Those Who Stand For Nothing Fall For Anything

by halfpromise

Light is a politician. What could go wrong? It's very long (really 3 parts in one) and as AU as you can get. Mention/content warnings: MA, alcohol, drugs, emotional/physical abuse, the list goes on. Every bad thing in the world is in it in a satirical way or to make a point of it, it's hugely offensive, and the rest is about men in suits.

49. But You Blew My Mind

A/N: Extra long update because that's just what happened. It's a book in itself, and seriously might take about 5 hours to read, and that's just the opening scene. :D This fic isn't known for brevity. Also, I'm probably not going to be able to write anything or post the end times as far as this story goes until May-ish at the earliest because of 'personal responsibilities'.
The disclaimer is that shit happens. L's in it and I have missed him, the rotter. No spoilers.
Debrief with no sackings on halfpromise tumblr for credits, thanks, references, including one for a court case I just straight up lifted lines from at the time because, damn. Extra long playlist, I don't know yet. Lots of love and thank you for everything. Your comments and support mean the world to me, as cliché as that is. I feel incredibly blessed by the lovely people who read this shitstorm. Take care. xxx

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But You Blew My Mind

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After a few seconds, I realise that L probably can't tell who it is who's sitting in a chair in the living room in the dark. I try to imagine how I must appear as an unmoving, dark creature, barely visible, and maybe I look like Ryuk. Because IamRyuk, aren't I? I have come to claim my victim. Maybe I could be a figment of L's half-asleep, battered brain? I wonder if I am. But I want him to suffer in not knowing. To suffer like I am.

And yet, I realise that as soon as I saw him upstairs, and again now, I felt whatever 'home' feels like to me. He can't be a home. A home is bricks and mortar, not blood and bones. But he brings a slackening relief of longing for something which was missing for most of my life—only tinged with sadness and apprehension. And I resent that more than I can put into words.

"Oh Christ, give me strength," he asks the ceiling while sleepily rubbing his eye. "Look, I know we're not on speaking terms, but seriously?"

I don't know whether he's talking to me, a deity who probably blocked his number a long time ago, or if it's just the lingering effects of brain damage, so I stay silent.

Meanwhile, he turns on the overhead light so he can reveal the one true Light and be amazed. Be not afraid, you bastard. You'd only disappoint me.

"Great," he sighs when he sees me, dipping his head to breathe slowly for a moment. "Ok. Give me a minute. I'll just get my ice hockey helmet and a mouthguard."

"You haven't killed me," I point out.

"I didn't give you a fixed time, you puzzled cock," he replies with a dry voice full of vocal fry, which is a reason to kill him in itself. He's still palming his eye like he's trying to push it back into its socket. "At least let me have a coffee first. What are you doing here anyway?"

"I want to speak with you."

"To apologise?"

"No? What for?" I ask.

"Whu…" he breathes out, scrunching up his face like he caught a whiff of something unpleasant. It's not me, obviously. I'm wearing Ébène Fumé by Tom Ford because my Kantei bottle looked too perfect in its unopened virgin state on my dresser.

Actually, since we're on the topic, I feel like a fearless explorer when I buy scents blind, but this one sounded perfect for me. And I trust Tom more than anyone in my life. This parfum was described in one review as an 'angry little beast with a soft belly'. I don't know about that, but I smelt like a pyrotechnics display in a forest which also set a library and a church on fire, so I added the tiniest spritz of Bitter Peach so it doesn't make metoosexually arousing. And Fucking Fabulous. Because I am. Now I smell like incense during an exorcism and a burnt fruit sando cake in a leather boot, but above all, I smell expensive. He shouldn't be able smell it from the stairs, but maybe the silage is overpowering and I've expensively stunk the house out but don't realise it because I've gone noseblind. I can't be sure.

I'm just about to ask him, because it seems like a very important question for some reason, when he suddenly moves away, and a little too quickly by the looks of it; needing to hold onto the wall momentarily as he turns to stop himself walking into it.

I'd worry about possible damage to his cerebellum or inner ear since his balance is fucked, but he often acts like this after he wakes up. He never seems to benefit from sleep, even when his body collapses into it from exhaustion. When he wakes, he walks like he's doing now—like a drunk old man, clumsily steering himself around the edges of counters—the antithesis of who he was a few hours ago, when I very nearly lay myself prostrate on the ground worshipping how perfectly tailored the suit I bought him was.

I follow him into the kitchen at a distance like we're in a socially distanced undead conga line.

He waves his hand around the inside of my carefully organised medicine cabinet, knocking everything over before finally finding what looks like a bottle of ginkgo biloba, which he opens, and chucks two tablets towards the back of his throat after sticking his mouth under the running tap. This is all very hangover time at university.

While he has his back to me, I stand still to watch him lean over the sink, putting almost his full weight on his forearms so that his shoulders tense under his silk blend shirt. He must look that way when he's on top of me. I should have filmed us. Then I'd know what it looked like from the outside and I could watch us over and over. We need more mirrors. I never used to care about this shit before. Not really. Why am I thinking these things?Down, boy.

"What did the doctors say?" I ask, and swallow when he tilts his head back to swallow for a completely different reason, though it looks like he immediately regrets it.

"At the hospital?" he asks. "A lot of things."

"Like?"

"Well, apparently the Giants are going to destroy the Dragons because of Yoshihiro Maru. I had no idea what they were talking about and wondered if they should be the neurology patients instead of me, but it's not for me to say."

"No, what did they say about—"

"My injuries?" he interjects, turning to glare at me with bruise-shadowed eyes. When it doesn't spark whatever reaction he's looking for, he lets out a sour laugh, his head hanging over the counter like he's barely clinging to consciousness. "I thought you'd know, seeing as one of your simps seemed to."

"Only that you'd left against medical advice and without signing the discharge papers. You were there for a few days, so it wasn't like they just stitched you up in fifteen minutes and kept you around to entertain them with your standup comedy. What did they say?"

"Like you care."

"I definitely shouldn't, but I do care," I say quietly. He must hear it, because he coughs out some kind of disbelieving laugh again, standing straighter as he turns to face me.

"As you can see, I'm not dead. More's the pity. You'll just have to try harder—because you failed, Light Yagami. You're a loser. You're the king of the losers, it's official now. You're so terrified of everything, including yourself, that you make such conflicted attempts at whatever you start that you can never finish the job, can you? Whatever that farce was today is a case in point."

My bombed-out brain tells me to kill him—a constant suggestion, like static, for as long as I've known him. The anticipation of it is another reason why I left the Death Note and any scraps of it at the Kantei. Beneath that shouting order is a small voice telling me that he's not wrong. Unsure of which side to take, I ignore both.

"You're not scared of me are you," I ask as more of a statement. Because maybe he should be by now. Anyone else would be.

"What's the point of being so scared of dying that you don't live at all?" he says, walking towards the kitchen island in front of me to spoon coffee grounds into a cafetière. Every sound is amplified against the marble. Drawers being opened and smoothly sliding to a cushioned close, metal canisters, spoons, and porcelain cups ring out against the worktop like we're in a sound effects studio. "How could I ever be frightened of such a weak man?"

"I think you're lying."

Expecting an inevitable sharp reply, I'm shocked by how he becomes instantly and completely still—frozen in motion—holding a spoon over the coffee and smiling sardonically like he's been put on pause. It's so strange that it makes me anxious, like I want to fill the silence with something to convince myself that this isn't just another fault in my solipsistic simulation of a life. My thoughts must prompt him into action again though, because he grabs a knife from the block. I take a step back away from him, but he just slides the knife across the counter towards me.

"That's how scared I am of you," he says aggressively, pointing at the knife within easy reach of me, before resuming his pursuit of coffee.

"I think you're scared of me though," he adds, smiling. "Which is interesting, considering that you have the notebook now and I don't. Also, you're clearly psychotically violent and I have the scars to prove it. But the last thing I am is scared of you. I guess that shows my strength of character, whereas you only have some flimsy, superficial persona modelled from what you've observed to be socially approved of. Get out and go fuck yourself."

God, I hate him. My body just flares and boils from anger from his insults and dismissal, but the longer I leave it before I answer, the more he'll think that he's won.

"I've dreamt of drowning you so many times and you never fought me. You looked so exquisite underwater, I loved it," I tell him breathily, since it's the first thing I think of.

As soon as I give it voice though, my imaginings vibrantly force themselves into my mind's eye again. I flinch away from them, and have to close my eyes until I can push them back down to where they came from.

When I open my eyes again, he's staring at me quizzically. Just some vague curiosity. Not frightened by what I've said like I am.

"Do it then, Light," he says. "I won't fight you."

And we have a silent conversation through only our eyes then. Yes. It always felt like he was giving me permission. It's predestined and he's been expecting it. B told him: 'You see the end of time in him because you think he's better than you, and he'll beat you, and you'll die at his hands.' Even B knew. I have permission, and I was programmed to do this. He's wanted this since he first met me.

My shoulders are fixed and welded together by how he's looking at me now. He's the head of Medusa turning me back to the stone he carved me from—just for a moment that would kill us both. Change the subject.

"I brought you some codeine and a Strong Zero. The can's in the fridge," I tell him, taking the codeine pack out of my jacket to place on the worktop between us as a fake olive branch. He picks up the codeine immediately.

"You actually went shopping?" he asks, sounding more surprised by that than the thought of me drowning him, apparently. "Yourself? In person? In an actual shop with people in it?"

"No. I found them in the kitchen staff room."

"Oh, of course. More theft. And you don't even have the decency to bring a box of assorted biscuits with you," he whines and grumbles and sulks and moans. "Well, I just took painkillers and you probably poisoned these ones, so you can take your pills and cans and stick them up your arse for 3 days instead."

"You just took ginkgo biloba. I don't think that's going to help you much," I tell him. He turns to blink slowly at the packet by the sink, and frowns to find that he just took a herbal supplement.

"Shit."

"On the plus side, it might help with increasing blood circulation for cognitive function and… other things you don't seem to need help with. I'm not sure if it's safe to take with codeine though, I'd have to check, I'll…" I stop myself rambling like a TV quack. He doesn't care. He never did. He's looking for the can I left in the fridge.

"What is the point of one Kirin Highball in a can, Light? I'd need about twenty."

"If you had twenty you'd be back in hospital. This way you might sleep eventually, because you clearly need it. You look like a heroin addict."

"You could do with a few of these too, then. You look absolutely atrocious; it hurts my eyes to look at you," he snipes. It's not true, obviously.

"Yes, you kindly let me know how awful I looked before. However, when I checked, I found that you were completely incorrect, so it must be your eyes that are at fault. Many thanks for your concern though."

"My eyes are fine," he scowls. "Your crows feet are spreading all over your face though, just all over. Your face looks like a fucked on old blanket. And you stink of burnt fucking peaches again, I can smell you from here. Don't think you can win me over with some stolen pharmaceuticals and an alcoholic beverage for people on low wages," he says, cracking open the can anyway. "You're not thinking of staying are you?"

"No."

"Good, yes," he grumps, popping the codeine and swilling it down with the drink of the economically destitute. That's not safe either. "Out you go then. Begone, foul dwimmerlaik, lord of carrion."

"I just wanted to ask you a few questions."

"Really?" he laughs. "I've answered enough questions, so it looks like you've wasted your time. My firm will be charging you personally for wasting mine today, by the way. Goodbye."

And like he's ushering in the end credits of a film, he switches on the radio on the counter. An awful English language song is mid-flight, because they tend to follow him around, along with gods of death. And steel drums, apparently.

We both stare at the radio like it's another person who just spontaneously started belting out a wildly inappropriate song.

Aruba, Jamaica, ooh I wanna take ya to

Bermuda, Bahama, come on pretty mama

Key Largo, Montego

Ooh I wanna take you down to Kokomo

We'll get there fast

And then we'll take it slow

That's where we wanna go

I raise my eyes to L after we get to Montego, because this is obviously all his fault. He winces, though struggling to keep his expression stone-faced. Pointedly avoiding my stare, he eventually flicks the station to another song which is just as bad, but he stubbornly pretends to find it acceptable.

Now here you go again

You say you want your freedom

Well, who am I to keep you down?

Quietly stifling a moment of fury while his back is turned, I stride to the counter to switch the radio off. He spins around, glaring at me indignantly again, reaching over to switch it back on, and rack the volume up while he's at it.

His stare is passively goading me, but I won't rise to it. Instead, in a fluid motion, I calmly push the knife back towards him, pull out a bar chair, and sit down to stare back at him.

—you should play the way you feel it

But listen carefully to the sound

Of your loneliness

Like a heartbeat drives you mad

I should throw the radio on the floor, but that'd be too dramatic and might damage the marble flooring. I had it imported from Greece. Pentelic marble, quarried from Mount Pentelicus in Attica. Along with being used to build the Parthenon and the Acropolis, it has now reached its true high point through being featured in our monumental kitchen! L doesn't appreciate things like this. He just babbles about Greek mythology, the Elgin Marbles, the cost, and'why couldn't we just have linoleum?'But the point is, if we were ever featured inWabi-Sabi Modern ShōgunsHome & Garden magazine—which is a goal of mine—it would be a great talking point.

So, without breaking eye contact, I rip the radio's cord from the socket and toss it aside to cut that shitty noise off.

In the stillness of remembering

What you had

And what you lost—

"You are unbelievably obnoxious," L tells me. Good good.

"Why did you lie for me?" I ask, and he laughs to himself.

"I don't believe that Elliewelly did lie at all today, sir! What a terrible thing to say! If I did, then… I don't know, it must have all been so terribly intimidating for little old me! I was completely overwhelmed to be faced with such majesty," he finishes his high-pitched Misa impression with a low, slow, dismissive cut, which unfortunately was very attractive in its drawn-out, languid huskiness. Oh dear. "Don't make yourself comfortable."

"I know that it could be considered wrong to have set you up. But I did apologise, and you punched me in front of the entire department and now it's in a fucking paper now. I think we're even on that score," I reply, though he doesn't take it gracefully. He switches the kettle on to boil, to add to the atmosphere, and to drown me out.

I snap open my cigarette case and fish out my lighter so I can blow smoke in his direction until the kettle boils.

"I suppose that I should be grateful that you admit that you were wrong," he says.

"I said that itcouldbe considered wrong, not that itwaswrong. All things considered, it was wise to put some distance between us."

"Well that's always been a good idea. But here are you anyway," he smirks at me derisively. "I was quite happy to talk with you when I got your message. Well, 'happy' in a manner of speaking, because it would be amassiveoverstatement. But I would have spoken to you. Just you, like I thought was the plan. I thought:'You knew that he was a psycho but you still tapped it, so time to reap what you sow, lad.'And that was quite magnanimous of me, I thought."

"I think that it'd be the least you could do," I mumble, disregarding his offensive ramblings. But he must hear me, since he reaches a new peak of annoyance and slams a mug down on the worktop like a judge's gavel, and so unexpectedly that I almost drop my cigarette.

"What the…! The least I could do is come to talk with you when I'd just got out of hospital after you started a physical fight and slammed my head against the wall?" he asks. He's annoyed. As I said. Blowing things out of proportion again and stretching it to hell.

"I did start a physical fight, but I was hitting you. I was not punching you," I correct him, sitting up straight because I'm not putting up with him trying to guilt trip me. "And I didn't slam your head against a wall. You're exaggerating."

"Don't tell me what it feels like to have my head slammed against a wall!" he shouts. "You saw my stitches right? Did you think I was just trying out some new body modification trend?"

"I'm sorry I might have hit you, but I did not punch you—I did not deck you. I was fucking hitting you. I don't know what the motion of my actual hand was or where the wall was, but you'refine. I did not hurt you, I did not punch you, I was hitting you. You're such a baby, grow the fuck up, L."

"It's not worth talking to you at all," he says, and starts stalking away.

"Wait!" I say just to make him stay behind the line in the sand, which is our kitchen island. "Ok, I'm sorry. I evidently hurt you and I'm sorry."

"Do you even remember doing it?" he asks, which makes me close my eyes, dragging on my cigarette. The smoke I expel moments later is a bitter stream of frustration and pain made visible.

"No," I admit. My back is aching now, so I lean on the counter. "Not really, no."

"You must have been on a lot of drugs to have such a selective memory," he says. I'd agree if I could remember taking anything. "How did you get them?"

"I didn't take anything!"

"Pffff…" he wheezes.

"I didn't. But I don't see what the difference is between what I did to you and what you did to me, anyway—only you hit me with a Barbara Hepworth sculpture and pretended to be dead for three years," I say, recounting it as it's been seared into my mind. There are more things I can't forgive him for than what positives he gave me, I think. The kettle boils to a rubbling, explosive crescendo, clicks, and dies.

"That was different," he replies after a short pause, pulling the sugar bowl towards himself aggressively.

"You mean that because what you did was worse, right? Because it was by a long, long way."

"You weren't supposed to be there then and how was I supposed to get rid of you? What you did to me was premeditated."

"So was yours, L. You had everything all planned out."

"Did I put you in the hospital? Did you have to get stitches?"

"I did when you caused that car crash to kill Watari and Homura," I argue, but he very clearly doesn't see that as being relevant either. It stumps him for a moment though.

