January 8, 2004. Someone's been in your room. The handle isn't at the angle you've left it, but the paper in the doorway has been replaced: it wasn't mom or Sayu. The pencil lead was broken, too. You walk into your bedroom, lie down on your bed, but the thought follows you: there might be secret cameras hidden around the house. Or microphones. Probably both, actually. The prickle of that knowledge is like ice water crawling down your spine: this is more than a cursory investigation.
June 24, 2004. Day twenty-four of confinement. It is not nighttime, but Aizawa has replaced the handcuffs that bound you with a soft leather strap, as though it were nighttime. You don't quite remember why, and you would ask him except that he's already left. When you tense your wrists and pull against the strap it is unyielding, but there is no sting of pain. You roll onto your stomach and then slowly sit up, and when you have completed that monumental effort you look blankly ahead of you and wonder why'd you'd even bothered. So you lie back down on your side on the floor and close your eyes. It can be nighttime if you want it to be, even if the bulbs still shine from overhead. If you let your mind drift, you can reach a state that's nearly like sleep, somewhere you don't have to think, somewhere the world can't get you.
"Light-kun, don't go to sleep," L says. It jolts you, as he'd intended: just when your breathing had begun to slow, your eyes fluttering shut. A cold spine of adrenaline cuts through your shoulders, and you bite back tears and the crowd of vicious words rattling against your teeth, tell yourself don't think about it. It's the only way to avoid reacting, the only reaction you can possibly give.
"Kira hasn't shown up yet," L continues. His voice is measured, his cadence almost kind. "Why don't you admit you're Kira already?" You lull yourself in his string of words until it all loses meaning, taste fog on your tongue.
June 25, 2004. Day twenty-five of confinement. Days have become predictable. The bulbs turn on and with it comes the morning, and you open your eyes or else keep them closed and pretend to be asleep. Eventually Aizawa will come inside the cell, and if you are not already up he will tell you to get up: you will have your teeth brushed and your hair brushed and if you need a shave, you will have that too. Then you will eat breakfast. You will lie back down on the floor, or on the bed, tucked into the corner where it's safe, or sit curled against the wall, drifting in and out of the haze of sleep, after that, until it is time to exercise; and then you will have lunch. After that you will lie down on the bed or maybe on the floor and close your eyes until Aizawa returns, and then you will exercise again, this time for two hours; and then you will have dinner; and then the cell will be bathed in darkness again. You can count the number of words you have spoken all day on the fingers of one hand: "yes," "okay," "okay," "yes." In the nighttime, the fear will tangle its way through your lungs. In the afternoon, the fear will crawl over your shoulders. In the evening, the fear will strangle the tongue in your throat: it is like a cold hand or the sea, parting in the wake of a boat.
June 26, 2004. Day twenty-six of confinement. You have forgotten how to think about anything but Kira. When I get out of here, when I get Kira executed— you think. When I find out who Kira is— when I see Kira suffer—and L, when he speaks through the camera, says, "you will never get out, Light-kun, unless you confess."
June 27, 2004. Day twenty-seven of confinement. Your clothes have been taken away to the wash. This is the fourth time it has happened, and you are too lethargic to care, anymore, about the way your nakedness became visible to the camera when you finally turned and the meagre protection of the sheet over your shoulders slipped away.
You lie on your side on the bed with your eyes closed and try to find somewhere else to be besides where you are, and you might have managed it: there was a bubble around you like shimmering glass, but it moved with your breath, and inside it was air that reminded you of the forest, somehow, and then L says, "Light-kun," and it pops and disappears. It occurs to you that you ought to be embarrassed, that you ought, perhaps, to pretend that L isn't here—if L had any decency he would pretend not to be here, not when you are exposed like this, but then again that must be precisely why L spoke now. "How are you doing?"
You cannot give him a true answer to this. You cannot say, "I hate you, I hate Kira, I want to be out of here, I want to die. Leave me alone." Then again, you just have. You wait, for a moment, the thought crawling through your mind that maybe the vehemence of your response surprises L, as he is quiet for a moment. You hope he is. You hope he feels sorry. You want to break the camera and reach inside the shattered gullet and take from its insides the small, squirming thing that is L's human body and crush it between your palms. You want to rip into it with your teeth and for a moment you think you really might have done it, because the tang of blood is in your mouth, but it's only your own bitten lip.
"I'm sorry to hear that, Light-kun," L says. "If you confess, I will allow you to die."
"What does that even mean?" you say. There's a choked laugh in your mouth. You wait till it subsides before continuing. You're 'sorry to hear that'? That's what you want! You want to kill me!"
"We are not talking about what I want, Light-kun," L says. "We are talking about what you did. How you killed people."
"So what?" you say. "So what? Maybe I did kill people!"
"Yagami Light, are you Kira?"
"If I was Kira, I could kill people," you say. "I could kill Kira. I wish I could tell you what you want to know, but I'm not Kira. I just don't know the answer to your question…" you speak, but the frantic hatred is already subsiding, leaving you tired. "I don't know how he did it… maybe he just wished for it to happen. Do you do that, L? Do you just wish for things to happen, and then they happen? Is that how you do it?"
"Do what, Light-kun?"
"Control everything the way you do," you say. "I don't even know what's going on outside. Maybe Kira's killed everyone. Maybe everyone's already dead. Everyone but me. Why would he kill everyone but me?"
"You do not know how Kira kills?"
"I wish I did," you say. You pause. Your eyes are gritty. You rub your face against the pillow to try to pull the sleep from your eyes. "I'm doing fine, Ryuzaki, thank you for asking."
He shuts the connection.
.
.
.