There's a soft, wet, repetitive sound. Waking slowly, you notice, disoriented, that it's still the middle of the night, with not the faintest glimmer of light from under the closed curtains; without moving, or letting your breathing pattern speed up too much, you try to catch a glimpse of the time, but your watch, on the bedside table, is facing away from you.
The sound is Ryuzaki. Palming himself. It's not like you expected him to be a complete eunuch but you'd been having a dreamless sleep for once, and you kind of wish you still were, instead of awkwardly trying to pretend you aren't here.
The glow from his computer is searing through the room, lending a ghostly blue cast to the blankets and ceiling, and it's that fact that ends up scratching at the edge of your brain, more and more with each passing moment.
There's no sound coming from the screen, so there's no clue as to what he's watching. But he's watching something.
What is it that gets Ryuzaki off?
It's a question that's been wandering in and out of your mind for ages, probably since you first met him. Ryuzaki is, though forthright in his personality, a completely closed book when it comes to details: where did he grow up? Why did he become a detective? Who is he? What is his past, who does he know, what does he care about? Anything that might be used against him is locked in an inaccessible vault, and by catching him unawares, in an act so personal, perhaps you'll be able to peek through an open keyhole, to catch a glimpse of something he's tried to hide.
If you can manage to catch him unawares.
Slowly, feigning unconsciousness, you turn onto your other side. The blue glow burns against your closed eyelids, now. Ryuzaki's rhythm hasn't paused. You let your eyes open to the barest slits, watching a world blurred by your eyelashes; Ryuzaki's shadow sitting before you, the silver chain like a linked road going up a mountain, shining in false-moonlight. He is quiet, but even so, he is not able to keep full control of his breath. In the darkness, you can't see sweat. He is movement; shadow and sound. He is unaware of you.
The reason becomes clear soon enough. He's wearing earbuds; listening to the sounds you can't hear from the computer's screen.
Colors. Bright, radioactive; a movement that seems at first like blobs floating in a blue expanse. It resolves itself at last into two bodies, glowing red at their cores, creating red between them in touch. A man and a woman; features indistinguishable under heat-photography. What is this? If it's pornography, it's not very good. You haven't actually seen any videos before, but from what you know of it, it's supposed to get detailed angles, close-ups; be like those magazines, provocative… and this seems too un-purposeful, the actors' movements too lingering and random; when the angles change, it's to other static visuals from the exact same distance. Although the viewpoint from every wall and even the ceiling seems to be accounted for, which changes based on the click of a few keys from Ryuzaki's free hand. Weirdly enough, your first thought is that Ryuzaki is playing some sort of interactive sexual video game. The clues take a second too long to sink in. Infrared cameras.
Misa.
And… who is that… someone on the investigation… Matsuda?
What the hell?
Honestly, you're not sure who you're more disgusted by. Ryuzaki, or your so-called girlfriend.
"Ryuzaki, what the hell?"
You're so put-off, so baffled, that the words leave your throat before you've considered the consequences.
The rules of the game.
Keep quiet and pretend nothing's happening.
Ryuzaki's eyes flicker your way for a split-second before refocusing. "Light-kun. I must have disturbed you." He doesn't stop. He probably wouldn't, unless you slammed the computer shut. You don't want to start a fight with a horny Ryuzaki. You're already regretting opening your mouth.
He knows you're watching now.
You should turn the other way, plug your ears and try to go back to sleep.
But it would feel like you'd admitted defeat.
Instead, you watch. Feeling a vague curiosity amidst the disgust; like you're watching a production of something you hate, but paid to see.
It's as sordid as it ought to be.
Like he was anyone.
When he comes, his breath catches; you think you can actually see him stop breathing, like the air was strangled behind his throat; and his face twists up as though in pain.
He makes a mess on the sheets.
"Oops."
"Fuck. Ryuzaki, you're gross."
"Don't worry, I have a towel," he says, grabbing one from somewhere like a magician. He scrubs at the mess.
"It's not gonna help. God, just turn the—Ryuzaki—"
You sit up, annoyed; slam the computer shut.
In the sudden darkness, everything becomes pitch-black.
"Now what, Light-kun?" Ryuzaki drawls.
"Damn you."
"Interesting suggestion. I'll take it into account."
You flop back onto your side of the bed and turn your back on him, and you hear him shuffling around, sheets and maybe towel kicking this way and that.
Then silence falls again.
Total silence; the computer is closed and not playing its usual rain noises.
