On the eleventh day of Christmas
Jan. 5th, 2011 08:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tallulahgsmy true love gave to me
eleven sunlit days
[Title] There's Always One Summer
[Fandom] Death Note
[Rating] PG for character death and bad language
[Notes/Summary] Everyone has sunny memories of childhood, no matter who they grow up to be. (I was going for a slice-of-life-contrasting-with-death kind of thing, and an excuse to write about the summer and feel less cold ^^)
1: Raye Pember
Life
The cafeteria was stifling hot, and they always seemed to serve stuff like lasagne or stew on the warmest days. Raye would make like he was hungry, but truthfully he would've happily gone without lunch when it was hot enough outside to melt the asphalt. The air-con was constantly breaking down too, and by the end of the day his feet would feel like they were made of mud. You knew it was gonna be tough to keep awake when you headed to your locker in the morning, when the sun was still milky, and it was already warm to the touch. Some kid got shoved in his own locker once in July, at lunchtime, and passed out from the heat, though of course everyone joked afterwards it was from the stink of his gym clothes.
Raye made like he liked going to the beach, too, but when it was this hot he could care less about it. Bad enough to know your scalp was getting sunburnt without your shoes filling with sand too. It was better when he was on his own and it was chillier, the sky mottled and grey. Not that he didn't like hanging out with other people, but at the beach, someone was always gonna shove your head underwater and your nose and eyes would burn for hours afterwards and your mouth would taste like stale potato chips. His mom never liked the beach either, but she seemed way too proud of being from a different country, and Raye used to get pissed off with her that she'd make a big deal about how this or that thing wasn't like it was in Japan. He didn't like making a big deal of things in general. Maybe that was because of the sun. It was difficult to get stressed out on a summer evening when it felt like you had bags of time left to get this or that assignment done.
Death
He doesn't even realise how scared he is, it hurts too bad. That, and noticing how damn clean the floor is (another odd little difference about Japan, another thing he thought he was going to have time to learn, time on innumerable visits to his in-laws -) It's cold under his palms and trembles slightly as the train pulls away, taking Raito Yagami with it and pulling the knowledge that he's Kira out of Raye's mind. Getting darker. He thought he had more time to fight back, to work out a way of escape, to somehow derail Kira's plans. But he can see now that's just an idea he had; his body's got his own plans, and there's no point in making like he's going to walk away from this. He would panic about that, but it's all got too dark even for fear.
2: Naomi Misora
Life
No matter what the weather was like, to Naomi it always seemed it was sunny when she was stuck indoors studying for exams. The balcony door open, letting in the faint hum of traffic and voices and the smell of car fumes and fresh air, and all of her thinking how right it would be to stretch out in the sun and go to sleep. She never did, of course. Leant back on her chair for a second, stretching her already-inky hands up, letting her head tilt back so that the curtains seemed to hang upside-down at the bottom of her ceiling. A wisp of breeze across her hair. She was always growing it, but it never quite touched the floor when she leant back like this. She got it cut short in her first college year, in a hairdresser's with the blinds down because of the heat, faint dots of sunlight around them, her sipping coffee and pretending not to hear the crssssssh as the scissors slid through her hair. Studying was different in college; sitting cross-legged on a friend's bed or leaning against their wardrobe, or in the library where the windows were high up and the sunlight was only square patches on the wall. And of course the silence, silence filled with other people's breathing and the turning of pages. Even at college, it always felt like she was waiting for something, like all the studying was directly relevant to something she'd have to face, like she was in summer school and waiting for a new term which would be the real academic year. Even when there was ice on the ground.
Death
The snow is spiralling down like scissor cuts over the landscape. Slowly it blanks out everything like white-hot light in her eyes. Specks land on her sleeves, in her hair, but melt before they can settle on her. She must look like a crow in this whitening landscape. The drop below her is being softened by the snow; already it looks as if it would be nothing worse than tumbling down pillows. But she turns her back on it anyway. The taste of snow in her mouth is fresh and clean, emptiness and now she leans back, back, like she wants her hair to touch the ground.
3: Hirokazu Ukita
Life
People acted more like jerks when the sun was out, Hirokazu noticed. He probably acted more like a jerk as well, but with him that just meant calling people out for being morons. It was something to do with spending all your time sitting in a shady classroom and all the buildings outside white with sunlight. The sunlight lay across your desk as well and you found yourself trying to make shadow shapes in it, or just yearning to put your head down on it and sleep. Sometimes the metal legs of the desk were hot enough to hurt, but hey, gripping hold of them was something to do when the teaching was really dull. He worked best when he was uncomfortable or pissed off; if he gave a damn about something, he was usually angry at it and determined to win. The summer seemed to tell you just to give up, to chill out, the holidays were just round the corner. Hell, even the last lesson of the day encouraged you to stare out of the window, half-close your eyes, and think about what magazine you were gonna buy, or which of the girls in class you'd go with.