"You weren't supposed to be there either. Like you shouldn't be here now. You're always somewhere you shouldn't be!" he complains. "Well, since I obviously did lie, why are you not pressing charges and releasing a statement to the press, like compromised politicians tend to do when they're trying to backtrack on a personal faux-pas?"

"I explained in the inquiry."

"Oh, an inquiry?! Was thatreallywhat that was? Wow. They've changed since my time. So, my 'considerable' tax contribution saved me? This is coming from a man who's threatened to kill me, and very nearly did at least three times. Four if you count trying to strangle me with your belt. I still have bruises from that little escapade, actually. Do you want to see them?"

"I still have bruises too, but they're fading," I say sadly, leaning over to press my hand on my knee to find that it doesn't hurt anymore. I glance up at him to hold his gaze and smile slowly—full of mischief and sultry nonsense as I am. Not sure what I'd do if he took it as an invitation. I'd have to have caffeine tablets and a few energy drinks, but I'd do my best. Gambare, Yagami!
"And it wasn't a belt anymore. It became a leash. Dog."

"Hmm," he sounds out—suggesting nothing—only breaking eye contact to smile at an empty espresso cup before rejecting me. I should kill him.
"Back to the point though, it would be a first if you put a tax contribution ahead of your reputation, but money is obviously the most important thing in the known universe."

He puts one arm around himself, as if for comfort, and both of us have trouble looking at each other directly now because of this burning tension we've had since year fucking dot. He appears to be casually scanning shelves under the counter, and I must look like an impoverished Impressionist artist from Paris who can't sell anything.

"Was that actually the reason? Money?" he asks. "Or was it similar to the reason why I lied and substantiated your bullshit? Well, you got it, for what use it is to you. I'll kill everyone who was in that room."

"No you won't. I will. That was always the idea."

"Oh, nice. Formulating a predictable way to humiliate me because now you can kill everyone involved and draw more attention to me? You're so gutless," he snarls at me through curling lips for a second. Nice.
"Whatever. But not Yamada. That was particularly cuntish of you to drag him in. Everyone else, including yourself, go for it. Scribble away and make it a big fiery train crash. That's believable."

That's a good idea actually. I'll think of a reason for them to be going somewhere and—

He suddenly slams a cupboard door after peering inside it for a few seconds.

"Ugh, there's nothing to eat here," he says, surrounded by food. "Did you eat my millionaire's shortbread? Because that would just—pardon the pun—take the fucking cake."

"It's in the bottom right-hand cupboard behind you. It's probably stale now though, I don't think that you should—"

"Ahhh!" he gasps upon opening the cupboard, clearly expecting to find only radishes and edamame beans. After grabbing the carton, he cracks open the plastic lid to admire the processed, sugary, saturated fat of a horror like it's a priceless artifact. It's so full of preservatives that even if left for a thousand years, it'd probably look exactly the same, and L would still think it edible.

"Why are my things always relegated to some pokey hole in the wall, while you have these hideous green leafy things everywhere?" he asks, flicking a wilting cabbage on the counter.

"Answer the question," I insist. He makes a big dying swan drama out of sighing before answering. Do I pay too much attention to his macro and micro expressions and just to him generally, constantly misreading him? Probably. "Why did you lie for me?"

"I didn't lie for you," he lies.

"You definitely didn't lie for yourself. Why did you lie?" I ask again, and watch his shoulders fall while he takes a long time to answer. This should be good.

"Because you wanted me to," he says, tiredly devastated in letting himself down. "Are you happy? I lied because you wanted me to. Unless you think that's a lie. In which case, I don't know, Light, I must just hate myself."

"Why though?"

"Apparently so you could have everything, and have the capacity to kill indiscriminately until there's no one left," he replies like he finds it amusing. "Why should I stand in your way? I knew this would happen. I'm not surprised—just disappointed, for some reason. I still had hope for you until recently. So, go ahead. Have everything and everyone who's worth more than me."

But I didn't want anything else. Just him and the Death Note—that's all I could ever have wanted. Everything. One without the other now feels like nothing but an empty victory. A hollow crown.

"I didn't want anything else," I confess.

"Oh, come on, of course you did. And somehow you're apparently doing well in the polls, which is so shocking anyone could be mistaken for thinking that there might be some jiggery pokery going on there. Even the betting odds. But then, since you killed your main opposition, I don't suppose there's any choice but a dictatorship. I don't know why they're even bothering to hold an election, because you obviously won it again, yippeeeee!"

"There's no need for me to interfere with the polls," I sigh through my automated response. "Aside from it being unnecessary, it's unethical, undemocratic and—"

"And absolutely something that you would stoop to, and not just limited to polls, as we know. But, naturally, I wouldn't suspect that of you. Oh, these damn conspiracy theories."

"L…"

"Go back to the Kantei, Light."

"I wanted you to tell the truth in the inquiry," I admit softly, to which he squints momentarily, as if trying to process my words. His brow furrowing from a mixture of surprise and disbelief.

"No you didn't!" he laughs. "The truth isn't palatable. You wanted me to be your scapegoat. Lee Harvey Oswald, I am. I'm half expecting Jack Ruby to pop up from behind your blasted kumquat tree over there. I mean really, what are theyforexactly?"

Dazed, half-present, and unsure if this is part of an unending dream, my eyes unfocus, birthing a blurred twin of everything I see. I stare unblinkingly at useless, bland, but pretentiously expensive objects we don't use on a shelf behind L while I try to think.

I assured myself that I knew exactly what my goals were, even when I arranged that inquiry—when actually I had none. Only conflicted hopes. I wanted to see him.

"I don't know what I want anymore," I admit to myself as much as to him.

"Well you bought an actual tree, so I suppose that you want kumquats," he replies.

"Fuck the tree," I sigh despondently, purposefully lowering my head to blink twice towards the worktop and break myself out of the disorientating trance I've found myself in. Now I'm only left with anger. "But what I wanted never bothered you before, so I don't know why you'd lie, regardless of what I wanted."

"It hardly matters now," he says, looking me up and down like he's not sure if he knows me or not. "What do you want? As in being here now, what do you want?"

"Ryuk still follows you," I reply after a moment. "He told me that you still possess him and the ownership of the Death Note, even though I physically hold it. Is that true?"

"You can never trust him, can you?" he smiles. "You figured that out quickly enough. Aside from the ones you know, I only know the additional rules that he's told me. He says that it's partly true. You robbed me and assaulted me, and if I reported that as a domestic violence case then… Well, let's face it—nothing would happen to you, no matter how many favours I cashed in. You're still a thief though. In terms of the Death Note, that reportedly counts for something."

"So youarestill the owner?"

"Apparently so, according to the notebook's rules on theft. So Ryuk says," he smiles again, inspecting a shortbread cube.

"You don't believe him?"

"I don't know what to believe. Only that I don't trust him about anything."

"What did he tell you exactly?" I ask, and he glances at me for a second, and sighs.

"Don't laugh like I did, but he said that if stolen, the original owner has 42 days and 56 minutes to retrieve it before they die, but—"

"Wait, 42 days and 56 minutes? 4 2 5 6?"

"I know. It sounds like 'time to die,'" he groans, constantly occupying himself with some stupid thing on the worktop. At the moment, it's a teaspoon he's inspecting. "Funny right?"

I thought that 4256 was Namikawa's address. The security guard must have told him about that, so he's mocking me. He tilts his head as what might be interpreted as confusion glazes over his face after he notices me staring at him. I don't know what he read from whatever expression I have, because I wasn't keeping tabs on myself. I could have been stretching the corners of my mouth apart with my fingers and sticking my tongue out at him for all I know. All I can think is that I can't trust him and never could.

"You don't think it's funny?" he asks.

"It's strange," I answer flatly, to which he shrugs his shoulders, shielding his eyes from me as turns away slightly to rub at his temples with one hand.

"Yeah, in an AI sort of way. No humour of his own. Anyway, lucky for me, I know who stole the notebook. Those 56 minutes could really cut it fine otherwise."

He's lying. But he's a good liar. "So you do have to kill me," I say, like it doesn't matter.

"That's clearly what he wants. Otherwise, you'll have to either give it back like an overdue library book, or kill the librarian. And since you won't return it and you've had considerable practice at killing me, maybe you should just finish the job."

"Yes," I agree without hesitation. Though, again, my stupid alter ego won't let that stand. "But I'd sooner kill the whole world," I add, so quietly I'm not sure if I made a sound. I'm not even sure that I said it at all.

"You're right. I should," I tell him. "It's interesting, considering that Ryuk told me where you'd hidden the notebook. He more or less handed it to me."

"Then why did you rip the floorboards up in the storage room?" he asks. Did he expect me to do some DIY afterwards to put it all back like Stephen would?

"Because that's where you'd hidden it," I sneer back.

"No I didn't, and you know that, since you obviously found it. I just put your general insanity and sudden hatred of wooden flooring down to it being a full moon."

"You didn't hide it there?" I ask. There's no reason why he'd lie about that, but he's not paying much attention now that he's pouring not-so-boiling water into the cafetière. I'll persevere though. "And the Death Note you had is definitely gone? He hasn't just given me another one?"

"No, it's gone because you stole it. I put it somewhere you'd never look, in fear of the holiness of its casings burning you to ashes."

"Where?"

"You don't remember? How can you not remember—are you taking the piss?"

"It was under the floorboards. He guided me to it."

"God, Light. What did you take? It's not like you. And your eyes are blasted even now," he says. Are they? He peers at my eyes in a clinical way, looking vaguely disgusted, like I have a nasty case of conjunctivitis.

"No, I… it doesn't matter. Where did you keep the Death Note?"

"It was in one of my retro British biscuit boxes which—as you do with all of my beautiful things—you relegated to another pokey hole called my office where it can't be seen. All my Wagon Wheels, Jammie Dodgers, Bourbons and Penguins. even the Tunnock's tea cakes…" he laments, biting his lip. My heart bleeds, but I'm more concerned with what's actually relevant.

"But it was under the floorboards in the spare room. That's why I pulled them up. You don't think that I'd do that for the gothic appeal when it was just in a biscuit tin in your office."

"I don't know why you did it, Light."

"Could Ryuk have put it there?"

"Would that even be possible? And it sounds too much like hard work for him anyway."

"Then that just makes it more strange," I think out loud.

"What's strange is you being here," he replies harshly. Ugh, shut up for one minute while I think about this will you?

"But he must have put it under the floorboards because he essentially told me that it was there."

"Light, wherever you found it—and whether Ryuk brought showgirls from Vegas to point at it for you—doesn't really matter. It's a typical Ryuk game that doesn't surprise me. He's bored because I haven't used it often enough for his liking. You'd clearly be a better bet in that regard. And you respond to jump scares like a four-year-old Amish girl watchingThe Sixth Sense."

"No, you're missing the point. He gave it to you in the first place. You found it on your desk in London one day, didn't you? He chose you specifically. He told me that he likes watching how you use it."

"What? That makes it sound like I do a song and dance number every time. I don't know what he's talking about there."

"No, think about it. Why would he be so concerned about you having the Death Note?" I ask. Yes, why?

"Fuck knows, Light. If he wanted me to have it for my impressive Busby Berkeley routines then why would he make sure that you could steal it?"

"Because he wants me dead. You're still the owner of the Death Note, and you still have pages of it, don't you? He thinks that if I've stolen it and you have a limited timescale to get it back, then obviously you'll kill me to get it. That's all he wants. He wanted me to write your name but I wouldn't, then he wanted me to write my own name, but I wouldn't do that either. He wants you to kill me."

"Maybe," he says, chewing after popping more shortbread into his mouth, forcing me to wait until he's finished. "I mean, yeah, why wouldn't he want me to kill you? But it sounds like he wanted you to kill me—or for us to kill each other, if anything. He loves that kind of stuff. All the drama."

"No, he wants you to kill me!"

"Oh, do calm your histrionics, Light; I know it's hard to believe, but not everything's about you. I don't think he cares who has it. He could kill us both at any time, remember? He's got his own Death Note on some emo belt chain—you must have noticed. He's a snazzy dresser, that Ryuk.
"There's definitely no favouritism, anyway. I'm horrible to him, and you're not much better. I'm not saying it's impossible that he initially chose me for some reason—maybe he's interested in law and my taste in music-—but it's equally possible he just dumped it randomly. Helping you steal it is probably just about increasing the entertainment value for himself. Do you still believe that he's you?" he asks.

"Don't you?"

"No. In my opinion, no. I could be wrong, but I hardly ever am," he says, pressing crumbs from the shortbread box onto his fingertips.

"And I researched the shit out of that Ryuk story. It's not easy to interrogate someone when they can walk through walls and fly."

My focus drifts after this point because, really, he is hardly ever wrong, and I need to consider everything he's said while he carries on waffling.

"I learnt a bit about the afterlife, though. Whether it's true or not doesn't matter. I was thinking of writing a book or starting a YouTube channel, just for a laugh, you know? Maybe I could predict my own death and be remembered as the world's greatest psychic barrister—if I die when Ryuk says I will. I'd have to buy some hippy tie-dye T-shirts for the videos, though. Where do they sell those these days?"

"I'm supposed to die on the stairs," I mumble to myself.

"Would you be disappointed or relieved if that story turned out to be a barrel of shit?" L interrupts my train of thought. "He put some effort into it, though. Had me fooled for a while. But apparently, I'm easy to fool, as it turns out," he adds, glaring at me.

He's always had this unsettling ability to convey either nothing or the faintest shadow of emotion through his eyes—and now there's a defeated futility in them. I don't think he means for me to see it, because he tears his gaze away from mine and looks around the room instead. For a long time after I met him, he gave me nothing.

"But as I said, it's all about entertainment for Ryuk," he continues. "He gains the years of the lives the Death Note takes, but I don't think that's his motivation. It's not a deep, pining love which you think he has for me either, because he hates my guts. Oh! Hold on—maybe heisyou after all!"

"You know that I heard you talking to him," I remind him while he gets himself a bar stool, pouring tepid, weak coffee for himself and not offering me any. I should be grateful, really.

Coffee in moderation can benefit microvascular health and can help with headaches. After a substantial impact to the head, the brain can swell but has nowhere to swell to within the confines of the goldfish bowl of a skull it's housed in. Unless the pressure is relieved through cracking the skull open like an egg within minutes or hours, the brain's only option is the hole of the foramen magnum at the base of the cranium, where it herniates to squeeze down towards the spinal column. This is a terrible idea for many reasons, not least because the brainstem, which controls fairly important autonomic functions, such as breathing and the heart rate, is inevitably squashed to oblivion, and the brain's owner dies. It's just something to think about.

"He quotes things I've said to you and things you've said to me," I prompt him again.

"Well, that's not difficult really, is it? He's probably listening to us now. Are you going to let me eat my dinner in peace?" he gestures towards his coffee and ticket to diabetes shortbread on the worktop.

"I know when he's there even when I can't see him."

"No you don't. Maybe you get that feeling that you're being watched, because he is basically a stalker watching a film play out, and he tries to interfere with the script sometimes. But don't think that you have a connection to him. For a while, you couldn't see him, remember? I made you not remember him and not see him, and it's my fault that you do now," he says bitterly. "But I saw him earwigging behind you over there just a minute ago. Did you know that? Did your spidey senses tell you that?"

"That doesn't signify anything. I was distracted," I say, after glancing behind me. And I do sound a little disappointed.

"So that's a no then. You heard us talking and became paranoid. More paranoid. I didn't do anything to ease that and I'm sorry, but I didn't know what to think either at the time. He pulled a lot of CGI shit on me," he says.

He must notice me looking a little crestfallen at the possibility that I've been swept along by madness, since he leans towards me to speak more softly. That's a nice change.

"Look. He loves his wild stories and optical illusions. I believed him. That's why I came back from my death trip. I believed him and wanted to stop it from happening somehow. When he told me that you were going to die, I mean. Clearly I have issues, because that would be a cause for celebration wouldn't it?"

"But now you think that he's lying?"

"Well…" he lets the word drift away as he appears to be reviewing things in his mind. I want it. "I didn't think that way until I was in an MRI scanner—because those things take years. It's just, if you question him enough… Well, I started wondering why I ever believed him in the first place.

"You think that he's just playing with us?"

"I think that truth is always buried in the lies somewhere, always. I just don't know exactly what it is with him yet."

He muses for a moment, compulsively tapping his finger against the edge of the worktop. Because the odds aren't in his favour and he knows it. "What do you think?"

"I need to think about it," I reply. "You've had a headstart on me—I need more time."

Almost like he's frustrated with my answer, or lack of one, he stuffs the last chunk of shortbread into his mouth, spitting crumbs everywhere when he speaks. "Anyway, I don't believe you're him now. And no, I never wanted to kill you."

"You do want to kill me though. One thing I believe is that he wants you to kill me," I tell him in a daze. My stomach suddenly feels as though it's been twisted into a seafarer's knot, it's so nauseating. "You need to kill me."

"Oh, his favourite shtick, yeah. Almost constant in my ear for years," he replies, waving it off like it's nothing. "Anyway, since you insist on being here, do you want a drink?"

"No."

"Not even your favourite exciting beverage of whisky tonic, hold the triple sec because it's too interesting, a slice of lemon and two ice cubes? Not one. Not three.Twoice cubes. Just enough to be annoying because I have to open the freezer to find them, but only two, otherwise the glass looks cluttered and self indulgent."