Ryuzaki starts clicking his tongue.
/
Needless to say, you sleep badly. But in the morning you're fairly certain of a few things you hadn't been before: for one thing, Ryuzaki grew up in close quarters with people, at least when he was in and around his teens. You're almost certain of it. He was quiet during sex, and it wasn't because he was afraid of waking you, judging by his response or lack of one. It was habit. And sure, maybe he has some completely eccentric reason for it, but Occam's razor says… L has soundproof walls and rooms to spare, now. Not always. He mentioned having learned Japanese from someone when he was twelve. Someone who reminded him of you. Kira or not, it's likely he wasn't framing people for murder at twelve years old… who was this acquaintance? A friend at school? Did he even have friends? He said you were his first friend. A lie, but in how many ways? He considers me a friend. That's the obvious one. The other obvious one… He's never had a friend before. Somehow you'd never considered that part of the statement a lie, though it's perfectly likely he has in fact had friends.
Still; his wording. "An acquaintance who reminds me of you." Considering that both you and Ryuzaki are still playing into the image of yourselves as friends, wouldn't it be better to say "a friend who reminds me of you?"
'Acquaintance'... strikes you as more honest. And yet hiding volumes. What was the exact nature of the relationship? Why did Ryuzaki mention it? What did he want you to assume, and how did he want you to respond? He didn't even bother to hide that the mention was calculated, but calculated for what?
It was meant to be a story in response to yours in which you referred to your childhood friends.
Childhood friend?
Maybe.
You're guessing it had to be a peer, just from the way Ryuzaki spoke of him. As with all assumptions, you could be wrong, but it's solid enough to add to his profile.
Weird thought. Perhaps a sibling?
Ryuzaki has always struck you as an only child; he wants things to go his own way and he's terrible at compromising. Although that's probably just his general personality. He does actually know how to get along with others, and share space with them, when he needs to. Even in the close quarters of a hotel room.
No. If it was a sibling, even Ryuzaki wouldn't have been able to say he died so offhandedly. …Probably.
Someone he grew up with, though.
Which leads to the second thing. He hasn't always been this rich.
That one, at least, makes sense. L gets paid by Interpol and the U.N., but that's because he has such a reputation for solving cases at this point in his career. Perhaps you assumed he had some wealth beforehand as well; which is still possible, even likely… but whatever the other source of his wealth, there was never any mini-L sitting in a computer room in a vast building created just for him… whatever his lifestyle now, it's something he built, and can't be extrapolated backward to predict his origins.
Whatever his lifestyle now… strange to think; you've known him only in a succession of hotels and now in the Kira task force headquarters, working on one case. Before the Kira investigation, L had never shown his face to anyone working under him, and he didn't team up with the police. Even up until a year ago, his lifestyle, his methods, were completely different… and he changed all that. Because of Kira.
No, you think. Because of me.
/
The movie, an English one, is subtitled for your and Misa's benefit (you both know English, but the dialogue is fast-paced and can be somewhat confusing to parse). Double Indemnity. Any protests she might have about it being a black and white movie are stalled immediately by the arresting opening image; a man in silhouette walking on crutches, limping, looming slowly in the center of the frame as the music plays.
It tells its story through a series of flashbacks, framed by the protagonist's voiceover narration as he speaks into a phonograph. The man's name is Neff, an insurance salesman. And it turns out he's involved in a murder.
The woman's name is Phyllis.
"This reminds me of us, don't you think, Light?" Misa chirps, after the characters' tense first meeting.
"Uh…"
"Only without the murder, of course!" she laughs. "Remember, our first meeting was just like that. You were so shy and charming…"
You don't dare to look over at Ryuzaki, but you can feel him taking note of every single word, and you want to shake her. Misa, you idiot. Shut up!
If she actually knew anything to implicate you, she'd probably let it slip while chattering on about this damn movie.
She's doing pretty well at it even with nothing.
But Misa's right, it does remind you of the two of you. Phyllis is also a crazy stalker who shows up at the house of a guy she shouldn't unannounced at night. And she practically badgers Neff into kissing her when he obviously doesn't want to… and she brings up the idea. The idea. Of killing someone.
"Maybe she had stopped thinking about it, but I hadn't," Neff thought. "I couldn't. Because it all tied up with something I had been thinking about for years, since long before I ever ran into Phyllis Dietrichson. Because, in this business you can't sleep for trying to figure out the tricks they could pull on you. You're like the guy behind the roulette wheel, watching the customers to make sure they don't crook the house. And then one night, you get to thinking how you could crook the house yourself. And do it smart. Because you've got that wheel right under your hands. And you know every notch in it by heart. And you figure all you need is a plant out in front, a shill to put down the bet."