He and his sister lived close enough to walk home from school, through crowds of afternoon shoppers. She trailed behind to look at window displays; he'd shove ahead because guys from school always laughed at him for being on babysitting duty. One time, when she'd just started junior high, he pushed on ahead too far and looked back to see a pavement which might have been empty for all the sign it had of her. He'd never been the kind of big brother you saw in dramas, but he hurried back, shoving people out of the way and ignoring the muttered complaints, and found her huddled by the traffic lights, biting her lip and clearly trying to be grown-up. He yanked her by the arm all the way home, but she didn't complain.
Death
The pavement's empty and there's no one around so when the heart attack hits his brain's going all but the bastard came out of nowhere, didn't even see, didn't even touch me - He's trying to hold onto the anger, the rage that got him to Sakura TV, the resentment that he's been blindsided by someone whose face he'll never even glimpse, but it's all fading away into the blackness crawling through his ribs and up his arms. Give up, chill out - the pavement isn't that hard, and it's good to lie down on it. And there's no one there to cat-call or wrench him to his feet, so he lets himself fall.
4: Kyosuke Higuchi
Life
Kyosuke never liked the summer. Packed into a subway train, strap-hanging and well aware that your polyester school shirt was soaked and it was only eight a.m. His hair stuck to his forehead too, made him look like someone had poured ink over his head. In the winter he could run a hand through it and it would spike up and girls would say they thought it looked really cool, but it wilted as soon as he got past May. In the summer, you spent all your time trying to pretend you weren't like a burning candle under your clothes. The air-con at home never worked properly and one of them was always up on a chair smacking it trying to get it to buzz into resentful, dust-spewing life. At school it worked too well, goose bumps came up on your arms.
He was good at baseball, for a while. One summer. Out under the sun, the smell of cut grass and not even noticing the clamminess of the bat in his hands. And every time, the thunk of bat meeting ball and it flying off into the blazing sunlight. While he was running, he didn't think about anything. Of course afterwards, when they were getting changed, he noticed how when they said well done they said it with smirks on their faces. Maybe that soured things or maybe he just couldn't be fucking bothered any more, because the next time, he struck out right away and then picked a fight with one of his teammates afterwards. He got punched in the nose and the blood spewed all over his shirt and the bare, grimy tiles of the changing room. His mother was furious about the shirt, which never quite lost the pink marks, but she put some ice in a bag for his swollen nose and the air-con was actually working for once, and he lay on his bed reading a comic and sipping Coke he couldn't taste and giving homework the finger. The sun took ages to set and hey, who needed brand-name clothes and team spirit anyway.
Death
It's a game, it's all been a game, and he kept on playing it even as the slow creep of ice down his spine told him he was fucking it up. When it finally all went to hell and he was blindfolded and handcuffed and spilling the beans about everything, he was more numb than anything else, his thoughts juddering round like the noise of the helicopter. Shouldn't have fucking cared. Shouldn't have fucking given a damn about it all, that's where you go wrong. Doesn't matter how much your suit cost when you're kneeling on a fucking motorway, does it? Doesn't matter how much your car cost when they've shot out the tyres. And yet it does, still, somehow matter, he's clinging onto those sums as evidence that he didn't completely fuck up and mentally giving L and the cops the finger and then, of course, the heart attack hits, just to remind him he's struck out.
5: Quillsh Wammy
Life
Quillsh always preferred the summer. Being able to leave the doors and windows open, or walk through fields, and the feeling that you always had more time in the day. In high summer, even at eleven o'clock at night there was still some light in the sky, and he would often put down his book to gaze out of the window at the pearl-coloured dusk. If he actually leant out of the window, he could feel the heat rising from the ground, and the air always seemed to smell of plants. Even Roger would grudgingly admit to enjoying good weather, and during the school holidays the two of them would spend hours wandering down the lanes looking for beetles, or the courses of streams, or easily climbable trees. In winter, everything was covered with dead leaves, or ice, or snow, and you were kept inside more, and when you did go walking you tended to tread mud everywhere when you got back. In summer, it was as if the cover was lifted off the world and you were able to see all its workings. Even when he was kept inside and being expected to do something dull when he would rather be trying to build something, or find something, or imagine something, the sunlight sliding across the walls seemed to promise that this was only temporary, that soon he would be back with everything interesting.
Death
It is dark, and cold, and the pain is dark and cold and tells him that it is best to huddle up and try and hold onto the last scraps of warmth. As if he's an old man already, as if he should stay at home and rest. But he's reaching for the data deletion key anyway, because he's never given up and stayed at home when there are things to be done. His face is hot and sticky as if he's out the hottest part of the afternoon, but the cold is already up over his shoulders, and as he jams his finger down on the key he's forgetting why it's so important to manage it. There's no sunlight on the walls.
6: L Lawliet
Life
L has few memories of the time before. Of being outside in the backyard with the paving slabs hot on his bare legs. Of putting a jigsaw puzzle together, lying in a square of sunlight, faster, faster, before someone kicked out at it.
