Chapter 4
“You should really be asleep right now, Sayu,” Light scolded as he answered his sister’s phone call.
It was his first day of classes. Thursdays for him ended in the early afternoon, which would be early the next morning in Japan. He had sent Sayu his schedule once he got it solidified; he thought she just wanted to know out of curiosity. He was wrong.
“I just woke up! I went to bed early so I could call you right after your class. I set an alarm.”
He shook his head as if she could see it. He hadn’t even made it back to the dorm yet. “You miss me that much, huh?”
“Pfft, no. It’s just so boring here. And mom’s not as good at math as you are. She’s saying she’ll need to hire a tutor for me. Can you believe it? A tutor??”
“Well, now I feel slighted,” Light laughed. “They should have been paying me this whole time.”
“Oh, come on, you were compensated with the pleasure of my company. Anyway, enough about me. How are classes? How’s your job? Living alone? Have you made friends yet?”
“You’ve been hanging around mom too much, Sayu,” he said affectionately. “One question at a time, please?” He had to shuffle his phone and his bag in his hands so he could fish through his jacket pocket for his keys once he reached his dorm. He prayed that Ryuzaki wasn’t in, but there wasn’t much he could do if he was. Light was tired, damnit, he wasn’t going to let his discomfort with his roommate stop him from laying on his bed after a long day. And it was only 2 o’clock.
“Okay, fine, if you wanna be like that. How’s classes?”
He swung the door opened and noticed that Ryuzaki was, in fact, sitting on his bed, tapping intently at his keyboard. Light nodded curtly to him as he passed. Ryuzaki barely spared him a glance, which he was more than fine with.
He told her about his classes of the day in as much detail as he could; but quite honestly, he was pretty overwhelmed with his new routine.
Light said down on his bed, crossing his legs over one another and swinging his foot freely. He fumbled with the headphones he had beside his bed and connected them so that he could rest his arms behind his head.
“Did you just lay down? I heard some crunching. Mattress protector?”
“Yeah.” Sayu was pretty smart – she knew her brother well, and she was quite capable of learning what she was interested in. Unfortunately for her grades, she had little interest in math and science. “It’s probably riddled with bedbugs and I don’t really want to become a feast.”
“I sent your stuff off a couple days ago. I think it should be there next week? Maybe a week and a half?”
“Thanks, I really appreciate it. This travel pillow is giving me a stiff neck.”
“Cheapskate, why don’t you just buy another pillow? It couldn’t hurt to have two.”
“I don’t need two, that’s why. I can wait until the packages get here.”
“Ugh, fine, have it your way and get arthritis.” Light didn’t bother telling her that wasn’t how it worked. “Anyway. Onto the next thing. You got a job?”
“Yeah, at this local bakery. Seems pretty fun.”
“Any cute guys?”
Sayu was confident that Light was gay. For his part, he wasn’t entirely sure what gave her that impression, but since he wasn’t exactly attracted to girls, he didn’t bother denying it. “Hell no. There’s this stoner guy, Ryuk, who’s absolutely ridiculous. He’s kinda funny, though, so I can try to ignore the smell.” He could almost hear Sayu wrinkling her nose.
“Gross. And what about your dorm? Are you lonely or homesick?”
“Well, actually,” Light glanced to Ryuzaki, started to see him staring in his direction with his wide black eyes. “I have a roommate.”
“Oh! The weird cake guy?”
“Yeah, Ryuzaki.” Light was speaking in Japanese, as he always did to his family, so he was sure that Ryuzaki could not understand him. He doubted that, if all of his family was white except for his grandfather, he knew much of the language. Ryuzaki glanced back down to his laptop screen when he heard his name, but that was probably the only word he could recognize. “He showed up after all.”
“You don’t sound happy about it.”
“I’m not,” he said honestly. “He’s messy, and pushy, and he’s just kind of weird.”
“Oh, well, so are you, Light. He’s not there right now, is he? He can’t hear you?”
“No, he is.”
“But, Light! You can’t say that kind of stuff in front of him!”
“Don’t worry, he can’t understand me.”
“He’s not Japanese? With a name like Ryuzaki –“
“He’s a white guy,” Light laughed. “Has some distant Japanese relative or something.” He didn’t want to have Sayu think he paid too much attention to his roommate, because she would definitely read into it, so he kept it vague on purpose. He recounted to her the story of his silence over the summer, which he had vented to Sayu about already, and gave her a brief overview of how their first real interaction went.
“Oh, that is weird.”
“Yeah.”
“Well, even if he’s weird, be nice, okay?”
“Oh, you know me, I’m always nice.”
