Transcendental experiences or not, time waits for no man and Misa opens her door with a skip in her step, trying to press up against you while you gently take her hand to redirect her. You're aware that if she were to get close enough to cling onto you she would feel the line of the corset under your clothes; the slight danger that she might find out, might be confused or displeased or assume something is a bright amused sensation, like dipping out of a room with stale air into the wind. She's not entirely useless, you allow; even tolerable on occasion; if only to toy with. Social interaction—strange, for a second you recall what it was like to look forward to it; when that admiration and the presence of others was the better part of your days, and not something that sinks a hook of self-doubt and simmering anger into your gut. It's like a colorful soap bubble, the way she says, "Light, I've missed you!—" and beams into the polite look you give her. Everything around you seems perfect.
Then Ryuzaki says, "and I've missed you, Misa-san," and reality descends not so much like a lead weight as a bag of sand.
"Uh, is your name Light?" Misa asks, turning to him with a hand on her hip.
Ryuzaki presses his thumb between his lips and gives that question a good deal more thought than it deserves.
She huffs, and you say, "it's good to see you too, Misa."
She smiles at you and, almost shyly, reaches back for your hand, twining your fingers together and blushing like a love-struck schoolgirl. Predictable.
As you walk towards the theater you sneak a look at Ryuzaki, and find his gaze fixed on the place where your palms meet. You give him a bright grin.
Ryuzaki's movie is called Sunset Boulevard. An English voiceover starts up over the monochrome image of a street, and then a house, and then, eerily filmed toward the sun through a haze of water, a pool with a body floating facedown as though the viewer were also drowned and sunk below.
"The poor dope," the unseen speaker remarks. "He always wanted a pool. Well, in the end he got himself a pool—only the price was a little high…"
It switches to six months earlier. Joe Gillis is a B-movie writer down on his luck in California, unable to write a script that will sell—and he needs the money bad, because he's three months behind on rent for his apartment and about to lose his car. Needing somewhere to stash it, he finds what is nothing less than a huge, mouldering mansion, eerily neglected. He's certain the place is abandoned, but as it turns out, it's the home of an aging silent film star whose career was killed by the talkies. Her name is Norma Desmond. Even now, her gravitas, unsettling and pointed, remains. When Norma finds out Joe is a writer she drags him to her own piece-de-resistance, a terrible movie script (with her as the star), which, Joe soon realizes, is a prime opportunity to take advantage of this woman's money, by convincing her to let him serve as her editor.
He's daunted but undeterred by the unsettling nature of the place, the cluttered evidence of her own fame trapping her like a mirror.
"The whole place," he thinks, "seemed to have been stricken with a kind of creeping paralysis, out of beat with the rest of the world, crumbling apart in slow motion… there was a tennis court, or rather the ghost of a tennis court, with faded markings and a sagging net…" and the pool, empty of water, but where scuttling rats make their meagre homes. In the morning, the room where he's spent the night is suddenly filled with his own things, which Norma has had her butler place there during the night, taken from Joe's own apartment. At that moment you laugh; spontaneously genuine. Misa sends you a puzzled look. "Light? Did I miss something?" she asks, aware that subtitles don't always reveal every nuance of a language, although you know her English is as good as yours—perhaps better. But this nuance isn't held in language. It's a private joke that no one but you and Ryuzaki can understand.
"No," you say. "It was just odd, that's all. I guess it struck me as funny."
You glance over at Ryuzaki, who's watching you, with the barest hint of a smile hidden behind the press of his thumb against his lip. So, that's what this is, you decide. Norma is you, Joe is me—? The unscrupulous writer and the narcissistic star, only looking for herself (Kira and L, oh how far back it goes…). The eerie extravagance of the place and its situations quickly blurs the line between employer and employee, and it's soon clear, to Joe's chagrin, that he's not her live-in editor but her kept man.
During the New Year's party, where, coincidentally, no one else is invited, they dance; Joe a little uneasy and embarrassed—and Norma—what can you say? She's Norma. Off-kilter. Captivating and unsettling and by no means quite sane.
"You think this is all very funny," she says, about his blasé reaction to the lavish (non)-party.
"A little," Gillis replies.