Once at Wammy's House, he is allowed to walk around with no shoes on whenever he wants, and outside even, when the weather's nice. His toes curling against speckled concrete or gravel. An ice cream van stopped by the front gate in the summer; they would run to it after the last lesson was over, cluster round. Whatever you bought tended to melt all over your fingers after you had been eating it for more than a few minutes; sticky red juice or chocolate coated your skin. L sat on the steps, licking at his fingers, and watched the other children eating ice cream or dropping it, or kicking around a football, which they did a lot. Sometimes there were rules to the game; sometimes it was just, it seemed, for the satisfaction of kicking something. Like, perhaps, the difference between laying out tessellating shapes to see how fast you could fit them together, and lying on the floor under the stained glass and passing your hands through the coloured light; the latter being a pointless activity but something L found himself doing anyway.
Death
He is seeing those coloured lights again, but they're far away now, he wouldn't be able to reach them even if he tried. And the iron railings like crosses; cold bars across his chest, wrapping round him, echoing the warmth of Raito's arms. He's watching the colours and the shapes and the flickering red light like a heartbeat, and Raito's mouth curving into a smile. He has laid out the shapes and tried to fit them together but it wasn't fast enough, and he thinks now it was only reaching out to shadow colours after all. He was right. But that doesn't matter now. He's never going to eat ice cream again, there will be no more sunlit barefoot afternoons; funny what you realise you'll miss, even after you thought you'd given them up.
7: Soichiro Yagami
Life
As spring turned into summer, Soichiro was able to walk home from cram school while it was still light. The streets were cooling down, and the breeze ruffled his hair and chased away the headache that often as not had built up from the sustained focus on study. His neck was always aching too, but more than once he caught himself tilting his head to stare at the sky. On one occasion, he stopped on a walkway over the road and leant against the bars and just gazed out at the horizon - the sky fading slightly as the sun set - and the cars rushing past below, still glinting as they caught the light.
He probably wouldn't have admitted it, but he almost preferred term-time to the holidays. In the summer he always awoke early as the sun glared round the blinds, and then fell back to sleep later and woke too late, eyes itching, head aching. The house was too hot and outside it, everyone seemed determined to make themselves sick on fun. To be fair, they only invited him for the trips when it would have been rude not to; a big group of them at the beach or the amusement park. He knew most people went out in threes and fours just to sit on the grass or perch on a wall and talk, or play football. But even in the large groups, they would wait outside until the sun set - which, on some days, it didn't do for hours - and even when everyone was tired and thirsty and sick of the chatter and in-jokes, they still stayed just to get as much value as possible from the sun. And yet he could understand it. When he was at home doing nothing on a sunny day, he constantly felt as though there should be something more useful, more enjoyable, he could be doing. Whereas when he walked out of school or cram school into a quiet, warm evening, it was like a greeting; someone pleased to see him, but not needing to make a fuss about it.
Death
He is so tired. But it's the good kind of tired you get after you've worked almost until you drop but you have completed what you set out to do, and now you will be able to go home and they'll greet you, and you'll be able to tell them it's over. We did it. He hopes one of the others will remember to tell Sachiko that, afterwards; that they'll remember what he said about Raito's lifespan. Soon he'll walk on, go home, but for now he is just still for a second, watching the beautiful white letters, shining in the air like dust motes in sunlight.
8: Mail Jeevas
Life
Matt (he was Matt, not Mail, by the time he properly realised this) hated the summer, really hated it. Everyone always told him to go outside because it was a nice sunny day when he'd been happy lying on an unmade bed playing on his Gameboy. Except that the sun always shone in at some point and blanked out the screen, but he moved around to avoid it. Or sat in the cupboard under the stairs on top of everyone's shoes; or the larder, which smelt of spices; or the attics, but he didn't stay there long because it boiled in summer. Mello and him once checked to see how long they could stay in there without passing out but they got caught before they could test it properly. Which seemed pretty unfair to Matt, because it was scientific experiment, right, and they were meant to be doing clever stuff.
And even when you went to bed the sun was still shining, cooler and quieter now but still there, so it was still too bright to be able to play a game and too hot to hide under the duvet where it was darker. It was too hot all the time, and even when they did make him go outside he sunburnt. Okay, they told him to put suncream on first, but Mello pointed out if he got burnt every time he went out, they'd stop making him go eventually. It probably would have worked, but Matt got sick of the itching and the peeling skin. It distracted him from the Gameboy.
Death
Above him the sky is huge and black and the air is chilly and as he speaks he can see his breath condensing. The kind of evening normally he's okay with, but he still doesn't want to be out in it. Headlights glint through the dark and even though he knows they're not gonna shoot him, he wishes he hadn't got out of the car. He wants to be hiding somewhere. Back in the car, back down the motorway, or hell, head back to childhood and hide in the cupboard under the stairs.
There's a burst of gunshots like rain on a plastic roof, but he's got hardly any time to hear them before he passes out.