Your eyes slip away from the scene then, leaving Neff and Phyllis and the rain against his apartment window behind, inside the screen, and Ryuzaki is watching. Not the movie. Not Misa, either. But you. Your gazes catch each other and lock, and you're wondering is that what you thought? Was it all too easy, figuring out how to catch the bad guys? Did you think you could do it better, with everything you knew? With the law and the police at your disposal?
Of course. How could he not? Even you, with your small history of detective work, have found the thought too irresistible to pass up on occasion. When the Kira case came along, you couldn't help but be curious, too curious. You'd hacked into your father's computer through your home network and kept up-to-date on the early actions of the task force before realizing they'd narrowed down the suspect list to a student, and when the information had gone dark suddenly, you'd had a premonition that something was closing in on you; a pitiless eye. It looked bad, you'd realized; the truth of your innocence couldn't explain away how it looked to have that stuff on you, so you'd deleted it all.
Funny, how the memory didn't strike you until now, with a sharp, sudden vividness; the triumph you'd felt at even that small law-breaking; and you feel a phantom sense of that perilous huntedness while staring into the dark, glistening lenses of L's eyes.
You know who L's trying to cast you as. Neff. With him as the detective, Keyes—the one who catches the bad guy. The bad guy who spends his last moments in a futile run to nowhere, a race for the border with a gunshot wound in his stomach and his enemies at his heels. "You'll never make the border," Keyes warns. "You'll never even make the elevator." Neff has been dying all along, though you didn't know it before, because of a face-off he wasn't prepared for, a situation he underestimated. It's the death penalty one way or another, and Keyes is there to witness it.
It should come across as moralistic. Neff got what was coming to him.
You believe it deeply. The world ought to be that way.
But it isn't. Not really.
"You know why you didn't figure this one, Keyes?" Neff asks, collapsed on the ground as Keyes stands above him. "Let me tell you. The guy you were looking for was too close. He was right across the desk from you."
"Closer than that, Walter," Keyes responds.
In this movie, the characters speak in codes. Terse, flippant sentences that never say exactly what they mean. The hunter, the hunted. Criminals at each other's throats. And a last explanation. When Neff tells Keyes I love you too he means…
Who knows what he means? He said it enough to Phyllis and he didn't mean it.
A lit match.
Credits.
Dark.
/
In the evening, Ryuzaki flops into bed at the reasonable (for him) hour of one, dragging you away from a game of solitaire you'd been in the middle of on your computer on the main floor.
You've caved to that; game-playing during work hours. There's only so many ways you can turn the Kira numbers over and over, and by ten o'clock at night you'd tried them all.
With deaths blurring before your eyes, turning into facts and figures, puzzle pieces you haven't put together the right way yet. Ryuzaki had stared at the end of his German game, chewing on his thumb. "Yes, it was time travel," he'd said, and sighed as he clicked the computer off. He'd got up and walked quickly towards the elevators before you'd had the chance to do more than press the button to close your own game.
"I'm tired of being sociable," he announces now. Presumably at you, since you're the only one in the room. You unbuckle your watch, putting it on your bedside table, and you climb under the covers.
You've gotten used to ending up in bed at two or even three in the morning, so you're alert enough that you answer him, not in the mood to fight for a sleep that will no doubt be filled with nightmares anyway.
"You're never sociable."
"Then I'm tired of being a person," Ryuzaki says.
"I know what you mean," you say.
He lets out a sigh. "Maybe you do."
You fall asleep, some time later, to the ever-present sounds of fake rain. In your dream, Misa is dressed in Phyllis's black clothes, sitting on a supermarket shelf, her legs dangling. Matsuda is beside her, and when they touch they melt the stacks of cans beside them; orange, white, blue and green-hot, the cans go sliding down the shelves in molten pools. Ryuzaki is watching, rapt, standing close enough that sparks fly into his hair, fizzle like embers, stars in the black mess of it. Melted metal drifts around his feet, seeping across linoleum flooring.
You're bound hand and foot, as you had been in confinement, and watching him watching them. Sitting on the floor as you are, the metal creeps up over your ankles and thighs, cools to immobile blueness around you. "L, you're going to burn up," you warn.
"Not yet," he replies.
.
.
.