Chapter 5
The next week continued in the same style as the first. Light spent his days at work and in classes. While in the dorm, he ignored his roommate as much as he could. They probably exchanged five words in total – if that. Light couldn’t really recall having any conversation after their little argument about typing and snoring.
Light did end up buying earplugs, though. He hid them from Ryuzaki as best he could, as if having them was admitting defeat. They, along with the arrival of his bedding and other random possessions from his old room, made for a much better night’s sleep.
He was quickly becoming friends with Ryuk at work. Misa’s irritating crush on him was growing, though he was trying his best to be aloof, and he had to reassure Rem multiple times that he wasn’t intentionally leading her on, though there was only so much he could do without being outright rude to her, which Rem had forbidden him from doing. Unless he was deluding himself, Rem was slowly starting to approve of him, and the few shifts he’d worked where Naomi Misora was present, they had amicable interactions.
He was allowed to take home baked goods that were still good but too old to sell, especially if he was the one who made them. He found that, more often than not, the sweets were missing the next time he left the room. He knew very well that his roommate was a thief, but he didn’t care enough to talk to him about it.
His classes were not challenging. He was learning a bit, but that was mostly from his own research into the subjects vaguely outlined in class. He very much hoped that only his first few classes were going to be like this, praying for them to get more difficult in later semesters. He tried not to think that, maybe, he would have been better off staying in Japan, anyway.
Light sat on his bed, undoing his shoes after his morning classes the second Thursday of the semester. Ryuzaki was busy almost all day on Thursday, Light noticed, so he allowed himself to get comfortable and luxuriate in the alone time.
His phone rang. It was his mother.
“Hello?”
“Hello, Light dear, how are you?”
He felt a throb of something unfamiliar at his mother’s voice. Homesickness? “Oh, I’m doing fine. I just finished my classes for the day.”
“Ah, excellent! Are you gonna be studying the rest of the day?”
No, he thought, I’ll be sleeping as much as I come before that bastard of a roommate comes back. “Yes. I have plenty of classes, and even though exams aren’t for a while yet, we have daily assignments and some quizzes coming up.”
It seemed all his parents ever cared about were his grades. “I’m so glad, Light. You know how worried I was, with you going away to the States for school – you know how they are there. I’m glad you’re keeping your good habits.”
“Of course, Mom,” he said politely. “I would hate to disappoint you and Dad.” Though he knew full well that he already had.
“Oh! Speaking of, there’s your father now. Oh, Soichiro, honey, it’s Light on the phone!” There was some quieter discourse on the other side of the line that sounded a lot like his mother doing her best to convince his father to have a word with him. He silently prayed that she was unsuccessful. “Here’s your father to say hello, dear.”
No luck. “Hey, Dad.”
“Light.”
It was short, gruff. Light vaguely wondered what his parents were doing up at such an odd time in Japan. Most likely his father had spent another very late night at work. Light didn’t know what to say in response to that very inviting greeting, so he tried to distract himself with inspecting his fingernails.
“Sayu tells me you got a job.”
Damn her. Light hadn’t wanted his parents to know he was wasting precious study time away from his books. “Well, I needed a bit of extra money on top of scholarships to cover textbooks. I had to take that one loan, you see, and I don’t want to graduate with too much debt.”
His father made a huffing noise. “Ah, well. I suppose you do what you must. It’s not like here, where you could have gone to To-Oh and lived at home. You’re most likely going to go into debt regardless, there in America.”
Light focused his eyes hard on his fingers. Talking to his father was difficult. He hated knowing that he’d disappointed him. There was a pressure in his sinuses behind his eyes and nose, so he took a deep breath to try and relax. “I’m doing what I can. This really is a great academic program here, though. I’m learning a lot.”
“Well, that’s all very well. I do hope you can find a way to put that to good use, once you’re done with your school there.” That implied so much. His father did not, in fact, see it as all well. Light knew that. He also caught his father’s implication that he was only in America for the duration of his higher education, probably expecting him to return to Japan. “You know, we look for excellent academic standards from accredited institutions when we hire new employees on the force.”
It seems his father still hadn’t realized that Light had no intention of joining the Japanese police. Light did not protest, fearing what he might hear in response. “I understand, Dad.” That was the safe response.
“I noticed that Sayu shipped your things off. You left an awful lot here, Light, are you planning on paying us to use that room as storage?”