9: Mihael Keehl
Life
Mello liked the rainy days best; when it rained but the sun still shone with a weird boiling light. When he was still Mihael, he'd sit on the windowsill looking out at the sky throwing a tantrum and it wouldn't matter what was going on indoors. Even after he came to Wammy's House, the days like that were still his favourite, the weather doing crazy stuff like it was on his side. He'd yell to Matt to come and look, but Matt hated the sky. Didn't matter really. Mello could stare at his own reflection in the sour light and smile at it and paint an L on the window with a grimy finger.
It was different after he got to LA. The sun always shone there, like it was hiding something. And it was hot all the time, too. Always the whirr of the air-conditioning in Rod's upmarket hide-outs; allways like a sweatbox in the cheap ones. Or like Wammy's House attic, with the smell of bare wood and chipboard and dust. He liked to snoop around, in the attic and elsewhere, and find the grubby parts of the big old house; the unpainted parts, the eaves too low to stand up in, the store cupboards and broken furniture. Looking for clues, to the house's past or something else. He stopped doing that after he left - looking for the dodgy parts of buildings. Mainly because it was too easy to find them in LA.
Death
There's no sun, there's only the black sky and mottled patches of damp on the truck windscreen like nothing up there gives a damn about any of this. And he is sitting looking out at it and everything is still, so still, but he's splitting apart from the chest outwards, and he's trying not to cry out because that bitch will hear but it hurts. He can see his own reflection in the wing mirror, his face dead white and glistening, his eyes bulging as he struggles for breath. He tries to reach up, turn the mirror away, but his arm's too heavy. It's all dark outside but that doesn't matter now 'cause there's nothing to hide, not any more.
10: Kiyomi Takada
Life
Kiyomi first started getting hayfever when she was eight years old. And she'd learnt already not to wipe her nose on her hand but she never had enough tissues and her eyes kept itching, like she was crying and she hated crying in front of people. After a bit she got some pills from the doctor which helped her sneeze a bit less, but then people used to whisper if she had to take them in school, or ask her if she had some yucky disease.
It got better as she got older, but she still didn't like summer very much. When it was really hot, even her nicest clothes were uncomfortable, and so many of them required her to be perfect all over because they showed patches of skin normally hidden under cloth. For instance, if she wore open-toed sandals she had to take care to manicure her toenails. The smell of nail varnish on a Sunday morning; her eyes watering with the irritation of the task. She could have not bothered, of course, but then she'd look cheap. Lazy. The sun made her less hungry, too. She picked at a roll or a salad and tried to throw herself into her studying, but the weather drove all her classmates crazy and they kept heading off to the beach, or to go shopping, and there was less satisfaction in being the best because she knew everyone else wasn't really trying. She picked fights with her parents, shouted and slammed doors; refused to cry afterwards. The end of the summer holidays was calming, and she'd always make sure to buy new stationery, or get her hair cut, to celebrate her return to excellence.
Death
At first the fire is comforting because of the brightness and warmth, but then as it spreads the air gets thin and hot and she starts to cough. She coughs and coughs and tears ooze from her eyes. She rubs at them with one hand. She was going to be brave about this. She knows it was the right thing to do. (She doesn't know how she knows, but -) But her chest rises and falls and every breath seems to squash it further as she tries to find air. She clenches her fists. Her nails are ragged and dirty; there are cuts on her hands. She'd never normally let her hands end up like that. She has taken so much care of her body, all these years, and it's going to be ruined, scarred and charred and - such a waste. Such a stupid, stupid waste. Tears pouring down her face. When it comes down to it, she's no better than anyone else. That's why, this time, she's crying.
11: Raito Yagami
Life
Raito didn't mind getting up early, even when he was little. He would wake up as soon as it was light and lie on his stomach in his room, drawing, or sending action figures on quests across the carpet, or making up stories. Or opening the balcony door - he wasn't really supposed to, but he knew he could do it - and sitting out on the balcony and listening to hear if anyone else was up yet. Usually people weren't, but he liked that. It was as if he was a character in a TV show or a manga, where everything happened to him and there wasn't anyone else around to worry about. Of course, after Sayu was born, when she was old enough to walk and want to follow him around, it was different. She would sneak into his room and he'd carry her downstairs or clutch her sticky hand and they'd watch TV, quietly, so that Mum and Dad wouldn't be woken up. This was in the summer holidays, of course, or the weekends. The sun always started off looking actually cool, the colour of vanilla ice cream; by the time it actually felt like a hot day, Mum would have come downstairs and be making breakfast.
