Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

If Light sat still long enough, he could watch the shadows of the fluted ornamental stone columns on the building across from him move in their stable arc, from sunrise to sunset. 

Of course, that wasn’t technically accurate, and in the two and a half hours he sat in his lambda calculus lecture, the shadows hardly changed position at all. But staring out the window to which his chosen desk was closest, staring at the shadows, was a way to keep focused. And, it had the added benefit of letting him avoid the eyes of all the young men and women who wanted to either screw him, or be him. Or both. There had initially been a third group besides those two, but after two years spent dutifully finessing the Oxford University milieu, there wasn’t a single person who would say they hated Light Yagami.

The professor’s interrogative “Any questions before we move on?” pulled Light’s eyes briefly to the chalkboard, where he was both disappointed and unsurprised to find nothing of interest. He shook his head slightly, and looked back outside.

Something dropped out of the sky.

A thin black notebook, with white lettering on its front cover, fell down past the window. Light’s eyes tracked its descent, almost graceful due to the lightness of the paper, as it rotated once, twice in the air, then landed on its spine, tipping to one side and flipping softly shut on the grass of the quad. 

Light stared down at the book, eyes wide with confusion. It shouldn’t be too unusual for a notebook to fall past a window on a college campus: someone on an upper floor of the building could have dropped it. But the angle was all wrong. It had fallen too far away from the window to have been dropped from above, but the trajectory wasn’t the arc he would have expected if it were thrown. The book had fallen perfectly straight down to the ground, as though it’d been dropped from a helicopter. 

And it wasn’t just that. No-one was coming to retrieve it. Light would figure that if someone had dropped or thrown a notebook out a window, the owner would be coming out of the building to get it back. But as Light stared at it, not a single person was coming near it. Not the owner, and not any passers-by, either. The book had landed somewhere out of most peoples’ walking path, in the shadow of the building, so despite the unusual brightness of this December morning and the lack of England’s usual cloud cover, nobody on the quad seemed to notice it, either.

When Light left class a half-hour later, shrugging on his lightweight beige overcoat and walking out aimlessly toward the student housing - lambda calculus was his only lecture for today - the notebook was still sitting there.

Figuring he might as well be a good samaritan and return the book to whomever it belonged, Light made his way to it. 

He lifted the thin black notebook, turning it over. His brows furrowed. The lettering on the front cover was not a name or any form of identification, but instead, two words in an odd scrawl. “ Death Note ,” he murmured the words aloud. “As in… a notebook of death?” What did that even mean?

Light flipped the book open; there was more text in the strange, slightly alien white lettering on the inside cover. "How to use it..." he read the heading, and skimmed the (remarkably intricate) rules. Heading up the list was:

The human whose name is written in this notebook shall die.

So that was its alleged purpose. Obviously, a notebook couldn’t actually do that - cause any type of death the writer specified (within 40 seconds), with the default being a heart attack, anywhere in the world, so long as the writer knew the target’s name and face. But whoever made this had gone to a lot of trouble to make it look like a legitimate magical artefact. While it looked like a typical college student’s notebook at first glance, a closer inspection revealed subtle wearing in certain places, like it had seen many decades of handling. The usual patterns of wear that would occur by human hands were much too large, or completely wrong; as though the notebook’s previous owner had been not-human.

What kind of person would drop something like this onto a university campus? Maybe they planned to do some type of social experiment, to see what kind of people the students at Oxford would kill, if they had the opportunity. Or maybe this book was a prop, made by some theatre student for a movie. It could even be one of those fake magic books, like the ones people who called themselves ‘wiccan’ carted around, although this was a bit too normal-looking. Usually people who pretended to be witches embraced the aesthetic a little more.

Flipping through the lined pages, he noticed all of them were blank. There was no contact information to get ahold of whoever the book might belong to. The only thing on the back inside cover were a few more rules.

Light closed the strange notebook again with a shrug, about to set it back onto the grass where he'd found it, and chalk it up to some odd prank. But he paused, and ended up taking out his phone instead, tapping the first (and only) number on his favourites list.

"Ryuzaki," he said, and continued without waiting for a reply, "I found something interesting at school today. I’m heading to the office now, meet me there and I’ll tell you about it."

Nine months ago: March 3rd, 2019. 

The buzzing of his phone was the first thing Light registered as he blinked his bleary eyes open. He looked out his bedroom window: still dark outside. What time was it? He checked his phone, and realised someone was calling him. Not just someone. The name on the phone read Ryuzaki .

Light pressed the green circle and scooted the phone closer. He whispered, “What?”

“Light, I have something important to tell you. It’s about our project.”

He shot up in bed, picking up the phone and pressing it to his ear. If there was something important enough to call about at three in the morning, he definitely wanted to hear about it in person. From his parents’ house to their office was a fifteen-minute journey, but he would need another ten to get dressed, so: “Meet you at the office in half an hour.”

“Perfect. I will see you there.”

Chapter Text

A short train ride away from the Oxford campus, there was a quaint five-story building with a coffee shop on the first floor. Light picked up two black teas and two cake pops, and took the lift up to the fourth level. Down the hall and to the right, in a visually unremarkable office space with opaque curtains on the insides of all the windows and a truly paranoid amount of security on the door lock (not that the entire building hadn’t been modified to have extremely high security, but this was excessive even by Light’s standards), was “the office”.

Light stood at the door, unblinking (for the retinal scan), mostly unmoving (for the facial recognition), except for his arms, which manoeuvred the drinks around to let him scan his thumbprint on a little plate above the metal door handle. Once every scan was complete, he pushed the handle down enough to unlatch it, and shoved the door open with his hip.

Already sitting close to the middle of the room, wearing his usual white button-up shirt and loose navy slacks, spinning slowly in a swivel chair and crouching on bare feet, was Light’s only real friend. He was his best friend, and his lover. This was the man Light had known for as close to forever as either of them cared to recall, the man who understood him in a world that couldn’t, the man who both drove him crazy and kept him sane.

The man with whom Light shared the moniker of L.

Light held up a cup and a cake pop. “Here, Leon, I brought you some sweets.” He laid a hand on the back of the chair to stop it spinning, and handed them over.

“Ten sugars?” Leon asked hopefully, owlish eyes staring up at Light above dark violet circles. He took a bite from the strawberry-vanilla cake pop and hummed in appreciation. “Mph good.”

“I gave you eight,” Light said, prying the lid off his own cup and taking a quiet sip. “Your insane metabolism might keep you from getting fat, but it won’t stave off diabetes.”

Leon shrugged, copacetic with this arrangement. He slurped his tea noisily. “So, Light, you said you had something to show me?”

Technically, he’d said he’d found something interesting , but that could be inferred. Light hopped up onto the empty space on his desk, crossing his legs as he took a small bite from his cake pop. It was quite good, chocolate and raspberry. “I did,” he said, pulling around his messenger bag to fish out the strange black notebook. He held it up, letting Leon read the cover, then tossed it over to him. “What do you make of this?”

“ Death Note. Hm.” Leon caught it between the thumb and forefinger of one hand, holding it up to the neutral-coloured overhead lights. “No visible fingerprints besides yours. Some scratches, like from claws. The cover is… well, it feels like synthetic leather, but might be something else. The lettering was done with a wide-nibbed quill pen by someone with very large hands, or a strange way of holding writing implements.” He flipped the book open. “The lines printed onto the pages are the standard college rule, but missing margin guides. No contact names or other information besides these ‘rules’.”

Light nodded. He’d been curious what Leon would make of the book, since he was so good at poring over evidence, but nothing about that description led Light to doubt his previous conclusions. “My best guess is that it’s a prop for a movie,” he said. “I considered it might be a prank or a social experiment, but there’s no contact info or instructions.” He made to take another sip of his tea, but nearly spat it out. He forced himself to swallow before he yelled, “ Leon! Bloody hell, what do you think you’re doing ?!”

He removed his tongue from the book cover, looking quizzically at Light. “I thought you would want me to be thorough, since you were so anxious to tell me about this point of interest .” He smiled. “It tastes like sand.”

“I didn’t say you should-” he started to scold Leon, but paused. Sand? Why does it taste like- “Did you say sand?”

“Yes. I am aware we’re nowhere near a beach. It also smells stiff and dusty. Like it’s been left in a cardboard box in an attic for twenty years.”

Light ate the rest of his cake pop in one bite, his plan to savour one of the few sweets he let himself have be damned, and leapt off the desk. He circled Leon’s swivel chair, leaning over his shoulder to stare at the notebook with him. This mystery was getting more interesting by the moment. It tastes like sand, looks like it’s been raked through hell and back, and smells like it’s been left in an attic. Faking all those qualities would be way too much work for a theatre student to put in, for no good reason. So who made this, and why?

“I have no better guesses than you do, Light,” Leon said, replying to Light’s unspoken question. This was a pretty common occurrence for them, predicting what each other were thinking well enough to complete the other’s thoughts. “I initially thought it was some kind of toy, but now I’m lacking any hypotheses.”

Light chuckled, leaning back. “A toy ? Oh, sure, like…” He affected his best children’s TV commercial voiceover tone: “Bop it! Twist it! Commit homicide!”

Leon laughed hard enough to shake the chair he was crouching on. “Oi, shut up, Light.”

Reflexively: “Make me.” Light stood, crossing his arms. 

Leon reached back to grab Light’s waist and spin his chair around; as soon as they were facing each other, he grabbed Light’s shirt near the collar and yanked him down into a kiss. 

Even after they broke away, Light stayed close, smiling affectionately. “Idiot.”

“Bastard,” Leon replied, his tone just as sweet.

“I love you.”

“I love you too.”

Light finally stood straight after that, returning to get his tea with a pleased smile. “Well, without enough information to figure out who made this, we could speculate on something else,” he offered, leaning back against his desk. “If the rules in that book were accurate, and you really could kill someone just by writing their name… who would it be? How would you use something like this?”

He tipped his head aside, messy mop of black hair flipping with it as he looked up at Light. “Hm… if we pretend this is a real weapon… the first thing coming to mind is a hostage situation, where officials can’t get a sniper lock on the target. This could resolve such a situation with a minimum of risk. Or… there are a great many criminals who the police would execute if they could, but who are too deep in hiding to touch. If all that’s needed is a face and a real name… we know that , Light. We could do the world a favour and take out every nation’s Most Wanted list with a few strokes of a pen.”

Light nodded. That was exactly what he’d been thinking. “Well, it’s not that hard to test it.”

Someone else might have baulked at the idea. Of stooping to test something that had the most miniscule likelihood of working, or of killing someone. Honestly, everyone in Light’s classes at Oxford - the sorts of people who thought “science” was restricted only to the domain of classes whose names ended in “-ology”, instead of being a generalizable way to find out stuff about the universe - would probably be more upset about the former than the latter.

But Leon just nodded. He and Light weren’t anything like those stuffy academics locked in their ivory towers: both of them cared much more about results than methodologies. This was, of course, the same reason neither of them had any trouble with the idea of committing murder. Ordinary eighteen-year-olds probably would have, but neither of them were ordinary. “Let’s find five death-row inmates from five different countries and have them all die at specified times. If the first one dies on time, we’ll begin testing the other rules… have one write a note, perhaps.”

It was a good plan. It would provide enough evidence to be absolutely certain the book did what it purported to, and also prevent anyone from connecting the deaths to each other or to them. “Do you think that’s what ‘details of the death’ means? That this notebook is supposed to be able to control peoples’ actions before they die?” It was the same hunch Light had.

“It seems like the most likely possibility.” Leon climbed out of his chair onto the floor, where his computer was set up. (He had a desk, but it was covered in papers.) “For our five countries, let’s use… England, America, China, India, and Japan.” After a few moments of typing in passwords and searching databases, he had the names, and was kneeling on the ground with the notebook open under his pen. “Ready?” 

“As I’ll ever be,” Light shrugged. Despite his outward nonchalance, his heartbeat was kicking up an anxious pace. He stared intently at the notebook, watching the point of Leon’s pen as he wrote the first name, then turning his wrist to stare at the second hand of his watch.

After precisely forty seconds, Leon yelped aloud in surprise, leaping to his feet and backing away until he slammed into his desk.

“Leon! What’s wrong?” Light turned toward him, halfway to standing. But Leon relaxed a moment after, releasing the white-knuckled grip on his pen.

“There was a strange feeling,” he said, sounding more excited than scared, “a short delay after writing the name. It was… a small jolt, or a rush… not altogether unpleasant.” He walked back over and pressed the pen into Light’s hand. “You should try it. Let’s see if it’s replicable.”

“Okay, but first, check if that man-” he pointed at the name Leon had scrawled into the top corner of the blank page, “-is dead.”

“Oh, of course.” He knelt in front of his monitor, clicking around, before he froze. His eyes pulled open wide, staring at the screen. “Light…” he said distantly as his breathing quickened, “It happened . I would never have expected it to actually work , but he… he had a heart attack. Exactly forty seconds after I wrote his name.”

Light looked over, looking at the prison’s bare-bones report, and back at the page. The same name, written at the top of each. “Leon…” It could be a coincidence. I have to try making someone write a note, like Leon suggested. “Get me another name.”

He nodded mutely and did so, not taking his eyes off the screen until Light was halfway finished with writing. 

Light wrote the name right beside the previous one, and then added that the man should write out a specific message before he died. Just as Light was finishing his writing, a warm crackling electricity ran through his chest, dissipating a moment after. It wasn’t like any feeling he had ever experienced before, but as Leon had said… it wasn’t unpleasant. Slightly breathless, and strangely invigorated, he said, “It happened to me, too.”

“Interesting,” Leon said, eyes glued to his screen as he waited for a report to come up. “I wonder if that’s how the book lets you know it worked.”

Light was hardly paying attention to the strange sensation they’d both experienced, under the weight of the fact that forty seconds after Leon had written a name in a notebook that said it could kill, that man had died. The moment he saw movement on Leon’s screen, he exclaimed, “There, look!”

“Inmate died of a sudden heart attack after writing the following…” Light read the report, and the attached photograph of the note. He read it, and looked back at his own handwriting on the page, containing the exact same words. “The death note… it’s for real!”

Leon was grinning now, staring down at the notebook like it was the most interesting puzzle he’d ever seen. Well, it probably was. “You do understand what this means, don’t you Light.” He looked up at Light, a maniacal glint in his eyes. “Everything we thought we knew is false.”

Light blinked at him. He’d been thinking this whole time of things to do with this book, and the ambition of his thoughts had only been exacerbated by finding out the bloody thing worked . Ideas of demolishing the current world order and erecting a superior one in its place were swirling through his mind. But it seemed Leon was thinking down a different train entirely. It happened, sometimes. “Huh?”

“We just caused two heart attacks on the opposite side of the world by writing on magic paper. There isn’t any reason, within the laws of physics as we know them, that that should be possible. For centuries , science has been operating under the delusion that we can find out everything there is to know about the universe just by looking at natural phenomena, but clearly , that’s false! This book breaks everything , Light!”

And now Light understood that look. He sighed, running his fingers across his forehead. “You want to do science to the magic book, don’t you.”

Leon frowned, tilting his head aside. “Don’t you?”

Light chuckled, giving Leon a smirk. “Of course I do. But what’s the end goal of science? It isn’t just knowledge. It’s progress .”

With a similarly amused look, Leon stared back. “You want to change the world with the magic book, don’t you.”

“Don’t you?” Light echoed.

“Of course.”

One year ago: November 22, 2018. 

Light closed his umbrella, and set it, still-dripping, into the holder by the door as he walked into the cafe. His expression and breathing were even, excessively so from the control he was forcing to cover up the racing of his heart. Leon had texted him today while he was in the middle of class, and explicitly said he wanted to meet Light somewhere besides their office, to talk about something outside of work. 

The cafe was a little out of his way, but it was a nice place. Quaint, even. Soft yellow lighting cascaded over delicate desserts in polished glass cases, mahogany-accented booths and wide-leafed potted ferns. Light hadn’t been here in a long time. Actually, the last time he’d been here was… 

He shook his head, not keen on reminiscing, and made his way towards the centre of the cafe, from which he could see Leon tucked away in the furthest booth from the entrance. He bought two strawberry parfaits from the counter, and made his way over.

“Ryuzaki,” he said, sliding the parfait across the table, then setting a spoon down beside it. “You wanted to talk to me?”

“Asahi,” Leon used his alias, too, as he always did outside of school or work. “Yes, I did.” He picked up his spoon, lifting out a small bite of parfait. “Thank you for buying me food.”

“It was my pleasure,” Light said, brain running on automatic as he tried to hyperventilate quietly enough that Leon wouldn’t notice. “What did you want to talk about? You said it wasn’t about any of our projects.”

“Yes, well…” he stared at his spoon for a long moment before setting it gently down on the table with a soft clank. “I have a bit of a… problem. I wanted to ask for your advice in solving it.”

A problem… unrelated to their detective work as L. Was Leon reconsidering his decision to not go to college? As Light met his eyes, he knew that couldn’t be it. Leon looked so… nervous. He was shifting uncomfortably in his crouch, like he was trying to get out from under Light’s inquisitive gaze. 

Light kept his voice carefully calm as he asked, “What kind of problem?”

Leon frowned, reaching back to scratch at his scalp as he looked off to the corner of their table. “I am currently suspended in a superposition.”

Light blinked at him. A superposition… like Schrödinger's Cat, both alive and dead at the same time until someone opens the box.  

“But, if I tell you what two states I’m caught between, the superposition will collapse.” He glanced back at Light, eyes apologetic. “I’m not trying to frustrate you, I’m sorry. I’m just…” He shook his head, and took another quick bite of his parfait. The unsaid word hung in the air: afraid.

“It’s okay,” Light said, and meant it more than he realised. Because he’d been in his own superposition. For some time, the usual banter between him and Leon had been… different. The words themselves hadn’t changed, but the competitive edge that saturated their exchanges had shifted into something new. Something charged . Like a jolt of electricity passed between them whenever Leon’s intense, unblinking gaze met his own, making Light’s chest clench a little bit each time. 

He had done precisely nothing about this feeling for months, and he’d been planning to continue doing nothing about it. He was a more than good enough actor to pretend nothing was going on. And he couldn’t jeopardise his friendship with the only person who genuinely understood him, no more than he could jeopardise the name they’d made for themselves as L. Light’s little crush had stayed unacknowledged for as many months, and both their seventeenth birthdays had passed without either of them the wiser.

But this conversation, this anxiety that Leon didn’t even seem to be trying to hide…

“You’re my best friend, Asahi,” Leon stated the obvious. “And I never want to lose you.”

“I know,” Light said. He picked up his spoon, finally, and lifted a spoonful of parfait to his lips. The nervousness was settling into his stomach and he really didn’t feel like eating, but this way he wouldn’t have to keep looking into Leon’s deep grey eyes. “But for what it’s worth, Ryuzaki… I don’t think there’s anything you could possibly do to make me stop being your friend.”

Even though he wasn’t looking, he could feel Leon staring at him anyway, with the slant of his eyelids asking, Is there really? Could I do anything, anything at all to you, and you would accept it? And Light chuckled softly to himself then, because he knew his answer, though he also knew it was probably foolish. “Yeah, I… I remember being alone, even though it was ages ago. I don’t ever want to go back to living like that.”

“I remember it too,” Leon said, voice stronger for hearing Light’s words. “You know, the problem with collapsing a superposition lies when you don’t know the probability of each state.”

“True.” But I think I can guess what those probabilities are now, Leon. He scraped up a spoonful of slightly-melted pink-and-white, and held it in the air as he smiled at his friend. “I have a hypothesis, of what you called me here to ask. Would you like to hear it?”

Leon blinked once, and then again. “...Yes, I think I would.”

Light nodded. “Are you…” he started to ask, but trailed off. Leon’s curious, nervous expression blurred in front of him as he focused on his spoon. That wasn’t the right way to say this. He bit his lip, letting it slide slowly out from between his teeth as he lowered the spoon back to rest in his parfait cup. Saying it the right way was harder.

“Am I?”

“I am…” Light began again. That was better. Now he just had to finish. Four more words, only four more words. But they stuck in his throat, so sweet they tasted acidic, like the thirtieth candy Leon made him try because he was confident he could get Light to enjoy sweets as much as he did if only he showed him enough kinds. 

Leon didn’t echo him that time, just sat there, blurry, still, and staring. 

“I’m… in love with you,” and it didn’t seem right to use a pseudonym now, so as he looked up at him again he whispered, “Leon.”

He started laughing, softly, like he was keeping that laugh just for Light. “Got it in one,” he said, with a wicked smirk but adoring eyes. He pushed his parfait aside then, and climbed out of his crouch onto the table. Kneeling, face an inch from Light’s: “Was I really so obvious?”

And, breathlessly, just before he kissed him, Light said, “Yeah.”

Chapter Text

Under the white lights of their office, both halves of the elusive detective L, two teenage boys in collared shirts and slacks, sat on polished wooden floorboards. They were hunched over a laptop computer and a magical notebook, and staring at each other with dangerous smirks on their faces.

“We ought to figure out the scope of the death note’s powers before we decide on the best way to use it,” Leon proposed, reaching over to take Light’s free hand.

Light nodded in reply, spinning the pen idly between his fingers. “What tests could you think of? I think we should test all the rules written in this thing, just to make sure they’re accurate, but on top of that.”

“Agreed. For additional tests,” Leon rubbed his thumb across Light’s absently, “let’s start with figuring out the limits of our control over peoples’ actions before they die. If we can make them kill others, for example, that’s a significant increase in the number of potential applications for this.” He lifted his half-empty cup of tea and took a long sip. 

“I also wonder what we’d find if we looked at the physical properties of the notebook. Could you burn it or dissolve it in acid? What if we looked at the paper under a microscope?” Light tapped the back-end of the pen against the notebook page. “Maybe we won’t glean anything interesting or useful, but it’s worth testing.”

Leon nodded once, perfunctorily, before he turned to Light with a steel gaze. “We’ll need to be very careful about killing too many criminals too suspiciously, too close together. It could attract unwanted attention.”

“I know,” Light said, squeezing Leon’s hand in acknowledgement. A lot of the plans which his mind was still weaving into place, even now, would require bringing rather a lot of attention onto them - but still, he could recognise that Leon was right. It made no sense to start trying to fix the world with this notebook before they knew the full extent of what it was capable of. He could be patient.

Within four days, they’d confirmed all the rules written in the notebook itself: the name had to be written with the person’s face in mind, any plausible cause of death would happen so long as it was written within 40 seconds, and most sets of ‘details’ could be specified within 6 minutes and 40 seconds. In the process of testing these, they’d figured out some additional rules. 

First, the notebook (inconveniently) wouldn’t allow killing anyone whose name wasn’t written in it: if a specified death would affect other lives, the person would just die of a heart attack instead. However, if the names of everyone who was going to die in a certain situation were written in the note, it was possible for the death of one to cause the deaths of others.

Second, any ‘details’ needed to be within the reasonable limits of what a person might normally do. They couldn’t get someone to draw a picture of a face they’d never seen, or write down information they had no way of knowing. However, it moderately amused the both of them to learn they could still make people do things that were rather out of character , such as confessing to crimes they’d previously been tight-lipped about, or donating all their money to charity despite a long history of miserliness.

Third, the cause and details of the death could be filled in before the name, even days before. They had some ongoing experiments to see how many days, but so far, up through four days seemed to still work perfectly well.

They’d consolidated their experiments to minimise the total number of deaths, so between the two of them over four days, their total kill count with the death note was just shy of two dozen. An insignificant blip on the radar of the world.

On the fifth day, in the middle of the night, they were in one of Oxford’s chemistry labs, carefully watching a beaker of muriatic acid that was sitting under a fume hood. Leon held a torn piece of the death note just above the liquid’s surface, gripped in long metal tongs. Both he and Light wore acid-resistant gloves as well as the usual safety goggles and white lab coats, and there was a large bucket of water and a bowl of baking soda nearby. 

It was almost anticlimactic when Leon dropped the scrap into the beaker and all it did was dissolve.

“So far,” Light summarised as he diluted, then neutralised, the acid, “the pages of the death note do mostly what we’d expect of ordinary paper. They tear under tension, crease under pressure, burn in fire, and dissolve in acid.” He pushed the beaker towards Leon, and pulled off his goggles and gloves. “The only difference is they’re waterproof.”

“A disappointing result, but not an unsurprising one,” Leon said as he took the beaker of grainy sludge and poured it into a hazardous waste container. “Would you still like to try-” 

A shaking clatter of Leon putting the empty beaker down with suddenly-trembling hands, followed by a dull thud as he backed into the opposite counter, caused Light to turn around. “What is-”

Then he saw it.

In the far corner of the room, out of direct view of the ceiling lights, was something . Light would have called it a monster, if he thought in such terms: the creature was massive, with a mess of ink-black feathers protruding from behind bony, angular shoulderblades. Its gangly arms and legs were bent as it crouched to fit its seven-plus-foot-tall form under the laboratory ceiling, and it was clothed in patchwork leather with alien-looking metallic jewellery and chains. Its face was almost mask-like, plaster white with puffy blue lips that stretched into an inhumanly wide smile, showing off glimmering, shark-like teeth. 

Light clamped his hands over his mouth to keep from screaming, backing up as far as he could anyway, until his back hit the same counter as Leon. 

And just then, the creature’s bright yellow eyes briefly glowed red, and it opened its mouth. “Hi there!”

Light blinked, now more confused than anything else. He would have expected some kind of guttural growl to come from something that looked like that, but the voice was oddly… normal? It sounded like it ought to come out of a cheeky young man from Birmingham, not this gothic demon. He lowered his hands from his mouth, and took a cautious step forward. “Uh… hi.”

“Who are you?” Leon added, still standing at the counter but no longer pressed against it as though glued there. 

“The name’s Ryuk,” the creature said, giving a little wave, then pointing to the death note sitting on a nearby countertop. “That used to be my notebook.”

The last of Light’s shock fled with the knowledge that his - and Leon’s - suspicions were correct. The death note did have a previous owner, who wasn’t human. “I see,” he said. “Well, Ryuk. We’ve been expecting you.”

“We, huh?” A long clawed finger came to point at Leon. “You’re including him, right? I was wondering why there was another guy writing in my death note.”

“Yes, he is including me.” Leon finally stepped away from the counter, slinking forward to stand beside Light. He peeled off his gloves and picked the goggles off his head, setting them all on the counter and looking up at Ryuk. “I’m Leon,” he said, because he clearly didn’t see any point in giving a pseudonym to a supernatural entity, “Light’s boyfriend. I have to ask… what are you?”

“I’m a shinigami,” he replied, nonchalant.

“A god of death…” Light whispered, impressed. “I should have known.”

“But I’m gonna ask you the same thing, Leon ,” Ryuk continued. “What are you ? It has been a few thousand years since a death note came to the human world, but I don’t remember any previous users sharing its power with their boyfriends .” The shinigami floated closer on unbeating wings, more gliding than flying. “Siblings, sometimes, or spouses, but humans go through lovers too quick.”

“Ah,” Leon said, wandering around a table, his light steps similar to Ryuk’s floating as he moved closer. “I understand. Suffice it to say that Light and I share a very strong bond, because we share our lives, even and especially the parts no-one else knows about.”

It was pure fact, but Light still smiled to hear Leon say it. Looking up at Ryuk, he nodded.