“You’re an asshole, Light. Don’t think I don’t remember how much you hated Hayato last year.” Light frowned at the reminder of the boy who’d developed a crush on his sister. He’d spent much of that year intimidating him into staying away from her. His little sister was too young to be dating.
“Hey, watch your language,” he scolded half-heartedly.
They talked until Sayu had to get ready for school. “Bye, Light, keep an eye out for L-loyd for me!" His mood was good after their conversation; talking to his sister always cheered him up, unless they were arguing, and even then, at least it was fun.
Light settled into his bed further after grabbing his laptop and getting some writing done. He really should have given a second thought to whether Ryuzaki knew Japanese.
~
L’s coursework was a breeze. He could do differential equations in his head; it was really no bother to him to finish the complex calculus problems the professors assigned for homework. He really wished his classes were more challenging; if they were, he could ignore his roommate and the complexities he brought more completely.
Light was currently at work. It was easy for L to figure out his schedule. He could tell that in the mornings, when he left without his bag, he was heading to work and would be gone for at least five hours. As such, L took advantage of this time to catch up on cases and coordinate with Watari and the rest of the Whammy house.
The laptop screen currently showed Watari’s face. “I trust you have been getting some sleep, Ryuzaki,” the man said. In case anybody was passing by and could overhear, they were not to use ‘real’ names.
“As much as I usually do, at any rate,” he replied, typing away at the other open page, which was a message to the German government pertaining to a recent string of kidnappings. “I have grown bored. There are not enough cases coming to me.”
“I’ve got Mello and Near doing most of them,” Watari said as if that would make L feel better. “You haven’t had any migraines yet?”
“You would know if I had.” L was never one to keep his suffering private. He complained to Watari over the slightest inconvenience.
Watari gave him a brief rundown of the goings-on of the Whammy house and it seemed that not much was amiss. The successors were basking in the opportunity to prove themselves to L and to the world.
Then, Watari shifted the topic of conversation back to L’s situation. “I performed the background check you requested on your roommate, Light Yagami,” he announced. L had asked for all the information Watari could find. “He is the son of a Japanese police chief, Soichiro Yagami and his wife Sachiko. He has a younger sister, Sayu. He graduated top of his class and assisted his father in cases during his youth –“
“Enough about the roommate, Watari,” L sighed. “He’s enough of a headache with the little I already know of him.”
Watari raised an eyebrow. “Is he not..?”
Nobody but Watari and L knew that, on his right arm, he had a distinctive Japanese character as his soulmark. It had not taken either of them long to deduce that, with very little margin for error, there was a ninety-three percent chance that L’s roommate is the one his soulmark describes. To everyone else, L was one of the ten percent of the population that did not have a soulmark (not that many had ever had the opportunity to ask).
“For all intents and purposes, no,” L said spitefully. “I have no soulmate.”
Watari sighed. “What happened?” He sounded resigned, as if he knew this was going to happen. L didn’t notice the tone and launched into a detailed description of their short interactions.
After his story, his mentor was quiet for a length of time. “Do you not understand my frustration?”
“I understand,” he said slowly, “but I also understand Yagami’s actions, as you’ve described them.”
“You do?” L was surprised. He could not begin to comprehend what he had done to warrant such disrespect from his roommate. “He has been incredibly rude.”
“Yes, but you have, too.” At L’s defensively narrowed eyes, he added, “Unintentionally.”
“How?”
“He seemed… hurt that you did not respond to him during the summer.”
“But I explained why,” L nearly whined. “Is that not enough?”
Watari folded his hands together and closed his eyes patiently. “Your unwillingness to reply must have caused him a great deal of anxiety and uncertainty in the months leading up to the start of term. How would you feel, do you think, if you could not know what your future would hold just because someone didn’t want to tell you?”
L did not respond immediately to this. He did not know what to say because Watari made a non-zero amount of sense and that made L uncomfortable. L did not like to regret his actions. Instead, he elaborated more on what it was like to live with, in his own unprofessional diagnosis, a self-obsessed narcissist.
“He has all but drawn a line in tape between the two halves of the room. He is treating me like a child. If my laptop charger’s cord is so much as approaching his side of the room, he’ll shove it away with his foot like it disgusts him. He will do the same for any books or papers. He’s so passive aggressive, it’s infuriating. I’ve given up trying to talk to him, and if I so much as look at him he glares at me.” He went quiet for a moment. “I really tried, Watari. I tried to be friendly. Did I really go so wrong?”
His mentor sighed again. He did that a lot when talking with L. “Some people take offense very deeply, Ryuzaki,” he explained. “And it seems he relies on first impressions. He saw your first impression as rude. So, in response, he is being rude in kind.”
“Perhaps he is just rude, anyway? My slights toward him were unintentional, yet he is intentionally…mean.” The words sounded so childish leaving his mouth.
