Valerie's Writings

Author’s note: This story follows the events in the anime almost exactly. This is why some of the dialogue is sort of glossed over rather than full exposition.

It was one of the oddest moments of my life. The way that guy could sit in this room of uniforms and downturned heads and pens scratching against examination papers, in his dusty old jeans and a T-shirt, with his knees up against his chest like some street bum huddling in the cold, his shoeless toes wriggling beneath the desk. Just the sight of him in the exam hall amidst all the others might have been odd enough to be memorable.

But that hadn’t been all: it was the first time in my life, a sequence of exams after exams, that I had looked up from my paper and my desk, in the middle of the heavy silence broken only by rustling papers and muffled coughs, to see a face so startling, so strange, staring straight back at me with its lifted eyes, meeting mine and refusing to stray away despite the rows of desks. And those were not just any eyes staring back at me—wide eyes that seemed to catch all the light in the room, that didn’t seem to ever blink.

Not that I really gave it much thought at the time.

But it was strange. Enough to stand out in my mind. Come exam time, it seemed no one wanted to make eye contact any more—not even close friends amongst themselves—and eyes were constantly averted; the hush and the downcast glances only ended once the doors opened, students breathed a huge sigh of relief and, chattering excitedly about all the most “impossible” questions, found each other out in the hallways. In the hours before that tension-shattering moment, it was as if just the act of looking up at someone, meeting another’s gaze, would be enough to spill out one’s innermost secrets and fears to everyone around you, rendering one paralyzed and impotent before the single hour that must be the most important moment of their lives yet.

Myself being a loner, I’ve never worried about such a thing happening to me; especially since I’ve never walked into an exam with any kind of fear, myself. But anyone could see the shaky, watery anxiety in the eyes of these kids, in every stiff movement of the crowd, in the way everyone was unusually quiet; you could see that kind of fear 10 minutes, 20 minutes, even several hours from the exam, and during it, and after it. Even as they gather in little groups in the hallways, patting each other on the back and offering weak, false wishes of good fortune, you can see that the last thing any of those people wants is to see their friend actually get a score better than theirs and enter a prestigious university they can’t.

And it was the same in the auditorium. In all the hundreds of students seated inside here, writing away, only the incurably feeble-minded don’t have that look of wild, self-centered desperation about them; some of these clueless ones might even loll back in their seats during the exam, staring dumbly about the room as if the answers might be printed on the ceiling.

But that was not the look I saw now. Not on this one. A few rows back, the kid with the freaky eyes was staring directly at me—definitely not just in my direction, but at me—and there was a thing in his look that told me he’d seen my face before, that he knew me and wanted something from me. Even in the few seconds I had turned my head back to look, I could tell he was one of the freakiest students I had ever seen: his eyes were sunken and wide and seemed carved out due to the huge, heavy shadows underneath, his skin had the white, starchy quality of a cobweb, and his posture was so slouched I couldn’t make out a neck on him. He made no movements. His eyes did not even blink. His pencil was grasped loosely around its middle, his hand looking limp and unwieldy. But like me, he did not seem to be in the same wild rush of the others to finish the exam.

Gradually, as my mind began to wander from the exam, his stare came to mind again. I wondered if I had ever seen that guy before. It was affecting me too much for it to be ostensible that he was just some unknown stranger. His appearance didn’t seem familiar, but I felt something in the way he had looked at me so intently. Almost as if he’d been saying with his eyes, “So, I’ve found you.”

Even if it didn’t remain constantly on my mind, there was something in that stare that had the power to haunt me, nag at my thoughts, for a long time after I’d left the examination hall. And, in my experience, my intuition has very rarely missed the mark.

-

It was at the entrance ceremony, several months later, that my questions were answered. For the most part, anyway.

In front of that great crowd of some of the nation’s brightest, myself selected as the top student among all the freshmen of Toudai, I admit I was bit caught up in the glamour of the moment. Death Note or no, I was still aware, somewhere in the back of my mind, that entering Toudai would inevitably become one of those significant moments in my life, maybe when I looked back on it one day. Even if my mind was on other matters, to the public I would finally be recognized as an adult, as a university student; it was a day I had imagined for many years. On a day like this, I wasn’t expecting any danger connected with the Death Note to follow me. I suppose I had let my guard down.

In other words, it was just the right moment for a longtime enemy of mine to make his attack.

When “Ryuuga Hideki” was called up to stand beside me on the podium, I felt little, if any, apprehension. My concentration was focused on keeping myself collected in front of the audience. Certainly the appearance of this other, supposed “top student” was quite contrary to my imagination. Slouching next to me in his old blue jeans and crumpled sweater, he was clearly dressed inappropriately – probably a deliberate choice of his, as if to make some mysterious point – and his odd mannerisms confirmed that he was more than a little eccentric. But after all, he was only there to read out the ceremonial address. It wasn’t any of my business.