“It seems we each have a lot of questions for each other,” Light said, noticing the confused looks Ryuk was giving to the chemistry lab. “Shall we take turns?”

The shinigami nodded enthusiastically, hovering onto a countertop and sitting there cross-legged. 

When Leon leapt up onto the opposite counter, curling into a ball on the edge of its smooth black surface, Light strode over to stand at his side, across from their new supernatural friend. “Since you just asked Leon something, let me start. Ryuk, why exactly are you here?”

“I dropped the notebook. I’m supposed to haunt whoever picks it up, and that’s you, so here I am.” He turned his massive palms up. “Okay, my turn. What in the King’s name is this place? And what are you doing with my notebook in it?”

“That was two questions, Ryuk,” Light said, holding up two fingers for emphasis. It was remarkably easy to take a playful tone with this shinigami. “To answer your first question, this is a laboratory. It’s a place to do science, which is sort of like human magic.” Technically, that isn’t quite true - if anything, science is more powerful than magic. But it’s a fine comparison for a being who has probably never heard of science. “This particular place is for chemistry, which is about mixing things together to see what happens. There are a lot of tools here to measure those reactions, and to keep us safe while we create them.”

Ryuk’s grin widened with intrigue. “Heh, humans definitely didn’t have anything this interesting last time I was here.”

“Next question,” Leon said, “where do you come from?”

“The shinigami realm,” Ryuk said the name like it left a foul taste in his shark-toothed mouth. “It’s a desolate wasteland of a world, full of lazy bones. There used to be plants and animals and things, but now it’s all just desert, and a couple dozen shinigami lazing around gambling. I was so bored I didn’t even feel alive. Heh, suppose it’s odd for a death god to say that, but you get my point. I dropped the notebook because I wanted to have some real fun for the first time in so many centuries.”

Light nodded to himself. An immortal shinigami is here on earth because he was bored. I wonder if Leon is thinking the same thing I am about this. 

“To answer your other question,” Leon said, “we wanted to know the physical properties of the notebook. Does it work the same way as ordinary paper, or is there something special about it? We found out so far that even though the pages aren’t laminated, they don’t get wet when submerged in water.”

“Heh, even I didn’t know that,” Ryuk sounded impressed. “Not a lot of water in the shinigami realm.”

Shinigami realm. Right. About that… “Do you work the same way as shinigami in Japanese folklore? You kill humans to steal their unlived years?”

“Right,” Ryuk confirmed. “But before you ask, no, you two won’t get the unlived years from those twenty-three people you’ve killed with the notebook. That’s one of the two differences between you and me.”

Light chuckled, sharing a glance with Leon. “We look the ambitious sort, don’t we? Well, I won’t lie, it is disappointing that this notebook won’t make us immortal.” I think there might be another way to do it, though, if a more roundabout one.

“What’s the other difference between us, Ryuk?” Leon asked. “You mentioned there were two.”

“Now who’s asking two questions!” Ryuk cackled. 

“Ah, sorry, I’m getting ahead of myself. Ask us something else, then.” 

“Nah, I’ll answer this. Was gonna tell you anyway. The second difference between humans who own death notes, and shinigami, is our eyes.” His eyes flashed briefly red, for emphasis. “A shinigami’s eyes can see the names and lifespans of humans above their heads. That way, we never worry about being unable to kill someone just because we don’t know their name. And, when we do kill that person, we always know exactly how many years we’re going to get. I can see both your lifespans above your heads right now… although of course, there’s no way I’d tell you what they are.” 

He’s refusing to tell us how many years we have left… because he’s being deliberately obstinate? More likely that he simply can’t. With the number of rules surrounding the death note, it would make sense that the shinigami themselves have rules they have to operate by, too. Light nodded. “I see…” He took Leon’s hand now and held it against the counter, pressing his index finger into his lover’s palm in the staccato rhythm of hyper-quick Morse code. ‘I bet shinigami have a whole ruleset they have to abide by.’

‘Probably imposed by the king Ryuk mentioned before,’ Leon replied the same way.

“Alright,” Ryuk piped up cheerfully, none-the-wiser, “my next question for you two: have you found out any rules besides the ones I already wrote in the book?”

“Yes, actually, several,” Leon said with the same proud tone he used to deliver a critical insight into a case. “As long as the words are recognizable, the notebook can be written on with anything. But, names have to be written in their original language: writing a Chinese person’s name using Roman characters won’t work, even if it’s an accurate transliteration. That said, things like stroke order don’t seem to matter, nor does the legibility of one’s handwriting. This implies that the notebook reads the intentions of its user, rather than the letters on its pages.”

Light picked up right where Leon had left off: “While the notebook can’t affect any lives besides the ones written in it, you can create a situation where one person whose name is written physically causes the death of another person whose name is also written. Say, write that one person dies after shooting someone, and that the second person dies from being shot.”

Ryuk had started cackling by now, but Leon kept talking. “Erasing what’s written in the death note doesn’t have any effect, nor does white-out, or scribbling the words out, or writing nonsense letters on top to make the text illegible... but for some reason, if you cross out text with exactly two horizontal lines - no more, no less - it works.”

“The details of the death can be written up to days before the name itself is added - though how many days, we’re not sure yet.” Light flashed a grin at the laughing shinigami. “Give us a break on that one, we’ve only had the bloody thing four days.”

“It makes no difference what language is used to write the cause and conditions of the death. Living languages like Spanish, dead languages like Latin, and constructed languages like Klingon all work. But, the user does need to actually know the language: transcribing text in a language you don’t personally know won’t work. In short, the death note borrows the linguistic knowledge of its user.”

“Finally, a torn scrap contains all the same properties as a page still attached to the book. In short, there’s nothing special about being attached to the cover: it’s something about the paper itself which creates the effect.”

Between wheezes of laughter and loud smacks of giant clawed hands against gangly knees, Ryuk exclaimed, “You two are loony, you know that?”

“Thank you very much!” Leon nodded as though the Queen had just complimented his dress shirt. 

“What are you even going to do with the notebook?” Ryuk was just staring at the two intently, an enthusiastic grin splitting his inhuman face. “I’ve had a death note as long as there’ve been humans on this planet, and I didn’t know any of that. What are you planning so you need to know this stuff?”

“Oh, we’re not totally sure about that yet, actually,” Light said. He thinks we need a reason. Are all shinigami such incredibly uncurious creatures? They have failed to learn in twelve thousand years what Leon and I did in four days... but maybe that has more to do with the fact that they’ve never considered the idea of science. To be fair to Ryuk, I don’t think I would independently come up with the experimental method of my own accord, either. It wasn’t any one human that came up with it, it was thousands of humans over hundreds of years, each of us building on what we grew up with. That sort of thing couldn’t happen among a group of immortal beings. Does immortality necessarily breed that kind of stagnation?

Suddenly, there came a loud metallic creak as the laboratory door swung open. Leon turned to look over his shoulder, even as Light stayed frozen in place.

“Ah, hello! I was wondering why the lights were on in here,” said the warm, easygoing voice of the head of the astronomy department. She slid the sleeves of her loose brown turtleneck up to her elbows as she made her way toward them. “Light, who’s this?”

‘She can’t see Ryuk,’ Leon tapped into Light’s palm.

Relieved, Light tapped back ‘good’, then turned to the professor. “Ah, I don’t think you two have met. Professor, this is my boyfriend, Ryuzaki.” He gave her a warm smile, gesturing to Leon, and very carefully avoiding any glance toward the gigantic feathered reaper sitting on the counter at his other side.

Leon climbed down to take the professor’s outstretched hand, shaking it once gently before stepping back again, surreptitiously wiping his hand off on his slacks. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

“Ryuzaki, this is Professor Cairns,” Light completed the introduction, “she heads up the astronomy department here at Oxford.”

“The pleasure is mine.” She nodded at Leon, then looked to Light, raising a playful eyebrow. “Light, do I want to know what you’re doing with your boyfriend in the chemistry lab at one in the morning?”

“Professor…” Light groaned. “It isn’t like that. We were having dinner when I remembered I had an experiment due for my analytical chemistry class tomorrow morning. I’d completely forgotten about it.”

“And I insisted on tagging along, since we weren’t going to get to finish our date anyway,” Leon added mildly.

“I see,” the professor’s straw-blonde bob swung over her shoulders as she nodded. It wasn’t clear whether or not she bought their lie, but in the end it didn’t matter: it wasn’t the professors at this school who started rumours, and regardless, she would never come up with the truth . “Well, I’ll leave the lights on, then. Try to finish your experiment soon, Light, and get some sleep.” She spun on one heel, and her steps clicked back across the floor. “Don’t keep your boyfriend out too late either.”

“I’ll do my best, Professor,” Light gave a flourishing wave as she walked out the door. After he’d heard her steps clicking down the hallway and out of earshot, he turned back to Ryuk. “Ok, spill. Why couldn’t she see you?”

The shinigami cackled. “Only people who’ve touched my death note can see me, or hear my voice. Right now, that’s just the two of you.”

Leon’s gaze snapped over to the death note, which was currently sitting face-down on the counter beside him. Less than a metre away from where Professor Cairns had just been standing. “We are going to be much more careful about where we leave that thing from now on, if anyone who touches it can see you.”

Light nodded emphatically. He didn’t want to think about what might happen if even one other person besides Leon was able to see Ryuk following him everywhere. He and Leon were practised liars, but trying to explain why there was a blatantly supernatural entity following them around… where would they even start?

“But speaking of not staying out too late,” Leon said, “I do know you need to sleep, Light. Let’s look at that paper under a microscope, and then go home.”

Two years ago: September 17, 2017.

“Is this seat taken?”

Light looked up. His best friend was already sliding into the chair beside him. “For the fact that you don’t even go here, you’re sure on campus a lot.”

Leon shrugged, gesturing around the room. On either side of the table at which they sat, fluted arches framed shelves of hardback books. Further up, a railed-in second story of similar bookshelves could be accessed by spiral staircases at the ends of the room; arching over all of that, a tall ceiling framed by an oil-painted frieze. “I can get most of the fun out of college just by sitting in the library with you.” 

“Fair point,” Light ceded, skimming his fingers over the text open in front of him. But the history of computer systems had only barely held his attention before Leon had shown up, and now he had something more important on his mind. “Any progress with our project? Has the predictive analysis finished yet?”

Leon shook his head. “It’s still running on the supercomputer, but I have notifications set up.” He lifted his phone as emphasis, then tapped the rest into Light’s open palm: ‘We should have an answer within the hour, at which point we can tell the police where the robbers will hit next.’

Light nodded, closing his eyes and giving Leon’s hand a brief squeeze. He’d hoped they would be able to solve this case before anyone else got hurt, and it looked like that was going to happen. The relief was bittersweet, but still there.

“Good work on that code, by the way.”

Light looked back up to see Leon was smiling, grey eyes glittering with sympathy. His friend knew better than anyone that murder cases hit him harder than most. “Thanks,” he replied. “You know I couldn’t have done it without you.”

“Doubtful.” A quiet giggle. “You could have replaced me with a rubber duck.” 

“A rubber duck wouldn’t have ribbed me for ten minutes over missing a semicolon.” Light’s grin widened as he lifted an eyebrow.

Leon lifted both of his in reply. “Oh, so that’s a feature, not a bug?” 

Light laughed easily now. “Definitely.”

Chapter Text

Freezing wind whipped through loose hair as two young men stood on the edge of the university quad, each holding their phone in one hand and their lover’s hand in the other. Leon was hailing them a cab to take them back to their respective homes, since the buses and trains weren’t running at half past 1 am, and Light was opening his contacts list.

He tapped ‘B’, and immediately found the man he was looking for. Light had shared a computational linguistics class with him last year, and from that Light knew that although his real first name was Robert, and his parents called him Bobby, everyone at school called him “Beyond Birthday”.

Light didn’t know all that much about Beyond - particularly, he had no clue where he’d acquired such a strange nickname - but he did know three crucial things. First, Beyond got about as little sleep as Leon did. Second, the man was nearly as smart as Light, and was thus breezing through college nearly as easily. (Perhaps more so, in fact: after all, he wasn’t simultaneously juggling being the world’s greatest detective.) And third, Beyond was insatiably interested in anything and everything to do with languages.

Squinting against a particularly strong gust of winter wind, Light tapped out two messages in quick succession:

“Hey Beyond, you up?
Got a conlang idea for you.”

Beyond’s reply was almost immediate: “ya?”

Light allowed his lips to form a self-satisfied smile. His assumption that such an idea would be irresistible to the bored linguistic genius was completely correct.
“Can you make something that would work if:
1: nobody except the person you’re talking to can know you’re speaking any language, and
2: you can’t look at or touch your conversation partner to speak to them.”

“sounds like a fun challenge”
There was a short pause before the typing bubble came up again.
“how about a language based on singing or whistling?”

Light lifted one eyebrow as he peered at his screen. “I’m listening.”

“ok some guy made a musical language called solresol in the 1800s
which would work for that purpose perfectly
but it like
sucked?
as in it doesn’t sound nice or anything”

“Can you make one that sounds nice?”

“and also it’s sexist
yeah that’s what I was thinking”

Light was not going anywhere near the can of worms that he’d open by asking how a constructed language could be sexist , so he just wrote: “Would you mind teaching it to me whenever you’re finished?”

“ofc! I’ll make you a textbook”

“Thanks, Beyond.”

Light shut off his phone and slid it back into his pocket, balling his hand into a tight fist to try to warm his fingers. He was quite satisfied with how that conversation had gone: the idea had been interesting enough that Beyond hadn’t asked any inconvenient questions. Now to work out the other half of this idea... 

Glancing over his shoulder at the shinigami hovering there, Light asked, “Ryuk, how quickly do you pick up languages?”

“That’s our ride,” Leon said quietly, pointing to a car that was pulling up the road. The three of them started walking (and flying) towards it as Leon lifted his free hand to wave the driver down.

“Eh,” Ryuk sounded embarrassed, “not as quick as some others in the realm, if I’m honest… Um, maybe a few hours? A day at most. Guess it depends on what it is.”

A few hours is slow? Maybe shinigami are naturally talented with languages. I suppose it would make sense, if names have to be written in the death note in their native script. “That’ll be just fine,” Light murmured just before he opened the door to the back seat, climbing in after Leon. “Thank you.”

The next day, Light was leaving his cognitive psychology lecture and perambulating along an elevated walkway past smooth stone columns. A stack of loose papers was pressed into his arms. He looked over his shoulder, but only got a quick glimpse of long walnut curls before the man to whom they belonged disappeared into the crowd.

Hanging a right to descend a staircase and holding the papers in one hand as the other skimmed down the railing, Light read over what he’d been given. In monospace text that was too dark in some places and too light in others - like it had been written slapdash on a typewriter - the cover page said:

“Solresol v.2.0
grammar / dictionary
insp. credit to Light Yagami
everything else by Beyond Birthday”

True to form, the next few pages contained a perfunctory explanation of the alphabet used to write the language down, then tables full of grammar and vocabulary. Most of the text was written by the same typewriter as the front cover, but various notes were penned down in felt-tip.

Light nodded to himself as he rounded a circular fountain and continued across the quad, flipping through the remaining pages. Slowly, pausing numerous times to search for words, he whistled a few simple sentences. He found they sounded like pleasant nonsense, the sort of thing one might expect of tuneless humming. 

“Heh, doing well, how ‘bout you?” Ryuk responded when Light whistled ‘how are you’. Apparently he’d been looking over Light’s shoulder, which wasn’t surprising.

Light didn’t need to look it up to remember the word for ‘good’, and fortunately, Ryuk recognized it too. 

Accompanied again by the shifting of papers, Light whistled, ‘What do you think of my solution?’

“Well, I like it. Feels sort of sneaky, like we’re secret agents or something. But why’d’ya bother? It’s not that weird for humans to talk to themselves, especially with all that technology you’ve got floating around now.”

It was definitely true that things like Bluetooth earpieces existed, and with any ordinary conversation topic, that would probably be what people would think, if they overheard Light talking to himself. But… ‘Talk about magic books and death gods is not normal.’ 

Still walking, Light pulled out his phone and started to snap pictures of the paper-stack, texting them all (in order) to Leon. They were about equally quick with languages, and they could both probably pick it up to conversational fluency within a couple of days.

And of course, Leon didn’t need any context. His next message read, “Received, thank you. Getting started on learning it now.”

At nearly the same time, though, he got a less expected text - from Beyond. He tapped the notification without reading it, opening his messages… and stalled. The text read:

“hey, this is gonna sound weird, but I noticed something odd about you when I saw you today”

Light furrowed his brows, typing out a reply despite his confusion. “Odd how?”

“can’t tell you or you’ll think I’m crazy
more than you probably already do anyway
just
has anything… WEIRD happened to you lately?”

As a matter of fact, yes, an awful lot of weird things had happened to Light of late, most of them centered around a supernatural notebook. But there was no way in hell that Beyond could possibly know about that. All he’d done is look at his face...

Beyond kept texting, sending messages in rapid-fire.
“the grapevine says you and your bf have been spending a lot of time in the chem lab late at night
I wouldn’t think a criminal justice major like you would have any reason to be there
and your bf doesn’t even go here”

Light fired off his usual reply to people asking why he was doing strange things unrelated to his major. “You know I’m planning to become a detective, Beyond. I’ll need to be good with things like chemistry. It’s the same reason I used to spend a lot of time on the school’s supercomputer.” The only reason I don’t do that still is because Leon and I have our own now. Come to think, maybe we should have our own chemistry lab. That would mean less space in our office building to rent out, but that’s not too big an income stream for us, anyway. Despite these casual thoughts and his unperturbed outward appearance, in the back of his mind Light felt uneasy about all this. It seemed Beyond was talking about something more unusual than late-night chemistry experiments.

“I know, I know, but
oh fuck it you’ll think I’m insane no matter what.
Light, tell me”

The typing bubble came up, then disappeared, several times in quick succession. Light had stopped walking, just staring at his screen. The weight of nausea built in his gut even as he kept his face carefully neutral.

“have you figured out some way of making yourself immortal?”

The anxiety was abruptly replaced with a dizzying confusion. Light blinked at his phone, half-expecting the message to change into something that made more sense. After a long seconds, his fingers reached up to the keyboard, planning to type something like of course not, how on earth did you possibly come to a conclusion like that?

Ryuk coughed from behind him.

The sinking, anxious dread came back with full force. Whispering so quietly it was barely audible: “Ryuk… is that…” Is that true? But you told me before that I won’t get the years I stole from those criminals!

“You aren’t immortal,” the shinigami said. “But you’re not the regular kind of mortal anymore, either. This is, uh… gonna take more than five seconds to explain.”

Dazed, Light looked around; he was close to the edge of campus, but students were milling about in earshot. He took a sharp right, walking towards a nearby park that would probably be empty enough at this hour of the evening.

As he walked, he texted Beyond back: “Not sure how you came to that conclusion, but no. If I ever do find the cure for mortality I’ll give you a holler, ok?”

Beyond wasn’t replying right away, so Light screenshotted his strange text conversation and sent the pictures to Leon. As soon as he’d finished sending them, he added onto the end: “Our new friend has something to say about this. I’ll call you in a minute.”

Just after he sent that, Light finally got a reply from Beyond, only a single letter, impassive and unreadable: “k.”

Five years ago: August 3, 2014.

“We ought to have a secret code.”

Light looked up from the book he’d been reading - Influence: Science and Practice by Robert Cialdini - and propped his cheek on his palm. He was still laying on his stomach on their white-and-grey checquered picnic blanket, but his feet paused in their idle kicking at the air as he let out an inquisitive, “Hm?”

Leon was sitting cross-legged with his own book open across his lap; he removed his thumb from between his lips and was staring up at the swaying oak trees that framed the empty park and the cloudless summer sky. “Texting only works when we aren’t in the same room, and your family seems determined to have me over for dinner at least once a week.”

“I like having you over,” Light commented; his voice was nonchalant because the statement was so obvious.

“And I like being over,” Leon smiled, propping his hands on the blanket behind him and leaning back to rest on them. “But wouldn’t it be preferable if it didn’t interfere with our work?”

Light nodded, setting his bookmark into the book’s spine in case a gust of wind came along to flip its pages. He pushed himself up just enough to move closer to Leon, then turned over, so his head was resting in his best friend’s lap. “What kind of code?”

“It shouldn’t look to anyone else like we’re doing anything unusual,” Leon mused as his fingers traced along the thin leather straps of Light’s suspenders. “Writing on each others’ skin would be too ostentatious, but something similar…”

Light thought for a moment. “Do you know Morse code?” he asked. “It might take some practice for us to become fast enough for it to be practical, but that’s a definite option.”

Against Light’s chest, Leon’s thin fingers tapped out, ‘I do know it.’

“And you’re better at it than me, huh,” Light grinned. “I’ll practise more on generating, instead of just recognizing. But is that a satisfactory secret code for us, Leon?”

“I would say it is, Light,” he said aloud. “Thank you for a brilliant idea.”

Chapter Text

The park was about as deserted as Light expected it to be, and he took a few extra minutes for the additional precaution of climbing a shallow hill, then rounding a worn wooden gazebo to sit behind it at an old picnic table with peeling green paint. It was nearing the end of civil twilight, and the shadows of the trees waltzed slow circles across the grass. 

Light leaned back against the tabletop, and flipped to his favourites list to call Ryuzaki . He put the phone on speaker.

“I’m alone and won’t be overheard,” Light said instead of an introduction.

Through the tinny speakers came Leon’s baritone voice: “Likewise.”

“After that conversation with Beyond, Ryuk said that I was no longer the regular kind of mortal . You’re - virtually - here to listen to his explanation.”

“Ah,” Leon said. “Thank you, Light. Ryuk, please go ahead, then.”

Peering briefly at the interesting piece of human technology, but shaking his head to avoid letting it distract him, Ryuk said, “Okay. Every human has a certain lifespan. It’s about how long they’re going to live, given their current choices. Not a guarantee, so it can change, but it tends to stay pretty stagnant most of the time. And of course, they can die anytime before then, if a shinigami decides to steal their years. But for humans who’ve used death notes, it’s different.”

Light nodded along with Ryuk’s explanation: he’d been meaning to ask at some point, how a shinigami could see a set ‘lifespan’ above a human’s head. It seemed to imply, on some level, that some intelligent entity had an extremely precise, detailed set of predictions regarding the workings of the human world. He made a mental note for later, but kept listening.

“The lifespan of anyone who has used a death note belongs to the shinigami who dropped that death note. So, both of your lifespans belong to me.”

“What does that mean?” Leon asked through the phone speaker. 

“It means,” Ryuk’s usually-jocular voice dropped to a lower, more serious register, “that just as you write names of others, one day, I’ll be writing your names in my death note.”

Light leaned back against his elbows on the tabletop. So each human has a ‘lifespan’, predicted by some external intelligence ( besides the shinigami). If any human picks up and uses a death note, their lifespan is then transferred to the shinigami who dropped that death note. Then, that human’s death date is the decision of the shinigami. Which would mean… “I’m guessing we can’t die by any means other than that, right?”

Ryuk cackled briefly. “You got it.”

“So… as long as we keep you entertained, we’re functionally immortal. Huh. I didn’t think it would be that easy.” Light looked up at the trees, watched a pair of stray leaves fall away and drift through the air. He’d always wanted to be immortal - there was a reason he knew so much about chemistry, after all - but there hadn’t seemed to be any way to achieve that, practically speaking.

“Well… I s’pose, yeah.” Ryuk sounded like he’d never thought of it that way. “There’s a lot of things you could do to make me write your names, though.”

“Oh, I wasn’t thinking we’d be immune to things like car wrecks,” Light said. “More like ageing.” If using a death note made us indestructible, that would be a short little journey to godhood. 

“Well, no death note user I’ve heard of has ever lived long enough to grow old, so I don’t know.” Ryuk shrugged. “Might be. Wouldn’t be surprised.”

Chalk that up to a definite ‘maybe’ in the ‘have we cured senescence’ department, then. The rules seem to imply it, but no specific evidence verifies the claim. Still, good to know. I’ll let Leon ask about the rest of that.

“What do you mean, ‘no death note user has lived long enough to grow old’? Is there some rule that shinigami have to take their human’s years after a certain amount of time?”

“Oh, no. No rule saying that. Only,” Ryuk’s eyes flashed menacingly as his shark-toothed smile grew wider. “It’s been my experience that humans who find death notes experience nothing but pain and misfortune.”

“Really.” Light hummed, folding his arms. “Well, I have no intention of conforming to that pattern.”

Leon gave a hum like a nod and added, “Likewise.”

That seemed to amuse Ryuk, but they weren’t finished. Light looked up to where he was floating on his unbeating magical wings, and asked: “Is there anything else we should know? About the notebook? Because unless there is, I’ve got a question for you.”

“Well, there is one more thing,” Ryuk held up a taloned finger. “Any human who has used a death note can go to neither heaven nor hell.”

There wasn’t even a note of hope in Light’s mind at the clear implication that some sort of afterlife existed, only confusion. The sort of blind-siding confusion that would overtake him if he walked out his front door one day only to find his front lawn had been completely and uniformly replaced with blue cheese.

He blinked, and folded his hands in his lap.

The existence of death notes didn’t predicate the existence of any kind of afterlife. There was no reason to adjust his previous assessment that no such thing existed. Actually, if anything, the idea that the only supernatural thing he’d come across bore its closest resemblance to a non-Christian religion was rather strong evidence against the existence of such places - as if he’d needed any more. 

Then why would Ryuk phrase it like that? Posed that way, the question answered itself. To trick humans who believed in those things. Ryuk held no pretence of honesty (although it did seem from everything he’d said so far that he might be unwilling - or unable? - to tell a straight lie), and he seemed motivated exclusively by a desire for entertainment. 

“Neither does anyone else,” Light replied, a certainty and not a guess. “Those things don’t exist.”

“Heh, that’s right.” Ryuk shrugged as though to say, oh well, it was worth a shot . 

“Does any kind of afterlife exist?” Leon asked, sounding rather sceptical. “When a human dies, do they go anywhere?”

“I’d say,” Ryuk replied, “after any human dies, they go to Mu.”

Leon chuckled. “You just love tricking people, don’t you, Ryuk? We might be Englishmen, but we do know what that word means.”

Light nodded his agreement. Mu: nothing. The Zen Buddhist’s answer to a question that results from incorrect axioms. I wonder if Ryuk came up with that answer, or if any shinigami would say that if I asked. It’s an awfully clever-sounding way of saying ‘no, there isn’t any such thing.’

“Never said you didn’t,” Ryuk cocked his head aside. “I was just answering your question. Which, didn’t you say you had something else to ask me?”

“Yes,” Light replied. This was the important part; the reason this whole conversation had started. “A friend of mine, Beyond Birthday, said he noticed something weird about me, just by seeing my face. Then out of nowhere, he speculated I’d somehow become immortal, which isn’t too far from what might be correct. I thought you might have some sort of explanation, Ryuk.” So far, the only viable hypothesis seems to be that he has a death note, but if so… wouldn’t he ask me if I’d picked up a mysterious notebook, and not… that?

The shinigami pursed his puffy blue lips, then released them, making an obnoxious popping sound. “Beyond Birthday… that name doesn’t sound very familiar.”

“His real first name is Robert, if that helps.”

“Robert…” Suddenly, Ryuk’s body jerked with realisation; it looked like he’d been struck by lightning. “Oh! Bobby Beyondormason!”

