Chapter Text
In the morning, Ryuzaki is staring at the ceiling, looking tired. ‘I need some space today,’ he taps.
“Yeah, okay,” you say. “Let me get my stuff together.”
He’s not gonna be persuadable into taking a shower, so that will have to go. But you get dressed, grab leftovers from the fridge and put it onto a plate on the kitchen table while Ryuzaki makes coffee. The whole rule about seating arrangements has kind of drifted out of use by unspoken agreement; it was just a little too complicated to keep up, and Ryuzaki obviously forgot half the time that he was supposed to be paying attention to who’s sitting down first. But making sure that Ryuzaki eats breakfast is a rule that you take quite seriously. He’s staring vaguely into his coffee, lost in his own world when you tap onto the table, ‘you’d better eat something, okay?’
He glances up at you for a moment, stares, and you wonder what he’s thinking about. You aren’t surprised he’s crashed; what with the excitement of the plan to rescue Matsuda and then a date with Misa the day afterward. He has a vacant look in his eyes, but still, you think you can see him turning over every piece of evidence in the back of his brain, trying to fit the case together into something coherent.
He eats breakfast.
With a stack of books, more coffee, and extra food, you make a spot outside the bathroom door. Ryuzaki grabs his laptop. You might as well make yourself more comfortable, you decide, and grab your pillow from the bed, and an extra blanket. Ryuzaki clutches his closed laptop to his chest with one hand and starts into the bathroom, but pauses in the doorway; suddenly, without a word, he’s turning back to you and giving you a one-armed hug, the laptop digging awkwardly into your ribs.
“Hey,” you say, quietly. “Ryuzaki… what’s this all about?”
His bony chin is uncomfortable against your shoulder; his fingers are clawing tightly into your back. If a hug was weaponized, it would probably feel like this. When he finally lets go he sits down, slowly, with his back to the bathroom door, and wraps his arms around the laptop; he dips his chin against his collarbone and pulls his knees as far toward his chest as they will go. Then he sighs.
‘Ignore me,’ he taps, his nail clicking against the edge of the closed laptop.
“Uh… okay,” you say. You sit down beside him, set your pillow comfortably against the wall to lean on, and drag the blanket across you. After a moment, you hold it out towards him.
Ryuzaki puts down the laptop and takes the edge of the blanket. He presses it over his knees.
You read.
And for hours, that’s the only thing that happens: you read; and, beside you, Ryuzaki stares distantly up at the ceiling, curled into a ball.
Abruptly, around three, he stands up, bringing his laptop with him, and locks himself into the bathroom.
And from there, the day proceeds as normally as any other one where he wants space.
From the other side of the door, you can hear the clink of the chain and a spate of furious typing that keeps up for hours. You finish your book, try to start another, but tiredness seems to descend upon you, making your eyes gritty. You push your pillow onto the floor and put your head on it, curling up sideways on the ground. The blanket is tangled against your feet; and Ryuzaki is close enough to hear and feel, vibrations traveling through the solidity of the door, the floor. You close your eyes and let yourself drift.
On Monday, Ryuzaki goes back to work without a word. Pictures of the Yotsuba eight are already up on the screen, and from the looks of it, the rest of the task force have been at work for a good few hours before Ryuzaki’s arrival. The detective sits down in his seat and curls up on his chair. “Morning, everyone,” he says.
“Morning,” everyone replies, although it’s one in the afternoon. You sit down and start looking through profiles.
Ryuzaki just stares at the computer screen in front of him, without turning it on.
“So if Matsuda’s story is true,” Soichiro says, standing near the detective, “then one of these eight is Kira, or connected to Kira.”
“It’s true!” Matsuda insists, standing and gesturing. “I heard them say they’d use Kira to kill someone.”
“Ryuzaki,” Soichiro confirms, “even if all eight of them have the power of Kira, is it correct to assume that they cannot kill with just a face, like the Second Kira?”
“Yes…” Ryuzaki muses. “If they could do that, then I have a hard time believing Matsuda-san would still be alive.”
“Huh?” Matsuda asks. “Oh, yeah… I really was in trouble, wasn’t I…”
No one bothers to reply to this. As you and the others work, Ryuzaki takes a nap, curled up on his computer chair and drooling. He wakes up, calls Watari for a snack and the man enters the room carrying a plate of ohagi and a cup of black tea. The nap seems to have refreshed Ryuzaki to some extent, though he’s still got dark bags of sleeplessness under his eyes; he seems more alert and focused than he’d been a few hours before.
“So…” Ryuzaki says, as Watari leaves the room. “Any conclusions, Light-kun?”
“We haven’t been able to uncover any deaths that would implicate any of them personally,” you admit, summing up the state of the evidence you and the rest of the task force had shortly been discussing. “I figured that if they were using Kira’s power to increase the wealth of the Yotsuba corporation, then they’d also use it for their own personal benefit, but…” you trail off.
“So they aren’t using Kira’s power freely then?” Ryuzaki prompts. You glance over at him and watch him stick an entire piece of the rice ball, including the waxed paper wrapper it’s sitting in, into his mouth. The fact should be horrifying, but then, you aren’t even surprised that Ryuzaki would do something like that.
“Or perhaps they’re being careful so that even if Yotsuba is suspected, they won’t be personally,” you say.
“Either way,” Ryuzaki speaks through his mouthful, “he’s assembled a group to make the decisions so the person must be a stupid coward who can’t do anything on his own.”
“So the meetings happen on Fridays,” your father translates the pertinent aspects of Ryuzaki’s blunt response, “and then killings occur from Friday nights to Saturday. I’d like to be able to prove that conclusively.”
“I heard it with my own ears, there’s no doubt!” Matsuda hurries to reiterate.
“‘Heard it’ isn’t enough evidence,” Soichiro answers.