"That London Fog thing you made once would be nice," I suggest quietly. It was comforting. Probably because of the lavender.

"Fuck off," he replies. "We can barely be in the same room without killing each other, and a London Fog is a love token of immense significance because it's fiddly as fuck to make. Hence I've only made one in my life. And that was under duress."

"Ok. It was nice though," I say mournfully.

"Hm. God, Light. Look at all this," he waves towards the display of bottles which line almost the full width of a wall, while holding an espresso cup that's so minimalist it barely exists. "It's a bar at the Ritz, this place."

Yes, it is quite excessive, but it was an investment. He wasn't supposed to drink it all. Wait.

"He's been telling you to kill me for years?" I ask.

"Yes, which should suggest that I didn't want to do that, or I would have already. You don't know me at all if you think that I was ever onboard with that idea until you beat my head against a wall. It said a lot to me about how you trust me so little and how I couldn't possibly change that."

"You lie."

"Yes, and so do you. But I hoped that you'd know that the one thing you could trust me on is that I loved you. Why? Trauma-based dependency, probably. And your eyelashes," he sniffs. "It was one of the only true things I said to your stooges today. But never mind, L, old boy. You tried,"

He consoles himself by downing his espresso and pouring himself another. "Actually, I said a lot of true things today. No wonder I feel filthy."

"Then why all the lies and secrecy? All you said to me was:'We can't talk about it, he'll hear us. I'd never kill you, it'd be like killing myself.'Yeah," I recount, rolling my eyes at it like I did then. He puts his cup down on a table, acting like he didn't hear me. "You can't blame me for thinking that you're lying again."

But he just starts to root through bottles now, clinking them together on his uninterested stocktake.

"Why were you hiding the Death Note from me?" I ask.

"Well, duh," he says. "Do you really need to ask me that after what you did just to get rid of Tsukino? I read the reports about it while I was in hospital, and I had time to at least try to contemplate everything with a degree of dissociation. Do you know what he did to his wife?" he turns towards me, gripping a wine bottle like he might throw it at me if he doesn't approve of my answer.

"He killed her."

"Yes, and you set it up," he nods. "Because you're good at setups. How did he kill her?"

I feel weirdly nervous now from the topic, his change in tone, and that wine bottle. Some kind of nondescript, pointless emotion.

"We've been over this," I say.

"Well, let's try again. You thought that she was haunting you, didn't you? How did he kill her?"

"He shot her," I answer quietly.

"And what else? What else, Light?"

"This is not a court, L, and I'm not on the stand. I won't be interrogated by you or anyone."

"Fine. I'll tell you then. She had multiple stab wounds. She and Sakurada had several non-fatal but incapacitating injuries.Andhe might have manually strangled her at some point. Got to hand it to him, he went all out. They're not sure if she died from all that, the gunshot, smoke inhalation, or if she burnt to death. Shiori, wasn't it? Did she deserve that or was she just collateral damage?"

"It's unfortunate," I say, scanning the kitchen for bottled water. I ran out?

"No. What he did to her and Sakurada was so heinous. No quick death—just the pure evil of rage—and it wouldn't have happened if it wasn't for you. I was reading the articles thinking: 'It wasn't Tsukino who did this, really—it was Light.' And I felt ashamed that all I'd cared about was how you'd slept with her. And damn me, I still do," he finishes, raking his fingers through his hair in frustration at himself, stalking off to stand with his back to me and study a blank wall, apparently.

I don't know what sort of reaction he wants from me. A deeply felt, guilt-ridden apology? Assurances that I didn't enjoy it and just saw it as a chore? I don't feel anything worth giving to him.

"You can't think that it actually meant anything," I explain, in awe of myself, really. Best not mention Kiyomi—because I think that happened too—just so I could crawl back into my own shitting government-designated residence via bedsheets. I'm fairly certain she took advantage of me. I was clearly unwell, weakened, scraped to hell, and I don't really remember that either. It's probably a blessing.

L stares at me. Old news, fake news, misinformation, disinformation, move on.

"What Tsukino did and how he did it wasn't anything to do with me," I say, and he laughs bitterly.

"Your desire to win has always been the one certainty with you," he says through his tired amusement. "All you want to do is win when you don't even know what winning actually is. Neither of us does."

"What a shame," I sigh, still looking around the room. "Listen, do you know where my bottled water is?"

"My God, the audacity," he sighs. "You had a ludicrously expensive water filter installed. Tap water's fine, even for you."

"No, I'm not drinking that. I had some Nunobiki water delivered. The sulphates and minerals would do us both good. Did you know that it's been one of our best water sources since the Meiji era and—"

"Shut up about your fucking water, Light," he snaps at me. His piercing, aggressive staring makes me shift in my seat and break eye contact

"I don't know what you want me to say."

"Tell me what's in your head."

"That I want my Nunobiki water?" I ask.

"I might be able to help you out there," he says.

"You're holding it hostage?"

"Maybe. Maybe not. Tell me."

I groan through his endless task of trying to understand me. If anyone could, it would be him—then maybe he could tell me. But I'll be damned if I'm going to help him.

"Nobody appreciates what I do or what I subject myself to," I tell him. "They never have. I just exposed how corrupt their government is, but they're still more concerned about who I live with, what I look like, and what I fucking wear."

"I could have told you that," he replies, reaching down to get me a bottle of water which I don't want now that I have it. "You created a nice character for them—of course they don't want that changing. And the thing about people is, they don't want their worldview paradigm challenged. You just did that, and not gradually or kindly, so they'll fixate on gossipy nonsense instead. The press close ranks, and the public doesn't want to hear it anyway. I'm surprised you thought that it'd be any different. By rights, you should lose the election based on that alone. If you'd resigned like you were going to, it might have had more impact. Was Tsukino also a way of drawing attention back to what you want the focus to be on?"

I smile faintly towards my legs. There are several bonuses from what Tsukino did. I hoped that he might notice. Distractions, diversions.

"Itcouldbe—if you pressed the media."

"I'm not going to do that," he says bluntly. "I owe you nothing."

I exhale a molten breath of anger through his denial so suddenly that it leaves me momentarily stunned by my own fury.

"Are you saying that it's fair for me to have what's rightfully mine stolen from me through a bigotry-driven media campaign?" I ask.

"Of course I don't. But what you did in regards to Tsukino was disgusting—and you know it. Even I have standards," he tells me calmly. What standards? "Don't you realise how hypocritical you are in trying to show how corrupt and evil everything is through being corrupt and evil? What do you think Penber would think of you now, Light?"

I hate how he can look so disappointed in me. It's always been a stab in the chest and I don't know how he does it exactly. But surely he should see how what I did was an unfortunate but entirely justified tactic of war. Why would he think that mentioning Penber would affect me in any way?

"I regret any part I had in possibly hastening what Tsukino would have ended up doing anyway, but I didn't think he'd kill them over it," I say, matching his insufferable calm. Well, ok, the probability that Tsukino would go all Berserker was always going to be very high, but how is that my fault? I don't want to discuss this for much longer in case Shiori comes back though. "The fact is, he didn't have to do that. I just thought that he'd kill himself."

"That is NOT the issue, Light. They didn't need to die at all!" L shouts at me.

"Like Penber, you mean?"

"Yes, like Penber—keep throwing him at me. But at least he died quickly. I made it painless for him, not to relish in the destruction like you do."

"You brought up Penber, not me," I smile. "In any case, what Tsukino did was his decision."

"And what you did was yours, knowing that he was practically Phil Spector in how fucking mental he was. You knew that he'd kill them. You hurt people intentionally or through your lack of concern. Everyone's a chess piece to you of a different value and you're willing to sacrifice them all. It's a bit late for half-hearted regrets now. That is, if you feel anything."

"You don't know how ridiculous you sound; acting all superior," I mumble, just to not allow a pause while I think. "You still killed Penber and many others, and you still kept the Death Note from me. What happened was your fault."

"My fault?!" he shouts, marching towards the counter with purpose. I don't move, so he settles for standing across from me again, eyes burning through me like hellfire.

"Yes. I asked you to kill Tsukino and you said no. This is the result."

"I can't believe how you can say that. You're blaming me for this?"

"Yes. You kept the Death Note from me," I remind him, and his mouth falls open in some pretence of being shocked.

"Ok, Captain Batshit, I kept the Death Note from you because, firstly, it'smine,and secondly, because you having free rein over a Death Note would be a whole different story on a mass scale. But you've got it now, so…
"Y'know? I could of sworn I heard the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse doing wheelies in the sky looking for a burger bar for a Big fucking McWhopper. I suppose we know why now. Don't try to batter me again by the way. I've got a baseball bat by the microwave this time."

"I've only used it once since I got it," I say regretfully.

"The baseball bat?"

"No, the Death Note."

"Oh, such restraint! And who was the lucky recipient?"

"Are you serious?" I shout, feeling sudden anger rise and flare from the pit of my stomach like a hot spring geyser. I can't stand how devastated I sound; I'm usually better at regulating myself. He knows what he did but wants me to say it, feeding off the vindictiveness that drove him to do it in the first place. "Namikawa."

"Um… ok?" he says, raising his eyebrows. "But you only met him once, and that was years ago. He's a dingbat, but did he really leave that bad an impression on you? I remember that you had a bee in your crazy bonnet about him just before you bashed my head in, but you never told me why."

"You know full well why!"

"No. The gist of what I got from your insane ramblings was that you thought I'd done something with Namikawa when I actually do all I can to avoid him. If you've killed him, then I won't need to worry about that anymore. So thank you, I guess? He owed me money though, and I can't exactly put a claim in against his estate for that one."

He gazes towards the ceiling, as if contemplating how he might reasonably be reimbursed for a dead man's poker I.O.U., before coming up against hurdles. "Shit."

"Why is everyone trying to tell me that it didn't happen!?" I ask, more furious than confused. "You've even paid off the guards to lie to me. You were with him. In his house that night, you called me while you…"

But I cut myself off there. L squints at me for a few moments, before stealing my latest cigarette from between my fingers, which has acted as more of a chain smoking incense stick. He takes a long drag from it as he scrutinises me, and his bruises still rage against me—the mauves and claret edges seeming more vivid against his pale skin in this light. I feel no responsibility for them. They belong to the stories everyone insists upon telling me.

"I could prove to you that I was on my own at the Firm all night through time-stamped footage, but you still wouldn't believe me, would you?" he asks, having a mix of sadness and anger in his voice now. "Why should you? And as you've so lovingly shown, you'd kill me with your bare hands for no reason, based on whatever fantasies you dream up. Talk about waking up on the wrong side of the bed."

No, it definitely happened—I heard them!But you also saw The Lady hanging from the rafters, remember? And all the other ghosts.Shut up, shut up!

"Tell me the truth, L. Truth. There was no phone call? Look at me!" I demand of him, because he's uncorking the wine bottle now, and I can't fucking stand how easily distracted he is, standing there with my cigarette between his lips when I surely deserve his full attention. I need to see his eyes, as if I could see truth in them. If it were that easy, then I would have run a mile as soon as I saw him.

Eventually he rests the wine bottle on the counter so he can hold the cigarette and look at me. And now, in those bruise-ringed eyes, I see truth—and other things. The pain and confusion and disappointment. Always disappointment. And love behind everything, or something like it. Broken hearts.

As I realise this, Stephen's smirking face leans into view over L's shoulder. I gasp, gripping the edge of the worktop.

"What are you looking at?" L asks, glancing behind him. Nothing. Nothing there.

"Nothing," I say. "So you didn't call me? It really didn't happen?"

"No. So you attacked me for no reason, and if you thought that I'd done whatever with Namikawa, then youkilledhim for no reason. I haven't heard anything about it, but then, I have been out of the loop, shall we say. No one cares, probably. When did you do that?"

"That day."

"Ha! You couldn't have," he laughs,wrinkling his face up from his laughter.

"What do you mean?"

"Well, unless you killed him this afternoon, then you definitely didn't, because he posted something really stupid on the Tokyo Lawdogs forum, and I hate that fucking site. I ask for no daily digest emails but no, they still force them on me. Every single day without fail, there it is, and every single day, I read it."

"That's not possible," I reply, shaking my head. What the fuck is going on?

"I'm not exactly happy about it but I don't care much either way," he shrugs.

"Can I see the forum posts?" I ask quickly. I couldn't find any reports of his death, but just assumed that he was such a nobody that it's not worth reporting. And I had other things to do, like trying to sleep.

But L's in no rush whatsoever. He noisily unwraps the wine bottle before he speaks.

"Because you don't believe me? Ok," he sighs, pulling out his phone and letting his finger ski all over the screen for a minute before holding it up for me.

I take the phone, and it does look like Namikawa posted something this afternoon. I go into his post history and he seems to post nearly hourly about absolutely nothing. Why should anyone care what the bullet train was like this morning? But he's not dead. L, clearly annoyed by how I'm finding this impossible to accept, grabs his phone from my hands.

"So, there you go," he says. "It doesn't look like you did kill him, does it?"

"I wrote his name," I whisper.

"Maybe you didn't spell his name right because you're off your fucking head."

"No."

I wouldn't have made a mistake. Maybe the Death Note won't work for me because L's still the owner? L wouldn't tell me either way though, and Ryuk just appears when he feels like it. Is it a fake Death Note? Did L leave me a fake Death Note? Did I do all this for nothing?

"Maybe you didn't write it all, Light. Who knows?" L smirks bitterly, aggressively stubbing out his cigarette on the plate I've been using as an ashtray. "Regardless, I'm incredibly offended that you'd imagine I'd even touch him with a barge pole," he adds, swigs from the wine bottle, then turns to spit it into the sink in repulsion. "Fuck! This tastes like it's been dredged from a sewer pipe! Did you just buy this for the nice label?" he asks, holding up the bottle like evidence at a crime scene.

"I don't know what happened." I don't understand. I wouldn't have made a mistake. Is L playing me?

"You said that this afternoon. Like it could ever possibly be an excuse," he says, still pursing up his face in disgust and swilling out his mouth with whatever dregs of cold coffee he had left in the cafetiere, spitting it into the sink while he tilts the offending wine to gurgle down the plughole as well. "I hope we're talking about why you beat me up rather than whoever's responsible for buying this bottle of whatever it is."

"I bought it. It was a limited edition of five," I tell him distractedly, staring at the worktop, then jolting back from the sound of glass shattering nearby. L must have thrown the bottle towards the recycling with some force and missed.

"Well, now it's a limited edition of four," he says. If the Death Note won't work for me for whatever reason, that means L still has it and I have nothing. I can't use it to defend myself and he knows it.

"I'm sorry," I whisper.

"It's ok. I've got rid of it now."

"No, for what happened." I glance up at him just as he turns to glare at me.

"When you put me in hospital, you mean?" he asks.

"I'm not trying to excuse myself. I'm not justifying it. I don't… But I don't understand! I heard you, L. You called me so I could hear you with him."

"Namikawa?"

"Yes."

"Wow. Well that's an unpleasant image," he says, pouring himself another shot of coffee while pretending to be surprised, blinking it away. "Why?"

"Because you're vindictive and you're like a dog with six dicks!" I shout, and after a moment simply staring at me in apparent disbelief, holding his coffee like he's just heard that the Lusitania sank, until he bursts into laughter. This angers me greatly.

"Yeah, laugh, laugh. I heard both of you! I could see it in my head. I even put my phone in the microwave… like I could kill what I heard on it," I say, realising that I'm grasping the side of my head like I'm hopelessly disturbed. He stands to open the microwave door.

"Oh. So you did. And I think you killed the microwave as well. How am I supposed to eat anything slightly warm here ever again?"

"I did hear you, L," I tell him. "I heard you with Namikawa."

"So you completely fucked up killing him but you did nearly did kill me for it? Well, your imagination is truly a wonder of modern times," he says, grabbing my cigarette box and lighter from the worktop. "But nothing would excuse what you did to me. You really did nearly kill me."

Did I though? I don't remember it like it actually happened. It's a film I don't quite remember, but I wanted to take responsibility for it even if I had nothing to do with it. I've tried to remember it in a logical, fluid order of events, but I don't have a memory of it as something I actually experienced. Just flashes. Fragments. L walking in, tired and angry. My vision shaking as though I'm running towards him, light and dark, skin and fabric-covered arms brushing in front of my eyes like bird wings, punches I don't feel, everything seems so distorted and… Red hands. I touched his face. He was broken on the floor leaning against the wall. Against my labradorite tiles. I turn in my chair now to look at them and the blood stains on the floor. All that doesn't feel like it really did happen, but it must have. All the ghosts. No.

"L, I—"

"Don't insult me by apologising now," he adds, a new cigarette bobbing up and down between his lips with every syllable as he lights it. "At least I got some sleep in the hospital. I was unconscious for a lot of it, but I'm sure it did me some good all the same."

"L, will you stop joking? Stop trying to joke about everything, it's serious!" I shout at him. He's silent and still for a moment then, just staring at his coffee like it's a scrying mirror.

"I have to, because I can't think of another way to deal with this and still function," he says quietly. "This is a pretty cataclysmic thing you've done to me, Light. After everything, you betrayed me. After all these years and promises. You proven me wrong to have hope for you. Stupid me trusted you for a minute there. I can't be 100% right all the time, I suppose."