Death
This wasn't supposed to happen to him. He is lying on his back, covered in mud and blood and his heart is ringing like someone just hit it with a hammer and he is so angry but under that he's terrified because none of this makes sense. This wasn't supposed to happen to him; he was the hero, the one making everything better! He wants to look round for a patch of sunlight, if he can see the sun then that will prove he's still alive, he will wake up and go downstairs and do things properly. For a second, he sees a blaze of orange sunset, like a flag, and he clutches at it, and then everything has gone dark.
eleven sunlit days
[Title] There's Always One Summer
[Fandom] Death Note
[Rating] PG for character death and bad language
[Notes/Summary] Everyone has sunny memories of childhood, no matter who they grow up to be. (I was going for a slice-of-life-contrasting-with-death kind of thing, and an excuse to write about the summer and feel less cold ^^)
1: Raye Pember
Life
The cafeteria was stifling hot, and they always seemed to serve stuff like lasagne or stew on the warmest days. Raye would make like he was hungry, but truthfully he would've happily gone without lunch when it was hot enough outside to melt the asphalt. The air-con was constantly breaking down too, and by the end of the day his feet would feel like they were made of mud. You knew it was gonna be tough to keep awake when you headed to your locker in the morning, when the sun was still milky, and it was already warm to the touch. Some kid got shoved in his own locker once in July, at lunchtime, and passed out from the heat, though of course everyone joked afterwards it was from the stink of his gym clothes.
Raye made like he liked going to the beach, too, but when it was this hot he could care less about it. Bad enough to know your scalp was getting sunburnt without your shoes filling with sand too. It was better when he was on his own and it was chillier, the sky mottled and grey. Not that he didn't like hanging out with other people, but at the beach, someone was always gonna shove your head underwater and your nose and eyes would burn for hours afterwards and your mouth would taste like stale potato chips. His mom never liked the beach either, but she seemed way too proud of being from a different country, and Raye used to get pissed off with her that she'd make a big deal about how this or that thing wasn't like it was in Japan. He didn't like making a big deal of things in general. Maybe that was because of the sun. It was difficult to get stressed out on a summer evening when it felt like you had bags of time left to get this or that assignment done.
Death
He doesn't even realise how scared he is, it hurts too bad. That, and noticing how damn clean the floor is (another odd little difference about Japan, another thing he thought he was going to have time to learn, time on innumerable visits to his in-laws -) It's cold under his palms and trembles slightly as the train pulls away, taking Raito Yagami with it and pulling the knowledge that he's Kira out of Raye's mind. Getting darker. He thought he had more time to fight back, to work out a way of escape, to somehow derail Kira's plans. But he can see now that's just an idea he had; his body's got his own plans, and there's no point in making like he's going to walk away from this. He would panic about that, but it's all got too dark even for fear.
2: Naomi Misora
Life
No matter what the weather was like, to Naomi it always seemed it was sunny when she was stuck indoors studying for exams. The balcony door open, letting in the faint hum of traffic and voices and the smell of car fumes and fresh air, and all of her thinking how right it would be to stretch out in the sun and go to sleep. She never did, of course. Leant back on her chair for a second, stretching her already-inky hands up, letting her head tilt back so that the curtains seemed to hang upside-down at the bottom of her ceiling. A wisp of breeze across her hair. She was always growing it, but it never quite touched the floor when she leant back like this. She got it cut short in her first college year, in a hairdresser's with the blinds down because of the heat, faint dots of sunlight around them, her sipping coffee and pretending not to hear the crssssssh as the scissors slid through her hair. Studying was different in college; sitting cross-legged on a friend's bed or leaning against their wardrobe, or in the library where the windows were high up and the sunlight was only square patches on the wall. And of course the silence, silence filled with other people's breathing and the turning of pages. Even at college, it always felt like she was waiting for something, like all the studying was directly relevant to something she'd have to face, like she was in summer school and waiting for a new term which would be the real academic year. Even when there was ice on the ground.
Death
The snow is spiralling down like scissor cuts over the landscape. Slowly it blanks out everything like white-hot light in her eyes. Specks land on her sleeves, in her hair, but melt before they can settle on her. She must look like a crow in this whitening landscape. The drop below her is being softened by the snow; already it looks as if it would be nothing worse than tumbling down pillows. But she turns her back on it anyway. The taste of snow in her mouth is fresh and clean, emptiness and now she leans back, back, like she wants her hair to touch the ground.
3: Hirokazu Ukita
Life
People acted more like jerks when the sun was out, Hirokazu noticed. He probably acted more like a jerk as well, but with him that just meant calling people out for being morons. It was something to do with spending all your time sitting in a shady classroom and all the buildings outside white with sunlight. The sunlight lay across your desk as well and you found yourself trying to make shadow shapes in it, or just yearning to put your head down on it and sleep. Sometimes the metal legs of the desk were hot enough to hurt, but hey, gripping hold of them was something to do when the teaching was really dull. He worked best when he was uncomfortable or pissed off; if he gave a damn about something, he was usually angry at it and determined to win. The summer seemed to tell you just to give up, to chill out, the holidays were just round the corner. Hell, even the last lesson of the day encouraged you to stare out of the window, half-close your eyes, and think about what magazine you were gonna buy, or which of the girls in class you'd go with.