"Is it funny that I'm in love with you?" she asks.
"What's that?"
"I'm in love with you," Norma says, in a way that seems to imply that this is not a weakness in her character, not a dependency, but just as natural as the admiration she's deserved. It should be pathetic—it is pathetic. It should be easy to laugh off. "Don't you know that?" she says. "I've been in love with you all along." He rejects her; but can't pull away when it's her life at stake, and so he makes a choice. Tries to leave the rest behind. His career, the instant connection he had with a young woman and would-be screenwriter Betty. He tries and yet the need to write is more than even his loyalty, and worst of all he is ashamed.
You don't think you've ever seen one of these Western movies actually deal with shame before; it surprises you, how accurate it is. How palpable. When she drags him into a high-end store for a fitting and the salesman, presenting topcoats, says pointedly, "as long as the lady is paying for it, why not take the Vicuna?" It's in the deadpan delivery as Joe thinks, "ridiculous situation, wasn't it? A woman almost twice my age…" and it spills over in the final scenes, when he chases Betty out the doors with only terrible, sharpened words.
Perhaps that is why Joe decides to leave.
Perhaps that's why she kills him.
"You didn't know Norma Desmond as a plucky little girl of seventeen, with more courage and wit and heart than ever came together in one youngster."
"I hear she was a terror to work with."
"She got to be. A dozen press agents working overtime can do terrible things to the human spirit."
The credits roll; Misa, a little subdued, follows both of you out of the darkness, and you blink in the sudden glare of the sun through the windows of the main room, the painful ordinariness of life.
"Misa-san," Ryuzaki says.
"Hm?" she looks up at him, startled.
"Are you all right?" he asks her, gently, and you stare at him; startled by the fact that he would even bother to ask. You don't know why it should make something acid snake its way through your insides, or why you want to drag her away from the deep curiosity of his eyes; the calculating surface of their mirrored depths. You know, of course you know, that you are not the only thing that's ever made him wonder, and yet the rage that fills you is sudden and cold, and you clench your fists. The slight pull on the chain tugs at your handcuff; and as though in tune with even that miniscule motion his eyes follow you, so quickly you aren't able to relax your palms before he notices your spontaneous reaction, and he looks at you once again. Nothing there, in his eyes, except a shared knowledge. He'd baited you and you'd taken the bait. It feels like losing.
And it feels like winning.
"Yeah, of course!" Misa says. "I guess I just felt a little sorry for Norma. I can't imagine having to live like that…" she stops herself.
"Like a billionaire?" you tease, and Misa laughs.
"Yeah, sure," she says easily. "None of us would know anything about that, huh, Ryuzaki?" she says, trying to elbow him. Like a pro, Ryuzaki steps out of her range before she can intrude too far, and with unerring disregard for his discomfort, Misa follows and elbows him anyway. He gives her a flat-lipped expression, pulling at the edge of his jeans pockets with his fingers, and then lets out an exaggerated sigh as she smiles sweetly up at him.
"No, of course not," he says drily. "None of us would know anything about that."
You sit down to lunch and Ryuzaki, getting bored with his plate halfway through a bite, picks at the chipping blue polish on his nails. Flecks of color fall onto the glass.
Why this movie? you wonder. Is it a warning… a confession? You can't place it, but all that sticks with you is that solid mire of shame that left Joe floating facedown in a pool. He knew what she was capable of, all right. But he didn't take precautions. Didn't just wake the sleepwalker but taunted her, rubbed her face in it. Why? All these movies about suicides and murders, and suddenly you wonder if it all, somehow, comes from the same place; a place where existence itself seems trifling.
"We should play a game," Ryuzaki says.
"Yeah?" you ask.
He glances up at you. Reaches into his pocket and pulls out a deck of cards. "Do you guys know how to play poker?"
/
"What are we going to bet?" Misa asks. "We don't have any chips. I've got some coins in my purse?"
"How about clothes?" Ryuzaki says.
Misa stares at him for a moment, as though not entirely certain of what she just heard.
"I'm not playing strip-poker with you, Ryuzaki," you say. The coffee table is cleared off and you're all sitting on the floor around it as he shuffles the cards.