"It's more complicated than—"

"It's not complicated. First, you married Kiyomi and had a baby. It should have ended there, but no. You engineered it not ending there, though I take some of the responsibility for that and everything that happened since. But then you wouldn't resign when you promised me that you would. Then you caused the murder of two innocent people through seducing some poor girl so you wouldn't lose the election. Then you stole the Death Note. Then you put me in hospital. And then you humiliated me in front of a panel of absolute bastards out of spite.
"You're everything B said that you were, and I defended you. You've isolated me as much as you can because of your jealousy—don't think I don't know that. You wanted to be the only thing in my life, and you really didn't need to do that, Light. You already mattered more to me than anything else in the world. And you ruined it. So, no. It's not complicated. And I will laugh at all of it. Because I have to."

So I watch him while he's looking down at the cigarette smouldering between his fingers, and focus on the cut on his hairline, which he's not covering like he had this afternoon. He has remnants of bruises and blotches all over his face, which will fade, but the cut looks like a thin fracture in porcelain somehow, it looks so delicate. He must have just had suctres, so it couldn't have been that bad, but I feel like it should be filled with gold to preserve his damage as something beautiful.

I impulsively reach towards him across the worktop without thinking, not realising it until L looks furiously at me, pulling away from my outstretched hand.

"You want to see your handiwork close up?" he asks.

"I won't hurt you," I whisper, but why should he believe me, if I did this? All the same, he relents, turning his face slightly to one side to let me touch his face.

My fingertips barely glance over bruises before gently moving towards the cut on his forehead, and I feel such sorrow from each discolouration, more than if they were my own. I'm eternal and heal quickly. He's not and doesn't. When I reach the cut, he suddenly flinches like I'm an electric shock, closing his eyes and pulling away from me again.

"I didn't do this, L," I tell him quietly, my voice sounding strangely thick with heartbroken desperation. It feels so heavy on me, I can't stand it. But his expression hardens immediately as he goes back to occupying himself with the crap he's spread out on the worktop. I didn't do this to him though. I've dreamt about it, yes, but the thought of the aftermath and the loss of him always stopped me. I wouldn't do that. I didn't.
Why do I have bruised knuckles then? Why am I still covered in bruises myself?You know that you did, that's why.

"I didn't do it," I tell him again, but the doubt in myself is gorging itself like a parasite, and my words sound empty."Larsen—"

"I can assure you that you did," he replies harshly, probably more angry because I used his name. "Next you'll try to tell me that I mistook you for someone else."

"But I wouldn't do that, I…"

"You would, and you did. I remember it very clearly," he tells me. "You know, apart from my ridiculous family, who've probably forgotten it, do you know how many people know my birth name? B, and you. And you try to use it on me like a weapon. Don't try to make yourself a sympathetic character here, Light. Wah wah wah, you don't remember it, you hadn't been sleeping, you're very stressed, oh the bigotry!—well, welcome to my entire life so far. Excuses won't work with me. You fucked me up."

For some reason I want to ask him if he's absolutely sure, but I think he'd probably plant me upside down in that kumquat tree pot if I did. I just can't believe it when I don't remember it.

"I don't know what reality is anymore when nearly everything feels fake," I tell him. "Everything's synthetic."

"Oh! Is it? Well, this!" he says furiously, turning to point to the horrific stitched cut on the back of his head which I squirm away from, even if it's thankfully partially veiled under his hair. "This is reality."

"I know that." I swallow. I don't know why.

"Good. Gaslighting will only go so far. Sounds like you were on bath salts to me."

"I didn't take anything!"

"Haaaa… then what a lovely new term in office we can all look forward to. I don't know, Light. If you feel like that, see a doctor. Personally, though, I think you should never take whatever you took again, because you were absolutely insane. It was like you were possessed or something. You definitely can't afford to be like that with a kid around, but frankly, he deserves better than having you in his life, full stop. So does Kiyomi, for that matter. B was right. Fuck it, I hate it when B's right," he says, thumping a glancing blow of his fist off the worktop.

"But I really didn't take anything."

"Please. Don't say that you don't remember because you were out of your mind and life is a big nonsensical dream to you. It'll make no difference to me. After what you've done recently, I don't think that this is salvageable in any way," he tells me firmly and incredibly coldly, like he made his mind up a long time ago.

"Are you firing me like one of your paralegals, L?" I ask.

"You did this, Light. Not me," he replies. I don't object or say anything. I can only reach for my cigarette case and lighter in front of him to give myself something to do. What he said isn't hitting me like I'd expect. It's not important, really. I can deal with that anytime. But my mind stutters and starts.
"If you won't give the Death Note back, then good luck to you, but I'm not giving up ownership of it," I hear him say. "I thought that it was funny when the press called it 'The Curse,' because that's exactly what it is. Remember that, whenever you use it. That thing will be the death of you."

"L, can we just—"

"No."

"But—"

"I'm leaving," he says, which shuts me down for a moment. Leaving. Again.

"Where to?"

"I don't know. London, maybe. France. Maybe some shed in the Outer Hebrides."

"Oh, yeah!" I laugh. "Run away again back to B."

"I'm not running away, Light. I'm letting you know that I'm leaving."

"But what if Ryuk was telling the truth about you needing to get it back though? The forty-two days thing."

"Oh, yes, and the fifty-six minutes, can't forget those," he laughs. "Well, I think I'm just going to roll the dice on that one. Since it doesn't seem to be working for you, did you bring the Death Note to return it to me?" he asks.

For some reason I feel oddly guilty, like a child who's been caught in a lie but is too stubborn to admit to it. And I've been doing that my whole life. I'm a thief, and I won't return what I stole. Is this a test?

"No," I reply.

"No," he echoes, sounding unsurprised but disappointed all the same, and pauses to give me another death stare. "And you're not going to, are you," he states. It's not even a question.

"I think we need to figure out what our options are," I say.

"No we don't. Goodbye, good luck, don't contact me again unless it's to return the notebook. And I know you well enough to know that you won't do that," he says, still so cold in tone and resigned to it.

I cover my head with my hands and stay that way, even after he finishes speaking. Moments pass, and what he said is still secondary because I'm so stuck on the realisation that I was wrong, and I don't understand how it happened. I was a straight A student. I climbed to the highest position in the country to look down on everything I own. How did I let this happen?

"I must just be mad after all," I tell myself, though my mind rebels against it. I try to reverse over the days to pick out times that become indistinct, and maybe then I can find a commonality that… "No, something else happened here," I say rushingly, looking up at him.

"We can't fix this, Light," he interrupts me, and though he sounds quiet and kind now, it hurts me more than anything else he's said. "You know that as well as I do. You can't forgive me and now I can't forgive you, and if I die in however many days, I just lost a bet, that's all. Do you agree?"

I don't agree; so I say nothing. I breathe out, closing my eyes and dropping my head to it, so he must take that as meaning something or other. After a few seconds, I feel his hand stroke my hair a little, and I intend to stand, but feel weak and lightheaded. Not from any stupid emotional shit, but because I went past eating days ago, I think. Eating has become an unnecessary chore, and now I think of every cell in my autophagic body dying and regenerating until they can't anymore. Poetry.

"Can I just ask you something else about what you mentioned in the inquiry?" I ask.

Looking drained and grey from my question, he sighs. "Ok."

He needs to sleep more and eat something which isn't just coffee or sugar, but I know that he won't. Please try to look after yourself instead of assuming that you don't have to, L. I don't want this burden.

"How long have you known about Higuchi's death? About it being a murder, I mean. You never mentioned it."

"Oh fuck, it never mattered anyway," he groans.

"No, but I want to know if it was to do with what Penber knew about him."

"I think we know that it wasn't anything to do with Penber. You know what I didn't say," he grumbles.

"About the call girls and how they were treated?"

"Oh, well yeah. Sharon knows about that. Ask Sharon if you want graphic details."

"I can't quite call on the House Madam, can I? But no, I don't care about that. I want to know what you know and why you never mentioned it."

"Look, it just isn't important. Like I said this afternoon, after Higuchi died, I was asked to clean up the details—mostly to have his toxicology results altered—then chair that fake inquiry," he says, throwing his hand in the air to emphasise how unnecessary he thinks this is.

"And?" I ask.

"And that's it. I don't make a habit of looking for more work—bloody investigations like some fucking dropout detective—I don't need to!"

"Don't be vague with me now."

"I'm not!" he tells me, but I think I might underestimate the effect of my disapproving stare, because he rolls his eyes eventually and gives up. "AndI didn't buy the story that I was supposed to sell."

"But you must have been used to that. Defence law is full of it."

"Yes, but I always want to know the truth. You know that. But I didn't care enough to look into it too deeply—I was just sad about the car mostly. The car had been dumped on its side in the breaker's yard and I noticed that the brake lines had been sliced, and that was it. After the accident reconstruction and toxicology reports, it was decided that it was an accident, so that's what it was. No forensics necessary. There would be too many suspects anyway; his life even outside of politics was a minefield. From what I'd heard of him, he got what he deserved. I didn't do it, if that's what you think."

"No. I don't think that anymore," I say, and he smiles slightly like he can't quite stop himself.

"You thought that I did?"

"It crossed my mind."

"Well, I'm glad that the thought didn't cross too far," he says in amused annoyance. "You didn't seem to approve of it being spoken of at all."

"I didn't want it being discussed because I need Mikami for the election. I don't need a murder scandal to rival Tsukino's for top billing in the news this week."

"No, I suppose not. So, what do you think?"

"Penber had notes about the aide rumour in his desk. You must have seen them. You know, about that aide? The girl who died of an overdose at one party?"

"Oh, yeah. And was buried on the grounds somewhere?" he asks, rubbing the back of his neck. He looks so tired.

"Under the foundations of the House library extension, I heard."

"Dramatic. Well, I heard variations on that. And her ghost walking down corridors holding her decapitated head under her arm, things like that."

I smile as he does at how folktales evolve over time, but I'm desperately sad, trying to string out any opportunity to talk with him about anything without raising our voices. It might be the last time I can. And Higuchi will be the first and last subject that we discuss. We should finish it.

"You don't believe the story then?" I ask.

"Anything's possible in that place. It's like a portal to Hell or something. Who's got the time or inclination to dig up the grounds of a government building when there's no proof that anything happened, though? I mean, didyouever meet her?"

"I don't think so," I reply, suddenly not wanting anything to do with it even though I kept it alive for so long. "It might have happened before I was there."

"Maybe, but they're unsubstantiated rumours and nobody has any time for that. So you think Mikami killed Higuchi then?" he asks.

"I don't know. Mikami or Jeevas, maybe. Jeevas didn't think he was getting enough of a cut, I remember that. He liked old cars, so he'd probably know how to wreck one. He might have started rumours about the aide himself for a bit more clout."

"Even Jeevas wouldn't think dead aides at his parties was a selling point, surely?"

"You'd be surprised," I say. "Mikami told me that Higuchi and Jeevas ruined his life over something he did. By 'ruined,' he probably meant the drugs. You know how Jeevas used to push them onto people until they were addicts."

"Yes, I remember his cottage industry in the House well. What a lovely man he was. Rest in billions of pieces, Jeevas," he says thoughtfully, watching his fingers lazily rotate his empty wine glass to trace small circles on the worktop, like a planchette on a Ouija board. It's strangely hypnotic, bringing an atmosphere of enforced calm, heavy as a weighted blanket over us.
"It's comforting to blame others, but ultimately, aren't we responsible for the mistakes we make?" he asks in English, for some reason. He must be referring to Mikami, but it seems like such a loaded question.

"Probably," I answer, refusing a bilingual conference. "But maybe contributing factors should be considered, depending on the case. Extenuating circumstances."

"Not everything's black and white?"

"Not always."

"Oh. You've changed again, haven't you?" he says softly as he gazes at me, like he just got what he wanted without me noticing. I feel violated from it and don't know why. "What a shame."

"This must be a talent of mine which I wasn't aware of, but have I disappointed you again, L?"

"Not at all. As long as you extend that viewpoint to others and not just to whatever benefits you," he says. Because I applied that same forgiving logic to him, and the masochist in him disapproves?
He fills his wine glass with whisky instead, but he had codeine not long ago. This is how accidents happen.

"Penber was looking into what Higuchi was doing. I never knew what he found out, if anything. You mentioned a dossier and notes."

"Why don't you call him 'Raye,' Light? That's what you knew him as," he grumbles, tapping ash from his cigarette with the hurt, disdainful look of the forsaken on his face. As he drinks his shot of whisky like a medicine he's used to, a repressed smile lifts one corner of my mouth, but he can't distract me.

"Tell me about his dossier."

"He found out enough."

"What do you mean? I saw what was in his desk. There was nothing of any real value. You burned some things, though, didn't you?"

"No," he says, and my eyes narrow in anger, and he notices. "Not much anyway. You saw what I left."

He, of all people, has no right to hold onto anything, least of all something that should be mine. I should be happy if he didn't destroy everything, but it means that he lied to me again and I believed him. Did he lie or did I assume, though? But rather than allow myself to get angry, I swallow slowly.

"What did you take?" I ask.

"A postmarked copy of a dossier," he begins, then pauses, as if weighing up how much to tell me. I'm too tired for mind games, but draw on my cigarette as if to prepare myself anyway.

"He'd submitted it to The Lady, the NPA, and the Prosecutor General. It covered everything," he says.

He rubs his forehead, grimacing faintly, as if trying to conceal how much living pains him. Like how I'm trying to hide that I'm looking at him.

Maybe he should see a doctor. But that doesn't matter right now—not until he's told me everything. He's more likely to make mistakes as he is.

"Can I read it?" I ask, and it's like I just jabbed him with a cattle prod.

"No," he states emphatically. He straightens himself, smooths his hair, and his expression hardens into a blank, beautiful mask of unaffectedness. He's a lie. So how can I love him so much? I need the dossier.

"I just thought that it'd be easier," I say.

"I don't do easy," he snaps at me, some dark fire of anger flashing across his face like electricity through a storm cloud. "Don't worry about me."

He leaves a pause for me that I do not fill. Instead, I take a drag of my cigarette, exhaling slowly, and when I do, he mirrors me.

"If you really want to know," he says calmly, "the dossier covered everything, including Higuchi and all that demonic stag night shit. Not much, but enough to warrant an investigation at least, and blow the whole thing wide open. But of course there's no official record of them being received. And pretty soon after he sent them, he was killed. Is that what you want to know?"

"Would that be the evidence you had against The Lady that you wouldn't give me?" I ask

"Of course it was," he replies, like it's stupidly obvious. "If I'd given that to you then you wouldn't have gotten anywhere, because you could've destroyed the state with it, not just the government. International governments would be implicated by some of the accusations in that dossier, and… There were many reasons why I wouldn't give you that."

"You protected them then."

"Don't be stupid—why would I care about them? I protected you, actually. I did that a lot, like I did again today in the inquiry. I've always felt like I had to protect you from yourself. I mean, look at what you do when left to your own devices. And was it ever appreciated? No."

"But they used you, L. You allowed them to."

"Yes," he nods, and swirls the meagre millimeters of whisky has left in his glass for a few moments before drinking it.
"They did use me. But it was a transaction. Killing Penber got me into the government. I just had to prove myself as a miracle maker first. A fixer. I've spent my life having to prove myself in one way or another before anyone took me seriously."

I could describe my dealings with society in a similar way—the unacknowledged, unspoken unfairness of it.

"I know," I murmur after a heavy pause. Then another.

"Yes," he agrees tenderly all of a sudden. "I think you do."

We look at each other for too long, and this unexpected, unguarded sharing of empathy between us is something we both look away from, to shatter it.

"So, yes," he continues. "They used me to kill a good man. It didn't endear me to them. He was presented to me as a kind of super-radical insurgent. I didn't bother to look through his notes until after Higuchi died. And then I knew. And later I found out that he was your friend, or whatever he was to you. It wouldn't have been the best icebreaker."

"What did his dossier say? Do you have it now?"

"Thatis part of my dead man's switch. You'll probably read it like everyone else soon enough," he says with a slightly bitter smile.

I wipe my hand across my face like I'm sweating, but I'm freezing cold.

"I can give you an overview of it, though," he adds. "Along with my annotations with sources about them and world governments, you have a nice little incendiary device. Manipulations, misuse of public funds. Just your garden-variety longstanding state corruption. Oh, and the child abuse circle, a captured media, assorted suspicious deaths—which weren't anything to do with me, by the way. Huge cover-up, scandal central.
"Another MP I won't mention, because they're still alive and don't deserve that changing, gave me notes corroborating Penber's. You should be able to use it to your advantage; it ties in with what you've done. Just a heads-up. Ruin them without the Death Note, Light. That'd be a worse punishment and might change the world, or at least provide an opportunity. I'd be proud of you then."

Like all I've ever wanted in life is for him to be proud of me. It never was. But I don't know how to reply to him. I often don't know how to reply to things he says, and maybe that's the problem.

"What else did Penber have?" I say, tapping the ash from my cigarette again, playing the part of a character in one of his film noirs. All smoke concealing our endless lies and the feelings we wish we didn't have.

"Just notes."

"Could you give them to me?"

"Haven't you taken enough from me?!" he says, suddenly exploding with anger, but calms himself down again just as quickly.

"You've said that some mentioned me and you destroyed them. That's not true though, is it? You didn't destroy them."