He and his sister lived close enough to walk home from school, through crowds of afternoon shoppers. She trailed behind to look at window displays; he'd shove ahead because guys from school always laughed at him for being on babysitting duty. One time, when she'd just started junior high, he pushed on ahead too far and looked back to see a pavement which might have been empty for all the sign it had of her. He'd never been the kind of big brother you saw in dramas, but he hurried back, shoving people out of the way and ignoring the muttered complaints, and found her huddled by the traffic lights, biting her lip and clearly trying to be grown-up. He yanked her by the arm all the way home, but she didn't complain.
Death
The pavement's empty and there's no one around so when the heart attack hits his brain's going all but the bastard came out of nowhere, didn't even see, didn't even touch me - He's trying to hold onto the anger, the rage that got him to Sakura TV, the resentment that he's been blindsided by someone whose face he'll never even glimpse, but it's all fading away into the blackness crawling through his ribs and up his arms. Give up, chill out - the pavement isn't that hard, and it's good to lie down on it. And there's no one there to cat-call or wrench him to his feet, so he lets himself fall.
4: Kyosuke Higuchi
Life
Kyosuke never liked the summer. Packed into a subway train, strap-hanging and well aware that your polyester school shirt was soaked and it was only eight a.m. His hair stuck to his forehead too, made him look like someone had poured ink over his head. In the winter he could run a hand through it and it would spike up and girls would say they thought it looked really cool, but it wilted as soon as he got past May. In the summer, you spent all your time trying to pretend you weren't like a burning candle under your clothes. The air-con at home never worked properly and one of them was always up on a chair smacking it trying to get it to buzz into resentful, dust-spewing life. At school it worked too well, goose bumps came up on your arms.
He was good at baseball, for a while. One summer. Out under the sun, the smell of cut grass and not even noticing the clamminess of the bat in his hands. And every time, the thunk of bat meeting ball and it flying off into the blazing sunlight. While he was running, he didn't think about anything. Of course afterwards, when they were getting changed, he noticed how when they said well done they said it with smirks on their faces. Maybe that soured things or maybe he just couldn't be fucking bothered any more, because the next time, he struck out right away and then picked a fight with one of his teammates afterwards. He got punched in the nose and the blood spewed all over his shirt and the bare, grimy tiles of the changing room. His mother was furious about the shirt, which never quite lost the pink marks, but she put some ice in a bag for his swollen nose and the air-con was actually working for once, and he lay on his bed reading a comic and sipping Coke he couldn't taste and giving homework the finger. The sun took ages to set and hey, who needed brand-name clothes and team spirit anyway.
Death
It's a game, it's all been a game, and he kept on playing it even as the slow creep of ice down his spine told him he was fucking it up. When it finally all went to hell and he was blindfolded and handcuffed and spilling the beans about everything, he was more numb than anything else, his thoughts juddering round like the noise of the helicopter. Shouldn't have fucking cared. Shouldn't have fucking given a damn about it all, that's where you go wrong. Doesn't matter how much your suit cost when you're kneeling on a fucking motorway, does it? Doesn't matter how much your car cost when they've shot out the tyres. And yet it does, still, somehow matter, he's clinging onto those sums as evidence that he didn't completely fuck up and mentally giving L and the cops the finger and then, of course, the heart attack hits, just to remind him he's struck out.
5: Quillsh Wammy
Life
Quillsh always preferred the summer. Being able to leave the doors and windows open, or walk through fields, and the feeling that you always had more time in the day. In high summer, even at eleven o'clock at night there was still some light in the sky, and he would often put down his book to gaze out of the window at the pearl-coloured dusk. If he actually leant out of the window, he could feel the heat rising from the ground, and the air always seemed to smell of plants. Even Roger would grudgingly admit to enjoying good weather, and during the school holidays the two of them would spend hours wandering down the lanes looking for beetles, or the courses of streams, or easily climbable trees. In winter, everything was covered with dead leaves, or ice, or snow, and you were kept inside more, and when you did go walking you tended to tread mud everywhere when you got back. In summer, it was as if the cover was lifted off the world and you were able to see all its workings. Even when he was kept inside and being expected to do something dull when he would rather be trying to build something, or find something, or imagine something, the sunlight sliding across the walls seemed to promise that this was only temporary, that soon he would be back with everything interesting.
Death
It is dark, and cold, and the pain is dark and cold and tells him that it is best to huddle up and try and hold onto the last scraps of warmth. As if he's an old man already, as if he should stay at home and rest. But he's reaching for the data deletion key anyway, because he's never given up and stayed at home when there are things to be done. His face is hot and sticky as if he's out the hottest part of the afternoon, but the cold is already up over his shoulders, and as he jams his finger down on the key he's forgetting why it's so important to manage it. There's no sunlight on the walls.
6: L Lawliet
Life
L has few memories of the time before. Of being outside in the backyard with the paving slabs hot on his bare legs. Of putting a jigsaw puzzle together, lying in a square of sunlight, faster, faster, before someone kicked out at it.