"Why?" he asks, innocently. "Do you have something to hide?"
"It's completely inappropriate," you exclaim. "You're pressuring Misa into something she's uncomfortable with."
"I didn't say I was uncomfortable with it!" Misa says, giggling. "I was just thinking we need some ground rules. Like, no further than underwear."
"The task force is probably watching," you say flatly.
"Then they'll either have to come up here and stop us, or look away," Ryuzaki says. "...Or, I suppose they could spy on us like a bunch of perverts. It's up to them."
"Well, you guys have seen all this already," she says, gesturing crudely toward her boobs and crotch.
"The cloth I gave you covered every significant area," Ryuzaki says drily.
"Thanks," Misa drawls, "that was so sweet of you."
"Would you two cut it out already?" you say. "This is a terrible idea."
"Are you chicken?" Ryuzaki says idly.
"Are you twelve?" you retort.
"All right," Misa says, and points one of her feet in the air, rolling her striped stocking down until it is balled up in her hand; she drops it on the table. "I'll just play with Ryuzaki then."
You give her a frustrated look, and she grins at you. "Come on, Light," she says. "It'll be fun."
Ryuzaki thinks deeply about what to put in as an ante, his gaze lingering on his shirt and then his jeans. That is the entire extent of his outfit—as usual. At last, with a shrug, he pulls off his shirt, leaving it hanging on the chain between you by one arm.
"Regretting it already?" you say under your breath, but pull off one of your socks and stick it on the table.
"You look like a malnourished scarecrow," Misa tells the detective bluntly.
"You just wish you could have my figure," Ryuzaki says, striking a pose that makes her roll her eyes. "I could be a model too, hm, Misa-san?"
"Maybe," she admits. "If you got rid of, oh… your face."
You snicker.
"Ah, I see, you'd rather I look like your friend Kuchisake-onna," Ryuzaki says sagely. He deals five cards for each of you and you take a look at your hand.
As predicted, Ryuzaki is fiendishly good at the game. He's terrific with probabilities, and his poker face is unmatched. He has a number of small tells in everyday life—the little fidgeting motions he does with his fingers are the most obvious, but he curls his hands firmly around his knees to prevent that. You aren't too familiar with the game, but it's easy enough to get the hang of—the trouble comes not in the game itself but the situation Ryuzaki's put you in. The rules as Ryuzaki has set them are that if any player folds before the flop, they don't have to remove clothes. Which means if you play it safe, you're in no danger of having to reveal the corset. You have two items of clothing you could take off before that becomes an issue—your other sock, and your pants. But if you took off your pants but refused to take off your shirt you'd look like a complete freak. That leaves you with only one acceptable item to bet; after that you either have to fold or take off your shirt (impossible, since you're all on camera and the task force is watching. Oh, maybe not all of them, but speaking of bets, you'd bet your whole outfit Matsuda at least is glued to the screen). Ryuzaki's set you up to lose. No—not just to lose—he's set you up so you have to decide to lose.
You look at him with a placid expression, but your eyes promise vengeance. He looks back at you, satisfaction dripping from his impeccable poker face all the way down to his toes.
No, wait a minute, you realize, as the game goes round with Misa making a bet first. If relying on probability alone, there's no way you could be sure not to lose. But you have the ability to bluff, and what's more, you know as well as Ryuzaki that letting the task force see the corset would be an absolutely disastrous move for both of you, but primarily for him. After all, he's the one in charge of the task force. He's the "responsible adult" and he's the detective on the case in which you're a suspect, chained to him 24/7 on his own reccommendation. If you bet and lose your other sock Ryuzaki knows as well as you do that there's no way he can allow you to lose again, so if you bluffed after that, even if he had a better hand and knew it, he would have to fold.
Although—
You realize, as the game continues, that you've neglected to consider one very important thing.
Your other sock is on the table. Misa has pulled off her shirt, exposing a bright yellow bra, and gives a flirty look toward one of the walls. "You'd better enjoy it, boys!" she says toward the unseen cameras. (She should turn a little to the left, actually, if she wants to be in center frame.)