"It's nothing for you to worry about," he says, but guarded. He is getting lax, isn't he?

"I have a right to know. And about Higuchi's death. I was researching him for Penber for a while, and I want to know what he had."

"You want to see if it points to who killed him so you can shake their hand?" he laughs, wiping his hand across the worktop to sweep the crumbs he left on it to the floor instead.
"What makes you think they're still alive? I was around by then and The Cabinet wanted a few people off their hands. But I don't know. Higuchi had a lot of leverage at his disposal, and with that incurs risk. MPs and civil servants were benefiting from him all over the Party. Or not as the case may be. I mean, you did when you became an MP, didn't you?"

I extend and twist my foot slightly to look at how the trademark red lacquer soles of my Christian Louboutin 'Greggo' Oxfords are holding up. Not well, unfortunately. Lace up stacked heels with a round cap toe in patent calf leather you can see your reflection in when properly polished. I didn't take them off when I came in, because one way or another I didn't think that I'd be staying long. The lacquer makes my shoes look like I've been walking through the blood of those who die because of me. L's blood.

"I wouldn't say that I benefited," I reply.

"Of course," he smiles, pouring himself more whisky. "What I'm saying is, some people either didn't benefit or were beholden to him, and if you factor in his extremely dubious history, as far as suspects go, it was like Murder on the Orient Express. Mikami had an axe to grind, for example. He was shifty if anyone mentioned Higuchi's name."

"So you do think that Mikami cut his brakes?"

"No."

"I thought that you did. Why not?"

"Too obvious."

"Well, somebody did it."

"Do you care who it was?" he asks, disinterestedly watching his new dose of whisky swirl inside his glass as he holds it.

"No, not really," I shrug.

"That's good."

"Why? You know who it was?"

"Yes."

"Who?"

"You."

I'm so stunned for a moment, I forget to breathe. He looks up at me slowly, and all I can do is laugh.

"You're joking. What makes you think that?" I ask. "Mikami admitted to me just before that he did it because he wanted me to help him. He thinks you might publicly accuse him or something. Why would you think that I did it?"

He drinks his whisky and frowns as he walks towards his office.

"Wait there a minute," he calls back to me, while I sit dumbfounded. Why would he think that? He's gone for a few minutes, and the loss of him fades like a scent to increase the shocked silence. Why would he think that?

When he returns, he draws two pieces of paper out of a protective plastic sleeve to place one in front of me without saying a word. I look over it, but it's mostly blank apart from a scribbled note of a time and date and the words: 'Benefits reform petition' in Raye's handwriting. It's tinged yellow with age.

"What's this got to do with me?" I ask.

"Good question—we'll get there," L says, purposefully not looking at me, I think. "This was hidden in Penber's desk, so it had to be important."

"It's just a note," I say, picking it up to check the other side before placing it back down on the worktop "Just a date for a petition response meeting, like he wrote it during a phone call. It doesn't mean anything."

"He wrote something here," he tells me, pointing at a blank area above the note. "With an inkless pen or something. Can you see it?

"No," I answer, holding up the paper to shift it around in the light.

"Now come on, he wasn't that clever. Pretty cliché if you ask me," he says. "Pay attention then. I remembered 80s crime dramas about indentation recovery and relived my kindergarten days for this."

He unceremoniously places a piece of tracing paper in front of me, which is dark—almost completely rubbed over with the side of pencil. White against graphite, Raye's handwriting hovers there like a ghost.

'Victim Y: researcher, male, 23. Drugged (Rohypnol in alcohol) February 28, 2010, by Jeevas for probable SA by Higuchi. Informant: Mikami, T. Victim removed from scene. Presumed memory impairment—likely unavailable as a witness. Informant reluctant.'

Penber did know. Traitor. I keep rereading it in silence and feel nothing except a drop in temperature around me which I retract from.

"Sometimes you have to do more than just scratch," I say, glancing up at L curiously as he leans over Penber's note. Over me. I sit beneath his shadow.

"Yeah," he smiles sadly, placing his hand on my back for a moment, before pulling away as if burned by me.

"So you knew about this before the inquiry?" I ask, going back to reading over the few lines over and over on a loop while his voice flows over me.

"Yes. And then I saw you. And I met you. And I felt like you'd been made for me," he says, sounding strangely relieved. Yes, I felt that about him too. Butkoi no yokanis for girls with hearts and stars plastered all over their rooms. It's not for real life. The inevitability of him isn't something I want to admit could touch me.

He murders any fondness by suddenly pulling away from the table to stand like the Prosecution in a courtroom.

"You took your time killing him, Light."

"Ha," I breathe out. "I didn't really kill him. I just damaged his car. He killed himself. I'm a murderer in all ways but one, you said."

"You don't have to talk about it."

"No, I'm proud of it," I say, and it feels almost dreamlike. Words voice themselves. "I wanted to hurt him, so I blackmailed him. He never knew that it was me though; I was anonymous. It was all through letters. I was an MP who knew about him assaulting a researcher, as far as he knew. I think he thought that it was Mikami, maybe Raye. Maybe Jeevas. In person, no one would think that I remembered anything, and no one did, apparently. But then I thought that he'd killed Raye. I would have done it anyway though."

"Not so much of an unreliable witness then."

"I talked to Mikami about it before I came here, actually. He was surprised. He said that nothing really happened. He said that Jeevas drugged me, but that he got me out before anything happened."

"And you believe him?"

"He could be telling the truth. Higuchi blacklisted him, so that could be why, maybe. I don't know for sure though. He denied telling Raye anything, so he must have beenreallydrunk. Or he lied," I exhale, pushing the paper away so I can look at him instead. "Well, you always were fond of murderers weren't you? And you always knew."

"Well, you had a motive, but I couldn't be sure until I met you. So I did," he says with a sigh, carefully putting the papers back into the plastic sleeve.
"I wanted to meet the one who did it, because it was quite a classy act, I thought. Well done. It takes a lot to impress me, but that did. You did. I've wanted to tell you that for so long."

"Why didn't you?" I ask, and he laughs.

"It wasn't possible even if it was important, which it wasn't. I didn't go out there for a hook-up based on that, by the way. I didn't know what you looked like. I could have found out, but I didn't care enough. It didn't matter. I knew your name and that you were an MP by then. You'd been promoted from being backbencher to a deputy as a result of Higuchi dying. Clever. So I called for you to testify at the inquiry to satisfy my curiosity, read your blandly eloquent police statement which cured my insomnia, and didn't think about you after that.
"But then I saw you at Aizawa's funeral and asked someone who you were, and… yeah."

"I didn't notice you," I tell him regretfully. I should have known he was there.

"I'm not meant to be noticed though," he replies, with a small, sly smile ghosting his lips.
"So there you were, and, of course, you had to be the most glorious thing I'd ever seen. Like there was a spotlight on you. There he is," he trails off into a whisper, dreamily into the distance, as if reliving the sight of me on a cloudy day in a cemetery.

Funerals always did suit me.

Then, as if shaking off the image he has of me, he shifts suddenly and reaches for his whisky in a wine glass. "And then I saw you at Haruki's."

"Didyou know that I was going to be there?" I ask.

"Actually, no," he smiles. "That must have been more of your fate stuff in action. Just a joke of the universe. I mean, yeah, I know, I saw him. You don't have to keep throwing him in my face everywhere I go."

"I didn't notice you there either."

"Well you obviously weren't terribly observant. You seemed occupied enough, from what I remember. So was I, actually. The chocolate fondant there was a work of beauty.
"Anyway, it wasn't difficult to figure out who you were when Penber had tried to hide this particular page in a compartment in his desk, so it had to be significant even if it doesn't look that way on the face of it. And he didn't even try with the victim's codename, did he? He basically wrote a biography of you in terms of information, but I don't think he ever wanted to use it. He was trying to protect you, I think."

"Do you think so? Mikami thought that. I never knew that he was so patronising."

"Not patronising. It was kind of him," L says, weirdly respectful of someone he killed without knowing him.

"After I was made an MP, he encouraged me to be friendly with Jeevas and Higuchi; for information, you know. And for me to go to those parties. I can only guess that he was also testing to see if I did remember anything—if I'd crack or something. But no. He didn't know me well enough. I just forgot about it because it didn't serve me. Anyway, then he died. And Higuchi died. And Jeevas died. Did all this have any bearing on you killing Jeevas the way you did?"

"Well, it didn't help, put it that way."

"Explain," I say. "I want to know why you made him die the way he did."

"It's pretty obvious, isn't it? He was Jeevas. I don't want to upset you."

"I thought we'd established by now that I have no feelingstoupset. Tell me," I say, and hear him exhale his unwillingness.

"Not long after the inquiry, he told me that you enthusiastically did things to ingratiate yourself with Higuchi. I think 'money-grabbing whore' were the words he used."

I look up at him with shock and horror tightening my throat. You fucking fuck, Jeevas. If you weren't dead already, I'd drown you in a blocked toilet.

"I wouldn't have believed him anyway, don't worry," L assures me. Well, I'd fucking hope not! "Apart from anything else, I had far more to offer than Higuchi, but you were so painfully grudging and dignified, it was like walking into a fridge for a long, long while. I can't imagine you being the life of any party, no offence. They wouldn't spare the effort for you."

"Like you did?" I ask, but he just turns his face away.

Look at me.

"They didn't know what you were. Or what you could be," he says quietly.

I said,look at me.

"But Jeevas had plenty of stories—some more useful than others," he continues. "Not just about you. He did seem to have a particular fixation with you though, like he felt wronged by you in some way. I should have written his name earlier, but he blabbed a lot to Mihael, so that was useful. Itmighthave been overkill. I'd feel bad about it, but then I remember him and I don't feel so bad anymore."

"As far as goodbye presents go, it was quite unusual," I smile weakly at him, but shaking from the cold, still. Jeevas. "He knew about us, didn't he?"

"Was he ever sober enough to enact a thought process of any degree of difficulty though? I think that was just his standard banter, because woooo, resident gay man who didn't lie about it. When I obviously disregarded his crap, he wanted The Lady to sack me for no reason, but then she iced him out. I've known a lot of people like him. Maybe I underestimated him."

"Maybe," I reply softly.

"Are you ok?" he asks.

"Raye would've forgiven you," I tell him. The stupid fuck probably would have. He dripped forgiveness, wisdom and enlightenment everywhere in a place where it had no value, but he had a boneheaded, ruthless streak. And Naomi can never buy enough self-help books to replace him.
"He knew what he was risking. I didn't try to stop him and I should have. But like Naomi said to me: the government had him killed, not anyone in particular."

"That's consoling hopium, thank you," he says, forcing a smile, but dismisses it straight away. "Didyouever forgive me really, though?"

"I told you, didn't I?" I say wearily. "I didn't have a choice but to forgive you. I told you. How many times do I need to tell you before you believe me? Why can't you?"

"I don't know anymore, Light. I don't know," he replies sadly. "It was your raison d'être though, wasn't it? It must have been. You got Mikami to research it, for how long?"

"All I wanted was to know who killed him and have it known publicly for there to be justice. Just for everything to be known."

"Well, I'm the one who killed Penber. Shouldn't you do something?" he asks, lazily gesturing like he's revealing himself as a big surprise. "Where's your justice?"

"If I suspected you of anything, I ignored it, for one reason or another. But after you'd admitted your part in it, I just wanted it to go away because…" I tell him, unable to finish, so just weakly wave my hand between the two of us, ruined by my own failures. "So I live with it. I did tell you though."

"I shouldn't have come back, should I?" he says after a few moments. "After The Judge died, I should have just stayed there."

"Yes."

"Yes," he nods, and I watch a shift in his expression and demeanor until he looks like a lost child in a place he doesn't recognise. What could have been. What could have been avoided.
"But I wouldn't lose the time we had together for anything," he tells me with some sense of urgency, following it with a regretful half-smile. "That's mad, isn't it? I'm sorry."

"So am I," I reply coldly, but seem determined to betray myself, pushing my hair back in frustration after lying to him and myself."I loved you then and I love you still and I hate what you've done to me. But I wouldn't change it."

L stares at me before backing away, looking like I'm a vicious wolf sharpening knives against each other.

"No… you're not dragging me back into this," he says.

"I'm not dragging you anywhere. You're leaving, aren't you?"

The words settle in the quiet then, like leaves after the breeze dies down. For once, he doesn't have a razor of a reply. He sits back at the counter, looking at me, before reaching for my hands.

"Listen. Write my name now? You have pages on you, don't you? If you don't, I do," he says, leaning toward me. "Let me see you do it. Stay with me until I'm gone?" He pauses, looking so desolate as he lightly brushes my hair away from the side of my face.Kiss me before you go?

"What?!" I exclaim, snapping out of it and trying to pull my hands away. He won't let go. "Don't ask me to do that."

"You're my main inheritor—you get nearly everything," he continues, quietly determined. "I'mtired, Light. I might be dead in less than two months anyway, and I've never liked waiting for anything. Then the Death Note really will be yours. I'd just rather that you did it. Now. Didn't you say: 'I'd want your face to be the last face I'd see'? I feel that way."

"You know I can't do that to you," I whisper, sounding like he just gutted me, because he has.

He stares at me for a long moment before shoving my hands away from him, standing to turn away. "Then you're useless to me."

"What's with the sudden suicidal act?" I ask, rising to stand as an inverted reflection of him—a reversed mirrored twin of him. His apparent sincerity is disarming, but I can't trust anything about him. Not one thing. Why does he have to hurt me all the time?

"I'm not acting," he says.

"So you're just being manipulative again?"

He turns, slowly walking around the counter until we're facing each other. Cursive and fluid in a world full of numbers.

"If you think that's what I am, then why don't you do us both a favour and kill me?" he asks, leaning closer, until I feel trapped by what he says. Suddenly, all I can see is him. All there is is him. My breath catches in my throat when his lips barely touch mine, and he holds my arms like I'm just a statue. Like that statue of myself that I kissed before I killed it, smashing it to pieces like everything else I touch.

"You've dreamt of it. I'll make it just how you want it," he tells me, with a feather-light, murmuring intimacy. The quiet clicks of his voice shiver up my spine like water. "Do you remember when I asked you if you'd readSong of Solomon?" he whispers against my mouth, and I inhale it because I have no choice. I drink it in.

"We hadn't known each other long," I answer quietly, and then remember, and anger brings some sense to me again. "It was just before you fucked me, if I remember rightly. That's why you did this. And not for the first time," I reply angrily, because I know what he's doing. He's doing it again.

"Don't make it ugly," he tells me softly, watching his fingers loosen my tie and unbutton my shirt to expose more skin.

"You are altogether beautiful, my darling," he says, spreading his hands across my chest, just like he did then. "There is no flaw in you."

And just like he did then, he pushes my shirt aside to kiss the side of my throat, and I feel my breathing become a juddering mess because of it, but he still closes my eyes through the touch of him. I put my hand on his shoulder blade, feeling the warmth of his skin under a cotton silk shirt.

And just like then, he drifts away from my throat to look me in the eyes. I felt like I'd never been truly seen before. I felt worshipped, as I always should have been. His eyes flicker between my eyes and my mouth as he lets his hand drift lightly up my chest and my throat to halt at my jaw. He knew me before he'd met me, I think.

"His mouth is most sweet. He is altogether lovely," he whispers, like it's a replay of the first time he said it to me. He holds the side of my face like I'm something holy.
"Poor boy," he adds in sympathy. "You're very tense—I noticed that about you. You seem nervous. Are you always like this or am I special?" he asks me, as he'd asked me then. But a lot has changed since.

"You're special," I tell him this time, and I kiss him surprisingly aggressively. I know what he's trying to do through this, but my fingers gingerly hook around the edge of his collar, when I was actually intending to make my hands a barrier between us. He has a tobacco, caramel, whisky, and coffee scent and taste now, and I've never found a perfume like it. Warm. And I almost forget everything. Because there is nothing else.

"You'd never had someone who knew what they were doing, had you? A god on earth, alone," he tells me breathlessly, twisting his face away, because I steal the air from him like water would.

"You talked a lot then and you talk a lot now," I reply, and kiss him again as if to suffocate him—fierce and consuming—to take all his words and all he is and make them mine.

"But the difference is you love me now," his mouth protests against me. Love is nothing to do with it.

"Why are you asking me to write your name?" I whisper back against his mouth in-between his lazy kisses with their infuriating tenderness.

His fingers glance down the side of my neck again so that I unwillingly tilt my head towards it, and he pulls away a little. When I open my eyes, it's to see a slow, smug smile spread across his face.

"Just to see if you would, actually," he replies, beaming now, apparently recharged with a new lease on life, and he walks towards the bar to rifle through bottles again like none of this happened.
"It seems I have nothing to worry about for at least a day or so. And if I walk past the Kantei a few times wearing the Dior, then I might be able to string it out for another week!"

"You bastard," I hiss, caught between anger and some level of admiration. After all these years, I still fall for his shit?

"Yep!" he calls cheerfully. "You can go now."

Right. Ok.

"Thank you for the information," I reply flatly, pocketing my cigarettes and lighter, and then try to take Penber's notes he left on the worktop while he's distracted.

"Put those down," he orders me. "They're part of my life insurance policy. We wouldn't want it getting into the wrong hands, would we? Put it down." But I ignore him and fold them into my pocket.