Once at Wammy's House, he is allowed to walk around with no shoes on whenever he wants, and outside even, when the weather's nice. His toes curling against speckled concrete or gravel. An ice cream van stopped by the front gate in the summer; they would run to it after the last lesson was over, cluster round. Whatever you bought tended to melt all over your fingers after you had been eating it for more than a few minutes; sticky red juice or chocolate coated your skin. L sat on the steps, licking at his fingers, and watched the other children eating ice cream or dropping it, or kicking around a football, which they did a lot. Sometimes there were rules to the game; sometimes it was just, it seemed, for the satisfaction of kicking something. Like, perhaps, the difference between laying out tessellating shapes to see how fast you could fit them together, and lying on the floor under the stained glass and passing your hands through the coloured light; the latter being a pointless activity but something L found himself doing anyway.
Death
He is seeing those coloured lights again, but they're far away now, he wouldn't be able to reach them even if he tried. And the iron railings like crosses; cold bars across his chest, wrapping round him, echoing the warmth of Raito's arms. He's watching the colours and the shapes and the flickering red light like a heartbeat, and Raito's mouth curving into a smile. He has laid out the shapes and tried to fit them together but it wasn't fast enough, and he thinks now it was only reaching out to shadow colours after all. He was right. But that doesn't matter now. He's never going to eat ice cream again, there will be no more sunlit barefoot afternoons; funny what you realise you'll miss, even after you thought you'd given them up.
7: Soichiro Yagami
Life
As spring turned into summer, Soichiro was able to walk home from cram school while it was still light. The streets were cooling down, and the breeze ruffled his hair and chased away the headache that often as not had built up from the sustained focus on study. His neck was always aching too, but more than once he caught himself tilting his head to stare at the sky. On one occasion, he stopped on a walkway over the road and leant against the bars and just gazed out at the horizon - the sky fading slightly as the sun set - and the cars rushing past below, still glinting as they caught the light.
He probably wouldn't have admitted it, but he almost preferred term-time to the holidays. In the summer he always awoke early as the sun glared round the blinds, and then fell back to sleep later and woke too late, eyes itching, head aching. The house was too hot and outside it, everyone seemed determined to make themselves sick on fun. To be fair, they only invited him for the trips when it would have been rude not to; a big group of them at the beach or the amusement park. He knew most people went out in threes and fours just to sit on the grass or perch on a wall and talk, or play football. But even in the large groups, they would wait outside until the sun set - which, on some days, it didn't do for hours - and even when everyone was tired and thirsty and sick of the chatter and in-jokes, they still stayed just to get as much value as possible from the sun. And yet he could understand it. When he was at home doing nothing on a sunny day, he constantly felt as though there should be something more useful, more enjoyable, he could be doing. Whereas when he walked out of school or cram school into a quiet, warm evening, it was like a greeting; someone pleased to see him, but not needing to make a fuss about it.
Death
He is so tired. But it's the good kind of tired you get after you've worked almost until you drop but you have completed what you set out to do, and now you will be able to go home and they'll greet you, and you'll be able to tell them it's over. We did it. He hopes one of the others will remember to tell Sachiko that, afterwards; that they'll remember what he said about Raito's lifespan. Soon he'll walk on, go home, but for now he is just still for a second, watching the beautiful white letters, shining in the air like dust motes in sunlight.
8: Mail Jeevas
Life
Matt (he was Matt, not Mail, by the time he properly realised this) hated the summer, really hated it. Everyone always told him to go outside because it was a nice sunny day when he'd been happy lying on an unmade bed playing on his Gameboy. Except that the sun always shone in at some point and blanked out the screen, but he moved around to avoid it. Or sat in the cupboard under the stairs on top of everyone's shoes; or the larder, which smelt of spices; or the attics, but he didn't stay there long because it boiled in summer. Mello and him once checked to see how long they could stay in there without passing out but they got caught before they could test it properly. Which seemed pretty unfair to Matt, because it was scientific experiment, right, and they were meant to be doing clever stuff.
And even when you went to bed the sun was still shining, cooler and quieter now but still there, so it was still too bright to be able to play a game and too hot to hide under the duvet where it was darker. It was too hot all the time, and even when they did make him go outside he sunburnt. Okay, they told him to put suncream on first, but Mello pointed out if he got burnt every time he went out, they'd stop making him go eventually. It probably would have worked, but Matt got sick of the itching and the peeling skin. It distracted him from the Gameboy.
Death
Above him the sky is huge and black and the air is chilly and as he speaks he can see his breath condensing. The kind of evening normally he's okay with, but he still doesn't want to be out in it. Headlights glint through the dark and even though he knows they're not gonna shoot him, he wishes he hadn't got out of the car. He wants to be hiding somewhere. Back in the car, back down the motorway, or hell, head back to childhood and hide in the cupboard under the stairs.
There's a burst of gunshots like rain on a plastic roof, but he's got hardly any time to hear them before he passes out.