The very important thing you've neglected to consider, you realize as Ryuzaki calls your bluff in a voice as dry as the desert, is that while he also knows that taking off the shirt to expose the corset would be suicide, he doesn't give a fuck whether you come across as a freak or not.
He isn't betting on the shirt after all because both of you know you can't let it get that far. He's betting on your pride.
Or, in other words, your pants.
Damn you, Ryuzaki.
It's moved into a showdown, and you place your hand down: four of a kind. He places his: straight flush. "Well, Light-kun?" he says.
You glare at him. You want to tear him to pieces with your bare hands, wipe away the smirk that's hiding behind the glassy surface of his eyes. You unzip your fly, lifting your hips from the floor just enough to pull your pants off without having to stand up and give the task force the kind of show Misa would give them, and you toss it at his head.
He could catch it easily, but instead lets it crumple over him, looking pathetic and silly with your khakis serving him as some kind of makeshift hat. It's enough to ease some of the rage that's stringing its way through your veins. And, when he doesn't even bother to remove the item of clothing but just absently goes back to picking at the polish on his nails, you find your rage flattening to a distracted fondness that should make you more terrified than it does.
Misa laughs brightly, and reaches for her discarded shirt before pulling it back on. She pulls on one stocking and then hunts for the other, which has somehow ended up under the table. You move your legs a little further from her when she "just happens" to bump into them, and Ryuzaki hands your pants back to you.
The world doesn't end.
You do, however, have to stand up to get dressed again.
/
You're at the door, putting your shoes back on, and you're hyperaware of Misa's proximity to you; the way she's leaning forward as though for a hug. You have every intention of stopping her. Every intention—you think. And then, so what? The thought hits you. Misa is a suspect too. She's not one of the task force and she never has been. So what if she wonders? You're so tired—tired of you're not sure even what, but it pulls together like the image of a dead man in a pool, the flakes of polish from Ryuzaki's hands, the smudge of ink against your finger when you would write in your school-ruled notebook, feeling secretive and powerful. When the Kira case is over, you're never going to see her again. She presses her arms around you and you hug her back, politely. The metal hooks and spars flat and hidden against her softness.
"Huh?" she says, looking at you quizzically with a question on her lips, but you just smile at her, enigmatic. Ryuzaki pushes the door open.
"Bye Misa," you say. You wave. You take the elevator down.
"That was unwise," Ryuzaki says, the moment you get onto your floor and the doors have closed behind you.
"You're one to speak, Ryuzaki," you say flippantly. "Strip poker? Do you have a death wish? If my father finds out about that—"
You're not sure what he would do. Maybe just look at Ryuzaki with disappointment. Once, you'd thought—you'd been sure—he would do everything within reason to protect you. But that was before the mock execution. ("We should run away! The truth might come out—no, I'll find the truth while I'm running!"
"It's too late, Light. It's already been decided by those above me.") Ryuzaki has pulled everyone along little by little into his game, and why?
Because he was bored.
You're angry. You're not even sure why.
"He would what?" Ryuzaki says quietly.
He wouldn't do a thing. As far as Soichiro is concerned, Ryuzaki is your only hope of proving your innocence—of ending up anywhere but on death row waiting for the noose, or tried by an international tribunal, or disappeared by a government that wants to sweep the Kira problem under the rug. Misa is undisputably the Second Kira, according to all the physical evidence. There's enough to convict her, and the only possible hope that leaves you as anything but the prime suspect for the first is the one Ryuzaki himself has voiced—the theory of Kira possession which leaves its victims with amnesia after the fact. The theory, as far-fetched as it is, explains the evidence, the "new" Kira, all of it—and it means your character isn't in question.
Of course it would take far more than a friendly game of strip-poker for Soichiro to even think of voicing a concern with the one person who's offered hope, slim as it seems. It's understandable. You'd do the same thing. Have—are—doing the same. So why does it make you so angry?
"Whatever," you say.
"No, Light-kun, it's okay, go on," Ryuzaki says. "He would do what?"
"It doesn't matter, okay?" you say. "Just drop it." You tug him through the corridor of the apartment, but he pulls back.
"What?" you snap, glaring back at him.