“It is… a possibility.”
“He doesn’t know that I can speak Japanese. I overheard him on the phone, saying such mean things about his ‘weird roommate’ to his family.” L looked down. “There is no hope, then. I was a fool to think anything would come of this.” He rubbed his arm.
“I told you, my boy, your line of work is not conducive to romance. Perhaps it is better this way.”
L closed his eyes. He was not going to let the emotion he felt betray himself to his mentor. “You’re probably right, Watari. He is not worth the trouble. I should focus more on the cases you send me.”
“You should focus on relaxing and sleeping,” he reprimanded. “And be sure to call me if you feel a migraine coming on.”
“Yes, Watari.”
“Please try to take care of yourself,” he said sincerely. “Enjoy the break. Request a change of rooms if you must – most importantly, though, sleep and eat well. I expect to see you ten pounds heavier next time we meet.”
“I will do my best.” L was exhausted from feeling so intently. He was hardly ever mad, but Light Yagami made him furious, and it took great effort to keep himself collected. “I will speak to you soon.”
He signed off and rubbed his eyes, reaching for a cookie from the package on his bed. The store-bought sweets weren’t as good here, which lead to L eating more and more of them to satiate himself. He needed to find another case to distract him.
~
Light had a long day. He had woken early to head to work, then had his third day of classes. Thankfully, it was a Friday, so he had a weekend’s worth of sleep to look forward to. He used that thought to motivate him not to hang his head low as he trudged back to his dorm after his late afternoon class.
He ignored Ryuzaki as he let himself into the dorm, as usual. He knew Ryuzaki was furtively watching him, he could feel the penetrating eyes, but that was even more reason to ignore him. He didn’t want Ryuzaki thinking eye contact was an invitation to start conversation.
He slumped down onto his bed and pulled out his phone, aimlessly checking his notifications and scanning the news headlines before reading into his bag and pulling out the sandwich he had grabbed from the cafeteria on his way back.
Biting into it, Light cringed at how the over-soft bread stuck to the roof of his mouth. He couldn’t wait until he had enough money to buy a refrigerator and microwave and make his own dinners.
He watched a bit of television on his laptop while he ate, the volume low enough that it shouldn’t bother Ryuzaki. This wasn’t out of consideration for the man; it was mostly because he didn’t want to be bothered with turning it down later, should it prove to be an issue. Besides, Light had very good hearing.
Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed Ryuzaki pull himself out of his crouched position on the bed, crawl onto the floor, and dig under the bed for a small pile of clothes. It looked like the same combination of faded jeans and an old t-shirt that he always wore.
He’s like some weird cartoon character, Light thought with some amusement. And here I thought he was just wearing the same clothes for three days straight. Part of him felt better knowing that his roommate wasn’t just festering in days-old clothes.
Ryuzaki went into the bathroom silently. Light heard the water running and turned the volume of his laptop up a bit higher to hear over the running water.
The shower did not last long. Light turned the volume back down, and Ryuzaki emerged, fully dressed but damp, with dripping wet hair. He hadn’t even dried it with a towel, it seemed. He crawled back into his bed, scrunched himself into the far corner, and got back on his laptop. It struck Light very much like he was making himself as small as possible.
Hours passed in silence. After he ate, he began working on some outlining of a short story he’d thought up the other day at work. He was at it until he had to squint at the screen to see the words clearly. It was at this point that he saw that it was late at night, finally an acceptable time to get some sleep.
Putting his laptop up to charge, Light situated himself into bed. His blanket was too thin and his travel pillow – well, it was a travel pillow. It was hard to fall asleep. But, most annoying of all, was the incessant clack, clink, click of quick fingers against a very bubbly keyboard across the room.
He flipped over quickly and glared at Ryuzaki, who noticed immediately. “Don’t you ever sleep?” he demanded irritably.
Ryuzaki looked back down at his screen and typed some more. “Not if I can avoid it.”
“Well, can you at least not type so loud? Some of us need the rest.” He hoped his voice adequately conveyed the venom he felt in his mind.
Ryuzaki cut him a sharp glance. His face held an almost-expression of annoyance and a single eyebrow almost-imperceptibly raised as he replied, “I will, if you promise not to snore so loudly.”
Taken aback, Light sputtered, “I don’t – I don’t snore!”
“And I don’t type loudly.” He clacked at the keyboard a bit more as if to prove his point. It grated at Light’s ears. “Buy earplugs if you must. And, if not, it sucks to be you, then.”
Fury bubbled up inside Light and incubated for what felt like hours. At some point, though, he must have fallen asleep, because he began to dream about strangling a noisy court stenographer at his own murder trial. He always did have the most interesting dreams.