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Yagami Light was bored, but not in the typical sense of disinterest. Light cared for various things: school, his parents, his sister, morality, justice. The list goes on. The thing is, life was monotonous.
Every day, Light suffered the same idiotic ramblings of his peers. Did you hear that Aiko-chan is dating Haruto? I got so drunk at that party last night! Hey, Yagami-kun, do you have the answers to the homework?
It wasn’t limited to school. Wherever Light went, he was tortured with the knowledge of his superiority. These people wasted their time gossiping and chatting about nonsense, living out their immoral lives without a care in the world.
Maybe life was more than monotonous. It was torturous until Light saw the Death Note.
He brushed it off as chain mail. Idiots loved those things. Forward this email, or you’ll be subjected to Reiko Kashima’s curse. Light scoffed but shoved the book into his school bag anyway. The black cover stained his hands. Call it morbid curiosity.
At his desk, Light flipped through the blank pages, fascinated and disgusted at the effort in creating the prank. He pushed it into his drawer, fighting the itch in his hands.
Light scribbled a few math problems into his workbook, glancing from his neat handwriting to the TV on his side table. He huffed and grabbed the remote. Morbid curiosity.
The news channel broadcasted the face of Otoharada Kurou, an older man hijacking a daycare. Light scowled as glee flooded his body. What depravity.
In his seventeen years of life, he has heard several arguments against the death penalty but disagreed with all of them. Men like Otoharada deserve to die. When activists say it’s immoral to kill another human being, he nearly laughs. Is it not the pinnacle of morality to remove filth from this earth? The justice system exists to rid Japan of depraved criminals. He has never felt the urge to defend them.
Light scribbled Otoharada’s name, keeping his face in mind like the notebook said. He looked at his watch, noting the seconds ticking by. Forty seconds. In forty seconds, the world would be free of Otoharada.
Thirty-five seconds passed, and nothing happened. Light flushed. He couldn’t believe himself, falling victim to a stupid prank like a common fool, too stuck in the emotions of it all. He shook his head, returning to his math problems.
The reporter gasped. Light swiveled, jumping from his chair to stare at the TV in horror. Otoharada died. Light killed him. Thickness welled in his throat, black like the ink staining Otoharada’s name on the Death Note’s page. Yagami Light killed a man. He wanted to vomit.
When Light picked up his pencil, his hands shook furiously. The reporter continued in the background, her words rattling between his ears. He couldn’t believe it worked. Was he a murderer?
He ran his fingers along the Death Note’s cover, sliding it inside his desk drawer. For the first time, Yagami Light was no longer bored.
Light gripped his cram school books under his arm, slinking into the bright 7-Eleven. On his walk home, he watched the degeneracy unfold around him like clockwork. Darkness brought out the wicked, and he began believing the creatures of the night in horror films were nothing more than amalgamations of Tokyo’s midnight streets.
Drunks stumbling out of bars, harassing any woman they can get their hands on. Students around his age, hanging off the arms of older men from the club they got into with their fake IDs. People had no shame, no decency. It revolted him. While they weren’t criminals, Light couldn’t deny the world would be better off without them.
A scream sounded from outside the store. Light looked up from the rows of energy drinks, catching sight of a group of men assaulting a terrified woman. He sneered and ran his hands along the side of his bookbag.
Light pulled a magazine from the magazine stand and slid the Death Note between its pages. On the man’s lips hung his name: Shibuimaru Takuo. He scribbled a few iterations, crossing his fingers the kanji were right. Finally, he etched 渋井丸 拓男 [1] into the page next to plain characters reading traffic accident.
The woman struggled from Shibuimaru’s grasp, starting down the street, her coat billowing behind her. Shibuimaru followed, revving the engine of his bike with furrowed brows.
Light scoffed. Of course, it wouldn’t work. He was naïve for thinking the first time wasn’t a fluke.
He returned to the energy drinks, plucking out his favourite flavours. Shibuimaru’s gang shouted. Light stared at the scene; Takuo’s bike was crushed against the concrete. His hands shook, and he forced the Death Note back into his book bag.
For the first time, Yagami Light killed someone who was not a criminal. Shibuimaru had not faced a trial in court, and he had not been found guilty.
Light stumbled out of the 7-Eleven, clutching his chest. He fell against the brick wall outside the store and felt dirty; his hands soiled with the death of an innocent. But that wasn’t a fair judgement. Shibuimaru was far from innocent. If Light hadn’t stopped him, he would’ve raped that woman. He would’ve been a criminal.
His body sparked with exhilaration. Yagami Light realized the Death Note was what he had been looking for all this time.
After Shibuimaru, Light spent his free nights scanning the NPA’s database and monitoring the news. Every stroke of his pen was liberating; every criminal erased from the world was a step closer to divinity.
The new possibilities unfurling elated Light. A world free of evil, free of cruelty. He held morality in his palm, and it was intoxicating.
He understood the implications of his actions. Light was smart, smarter than the average person. He knew murder received the death penalty, but he would martyr himself if he had to.
-
With the peoples’ interests at heart, Light trudged forward, correcting the NPA’s failures. He left the deaths blank but sensed the ripples of every heart attack along his spine. Light wanted criminals to know they were being punished.
When he wasn’t studying or correcting, he spent some time on occult blogs, learning the intricacies of the Death Note. To his surprise, no Shinigami came to him. He imagined they observed him and agreed.
The more he learnt about the Death Note, through use and reading, a strange reverence grew inside him. Not reverence for the Shinigami, but for the notebook itself. The gods blessed him with a tool to rid the world of evil. Light never wanted more.
Light took his Death Note from his desk, placing it alongside his textbooks and a black pen. He scanned the list of names imprinted on the pages and flipped on the TV.
Morality and justice used to be concepts Light could only ever fantasize about. Now, he held the power to enact them in his fingers.
For the first time in his life, Yagami Light felt true, unequivocal love.