"They're not yours. You should never have had them," I tell him, buttoning up my shirt and fixing my tie again. "So that's it then."

"Unless you return the Death Note, then I suppose so."

"L, you must know that I never wanted this."

"Ha. You sound surprised by it. I'm not. You kept me around for what you could get out of it, and when it was payday you suddenly couldn't afford it. So you stole what I had left."

"That's not fair."

"Nothing in life is fair. What's incorrect about what I said?"

"You make it sound like I used you."

"Well it was a factor, Light, let's not be stupid about it," he says, awkwardly unbuttoning his cuffs. "That blackmail line you took this afternoon; you see things that way."

"No I didn't. I never did."

"How could anything built on a transactional relationship, lies, and a shared goal pursued for different reasons, held together by threats of career damage, be anything other than what we had?" he says, like he's been rehearsing the lines for years. "It's exactly how you saw it. And before you say anything, you know that you wouldn't have thrown a bucket of water on me if I was on fire unless it was petrol, otherwise. You wanted my influence. I wanted to increase it. That's all it ever was."

Well if that wasn't a punch in the balls, and I'm not even sure why it feels that way. My shoulders fall, and I blink compulsively at the bland white worktop. At how disgustingly shallow and meaningless he makes everything sound.

"Right," I say eventually.

"Have I hurt the feelings that we know you don't have?" he asks, feral with sarcasm.

"No," I tell him, drawing myself straight again. "I'm used to it. You use people. Your father fucked you up so now you're anything someone wants you to be so they'll love you because he didn't. And once they do, you won't let them go until you've used them up and thrown them away," I tell him, feeling proud of how, the moment I mention his father, he physically reacts—flinching, his jaw clenching for a brief second, like I've shot him with one of the many personalised bullets I have for him. He hasn't felt the pain of it yet. But it'll come for him.
"You've used that Death Note purely for your own benefit when it could be a tool used for the betterment of the world. And Mikami knows now. He's a problem as well, isn't he, L? What are you going to do about it?"

"Please just go or I might do something I'll regret," he says, sounding beaten down. And so easily, L, how disappointing.

"You're not the only one who can do that now though."

"No. Well, as I said—do it," he says bluntly. "You know my name. Don't misspell it like with Namikawa and fuck up again."

The knuckles of his hands are blanched white from how he's gripping the edge of the worktop now, like he might collapse if he didn't.

"But whatever happens—whether you do it or my time runs out, it'll be on your conscience, because I still mean far too much to you, don't I? All you ever wanted was to win, and look at the bodies you left behind you so you could do that. Even me, as it turns out."

"That's something, coming from you. How many people have you killed, L? You've been lying to everyone for years so that no one knows who you are."

"You really think that? What role do you think I've been playing for you then?" he asks. We're both so quiet, speaking as if we're trying to not to be overheard in a crowded room. I have to think about how to answer him for a moment, because I don't know.

"None," I conclude after searching the depths of my worn-out soul. "You've lied to me, but I think that I'm the only person who truly knows you and loves you anyway. And you know that."

He appears, despite himself, to be affected by what I said, but wipes his face with his hand like he's wiping the feeling away.

"Light. I don't know you," he tells me.

Ok. After lighting another cigarette, because why not? I have to do something. I stand to casually look around me in case there's something I forgot to take with me when I left. All I notice are dark smears of old blood beneath my labradorite wall.

"Well, you read Penber's notes. You did your research on me for a long time. You know at least as much about me as I do," I say, turning back towards him to smile and blow out smoke.
"But what you failed to mention, is that after your Song of Solomon speech and being the most curated, charming fucker I'd ever met, with your promises of helping me make all my dreams come true, you fucked me and threw me a towel and disappeared into the shower without a word. I don't know why I gave a shit, but I asked you if it had been ok, because it hadn't been before then, had it? Do you remember—the first time after we met at the Arcadia Room? You asked me: 'Was that it?' So you trained me, didn't you? You made me want to impress you.
"So this time, when I asked you if it'd been ok for you, you said: 'That wasn't the objective.' I remember everything. What was the objective, L? To understand me? Did you understand me then? Did you think that I was that easy to understand? A bit of flattery and promises? You've never fucking understood me and I don't think you ever can. So yes, I absolutely agree, we are done."

And I reward myself by breathing in tar and carcinogens from my cigarette while L stares at me, because nothing could be as toxic as I feel right now.

"I never needed to understand you to love you, Light," he says. Ha.

"Then that's your mistake. I imagine things. Maybe you shouldn't have overlooked it. I was hallucinating. I probably still am. I'll think this conversation happened but it'll turn out that it didn't. I saw ghosts running around this house after you left and I obviously invented that whole thing with you and Namikawa. I thought I'd killed him when I hadn't. I was so out of it that I beat you when I could've just taken the Death Note and run. Or not, because I didn't want this, L.This."

Practically vibrating with anger, it's calming to see how destroyed he looks now. Did I shame him? Did I scare him? Probably not.

"It's…" he starts, but stops to rub his face like he's trying to shut himself up. "It's obvious that you had an episode of psychosis or something because of… well, everything."

"Oh. Psychosis. Really?" I ask in pausing blocks. I'm stunned by his desperation to ignore, excuse, and deflect right back onto me because it's easier for him. I actually cannot believe it.

"You've been under unbelievable stress, and I'm aware that I didn't support you like I should have. It's not unheard of for people to react this way—especially if you'd been through something traumatic." If. If?

"IfI had?"

"No. Wait. I mean… God, Light," he says, tripping over himself.

"Not everything is traumatic. Sometimes it's just life, isn't it?"

"Maybe we should try to see what our options are, like you said. We can be truthful now," he suggests, all soft and endearing lies. Maybe it's time that we both stopped deluding ourselves.

"Ah, yes, truth," I half-laugh, as the word has a triggering effect on me now.
"Ok. Let's talk about truth, since neither of us know what it is exactly. It's not surprising, since we're both paid to talk and say the right words in the right order to make everything make some kind of comforting sense for everyone, when really there's no sense to be made. It's not what we say, it's what we don't say that matters. Nobody realises that we're lying through our teeth, so we keep getting away with it. We're both paid to lie and can't seem to do anything else now. The only truth there's ever been between us was when we were fucking each other's brains out or beating the shit out of each other. That was truth, and it was a beautiful thing. It's just sad, maybe, that it couldn't go beyond that, but we're clearly not made for such things.
"The very worst of humanity get to the top, that's all I know. What does that make us then, L? What does it make you, when you had a way of changing it?Reallychanging it. But you wanted to make a proxy out of me. You used me. You sold your soul for that book, for absolutely nothing. I would be proud to sacrifice my soul to change the world. And that's what I'm going to do."

"You won't though, Light. You might like to think that. There's no justice when only one person makes the decisions. There's no justice without full disclosure."

"Full disclosure. To dirty the minds of everyone who hears it? That's because we live in an imperfect world. It needs to be made clean first."

"Because you're God?"

I can't help but smile at everything he says. Manipulative, evil freak who always talked down to me and treating me like a game of cards. I was always a game to him.

"I don't know," I laugh. "I'm not sure if I'm qualified to answer that question. We might need a professional. I'm sure that you know a psychiatrist, psychologist, whatever he is. Go ask your soul healing observer of minds who has the view that mental illnesses should be left to fly free and torture, and let me know what he thinks of how you've treated me since you met me. Wanting me to give up everything I've built just so you can feel important. Lying to me about everything. You played me. But now you want full disclosure. You fucking bastard, L."

"I'm sorry," he whispers and then just breathes heavily, scanning the floor around him for answers, even though I gave him an answer. He just doesn't like it. "I'm not saying that I've acted well."

"Good job, because that would be another lie," I say, turning my face away for a moment, exhaling through the hopelessness of everything we patched up and ignored just to make it last a little longer—now crashing down around us. "Ryuk told me you've been trying to save me for a long time. Is that true?"

"No one can save you but yourself, Light."

"Is it true?"

"Yes."

It looks like it hurt him to say that, but I can't even believe him now. I miss who I was before I met him. I was accountable to no one. I felt nothing but hatred at everything I came across. Filling my life with hopes and ideals which weren't mine, empty materialistic shit that was owed to me, and following a to-do list so efficiently that it left no room for failure. I preferred myself then. It was easy. Achievable.

"I don't need to be saved. Just because I can't bring myself to kill you doesn't mean that I can't get someone else to. Like you did with Penber. You know how all that works. Would that be justice you'd approve of?"

I look at him as he looks at me, and I smile before turning away—because I need to get out of this house. I can't even look at him anymore.

"Have a good time with B. I'm sure he'll be thrilled to have you back. Oh, actually…" I pause at the door. "You're not too attached to anyone, are you? Mihael or B or someone?"

I glance back, just enough to see his reaction. "I think you should know what it feels like to have someone's life stolen from you for no reason."

---

I stride back into the Kantei with a quiet but all-consuming wrath which only seemed to increased while I was driving back. The house is silent, dark, and abandoned inside, until on the private floor I notice Kiyomi sitting cross-legged on the sofa in her silk pyjamas, reading a magazine. She glances up at me with the same cold hatred I saw from her a few hours ago, then dismissively looks back down and turns the page. Wonderful.

With no more stairs to slow my pace, I head straight towards my rooms. Behind me, Kira's voice rings out a shout all of a sudden, as surreal as a living thing with a beating heart entering a house of nothing but gliding ghosts. I wonder why he's still awake, but keep walking. Within my determined footsteps, I hear the quick tempo of lighter ones following me, so I just walk faster. Because I will not stop.

Soon after though, small arms wrap around one of my legs. The hold feels so flimsy that I want to shake it off like cobwebs, but I stop and dip my head from the stubborn drag around my knee. Kira welcomes me home brightly, and it makes me sigh as I close my eyes. This is not my home.

The embrace around my leg doesn't end, it just tightens, and after a moment, I turn around to kneel on the floor to face him. He looks shocked and uncertain—standing there in his airplane-patterned pyjamas—but he reaches out to hesitantly stroke my cheek. His hands are too small for anything but soft, trepidatious touches, and I can't believe that something so fragile is my son.

"Did you come second and fail a test, too?" he whispers, as if sharing a shameful secret.

"Yeah," I murmur after a second. Broken and hollow from the rage that's filled me for so long. "Yes. I think I did."

"Poor Daddy," he says, touching my face again just under my eye. It's something between a stroke and a gentle pat, reminding me of when Kiyomi and I brought him to a photo op at a farm and he petted a lamb through the bars. A lamb which was marked for slaughter. "It's ok though! You can just try harder next time!"

He hugs me, offering the comforting unity of two failures. He stretches to stand as tall as he can to reach around my neck until I lean further down for him. Something supernatural and invisible radiates from him into my chest, and without thinking, I clasp him tightly to me. I don't know why. His consoling pats on my back are so featherlight I can barely feel them, and then he turns his face to kiss me quickly on the cheek.

"Don't be sad, Daddy," he says. "I love you."

My breath hitches and tries to choke me. I press my mouth against his shoulder, stifling the jagged gasps from clawing their way out.

---

Mihael swaggers down the street on his lunch break with a girl he just met at the makeup counter at Chanel. His sidekick looks like a silken angel soufflé doused in white ruffles, while he looks like he just stepped straight out of any franchise starring Keanu Reeves.

He has every song AC/DC ever released in his head. He had a mid-length ice blonde balayage done last Thursday to emphasise his undercut, and he's pleased with his badassery being amplified. The sun makes him glow with danger amongst the afternoon crowds, which part like the Red Sea to let him through to avoid being run over by his PVC Panzer tank attitude. That is until a black Mercedes S-Class mounts the kerb about a foot away from running him over.

People gasp and some scream on a bright, sunny day in Ginza. The Chanel angel pulls on Mihael's arm as they look at the car rumbling like it's having major engine trouble, but when the window is wound down, it's clear that the rumbling was just Lady Gaga being contained against her will. As 'Paparazzi' blares out of the car parked halfway across the sidewalk, the man in the driver's seat tips down his sunglasses to stare at Mihael with eyes ringed with an alarmingly similar darkness as his shades.

"You should have taken your lunch break at 1pm and it's now 1:27," he shouts over the music. "I've been driving up and down this road for half an hour looking for you. Have you forgotten how much I cost per hour? You owe me a hell of a lot of money plus taxes, Mihael. Dump your dolly bird and get in."

"Should I call the police?" the angel asks Mihael in her state of shock. Her froufrou and impractical shoes prevent her from further action, despite the course she took in self defence. She's completely reliant on a rockstar she'd just met called me-HAIL, who has an album called 'MELLo BURNS' being released next year, so he said. "I think that he wants to abduct you."

"No, it's just my boss. He must have busted out of hospital," Mihael replies, strangely laid-back about it all.

"What kind of a boss is that?"

"Mine."

"But you said that you're a rockstar!"

"I am," Mihael smiles back at her confidently. "Raincheck?"

"But are you going to be ok? me-HAIL! I haven't got your number!"

Sadly Mihael is too exclusive and unconventional for numbers and phones. He slickly slides into the passenger seat just as L reverses back into the road and speeds off, beeping his horn at someone he cut up. Lady Gaga is getting a little beyond herself for any self-respecting stickler for coolness like Mihael, but when he tries to turn her off, L slaps his hand. When the song finishes, Mihael realises that it's set to repeat.

"Ok, L. It was quirky the first time round but now it's just weird," Mihael strains his voice to be heard over Gaga.

"We'd be so… fantastical," L talk-sings along with the song before letting his devastated face crack completely and fall against the steering wheel. The car's horn blares an unbroken scream in sympathy with the driver, or maybe because the car feels the call of the void and has decided to end it all. As they begin to drift into oncoming traffic, Mihael nonchalantly yanks L back into his seat and tries to steer the car like things like this happen to him every day.

"Fucking hell. If you're going to kill yourself don't take me with you! Not with this playing as the closing credits. That's not cool, man. It's not how I want to go," Mihael shouts just enough to be heard over Gaga, until L bats his hands away and takes back the wheel.

"Do you ever hear songs that seem to be about your life?" L says wistfully, thankfully lowering the volume of Gaga.

"Yeah. Mine's—"

"That wasn't a question requiring an answer, you strange ferret. This isn't about you—stop making everything about you!" L tells Mihael, and as aggressively as the continuing reckless, sharp, and fast nature of his driving, which is reminiscent of a pursued getaway driver after a massive heist. Mihael digs his fingertips into the side of his leather seat.

"Hey, why don't I drive? Give you a break for a while," he suggests soothingly.

"Oh you'd love that wouldn't you?!" L gasps at him as if uncovering a long-suspected plot. "Like I'd trust my car with your driving when you haven't even got a legal licence to drive that fart in a bottle moped of yours."

"It's a Kawasaki!"

"Same difference. It's not a fucking car is it? It's notthiscar.Mycar. Who do you think you are? You're getting a bit beyond yourself if you don't mind me saying so, and even if you do mind, suck on it. You're hardly lead character material—you're the sort of side character the writers write out because you're pointless to the plot—and I think you forget that sometimes. You're mostly PVC, silverplate goth jewellery, and an attitude problem, and frankly, you're starting to look like you're auditioning to be Kiefer Sutherland's backup stunt double inThe Lost Boys."

"Cool, thanks!"

"It wasn't meant as a compliment. My point is, lower class people like you should have limited dialogue, so shut up and let me speak for one fucking second!" L tells him, before turning to grin at him mischievously.

"Whatever, Lord fucking HaHa von Fartin. Anyway, mine's 'Renegade' by Styx. It slaps so hard!"

"You surprise me. I thought that you were going to say that it was 'Jupiter' fromThe Planet Suiteor something."

"What's that, some boring instrumental? Nah, dude, that stuff's only good for testing a hi-fi. No, it's all about lyrics really. Not many people would expect me to pay much attention to lyrics, but after the music it should be the number one factor. Hey! You wanna hear something weird though?! 'Renegade' was written in 1978, released in '79, but it's definitely about me even though I wasn't even born then and no one in Styx has ever even met me! Spooky, right?"

"It's positively paranormal, Mihael."

"Isn't it?! And like I say, that song slaps so hard it hurts good. Hold on, I'll just pair my phone with your stereo so you can hear it. And listen to the lyrics, you won't believe—"

"Don't. Pairing with my stereo to inflict your music on me in my car is crossing some serious boundaries you don't want to cross. Put your phone away."

"So we have to keep listening to this forever? Why are you playing this shit anyway?"

"I'd managed to forget it until it was on the radio this morning. And now I can't get it out of my head."

"Then stop playing it and we'll find a priest to exorcise your demons."

"I can't stop playing it when nothing's changed to make it any less relevant. It's just my background soundtrack at the moment. It's this or 'Adagio in G Minor'. Maybe 'Edge of Seventeen'."

"Stevie Nicks? If all this is about the PM then I think you need to rethink that song. It's been a long time since he was seventeen."

"Shut up, Mihael. You don't understand."

"I do. You're nuts. Now, if you'd said 'The Old Man's Back Again' then I could totally understand that one. You know the Scott Walker one? The one about authoritarianism?"

"Very funny."

"Really though, I'd take anything at this point. Put on Stevie or your Caravaggio whatever."

"No, don't ask for either of those. It's really not a good idea unless you want me to drive into that truck over there," he points at an innocent rubbish truck in the opposite lane, and turns the volume back up for a particularly painful chorus.