9: Mihael Keehl
Life
Mello liked the rainy days best; when it rained but the sun still shone with a weird boiling light. When he was still Mihael, he'd sit on the windowsill looking out at the sky throwing a tantrum and it wouldn't matter what was going on indoors. Even after he came to Wammy's House, the days like that were still his favourite, the weather doing crazy stuff like it was on his side. He'd yell to Matt to come and look, but Matt hated the sky. Didn't matter really. Mello could stare at his own reflection in the sour light and smile at it and paint an L on the window with a grimy finger.
It was different after he got to LA. The sun always shone there, like it was hiding something. And it was hot all the time, too. Always the whirr of the air-conditioning in Rod's upmarket hide-outs; allways like a sweatbox in the cheap ones. Or like Wammy's House attic, with the smell of bare wood and chipboard and dust. He liked to snoop around, in the attic and elsewhere, and find the grubby parts of the big old house; the unpainted parts, the eaves too low to stand up in, the store cupboards and broken furniture. Looking for clues, to the house's past or something else. He stopped doing that after he left - looking for the dodgy parts of buildings. Mainly because it was too easy to find them in LA.
Death
There's no sun, there's only the black sky and mottled patches of damp on the truck windscreen like nothing up there gives a damn about any of this. And he is sitting looking out at it and everything is still, so still, but he's splitting apart from the chest outwards, and he's trying not to cry out because that bitch will hear but it hurts. He can see his own reflection in the wing mirror, his face dead white and glistening, his eyes bulging as he struggles for breath. He tries to reach up, turn the mirror away, but his arm's too heavy. It's all dark outside but that doesn't matter now 'cause there's nothing to hide, not any more.
10: Kiyomi Takada
Life
Kiyomi first started getting hayfever when she was eight years old. And she'd learnt already not to wipe her nose on her hand but she never had enough tissues and her eyes kept itching, like she was crying and she hated crying in front of people. After a bit she got some pills from the doctor which helped her sneeze a bit less, but then people used to whisper if she had to take them in school, or ask her if she had some yucky disease.
It got better as she got older, but she still didn't like summer very much. When it was really hot, even her nicest clothes were uncomfortable, and so many of them required her to be perfect all over because they showed patches of skin normally hidden under cloth. For instance, if she wore open-toed sandals she had to take care to manicure her toenails. The smell of nail varnish on a Sunday morning; her eyes watering with the irritation of the task. She could have not bothered, of course, but then she'd look cheap. Lazy. The sun made her less hungry, too. She picked at a roll or a salad and tried to throw herself into her studying, but the weather drove all her classmates crazy and they kept heading off to the beach, or to go shopping, and there was less satisfaction in being the best because she knew everyone else wasn't really trying. She picked fights with her parents, shouted and slammed doors; refused to cry afterwards. The end of the summer holidays was calming, and she'd always make sure to buy new stationery, or get her hair cut, to celebrate her return to excellence.
Death
At first the fire is comforting because of the brightness and warmth, but then as it spreads the air gets thin and hot and she starts to cough. She coughs and coughs and tears ooze from her eyes. She rubs at them with one hand. She was going to be brave about this. She knows it was the right thing to do. (She doesn't know how she knows, but -) But her chest rises and falls and every breath seems to squash it further as she tries to find air. She clenches her fists. Her nails are ragged and dirty; there are cuts on her hands. She'd never normally let her hands end up like that. She has taken so much care of her body, all these years, and it's going to be ruined, scarred and charred and - such a waste. Such a stupid, stupid waste. Tears pouring down her face. When it comes down to it, she's no better than anyone else. That's why, this time, she's crying.
11: Raito Yagami
Life
Raito didn't mind getting up early, even when he was little. He would wake up as soon as it was light and lie on his stomach in his room, drawing, or sending action figures on quests across the carpet, or making up stories. Or opening the balcony door - he wasn't really supposed to, but he knew he could do it - and sitting out on the balcony and listening to hear if anyone else was up yet. Usually people weren't, but he liked that. It was as if he was a character in a TV show or a manga, where everything happened to him and there wasn't anyone else around to worry about. Of course, after Sayu was born, when she was old enough to walk and want to follow him around, it was different. She would sneak into his room and he'd carry her downstairs or clutch her sticky hand and they'd watch TV, quietly, so that Mum and Dad wouldn't be woken up. This was in the summer holidays, of course, or the weekends. The sun always started off looking actually cool, the colour of vanilla ice cream; by the time it actually felt like a hot day, Mum would have come downstairs and be making breakfast.
Death
This wasn't supposed to happen to him. He is lying on his back, covered in mud and blood and his heart is ringing like someone just hit it with a hammer and he is so angry but under that he's terrified because none of this makes sense. This wasn't supposed to happen to him; he was the hero, the one making everything better! He wants to look round for a patch of sunlight, if he can see the sun then that will prove he's still alive, he will wake up and go downstairs and do things properly. For a second, he sees a blaze of orange sunset, like a flag, and he clutches at it, and then everything has gone dark.
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