That might just be the stupidest name Light had ever heard. “Who?”

“There’s a pretty powerful shinigami back in the realm, name’s Justin Armonia Beyondormason. He, uh, had a bit of a bad habit of seducing human women. ‘Til the King put a stop to it, of course. But Bobby's one of his.”

“Shinigami can have children with humans?” At first, Light was merely baffled by the idea that naturally-immortal, millennia-old, magical beings from another world would even have enough DNA in common to produce viable offspring. But then he did himself the disservice of actually imagining the process , and his gaze snapped away from Ryuk like he’d been burned.

“Yeah,” Ryuk continued, unperturbed. “It usually doesn’t work, human bodies are too fragile, but I think this particular human got ahold of some shinigami spellbooks.” He shrugged.

Despite the predicament of his current mental image, Light could still find the wherewithal to be annoyed. And the answer to ‘how does the strange magic thing happen’ is ‘more magic’. Why am I not surprised?

“You said,” Leon piped up, “that Beyond’s being half-shinigami would explain his strange assumptions about Light. Did he… inherit a shinigami’s eyes?”

Light smiled, then. Oh, you’re good. I’m sure he did.

Ryuk, meanwhile, looked positively giddy - in a monstrous, evil sort of way. (To be fair, one could also often say that to describe Light.) “You’ve got it,” he said. “He’s probably got some others of Justin’s powers, too, but he’s got the eyes for sure.”

“Other powers?”

“Justin has a lot, and I don’t think a human could get most of ‘em. But maybe he can heal really quick, or he’s got some control over fire.”

Recognition flashed through Light’s mind. Hadn’t there been that one story going through the school? Purportedly, Beyond had gotten his leg set on fire during a camping trip, and it should have burned all the way down to the bone. But he got really lucky, and ended up with minimal nerve damage. Then, on top of that, he’d healed so quickly that once he came back to school, nobody could even see the graft. The two possibilities that had gone through Light’s head at the time - either the doctors had been really good, or Beyond had made the whole thing up - now went out the window.

When Light spoke aloud, he did so slowly. “I’m guessing he has both of those things, actually.”

“Interesting,” Leon replied. “So… are you considering telling Beyond about the notebook, then?”

It would definitely be useful to have someone with his power set on our side. Light unfolded his hands, drumming his fingers against his legs in staccato rhythm. “Considering, yes,” he said. “Decided, not at all. Neither of us know him very well, so we don’t have any way of knowing if he’d be trustworthy. You can imagine the consequences if everyone knew about the notebook.” A quiet breeze drifted past, the air chilled with the coming night. It prickled gooseflesh across Light’s arms, but he didn’t shiver. “Ordinarily, I’d try to befriend him, get closer to him and see if I can find some leverage I could use? But he’s already suspicious. We have to decide whether to lie to him, or tell him the truth, now.”

“I don’t think he necessarily needs to be trustworthy,” Leon said in an undulating rhythm, like he was tracing circles in the air with his words. “We can simply offer an exchange of information. I’m quite sure this shinigami, Justin, has never made contact with his offspring. Therefore, Beyond has no idea why he can see names and lifespans above peoples’ heads. We could offer him the reason in exchange for his cooperation.”

Light nodded slowly, eyes lifting to track the clouds drifting slowly across the darkening sky. He’s right. We can pose this first meeting as a trade, our information for his help with certain specific tasks. That gives us the room to divulge some secrets without having to make a final judgement call on whether to tell him everything. “I see.”

Realising Light had made his decision, Leon asked, “When?”

He leapt gracefully from the bench, pacing back down the hill towards the campus. He didn’t know much about Beyond, but he knew where the man’s dorm room was. Pulling out his phone and texting the location to Leon, he said, “Right now.”

Today: December 12th, 2019. To-Oh University Campus, Japan.

A cool wind drifted through the barren branches of cherry trees, ruffling the fur collar of a maroon coat. The young woman to whom it belonged adjusted it subtly on her shoulders, glancing about the campus grounds lit by the late afternoon sun. 

On the grass beside a tree, something caught her eye.

A thin, black notebook.

Chapter Text

It was entering astronomical twilight when Light met Leon on the doorstep of Beyond Birthday’s dorm room. It was at the top of a stonework staircase, on the left-hand side of a pair of bedrooms separated by a shared bathroom, located in the southwest corner of the building. 

A gold-plated number 4 hung in the centre of the thick mahogany door, just above the peephole.

Light rapped lightly three times at its right-hand side, to immediately hear a brusque “Who is it!”

“It’s Light and Ryuzaki,” he called out.

A raucous clattering preceded thumping steps toward the door, and it was thrown open to reveal a gangly young man whose height and slumped posture cancelled each other out. His sunken, tired eyes shut for a long moment as he nodded slowly, the energy seeming to drain out of him the longer he stood in the doorway. “Yo,” he said in a gravelly voice, “come in.”

Beyond’s dorm room was the type of longstanding mess that had visibly foiled several past attempts at organisation. Mismatched papers, envelopes, and index cards were falling out of a tiered plastic document organiser on the corner desk; clothes were strewn across the floor from the bed to the laundry hamper like puddles of water left by someone who had forgotten their towel and had to trudge back mid-shower to retrieve it. Empty and partial containers of soda, milk, and baked beans made little piles next to every available sitting-place: against the bed frame, on the windowsills, and beside the open closet door, the floor of which was covered by a fuzzy neon-pink beanbag chair.

Beyond crumpled into the beanbag, leaving Leon and Light to occupy the desk and desk-chair, respectively. 

“You two haven’t come here before… what’s up?” There was a hesitance to Beyond’s voice, as though he already suspected a certain answer.

“I wanted to discuss the question you asked earlier,” Light said impassively. He watched the discomfort cross Beyond’s face as the man struggled to come up with a natural explanation for the supernatural. Before he could verbalise an excuse, Light continued: “I think I know why you asked it.”

Beyond’s face contorted abruptly into confusion.

“You were born with an interesting ability,” Light explained. “When you look at a person’s face, you can see their real name, and a set of numbers, above their head.” He leaned forward, uncrossing his legs to press his palms to his knees, as though to ask, am I right?

Neck creaking like an old door-hinge, Beyond gave a slow nod.

Light leaned back into the chair, arms crossing. “I know why you have this power.” He restrained a smile as Beyond’s eyes widened further. “But the reason is strange, so I’m going to need to ask a favour in order to tell you.”

“Dude, I’m chill with strange!” He perked up, looking expectant, then a shade of scepticism entered his voice. “What’s the favour?”

“Don’t worry, it’s nothing insane.” Light chuckled, turning up his palms. “We aren’t asking you to commit a murder.” He levelled a serious look at Beyond. “But we will have to ask you to keep a secret. If this got out, it would be to the entire world’s detriment. I know we don’t know each other well, so it’s up to you to decide whether you want to do this for us.”

“Mmm…” Beyond hummed, finger poking into his cheek as he looked contemplatively at the ceiling. “You said you know why I see what I do. But can you explain why fire doesn’t hurt me as bad? Or why I heal so quickly? Or what about why I can learn languages so fast?”

“Yes, on all counts,” Leon said.

“Oh! Oh. Then yes.” Beyond grinned. “Absolutely.”

“And you’ll keep this secret?” Leon asked, for confirmation.

Beyond heaved an exaggerated sigh. “ Yes , I’ll keep your secret.” He rolled his eyes. “I don’t wanna destroy the world anyhow.”

Light chuckled wryly. “Good.” He opened his bag and unzipped an inside pocket. “Beyond, do you think humans are the only intelligent species in the universe?”

“Uhhh…” his confused expression belied how unrelated he believed those two concepts were, “probably not? Leaving aside Fermi’s paradox, I mean.”

Interesting. As a solution to Fermi’s paradox: there are other sentient beings, but they exist in alternate universes. Light nodded nonetheless. “If you’d asked me the same thing a week ago, I would have agreed. Now, I have proof that we were both right.” Gently, he lifted out the death note, holding it out so Beyond could see its blank back cover. He spared a few rapid glances around the room, noting that Ryuk was grinning from the corner. “Touch this notebook if you want to see it for yourself.”

Entranced, Beyond pressed himself out of the beanbag, padding slowly over to where Light held the notebook out. Cautious fingers reached out to brush against the cover. “Okay, now what do I-” 

Light stifled a giggle at the way Beyond stalled, gaping at Ryuk and sputtering nonsense. 

“W- wh- wh- what- y- you- why-”

A friendly wave of a taloned hand accompanied the words, “Hi there!” 

“That,” explained Leon, “is an alien. His name is Ryuk.”

“ I can see that! ” Beyond shouted, flailing his arms about.

At the same time, Ryuk chided: “Alien? I told ya, I’m a shinigami!”

Leon shushed them both, a harsh finger pressed to his lips. Whispering: “What part of ‘secret’ was unclear?”

“Sorry,” said Beyond and Ryuk in unison.

“This notebook belonged to Ryuk,” Light explained, holding up the death note. “When we picked it up, that let us see him.” He replaced it in his bag, zipping the pocket closed.

“Oh! Okay!” Beyond exclaimed, with a grin that dropped almost instantly. “That doesn’t help at all actually. How does this have to do with me?”

“Shinigami have a lot of fascinating abilities that differ from humans’,” Leon said. “One of these is their special eyes - which can see a human’s name and lifespan above their head.”

Beyond froze, then dropped to the floor haphazardly, like a toy thrown aside by a toddler. His eyes bugged out as he stared at Ryuk. “Are you… telling me…” he pointed with a shaking hand at himself, “that I’m… an alien…?”

“Well, half,” Ryuk said, shrugging. “Yeah.”

“I’m… half… shinigami.” Beyond said it with all the confidence of calling himself a refrigerator. “Uhh… so… does that mean I heal quickly because death gods do too? And the fire thing, and…also the language thing?”

“The healing and the languages are because you’re part-shinigami, yeah.” Ryuk gestured vaguely. “The ‘fire thing’ you got from your dad in specific. His name’s Justin.”

“That’s… a strange name for a shinigami,” Beyond’s lips were pursed into a thin line.

“Why?”

“Because Justin comes from the Latin justinius ,” Beyond pointed at the air in various places as though gesturing at an invisible chart, “which is the same place we get our word for justice . Why would an alien from a different universe have that name? It would be like… like… like two different artists deciding to paint something, with different canvases, colours, mediums, all that, and then having them both come up with the same exact painting!” Beyond was getting progressively more exasperated the more he talked, tossing his hands around in wild gesticulations. “If Rome didn’t exist in the shinigami realm, then how the hell would you end up with somebody named Justin ?!”

“He probably wasn’t named that at first,” Ryuk shrugged. “He probably stole it from a human.”

Beyond’s mouth hung open a moment, then he closed it. “...Fine.” He climbed back to his feet, pacing backwards until he fell back into his closet beanbag. “Then the question is, how did you get here?”

“There’s a portal.”

“Excuse me, where?! ”

Ryuk mutely pointed upward.

“I’m aware this is a lot of information to process at once,” Leon said mildly.

Head snapping toward him: “ Ya think, Ryuzaki?! ”

Leon shrugged.

In that moment, the door creaked open. “Ghh, Beyond…” a groggy-sounding voice came from the entryway, “What are you yelling about…?”

Light froze. He was thankful he’d already put the death note back in his bag, but he had no idea whether he could trust Beyond’s ability to lie seamlessly. 

Beyond turned around sheepishly. “Oh, hi, Aydin. Um, did I wake you?”

“Didn’t wake me, but…” Aydin plodded slowly into the room, shoulders rotated slightly inward like that was as far he could physically get from perfect posture. He rubbed the shaggy, chlorine-stained, greenish hair at the base of his neck. “I was just going to bed. I heard you yelling about… aliens?”

Light glanced between the two roommates. Can I trust Beyond to handle him on his own? Or do I need to talk my own way out if this? If I’m going to jump in, I have to do it right now…  

Beyond nodded apologetically. “I’ll pipe down.” He gestured casually at Leon: “My friend Ryuzaki was just telling me about a book he was reading, and in it there was an alien named Justin, and I went on a little bit of a rant about why that wouldn’t make any sense.”

“Ahh, my mistake then,” Aydin gave a lopsided smile. “I didn’t realise you were on a righteous linguistic tirade.”

“No worries mate, I’m done now.” Beyond grinned widely and held out a thumbs-up. “Go ahead and sleep, I know you got swim practice bright and early.”

Aydin nodded and turned around, pulling the door smoothly shut behind him.

There was silence in the room until they heard the quiet click of Aydin’s door closing across the hall.

“Thank you,” Leon said.

Light nodded his agreement.

“Sure,” Beyond shrugged nonchalantly. “Now… you wanna tell me how this could blow up the world? I’m still unclear on that.”

“Simply,” said Leon, “we doubt the capacity of the broader human population to avoid using this discovery foolishly. Think about it, Beyond. You touched a book and suddenly were able to see a nonhuman creature that Light and I have been seeing this entire time. We’re still unclear on the underlying mechanism that produces this effect, but almost no matter what it might be, it’s obvious how such a mechanism could be used to instigate a dystopia.” 

“I… see.” Beyond slouched even further over. “Yeah, I wasn’t thinking down that line earlier, but now that you mention it… that could be really bad.” He nodded solemnly. “I can see why you wanted me to keep that secret. I’ll do it.”

“Thank you, Beyond Birthday,” Leon said, hopping off the man’s desk. “We appreciate it.”

Ten years ago: April 21st, 2009.

“Is there anything I can get for you, Ryuzaki?”

The two children were sitting on a checkered mat in the centre of the floor in a certain basement room which had been set aside for Light (and therefore, nowadays, also Leon) to play and do homework. The walls were painted two-tone white-and-blue - Leon’s favourite colours - but all the furniture was sleek and postmodern, according to Light’s preference. One end of the room contained two desks with stacks of completed schoolwork, the other end contained a wide red couch facing an entertainment centre on which sat an old TV and a Wii. 

Leon looked up at Light’s mom, where she stood in the doorway. “No, Mrs. Yagami.” His hands didn’t pause in putting together an intricate Lego set. His wide grey eyes flickered appreciatively to the glass of soda which was sitting beside him on the carpet, propped on top of one of his school books. “Thank you!”

Sachiko nodded, turning to Light. Her son was carefully piecing together the orange segments of a Hot Wheels track, but he lifted his cherubic face to smile at his mother. “I’m good! Thanks mom!”

“Alright then,” Sachiko smiled at the two of them, stepping out the door. “I’ll leave you two be for now, but I’ll be upstairs in the living room if you need me.”

The door clicked shut. 

“Light.”

He looked over at his best friend, and saw that Leon had stopped working on his Legos. Gently setting down a segment of track, he asked, “What is it?”

Leon lifted his soda glass, setting it aside on the carpet in a slightly precarious position while he opened the book on which it was propped. From its front cover, he retrieved a folded newspaper page. Handing it to Light: “What do you think about this?”

Light took the page in both hands, adjusting himself into a cross-legged position as he read. “8 dead, 21 injured in 3 shootings, suspect still at large…?” He looked up, a look of deep concern on his young face. “That’s horrible… why did you want me to read it?”

“Read the rest,” Leon urged, repetitively flapping his hands in the direction of the paper.

Light shrugged, and read. When he’d finished, he folded the paper back up. “Well, the local police don’t seem to be doing a very good job. If my dad were in charge, he’d catch this guy” -he snapped his fingers- “like that.”

“What if you were in charge?” 

Light looked up in confusion, but Leon was staring at a Lego block as though it were the most important thing on the planet, running his thumb up and down its ridged top. 

“Ryuzaki, what do you mean?”

“If you were in charge of this investigation,” Leon said, still staring at the block, turning it over in his fingers, “could you do it better?”

Light pulled the paper back open and skimmed the article again. Without looking up: “Are there any more articles covering this?”

He could hear the smile in Leon’s voice when he said, “Yes.” When he crawled over to Light, he had two more pages from different newspapers in hand. “Here.”

For about ten minutes, there was only the sound of paper rustling. 

Then, Light said, “Yes.”

“Mm?” Leon hummed. His chin was tucked over Light’s shoulder, from which position he’d been looking at the papers with him.

“You asked if I thought I could do this better. Yes, I think I could. I already have some ideas for how to find this guy… although I’d need my computer to work on them.” Light lowered the paper to his lap, turning to look Leon in the face. “But… why are you asking me? I can’t do anything about this. My dad works for the ICPO, not for the local police. And the cops wouldn’t listen to a couple of kids.”

Leon shrugged. “They might listen to an anonymous tip. We could send it through the paper, or the internet, or through the phone using a voice filter. They’d never know how old we are, they’d just have more information.”

A look of determination crossed Light’s face. “You’re right! In fact, there’s no reason not to! The worst case scenario is they don’t get anything useful out of it - but if we can help, then they can catch this guy and bring him to justice!”

The corners of Leon’s mouth curled up into a cute, u-shaped smile. “Perfect.”

“Oh, but…” Light tapped a finger against his cheek. “What should we call ourselves? When we send our info to the police, we’ll need to give them some kind of name.”

“Hm…” Leon slipped a finger into his mouth, speaking around it while he chewed on the side of his nail. “Well… your real name and mine both start with the letter L. How about that?”

“L?” Light smiled. “I like it!”

Leon nodded. “L it is.”

Chapter Text

December 13th, 2019. 3:39 AM.

Clip.

The sound echoed through the darkness, the only substantial noise that had been made in that room for hours. Leaning toward the bright blue light of his laptop screen, Leon inspected the thumbnail he’d bitten. The irritating point on its corner had been ameliorated. As he lowered that hand to the ground, the other reached blindly into the darkness, retrieved a handmade concoction of strawberry lemonade and Sprite, and lifted the glass to his lips.

Slurp… sigh.

A quiet tap accompanied the glass as he set it again on the floor, then there was silence once more.

Leon returned to thinking about the effects of the death note.

The act of writing on paper wasn’t complicated enough, in and of itself, to create the effects of the death note. Not in the way that thousands of bytes of data actually were enough to create a computer program from scratch, or a person’s DNA actually was enough to build them from scratch. The writing was just an input mechanism, like typing on a keyboard or speaking to a person. Something had to be paying attention to the writing, and then doing what the death note’s user told it to.

That something seemed to be borrowing the knowledge of the death note’s user, so if the user spoke Klingon, then so did the death note. And the interface of knowledge was telepathic - located in or near the user’s mind - so, the user had to merely think of the target’s face , instead of needing to, say, draw a realistic portrait in the death note.

Leon shifted in his crouch, scratching the top of one foot with the toes of the other. 

Why names ? Faces were better for identification, and would have been sufficient by themselves. Why did the notebook not allow its user to merely write the cause and conditions of a death while holding the target’s face in mind? Why was the name necessary? It could be for redundancy, in cases of identical twins or people who otherwise had extremely similar faces… However, the fact that one could write the details before the name, and only after the name itself was written would the notebook take effect, implied that it was more central than that.

It seemed that there was some sort of inherent magic in a human’s name that attached it to whatever part of them was affected by the notebook.

How did that work, exactly? Was the person’s name set permanently by their parents at birth? Or could it change over time depending on the person’s circumstances, like the shinigami’s lifespan estimates? Maybe it demanded some mental attachment of the person to the name. Personally, Leon rather hoped it was one of the latter options - though, if he really wanted to find out, he could simply ask Beyond what name his eyes saw above Leon’s own head.

Regardless, the key point for this line of inquiry was thus: was it possible to isolate this magical name-attachment property to create other effects on individuals from a distance? Control their actions without needing to kill them afterwards, perhaps? In fact… maybe such an artefact already existed, but they just didn’t know it-

Knock. Knock. Knock.

“Come in,” Leon called out. That was Light’s knock.

The office door swung quietly open, and Light ducked through it. The sleeves of his light blue button-up were rolled pristinely to his elbows, but the cuffs on his khakis were coming undone.

“Good evening, Leon,” he said once the door clicked shut. Light’s tone and expression were utterly inscrutable. Which, of course, meant that he was determined to persuade Leon of something about which he himself was emotional. It also meant that deduction wasn’t one Light wanted to prevent him from making; hence the lack of pretence layered over the blankness.

“Good evening, Light.” Leon craned his neck aside, staring unblinkingly. He knew Light would infer from this that he hadn’t interrupted anything time-sensitive, and that he now had Leon’s full attention.

Light didn’t move from the door, just leaned against it. “I wanted to talk to you about the notebook,” he said, “and what to do with it.” 

Leon’s brows furrowed; he slowly shut his laptop and climbed to his feet. His gaze remained on Light. “Something tells me this is a more loaded question than when you asked it last time.”

He shrugged defensively. “We were holding off to make sure we knew everything the notebook could do,” he turned his palms up. “I’m fairly sure we know it all. So we should figure this out now! Right?”

“Not true,” Leon pointed out, lifting one hand, then its index finger. “Our experiments regarding how many days in advance we can schedule a death are still ongoing. That would be extremely useful information-”

“Well yes , but except that.” Light flicked his fingers to one side impatiently.

“Why except that? Light…” Leon started to walk to his lover, but stopped in his tracks after a single step. “This is something I’ve wondered about for several days now.” Gazing down at Light’s feet, his eyes traced the neat ladder-lacing on walnut leather wingtips. “You’ve done a very good job distracting me with experiments into this fascinating supernatural power. But you’re rushing, Light. Rushing to go somewhere,” he looked up then, into Light’s bright amber eyes, “and for once, I don’t know where.”

Light sighed. He pressed himself away from the door, took two steps toward Leon. “You’re right,” he said, glancing aside. He slid his thumbs into his pockets. “You’ve… so far treated this like a puzzle.” Looking alternately between Leon and the wall behind him: “And don’t get me wrong, interesting puzzles are great! But…” he took another step forward, “don’t you think the world needs to change?”

Leon’s eyes slid down, defocusing at the blurring creases in Light’s shirt. So the work we do isn’t good enough for you, then.

It wasn’t as big a revelation as it could have been. One of the things that Leon had always known about Light was that he wanted his life to leave a lasting impact on the world. But the thing was, L had changed the world. Since their debut ten years ago, wrongful conviction rates around the world had decreased drastically, and even the crime rates themselves had dropped by significant margins in many countries. Leon himself didn’t feel as strongly for humanity-as-a-whole, but even he could appreciate all they’d done together.

Apparently, it wasn’t sufficient for Light.

“This power,” Light kept on, speaking vigorously now, “it isn’t like ordinary things, like money or social finesse. It’s completely unprecedented. Completely unexpected!” He gave a wide, beautiful grin. “It could give us that edge we would need to really change the world, for good.”

Leon frowned. I know those things. That’s why I’ve been fascinated by the experiments we’ve done so far. But you’re not satisfied with that anymore… I’m satisfied with this life we’ve built together, Light. Why aren’t you? And why does it sound like you’re desperate to use this on people who aren’t about to die within the week? He looked up, hesitantly. “I do think the world needs to change,” he said. “I might even concede that the supernatural would be a better-than-average way of doing that. But this,” he gestured in the general direction of the extremely well-secured lockbox in which they kept their death note when it wasn’t on either of their persons, “is a very deadly supernatural artefact. Has it occurred to you at any point that this might not be the best of all possible ways to go about changing the world?”

Light frowned back. “Isn’t it a little late to be wondering whether we should use this, Leon? We’ve already killed over two dozen people.”

“Foot in the door technique,” Leon commented mildly. “I read Cialdini’s Influence too.” 

Light just looked angry now. It was his least pleasant emotion to be on the receiving end of - not that Leon himself was particularly pleasant while angry. But it seemed that something always simmered just under the surface of Light’s anger, something that made Leon genuinely afraid for his safety. Light had never really hit him, they’d never gone past playful roughhousing even when they were kids, but… still. When Light glared at him like this, he looked dangerous .

Leon straightened his back, and bore the weight of it. “To put this rather too bluntly: two dozen lives is insignificant even for us , even if those people weren’t death-row inmates. More people than that have died as collateral on a single case. We’ve made mistakes that cost more lives than that.”

The shadows in Light’s temples darkened as he clenched his jaw.

“I know what you want to do.” Leon’s voice was quiet now as he stared at a point where the floor met the wall. “But using this notebook on a large scale… it could cost, not tens… but tens of thousands of lives.” He took one wrist in the other hand, slowly unbuttoning then re-buttoning his sleeve-cuff. “That’s not the type of thing to be rushed into. Not something we should do without thorough precautions to ensure we’re making those sacrifices for good reason. I think…” He looked up at Light, finally. “I think if you were of sounder mind, you would agree with me. Because it’s the little picture of you I keep in my brain that’s telling me to say this.”

Light’s eyes opened just slightly wider, then clicked like a camera shutter. It was the only visible indication that he was thinking harder than usual about something.

Emboldened by this, Leon continued. “We have no way to know that there aren’t other magical artefacts somewhere out there. Maybe some of them have less potential for catastrophe. If we’re no longer certain about simple things like the laws of physics, suddenly anything is fair game. I used to scoff at the idea of witches or fairies, but I’m suddenly a lot warier of the existence of supernatural things.”

Suddenly the anger was back in full force. “You think we should put a real chance of changing the world on hold to go look for fairies?! ”

Leon took a step back on instinct, his rapid heartbeat screaming at the rest of his body to run away from Light’s loud gestures, his afire eyes. “Light, you’re not listening to me.” He carefully avoided letting his voice tremble. “That isn’t what I said. Something…” he glanced around, “I don’t know what, but something about this is making you very emotional, and I… I don’t know what to do about that.”

Light opened his mouth, then closed it again. Like the strength of emotion he felt was beyond words.

Leon didn’t speak either. He’d never seen Light like this, and he had no idea what to do. 

Then Light turned, taking the steps back toward the door. He didn’t open it. Instead, he lifted one arm and propped it against its surface. Defeated, he said, “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Leon replied. “Talk to me?”

Forehead against the door, Light nodded mutely. “I’ll try.”

There was silence.

Leon resisted the impulse to speak. To fill the quiet with assumptions and inferences. So he stood there, as the overhead lights burned purple circles into his eyes. He stood there as the stagnant air scraped his lungs. He stood there as a dull ache seeped into the soles of his feet. 

Finally, Light spoke.

“You remember how we first started as L.” He started to turn, in wooden motions. “The police are good people, fighting a good fight… I know that better than anyone. But it’s a pointless fight, Leon. Day in and day out, the same news still plays on permanent repeat… The police don’t stop crime; they can’t . They don’t have power on a large enough scale to make a real impact. But us…” At last he looked at Leon, a caring look in his eyes. “I thought that, together, we could.”

“ Stop crime? ” Leon asked, failing completely to sound unperturbed by the insanity of the proposition.

Light backpedalled and equivocated, “Well, maybe not entirely , especially not at first… but I think it’s completely possible to reduce crime rates by huge margins.”

Still unconvinced, Leon asked, “...Percentage?”

Smugly: “Seventy percent or greater, easily. Maybe even eighty or ninety.”

Leon paused. Rubbed his fingers up and down against the course material of his pockets. “Why do you care?” 

Light tipped his head aside, thick chestnut bangs falling softly across his forehead. “I’ve already told you why I want to fix the world.”

