers (you've done your best to make your side of the bed, but the same can't be said for his) and groans.
"That was exhausting," he says.
"You didn't do anything but fill out crossword puzzles all day," you point out.
"Yeah, I know. I meant the rest of it," he admits, speaking muffled into his pillow. "These handcuffs are more trouble than I thought they'd be," he says, lifting up his right arm limply, and shaking it so the chain clanks softly.
"Well, you know I wouldn't mind if we take them off," you say, sitting on the edge of the bed beside him.
"Not gonna happen," he says. "But I appreciate the sentiment."
He turns onto his side to half-face you, and you stay sitting under his scrutiny, feeling somewhat curious. He's brought his thumb to his mouth and is pressing at it a little, and the sun passes over him in sharp lines of blaze and shadow from the half-opened blinds.
He still looks tired, but it's a quiet kind of tiredness, not the hunted prickliness of yesterday. It softens even his awkward sprawl, picking up the brightness of his worn jeans and adding a gleam even to his dark, feathered hair, which is sticking up at all angles. He looks a little bit like a real person, and you know you wouldn't be seeing any of this if Ryuzaki hadn't let you, but you still can't help but feel off-kilter about it.
"Light-kun," he says after a moment. "Have you ever been wrong?"
"Sure," you say, benevolently. "Plenty of times."
Ryuzaki spares a long-suffering look toward the ceiling and then meets your eyes again. "You manage to say even this in a way that implies you've never been wrong," he says, in something that's a little too laid-back to be proper annoyance.
"I think you're reading too much into it," you say.
"Yes, I'm good at that, aren't I," Ryuzaki says ironically. "Takes one to know one."
"I don't know what you mean," you say.
"Do you know, I almost believe you?" he says. "It's weird, because I never did before. I just keep feeling like something's missing."
"Ryuzaki—"
"Let's not bring up Kira," he says definitively.
"I wasn't going to bring up Kira."
"Yes you were."
"No I wasn't."
"Yes you were."
"No I—" you let out a breath of annoyance and catch the glimpse of a sly smile half-hidden behind Ryuzaki's hand, but a moment later, the expression falls away as though it had never been, leaving Ryuzaki looking blank and a little sad.
"I'm going to sleep," he says.
"What—already?"
"Yeah," he says. "If you have any questions, come back tomorrow." He curls up on his side, tugging his knees to his chest, and true to his word, actually manages to drift off in about five minutes.
If this were anyone but Ryuzaki, you'd think catching up on his sleep would be a good thing, but considering who you're dealing with, you can't help but feel unsettled. First his listlessness over the past week and now this—? Maybe, you think, he's just telling the truth about taking time off. It's only three more days till the headquarters are finished, anyway, you reason.
You can wait till then to call him on it.
/
You're pretty sure you know what L is doing, is the thing. It's not even subtle, and you've recognized the signs since the two of you first met. The whole idea of "becoming friends" and "inviting you onto the task force," the way he made sure to phrase his suspicion of your guilt as a percentage, which gave it a seeming legitimacy and forced others to play into his rules in hopes of adding or subtracting points… even the fact that he staged the task force headquarters in hotels. Sure, it was logically a good move, and is probably the reason any of you are still alive, but there's an intimacy to sharing a hotel room with five other people that there isn't in, say, an official building. It fosters feelings of trust and dependency, like you're "all in this together."
If you hadn't been sure, the very fact that Soichiro, your own father, drew a gun on you at L's request would be enough to clinch it. Sure, it was loaded with a blank, but the mock execution was carefully staged to have all three of you fearing for your life. You and Misa, because you thought you were in danger from Soichiro—and Soichiro, because he thought he might be in danger from you. Though you can all logically admit nothing happened, on an emotional level, the trust between you has been irrevocably broken.
Of course, you can't let L know that. So, you're treating Soichiro just as you ever had—in fact, you're even being more attentive and polite, not questioning a thing in order to keep him as an ally. The last thing you need is to play into the wedge L intends to drive between the two of you.
It's a flurry of tactics used by everything from abusers to cult leaders, and now L's going to have a whole headquarters made up just for this case, further isolating the task force from the outside world…
You don't blame him. If you were in his position, trying to catch a criminal like Kira, you'd probably do much the same—but just because you don't blame him doesn't mean it can't irritate the hell out of you.
It's because of L's machinations that you're handcuffed together. And the chain has more than physical weight—it's symbolic too.
If you were L, you'd be worried about your only lead going stale. Considering how well the evidence is stacked against you, you'd insist on believing that Yagami Light was lying to you about having no memories of his crimes. (It fits together too perfectly, and, after all, L is human, and as susceptible to belief perseverance as anyone.)
But what to do about it?
If you were L, you'd try to manoeuvre Yagami Light to a confession, or, barring that, keep poking around in both Yagami Light's psyche and the outside world until something tips the balance.