"No. This is bad enough. Can I at least turn it down a bit? I can't hear myself think," Mihael shouts, employing his Death Metal voice especially, but still making little impact against Gaga.

"That's the point of playing music, Mihael," L shouts back.

"Yeah, I guess you're right," Mihael huffs. He really can't argue against that statement. "So, you got out of hospital?"

"What?" L asks, turning the volume down.

"You're out of hospital?" Mihael repeats.

"Evidently."

"What were you there for?"

"I fell."

"Yeah, you fall a lot since you met your 'bronzed god' or whatever you call him these days. Well, you look like shit but I'm glad you're alive, I guess. Actually, I meant to text you. There are loads of journalists and paps across the road from the Firm. Did you see?"

"I did. The coffee shop must be doing a roaring trade. I'll suggest that I should get a free coffee and a cake next time. Or maybe an ongoing discount on—"

"I presume that they're after you?" Mihael interrupts L's meandering hopes of the obligatory gratitude owed to him by everyone finally being acknowledged.

"Possibly. But they won't get me. Do you want a coffee?"

"Yeah, cool. I've got time."

"Of course you have time since I'm the one paying you. Here," L says, reaching into the Mihael's footwell to pass him a thermos. Not one to seem churlish even when bitterly disappointed and offended, Mihael starts pouring the vile looking worm dirt—so strong you could probably stand a spoon up in it—into the flask cap. Sadly, L is a notoriously terroristic driver, and his sudden breaking throws the coffee all over Mihael's jacket.

"Are you sure he didn't break your head or was it just your balls?" Mihael asks grumpily, holding his hands away from himself like he'd just been sprayed with shit. He watches the coffee drip off his vintage jacket which has lived through worse, screws the thermos back together, and plonks it back into the footwell to roll around and knock against his boots like a ship against a seawall.

L, who looks barely human, turns to glare at Mihael briefly at a traffic light—looking like a giant fly because of his sunglasses.

"Who are you talking about? I told you. I fell."

"No kidding."

"The danger of having highly polished floors is that sometimes you slip and whack your head a few times against a wall and other things," he clarifies.

"Like a fist?Whooooaaaa!Easy tiger, what the fuck!?" Mihael exclaims when L goes through the red light and the little that Mihael can actually remember of his life flashes before his eyes. "What's the rush about?"

"Light's been kind enough to send some of his disciples to follow me, so I have to lose them. So thoughtful."

"So psychotic. I'd say that maybe you should call the police, for what use they are, but I guess that he owns them too. Anyway, yeah, whatever, you fell. Listen, can you put another song on just for a change? I can live with Stevie. We could duet, if you want?"

"Maybe later. Right. Put your work hat on, boy, if you can remember where you left it. I have these papers for you to type up for me," L tells him, reaching over again to pull a folder out the void of the Mihael's footwell, and throwing it in the vague vicinity of Mihael's knees with a patent leather skidding thud.

"You're kidding," Mihael says mournfully when faced with a file the size of three annotated manuscripts of War and Peace. "Can't you get Aida to do it?" Aida is L's other PA, and thus is Mihael's archnemesis. They are sworn to bicker and insult each other for all time.

"Aida? Absolutely not. She's a glamorous Sicilian and can hardly type because her nails are so long," L explains.

"She's stuck diamanté on them today and they keep popping off if she touches something, so she's definitely not doing anything apart from strutting around in a leather skirt and a tight blouse," Mihael tells him with a vaguely tortured groan. "She's so unprofessional, L."

"Yes, well, bearing in mind that my staff are busy strutting around in tight blouses and not doing much else because they might damage their manicure, it's a relief to know that I have you to rely on. Especially since you're the best at languages and you're also my favourite."

"Thanks!" Mihael beams in surprise of his worth finally being noticed.

"Don't feel smug. I'm just saying that to make you compliant."

"Pffff… I am the best though," Mihael assures himself. "Why did you hire her anyway?"

"Which begs the question, why did I hire you?" L asks the windscreen. "She's my favourite, and I need an assortment of eye candy for the punters in the waiting room. Your music choices for the PA system certainly aren't doing it."

"The music's fine when I'm there."

"Metallica?"

"It's classical."

"No, Mihael, it isn't. You know,PA systemdoesn't stand forpersonal assistant system—I think you're getting confused. Actually, all of you fighting over the music creates a very schizophrenic musical atmosphere in there. It's justRadio Crackpipeinstead of that expensive-sounding, calm down, your legal problem is in safe hands ambience it's there for. If someone walks in the lobby, they get blasted by Mötley Crüe or Rosemary fucking Clooney, and it just won't do, Mihael—they'll walk straight back out again. Even I do sometimes, and I own the place."

"Well tell Aida and Keiko to stop fucking with the vibe!"

"The vibe of my law firm is not Black Sabbath or any of the other shit you lot have been playing. I'll decide on the music from now on."

"What, Lady fucking Gaga on repeat?"

"No, but I'll make it so incredibly, soul destroyingly boring that you'll think it's the torture scene fromThe Clockwork Orange."

"Jeez, man. You can't do that. Not Coldplay."

"I could and I will if you don't behave. Anyway, between you and Aida, I think I have most bases covered in regards to scenery for clients. By the way, you really need to ease off on your competitive streak with her. I was going to say that formally in a warning letter but I couldn't be arsed. I don't need staff problems when I have enough problems of my own and struggle to even work those out. With Aida as well, Mihael… seriously? You'll never win, you idiot child. She was very upset and you know that I don't do emotions of that intensity. I simply don't pay myself enough for that HR shit, and I'm not going to pay someone to do it for me when you can all just bloody behave yourselves, ok? Grovel. Buy her some flowers or a handbag or sanitary towels or whatever women like. Whatever it takes. Do not. Upset. Aida. Or I will end you.
"Here," L says, reaching awkwardly into his trouser pocket to pull out his wallet. He finds and hands four ten thousand yen notes over to Mihael while somehow steering the car with his knees. "And I want a receipt and the change."

"But... what do you want me to buy her?"

"Fuck knows. If I was you, I'd probably just buy her a dildo. That's a fairly safe option with women these days."

"Really?"

"I think so. The idea is tospreadhappiness. What more could she ask for? And don't start saying that it goes against your religious beliefs or something. The state of you and the price of meat. Call yourself Catholic when you're banging angels on every street corner in Tokyo, mercy me, In nomine Patris et Filii, et Spiritu—"

"Oi, don't get His attention with your Latin.Hedoesn't need to know," Mihael interrupts whisperingly, and L smiles so widely he's reminded of muscles in his face which he forgot he had. "She was just following me around. I didn't know who she was. Pretty though, eh?"

"You're asking me?" L asks, vaguely horrified. "Well, if you like that sort of thing, I'm sure she was. They all look the same to me really. Women. And once you've seen one dressed up as an angel in platform boots you've seen them all."

"Meh. Ugh though. Aida doesn't deserve anything though. I just don't see the point of her and why you brought her in on my turf. You collect all these people with no experience and make a job up for them, it's cray-cray," Mihael laments, forever trapped in the early 2010s.

"Yes, all the social orphans, and you're one of them. You're all hopeless but you're cheap to run, so of course there's plenty of work to go around because nothing ever gets done. I'm practically running a charitable mission here. My hope is that if you all work together a one day, something amazing might happen and one of you might answer the phone for enquiries. Oh! I heard this at a leadership course I was forced to go to once, I never thought I'd ever have to actually use it. This is a new low point in my career, if not my entire life. I hope you're happy. Are you listening?"

"No."

"Well you better had or I'll sack you."

"Again?"

"You've been working on a probationary period for the last ten years. I'm well within my rights to let you go. To where? Who knows? Who cares? Not me. Yet here I am trying to give you an absolute gem of wisdom and one last chance. Put your phone down."

"I'm just recording this for any future constructive dismissal, power harassment… whatever, compensation claim. A tribunal," Mihael replies.

"Oh fuck off, you know that I could dangle you from the side of the building for a fortnight for people to use as target practice as part of an advertising campaign and I'd still win," L tells him. "Now, Mihael. Repeat after me. There's no 'I' in team."

"What?"

"Nope. No there is not. Unfortunately that doesn't translate well into Japanese so it doesn't apply, but leave your ego on the pavement next to the puke and shit and piss and jizz and spit out chewing gum to pick it up later. Anyway, Aida's the best naturally gifted drink mixer I've ever met. You can't even pour a glass of water without setting fire to something. She's indispensable to my wellbeing and you most certainly aren't, so shut it with your whining. Ok, are you reformed now? Right, open the folder. I want that translated into erm… Vietnamese."

"Haaaaaa! Yeah, good one."

"I'm not joking."

"But I don't know any Vietnamese apart from basic words like bánh tráng trộn khô bò đen trứng lòng đào tóp mỡ rau răm," Mihael mumbles, before realising that they're heading towards Ukishima for some reason. This is concerning. "Um… where are we going exactly?"

"I'm glad that you asked that, because I have a surprise for you!" L tells him, suddenly becoming manically cheerful, which is even more concerning. "Get ready for this—you'll love it!"

"That means that I won't," Mihael sighs, sulkily throwing himself back into his seat and crossing his arms. "I've seen your junk already and my optician was only just saying how miraculous my recovery has been."

"Then you shouldn't just wander into my office without knocking should you?" L says, but Mihael just stares at him moodily. "Aida didn't seem to mind, because she's not frigid like you. Anyway—"

"Aida's a pervert."

"Now Mihael, she's a good Catholic girl. An authentic Catholic, unlike some. I won't have that. So—"

"If she went into the confessional in my Church she'd never come out. I don't feel particularly safe in the office, L. Every time she picks up a staple gun I hide under the table in case I get hit by staples or diamanté shrapnel—it's just not a healthy environment."

L's shoulders fall from exhaling the most exhausted sigh before he's forced to adopt the caring managerial affect which is so unnatural to him.

"Thank you for expressing your concerns. As a considerate employer who values your safety and mental health, I will consider what you've said and what I can do to resolve the situation," he nods robotically. "Ok, I've considered it and my resolution is that you need to stop being such a prissy bitch. If she was going to shoot you, she would've done it by now. God knows you deserve it."

"You can't bring murderers in to work where I work without at least running it by me first!" Mihael squawks indignantly.

"We don't talk about that unfortunate incident. She didn't know that the gun was loaded."

"I think she knew after the first five shots."

"No. The judge agreed with me that she'd never seen a gun before, her nails formed some sort of hook around the trigger and then her hair wrapped around it and… I can't remember what the excuse was now but that's what happened. It happens all the time. Shut up now. I want to tell you what your surprise is."

"I don't want to know," Mihael pouts and stews in his fury. "She was creaming herself about how lucky we are to work for someone whose door really is always open to us. I'd just love for you to lock the door and stay in there. Keep your wang and your mid-life crisis between you and your fucked up boyfriend."

"Thank you for disclosing your sensitivities about anatomy," L sighs again."I apologise for not adequately resolving the situation to your satisfaction. After some consideration I've concluded that it's my office and my fucking building, so I can hang free whenever I want to. And again, stop being such a prissy bitch. You're just intimidated by me and I make you feel less of a man. But it's fine, that's a common reaction, get over it. Look, don't you want to know what your surprise is? Totally PG rated, I promise."

"Nope."

"Congratulations! I'm sending you on a paid legal language crash course in sunny Fukuokaaaaa!" L tells him like a worn out game show host. "I'm taking you straight to the airport for your flight, which I've paid for, so—"

"Wait, hold on a minute!" Mihael shouts, concerned enough now to even sit up in his seat instead of lolling around like a sheet of teflon.

"You'll be staying in-house with your tutor, and you will not leave that house until I call you back. You'll like him. He used to be in the yakuza before Light put him in prison and had his assets seized. Nice man. You can reminisce about your criminal syndicate days."

"What? But I haven't packed a bag or anything!"

"Don't worry about that. I'm sure that he's got lots of bags," L waves the valid issue aside blithely. "Now, he might put an ankle tag on you when you get there, but just let him. He loves it. And don't try to remove it because, well, you can't or he'll taser you on sight and lock you in a room with no windows. It's a really nice place! This folder is just something for you to work on in your spare time so I'll be getting something for my money."

"Why are you trying to get rid of me?" Mihael asks him quietly. Mihael has the skill of heart-string pulling equal to a Leslie Cheung performance, and it's known to have a kryptonite-like effect on L in particular.

"I'm not," L assures him, when that's clearly not the case. "It's elite staff training so you'll be the greatest PA on the face of the earth. You'll get a certificate and everything. Aida hasn't got one, so you can show off this misguided favouritism I'm bestowing on you when you get back. Hang it around your neck. It'll make her sick, I'm sure."

"What's wrong?" Mihael asks, in such a way that L's manner becomes as solemn as a funeral when he glances at him.

"Mihael. I don't want to lie to you. I just need you out of Tokyo for a while and don't ask why, ok? It's nothing to worry about."

"But you're worried about it."

"I don't find it helpful to be worried about anything. Just do what I tell you, there's a good lad," L says sadly, ruffling up the good lad's fully-grown adult head.

"He's playing a hard game with you, isn't he?" Mihael asks him, able to catch a glimpse of angry bruises and cuts on L's face now that he's focused on him. "What's it got to do with me though? Has he threatened me? Why would he threaten me? I don't like him, but then nobody does apart from you.

"I don't like him either," L lies.

"Why's he picking on me?"

"It's not about you."

"Then why am I the one being sent away? I mean, do whatever you want, but when it means that I get sent off to fuck knows where to do impossible and pointless things without my phone charger or toothbrush, I have a problem with that. I haven't got my passport by the way, so I can't go anywhere. Boom!"

"Don't worry about that either."

"Well I'd kind of need my passport to fly unless you're smuggling me in cargo, and I don't want to do that ever again, so… Listen. Have you ever thought of… y'know… splitting up with him? Permanently? For the good of humanity?"

After a tense moment of reflection, L apparently decides to disregard both common sense and humanity.

"I'll take you back to yours so you can pick whatever you can get in 2 minutes. Make it likeSupermarket Sweep. But here's your passport," he says, pulling a freshly minted one from his pocket to give to Mihael.

"Did you break into my flat to get… but this passport's for someone called Gabriel Clark," Mihael points out, but not sounding terribly surprised.

"Is it? Well, I suppose that you're Gabriel now," L explains. "Like the angel but in a zentai sort of way. God, you're handsome. You should be an idol on TV or TokTik or whatever it's called. Did you have your hair cut? It looks magnificent. I'm so proud of you, you know? You're my favourite along with Aida. You might just overtake her if you do what I tell you to with no questions. You'll be number one then."

"I have my own passport."

"Yeah, and it's fake. So's this one, but the course is for Gabriel Clark so we might as well keep everything consistent."

"He's a porn star, isn't he?"

"Mihael, I'm appalled that you know that."

"Won't my certificate be for Gabriel Clark if I use this? What good would that do me?"

"I'll know that you'll have done that course and that's all that matters since I'm the only idiot who'd ever employ you. Nobody cares."

"I don't want to do the course though. I don't even think there really is a course, so I'm not going," Mihael concludes quite reasonably.

"Then you're not my favourite and you're fired. For real this time," L replies.

"Fine!"

"Now, Mihael…"

"No."

"Don't be hasty in throwing away the opportunities that I'm stupid enough to offer you."

"You force them on me, more like," Mihael continues to sulk. "No. I don't want to be a porn star's namesake under house arrest in Fukuoka to do stuff you've invented for no reason."

"Of course you do, don't be ridiculous," L tells him, resentfully paying at the Daishi Bridge toll booth.

"Like a retired Yakuza guy is going to teach anything to do with law apart from how to get yourself out of charges by shooting the arresting officers, and I already know how to do that."

"He also worked for the NPA, actually. I know. Crazy, right? He's a guitarist now."

"That's more proof that he'd know nothing about legal language. Wait. He plays the guitar?"

"Yes and he has a drum kit you can bash and jam and whatever people like you do with them."

"I have one at home," Mihael says in a strop after being momentarily distracted by the idea of a musical retreat.

"I'm getting impatient with you now, Gabriel," L replies. "Oh! And by the way, here's your new birth certificate. I don't know if this'll work but it's all I can think of and hopefully it won't be necessary anyway."

He's almost certain that a legal name change wouldn't work, but Ryuk just stands around and shrugs to every question. He reasoned that Light would have someone sent to kill Mihael to make a messy point of his unusual backstory for emotional impact, rather than to dispense a more natural looking death with no press coverage. Making that more difficult through making Mihael disappear is all L decided that he could try. Either way, the chances of success are slim, unless he can distract Light somehow. Sitting next to Mihael now punches fear in L's stomach like a clock that's counting down to the last three seconds before the bomb explodes.

"You can keep your paperwork and wrap your dick in them for all I care," Mihael humphs, petulantly tossing Gabriel Clark's birth certificate and passport onto the dashboard, leaving L tiredly scrambling for a killer blow. The promise of drum kits didn't seem to work.

"Please take them," he says, and in such a pleading way, it makes Mihael stare at him in shock and worry.

"Please?" Mihael asks. "What the fuck is going on, L?"

As the traffic calmly shuffles across the bridge, the only thing notable is how L uncharacteristically doesn't try to force his way through it. He simmers in the unease, unsure of how to get Mihael on the plane without a tranquiliser dart.