Light’s heard hammered in his chest. He didn’t know that his parents wouldn’t want him to keep any of his things at home anymore. Were they not expecting him to come home over the summers? Were they no longer allowing him to stay in his own house? Was he being kicked out?
He was furious with himself when he felt that sinus pressure returning. “I’ll have Sayu send the rest over. I’m sorry, Dad.” He would not cry. He couldn’t.
“Goodbye, son.”
The line disconnected. Light swore to himself and stood, throwing his phone back onto the bed furiously. He clutched at his hair and pulled until he felt his scalp ache; had he really ruined his relationship with his father permanently? As it was, he wasn’t even welcome to keep a couple of books at home anymore. He felt betrayed by the tears that welled in his eyes.
He spun around the room, looking furiously for something to do, some way to distract himself from his thoughts. He shoved his shoes back onto his feet and swung his wardrobe door open, searching for his jacket. The door met some resistance in the shape of a stack of paper that should have been on Ryuzaki’s side of the dorm. Being dangerously close to Light’s wardrobe was reason enough for Light’s next action.
With a harsh grunt, Light kicked the pile over with a sharp swing of his foot. Papers went flying everywhere on Ryuzaki’s side of the room. At least the mess is just on your side, now, he thought venomously. That’ll teach you to put anything too close to my stuff.
He stormed out of his dorm to find somewhere to blow off steam.
~
L was not having a good day.
It was sunny, which was odd for Washington State, so L wasn’t expecting to have to squint all day. That alone was making his head ache. He’d also run out of his favorite Swiss chocolate brand, and had yet to find any store nearby that carried them, so he would have to get Watari to order more as soon as possible.
There was a student in his calculus-based physics class who was chewing on a piece of gum. He was clear across the room, but the constant open-mouthed smacking made L picture the saliva sloshing around in his mouth quite against his will. He wanted to shield his ears from the noise, but of course he would look rather silly doing that. To try and cope, he closed his eyes, clenched his jaw, and tapped out a steady rhythm with his teeth, trying to drown out the noise around him.
This almost worked, but the professor approached L’s desk while his eyes were closed and rapped quickly on the surface with his pointer stick. “Pay attention. Far too early in the semester to be sleeping in class. It would almost be more respectful not to show up.”
L’s eyes shot open. At least at the interruption, that kid across the room had stopped smacking.
He spent the rest of the class period (which was two hours long, unfortunately) staring straight ahead at the whiteboard, eyes following every errant mark that the professor forgot to erase and analyzing the tendencies of his handwriting. It was almost, but not quite, enough to distract him from the cacophony of smacking, breathing, pen clicking, and knuckle cracking.
He counted the seconds until class was dismissed. Thankful that it was his last class of the day, and that it was nearing evening time, he trudged back to his dorm. The walk made his back ache (he wasn’t used to carrying a bag, and he was sure his slouched posture didn’t help either) and by the time he got to the residential side of campus, he was just about ready to collapse.
When L got to the door, he quickly calculated the probability that Light Yagami was currently in the dorm. It was an eighty-seven percent probability. If he was, L would put his bag down and stand in the shower until the scorching heat made him focus more on the burning of his skin than the throbbing of his head. If he wasn’t, then he would sit on his bed and rest his weary eyes.
At first, he felt relief to see that Light’s side of the room was empty. However, once he made his way to his bed, he saw the state of the floor, and panic began to swell in him.
Before he left, L had printed out several sheets of information (in the Russian language, which he was fairly certain Light didn’t know, because they contained confidential information) pertaining to a series of cases which he believed to be linked and was working on convincing Watari of the credibility of studying it. He would not be able to investigate in person, but he was certain one of his successors would be of help.
He had those papers neatly stacked on the floor next to his laptop charger. Beside it was a loose-leaf copy of a textbook he had bought from the university bookstore (he was thankful he was rich, because if he was an average college student who had to purchase an $120 copy of a textbook that wasn’t even bound, he might have committed several infractions). He also had his calculus and physics homework in their respective piles nearby.
In short, L’s side of the room was organized chaos. Or, at least, it was supposed to be. Now, it was just chaos.
All of his papers had been knocked out of their piles as if kicked. He saw the barest trace of a footprint that all but confirmed that Light had scattered his papers across the room. Some of the pages had wrinkled, and some of them had collided with a previously neat stack of post-it notes. It was a mess.