Of course, I did recognize him as that haunting face from the exam room—I wouldn’t have forgotten something like that—but it was nothing more to me at the moment than a meaningless coincidence.

The bastard had caught me off guard, all right. As soon as the applause ended and we were allowed to be seated once again, “Ryuuga” followed me off the stage. I heard his sneakers squeaking on the floor behind me. I suspected nothing. Inside, I was prepared for a drawn-out, uneventful two hours of pointless ceremony. My mind was almost already shut off to the outside world.

It was then, walking to our seats in the front row, that he spoke to me. I hadn’t noticed before when he had been reading out the address, but now that he was speaking to me it was immediately obvious how strange his voice was: it was low and quiet and mumbling, and barely ever changed in tone or pitch. It made him sound like he was used to furtively passing messages around in a whisper, or perhaps he had just woken from sleep. The voice definitely fitted the appearance.

He was to the point. In a few quick moments, he had emptied the contents of his mind, making a sort of speech I’m sure he had rehearsed, by the sound of it. He didn’t spare a second of hesitation or uncertainty in telling me, in his low rumbling voice, that he knew who I was and who my father was. He commented, noticeably, that I had a sense of justice and sharp deductive skills just like my father’s.

“You are aspiring to enter the police forces yourself,” he said, going on without waiting for any response from me, “and your assistance in some cases has already led to several convictions. With such a strong passion for justice, I believe maybe…”

Justice.

That was what set me on edge. I could only guess how he had known what he did about me, as well as his motive for giving such a compliment. But this sounded especially out of place – justice? Who ever talked about justice just like that? Only my closest friends could presume to know enough about me to tell me I had a “strong passion for justice.” Who was this?

He continued without any pause. The words were slipping off his tongue with a confidence and skill that seemed professional. His eyes never left my face. My pulse was starting to rise; I felt threatened, almost incomprehensibly. And just seconds ago I had believed this guy was just some clueless nerd with hygiene issues.

Could he be an acquaintance of my father’s? It was likely.

“There is some important information that I thought I should entrust you with,” he was telling me now. We were seated again, him on my left and sitting with his knees against his chin like earlier, his shoes under his chair and his bare toes sticking out, looking as uncivilized and eccentric as ever. His wide eyes were turned on me, and in that gaze I could feel the same intensity as before. Only it seemed threatening now that he was closer.

I was leaning back slightly in my seat, looking dully towards the front of the auditorium and pretending not to be paying him any attention. In fact I was listening to him, carefully, but it was my conscious intention to make him feel ignored; from all it seemed he knew about me, whoever he was, he had to be a bit of a stalker, and I certainly didn’t want him to think we would be friends.

It didn’t take long for this view to change, as I began to recognize the purpose behind his words. I began to wish I was sitting anywhere but here, in this seat, inseparable from this new, strange threat. Soon even the seemingly innocent, quiet words he spoke sounded deafening in my ears, and I clung on to every sound he made with a crushing urgency.

He was leaning towards me just slightly now, still speaking very quietly, but with a focused intensity that couldn’t be called normal.

“I thought you ought to know, since it’s related to the Kira investigation.”

Warning blared in my mind at the sound of those last words, with the familiar accompanying rush of hot blood to my arms and my chest. Just the mention of Kira made me draw my breath in. I looked at him out of the corners of my eyes.

“As long as you can promise not to speak of this to anyone,” he went on, “I can pass this information to you.”

My heart was pounding now.

He has a secret. About you, Kira.

He knows.

Will you promise not to tell anyone?

I turned my head slightly to look at him, trying not to seem too interested. His unblinking, flashbulb eyes were not pleasant to look at, but there was something so plain and honest about the way he was looking at me, like only the brain of a simpleton could be contained inside, that I couldn’t help but feel relieved. It had only been a false alarm, definitely. He was just some weak-shouldered, slouching, unhygienic, nerd of a freshman who was trying too hard either to impress me or to intimidate me, or something. Whatever it was, I could see right through it. The fool!

Finally, I nodded and turned away from him, feeling smug around this dubious mess of a top student. “Yeah, sure. I won’t tell anyone.” I gave an inviting smile, as if I was only eager to catch up on the latest rumours. “What is it?”

For a long moment, he didn’t say anything. I remember feeling disappointed. It was completely silent. It seemed he was thinking.