“You told me that you feel it’s your responsibility, as a person of significantly higher than average intelligence, to use that talent for the betterment of humanity.” Leon lifted an eyebrow. “That makes sense to me, but it doesn’t line up with my observations. If your entire reason was this modified noblesse oblige , I see no reason for you to go to such lengths, or to be so emotional.”

Light’s eye twitched. For the briefest moment a hint of fear touched his face amid the fury, but was smothered again. “What lengths , Leon?”

As mildly as he could, “You’re ignoring potential solutions that take longer than a week to begin implementing, even if they have a higher chance of success.” 

Light replied only with a blank stare. 

Leon prodded the sleeping bear again, with a bigger stick. “That’s not what I would expect unless you had some greater reason for this. So, what is it?”

Abruptly, Light’s face flickered through nearly too many emotions to count - chief among them, desperation, sadness, and fear. He strode toward Leon, cracking the distance they’d held between them, and he grabbed Leon’s arms. 

Leon tried to hyperventilate quietly enough that Light wouldn’t notice. 

But then, Light’s grip loosened, and he slid his hands down to interlace their fingers. Looking down at the floor between them, he said, “I don’t know if I can explain it to you.”

And then, with his thumb pressing Morse into the side of Leon’s palm, he added, ‘out loud.’

Leon pulled apart their hands, wrapping his arms around Light. Despite his confusion, he made himself sound worried. “Please try?”

‘Ryuk is here for entertainment,’ his fingers pressed into the small of Leon’s back, then paused to nod meagerly against Leon’s collar. ‘If we fail to provide it, we die.’

The revelation of what this had all been about shocked through Leon, thoughts coming in bursts of clarity.

It’s about Ryuk. 

Watching us conduct our experiments might be fun at first, but it will get boring quickly. We cannot afford to let him get bored.

Light wants to change the world, he always has. But he isn’t rushing into this for no reason. He’s rushing because he wants us to stay alive… wants me to stay alive.

‘I see,’ Leon tapped against Light’s shoulder. Because, finally, he did.

“I just…” Light spoke aloud now, “I can’t help but think of all the people we could be saving now , instead of waiting around.” He sounded like he was about to cry; not from what he said aloud… but from the pattern of letters he pressed into Leon’s skin. ‘I love you. I don’t want to lose you.’

Leon nodded slowly, as though attempting to comprehend what Light had said. ‘Likewise,’ he tapped, because it was so obvious. ‘But you don’t really want to sacrifice the world for me.’

‘Not if I have another option.’

Speaking aloud the antithesis of what he felt, Leon said, “I’m not sure if I understand.” He ran his fingers over Light’s back comfortingly as he completed the ruse which Light had created for Ryuk’s benefit. “But this is clearly upsetting you. Would you like me to come over tonight?”

Light gave a hesitant nod, and whispered, “Yes. Please.”

As they parted, each gave the other a reassuring look, and restrained the satisfied grin his mouth wanted to form when he heard amused cackling from the corner of the room.

In the car on the way back to Light’s family home, Leon took his lover’s hand. Their resident shinigami was flying outside, but they couldn’t risk being overheard nonetheless. ‘Do you have a plan for what to do about Ryuk?’

Light leaned his head on Leon’s shoulder. ‘Some ideas, but I wanted to discuss it with you. Do you?’

‘Yes, several.’

‘Alright, go on.’

‘Ryuk wants entertainment; the best form is a story. We could do something that would produce drama in the world which we would then deal with… but that’s risky. It would be better to construct the entire narrative ourselves, and let the two of us be the main game pieces.’

‘Makes sense. Also helps us minimise collateral damage. But a story needs a villain. If we’re unwilling to let anyone else play that role, one of us will have to.’

‘Write in a redemption arc, then. It’s a solvable problem.’

Light nodded subtly - a slow shifting of his head which only Leon would interpret properly. He turned his eyes upward, looking briefly out the window at the buildings passing by under yellow-tinted streetlamps. He shut his eyes. 

The plan was risky, but everything to do with the death note was. The feeling of uneasiness the entire situation brought on wasn’t useful, so Light pushed it aside and thought: What could go wrong with this plan in particular?

In a few seconds he had an answer. ‘If our story plot produces any external threats,’ he tapped, ‘or if any arise naturally, an artificial conflict between us will make it hard to deal with them.’

‘Two possibilities,’ Leon replied. ‘One, we avoid plots that could produce external threats. Two, we create the plot to produce one specific type of threat which we can deal with.’

Light didn’t reply immediately, only traced little circles on the back of Leon’s hand with his thumb. Then he thought of a possible failure mode for that plan. ‘We have no way to know if there might be other notebooks in the world. Many other people might have them, and be quietly using them for their own ends. If we begin using the death note ostentatiously, we could draw their attention.’

‘And there are a near-infinite number of ways that could play out,’ Leon managed to sound dejected even in Morse. 

‘We’ll keep thinking,’ Light reassured him, ‘and come up with something.’

Nine years ago: May 8th, 2010.

The damp, heavy pattering of raindrops against windowsills was ambient noise to the Yagami household’s kitchen. The storm had gone on continuously, oscillating in intensity but never pausing, since Light had woken up that morning. 

Inside the house, warm lamps and ceiling-lights draped gold across every surface. The dining table and everything on it: partially-finished bowls of katsudon, glasses of water, and three pairs of hands holding chopsticks. The remaining utensils and ingredients across the countertop that Sachiko had yet to put away. The small white armchair where Sayu sat in the adjoining living room, watching cartoons on TV. 

Today was Saturday, which meant Light had no school - no reason to go out in the downpour. But now it was almost nighttime, and the rain was showing no signs of letting up… 

“Hey, Mom?” Light looked up from his bowl. “Can Ryuzaki sleep over again tonight?”

Sachiko chuckled softly. “Yes, of course.” She turned to Leon with a playful smile. “With how often you sleep over, we ought to get you your own bedroom.”

“That’s a good idea!” Light said excitedly. He knew that Leon would be okay with accepting such a favour if it was offered unprompted. “We have two guest bedrooms, we only really use one of them.” Turning to Leon, “You could take the other one!”

Leon didn’t look up from his dinner, but he smiled. “Thank you,” he said, a slight melancholy mixed with his appreciation. “I would like that very much.”

There was motion and noise in the foyer then. The heavy front door squeaked shut, there was a dull thud of a briefcase set on the hardwood floor, and the loud rustling of a raincoat slipping off. 

“Dad’s home!” Sayu squealed from her little chair, and abandoned an episode of Thomas the Tank Engine to rush and greet him.

With much less energy, Sachiko pushed her chair back and followed her daughter. “Welcome home, dear. How was your day?”

Light could hear her gentle voice from where he stayed sitting next to Leon at the dining table. His friend hadn’t moved, so he wasn’t about to leave him alone. 

“Oh, fine,” Soichiro said. He was tired, going by the gruffness of his voice and the thickness of his accent. “This is a harder case than I’ve had in a while. We’re considering bringing in some outside help.” He plodded into the dining room at last, and Light could see his father’s exhaustion clearly in the slump of shoulders, the hanging of his head.

“Hi Dad!” Light said, waving. “Welcome home!”

“Light,” Soichiro greeted his son with a warm smile, taking a place beside him at the end of the table. “And Ryuzaki, it’s good to see you. Will you be spending tonight, too?”

“Hello, Mr. Yagami,” Leon said, voice flat, still staring at the table. “Yes, I would… I hoped you’d be alright letting me stay.”

“Well, of course we are,” Soichiro said matter-of-factly. “Please, stay here as often as you like.”

“So long as your parents are okay with it, of course,” Sachiko added.

“Oh, don’t worry about them, Mrs. Yagami,” Leon looked up with what would look to anyone except Light like a genuine smile, before his gaze returned to his bowl. “I wouldn’t be here if they weren’t.”

Light resisted an impulse to take his friend’s hand, and changed the subject. “Dad,” he said, putting on his perfect-son grin, "I’m going to help Mum set up the second guest bedroom later! You know, the one we never use? So that Ryuzaki has a more permanent place here.”

“That’s an excellent idea.” He nodded at Light, then again at Sachiko as she set a fresh, hot bowl of katsudon in front of him. “Thank you.”

Light flashed Leon a smile: his presumptive close had worked perfectly.

Turning back to his father with a conversational lilt, he asked, “Hey, Dad?” 

Soichiro took a bite of pork cutlet, and inclined his head.

Light lifted his chopsticks. “You said earlier that you were getting outside help for your case.” He paused to take a small bite of egg. “I’ve never heard of you bringing anyone else on before.”

“Right,” Soichiro said, and for a moment Light thought he might stop there. But he continued: “There’s a detective who’s recently entered our radar. Over the past year, he’s assisted many of the world's police organisations on their toughest cases. We don’t know his real name or whereabouts - we don’t even know what he looks like. He goes only by the letter L.”

“Wow,” Light said, all his willpower restraining his lungs from bursting into hysterical laughter. “And you think this… L, could help you with your case?”

“I’m discussing with my team the prospect of bringing him on,” Soichiro said, in that tone he used when he was trying to avoid getting his hopes up. “But yes, I believe he could.”

“I think you’re right,” Leon said, a small smile playing at his lips. “Going off what you said, L seems very competent.”

Light nodded. “I hope you convince your team, and that you and L solve your case!” He pushed his bowl away then, leaping to his feet. “I’m done with my dinner now, Mom! Can Ryuzaki and I play in the basement for a little while before bed?”

“Sure, Light,” Sachiko said fondly. “Ryuzaki, are you finished too?”

Leon nodded, unfolding out of his usual crouch and walking over to Light. Hand in hand, they made their way around the corner, down the stairs, into the basement.

Light set the door into place, ensuring the latch clicked firmly behind them.

“So,” Leon said, in a perfectly ordinary speaking voice. They’d tested the quality of the soundproofing, and from where they sat now, anything short of a yell couldn’t be heard at all from outside the room. “We’re going to be on a case with your dad.”

Light nodded thoughtfully, but said nothing. He walked over to one of the shelves on the wall, pulled out a box of Hot Wheels cars, and brought the entire thing into the middle of the room.

Leon walked along beside him, not picking up any toys for himself. He sat on the mat with Light. With his free hand, he lifted out a model sports car with a sleek black body and red hubcaps. Staring at its silver-painted undercarriage, he rolled its front wheels with his thumb. “Do you want to tell him it’s us?”

“No,” Light said immediately. There was a sadness in his tone, the sort that always accompanied keeping secrets from his family. “My dad’s so protective of me. He wouldn’t let me keep doing this if I told him.” He took a different car from the box, a bright orange one modelled off some retro design from the 70s, and rolled it slowly across the mat. “It’s the same reason we’re not telling them your situation. You don’t want to burden my family with guilt, and I don’t want to burden them with worry.”

“Okay,” Leon said. He squeezed Light’s hand gently. “That’s what I thought, but I wanted to ask.”

Light finally looked him in the eyes. He whispered, “Thank you, Leon.”

He smiled, whispering back: “Thank you , Light.”

Chapter Text

“Light, take a look at this.”

“Mmm…” Light hummed groggily, trying to turn over in bed but realising he couldn’t. Blearily, he opened his eyes. Leon was crouched over him, their noses a centimetre from touching. The pale yellow light striped across Leon’s face made Light hope that Leon hadn’t just woken him at the crack of dawn. “Do I want to know what time it is?”

“Eight a.m. exactly,” Leon replied mechanically, like a human alarm clock. Like he’d been patiently waiting for this time to come. He leaned back just enough to shove his phone toward Light. 

“If you want me to read that,” Light grumbled, squinting against the blurry form of what looked to be a news site displayed on the screen, “you’re gonna have to move it a bit further from my face.”

Leon sighed as though he was the one put-upon by this request, and clambered off of Light. He handed over his phone, rocking expectantly.

Light sat up, holding the phone in one palm as the other pressed into the bed behind him.  

Without even pausing to let Light read, Leon summarised the article aloud. “It seems a large number of the world’s major criminals have all died of sudden, mysterious heart attacks.” Shifting to sit cross-legged and rest one hand on Light’s thigh, he added: ‘It seems we won’t have to make up an enemy after all.’

Light nodded thoughtfully, at both parts of that. This is both better and worse. We have less control over the situation… but we won’t have to fake a conflict. At least for now. The “argument” we had yesterday could be brought back if we ever needed to stage something like that. Regardless, we can work with this. We just need more data.

“The Japanese websites seem to have thought of a name first: they’ve termed this person or organisation Kira .”

Wasei-eigo that I’m sure was based on ‘killer’. Light frowned at the usage of such a far-reaching, destructive moniker. That name doesn’t describe an MO, just an outcome. ‘Kira’ could be the killer of anyone . Maybe that’s the point. I don’t like the idea of another death note user as ambitious as me being out there. “Has the ICPO contacted us yet?”

“No, they haven’t,” Leon said, tapping randomness against Light’s thigh. When they weren’t having secret conversations, they tended to do this for the sake of plausible deniability. “Perhaps they’re just slow; it is a bureaucracy, after all.”

“Possible,” Light said. “Regardless, we should start pursuing this Kira immediately.”

“But,” Leon added, “not publicly.” He smirked. “If the ICPO is willing to pay us to catch Kira, I don’t see why we wouldn’t take their money, even if we were going to do it on our own anyway.”

“Good plan,” Light agreed. He got out of bed then, starting to get dressed. “In the meantime, I can hack my dad’s work computer and mirror the data to one of our machines, so we can keep track of anything that crosses his radar. He’s Director of Special Projects, so I figure Kira would probably end up on his plate.”

“Already did it.” Leon lifted his laptop off Light’s nightstand and walked over as he pulled up the custom terminal on his virtual machine. He turned the screen toward Light, scrolling quickly through its log.

“Oh, I love you. That’s perfect.”

The two men behind the detective L shared a smile, then a kiss. And then, they got to work.

There was a flat in Shinjuku, Japan, in which little expense had been spared to create the impression that no expense had been spared. It belonged to a student at the prestigious To-Oh University, who had this year been the school’s freshman representative after getting perfect or near-perfect scores across every subject in the entrance exam. 

Her parents were wealthy, and it showed. Her furniture was all leather and polished dark oak, her desk and tables had immaculate glass surfaces. Her kitchen countertop and coasters were all marble, and the flat itself was spacious, with a breathtaking view of the Tokyo skyline.

Laying across the bed in a navy silk full slip was the young woman herself: Kiyomi Takada. 

In her hand was a ballpoint pen; laid out before her on the white lace-patterned cotton bedspread was a thin black notebook. In the corner, a large bowl of steadily-vanishing bananas sat on the floor before the curled-up body of a massive green salamander-like shinigami.

Kiyomi looked up at the wall-mounted flatscreen TV before her bed, and watched in silence as a story aired about the sexual assault of a group of high school students. She scribbled down the name of the ‘alleged’ assaulter the moment his face appeared on the screen, already anticipating the soft electricity that crackled through her chest when he died.

There was a wet sigh from the corner. “I thought I told you, Kiyomi, that notebook is yours. You don’t have to write in it constantly to keep it.”

“I know that, Midora,” Kiyomi said, glancing up at the news again and noting down the name of a youth pastor with a history of molesting children. “But I only have so much time to write in the death note. I must make the most of my time.”

“I just don’t get why you care,” Midora said. “Explain it to me.”

Kiyomi checked the TV: that story ended, and the one that took its place didn’t merit her attention. She set the notebook aside and slid out of bed, walking briskly into her study and retrieving her laptop. “Look at this,” she said, and turned its screen to Midora.

“ The legend of Kira the saviour .” Midora read the heading aloud. “That’s about you?”

Kiyomi nodded. “The media hasn’t picked up on it yet, which honestly surprises me, but websites like this keep popping up. People aren’t willing to support me openly yet, but…” she smiled, quoting: “ The true test of a man’s character is what he does when nobody is watching. This is what they really think.” She shrugged, setting the computer on her nightstand. “It seems they’ve decided to call me ‘Kira’. It’s not what I’d choose, but I suppose that’s what I get for not doing my own branding quickly enough.”

“What would you choose?”

“Dike,” she replied immediately. “Greek goddess of justice, abused by men on earth but revered by the gods in heaven. She reports the misdeeds of humans and doles out divine punishment.”

Midora popped another banana out of its peel, tossing it whole into her gaping maw. “But you’ve never been abused,” she said nonchalantly. “Have you?”

“No,” Kiyomi said, a hint of annoyance tinging her tone. “But that name isn’t for me . It’s for the people I’ll save. They’re the most important voices in this. And I hope that one day, when the time is right…” She smiled. “I’ll convince them to join me.”

“Well,” Light turned to Leon, “it looks like we’ll be moving to Japan.”

The meeting-hall of the ICPO was a gigantic cube of a room, wide and long and tall in equal measure, occupied almost entirely by a half-dozen tiers of tables and chairs in two long rows. They were solid wood, polished to a shine, to appease those of the delegates who felt it was only appropriate for a person of their stature. At most of these tables, there were two people to represent one country’s police organisation. The remaining few tables were occupied by agents of the ICPO itself.

Opposite all this, most of the wall was taken up by a massive grey screen, the projector for which was hidden in the room’s high ceiling. It was dark in this meeting room now, even though the projector was not in use, because regardless of the delegates who might think otherwise, it was not them who was important. The import lied in their roles as the mouthpieces of governments. Their faces mattered far less than their words.

Underneath the gigantic screen, at the front of the room, stood a lonely podium. If any one person was important enough to be seen, they would be standing there. But at the moment, partway through today’s meeting, it was empty.

Voices echoed through the cavernous room, via headset microphones connected to a speaker system, discussing the problem at hand.

“There have been sixty-four deaths that we know of, in just the past week.” A hint of surprise underlied the man’s even, factual tone. “Seventeen politicians and twelve corporate heads, as well as forty-five suspects in ongoing investigations of child abuse, rape, and murder. Every single one died of a sudden inexplicable heart attack.”

A second man with a grumbling voice and a slight Italian accent said, “Given that the perpetrators aren’t limiting themselves to high-profile individuals, it’s likely there are more murders unaccounted for.”

A Chinese woman with a snarky, nasally voice piped in: “It’s still too early to consider these homicides.”

The grumbling turned to a shout: “Then how did all these people have heart attacks at the same time?! That’s not coincidence, it’s murder!”

She sounded like she was holding back laughter at the absurdity: “You think it’s possible to simultaneously kill all these people in different locations?”

A gruff American man spoke up: “We’re treating this as an elaborate murder plot that’s been carried out by a large organisation.”

“If it is a large organisation,” said a fourth man with a lilting British accent, “I’m sure I’m not alone in suspecting the FBI or CIA.”

“I dare you to say that again!” the American shouted back.

“Now now,” said an Indian woman, despairing at the entire delegation, “this is not the time to be joking around! We need to confirm that these are indeed homicides and not coincidences!”

“How?!” exclaimed the Italian man. “The autopsy results show that in all these cases, the victims died of sudden heart attacks.”

“Investigating a series of heart attacks is pointless,” sighed the Chinese woman, who didn’t seem terribly enthusiastic about being here at all. “I don’t see what else we can learn.”

“Absolutely,” agreed a younger Russian man. “If these people had been shot or stabbed, at least we’d have something to go on.”

“If that’s the case,” said the authoritative voice of the first man to speak, “it looks as if we’ll have no choice but to bring in L.”

At the mere mention, the room quieted to whispers. Groups of delegates murmuring among themselves - some wondering if doing so would be worth L’s time, others questioning the point of bringing in a detective on a series of coincidences. A new delegate on the Japanese NPA asked his Chief about who or what this ‘L’ was. And in the front corner, the ICPO’s Director of Special Projects sat in silence, ignoring the prodding questions of his coworker.

Then, there was noise.

Click. Click. Click. Click.

The room fell silent as the sound of footsteps echoed through the room. From the back entrance, walking up to the podium, was a person in a long, thick, black overcoat. It was padded and shut firmly by a number of buckles and straps, lending to its wearer a near-complete inscrutability of physical appearance. Laying low on their head was a large hat, under whose wide brim little could be distinguished, and nearly all of that was covered by a black face scarf. 

No sound was made, no word was whispered by anyone until the person arrived at the lectern.

“Esteemed delegates of the ICPO,” they greeted the room, sounding polite and friendly despite the real-time voice distorter they used, “L has already begun his investigation into these incidents. Please be silent: L would now like to address you directly.”

Seven years ago: September 12th, 2012.

“You’ve been spending a lot of time out of the house lately,” Sachiko brought up idly, one day over dinner. 

Light nodded, putting on a caring smile as he picked up another piece of his mother’s homemade sushi. “I’ve been hanging out with Ryuzaki at a cafe, programming.”

This was Light’s favourite excuse for random absences, because it didn’t just explain the absence, it also explained why he somehow had an income despite never holding a job. I sell the software I build online, he would say. It pays remarkably well.

“I see. You boys and your computers,” Sachiko said. She smiled, but a hint of worry was still buried in her tone. “I suppose a cafe is best for satisfying Ryuzaki’s sweet tooth.”

“I know you can only bake so fast, Mom.” Light chuckled. “We’ve been teaching ourselves this cool new programming language called Rust. It’s really fascinating, and both of us like it.” He watched her eyes as he continued, “I usually prefer dynamically-typed languages like Python, but Rust is a lot easier to use than Java or C. And Ryuzaki - who actually likes C - told me that Rust is intuitive for him, and it’s better for memory safety.”

Sachiko nodded. “Well, I’m glad you enjoy it,” she said, not even pretending to understand, “and that you get to share it with Ryuzaki.”

The hint of worry had disappeared from her tone. Not because Light had actually done anything to assuage it, but merely because he’d reminded her of why (she thought) she didn’t need to be concerned. There were children who lied to their parents and did dangerous things behind their backs, and then there were children who excitedly rambled to their parents about new programming languages they were learning. They didn’t match up, those two contrasting stereotypes. And while Light’s mother might be smart, she was just as susceptible to the representativeness heuristic as every other human being.

“Me too, Mom,” Light agreed, taking a bite of sushi and thinking of what he and Leon were really doing together. 

After some careful deliberation over their collective finances, they’d decided to buy an office building, part of which would become their headquarters as L. Operating out of Light’s family home had worked for a long time, but as they kept accumulating technology, it had become difficult to maintain secrecy. 

Their new office was located a short ways off from Oxford, where Light was planning to go to university - entirely for the sake of the connections, he certainly didn’t need anything they could offer in education - after he took his A-levels. The building even had a quaint little cafe subletting off the ground floor. 

“So long as you’re happy, Light,” Sachiko said cheerfully, “that’s what matters.”

Chapter Text

It hadn’t taken much effort to come up with an excuse for both Light and Leon to be away from home indefinitely. In fact, Light’s age-old excuse worked again. He explained to his parents that the two of them would be spending their evenings and weekends working on a new software application with some of Light’s friends from university, and would thus be renting an apartment nearby the campus for a while to make that easier. 

After that, all that was left was to book their flights to Japan (with a brief stop-off in Lyon, France, for Light to attend the ICPO’s meeting on Kira in person as L’s handler ) and their first five days’ hotel. They picked planes that offered high-speed internet on board and a hotel room that came with blackout curtains on all the windows.

In the middle of the night, in a darkened suite somewhere in Kyoto, Leon knelt alone on the floor. Through his computer screen, he could see the same thing that Light saw in person: the meeting hall of ICPO HQ. Every delegate stared in rapt attention at the two of them.

Pushing a button on the side of his headset to turn on his microphone and his voice filter, he spoke. “Greetings to all of you at the ICPO. I am L.”

A brief pause, to let the delegation absorb this. “The difficulty of this case,” Leon went on, “lies mainly in its unprecedented scope. But make no mistake: we are witnessing an atrocious act of mass murder. Therefore, this case cannot be solved without the full cooperation of the ICPO. You will need to make the decision to fully support this investigation at this meeting. I will be requiring particular cooperation from Japan’s National Police Agency.”

In the front corner, a man stood - the ICPO’s Director of Special Projects, Soichiro Yagami, former Chief of the NPA. “If I may ask,” he said, “why Japan in particular?”

Leon smiled. He was looking forward to working with Light’s father on this case. “There’s a strong possibility,” he explained, “that the perpetrator is Japanese. And even if they’re not, we can be sure they’re presently located in Japan. Additionally, I have grounds for suspicion that these crimes have been committed by a single individual.”

Soichiro remained standing. “What is all this based on?”

“I believe I’ll be able to offer proof that the culprit is located in Japan when I directly confront them. And in any case, I would like to set up the investigation headquarters in Japan. The rest…” Leon nodded to himself, “will come in time.”

Glancing over at the Japanese delegates, he could see them nodding their hesitant assent.

Two days later: December 15th, 2019.

Kiyomi set her shoes at the door and made her way to the living room, draping her jacket over the back of the couch. Her stockinged feet shuffled across the carpet as she went to sit before her TV.

“Another long night of writing coming up, right?” Midora yawned.

“You could sound a little less put-upon,” Kiyomi suggested, taking her death note from a hidden pocket in her purse and flipping it open. 

“I’m not put-upon,” Midora said, “just bored.”

“I’ll be more interesting later on, I promise.” Kiyomi tapped the back-end of a pen against a fresh page as she watched the news. “For now, I have to lay low and gather support.”

She sat through a meaningless story about some political scandal, hoping the next segment would be more useful, when the announcer was urgently handed a stack of paper from off-camera. “Oh!” he exclaimed, composure slipping in surprise as he glanced between the paper and the camera, “We’d like to apologise for this interruption. As of now, we’re bringing you a live worldwide broadcast from Interpol, ICPO!”

Kiyomi frowned. “Interpol, hm?”

The scene on the TV flickered and changed, and suddenly a new face was staring at her. A broad-shouldered man with angular features, long black hair, and striking blue eyes stood at a lectern behind a nameplate reading “Lind L. Tailor”. Behind him, a white backdrop centred by Interpol’s logo.

The man’s voice was naturally suave as well as practised; he spoke with an orator’s poise. “I head up an international police task force which includes all member nations. I am Lind L. Tailor, otherwise known as L.”

“Ooh,” Midora cooed. “Sounds important.”

Kiyomi lifted an unimpressed eyebrow, but said nothing.

“Around the world,” L explained, “criminals, suspects, politicians, and corporate leaders are being murdered by a serial killer. I consider this crime to be the most atrocious act of mass murder in history. I will not rest until the person or persons responsible are brought to justice.”

“Good luck, L,” Kiyomi affected a look of boredom, inspecting her manicure. But she didn’t turn off the TV, or change the channel. Not yet. She needed to make absolutely sure that L wouldn’t be able to get to her.

“I have a pretty good idea what your motivation might be, and I can guess what you hope to achieve.” L’s stare grew more intense. “But although you might have the power of a god of death, you aren’t invisible, or indestructible.”

Kiyomi stood abruptly. She whispered, “God of death? Does he know?! ”

“I will hunt you down, Kira,” L continued from the screen. “I will find you.”

“Could be a coincidence,” Midora said, sounding unconvinced.

Heart hammering against her ribcage, Kiyomi took her pen between trembling fingers and immediately began to write. “I can’t afford to take the chance,” she said quietly. “I have to do this.”

With Lind L. Tailor written in just slightly shakier handwriting than usual, Kiyomi stared at the TV screen, hearing but not processing anything else L was saying, waiting impatiently for the longest forty seconds of her life to pass.

And then, on the screen, L gasped, clutching at his suit jacket until he collapsed face-down onto the desk before him.