L was immediately overwhelmed. His side of the room was an absolute mess. Nothing was where he put it last. There was a fly buzzing somewhere off to his left. He heard stomping from the floor above him. His head was pounding, stabbing, throbbing, burning. The sunlight slipping through the blinds burned his eyes – he felt like he could practically feel his retinas melting, perhaps detaching, perhaps shriveling up to be swallowed by the aqueous humor.
He let out a pathetic whimper at all the overwhelming stimuli. He had never had a migraine come onto him so quickly. He didn’t even have time to let Watari know of his condition before his eyes shut of their own accord and he collapsed onto his bed, covering his head with his blanket. He left the rest of his body uncovered because he was suddenly too hot to withstand it.
He felt fluid on his face but couldn’t tell if it was tears or sweat or both.
~
Light had gone for a run until his thighs burned and he could hardly breath anymore. That had almost worked to make him forget the conversation with his father; at the very least, it made him think of something other than the dread he felt. He had texted Sayu to call him when it was convenient, but she must have been asleep, because she hadn’t read the message yet. He regretted sending it some hours later, because he no longer wished to discuss what had happened.
He was warm and exhausted by the time he returned to his dorm. He was surprised to find the door wasn’t locked, prepared to scold Ryuzaki for being so reckless, when he saw something that surprised him.
Ryuzaki was curled in on himself as tightly as he could, his fists clenched around the covers that wrapped about his head. He wondered for a brief second if he was trying to suffocate himself. He stood in the doorway in shock.
“Please,” came an impossibly soft voice muffled by layers of comforter, “close the door, please.”
Light wasn’t sure what he was hearing. “What?”
“Please,” he begged, lifting the blanket the slightest bit to let some noise through, “the light hurts.”
Without thinking, Light shrugged and slammed the door. He had gotten to the point that he just wanted to be an inconvenience to Ryuzaki, who couldn’t even be bothered to lock the door after himself, after all.
He stopped when a pained whimper came from Ryuzaki’s direction. He looked to see the man practically writhing in the bed, his feet curling as if in absolute agony.
“What’s… what’s wrong?” He was not comfortable with this sudden change in his roommate’s behavior.
There was a long silence before Ryuzaki managed, “Migraine.”
“Oh,” Light said, at a loss for words. He was not familiar with migraines, himself, and seeing Ryuzaki in this state, he was glad for it.
Light decided he had had enough bothering him today, so he callously shrugged off his roommate’s state. It was not as easy as he wanted it to be, but he schooled his expression and sat down at his desk, cracking open his laptop to get to work on his latest plot idea.
He had barely typed out three words when, out of his periphery, he saw Ryuzaki’s pale arms raise in his direction. He looked like a peasant pleading to a merciless god. The mental image almost made him smile. “Please, Light, it’s so loud.”
“What, is my typing too loud?” he almost laughed.
“Please, you are being cruel.” It sounded so painful for him to say. Light could swear he heard a choking sob.
He must have really been in pain. Light had either not noticed or not cared, but now that he actually, properly looked at Ryuzaki, he saw how pitiful he was. Something struck him in his chest, some unknown emotion. Pity? He wasn’t sure. He didn’t register that he was subconsciously rubbing his wrist brace.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” he said, surprised by the sincerity in his voice. “Is there anything I can do?”
“Kill me,” came out of the blankets, and this time, there was definitely a cry in his voice.
Why did it hurt him to see his roommate like this? He was not usually so empathetic. “Come now, Ryuzaki. It – it’s not that bad, is it?”
“Kill me now, please,” he begged. “Just make it quick.”
Light grimaced looking at him. He did not like this feeling. He repeated, “Is there anything I can do for you, Ryuzaki?”
A whimper answered him. Ryuzaki shifted his fists so that he was pressing on his forehead with considerable pressure. Light almost stood up to stop the man when he started pounding on his head, but he evidently realized rather quickly that it wasn’t helping, because he did not continue beyond the second strike. “Nothing can help me now.”
Light half suspected that Ryuzaki was just being dramatic. He did not like the feeling in his chest, so he got into his bed, turned his phone brightness down to match the darkness in the room, and tried to distract himself.
He wasn’t sure when the whimpering from the other side of the room finally stopped, but at a certain point, Ryuzaki’s breathing evened out and relaxed. Light found himself relaxing, too.