“Right now Aiber is working to get close to one of the eight,” Ryuzaki explains, “and Wedy is concentrating on breaking through the security of the Yotsuba building. If things go well…” he pauses, spits the paper wrapper onto his plate, and continues, “this next Friday should be very interesting.”
On the same evening, you break a cup.
You didn’t mean to. You’d picked up the coffee cup to clean it and it had slipped from your hands, slippery with soap, to crack on the edge of the sink. Shards are glittering in the steel bowl, white and sharp, like icicles on snow. You stare down at it. Ryuzaki flinches, then sighs. “Light-kun,” he says. “Perhaps you should let me.”
“Cleaning dishes with a scrub-brush leaves junk on them,” you say.
“I don’t leave junk on them,” Ryuzaki says, offended.
“Yes you do, I’ve seen it,” you say.
“Then perhaps tomorrow—”
“It’s just a cup,” you say.
“And,” Ryuzaki says, “you’re tired.”
You rest your elbows on the counter, and watch the shards glimmer against the bright, polished steel. “I’m not tired,” you say. No more than usual. “Just—distracted, I guess.”
Ooi Takeshi, weapons enthusiast. No particular evidence for or against him being Kira.
“I’ll call Watari and have him clean this up,” Ryuzaki says.
“Okay,” you say.
Ryuzaki gives you a slight, concerned look before pulling out his phone and speaking into it a moment; then he tugs you out of the kitchen. Past the main room, into the library… you rarely spend time here; like the rest of the building it smells faintly like metal, new paint and furnishings, but the smell of books overlays it, creating a sensation that the room, new that it is, contains more than its age allows. There’s a nook behind a few of the shelves that turns into a padded bench, a window seat with a small, square table in the space in front of it; a few chairs. Hidden from the rest of the room, but completely vulnerable to the sky; Ryuzaki turns on the lamp on the table and it makes reflections in the darkness of the night windows. He slides into one chair, you slide into the one across from him, the shelves at your back, the void at your feet. Your left hand is clenched in anger, though you’re not sure at who.
Shimura Siguru, raised by a single mom. No particular evidence for or against him being Kira.
With your wrist pressed against the table, you can feel the coolness of the metal against your skin. Ryuzaki’s hands are pale under the yellow glow from the lamp, the small lamp that leaves the rest of the room in shadow. The hair on the back of his hands glows golden; sculptural and strange.
You can hear the door open, down the hall, in the other room. Slow, stately footsteps entering. Your presence is invisible to Watari from here, but he must see the yellow pool the lamp makes across the floor.
Hatori Arayoshi, illegitimate son of the Yotsuba President. No particular evidence for or against him being Kira.
“Ryuzaki…” you say. In the kitchen, you can hear a vacuum being started up. Ryuzaki frowns at the noise, picks at his lip distractedly and hunches over.
“Yes?”
All this time, you were trying to get close to me so I would slip up and prove I was Kira, you think, with a sudden sense of despair. And it’s still all you’re trying to do. You want to shake him. Tell him it isn’t true. You aren’t Kira and you never were. But it would make you sound less certain than you are. L is waiting for anything… convinced that you’re the only suspect he needs.
Higuchi Kyosuke, son of the President of Yotsuba Heavy Industrial. No particular evidence for or against him being Kira.
“Never mind,” you say.
“You can tell me, Light-kun,” Ryuzaki says. He’s looking right at you, wide-eyed, unblinking; what if I was Kira? you think. What would you do? But you don’t need to ask him that. You already know the answer.
“You’re right,” you say. “I’m tired. This case—seeing them all, I guess…”
“I understand,” Ryuzaki says.
“We might solve it soon,” you say.
Takahashi Eiichi, whose hobby is surfing. No particular evidence for or against him being Kira.
“I hope we do,” Ryuzaki says.
“Yeah,” you say. You fall silent. The buzz of the vacuum scrapes its way around the air; Ryuzaki taps his finger… nothing; not a single code. He’s just distressed by the noise. You want a code, something to latch onto; you want to be able to say, with sincerity, as you had done before; I know you won’t kill me.
You don’t want to die.
You think you’d do anything not to.
Kida Masahado, collects eyeglasses. No particular evidence for or against him being Kira.
“I keep thinking about everything he did to me,” you admit. You look down, away from Ryuzaki; you feel odd, vulnerable, almost as though you were making a confession. But you never will. He knows it, and you know it. “I keep thinking about everything he…”
“He did?” Ryuzaki asks. “And I thought your life hadn’t been ruined.”
“Not by you,” you say.
Mido Shingo, whose hobby is fencing. No particular evidence for or against him being Kira.
Ryuzaki stops tapping on the table. You look up, caught by his sudden stillness; he’s looking at you, carefully, particularly, like you’re a tree he wants to strip the bark from. You shouldn’t have said anything. You didn’t mean for it to be a lie; but it is, and now he knows it.
You don’t know what’s happened.
You don’t know what’s happening.
Namikawa Reiji, son of the President of the Yotsuba American division. Slight evidence against him being Kira.
“I see,” Ryuzaki says.
“If we solve the case…” you say. “Once we solve the case. It’ll be better. I guess I’m just…” you try to smile, but somehow it sticks in your throat, “nervous about everything. Once we solve the case. It’ll be better, Ryuzaki.” What is this? You’re trying for a nonchalant tone but it’s grating, it’s horrible; it seems to satisfy Ryuzaki no more than the noise of the vacuum from the other room.
“Yes, of course, Light-kun,” Ryuzaki says. Lies. Liar. He doesn’t mean a bit of it.
Yagami Light; son of the former head of the NPA Yagami Soichiro, now freelance detective. All evidence points to him being Kira.
If I were you, I’d want to kill me too.