Kiyomi slowly lowered herself back down, letting her hands steady and her breathing even. As two men in suits and dark sunglasses showed up to drag away the body of Lind L. Tailor, she began to smile, and then to laugh. “Oh L, if you knew I had a death note, then why did you so carelessly give me your name? Maybe it was only a coincidence after all… Well, at least you’re out of my way.” With a final smirk, she lifted the remote to change the channel-

The image of the ICPO’s logo and a lectern emptied of a corpse flicked out, replaced by a flat grey background and a black gothic-script letter L.

“It seems I was right,” an unsurprised voice said through a thick distorter. “Kira. You can kill people without having to be there in person. Well then. I should let you know that if you did, indeed, kill Lind L. Tailor, the man who you just saw die on television: he was an inmate whose execution was scheduled for today. That was not me.”

Kiyomi’s eyes widened.

“The police arrested him in absolute secrecy,” the real L continued, “so you wouldn’t have heard of him. It appears that not even you have access to information about these types of criminals.”

The fury radiating from Kiyomi’s eyes was only made worse by Midora’s guttural giggling from behind.

“But I assure you,” L continued through his (her? their?) stupid voice filter, “L is real. I do exist. Now, try to kill me. ”

She stared at the TV, incredulous. But she didn’t move, she couldn’t .

“What’s wrong?” L taunted. “Go ahead! Come on, right now! Kill me! Can’t you do it?”

Kiyomi was shaking by now, but she couldn’t do anything! She didn’t know L’s name or face! All she knew…

“Can’t you do it?”

All she knew was that she had to get rid of L, as quickly as possible.

“Well, Kira,” L sounded almost disappointed . “It seems you can’t kill me after all. That means there are some people you can’t kill.” And she could hear an infuriating little smile when L said, “You’ve given me a useful hint!”

Light muted Leon’s microphone for a moment. “That wasn’t necessary.”

“But it was fun!” Leon complained playfully. “And we both know Kira can’t really kill me.” He smiled, then turned the mic back on.

Light shook his head, but smiled back while Leon told Kira about the way they’d found out, and just now proven, that Kira was located in the Kanto region of Japan. Light himself had found the first incident of an unexplained heart attack: a man holding a daycare hostage had suddenly collapsed, allowing the children and staff to escape without police intervening. From there, they’d found out that Victim Zero’s crime had only ever been reported within Japan. Because of the proximity to Victim Zero, as well as its high population density, they’d begun their broadcasting in the Kanto region - and found Kira right away.

It was, as Leon was saying into the microphone right now, a surprisingly good result. For L’s first official day on the case, things were turning out very well for them.

In his closing remarks on the broadcast, Leon feigned ignorance regarding Kira’s methodology. Light smirked, knowing that Kira would be forced to wonder whether or not L really knew about the existence of death notes. Given Kira’s current information, it could be either way. The metaphor ‘power of a god of death’ would easily come to mind to anyone from Japan (which L indeed was). The inference that Kira needed both a name and a face to kill could be derived from analysis of their MO. And Leon’s taunts to ‘kill me’ could be mere bravado.

If Kira was smart, they would nevertheless guard against the possibility that L knew about the existence of death notes. If they were smarter, they would also have a contingency plan for a situation where L owned a notebook himself. And, if Kira was as good as L… 

If Kira was as good as them, that would be something to fear. The reason L was so successful was because of their propensity to do the unexpected, to blindside their suspects with situations they couldn’t expect. If there was another death note user with the willingness and ability to do the same… 

Light watched Leon signing off with the newscasters with a determined stare. This wasn’t what he’d originally envisioned when he’d thought of ways to change the world with the notebook, but it was starting to seem like the matter of the most pressing import. Not just because the situation would amuse Ryuk, who held their lives in his clawed hands, but because this Kira could be the largest-scale threat the world had ever seen.

The broadcast cut out, leaving the screen snowy with static. A muted, fuzzy sound filled the quiet living room. 

Kiyomi stared blankly forward.

“That L is really good,” Midora said.

“Yeah…” Kiyomi nodded slowly, absently. 

I underestimated the intelligence of the world’s police organisations, and the people working with them. I can’t afford to make that mistake again.

I was foolish to think I could wait for the perfect time. I have to set my plans in motion right now.

At once, Kiyomi stood, pulling her coat back on as she headed for the door.

Midora slithered behind her. “Where are we going?”

“Out,” Kiyomi replied curtly. “There’s someone I need to see.”

Two years ago: September 16, 2017.

The front door stuck in its frame with the moisture of the rainstorm which had come and gone earlier that day. Light yanked on the iron handle twice before it came open. He was toeing off his shoes in the foyer when he noticed his father’s work shoes already set askew against the wall.

“Hey, Dad,” he said, as he rounded the corner into the living room, genuine confusion mixed with appreciation in his voice. “You’re home early.” I did tell him that the rest of the work would be on L’s end, but I didn’t expect him to actually take my advice. He never has before.

Soichiro nodded slowly. He was slumped back against one of the armchairs which flanked the couch, a loose fist balled in the fabric of a white-and-purple crocheted blanket which was pulled haphazardly across his lap. As Light rounded the room to sit on the couch at Soichiro’s right, he saw his dad’s tired eyes were half-lidded, with dark circles budding underneath. A cup of tea sat on the coffee table before him, lukewarm and stagnant. 

Light felt a pang of guilt for the fact that he’d left his dad and Leon to work on the LA murder case throughout the previous night, while he’d gotten what Leon liked to call his “eight hours of model student sleep”. Leon never slept much, so he wasn’t worse for wear. At the time, Light’s dad hadn’t seemed too exhausted… but he realised too late that it was merely a front.

“You look tired,” Light said. It took far more effort than usual to keep up his concerned son persona. “Tough case?”

Another half-slumbering nod. “Yeah. I can’t say much about it.”

Light nodded, a wry smile tugging at his lip. If he was in his dad’s position, he’d want to spare himself the details of this case, too. It was the most terrible and gruesome serial murder case that L had taken on in their eight years of investigative work, not only because of the killer’s methods, but also his victims. An elderly couple, a high school boy, and a thirteen-year-old girl… 

“I understand,” Light said. “Can I get you anything?”

Soichiro shook his head. “Thank you, Light. But I’ll finish my tea and get some sleep.” He smiled. “How were your classes today?”

Light sighed inside his mind, if not aloud. How ironic was this? Both of them, hiding the truth from the other in a vain attempt not to worry them. Both of them, attempting to keep their family safe from realising the danger they’ve put themself in. And both of them, doing it out of a sense of duty, for the betterment of the world.

But then he smiled, like the perfect son he was supposed to be, and pretended some more. “They were good, Dad. Everything’s going well.”

Chapter Text

The National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo was nearly a piece of modern art itself. The building consisted of three interlocked rectangular cuboids, descending diagonally like a section of a spiral staircase. Under the overhang thus created was the lobby entrance, faced by thin square pillars and tall windows which reflected in the natural light off the concrete walkway outside. Inside the galleries themselves, the light was predominantly artificial, shining across paintings, sculptures, and drawings.

Through this place, two young men walked side-by-side. They mostly didn’t speak, except on occasion to comment quietly on an art piece, but the air surrounding them was saturated with a soft and tuneless humming. They rarely hummed at the same time, but they also weren’t visibly trading off, because often one of them would stop and there would be a long period of silence before either one picked it up again. It was as though two people, who each hummed to themselves while deep in thought, happened to be doing so at the same time, each unaware of the habit of the other.

Light went with Leon through an entryway into an adjoining gallery, watching Ryuk’s shadow floating behind them in his peripherie. In Beyond’s Solresol 2.0 , he hummed, ‘It definitely seems like we’re looking for just one person with a death note. They’ve got a consistent MO, focused mostly on crimes that don’t usually get harsh sentences, like rape and abuse.’

Leon stopped walking to stand before a small painting at their left, depicting in an impressionist style a wide railroad splitting a hillside, flanked in the midground by electrical poles. ‘And we were able to provoke Kira into killing Lind L. Tailor with our broadcast yesterday. Yes, it seems Kira is a single individual.’

Light paused there with him, eyes drifting across the oranges and blues of the painting, then took a couple ambling steps to the next one over. ‘If we can narrow down our suspect pool to something a bit more sensible than the entire Kanto region , we could hand photographs to Beyond and ask him whether he can see their lifespans. Owning a death note doesn’t necessarily mean that person is Kira, but it would be good evidence.’

Leon nodded, and aloud, made a remark about the trees in the foreground of this new painting. They appeared to be blowing in a strong wind, partially obscuring the roof of a building behind. After a moment of silent staring, he hummed, ‘Two possible failure modes. It could be possible to lend a notebook to somebody else, or it could be possible to give up a notebook, but get it back later somehow.’

‘Ryuk, are either of those possible?’ 

The shinigami, lacking a need to do otherwise, spoke aloud. “The first one definitely is,” he said, “but good luck finding any human who’d lend their death note to someone who’d use it like that , heh. For the second… you can definitely give up ownership of a death note, but getting it back wouldn’t be easy. Any shinigami will let you return their notebook, but they’d also take back all your memories related to it. And, I don’t think they’d give the book back later if you asked.” There was a short contemplative silence. “Well… I can think of one who might, but it doesn’t matter since I don’t think the human she’s attached to would do any of this Kira stuff, not on her own anyhow.” Ryuk nodded to himself. “And of course, if you gave your notebook to another human, you’d have to figure out some way of convincing ‘em to return it later, without your memories.”

Light made the mental note: There’s another shinigami on Earth, with another death note attached to another human, unrelated to Kira or L. That makes three notebooks in total, including ours.

‘I can think of some ways to make that work,’ Light hummed. ‘Let’s not rule it out.’

There was a brief silence between the three as they walked, observing the art. In the rest of this particular gallery, there were various portraits and landscapes, all in oil, none more than a meter in their longest dimensions and many smaller than that. In the corner of the room, they came to a dark metal sculpture of a hand, wrist in extension, fingers gently curled. The base of the thumb was pulled oddly toward the palm even while the tip of it was extended, in a position that didn’t seem anatomically impossible so much as very uncomfortable.

‘Returning to the original point,’ Leon hummed while tilting his head to and fro to watch the light glinting off the sculpture, ‘what are our ideas for how to narrow down our suspect pool?’

‘Well,’ Light replied, ‘remember how, when we analysed the times of death, they indicated a regular schedule? The same times per week, every week, but not the right schedule for a salaryman or a high school student?’

‘Yes. It seems to indicate Kira goes to university, which also lines up with the surface-level altruistic motivation of the perpetrator. You’re suggesting we ask the Japanese police to comb through every university in the Kanto region to find students with that class schedule?’

‘With their resources, it shouldn’t be too difficult to gather the data. Then we could process and analyse it ourselves - it won’t take too long on the supercomputer.’ Light took Leon’s hand, and they walked away from the sculpture, through an entryway into the next gallery.

It was a smaller room than the last, with six portrait sculptures in two horizontal rows along the walls, each resting atop a featureless cuboid pedestal. Light found himself drawn to a sculpture in the back left corner, just by the entryway into the next room. It depicted a young woman with a rounded face and thick hair cropped close to her head. Unlike every other portrait sculpture in the room - whose eyes were turned up, down, aside, or over their shoulder - this one stared straight forward, not vacantly, but with a slight tension under her eyes which burned with purpose. 

Leon tugged on Light’s hand then, and they kept walking. 

‘On another topic,’ Leon hummed as they made their way into the next gallery, ‘we should revisit our judgement about Beyond Birthday. His ability would be much more helpful to us if we don’t have to make excuses for how we’ll use it.’

Looking about the room, which was larger than the previous two put together, with paintings along the walls and a few abstract sculptures in glass cases scattered about the middle, Light nodded. ‘Do you think we can trust him enough to tell him everything?’

The two of them took a seat upon a low, cushioned bench and looked across the paintings on the wall before them. Of the five portraits hanging there, the centre three were all nude.

Leon dragged the pad of his thumb across his lower lip, staring at one of the paintings. ‘He’s proven himself to be competent enough for our purposes, and intelligent enough to grasp the stakes of this situation. He’s clearly willing and able to keep a secret, or several, for the sake of the world.’ 

Light traced Leon’s gaze to the wall; the painting he observed depicted a young woman, seated casually with her chin in her palm, staring contemplatively off into the lower corner. 

‘I suppose we could always frame the conversation as theoretical,’ he hummed. ‘If he doesn’t respond well, we don’t need to tell him it’s real.’

‘Precisely,’ Leon agreed. ‘We meet with the NPA in a few hours, so we’ll have that conversation tomorrow. Like last time, I trust you’ll take the lead with it.’

Light smiled and stood, offering Leon his hand. He nodded.

The fluorescent lights overhead were arranged by groups of four into squares, inset into the ceiling. Below each square stood a simple desk of plastic and particle-board, and at each desk were two police officers with a notebook and a laptop apiece. This was the organisation of the NPA officers assigned to work on the Kira case, with only three exceptions. At the front of the room, Chief Kanzo Mogi sat with thick fingers interlaced and a respectful expression resting on his square face. At an adjacent desk was Interpol’s Soichiro Yagami, who was present in person at his own inclination rather than as a necessity of his position. And in the very back, dressed in a long, thick trench-coat, a wide-brimmed hat, and a black face scarf, was L’s handler - whose name nobody knew and no-one fancied asking for - sitting behind an open laptop. Displayed on his screen was L’s signature monogram in Cloister Black.

“Let’s begin,” said Kanzo, “with the tip-line reports. Aizawa?”

A tall man, whose thick black afro made him look taller still, stood from his desk. “Yes, sir.” Lifting a stack of papers, he said, “To date, we’ve received 3,029 messages concerning the murders by IM, email, and phone call. These are mostly from various bystanders, but we had 14 tips from people who claimed to know Kira or have seen them, and 21 who claimed to be Kira.” He rolled his eyes, heaving a sigh. “We followed up on all of them of course, even though none of them could offer any proof or provide any information that wasn’t publicly available.”

“Understood,” Kanzo nodded impassively. “Let’s move on to the victim reports. Ukita?”

A short man with a pleasant, rounded face stood from a desk across the room from Aizawa’s. “We’ve confirmed that every one of Kira’s victims had their names and faces broadcast within Japan before they died. And as to L’s request that we look into the times of death, it indicates a regular weekly schedule with few variations - lining up well with his theory that Kira might be a university student.”

“This is critical information for us,” L said, through a voice distorter and tinny laptop speakers. “If Kira is, indeed, a university student, their childish ideas of right and wrong make much more sense. I’d recommend that we operate under that assumption for now, and create a list of students at universities in the Kanto region whose class schedules line up with the absences of Kira deaths.”

“That is a lot of data to go through,” Kanzo commented. The unspoken question: are you sure this will be worth our time?

“I trust you and your team’s capabilities,” L said, which was a yes . “But please let me know if you need more computing resources. My handler will be happy to provide you with access to my supercomputer.”

In agreement, the brim of the wide hat tipped down once, then straightened.

Outside, a brilliant blood-orange sunset made the buildings of Tokyo into silhouettes against a warm yellow glow, drawn up in watercolour-like streaks by wispy clouds into the navy blue sky. The warmth dripped through the gap between the blackout curtains, casting the dark shadows of couches and tables across the carpet.

“Here, Leon,” Light said, “I brought you some tea.”

Leon nodded without speaking, taking the paper cup. He drank a small sip and set it on the floor beside his laptop. Without looking away from the screen, he said, “Five NPA officers quit the case today. I expect they will be the first of many.”

“Well, they’re afraid.” Light took a seat on the couch behind Leon, running his fingers idly through his lover’s hair. “We’ve told them that Kira can kill with only a name and a face, and shown them that Kira will kill anyone who gets in their way. It’s understandable.”

The corner of Leon’s lip pulled aside. He picked up his tea and stood up, only to climb backwards up onto the couch, curling up again there. “Still, I feel we should do something about it.” He cozied up next to Light and set his tea on the couch arm. “Perhaps once all the people who are going to quit do so, we create fake names and IDs for those officers who choose to stay?”

Light leaned over, resting his head on Leon’s shoulder. “That’s a good idea. I would try to find a way to speed that process up, but honestly, I think my dad will do it for us. I can bet that sometime in the next couple of days, he’ll say something like, ‘if you’re not completely willing to risk your lives for this case, we don’t need you’.”

“Probably, yes,” Leon said. “But you know…” he took a long sip of tea, “Even if we take this precaution, it’s not out of the question that Kira could just google a complete list of NPA officers and write every single name in their death note.” He set the cup again on the arm of the couch; it wobbled slightly before settling. “We’re expecting the officers to risk their lives for this case while we’re still in hiding.”

Light’s brow furrowed. “You’re suggesting that…” 

Leon nodded. “Once the investigators have been narrowed to those who are absolutely willing to risk everything for this case…” He turned bodily toward Light, levelling him a heavy stare. “We should reveal ourselves as L.”

Light stood abruptly and walked away, taking a sharp turn to avoid knocking his shins into the coffee table. Leon’s cup shook on the arm of the couch; he caught it before it could fall.

Light began to pace. He ran his fingers through his hair, tugging his bangs back briefly before they cascaded over his forehead again. If we do this, Dad will know. He’ll know that we’ve been lying to him… that I’ve been lying to him. For more than ten years.

“Light?” Leon asked.

Can I do that to him? Light continued to pace back and forth in quick strides. Can I do it to myself? The mere thought of his father’s rejection sent a stab of pain through his chest. If he never trusts me again… Is this case worth it?

“Light,” Leon said.

Light found Leon’s hand on his shoulder. They’d both stopped walking near the window. “Yeah?” He hated how weak his voice sounded.

“Your dad will understand,” Leon said. He squeezed Light’s shoulder hard in an attempt at reassurance. “He’ll see why you kept it from him. It’s the same reason he’s attempted to keep his work from you, isn’t it?”

“Yes, but… well-” Light lifted his hand toward Leon’s chest, but only traced his fingers down his shirt, nails catching on the buttons. He sighed. “I just… I can’t know that for sure. And I don’t want to even ask myself if this case is worth breaking my relationship with him.”

“You’ll ask it anyway.” There was confidence and trust in Leon’s voice, in his smile. “You were the one who taught me, a scientist never refuses to ask a question. But, regarding how you answer it…” Leon gave a melancholy smile, lowering his hand back down to his side. “I’m not exactly in a good position to tell you that , am I.”

Light tilted his head, even though Leon wouldn’t see it with his eyes turned to the floor. “Aren’t you? We wouldn’t have met if you hadn’t done what you did.”

Leon snorted, looking up at him. “Yes, we would. We would have met no matter what, Light. Somehow. I’m convinced of it.” He shrugged. “But, I suppose… I see your point. What do you think we should do, then? Drop the case?”

Light knew that Leon wasn’t being facetious. Right now, so early on, they needed the resources of the police. If they allowed unnecessary resentment to build between them, they would risk further reducing the numbers of the already dwindling Task Force, or having the NPA retract their support altogether. Those really were their two options: do everything in their power to level the playing field between themselves and the police, or abandon the case. And one of these was unacceptable.

“No.” Light’s voice was firm. “We can’t do that.” Above all else, that was the most important thing. “We shouldn’t.” He let out a short, sardonic laugh. “I just don’t want to be in this situation at all.”

“I know,” Leon said.

Light took both of Leon’s hands. “How did you make the decision you did, Leon?” And how did you live with it afterwards?

“Well,” Leon said, tracing circles on the back of Light’s right hand with his thumb, “it amounted to the question of how I wanted to live the rest of my life. Did I want to stay under her shadow, or was I compelled to become my own person? Put another way… Who was more important, her or me?” Leon lifted his shoulders gently, and squeezed Light’s hands. “I made my selfish decision, for better or worse.”

What is more important… Light looked askance, through the slice of window between the curtains into the darkening twilight. At the lights of a city that needed his help. 

Light knew better than anyone that no one person could be trusted with such a destructive weapon as a death note. Especially not someone like Kira. Someone so ambitious, their list of victims already included the leaders of twelve different countries. So trigger-happy, they didn’t even wait for their victims to be convicted before penning their executions. It would be to the entire world’s detriment to leave someone like that to their devices, no matter how good their intentions. 

Then Light looked forward once more, and met the eyes of a man who needed him . Light cared for the world - wanted to fix it, to protect it, to change it for the better. But even more than that, he cared for this one person. 

If the choice was Light’s relationship with his father, versus his care for Leon and the world that together they’d helped shape…

It was a painful choice, but not one that held any hint of doubt.

Light stared into Leon’s wide grey eyes and said, “We’ll do it. We’ll reveal ourselves as L, in person, for the first time.” He gave Leon a gentle kiss and added, “And no matter what happens, I know I’ll still have you.”

“Of course you will, Light.” Leon smiled, and nodded. “Of course you will.”

Seven hours later: 12:43 AM.

A bright desk-lamp buzzed by Light’s left ear, casting the harsh shadow of a hot-glue gun’s tip across the newly-opened inside of a bracelet pendant. The top of that pendant, a flat-topped rounded-rectangle of blue-green Pakistani kyanite, had been removed and set aside on the polished oak desk. To each side sat a thin metal pin, hardly wider than a sewing thread. Curling loosely around all these pieces was the bracelet’s strap, two pieces of black leather cord tied together with two overlapping knots to allow easy adjustment. Surrounding these pieces were various tools: an eyeglass screwdriver, a clear plastic ziploc bag of glue gun sticks, and a pair of needle-nose pliers, among others.

Light’s brows didn’t furrow as he stared intently at the miniscule hardware he was assembling. That would only impede his vision. Neither did his hands shake as he applied a line of glue, barely wider than a single hair, to the back of a tiny drawer-slide, before setting down the gun with his right hand as the tip of his left thumb held the metal in place.

He let out the breath he’d been holding, slowly, from his nose, so as to avoid blowing any of the tiny components out of place. 

The door swung open.

“Light?” asked Leon. “What-”

“-am I doing up?” Light completed his lover’s thought. He looked up at Leon’s silhouette in the doorway, and gestured with his eyes at his work. “Come and see for yourself.”

Leon walked over, leaning over the table. “You’re disassembling a bracelet.”

“I’m modifying it,” Light corrected him. He lifted his thumb from the drawer-slide and poked it gently. The infinitesimal amount of glue had already dried. He picked up the stone face of the bracelet and slotted it into the backing; it clicked near-silently into place. Looking at it impartially, Light would never have guessed it had been removed in the first place.

“To have a small space inside…” Leon paused, then smirked, a thumb tracing his lower lip. “For a cut piece of the death note.”

“Exactly.” He lifted his left wrist, on which rested the Omega Speedmaster Moonwatch his father had bought him upon his acceptance to Oxford. “I’ve already modified this to do a similar thing. If I just pull this” -he set down the bracelet pendant and took hold of the time-adjustment knob on his watch- “four times in less than a second…” 

Leon’s smile widened as a tiny spring-loaded drawer popped out of the side of the watch, already containing a piece of the death note and a needle. “Brilliant.”

“Yours is easier, since I don’t have any little watch innards to worry about.” Light spun in his desk chair, leaning back in it and looking up at Leon. “I’m nearly done, I only have to tie the cords back around the pins and fit those back into the sides of the pendant.”

Leon merely nodded. He was still staring at the various bits of metal and plastic and leather and stone across the desk. “I can assume from this that you’ve been thinking the same way I have regarding Beyond.”

“So it seems,” Light agreed. “Is that really so surprising?”

“No,” Leon said. “I suppose it isn’t.”

Chapter Text

The next morning, Light was sitting with his phone in his lap, crafting a message. They needed to have a call with Beyond, and explain the situation - in the abstract - and see how well he responded. But he hadn’t even written two sentences before the ellipsis bubble popped up on the screen.

He paused.

The bubble stayed for a long time, it didn’t so much as flicker for several straight minutes. 

And then the message sent.

“hey. heard you’re taking the spring semester off. the grapevine thinks it’s for financial reasons but don’t you have a full ride? I’ve been hearing some sketchy stuff on the news about “Kira” lately. apparently L confronted this creepy super-powerful serial killer with the words “god of death” and Kira freaked out. I wondered if your secret got out. not sure what you can tell me but I’m wondering if I can help somehow. the world’s a scary place man. let me know k?”

Light nodded slowly, then deleted what he’d written. “Hey, Beyond,” he typed out instead. “Thanks for checking in. I was actually just about to text you. I wanted to talk to you about all of that, but I hadn’t gotten the chance yet. I’ve been busy. Would you be good for a call at midnight tonight?”

The reply was almost immediate. “yeah, ofc.”

Three days later.

Fluorescent lights buzzed overhead. Stacks of paper shuffled and keys clattered. The day’s briefing concluded with a desk chair scooting back into place.

“This is the third consecutive day that the schedule has been different,” an irritated officer commented. “It really puts some holes in L’s theory that Kira is a university student.”

“Not necessarily,” a more moderate voice countered. “Anybody can miss three days of school.”

“You’re missing the point.”

The argument halted in place. The Task Force turned toward the back of the room, to look at the laptop screen held between a pair of gloved hands, upon which was emblazoned the monogram of the world’s greatest detective.

“Take a step back, and look at the broader picture,” L continued. “The schedule isn’t the only thing that’s changed. Up until now, Kira has focused on killing people who have either committed several related offences, or committed crimes that often go unconvicted. It isn’t a stretch to infer they were motivated by a desire to prevent these people from doing further harm . But take a look at the recent victims, particularly the ones who break the previous schedule. They don’t necessarily have a prior record of criminal behaviour, but they have all committed flashy crimes. The type that would spark outrage, especially in a person with a strong sense of retributive justice. Given that we are now looking at two different MOs, I believe we can safely say that there are now two people operating under the mantle of Kira.”

The wide-brimmed hat tipped down and straightened, as punctuation to L’s point.

“A second Kira?” asked Interpol’s Soichiro Yagami. “L, are you sure about this?”

“I wouldn’t call this a ‘second Kira’,” L said. “That would imply the two are not working together. No, I believe the opposite is the case. Consider the regular schedule. If Kira had some ESP-like power that allowed them to kill merely by wishing death upon someone, why wouldn’t they do so during school hours? It isn’t that difficult to remember a name and face. No, we can infer from the existence of the schedule that killing requires that Kira do something outwardly suspicious - something they would only be comfortable doing in relative privacy. Although, of course, we cannot know what that action might be.”

Nods and mutters of revelation scattered around the room.

L went on: “Whatever power the original - let’s call them A-Kira - has, they have somehow shared it with a second person, B -Kira, with similar but not identical motives. A-Kira has probably done this to diversify, and to try to throw us off the trail of their schedule. The fact that they’ve gone to such lengths to cover it up is more evidence that their schedules are our best lead to track both of them down.”

“Well, you already told us to compile a database of university students in the Kanto region,” said Aizawa. “We’ve made good headway so far. But what about this B-Kira ?”

“It’s harder to pin down, given that the two schedules overlap, but B-Kira’s schedule seems to indicate a full-time job from 9am to 5pm local time,” L said mildly. “Given the number of salarymen working those hours, it’s not within the realm of possibility to use that to find either culprit. We’ll focus on A-Kira for now. I am certain that within the social network of the original Kira, we will find the latest addition.”