"Do you trust me?" he asks eventually. Mihael continues to look troubled, now unconsciously picking at the skin around his thumbnail while he mulls the question over.

"Hell no," he replies. "I can't even trust you not to sprinkle cayenne pepper on the toilet paper."

"I don't mean with stupid shit. I mean if it was anything serious. Would you trust me?" L asks again earnestly.

"I don't know, it depends. How serious?"

"Your life. Would you trust me with your life?"

"Yes," Mihael tells him after barely a beat. L is slowly turning off towards a road which is more of a dirt track to what look like stacked ice cubes, where Mihael lives now. They were supposed to be temporary, but that was forty years ago.

The car is practically crawling at this point, so even massive lorries and caravans beep angrily and overtake them while they look at each other. Mihael's wide blue eyes try to burn through the opaque lenses of L's sunglasses.

"You're the only person in the world who would," L smiles weakly, turning back to face the road. "Would you really?"

"If there was no other option and as long as I'm not in a car you're driving, yes. But L—"

"Then you'll go?"

"Let me see your eyes?" Mihael asks, as they pull up outside his ice cube apartment thing.

"Why does everyone want to see my eyes these days?" L sighs, yanking the handbrake up frustratedly. "No. It'd ruin the mood that I'm going for. Leave your wallet with me, ok? It might not be me who calls you, but someone will bring you back in a week or so, probably."

"Why wouldn't it be you who calls?"

"I might be busy, you suspicious, wormy plebeian. Go pack a bag."

---

It's now Tuesday morning, and I spent the weekend half-expecting to die at any moment. Sometimes I wonder if I did and just didn't notice, but in any case, the election is on Sunday, so there's a lot to do this week.

Electioneering without obviously electioneering is almost as tiresome as the usual appearances here, there, and everywhere, but it has to be done. I have the rolling news on in the background as I sign standard reply letters imagining that I'm writing my own name on Death Note pages over and over again, when the news catches my attention.

"... Namikawa, a lawyer based in Tokyo, was found dead in his house early this morning. Authorities report no sign of foul play. And in sport, the Giants play…"

My stomach twists in confusion rather than from any sense of retribution enacted as I would have expected.

"What?" I ask the TV. The presenter looks thrilled.

"The Giants are playing the Dragons tonight," a creaking voice behind me says, and I spin around to see Ryuk leaning against a bookcase. The back of my chair hits my desk, as I must jump backwards from how close he is to me.

"Where have you been?" I ask him, grasping the remote on my desk to turn the TV off. "You turn up now?"

"You do remember me, don't you?" he replies, but I'm scanning social media to find out more information to validate that it's the same Namikawa.

Apparently it's true. Namikawa is dead. The internet barely notices, just a handful of morbid conspiracy theories or uninterested posts wondering who he was. No information, and no one cares, no matter how many posts he made online.

"Namikawa's dead. But he should have died a week ago last Saturday," I say, quietly at first, but rising as I point out the date, looking up at Ryuk accusingly.

"You took your time killing him, Light," Ryuk laughs for a moment before stopping abruptly. Replay. He's a CCTV camera which records lives and ends them.

"I wrote his name but he didn't die. He died today? I've used it since and it doesn't work. I don't understand."

"Always slow," he says breathily, crossing his arms and tilting his head like he's waiting in a long queue. He better fucking stop this and answer me.

"What do you mean?" I ask. "So there's a delay if I write in it? Is it because L owns the Death Note and not me?"

"I follow the Death Note. It works as it should," he says lazily.

"But you haven't been following it and it obviously doesn't work as it should! I haven't seen you! Aren't you supposed to answer questions about the rules like you have for L?"

"I owe you nothing. Light, I don't know you."

"What the fuck are you talking about?! You're me aren't you? That's what you've said!" I shout at him, shaking from the humiliation of feeling like an ignorant plaything to everyone while they laugh at me. "Tell me what's going on!? I have the Death Note; I followed the rules. So why did the man whose name I wrote to die a week last Saturday only die now?"

"Maybe it's not the Death Note. Maybe it's you. Useful idiot."

I stare at him as he laughs to himself unnaturally. His shoulders heave to jolt him through how funny he finds this. He steals things he's heard, he mimics what he sees, and makes a grotesque mockery out of me.

"Show me your face," I demand firmly. "Your real face."

"Oh. You don't want to see that."

"I do. You look like me don't you?" I press the issue, but he only laughs harder. "L said that underneath that mask, you look like me."

"You can't trust him about anything, can you? It's just us now. We're born with a covering for our shame."

"Then show me your face," I demand again more forcefully. I'll rip his face off myself if he keeps laughing at me like this.

"What went wrong, Light?" he asks, in a tone so similar to L's that it nearly cuts through me. Ignore.

"Will L die if he doesn't get it back?" I ask frustratedly. "He said that's what you told him."

"4256?"

"Yes. Is that true?"

"Everyone has their 4256."

"Ryuk, just tell me what is going on?"

"It wasn't the lobster, was it?" he asks, tilting his head, his expression as sincere and concerned as he can manage.

"What?"

"You believe me though, don't you? I am innocent."

"Stop it!"

"I understand now. I'm sorry for your loss."

And without thinking, I throw my desk clock at his face. I watch it fly through him and smash against the bookcase, and tremble as Ryuk's smile stretches even wider than usual. With a sudden, easy motion, he tears off his grey, paper-like mask to reveal another face beneath—dead, cold, and frostbitten—like explorers of Everest buried in ice for decades. His eyes were still Ryuk's though; yellow and reptilian like cruel contact lenses.

Then he fades, dissolving like a malignant miasma, leaving me to stare into the space where he stood. For a moment, I doubt he was ever there at all.

A knock at the door shocks me into breathing again; ragged, desperate breaths as if there's little oxygen in here. Before I can move, my gaze catches on my phone screen, where a short article about Namikawa stares back at me.

Ryuk had L's face.

"Come in," I call out towards the door with the commanding tone which would be expected of me, making sure that I look unruffled. My fingers straighten the papers on my desk again instinctively, but annoyingly shaking. I must look like a leader of nations. I thank myself every day for having the foresight to soundproof this office. It's been very useful.

"Excuse me, Prime Minister," my secretary says in all her forced cheerfulness as she opens the door. "Mikami-san is here. Shall I — ooof!" she gasps as Mikami barges past her and through the door to stand opposite me on the other side of my desk. He looks like he's been on a hell of a bender.

"Please sit down, Teru," I tell him, but my politeness is mostly due to my secretary still being in the room. Part of my consciousness jabs at me that I need to amend my outward mood before I speak. I don't want word getting around that I'm tired and irritable.

"Thank you, Kotomi," I tell my secretary with a nod so she can just fuck off now.

"Yes, Prime Minister," she bows, giving Mikami a moody glance as she shuts the door behind her.

"What are you doing here?" I ask Mikami, leaning back in my chair. "I told you to take some time off. You didn't need to be back until tomorrow, unless you have anything urgent apart from blindsiding my secretary."

He has no response. He just stares at me, unblinking. I can really do without his problems with Naomi right now. Or at any time, actually.

"I'm guessing that it didn't go well with Naomi then?" I ask, more irritated than concerned.

Still no answer. I'm fully expecting him to blame me for everything he's brought upon himself. As Prime Minister, I'm used to it. It doesn't mean that I have to care though, and I resent the assumption that I would.

"You seem tired, Mikami. Has anything happened that I need to know about?"

But he still doesn't respond, even to apologise for the intrusion. He just steps forward with a determined dirge of a pace, and puts his briefcase on my desk. That's rude as well. This desk is French polished and deserves respect because it's mine.

As he slowly pops the locks of the briefcase and the leather of it creaks to a yawn as it's opened, I watch him, bemused but uninterested at the same time. Something is very strange about him. He hasn't taken his eyes off me since he came in. And he hasn't blinked either.

The hairs on the back of my neck stand up, making me shiver. It's not cold.

"Are you happy?" he asks me, cutting through the silence. Now that he's closer, I can't help but notice how ashen his complexion is. He looks like he's just witnessed a particularly gory car accident.

"Ha. What?"

"Are you happy?" he asks again.

"Go home, Teru," I tell him slowly.

"Are you happy?" he repeats gruffly. The atmosphere of the room became heavy as soon as he walked in, but it's sulfurous and smothering now. And I'm shocked by seeing such a resolute look on his face which I've never seen on him before.

"Did you speak to Naomi?" I ask, sounding nervous despite myself. "What happened? Is she alright, Teru?"

"Are you happy?" he asks again, but more forcefully. His hands grip the sides of the briefcase so tightly the leather groans from it.

I want to run, but I can't move, like my legs are weighted down with lead, locking me in place. I feel paralysed and stunned by the intensity of his unwavering stare and by the question, and a pressure to answer him, and truthfully.

"Whatever happiness is, it isn't something I can allow myself to have," I tell him. Why did I say that?

"Ah," he exhales, like a quiet climax after getting all he ever wanted. My fingers fumble in finding the button of my intercom like they're working independently of me.

"Kotomi, could you bring me my messages now. Quickly," I say towards the veneered internal communications box on my desk.

Mikami reaches into his briefcase with a strangely contented smile on his face. My finger now hovers over the button under my desk for Security.

And efficient as usual, I hear the door open. My secretary's steady footsteps march in—undoubtedly bringing a pile of papers only fit for the shredder—and I unconsciously breathe a sigh of relief.

"Here's your message," Mikami tells me, unnaturally slowly, pushing a blank envelope from his briefcase towards me from across the desk.

I can only imagine that it's his resignation, which is stupid of him and inconvenient. It'll take at least fifteen minutes to talk him out of it, and I'm not sure that I want to after this. Still, I tear the envelope open.

Inside are what look like co-ordinates.

While I scowl at the letter, Kotomi—smilingly and bowingly—deposits papers on my desk. Except she doesn't.

This deviation in a routine I could set a clock by makes me glance towards her questioningly, only to find her backing away from Mikami. She clutches the papers to her chest and is fixed, apparently horrified, by the contents of the briefcase on the desk.

Mikami smiles unconvincingly at me—a sort of rictus grin stapled on at the corners, and his eyes are glassy but resolute. I stand up automatically, because I suddenly realise that I've seen that same vacant, soulless look before. River had looked exactly the same.

"Call security," I snap at my secretary.

"Song of Solomon. Come back to me," Mikami says, rolling his voice over foreign words. As my eyes widen from what he said, his face splits open in a silent scream. He lifts a revolver from the briefcase and presses it against the roof of his mouth.

"Don't—"

But I just watch him, because everything seems both instantaneous and slowed down at the same time. While I stand frozen, my secretary screams. Her scream is a piercing siren which is brutally silenced by a rounded gunshot cutting through the air, followed by a delicate metallic clink of a bullet casing striking my desk.

A warm mist spatters my face. I blink, only to open my eyes to see Mikami convulse briefly from the recoil snapping his head back, and throwing him to drop to the floor like a heavy bag of bones in front of me.

My secretary screams again, but louder, and bolts from the room. What time sped up it now slows, while I gaze down at my sleeves and chest, mystified by a polkadot scattering of red across my shirt. It darkens the fabric in neat pinhole splotches, like tiny wounds, as it soaks into the fibres. The high-pitched whining tinnitus I'm almost used to now, rises to such an headsplitting intensity I can't think of anything at all.

Within this echo chamber of sound, there's a thudding, like a fast heartbeat, followed by a stampede of security rushing into my office—too late—but I don't look. I stare at the blood on my sleeve and hand, and at L's cufflinks catching the light. There are buffered, dulled expletives, questions, calls. Someone tries to make me sit down without touching me, because, yes, I'm covered in blood, aren't I?

I didn't write Mikami's name, but I have the Death Note.

"L. Why would you do this?" I murmur to myself without meaning to. There's too much mindless noise and horror in the room. It swallows all thoughts and words.

The head of security bellows for everyone to get out.This is a crime scene, who was this and how did they get in with a gun? I can't tell who it is, he's blown the top of his head off! Fuck, what a mess, and in the Prime Minister's office too. It must have been The Curse. It's Mikami. The Deputy? Yes. Are you shot, sir? Prime Minister? I'll get a doctor.

"No. I'm ok," I say belatedly, numbed by the reverberation of the gunshot that whines in my head. A penlight suddenly shines into my eyes without warning, and the middle-aged face of a security guard squints close to mine. It repulses me. He smells like cheap aftershave and tuna. His cool breath makes the blood on my face feel like nettle stings, so I can't pretend that it isn't there even though I haven't seen it.

More people come, gasp with horror, and go. Useless, pointless. Eventually I wipe at my face and see the bloody smears across my hand. Seeing it runs an echo of regret through me, because it looks just like how L's blood did. But I didn't do this.

The most vibrant, viscous red slowly drips from the ceiling onto my desk, like rain as it begins or ends, and notice it falling onto Mikami's white, but now blood spattered envelope on the desk. I pick it up and put it in my pocket while no one would notice, along with the letter I've been holding the whole time. On the floor in front of my desk, I notice dark stains and globs of thick matter beneath Mikami's outstretched arm. That's all I can see of him from this angle.

A flash of white at the doorway catches my attention then, and I realise that it's Kiyomi in a dress as bright as a camera flash. She stops there, surrounded by dark suits and uniforms, staring but not screaming at what she just walked into.

After clasping her hand over her mouth for the briefest of moments it apparently takes for her to process what she's seeing, her eyes search around the room for me and find me, partially hidden by security. One of the most striking moments of my life with her is seeing her run towards me as though through a battlefield.

"Are you ok? What happened?" she asks when she reaches me. With her arrival, the tinnitus fades out graciously to something more manageable.

"Mikami shot himself," I tell her quietly, and laugh in surprise, realising how stupid I sound. She wraps her arms around my torso to press herself against me, the reluctant materna, even though she'll get blood all over her white dress. I'm dizzy from standing, so I hold onto her while I look towards Mikami, strangely splayed out on the floor like he's reaching towards the gun that killed him. It was Stephen's gun. I recognise it.

"But you're ok. You're ok," she tells herself breathlessly. "Why did he do it?" she asks, sounding brittle suddenly, and starting to become high-pitched and weepy. I turn off at this point, but she quickly starts babbling against my chest.

"I'll have to tell Naomi. He is dead, isn't he? She can't hear it from the police—they're so insensitive with things like this. No offence to your father, I'm sorry, but… you know. She can't hear this from a stranger. Oh God, how am I supposed to tell her?"

I huff out a tired laugh. How can we tell Naomi that another one of her partners has died—the second to die of a shot to the head, and the third to be killed by L—without her taking it personally?

"She's like a black widow," I whisper, and laugh dryly. "Someone should check on her," I say, then suddenly realising how someone really should, and look at all the people milling about doing nothing. "Someone should check on her!"

Kiyomi pulls away to inspect me then, because I said the wrong thing, didn't I? I must have a headache. Her dress looks like a woodblock print, blotted with the blood from me.

"Light. Look at me," she demands, so I do. She's still Kiyomi. Nothing's changed. "Are you ok?"

"You'll stain," I tell her flatly, my eyes

drifting back to the delicate, disorganised pattern of red flecks on her dress.

"Will you ever stop caring more about clothes than you do about people?" she asks. She smiles afterwards like she's joking, but she's not. Or maybe it just hit me harder than she intended. Clothes are safe. They communicate a clear, reliable message. People don't, and they're the ruination of me.

"Is this really happening?" I ask her, simultaneously wondering if she's actually there or if I'm imagining everything. I imagine things sometimes, out of boredom mostly, but I wake up eventually. I don't know why I expect her to tell me.

But Kiyomi—whether she's real or not—wears many variations of 'concern' on her face, and decides to take my hand. I can feel it. Like I can taste blood in my mouth and hope that it's mine though I know that it isn't.

"Let's get you out of here, ok?" Kiyomi tells me.

And in her no nonsense way, holding my limp hand, she guides me out of the office and through the department in front of lines of gawping faces, into what I presume will be another short, nightmarish scene to do with fire or something. I barely notice anything.

In an empty office inside the department, Kiyomi sits me on a chair and pulls out her phone. Her phonecase matches her dress today. She hesitates over touching my face, deciding to just smile reassuringly at me, then walk away to stand in the doorway with her back to me as if waiting for someone. While she's occupied, I reach into my pocket and unfold the letter inside.

The coordinates are handwritten in blue fountain pen ink and were shielded through the note being crushed in my hand for so long. On the reverse side, near the bottom of the page, mostly obscured by blood, is what looks like a smudged partial thumbprint, hiding tiny characters underneath. I stare at them for a moment, trying to identify them and apparently making meanings up in desperation.

At first, the blood smears everything into gibberish and I can't make anything out, let alone recognise the handwriting, but the first part might be 弁... 弁護士. Lawyer? Is it a Lawyer? No. I'm just grasping at anything that might form something recognisable.

弁論? It's an argument? No, it can't be. I can't make any sense out of it, so turn the paper to another angle.

I hold the paper closer, trying to see anything in the smudged characters. 文と... writing and? 文トート? Writing…tote bag?! Fuck! No, it could be デスノート. Death Note. But am I just reading what I want to see in it? It's practically illegible, but it feels deliberate, like something I should be able to understand.