I wanted to hear what this “secret” of his was, I was desperately curious now. Even if it was, in all likelihood, something obvious or ridiculous, I wanted to hear it. But I knew it wasn’t going to be obvious – it couldn’t be. There was something about this guy that wasn’t… normal. Logically, I knew for him to have followed in my footsteps, acing all the exams, besting all the other five hundred or so students in this hall, he couldn’t be as clueless and simple as he appeared. This knowledge, coupled with his freakish intensity, made my heart drum loudly with impatient curiosity—and a creeping dread.

Then, before I could think of much else, he had riveted his saucer bowl-eyes on me, and he had stretched his back even further so that he could lean towards me from his chair. I resisted the urge to break out of my straight-backed posture and look at him.

“I am L,” he said.

It slipped out of his mouth so smoothly and quietly, I had to backtrack through my memory and replay the sound of the utterance to grasp the meaning behind what he had said.

I’m L.

L.

He’s L!

Impossible. Just take a look at that braindead stare!

He’s L. Your greatest enemy.

It was natural to have some surprise, of course, but this wasn’t natural. I couldn’t speak, my mind was working far too hard, I could just barely keep myself from panting and breaking out in a sweat. What was the correct response? What was the expected response? Meanwhile, the bastard was watching me, with wide, stubborn eyes, not making a sound. I thought I saw a smirk on his face.

I had not prepared for this moment. For L to appear at my entrance ceremony, remove his sneakers and waggle his toes at me, and then voluntarily reveal himself to me. Not that, in any case, he could possibly know the person sitting beside him was the famed Kira himself. Even for L, it was impossible that he could have reached that conclusion already.

And this couldn’t be the real L. It couldn’t be. L wasn’t impulsive. He was the most guarded, most secretive, paranoid bastard there was out there! He’d never shown his face publicly throughout his entire career! He was a genius. A mastermind. A veteran detective with about a dozen “unsolvable” cases under his belt. He wasn’t a single bit like this mess in front of me.

But, I thought frantically, it didn’t matter whether he was the real L or not. Regardless, L was behind this in some way. There was no way this could be a random coincidence. I wouldn’t accept that. It was a fact: L was connected. L had cornered me.

So, you’re attacking me directly, now?

I felt rage boil inside me. He couldn’t have gotten this far: that meant all my precautions and disguises had completely failed to shake him off!

No. I had to stay cool; I was on the defensive now. However impossible it seemed, L had found me, somehow. But right now that didn’t matter. To the eyes of the public, of everyone in this ceremony hall—and even L himself—I was just Yagami Light, the son of the police chief and a brilliant new student at Toudai. I might’ve been a suspect before, but it seemed the investigation had mostly found me clear. I just had to keep up the act; it wasn’t too difficult of a part to play. If I just stayed cool, I would be fine.

Then, why could I feel the sweat dampening the collar of my suit, breaking out under my hair, spreading across my palms? Why had the shiver rippled up my spine as he’d told me who he was? Why was my heart pounding like I’d already been caught?

Because you’ve found the bastard you’ve been looking for all this time! a voice snarled. The one that deserves to die the most, more than any criminal in the world. The one who is targetting your very life!

L was staring at me, innocent flashbulb eyes.

Kira, why don’t you kill me?

I dare you.

I wanted nothing more than to do it, to pluck him like a louse from my back and be rid of him forever, to see him dead whether or not he was real; but I knew that was impossible now. I had to put away those thoughts. Later, I could kill him. And it would all be over. Now I was just Yagami Light.

I didn’t want to turn away from the front, where I’d been staring all this time under the pretense of diligently watching the uniformed speakers above us. But I couldn’t avoid his eyes any longer. With immense effort, I managed to turn my head and look at him. My expression was deliberately smooth and neutral, neither smiling nor angry.

“Well,” I said in a fake, strained voice, my eyes meeting his eyes, “if you truly are who you say, then you are a person who I respect and admire greatly.”

To my immense relief, he seemed satisfied with my response; his slouch lessened slightly, his lips were pursed. “Thanks,” he mumbled.

I swallowed, discreet.

I was watching him, trying to pick out any clues in his physical appearance that might help. From the wild black bush of hair, to the wrinkled, worn-looking jeans and his untied, dirty sneakers under the seat, every detail about him showed a disregard for cleanliness and formality, but nothing more.

“You’re wondering why I exposed my identity to you,” he said matter-of-factly, staring directly into my eyes. “I did it because I thought you might be able to aid our investigation.”

We watched each other mutually for a while longer until he broke the eye contact. I felt instant relief; he turned away, putting a finger to his mouth like a child. I was safe. L would die.

And, all of sudden, it was quiet and he left me alone. Thoughts tumbled and raced through my mind, but we didn’t speak again until the speeches had all ended, and it was only to say goodbye.