Kanzo pushed open the door to the office and plodded out into the hallway with a sigh. It was clearly frustrating many of the Task Force members that L was giving all the direction. These were intelligent detectives, who were used to contributing equally to discussions, but now they were getting shot down at every turn by L. Past a certain point, it stopped helping that L was always right, or that his handler - and, interestingly, Director Yagami - always kindly thanked the officers for their contributions before ultimately backing L’s judgements.

At his left as the door swung shut behind him, Kanzo found the Director himself - standing by the window, a half-full cup of coffee in hand, staring pensively into the darkness.

“Evening, Director Yagami,” Kanzo said, walking up to the man’s side and giving him a respectful nod.

“Ah, Chief Mogi,” Yagami turned to him. “Any new developments?”

“On the Kira front? Nothing in the past ten minutes.” Kanzo gave a muted shrug. “However, three more officers did hand over their badges after today’s meeting.”

Soichiro sighed, and turned back toward the window, looking past the reflections of the hallway and into the city lights beyond. “I understand that they’re afraid of Kira,” he said. “But it can’t be helping morale to have officers leaving left and right.” His free hand balled into a fist at his side; his voice hardened. “If there is anyone who isn’t willing to risk their lives for this case, we don’t need them.” 

Then he looked back at Kanzo, the harsh lines of his countenance softening as he shook his head. “Excuse me, Chief. Sometimes I forget I’m not an NPA officer anymore.”

Kanzo shook his head, giving the Director a smile. “No need to apologise. I’d had the same thought.”

At that moment, seemingly by coincidence, L’s handler pushed open the door to the Task Force office. Watching that person stroll up to them had the sense of being casually approached by a ghost. The person didn’t seem to belong in a well-lit office hallway, not the way they did in the shadowed back corner of a room, or under the blinding spotlight behind a lectern. But nonetheless, here they were.

“Good evening, gentlemen,” they said through their voice distorter. 

“Good evening,” the Chief and the Director said in disjointed semi-unison.

“I just talked to L,” the person said. “He said I should tell you that he will be able to offer some protection to those officers you deem to be fully committed to the case.”

Yagami inclined his head in approval at the fact that L and his handler seem to agree with him regarding which officers ought to stay - but then gave them a sceptical look. “Why hasn’t L offered this protection of his until now?”

The hat’s brim tilted, and a soft hum came through their voice distorter - the verbal equivalent of a smile. “Because unfortunately,” L’s handler replied, “even the best protection L can offer you is far from perfect. And if anyone on the Task Force is unwilling to risk their lives for this case, they should quit now.”

This exchange was making Kanzo wonder how much more frequently Yagami had worked with L. They had such a mutually respective rapport, not the sort that comes from simple compatibility of personality, but rather, the sort that’s built slowly over many years. Not just that, but they seemed at least occasionally to be able to predict each others’ lines of thinking.

Yagami said, “I see,” and took a drink from his cup. The matter seemed settled for him.

Kanzo nodded thoughtfully. “In that case, I’ll tell the team tonight,” he said, turning towards the door. “Whoever shows up tomorrow, they’re who we’ll have left.”

The shadows shifted back and forth below Light’s formal black shoes as he passed underneath the yellow light of a long row of identical chandeliers that lit the hotel hallway. Thin-pile maroon-and-gold acanthus carpet passed underfoot as row after row of dark wooden doors went by on each side. When at last he reached the end of the hall, he turned to the door on the right, and scanned his key-card to push it open.

“I’m home,” Light called out as he set down his briefcase to slip off his shoes. He was the spitting image of a businessman on a work trip - from his black two-piece suit to his platinum wristwatch - which was, of course, entirely the point. 

“Welcome back,” Leon called from inside.

Light took the briefcase into the empty bedroom on his immediate right and set it atop the dresser. He undid its silver latches with both hands, and lifted out the garb he wore as L’s handler : the heavily-padded overcoat, which went into the back of the coat-closet, and the black hat and face-scarf, which went into the bottom dresser drawer. Finally, he picked up his laptop and carried it into the living room.

There, he found Leon, crouching on one end of the couch with his thumb between his lips, staring at an abstract cubist painting on the opposite wall. Light sat down beside his lover. “So, Chief Mogi is going to announce that anyone who isn’t fully committed to this case should volunteer to be reassigned.”

Leon crawled into Light’s lap and nuzzled his head against his shoulder. “When?”

“Tonight,” Light replied, leaning against the couch back and staring vacantly at the ceiling as he wrapped his arms around Leon.

“Perfect.” He nodded. “I’ve just finished arranging the manufacturing supply chain for us to produce copies of the fake NPA badge you made.”

Light chuckled. “Excellent.”

Leon shrugged. “We’ll figure out tomorrow morning who’s left. Then we’ll produce the new badges, and have everyone meet us here tomorrow evening.”

The violet circles of the ceiling lights’ afterimages danced along the wall and across the abstract painting hanging there as Light lifted his head, staring over Leon’s shoulder. He sighed. “Yeah.”

Leon’s hands pressed into Light’s shoulders as he pushed himself away. Deep grey eyes bored into Light’s own. “It’s going to be okay. We’re making progress with the NPA. Beyond’s flight is landing tonight. I’m sure everything will be fine.”

Light frowned, trying to look away but not quite able. “I know,” he mumbled. And he did. Even though they had some new and concerning developments with the Kira case, they were making progress at the same time. The video call with Beyond had gone well, and the Task Force was being narrowed down to the few who were truly dedicated to the cause. But that didn’t assuage Light’s anxieties. In fact, everything running so smoothly removed any potential distraction, so that he could feel the fateful day rushing closer with every passing second.

“But,” Leon lifted one hand and tapped Light’s nose with his index finger, “it’s okay to be nervous.” He climbed off Light’s lap and turned towards the suite’s kitchenette. “I’m getting some cake. Want a piece?”

Light paused. He didn’t usually like sweets so much, but right now… “Actually, yeah,” he said, smiling weakly. “I’d like that.”

The pale dawn was fading outside the windows facing the hallway behind him as Kanzo pulled open the door to the Kira Task Force office. The room that stared back at him was a sobering sight: nearly every one of its thirty desks was vacant, only loose stacks of paper on some of them to mark those who had gone. Setting out their things on their usual desks in silence were the only four remaining officers: Shuichi Aizawa, Touta Matsuda, Hirokazu Ukita, and Hideki Ide. 

Kanzo nodded around the room as the officers each met his gaze. “Good morning, everyone,” he said, and went to his own desk at the front of the room to set up his things.

A minute later, L’s handler arrived. His body language was blank: he didn’t seem surprised, gracious, or emotional in any way. Not because he seemed oblivious - it was clear from his glancing across the room that he had noticed - he merely didn’t care. He just went to the back of the room and set up his laptop, watching its screen in silence. 

Another minute after that, Director Yagami arrived. He sighed and muttered to himself, “Well. I’m glad there are as many as five people who are willing to give up their lives for justice to be served.”

It was as he sat down with his briefcase that, at the back of the room, L’s handler spoke up. “Gentlemen,” he announced. “Thank you all for coming this morning. It proves beyond a doubt your complete dedication to this case. In return, L would like to prove his dedication to you .”

“Is he planning to show his face, for once?” Aizawa retorted.

“Aizawa,” Kanzo began to chide him-

“That’s completely correct.” A smile was audible through the person’s voice distorter. “However, in the interest of remaining anonymous to the outside world, L would like to request you all come to his location. Is this acceptable?”

There was some grumbling from Ide and Aizawa, but Ukita nodded eagerly, and Matsuda stood from his chair to exclaim, “Yeah!”

Kanzo looked to Director Yagami, who still wore a reticent expression. His voice was cautious, but he nodded. “I can accept that.”

Kanzo stood to address L’s handler directly. “You can tell L that we’ll meet with him, wherever and whenever he decides.”

The person in the hat and coat stood and bowed. “Thank you all very much.”

A minute later, a text message made Kanzo’s phone vibrate in his pocket. A text from an unrecognised local number read:

“My current residence is at the Teito Hotel, but I will be switching hotels every few days from this point on. I want you all to think of these hotel rooms as the de facto headquarters of this investigation. 

“Please split into two groups, staggering your arrivals so you come thirty minutes apart. Arrange it so that everyone is here by midnight.”

After this in a separate message was the address of the hotel and a suite number. 

Kanzo looked up to see the remaining members all looking at their phones. “Okay, everyone,” he said to the room at large. “L has expressed several times that he needs our help to solve this case, and I know we need his. We’ll accommodate his request.”

With varying degrees of enthusiasm, everyone in the room nodded their acquiescence. 

Under the yellow glow of chandeliers, six officers stood at the end of a hotel hallway. The door to the suite on the right was propped open by the extended deadbolt; above and below it, thin slivers of light separated the door from its frame. At the front of the group, Kanzo Mogi rapped his knuckles against heavy wood.

Through the door came an odd voice: young but serious, and monotonously baritone. “The door is unlocked,” he said. “Please, let yourselves in.”

Kanzo nodded, and with a palm pressed to its smooth surface, pushed the suite door open. He stepped into the room, letting the others hold the door for each other. In the foyer before him stood two young men who could not possibly be more different.

The one on the right watched the gathered officers with a friendly but determined smile; his amber eyes glittered with intelligence. A slim-tailored black suit outlined his athletic figure as immaculately as his coiffed auburn hair framed his angelic face, and with his left thumb in his pocket, a platinum designer watch could be seen encircling his wrist.

The man on the left was hunched awkwardly forward in a way that conveyed either the worst posture known to man, or maybe the presence of something under his shirt he was keen to hide. He stared at the officers with a blank, almost bored expression, flat grey eyes belying nothing except the insomnia which had produced the dark violet circles underneath them. His white sweater and navy slacks were of good quality, but baggy and ill-fitting; his thick black hair stuck out in a thousand gravity-defying directions. Around his right wrist was a bracelet of black leather cord with a rectangular pendant of dark green stone.

The two mens’ hands were clasped tightly between them, their fingers interlaced.

“Good evening, gentlemen,” said the man on the right.

The one on the left continued, “We are L.”

Eleven years ago: January 2nd, 2009

A thick layer of clouds hung low in the sky like the drooping grey comforter on a collapsing blanket fort. It hadn’t snowed today, which was a first for the week - the damp snow from all the previous days had collapsed into a grey-brown sludge that covered the sidewalk under Leon’s boots. 

None of this, of course, bothered Light. Nothing seemed to. As they walked side-by-side, mittened hands clasped, he was just chatting. If Leon had been able to pay attention, he would have found Light’s words captivating—he always did—but right now, even if he tried, he couldn’t make himself focus. An imposing structure was closing in on them, blotting out what little sun was visible, until they stood right in front of it.

“We’re here,” Light announced. “Ready?”

Leon adjusted his scarf. It was a heavy thing, crocheted from thick ultramarine yarn, but nonetheless extremely soft - a Christmas present from Light. The only Christmas present he’d gotten this year. “I guess.”

Light turned to him; on his face was that too-adult look he had sometimes. “We don’t have to do this. I only brought you today because you said you wanted to meet my parents. But we can go back to the cafe if you want.”

“No,” Leon said. “I do want to be here. I… only want to make sure they don’t get worried about me. Do I look seemly?”

“You look fine , trust me.” Light smirked, and ruffled Leon’s hair. Then his hands fell to rest on Leon’s coat-covered shoulders, and for what would surely be the last time before they went inside, he put on his adult face. “I’ll keep my promise. Your secret is safe with me.”

“Thank you, Light,” Leon said softly, resting his hands on Light’s wrists. “You’re a good friend.”

The moment their physical contact ended, it was like a switch flipped; once more, Light was merely a schoolboy. He lifted an eager hand to knock on the door.

The footsteps that approached at his knock were expectant, excited. When the door swung open, Leon could see why. A Japanese woman with chestnut hair and a soft, pleasant face stood in the entryway, already grinning with recognition. “Light!” she said. “Welcome home.”

“Hi mum!” Light said, holding out his arms just as his mother kneeled down to give him a hug.

They parted, and Light’s mum stood slowly, bracing one hand against her knee. “Who’s this? A friend from school?”

“Not exactly,” Light said, “his name is Leon, but you can call him Ryuzaki. Everybody does.”

“Well then, Ryuzaki, come on in.” Light’s mum stepped aside and ushered them into the house.

Leon walked in, slowly. Light’s family home was a delicate blend of cultures, with plush English furniture arranged in the minimalist open spaces of traditional Japanese style. In the foyer, a tiered shoe rack held neat rows of sneakers and snow-boots stood beside the open door to a coat-closet; across from it, a hardwood staircase framed by a square-spindle railing ascended into the second floor. Off in the remaining two directions were a sitting area at the left and a library straight ahead. “Ryuzaki is cyber-schooled,” Light was explaining to his mum, “his parents work a lot, so he does his schoolwork at the cafe.”

“My parents know the owners,” Leon commented absently as he removed his shoes and coat and placed them neatly beside the others.

“Yeah,” Light said. “And that’s where we met! I was passing by on my way home as Ryuzaki was leaving, and we ran into each other.”

“Well, I’m glad you have a new friend,” Light’s mum said. “Can I get you two anything? Water, tea, pastries?”

“Tea sounds good,” Light said, “can we play downstairs?”

“Of course, Light.” She stood, and went into the adjacent kitchen. “Have fun. I’ll come down with your tea in a minute.”

Light leapt up from his spot on the couch and held his hand out for Leon. Without speaking, Leon took it. They walked hand-in-hand back out into the foyer, down the hall, and into the library; around a corner was a heavy oaken door that Light pulled open. 

“After you, sir,” Light said with an exaggerated bow.

Leon gave a little smile, and started down the stairs.

When they reached the bottom, they headed through a door to their left. There was a playroom down here, with walls in plain white, outfitted with elegant modern furniture. Leon already knew that Light took excellent care of his things, but this room proved his parents knew it, too. It was a remarkable amount of trust in a child that Leon had never seen before.

While he’d been looking at the room, Light had been looking at him. He laid a gentle hand on Leon’s shoulder. “You look like you’re about to cry.”

Leon looked up, staring at the shoulder seam of Light’s sweater. “I…” he sighed. “This is just so normal . I’ve never… not even when I still had a home, it wasn’t…” His chest spasmed, his breathing stuttered. But no tears fell from his eyes. His hoarse voice whispered, “I’m sorry.”

Light pulled him into a sudden hug. “I know,” he said. And even though Leon hadn’t told him everything yet… it wasn’t his faith in Light’s deductive skill that made him feel that Light was speaking with complete honesty.

“I wish I could cry,” Leon murmured against Light’s shoulder as he pulled his friend close.

He felt Light’s chest fall as he sighed. “I know.”

Chapter Text

Soichiro Yagami walked into the room where he thought he would, for the first time, meet the detective L in person, and found his son and his son’s boyfriend standing there.

He stared, and helplessly tried to form words.

As his mouth hung uselessly open, Ryuzaki turned to him. “Good evening, Director Yagami,” he said in his usual monotone. “It’s nice to see you again.”

“Ah…” Soichiro said, blinking. His mental gears were still grinding together. A thousand coincidences fell into place, one after another after another. Then they halted completely, as he realised just how long he’d been working with L. That first case, back in 2010… he’d gotten help from his nine-year-old son on a homicide investigation . What kind of a man inflicts that responsibility on a child? What kind of a father inflicts that on his son ?!

But Soichiro looked up at his son now, and saw that Light was smiling at him, with an apologetic look in his eyes.

And something about that expression was familiar. Soichiro had seen it before. Maybe it was in a reflection in the glass frame above his supervisor’s desk at the NPA, when she’d called him into her office to answer for his reckless behaviour; he’d smiled as he’d apologised, because that so-called recklessness had meant a little boy got to go home to his mum and dad. Maybe it was standing before him after that office had become his own, on the face of a younger Kanzo Mogi, after he had gone against Soichiro’s own orders and continued to work on a lost-cause case, and saved two families as a result. It could have been any number of innumerable other times, before or since. But Soichiro himself had set the precedent, and he couldn’t fault his son for following in his footsteps.

So he straightened, and bowed professionally. “Thank you,” he said. “The same to you both.”

The officers looked back and forth in confusion, knowing that something had passed between the three of them but not what it was.

Eventually, the Chief broke the silence. “It’s nice to meet you, L,” he said, and held up his badge. “My name is Mogi.”

The remaining officers nodded and followed suit. “Matsuda.” “Aizawa.” “Ide.” “Ukita.”

At that moment, Ryuzaki lifted his hand toward the Chief, pointed his index finger like the barrel of a toy gun, and said, “Bang.”

“Huh?” asked Ukita.

“Um…” said Matsuda.

“What the hell was that?!” demanded Aizawa.

Light’s lips pursed; it was clear he was stifling a laugh. But his face returned to seriousness, and he turned to Mogi. “If either of us were Kira,” he explained, “all of you would be dead. Remember that Kira only needs a name and a face to kill. We should all do our best to be cautious, and never give out our real names to strangers.”

Ryuzaki nodded sagely. “Yes. Also, I’ll have to ask you all to stop calling me L. It was, in the first place, a misnomer. As you see, we are both L. Therefore, please refer to me as Ryuzaki from now on.”

“And,” Light finished, “call me Asahi.”

Soichiro smiled softly to himself. Of course they used their old childhood ‘codenames’. Some things never change.

“Okay, Asahi,” said Matsuda. “Um, about what you just said, I knew that Kira needed a face, but I didn’t know he needed a name too.”

Before Light could reply, Soichiro cut in. “There's no way to verify if this is related,” he said, “but criminals whose names were never released publicly or whose names were spelled incorrectly in the media have not been targeted. We briefly went over it at one of our meetings.”

Light smiled, and nodded. 

Ryuzaki was already turning away from the assembled officers, saying, “That’s enough smalltalk.” He let go of Light’s hand and headed off into the next room.

“If you wouldn’t mind, gentlemen,” Light said, “please silence your cell phones and set them on the table to your left.”

“What,” Ide mumbled to Aizawa under his breath, “is he worried we’re going to leak information?”

“I apologise for the inconvenience, Ide,” Light folded his hands respectfully. “But that isn’t the reason. Ryuzaki and I trust you all completely. He just finds beeping phones distracting.” He bowed to the officers, and went to join Ryuzaki in the next room.

“Let’s just do as he says,” Soichiro suggested, feeling oddly like he was coming to dinner at home as he turned off his phone and set it on the table, face-down.

Following begrudging shrugs, everyone else’s phones joined his on the table.

Light had a habit of cooking when he was anxious, a habit he’d likely inherited from his mother. This was the origin of the plate of snacks set out across the coffee table in the living room: a pot of coffee and a kettle of tea, accompanied by a mini-pitcher of milk and a bowl of sugar cubes, as well as a large plate of homemade raspberry crowns. 

It didn’t surprise Light in the slightest that Leon had walked into this room and promptly acquired a cup of tea, which ten dissolving sugar cubes were turning into sludge.

“Pour me a cup, if you would, Ryuzaki,” Light said as he slid into the armchair that faced the door, on the far side of the coffee table. 

Leon nodded, and poured a second cup into which he added a small splash of milk. He brought both cups over, with silver tea-spoons, and climbed into Light’s lap.

The Task Force walked into the room just after. The array of sweets seemed to please them, right up until they noticed Light and Leon’s seating arrangement, at which point the scowls and confused frowns returned. 

“Please,” Light said, pointedly ignoring their disapproval, “help yourself.”

Matsuda and Ukita cautiously approached and poured a cup of coffee each, mumbling thanks.

Ide, meanwhile, was not so keen to let it slide. “Ryuzaki,” he said accusingly, “why are you sitting in Asahi’s lap like that.”

Leon’s head swivelled to look Ide dead in the eyes. “I have to sit like this,” he said. “If I don’t, my mental acuity drops by 40%.”

Ide looked helplessly at Light, but he merely nodded sagely and took a sip of tea.

Defeated, the remaining three members of the Task Force wandered over and settled into the two couches that surrounded the coffee table. 

“Thank you all, again, for coming.” Light reached forward to set his teacup on the coffee table. “For your information, the material we cover in these meetings, including any data shared digitally or physically, must not leave this room. Whatever you need, please commit it to memory.”

Aizawa and Ide were both opening their mouths to speak, but Light’s father got there first. “Electronic data will be stored in a secure server, owned by L, back in England - correct?”

“Indeed,” said Leon.

“I’d be happy to explain the security measures in detail later,” Light said, looking pointedly between Ide and Aizawa, who nodded. Those two, at the very least, would be taking him up on that offer - as well as, possibly, the rest, who all looked at least somewhat curious.

“Well,” said Aizawa after a moment of silence, “we’ve done as you asked, Ryuzaki. These files” -he pulled an unmarked manilla envelope from under his arm and slid it across the table; it stopped a centimetre from Light’s teacup- “contain all the information we have on the 151 students whose schedules line up with the original Kira murders.”

Leon lifted the folder, undid the metal pin securing it and tipped its contents onto the tabletop. “Thank you, Aizawa,” he said. “These will be very useful. I would like to review with you all what we know about Kira’s motivations and personality, then go through each of these files with that in mind.”

“By yourself?” asked Aizawa, concerned. “That’s a lot of work, even for you.”

Light smiled gently. He sure read Leon correctly. “Not to say that Ryuzaki wouldn’t do that if he had no other options,” he nudged Leon playfully, “but we intend to parcel out this work between everyone here.”

Aizawa conceded the point with a nod, and gestured with an upturned palm at Leon: go ahead .

Leon set down his teacup beside the strewn papers. “What we have here are two people with similar, but not identical, motives. What they have in common is the belief that they have the right to murder anyone they deem to be immoral.”

Light watched the nods of agreement around the room. 

“The original Kira is particularly interesting,” Leon continued. “They decided to share their power somehow - but not immediately. It took over a week for them to do it. More importantly, they decided to do this right after we pressured them with our broadcast.”

“And it’s not only that,” Light added. “If we look in more detail at when exactly A-Kira killed Lind L. Tailor…”

Ukita, who had been looking expectant, jumped in. “It happened when he was talking about how Kira wasn’t invincible, that he - you - would find them, hunt them down!”

Light nodded. “A-Kira seems cautious . If we hadn’t backed them into a corner, they probably would have laid low. Not forever, but for a little while longer. Now, of course, our tactics were still necessary: the more time we allowed them to gather their forces, the harder it would be to catch them.”

“Thank you, Asahi. That’s right,” Leon said. “Now, despite their caution, A-Kira also has an incredibly inflated ego. Not in the sense of self-importance , but rather, moral superiority . They have no problem telling world leaders how to run their governments, or slaughtering anyone who doesn’t agree with them.”

“There’s almost a perverted sense of altruism with A-Kira,” Light added. “in the sense of the greatest good for the greatest number. Casualties are acceptable so long as the net impact is positive. A-Kira kills to prevent criminals from committing further crimes, and to force those with political power to enact change.”

Leon nodded. “Let’s contrast this with B-Kira, who has no pretence of altruism. Their purpose is vengeance, pure and simple. However… we shouldn’t be hasty, and assume that B-Kira themself, or even someone they care for, has been personally hurt by the sort of people Kira chooses as victims. Instead, let’s look at it from another angle. Regardless of how it happened, B-Kira has been greatly emotionally impacted by the criminals of the world. And this obsession with justice is likely to come out in other areas of their life - their hobbies, perhaps, or their choice of profession.”

“If I had to venture a guess,” Light said, “I’d expect B-Kira to do charity work in their off hours, or work a public service job of some kind. From that assumption, we can work backwards to get more information about A-Kira. They would need to be in a situation where they might come in contact with a person like that, while attending university.” He tapped his fingers against the stack of files. “During our search, let’s put special emphasis on students whose families are focused on altruism and charity work. After all, a lot of young peoples’ social circles overlap with their parents’.”

Leon watched the looks of understanding passing between the NPA officers, and nodded. “There is one more thing I would like to give you before we get started,” he said. Reaching down to the side of the chair, he lifted up a small black briefcase and popped open its latch, setting it on the table facing the officers. “These,” he said, “are your new police IDs.”

Aizawa’s brows lowered in confusion. “What for?”

Leon watched similar expressions contort the faces of the other officers - all except Soichiro. “As you know,” he said, “Kira requires a name and a face to kill.” He lifted his teacup and sipped the sugary sludge. “We will confront him with that premise in mind. I think it should be obvious why.”

Ukita frowned. “Yes, but of all people, the police shouldn’t use fake IDs!”

“What choice do we have, given the capabilities of the enemy?” Soichiro cut in. “As long as you're working on this case, I think we're going to need all the protection one can get. It would be foolish not to use them.”

“Yeah,” Matsuda nodded, “You’ve got a good point.”

“Good,” Leon said, setting down his teacup and lifting the badges one at a time, passing them round the circle until everyone was holding theirs. “Use these anytime you need to give your name to a stranger. And, of course, be careful not to take them out in the presence of other police officers. That could cause problems.”

Nods of understanding and agreement circled the room.

“Alright,” Light said at last. “Let’s parcel these out” -he gestured to the stack of files- “and get to work.”

Hideki Ide paused in sifting through his stack of files. Resting on top was the profile for a young man he figured would be a promising suspect, as his father had emigrated to Japan from America, and his family believed in a sect of Christianity that commanded they contribute ten percent of their income to charity. 

He glanced up, over the shoulder of his colleague and good friend Shuichi, who was staring bemused at the profile for a young man studying computer science at Waseda University. He shook his head, and set the paper gently upon the coffee table before him, beginning to read the next file.

Opposite them both sat Matsuda and Ukita, looking varied shades of puzzled at the files before them. Neither of them were speaking, which was for the better, in Hideki’s opinion. Matsuda was more of a hassle than he was worth, between his inexperience and foolish impulsiveness. Ukita was more experienced, which was good, but he was also more emotional, which wasn’t. If they hadn’t been so short-handed, he never would have tolerated keeping those two on the team of such an important investigation.

At the closer end of the table was Interpol’s Director of Special Projects, Soichiro Yagami, whose job description merely included overseeing the Kira case but who had decided to fly all the way back to Japan to participate directly. It seemed that something beyond fondness for his home country had pulled the man back. Hideki hadn’t worked directly on Yagami’s team, back before Mogi had become Chief, but he’d heard tales of the brutally competent officer who, out of all the risks he’d taken, had never taken an unnecessary one; who had sat on the phone with Interpol itself and calmly refused to leave for England before he had taught his replacement everything he knew, so that the NPA wouldn’t suffer for his absence. Yagami wasn’t here because he didn’t trust the NPA; he was here because he had always needed to be close to the action.

Then, on the opposite end of the table from this admirable man sat… them . Hideki was still having a hard time wrapping his brain around the fact that L, the world’s greatest detective, was a pair of kids . To be fair, if any two eighteen-year-olds were going to be capable of having never left a case unsolved, it would have to be a pair like this, whose skill sets were perfectly complementary, who finished each others’ sentences in real time with creepy borderline-telepathy. 

Even so, that was honestly what Hideki was wary of regarding L. He’d heard of the detective’s perfect track record, and was still sceptical about how it had been achieved. In a school setting, it was possible to get a perfect hundred-percent on every single test because you could be sure all the information you needed would be provided to you. In the real world, in a criminal case… there were no such guarantees. Sometimes critical information was irreparably damaged, or missing - sometimes you just didn’t have enough data to solve a case . And while, yes, L had personally chosen every case he’d worked on… going from saying that L was absurdly good at execution to saying the same about prediction instead didn’t make it any less improbable.