It would be so much easier if he'd just focus on the kills, because you're sure there's a pattern there. And the moment you find it… you'll be that much closer to being exonerated.
Well. Maybe once you bring it to him on a platter.
He'll be forced to take a look at it then. And his psychology will reel him in, making him obsessed with finding out the whys and hows. But it's for that exact same reason that you can't enlist his help until you've actually got something to hook him with. If you play your hand too soon, he'll only insist you're being irrational in an effort to make it look like you were framed, just the same as you did while you were in confinement.
You're still not friends, even though you're playing the part… although "friends" as a word fits even less in this situation than it did when the both of you were in college together, where it at least had some superficial logic to it.
But that's the genius of it, really.
Because you've both been insisting you're friends since the beginning, everyone else has gotten used to thinking about the two of you that way… and once the idea has been believed, well, confirmation bias will filter out anything the rest of the task force might potentially notice that doesn't fit into that narrative.
Like, what kind of friends are handcuffed together and sleep in the same bed?
Misa, ironically, was the one who could point out how weird it was, and you're not sure if that's just because she's Misa or because she hasn't been pulled into L's little world yet to the same extent as everyone else. You say "yet" because it's only a matter of time. L has two attributes that make him surprisingly likeable, despite being a creep by any definition of the word: he's both polite and genuine. True, he's not always polite in actions, but he's eccentric enough that some of his purposefully off-putting actions can be easily lumped in with his general manner—something he obviously uses to his advantage. And, who doesn't trust someone who's genuine? Especially when that someone is much smarter and more successful than you are, and has no reason to give you the time of day—but does anyway? It's only human to succumb to that kind of flattery.
And that's what makes it so easy for him to wrap people around his little finger.
Well, that and the way he just does things with confidence—like it's everyone else who would be weird if they disagree.
There's a social experiment known as the Asch line study, created by Solomon Eliot Asch, that tests social conformity. In it, a number of participants are put in a room together and shown lines of varying lengths, one on the left and three on the right, and are asked to pick out which one of the lines on the right are the same length as the one on the left. In cases where all participants but one were instructed to give the wrong answer, the participant not in the know would usually (though not always) go along with it. There were a number of different reasons these participants went along with the majority. Some were actually convinced by the unanimity that the wrong answer was actually the correct one. Others knew better, but were silent anyway.
And this is just an argument over the length of some lines—in which nothing at all is at stake!
How much more malleable would a group be, when the alternative is being targeted by a faceless killer who's already mercilessly executed one of your own? The fact that Ukita was killed by the Second Kira has only tied the remaining group more firmly together, in fear or in revenge.
There's an even more terrifying series of studies in which a participant is instructed by the experimenter (the "authority figure") to administer electric shocks to another participant, who is separated from their sight; they can "hear" the effect of the shocks from pre-recorded tapes. The shocks are fake, but they don't know that when they keep pressing the button, upping the voltage at the experimenter's request. The set-up makes sure the participant is aware of the severity of their crime: they get to see the other person strapped into an electric chair before the experiment starts, and they're even given a shock themselves so they knew what the other would be experiencing. Of course, the participant thinks they're in a study with a completely different topic… and 65% of them administer a final level of "shock" that would have definitely killed the person in the chair. Sure, they're stressed out when they do—they sweat and groan, and some even go into hysterical laughing fits. But they still do it.
In the article, "The Perils of Obedience," Stanley Milgram, the creator of the experiment, wrote:
Stark authority was pitted against the subjects' [participants'] strongest moral imperatives against hurting others, and, with the subjects' [participants'] ears ringing with the screams of the victims, authority won more often than not. The extreme willingness of adults to go to almost any lengths on the command of an authority constitutes the chief finding of the study and the fact most urgently demanding explanation. Ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, and without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process. Moreover, even when the destructive effects of their work become patently clear, and they are asked to carry out actions incompatible with fundamental standards of morality, relatively few people have the resources needed to resist authority.
L is an authority, and he knows it, and takes full advantage of the fact. What was it Soichiro had told you, during the mock execution stunt? "L controls the police?" "It was his idea, not mine?"
Manipulation is pretty shady stuff. There's a reason you don't let yourself get into a habit of it…
So. You're certain L will continue to play games with you. You're just not sure yet what the exact nature of those games will be. At the very least, he's going to use this opportunity to get closer to you. You can be sure of that, because from the very beginning, that's been his play. From the moment he sat next to you at the Todai opening ceremony and announced who he was and that he wanted your help with the investigation, to the tennis match and giving you his phone number… then calling you up and going on an outing… now the forced physical proximity.
It's good—or it would be, if you were the actual culprit. But since you aren't…
All you have to do is let him manipulate you and act, if not completely fooled, then lured in despite yourself. Since the task force trusts L implicitly, they'll trust you more the closer you get to L.
His own investigative tactics will become his downfall.
Because you'll be the one to catch Kira, not him.
You'll catch Kira, and in doing so, you'll overcome the greatest detective in the world.
.
.
.