"Phone," he says. You fumble in your pocket for it and consider throwing it at his head, but it's too good to possibly break. (Ryuzaki you aren't worried about. He's the least breakable item in existence.) You hand it to him carefully, and he places it on the side table.
We could just leave, you think. You could "solve the case" and we could just leave. We could pick up and move anywhere in the world and we'd never have to deal with any of this again. So why do you keep putting it off? There's no reason to put it off. He has to know you'll go with him.
He has to.
He doesn't want to kill you.
You turn back around and start into the living area.
"If Light-kun is angry with his father he should consider talking to him," Ryuzaki says, "instead of endangering himself."
You laugh sharply. "Endangering myself? Grow up. Misa's not going to tattle, she's in love with me."
"Then Light-kun took advantage of that fact to use her? Oh, I see," Ryuzaki says.
You're so angry you're shaking. If you were facing him (and it's a good thing you're not) you'd probably already have punched him, but you don't want to. You don't want to show him he can wind you up so easily. You don't want to be angry at him.
"So, what was that movie supposed to be?" you say, ignoring his jab. You stick your hands in your pockets, and then take them out again. The drapes are half-shut and the lights are off, but the evening sun is still casting a pale illumination across the picture-postcard of the room. "A confession, or a threat?"
"A confession, Light-kun?" Ryuzaki says carefully. "I'm not the criminal."
You smile bitterly. Even though he's standing behind you, you can feel his presence over your shoulder, and for a moment you have the odd thought that monsters always follow you like this.
"'Is it funny that I'm in love with you?'" you quote.
"I didn't know you had feelings for me," Ryuzaki says drily.
"Cut the crap, Ryuzaki."
"It's not a confession, and it's not a threat," Ryuzaki says.
"Then what?"
"A warning. I'm selfish."
I wish you would be more selfish. You're still treading the same old ground, and you're sick of it; sick of this place and these people. You could do with being kidnapped. You could do for this to be over. But you can't figure out what he's still waiting for.
The Third Kira. You have to find him yourself. Maybe, once you do… you can finally put it all behind. Start over.
"You're wrong," you say. "I'm not going to get tired of you and leave."
"It would be pleasant to believe that."
"But you won't, because you're a paranoid bastard."
"Yes," Ryuzaki says. "And also because I know you."
"You don't."
"Don't I? What don't I know, Light-kun?" He's stepped closer; he's standing almost behind your shoulder, now. You can almost feel his electrical signal sparking against your skin.
"I'm not your prisoner anymore, Ryuzaki," you remind him. "You're not trying to get my confession."
He sighs. "I'm sorry." He rests his bony chin on your shoulder and hugs his arms loosely around your waist. You'd almost forgot you were wearing the corset, till that moment; his back pressed against it.
After a moment, he says, "was it too far? The game?"
"Huh?"
"The strip-poker."
"It wasn't too far," you say. "I just think you're a lunatic."
"Maybe I am," he says, thoughtfully.
"I think you're bored," you say. "I think you're going stir-crazy and you want something to happen, so you're baiting your own people. You know that can't end well."
He shrugs; you feel the movement of his chest, his shoulders rising and falling. "Does it matter if it ends well?" he asks quietly.
"Ryuzaki," you say. "Do you have a death wish?"
He doesn't answer.
After a moment you say, "maybe it's all a game to you, but it's not to me. I can imagine a future for both of us."
"Yeah?" he says. "And what happens in this future for both of us?"
"Whatever you want to do," you say. "But I think… I think it starts when we leave this building together. When we leave this case. Whatever you want to do, or solve, or create…" you pull out of his arms just slightly, enough to turn around and look at him. He has his eyes closed and they barely flutter open to glance at you before closing again. You lean forward, rest your forehead against his skin, and wish with a kind of twisting desperation that you could beam the belief you have through the medium of the air, through the bone and the brain tissue, neurons to neurons, without having to speak. "Whatever you're curious about, right?"
"You can't want to come with me," Ryuzaki sighs.
"Stop telling me what I can't do."
"Because that will make Light-kun do the exact opposite," Ryuzaki says. He smiles; the barest tilting curve at the edge of his mouth. It makes him look so oddly young.
"Exactly."
.
.
.