Often, in a school setting, there was some element of luck to grades. A professor might hold a grudge, a student might misunderstand a question, there were a thousand ways a grade could end up less than perfect. If a student had gotten perfect grades in every subject, it could mean they were very smart as well as lucky - but sometimes, there was a simpler explanation. Cheating.

And in a real-world situation, where imperfect information was not only possible but almost guaranteed, that simpler explanation became much more likely.

If it didn’t seem possible that L had solved every case within the confines of the law, that meant they probably hadn’t . There was probably some kind of ace up their sleeves, a trick they weren’t letting on about. And that trick was probably illegal.

Hideki wasn’t going to go out of his way to find it. Not right now. Ratting out an amoral detective took a distant second place to finding a pair of serial killers and bringing them to justice. Even so… he would be watching. He hoped that Shuichi would be, too.

The sky was beginning to lighten with dawn by the time that Light finally sent the Task Force home. In Leon’s hands was a stack of five papers - the five that the team had collectively judged as the most likely candidates for being behind A-Kira.

The suite’s front door latched shut, and Light’s footsteps went off into the bedroom. Faintly, Leon heard him speaking to the man who was inside. 

“Beyond? Sorry to wake you, but - no, you don’t have to get up, stop eyeing me like that - here, just take a look at these photos. Do any of them-”

Before Light could finish speaking, there was a cottony thwap of a sleeping bag being rapidly thrown open, followed immediately by the thuds of rapid footfalls coming in Leon’s direction.

“Hey! Yo!” Beyond shoved a piece of paper in front of Leon’s face. “This lady has a death note!”

Leon plucked the paper from his hand with two fingers, holding it up to the light. “Kiyomi Takada,” he read. “Freshman at To-Oh University… lives in a flat in Shibuya paid for by her parents, who… own a legal firm, volunteer for a whole list of nonprofits, and host a yearly charity ball at their estate.”

“This woman is a perfect match for our profile,” Light said, leaning over Leon’s shoulder.

“I agree,” Leon said. “And we have several leads for where we could locate B-Kira, as well.” He gestured to the list of charities that Takada’s parents volunteered for, or donated to.

“Few too many, if you ask me,” Beyond commented. “But that’s what I’m here for, right?”

“Well, you and the Japanese police.” Light smirked. “But yes.”

Leon, meanwhile, flipped the paper over onto its other side, looking at the additional details printed there- “Hey, Light.”

“Hm?” His voice moved closer as he leaned in again.

“Look at this.” Leon pointed. 

“What-” Light started to say, and then cut himself off. “You’ve got to be kidding.”

“What is it?” Beyond asked, sliding onto the couch arm and trying to swipe the paper.

Leon effortlessly handed it over his shoulder to Light, to much grumbling from Beyond.

“That charity ball the Takada family is holding,” Light explained, “it’s in two weeks .”

Today: January 3rd, 2020

The first Sunday of this month, as every month, was spent at her parents’ estate.

She’d arrived late in the morning off a 2-hour train ride, with rays of sunlight descending through a cloudy sky. As her black stilettos clicked up the semicircular stone steps, she texted her father that she’d arrived. He was pushing open the glass front door before she reached the top of the staircase.

“Welcome home, Kiki,” he said as she passed through the entryway. 

“I’m glad to be back.” She smiled up at him, toeing her heels off and slipping on a pair of pristine white slippers.

“Would you like something to eat?” he asked, leading her under the glow of crystal chandeliers and into the house. “I’m not sure if you ate on the train.”

“That sounds lovely,” Kiyomi replied with a gentle nod. “But only something small, please. I wouldn’t want to spoil my appetite for lunch.” 

She let her father head toward the kitchen, while she turned into the living room. There was a square of black leather couches, separated by wooden end-tables; behind one side was a granite-faced gas fireplace that sat beneath a modern floating staircase, and behind the other was a wall-mounted 40-inch flatscreen TV. Kiyomi sat below the TV, watching the reflections of the flickering fire on the polished wooden floor.

Her father returned in another minute, carrying a small plate of bacon-wrapped dates, each one speared with a coloured toothpick. He set it down on the end-table between them, and sat on the adjacent couch. 

Kiyomi smiled. “Testing these for the party?”

He nodded. “Let me know if they’re any good, okay?”

“I will.” She picked one up with its toothpick. “So, how was work today?”

“Uneventful, mostly.” He scratched absently at the triangle of scruff beneath his lower lip. “Your mother is in her office now, finishing a review of some applications. We’re hiring a few expats who specialise in their home countries’ corporate law.”

Kiyomi swallowed, setting the toothpick gently against the plate’s edge. “She’s not going to work too long, I hope.” 

Her father shrugged, picking up a date and swallowing it almost in the same motion. “Well, you know Mom… but I think she’ll be okay. She’s got to see you , you know.”

As though on cue, a pair of dainty footfalls padded down the stairs, accompanied by the authoritative voice of the head of the household. “Kiki!”

Kiyomi smiled, waving. Her mother clearly wasn’t done working yet - the blazer that usually went over her white button-up shirt was missing, clearly left in her office upstairs - but she’d taken time out of her busy schedule to spend it with Kiyomi. Not even because Kiyomi had asked for her help, choosing which extracurriculars to take or which job offer to accept, but merely to have lunch together. It was so sweet. Especially because she managed to fit it in every single month.

Her mother descended the remainder of the stairs, with the widest smile she ever had - which wasn’t very wide, but that didn’t matter. “It’s so nice to see you, how was the trip?”

“Uneventful,” Kiyomi replied, “which is the best anyone can hope for.” She knew better, of course, than to offer her mother food outside of mealtimes, but her subconscious had already put a date between her fingers. So, she gestured with it instead. “Have you seen what Dad prepared for the ball?” she said. “He’d just given me a few to taste-test.” She popped the appetiser into her mouth, to finish her explanation.

“I hadn’t, no.” Her mother lifted an eyebrow. “Do you like them?”

Yes, she did - she would eat the whole plate if she was allowed - but that wasn’t the answer her mother was looking for. “They’re quite good,” she said, “but I think I won’t have any more. Thank you, Dad,” -she pushed the plate towards him- “you can have the rest.” 

“Okay,” said her father, who had never been the wiser about things like this, “if you’re sure.” He got up, taking the plate with him into the kitchen.

“So,” Kiyomi said as he left and her mother sat down at her side, “Dad was telling me about your latest expansion project.” Her mother always liked talking about her work. It was her life, after all. “Hiring expats to advise you on other countries’ laws? Not that you need my opinion on the matter, but I think it’s a very smart move.”

“Thank you, Kiki,” her mother said fondly. “I may not need it, but I always appreciate your opinion.” She crossed her legs professionally, at the ankles. “How are your studies going?”

“Very well,” Kiyomi said. “I’m learning a lot. At first, I was hesitant about going into journalism, after all you told me how poorly it pays, but I genuinely think I’ll be able to do an excellent job. My professors have complimented me on every exercise I’ve done in class.”

“Of course.” Her mother gestured lightly with manicured fingers. “It’s always better to have a job you like than one you hate, even if the one you hate might pay better. It’s why I dropped out of MIT to return here and study law, after all.”

Kiyomi nodded definitively - a close to that topic. They might come back to discussing school later on, but for now, there was something important she had to discuss. “So, mom. I wanted to talk to you about something. An idea I had.”

Her mother lifted an inquisitive eyebrow. “Yes?”

“For the charity ball in two weeks - I had an idea for something new and interesting we could do this year.”

Chapter Text

It was mid-morning, and the wispy clouds breaking up the sunlight overhead were slowly letting out powdery snow. It drifted down across the Tokyo metropolis, past homes and businesses, shop stalls and train cars. It fell past the window of a flat, where a young woman was unpacking an overnight case.

Kiyomi removed the clean, neatly-folded clothes - her father had washed them for her before she’d returned home - and set them out on the bed. To her left, she had the TV on the wall across from the footboard on, playing the news. For Kira, more information was always better than less, so she’d made a habit of leaving it on as often as she could.

She lifted her shirt and shook it out of its folds, laying it down to fetch a hanger from the closet.

“In further international news,” the channel anchor said, “this morning, 27 criminals in prisons around the world died of sudden heart attacks.”

Kiyomi lowered a single brow, glancing side-eyed at the TV screen. 

She put the shirt on the hanger, slowly. 

“International police agencies and L have yet to comment on the situation, but it is safe to say that these deaths can be added to the ever-growing list of Kira’s victims.”

“Hey,” Midora poked her huge, slimy head up from the other side of the bed. “I don’t get it. Why’d you do that?”

“I didn’t ,” Kiyomi snapped. “Which means…” she tapped her nails against her case, “there is another death note somewhere.”

In a hotel room where blackout curtains blocked all the morning’s sunlight, the Kira Task Force met to discuss the latest developments in the case.

Aizawa lifted up the printed report, tapping it against his palm. “27 criminals being held in prisons around the world died of heart attacks simultaneously, at exactly 8:00 a.m this morning. The media is reporting these as Kira deaths - the problem is, they don’t match Kira’s usual MO. Most of these criminals were already going to be executed within the next few weeks. Those aren’t targets that either A- or B-Kira goes after.”

“It makes you wonder what they were thinking,” Matsuda commented.

Light sipped his tea. His other hand - which held Leon’s - pressed code into his skin. ‘It looks like our experiments bore some unexpected fruit.’

In lieu of nodding, Leon replied, ‘Indeed.’

On the fifth day of their experimentation with the death note, they had decided to test the limits of how far in advance they could schedule a death. With fifty death-row inmates, they had scheduled one to die every day from then on. And as it turned out, there was a limit. They’d written those names on December the 12th, and today, January 4th, at precisely midnight (in London time), all the remaining 27 criminals had died at once. It put the limit on scheduled deaths at 23 days.

It was useful information, surely - but in this situation, possibly not worth the consequences.

“I’m sure all of us are wondering,” Soichiro said. “Does this mean there is a third person working as Kira?”

Leon looked contemplative, dragging the pad of his thumb across his lip. “It’s too early to say for certain. It is a possibility - but hardly the only one. As today is the first day this occurred, it’s impossible to know if this is a new pattern or an irregularity from an old one. We have no choice but to wait.”

“In the meantime,” Light said, “let’s consider what we do know. Since our meeting with you yesterday, Ryuzaki and I have been able to prioritise the list of suspects. At the top of our list, by a good margin, is this woman: Kiyomi Takada.” He lifted her file from the table, holding it up for the officers to see. “Her parents run a law firm, where she interned during her senior year of high school. Her family makes regular donations to top charities both here in Japan and around the world. Not only that, she was this year’s freshman representative at To-Oh University.” He handed the file to Ukita, who sat beside him, to start passing it around the group.

“I can see how having a family that works in public service and donates to charity fits our profile,” said Ukita, staring at the file, “but what does being freshman representative have to do with this?”

“Yeah,” Aizawa agreed. “It doesn’t exactly take a genius to think up the idea of killing people so they don’t hurt anybody else.”

Leon lifted his teacup. “While it’s true that nothing we’ve seen so far about Kira’s tactics predict intelligence, their motivation makes much more sense if we assume they are of above-average intellect.” He took a little sip. “Given everything we’ve seen, it seems likely that A-Kira, at least, sees themself as some sort of saviour figure. The scope of their ambition, combined with their lack of hesitation to kill anyone who stands in their way, should make that clear enough. So, we have to ask: what type of person is most likely to develop this type of god complex?” He slurped down the rest of his tea in one gulp, and set the cup down. “Mm, how about someone who was told by authority figures throughout her childhood how smart she is? Aptitude in school is very important for children, after all.”

The circle of assembled heads nodded.

“From this,” Light continued Leon’s train of thought, “we can figure that not only is Kira intelligent, but also, Kira’s plan is more complicated than what we’ve seen so far. We can expect them to continue recruiting more people, to disguise their schedule and their MO. And, we should also expect to see a significant turning-point sometime in the near future. If Kira is Kiyomi Takada,” -he accepted the file back from Aizawa, and pointed at the spot on the paper about the upcoming party- “we have a pretty good idea of when that will happen.”

Flickering yellow candlelight lit the darkness, flickering up the purple walls and across the chequer-tiled floor. Besides the candles, every available surface in the room was covered by various gothic items: an empty birdcage covered with ivy, a glass skull on a pedestal, and a porcelain statue of the grim reaper.

In the corner of this room was a bed, whose crimson sheets were barely indented by the weight of the young woman who lay upon it. She lay on her stomach, chin between her palms, wearing the matching violet tank-top and boy-shorts that served as her pyjamas. Her golden-blonde hair and chocolate eyes were cast in the artificial blue light of a laptop screen.

Standing at her side, a perfect match for this gothic decor, was a hunched creature of ligaments and bone, whose violet tentacles fell like dreadlocks around her angular face. 

“Hey, Rem,” said the girl, looking up at her shinigami. “How many death notes are there in the human world?”

“I couldn’t say,” Rem replied. “There were no others I knew of, at the time I left the shinigami realm. But it’s possible that I might have been wrong, or that any number could have entered the human world between then and now.” Her eyes narrowed in what might, to a human, look like worry… or confusion, or interest. She was a shinigami, after all; a very old one, who had not practised much with showing emotions. “Why do you ask, Misa?”

“Well. I know that Kira has one. I have another, which makes two.” Misa began kicking her feet in the air. “I wonder if somebody else could have number three?”

Rem tilted her skeletal head aside. “What makes you think there would be a third notebook?”

“Almost thirty people just died this morning all at once. I know that Kira doesn’t kill that way. And obviously I didn’t do it. So…” she sat up at once and pointed at Rem. “There has to be a third notebook!”

Rem looked down at the outstretched arm of her charge. “Maybe so,” she said. “If there is, what is your plan?”

Misa lowered her arm and sat up, sitting cross-legged. “Well, this new person seems to be killing criminals - they’re supporting Kira, like I’ve been. But they did it in a really obvious way, like they’re trying to get Kira to notice them. I can’t let that happen. Not before Kira notices me .” She levelled a determined stare at Rem. “ I will be Kira’s right hand. I have to meet her - before she can meet this new person.”

“You say ‘her’,” Rem said. “Are you sure of the gender of Kira?”

“Well, I guess I’m not sure ,” Misa giggled. “But I think she’s a she. Kira’s been extra harsh on criminals who hurt women. It might be a bit of a stretch, but I don’t think a man would go out of his way like that.”

“I see.” Rem lifted a hand and ran her claws down her other arm; they made a dull clacking sound on each vertebra-like segment. “If you are set on meeting Kira, how do you plan to do so?”

“I’ll use what you told me earlier,” Misa said, gesturing to the mirror and the hairbrush sitting before it, “about the lifespans I can see. The Takadas have invited me to perform at their charity ball this year - that’ll be the first place I look. With how kind and generous Kira is, I’m sure she’ll be there.”

Two days later.

Rows upon rows of brightly-coloured packaging in neat stacks passed by, beneath the glow of fluorescent lights, as a green-and-white shopping cart rolled across beige vinyl tiles. The two hands that pushed it, one from each of the two young men, moved with such perfect coordination that they might as well have been one creature with eight limbs and two heads.

The cart stopped moving, and one free hand moved to fetch a bag of candy off a shelf, while the other continued to tap away on a mobile phone.

Light set the bag in the cart, atop several other similar bags. ‘If we’re planning to have one of the Task Force members attend Takada’s ball,’ he hummed, ‘we’ll need to find some way of hiding their faces. Even if she doesn’t know their names, there’s no reason for us to take that risk.’

Leon lifted up his phone, putting it in Light’s field of view. ‘It seems that’s already been thought of,’ he replied.

Light reached over and took Leon’s phone from him; upon it was an announcement in the local news. ‘The Takada family’s annual charity ball is going to be a masquerade?’

‘Indeed,’ Leon replied, taking back his phone. 

They started to push the cart forward again. ‘Well, it’s convenient for us, for sure. It’s also something we can bring up to the Task Force as evidence that Kiyomi is Kira.’

‘True. We should say something like…’ He dragged his finger along his lower lip. ‘Kiyomi doesn’t want to show her face in a large public gathering if she can avoid it, because she suspects that there may be others with her power who do not agree with her methods. From this, we can conclude that the 27 deaths two days ago were not Kira deaths, but rather, carried out by some third party with their own aims.’

‘Is drawing attention to our experiments a good idea, Leon?’

‘I suppose not…’ Leon frowned. ‘I just have a feeling. Recall that Ryuk told us, in the art gallery, that there was a third notebook besides ours and Kira’s? I have a feeling that it will be important to this investigation, somehow.’

Light’s brow furrowed. This was the one thing that, in all their years together, he had never been able to replicate. Leon had a scarily accurate intuition. He knew the rhythm of situations, particularly the turning-points - the climacterics and peripeteias. It was like part of his brain was connected to the source-code of the universe.

‘I understand,’ Light said, although he mostly didn’t. ‘We’ll keep that in mind.’

‘In any case,’ Leon went on, ‘there may still be a problem with any of the Task Force members showing up at the ball in person. Kiyomi could set up security cameras around the venue. Just because a human might not be able to recognise one of our people with a mask on, doesn’t mean that an algorithm run on security camera footage would have the same problem.’

‘True.’

There was silence, as the two mulled over the situation.

Meanwhile, they rounded a shelf, and entered the fresh produce section. They passed stacks of oranges, pears, apples… 

From above and behind them, a voice piped up. “Hey.”

Physically ignoring Ryuk, Light picked up a bright red apple and inspected it. He hummed, ‘Yes?’

“Can I have that?”

Light looked up, and Ryuk’s beady yellow eyes were fixated on the apple in his hand, a shining claw pointed straight at it. ‘No,’ he replied, ‘it isn’t mine.’ But he handed it to Leon, who grabbed a bag and set it inside.

‘Do shinigami like apples?’ Leon asked as he plucked another off the pile by its stem and dropped it into the bag.

“I dunno about the others, but I sure do.” Ryuk clapped twice. “Apples from the human world are the best. They’re so juicy! If you two are buying some, would you get more for me? Please?” His eyelids twitched rapidly, like he was trying to bat his lack of eyelashes.

‘Sure,’ Light hummed, ‘I’ll buy you some apples. Just stop doing that. It’s creepy.’

“Got it!” Ryuk stopped, as promised, with a cheesy mock-salute.

Stepping closer to Leon to wrap an arm around his waist, Light pressed letters into his skin. ‘I think we’ve just solved our security camera problem.’

In a small park a few blocks away from the supermarket, vacant except for the dusty snow floating on the frigid air, Light and Leon sat together on a cold stone bench. A bag of apples sat beside Light; their other grocery bags rested on the ground nearby, accompanied by an expectant-looking shinigami.

“So?” Ryuk said, staring at (or maybe through?) the bag. “Are you two gonna give me those apples or what?”

“We will,” Light nodded. “For a favour. Each one you do for us gets you an apple.”

Ryuk’s expression went through frustration to begrudging acceptance; he rolled his eyes. “I guess that’s fair.”

“To start,” said Leon, making a circular gesture with his index finger, “please tell us everything you know about the third death note user, as well as the shinigami possessing them - the one who you said might give a death note back if asked.”

Ryuk glanced skyward before he looked back at his two humans. He enunciated very carefully: “I’m not telling you the name or lifespan of any human I see.” He dropped the veneer then, and spoke casually. “But, I’ve never seen this one. Just heard of her. Just to be safe, though, I’m not going to tell you her name. Anyhow, from what I’ve been told, her eyes are the colour of milk chocolate, and her hair’s golden like a barley field at sunset.”

Light cackled. “That’s some description, Ryuk. I didn’t take you for such a sap.”

Ryuk swatted at the air in front of Light. “Hey, I didn’t come up with it, okay?”

“Who did?”

“This shinigami named Rem. She used to stand at the portal all day with this guy Gelus. One day she flew back all mopey-like, and passed by our gambling ring. Gook asked her what happened, and she said that idiot Gelus dusted himself saving some human girl!” Ryuk threw up his hands in utter incomprehension. “Rem said she was gonna give his old notebook to the girl as soon as she reported Gelus’s death to the King!” His hands lowered back down to the snow-speckled grass. “Anyway, I’m pretty sure that Rem fell in love with that girl the same way Gelus did. That’s why I said she’d probably give the death note back.”

“Wow,” Light said. “So there’s a girl wandering around who’s seduced two shinigami.”

“What did you mean,” Leon asked, “when you said that Gelus ‘dusted himself’?”

Ryuk’s perpetual grin turned sour. “When a shinigami dies,” he said, “we don’t leave behind a corpse like you. Our bodies decompose immediately, we turn into dust. There’s a bunch of ways that a shinigami can die - most involve breaking the rules. One of the rules is that a shinigami can’t lengthen a human’s life on purpose.” He shrugged. “Not all rule-breaking is punishable by death, of course, but the smart ones don’t risk it.”

“I would figure,” Leon said.

Light plucked an apple out of the bag, threw it in the air - straight upward. He caught it again. “Before I give this to you, is there anything else you can tell us, about either Rem or the girl?”

Ryuk huffed. “Just that Rem is a stickler for the rules unless she’s got a really good reason to bend ‘em. She reports everything to the King, even when it’s not necessary. Part of why I’m glad I’m here; back in the realm, she’s always breathing down my neck. I don’t know much about the human. I mean, I’ve heard she’s pretty. She sings. And she’s got a thing for the colour black. But that’s about it.”

“That’ll be useful, Ryuk. Thanks.” Light tossed the apple at him, and Ryuk caught it directly between his shark-like teeth. He took a big bite out of the side and caught the remainder in his cupped palms.

“Mmm, sure thing.” He munched sloppily on the remainder of the apple, sending little chunks flying into the grass. “What else you wanna know?”

Leon didn’t skip a beat. “Are shinigami capable of telling lies?”

“We can ,” Ryuk said, “but the King isn’t a fan. I need to be in his good graces as much as I can, so I don’t. Not unless I really need to. If it’s a choice between telling a lie and breaking a rule, though, I’ll be lying through my teeth any day.”

“I see,” he said. “So we can’t expect all shinigami to be honest.”

“No,” Ryuk said. “Despite - huh, actually I think it’s because she’s got such a stick up her arse about the rules, Rem is a dirty liar. You definitely can’t expect her to tell you the truth all the time. I think the only human she’ll go out of her way to be honest with is the girl she’s possessing.”

Light tossed him a second apple.

Ryuk chucked this one into his mouth all at once, the way Leon ate those incorrectly-named ‘two-bite’ brownies back home. “That was easy,” he said. “You got more?”

Leon nodded, removing one gloved hand from his pocket and straightening his scarf. “What are the rules surrounding your interactions with the human world? It seemed like you weren’t able to eat an apple without our permission.”

Ryuk sighed. “Yep, that’s right.”

“So you can’t physically interact with objects unless one of us tells you to?”

“Well, not exactly that. I can pick things up and move them around if I feel like it, I just can’t remove anything from the human world.” Ryuk frowned in annoyance. “ Unfortunately , eating apples counts as removing stuff from here.”

“I see. So you can move objects around, you just choose not to.”

Ryuk shrugged. “Watching people scream about ghosts is fun for a couple centuries, but it gets boring. I’m not really interested in haunting anybody. Other than you two, that is.”

Light reached into Leon’s pocket and held his hand. ‘I’m quite grateful for that.’

‘Likewise. It could be difficult to explain to the Task Force why our hotel rooms were haunted.’

“Alright, Ryuk,” Light said, tossing him a third apple, “for the remainder of the apples in this bag, you’ll have to do something for us. We did say these were for favours , and that isn’t just talking.”

“You did say that…” Ryuk said. He seemed, for the first time they had seen, cautious . “What is it?”

“In two weeks, there is going to be a party. When one of us gives the word, you’ll scan the place for surveillance cameras, and destroy any you find. I would assume that destruction doesn’t involve taking anything from this world, since all the atoms are still in place - correct?”

“So far as the letter of the rules goes, yeah,” Ryuk said. “I can do that.”

“If you promise us that you will ,” -Light gestured to the bag- “then you can have all of these. That counts as permission conditional on your word, though, so if you break this promise, that permission is revoked. Are we understood?”

Ryuk realised that was all that they were going to ask of him, and his face lit up. “Oh, yeah!” he clapped enthusiastically. “All those apples just to break some pesky cameras? I’m in!”

“I’m glad to hear we can count on you.” Leon smiled, and Light handed Ryuk the bag.

Adjacent to the suite’s master bedroom, the sliding glass door that led onto the balcony stood open. Through it, a cool breeze wafted in, drifting across the floor by two pairs of bare feet.

Light sat on the edge of the bed, unbuttoning his shirt. “I know we’ve decided to keep a close eye on the Takadas’ party. But did you have someone in mind to do that?”

Leon was standing between Light and the open door, silhouetted against the city lights. He slid his shirt off his shoulders, letting it fall to the floor. “No, I don’t,” he said. “We have a much more limited team than usual, and it occurs that none of the Task Force members are easy choices.”

Light nodded. The current members all had their own problems regarding an infiltration mission. Matsuda and Ukita were both rash and impulsive in their respective ways; they were the types of people to not fully think through their actions. Aizawa and Ide still didn’t trust L, and even while wearing a wire, neither could be counted on as a point-of-contact between L and Kira. Mogi and Light’s dad were the best candidates, but even they weren’t great: if either one met Kira face-to-face, they would probably feel morally obligated to stop the killings at any cost - even if that cost was proof.

Leon turned aside, lifting his arms over his head and inverting his slump of a posture until he was halfway into a backbend. His spine crackled like a bowl of rice krispies. “Outside of the Task Force, then?” he said, voice strained by the stretch. “We have other resources we could call on.”

“Beyond should be there, for his eyes.” Light gestured in the direction of Beyond’s hotel room. “But he shouldn’t be there alone.”

Leon leaned forward again, not as far slumped over as he was around anybody else, but with his shoulders still rounded forward out of habit. “There is still over a week until the ball. We could bring other people over from England.” He traipsed over to the bed and slumped onto it, tucking his knees to his chest. 

Light turned to him. “Who would you suggest? Wedy? Aiber? J? Near?”

“J and Near don’t have the social energy. Wedy and Aiber do, but I hesitate to put them in a situation so dangerous. Kira almost certainly keeps a scrap of her death note on her at all times. And they wouldn’t know that her pulling out a piece of paper might be dangerous.”

Light studied Leon’s impassive expression, eyebrows furrowing as he put together what Leon was leading to. “It seems like you won’t be satisfied unless I go in person.”

“That’s right. And,” his eyes narrowed, “I’ll go with you.”

At first he just stared, expecting against reason that Leon was somehow kidding . He hated field work! Was it just the importance of the case? Some sense of protectiveness? “Leon…” he tilted his head, as though a slightly different visual angle would make this make sense. “You don’t have to do this. I can confront Takada. You hang back, monitor my wire, and I’ll signal you the second anything goes wrong.”

“No, Light.” Leon’s resolve was absolute. “I’m going with you. The Task Force is plenty capable of monitoring a wire - or two. Also, you can signal me as well or better if I’m there in person.”

Light’s brows twitched in confusion. Why is he being so persistent? Of course he knows that of the two of us, I’m the better social engineer. He’s not stubbornly self-sacrificial like my father, he’s had no problems hiding behind a computer before, so why is it different now? What gives?

Leon shook his head. “You’re forgetting the second crucial skill here,” he replied to Light’s thoughts. “I have no delusions that we’re equals in the department of persuasion, but as you should know, I’m better at thinking under fire. You haven’t been in as much personal danger as I have.”

Light could concede that point, but- “There’s another reason you haven’t told me yet.” It was a certainty, not a guess.

Leon smiled, in a way that was at once congratulatory and sad. “There is. And it is…” he looked out the window, watching Tokyo’s neon lights burn the night. “Kira, the original Kira, their ideology is disturbingly familiar to me.”

Familiar… Light knew a lot about Leon’s life before they’d met, and almost none of it had been good. If something was familiar to him, that was definitely a bad sign.

“It… it reminds me…” He sighed. “...of my mother.”

Chapter Text

Twelve years ago.

The front door slammed shut, furious footsteps disappearing behind it. He turned, trying to stare back through the frosted glass. She would reconsider. She had to. Just a few minutes, she would come back… 

If only she would just talk to him, he could explain himself… 

If only she would talk to her child …

But the footsteps didn’t return. The only shadow in the glass wore long black hair and a tear-stained face.

She wasn’t coming back. 

The boy’s eyebrows twitched. This wasn’t real to her, was it? To her, it was, what - a glorified time-out? She really was expecting him to come crawling back to her - to apologise for stepping out of line, to go back to being the daughter she raised instead of the person he was.

He turned around, then, away from the door. At the sidewalk and red brick townhouses on the other side of the street. At the entire world beyond. Down the street, a woman rode a bicycle, the sleeves and skirt of her dress billowing in the warm spring breeze. Up above, the sky was wide and bright and blue.

He started walking, and didn’t stop.

He would be okay for a couple of weeks. He’d been squirrelling away money in a side-pocket of his knapsack for years, just in case - even though he’d never expected to need it. 

Down stone sidewalks and through the thick brush on roadsides he walked, heading nowhere except away . For three pounds at a Walmart he bought a utility knife, and then, in the back corner of the parking lot, his thick black hair puddled behind a bush. With each chop, the boy murmured to himself: “Ryuzaki. My name is Ryuzaki.” The name was foreign, but sweet, like a new flavour of candy.

He tried to hate his mother. Some days, when the rain fell in gushes and not even the spaces under bridges were dry enough to sleep, he almost succeeded. But mostly, all he could think was how sad it was, that she was never able to escape her own childhood. That she was trapped by what had happened to her, and so never got to have a child who truly loved her.

He knew better than to try making a living from begging. Even at seven years old, he knew that pity didn’t motivate people nearly as much as self-interest. And besides… a child begging on the street would get asked after, worried about. The last thing he wanted was to end up in an orphanage or a foster home. If he couldn’t trust his mother, who had voluntarily brought him into this world, how could he possibly trust anyone he was foisted upon? Even - no, especially if taking care of him was a job they would be paid for.

So, in addition to his stops at supermarkets and gas station convenience stores, he made a habit of going to public libraries. And on the old computers there, he started to build a fake adult. A carefully stolen national insurance number, some edited birth records, and he had a legal guardian by the name of Osamu Lawliet.

With his new adult identity, he made accounts on freelancing websites. He started in transcription and translation: jobs that only required fluency in the relevant languages. Then he taught himself to speak more than just English and Japanese, and learnt programming and data analysis.

For a while, it was an uphill battle. Every dollar he made was spent on food, clothes, and other necessities. But the moment he had a hundred spare pounds, he bought a tent, and the moment he had five hundred, he bought a used Acer TravelMate laptop.

From that point on, Ryuzaki worked out of a teahouse cafe, where the yellow overhead lights illuminated glass cases of desserts, mahogany booths, and large potted ferns. It was near the Oxford University campus, where he spent his free time sitting in on interesting lectures, curled into a ball in the very back of the class. He told the cafe’s owners that he was cyber-schooled, and they accepted it without question, letting him stay as long as the shop was open.

It was at this place that Ryuzaki met him .

It was Thursday - a work day - and Ryuzaki was staring at a screen full of code. Replaying its logic in his head, trying to find the error. 

Someone approached his table.

He always sat in the furthest corner from the entrance - purposefully out of sight - so whoever it was, they were here on purpose.

He looked up.

Standing there was a young boy, Ryuzaki’s own age, in the uniform of one of the nicest private primary schools in the area. When Ryuzaki looked up from that uniform to the boy’s cherubic face and perfect auburn hair, he expected to see nothing behind the eyes. That was a sort of child he’d met before: the sort who was merely an empty vessel for their parents’ overbearing expectations. Ryuzaki couldn’t stand those children. He was fully cognizant of the fact that he probably hated them because that was how he himself might have ended up, if he hadn’t been born wrong .

But as soon as he looked into the boy’s amber eyes, he realised this boy wasn’t that type of child. There was something adult in the way he looked at him, something that was more responsible than most real adults.

“Hello,” said Ryuzaki.

The boy nodded to himself, like he was confirming some suspicion. “You’re too smart for your parents, aren’t you.” He was already sliding into the booth across from Ryuzaki.

Ryuzaki looked at the boy. Feeling it would be needlessly rude to ask him to leave, he sighed. “What do you mean?”

“Well, I am,” he said nonchalantly, folding his hands on the table’s edge. “And like attracts like.”

Ryuzaki stared blankly. “Is that the same way you figured I don’t appreciate smalltalk?”

The boy smiled, seeming equal parts self-satisfied and impressed. “Exactly.”

For a moment, there was silence. Ryuzaki sat, looking at the boy who looked oddly mature in the same way that Ryuzaki himself had always felt , not knowing what to say. He tried to formulate some response to the boy’s question from earlier, but had no words, and had nothing of his own to ask. Well, nothing more interesting than, “What’s your name?”

“Light,” the boy said.

“Of course it is,” Ryuzaki said - mostly to himself - with a small smile. Someone like this would never have an ordinary name.

Light seemed pleased with that reply. “What’s yours?”

“Ryuzaki,” he said.

“That’s pretty,” Light said, “how’s it written?”

Hands returning to keys, Ryuzaki pulled up a text file and switched to his Japanese keyboard, writing it down. He spun the laptop screen around its central hinge. “Like that.”

Light nodded. Evidently, knowledge of Japanese wasn’t enough to impress him - either that, or he had for some reason already expected Ryuzaki to know enough of it to answer his question. “Mine,” he said, “is written with the kanji for ‘moon’.”

“Your parents have an interesting choice in names,” commented Ryuzaki.

“So do yours.”

“My parents had no say in my name,” Ryuzaki said, feeling safe in doing so. After all, he wasn’t saying anything too personal just by telling Light that he’d picked his own name.

With a casual voice, like a verbal shrug, Light said, “Then you have an interesting choice in names, Ryuuzaki .” He drew out the u sound, pronouncing it as it would be in Japanese.

Ryuzaki glanced at the table. “Thank you.”

Just then, an older woman with silver hair tied into a loose bun walked over, silver serving cart wheeling in front of her. “I have an order for Light?”

He lifted his hand politely, to indicate his presence. “Thank you, ma’am.”

She nodded, setting their table with all the accoutrements of tea: a pot, two cups with saucers, and milk and sugar, all in beautiful blue-flower-patterned china. Two rectangular silver plates were added to the spread, one containing two pairs of diagonal-cut crusted sandwiches, the other containing two scones with clotted cream and jam.

Light thanked the woman again as she left with her cart. Ryuzaki eyed the scones, and was about to comment on their similar tastes in dessert when Light pushed the plate over to him.

“I’ve noticed you eat here often,” he said, by way of explanation, “and you get these a lot. I thought it would be nice to get them for you.”

Ryuzaki looked at the plate, then back at Light. He couldn’t exactly refuse . Even if he hadn’t been hungry - which he was - it would be rude. So, he pinched a scone between two fingers and bit off a piece. “Thank you.”

“It’s my pleasure,” Light said, digging into his sandwich. As he ate, he seemed to contemplate what to say, have an idea, disregard it, then ask something else. “That’s an analytics program you’re working on, right?”

“It is,” Ryuzaki replied. He swivelled his laptop screen towards Light again, pointing to the code there. “I’m debugging this section.”

“Mind if I take a look?” Light’s expression was already conveying deep thought as he read.

“Not at all,” Ryuzaki said, redundantly.

It was another minute of Light staring at his screen while mechanically munching on his sandwich before he pointed with a crumb-covered finger and said, “The conditional in that while loop is wrong.”

Ryuzaki spun the screen back around, staring at the offending statement. “How so?”

Light set the remainder of the sandwich down and licked his fingers. “It should be >=1, not >=0. You could make it >0, too, if you wanted.”

Ryuzaki deleted the equals sign, hit save, and compile. The program ran correctly. “Thanks,” he said.

“My pleasure,” Light replied. At last, he poured his tea, and added a small splash of milk. 

Ryuzaki shut his laptop gently, and slid it to the end of the table by the wall. He took his turn with the teapot, then, filling two-thirds of the cup with tea and the remainder with a stack of sugar cubes. “You said before that you could tell I was too smart for my parents because you were, too,” he said. “How is that?”

Light’s eyes turned down, watching the sugar dissolve into Ryuzaki’s tea. “There are people in this world who are intelligent but not smart . What I mean is, they won’t flinch away from trying to solve one hard problem, but string enough hard problems together and it’s like their brains shut off. Say, they can choose a job and work hard at it, but they won’t be able to even think about changing the world at a large scale.”

Ryuzaki raised his eyebrows. “Your parents aren’t as smart as you because they don’t want to change the world?”

Light looked back up at Ryuzaki, and shook his head. “It’s not about the specifics. It’s about taking principles to their logical conclusions. My parents say they care about humanity, but my mum gave up her career as a researcher in favour of an easier job she could do while taking care of kids. And my dad works for long hours every day in law enforcement, but he hasn’t considered how the system itself might be bad and need to change. Their care for the world has a limit. I can’t really call it hypocrisy, because that would require they’d actually thought of the alternative possibility. I don’t think they’ve ever actually sat down and thought through what they believe and why.”

Light’s life story was alien to Ryuzaki - and yet, his emotions parallelled Ryuzaki’s own to an uncanny precision. My mother said she cared about me, but her care, too, had a limit. And I can’t even find it in me to be angry at her hypocrisy, because that would require she’d actually thought rationally about it for long enough to know what she believed and why.

“That’s why I said smart instead of intelligent ,” Light completed his explanation. “My parents are plenty intelligent. They just don’t think about how they could use it.”

“I see.” Ryuzaki bore a stare into Light as he sipped his tea. “But what gave you the impression I’m the same way?”

Light’s eyes widened slightly, then clicked like a camera shutter. Ryuzaki couldn’t tell what that meant. “Are you sure you want me to tell you? I’m… very perceptive.”

Ryuzaki’s brows furrowed in a confusion that hid deep anxiety beneath. But ultimately, whatever Light knew, he didn’t gain anything from not hearing it. “It’s okay,” he said. “Please, go ahead.”

Light nodded firmly. “Every time I come here, you’re here, always on your computer. I asked one of the owners, and she said you were cyber-schooled, but most cyber-schooled kids work from home. Then, when I sat near you, I noticed that you’re always coding. Not the kinds of things that would be fun to make for yourself; the kinds of things businesses would use. And it’s not just that. Even when you stay here a whole day, you don’t buy much food. Your hair looks like you cut it yourself, and you told me just now that you picked your own name. So… I can conclude that your home life went from bad to nonexistent, I’m guessing because you came out as transgender, and you’re living on your own, maybe out of a youth hostel, maybe out of a tent, and freelance coding for money.” He met Ryuzaki’s level stare, and said, “Am I right?”

Ryuzaki’s shaking gaze broke from Light’s and focused on the slice of table edge above his knees. When he finally managed to speak, his voice was small. “Why did you spend so much time figuring that out?”

“Because I was bored.” The tone of his voice implied a shrug. “And…” 

Ryuzaki looked up, slowly, and saw that Light was smiling warmly. 

“Because I thought we could be friends.”

“Friends,” he said, quietly, almost a whisper. “I think, Light, you’re the first friend I’ve ever had.”

Today: January 18th, 2020.

Leon looked up from the floor of the car, and out the window.

Manicured gardens passed by as they drove through the open iron gate of the Takada estate. The car rolled slowly forward, amid a procession of other vehicles: limousines of various types and brand-new luxury cars. Leon didn’t need to be able to see into their tinted windows to know the fineries their occupants would be decked in: gold, diamonds, silks, and lace.

The car started to turn around the circle at the end of the drive, and the tiered stonework fountain in its centre came into view. 

Without looking back, Soichiro spoke from the driver’s seat. “As you requested, Aizawa and Mogi are monitoring your wires from a short distance. After I drop you two off, I’ll park nearby; if anything goes wrong, just give the signal.”

“Thank you,” Leon said absently. As they approached the entry, the fountain came into full view, and through the fog of his breath on the window he could see that its top tier held a statue of Athena, with sprigs of water shooting up around her feet and around the base of her spear. She stared straight at the mansion’s front doors, as though the goddess herself would be presiding over the ball tonight.

He turned away from the window just as the car lurched to a stop. Soichiro turned around in his seat.

He didn’t need to tell them he was worried. It would have been clear enough by the look in his eyes. But then he spoke - under his voice, despite the soundproofing in the limousine. “Light, Leon… please be safe.”

“Don’t worry, Dad,” Light replied, smiling. “We will.” With that, he popped open the door to his side of the car, and got out.

Leon nodded and followed suit, climbing up into the cool night air. 

It had been only ten degrees during the day, and had only gotten colder as the sun started to set, but his long, lace-embroidered suit coat and thick mask made the chill feel like a thin veneer. Most of the cold he felt was the salty moisture of ocean spray; the mansion was a mere few hundred feet from Sagami Bay, and the courtyard in which the ball would occur directly faced the sea.

He fidgeted with the button on his sleeve-cuff as he rounded the car, watching the facade of the mansion. It was a modern thing, all glass and sheet-metal, that curved slightly away from the entrance in both directions, as though the building itself were leaning forward to watch the bay. In the twilight, the golden light that streamed out of its huge glass windows was warm, inviting… and strangely eerie. 

He approached Light’s side, watching him stare. 

Then Light turned to him, smiling. “Every time I look at you, that hairstyle surprises me.”

Leon snorted. It had better, he figured, given how long they’d spent on it. His hair was a beast that did not like to be tamed, long and thick and prone to tangles, but nevertheless they’d managed to contort it semi-permanently into a pair of braids that rounded his head from the temples and joined into a ponytail at the crown. “I could say the same about you,” he said.

Likewise, it was true. Light’s hair had been parted at his right side and swept back far enough that the wispy strands at his temples were visible. Without his bangs obscuring them in shadow, his amber eyes shone like sunlight. All this combined with a black lace mask and a red-and-black silk suit, he too was unrecognisable. 

‘It’s time,’ Leon hummed, taking Light’s hand and walking forward, up the stonework steps.

“Oh! That’s my cue,” Ryuk said, and swooped past them, passing through the wall and out of sight. The strong breeze that blew in his wake ruffled the skirts of a few women further up the stairs, making them clutch at their fur coats.

‘Are you ready?’ Light asked.

‘I think,’ he replied, ‘I have always been ready.’

Chapter Text

At the top of the semicircular stonework staircase, Light and Leon found a tall young man dressed in the black-and-white formal garb of a highbrow security guard. He wore straight black hair to his shoulders, and watched each guest with a piercing set of green eyes.

“Your names, please.”

“Ryuzaki and Asahi,” Light said, gesturing to Leon and himself. The slightest smile was evident in his voice.

The guard nodded. “Let me look you up.” He lifted a pad of paper from his side. 

Leon had to admit, it was an excellent disguise. Not only had he straightened and dyed his hair, not only had he changed his eye colour with contacts, but he’d employed stage makeup to completely alter the shape of his face. Not a single person who saw him here tonight would recognize him later.

With the pretence of searching for their names, Beyond hummed his report. ‘I’ve kept watch since this thing started, and you two were right: a lot of people are showing up without masks and putting them on at the door. Out of everyone, though, there’s only been one person whose lifespan I couldn’t see. It’s the singer they hired to perform live, Misa Amane.’

Misa Amane, hm? Leon thought. Well, she certainly fits the description of the third death note user. But that still leaves Kiyomi’s associates, B-Kira and onward. Where are they? Did they all decide to put their masks on before coming in? Did they not show up at all? We expected that some of the others Kira recruited in the past two weeks might be no-shows, but not all of them.

“Ah,” Beyond said aloud, tapping his paper. “Here you are. Apologies for the wait,” -he pushed the door open- “here you go. Enjoy your night.”

“Thank you,” Light said. He took Leon’s hand, and led him in.

Past the glass doors, everything was bathed in gold. The entryway was two stories tall, lit by two chandeliers of dangling crystals. The walls were covered with framed paintings, and along each wall were long tables covered with tiered plates of hors d’oeuvres. Guests milled about, taking tiny sandwiches and coloured-toothpick-speared bites onto little china plates, and talking all sorts of business. 

Thank goodness Leon was here on an infiltration mission. He was utterly uncomprehending of people who did these things for fun .

Speaking of that type of person, Leon had apparently been standing in the doorway a few microseconds too long. From a nearby conversation departed an older woman who evidently didn’t abandon her professional wear even at a party, whose red silk mask matched her necktie.

“Good evening,” said the woman, bowing slightly to them. She had an aristocratic aire about her, like she had been a holy queen in some past life. “My name is Tomoko Takada, I’ll be your hostess tonight.”

“Good evening.” Light gestured to himself, and then to Leon, “My name is Katsuro Asahi; this is Hayate Ryuzaki. It’s an honour to meet you.”

“Likewise,” she nodded. “I’m glad you were able to attend.”

“Of course,” Light smiled. “We’ve always thought of charity as the most important obligation of the affluent.”

“I’m of precisely the same opinion,” Takada said. She turned, gesturing around the room: “Please, help yourself to a bite. We have tablets set up just outside the doors where you can easily make donations to hundreds of the best charities around the world, so feel free to use them at any time during the night. As to the ball, it will begin outside on the terrace in ten minutes.”

Light thanked her, and gently pulled Leon towards one of the tables just as a flapping sound came down from above.

“All the cameras are gone, just like you asked!”

Leon lifted a plate off a stack, and served himself a tea-cake. ‘Thank you.’

‘Now,’ Light hummed as he topped up his own plate, ‘I have one more favour to ask of you, in return for an apple in that bowl down there.’

Leon looked up; there was a bowl of fruits sitting on the end of one of the tables, close to the door - clearly real, but solely decorative in purpose, so nobody had touched them. It would be easy for Ryuk to take one without being seen.

“Yeah?” Ryuk asked. “What is it?”

Light began to walk slowly along the table, seeming to be greatly interested in the presentation of each dish. ‘I want you to hover around aimlessly tonight, instead of following us in specific. If any other shinigami tries to talk to you, you don’t need to ignore them, but don’t tell them why you’re here, or who has your notebook. If either of us need you for something, we’ll snap our fingers twice. Your hearing is good enough to pick that up if you’re paying attention, right?’

“Right,” Ryuk said. “Can do, Light-o!” He zipped over to the fruit bowl immediately and snatched up an apple, eating it in a single bite.

“Now,” Light smirked, turning to Leon, “on to your least favourite part.”

Leon nodded, grumbling under his breath. “Mingling.”

Under a twinkling blanket of starlight, Kiyomi stood against the wall with a glass of champagne. A metre to her left burned one of many tall glass patio heaters, which together warmed the chill January air up to a palatable temperature. At her other side, standing like a shadow in a gothic suit of all black, was Kiyomi’s first acolyte: a young prosecutor who she’d met about a year ago when he’d applied to her parents’ firm. Teru Mikami. Of all the - now, dozens - of people she had successfully recruited to Kira’s cause, he was the most respectable, dependable, and most importantly, devoted . This, more than anything else, was the reason he was here with her tonight.

Kiyomi did not know if L had gotten far enough yet in their investigation to suspect her directly, but she had already been burned once by underestimating the detective. She would not be making that mistake again. If she was a suspect, it was likely that L had at least one of their agents trailing her movements - not always, because she had bribed Midora to tell her if that happened, but possibly at certain key times. The most likely possibility was that they would send someone to seek her out at this ball. From the time Kira had come into the public consciousness, it had only been a few weeks away. A short time to wait. And from what little she had seen about L from that stupid broadcast a few weeks ago, that seemed like the sort of plan they would concoct. Minimum effort for maximum results.

This had been the reasoning that had led to her expenditure of a small amount of her social capital with her mother in order to request that this year’s event be a masked ball. She had no reason to believe that L had someone under their employ who had made the shinigami eye deal, but she could not, in the interest of caution, ignore the possibility. 

For tonight, she would be wary - wary, but not a wallflower. If she did not interact with as many people as possible, she might come out of tonight safe, but she would still be ignorant. She could not afford to be afraid of what information they might gather on her, and allow that fear to keep her from finding information of her own.

As she watched the technicians setting up final touches for the pop-up stage that faced the terrace, a huge white-and-green salamander came slithering through the wall, trailing noncorporeal muck across the floor. 

Without paying the shinigami any visible attention, Kiyomi raised her glass to her lips. “What is it, Midora?” she muttered against its rim.

“I just thought you should know,” she said, “that somebody just destroyed every security camera in this place.”

“What?!” Kiyomi hissed, then coughed gently, composing herself. She took a sip from her glass. “How could this happen?”

“Could be a thief, or a group of them,” Midora offered. “Could be another shinigami. Who knows?”

Teru spoke up, under his breath. “If there are any other shinigami here, would you tell us?”

“For a banana,” Midora said, her glassy orange eyes glowing as she stared up at Kiyomi.

“Sure.” Kiyomi rolled her eyes as inconspicuously as possible. “Take one from the fruit bowl by the door.”

She found Rem behind the stage, hovering over the shoulder of a human named Misa Amane.

Before addressing Midora, Rem turned to her charge. “Misa, there is another shinigami here.”

“Oh, thanks for telling me.” Misa looked up at Rem in the mirror of her boudoir, gesturing with a hairbrush. “Please relay whatever they say to me?”

Rem nodded, then finally turned. Her tone was completely disinterested: “Midora… What are you doing here?”

“I’m checking on a little curiosity,” Midora giggled. “Did you break those security cameras around this place?”

Rem’s eyes narrowed. “No,” she said. “I did not alter any part of this building. If the security cameras have been broken, I had no part in it.”

It wasn’t too long until she found the second shinigami. Ryuk was crouched like a leather-clad gargoyle on one corner of the mansion’s roof, overseeing the party. He didn’t look up when she approached, didn’t even stop picking flecks of apple out of his pointed teeth.

“Hey, Ryuk,” she said. “What are you doing here?”

He shrugged, noncommittally. “Just hangin’ out. You?”

She tilted her rounded head aside.  “You’re not here because of a human?”

“Well, I didn’t say that.” Ryuk flicked one last speck from his teeth, then shrugged. “But doesn’t it get boring to keep following your human around all the time? I dunno about you, but sometimes I just wanna hang out somewhere else.”

“Are you annoyed with your human, Ryuk?” Midora leaned in, intrigued. “I would think you’d’ve just killed them by now.”

“Not annoyed,” Ryuk said. “Just not fascinated by their every movement. Most parts of human life are so boring. I only need to be around for the juicy bits.” He turned to her, cocking his head. “What about yours, where’s your human at?”

“She’s around,” Midora said, gesturing vaguely with a chubby hand. “Sent me to check for other shinigami. It’s a weird request, but human world fruit is good, so whatever.”

“Well,” Ryuk spread his arms in a performer’s gesture like Light would, “here I am.”

“I can see that.” She plodded on her rear legs closer to him. “So, I’m curious. Somebody broke the security cameras around here. Was it you?”

“Nah,” Ryuk said. “Did you already ask Rem, though? I saw her here earlier.”

“I did, and she said she didn’t do it either.” Midora frowned.

“Huh. Well, if I’ve learned anything since I flew down here, it’s that human technology has gotten a lot better.” Ryuk’s forehead creased as though he was raising nonexistent eyebrows. “I wouldn’t be surprised if it was actually some human who’d done that.”

“Really…” Midora chuckled. “Huh. Thank you, Ryuk, you’ve sated my curiosity.”

“Sure,” Ryuk replied, with a lacklustre salute. He turned back to watch the party. “Later.”

As soon as Midora had gone, Ryuk took off from the rooftop. He found Light and Leon standing amid a crowd of other party-goers, listening to the opening announcements that Takada Tomoko was giving on the stage. 

Hovering over the shoulder of some random other human nearby, he started humming: ‘Hey, you two. You don’t have to reply, I’ll just talk and you listen. There’s another shinigami here, besides Rem, who just asked me if I was the one who broke the security cameras. I told her no, and implied it was some human with technology.’

Leon’s eyes widened a little bit, like he was wondering why Ryuk would bother to tell them this. 

‘I also made sure not to tell her anything about either of you.’ He grinned. ‘That was helpful, right? So I can have another apple?’

Leon nodded slowly in understanding, and Light nodded quickly in agreement.

Ryuk grinned, hovering for a little longer before darting off in the direction of the fruit bowl. Admittedly, apples were not his only reason for committing that little bit of human-assistance. This was the most fun he’d had in millennia. He wasn’t about to let the idle curiosity of another shinigami get in the way of his entertainment.

Not only that, it didn’t seem like this Kira business was the only thing that Light and Leon were planning to do with his (pilfered) death note. With all that experimenting they were doing earlier, and that argument the two of them had about changing the world, Ryuk was pretty sure that even if the Kira case got solved tomorrow, he wouldn’t have a shortage of fascinating human drama to watch.

So no, he didn’t mind helping out a little, around the edges. Just to level the playing field. 

Midora crawled down the side of the building, approaching the front of the crowd where Kiyomi was standing. “I asked around,” she said. “Two other shinigami, neither of them say they messed with the cameras.”

“Two, hm?” Kiyomi smiled, and downed the remainder of her champagne. “L should have one, but I wonder who the second one belongs to.”

“It could be another supporter of your cause, God,” Teru murmured close to her ear.

It could be, Kiyomi considered. But it could not be, just as well. She gained nothing by assuming things would work out in her favour. Only by planning for every possibility could she gain real advantage. And the truth was, she knew nothing about this third death note user - whether they might be aligned with her, an unrelated third party, someone other than L who stood opposed to Kira, or - perhaps worst of all - a second death note owner under L’s employ. All she could do was wait and see.

On the stage, her mother was stepping down, giving way to the musicians who had already set up behind her. There was a soft tick-tick-tick, setting the tempo, and then, softly, with the lilt of a violin, a waltz began.

Kiyomi passed a side-eyed glance to Teru, who was being rather slow on the uptake, staring at the singer who had just taken the stage. She was a pretty girl, Kiyomi supposed, young and blonde, with a dress almost gothic in its black silk and lace. But they had discussed what to do at this moment.

All it took was a simple snap of her fingers to remove him from his trance. He blinked, and extended a sheepish hand to her, which she sharply took, and they began to waltz.

Across the terrace, two young men joined hands, and joined the clockwork circles of dancers.

And on the stage above, the singer drew her breath, as three names missing numbers swayed in her sight.