codewriter / death note [デスノート]

The office was an unending monochrome of gray, the embodiment of plain justice. Tired eyes were clouded by the steam of cups of coffee. Aki sat across from the young man at the table, rubbing the sleeves of her hoodie with her fingertips, eyes cast down to the edge of his desk.

"Kataoka-san, what can you tell me about the people who broke into your house?" the young man asked, fingers resting on his keyboard to file a report.

"There were two," she said quietly. "Both male, similar height. They had masks and gloves and voice synthesizers. Prepared for Kira."

She braced her knees against her chest in the chair she was sitting in, observing the officer quietly. He was called Matsuda. Seemed nice, casual. Didn't mind her heels on the seat. From the movement of his eyes, their slight widening, her posture reminded him of something.

  He stiffened at the mention of Kira, his fingertips shifting on the keys, but looked at Aki politely, "They can't be too careful."

  He knew something. She'd heard of him before - or rather, as AZRIEL, she knew him.

松田 桃太 | Matsuda Tōta

  She'd seen his files, back at the height of the investigation into Kira. One of the people trusted by L himself, from the NPA headed by Yagami Sōichirō...

  "No, they can't." She hugged her shins, feeling the walls caving in around her. "He's out there. A ghost." She pressed her chin into the space between her kneecaps, feeling her heartbeat against her knees. The grayness of the world dissolved into the static of radio stations, stills of people mid-choke, screams of pain as their hearts rebelled...the flopping of corpse hands against the floors of mortuaries, dead, dying eyes...

  Her heartbeat tore at her lungs. "I can tell they watched me." Aki was shaking in the chair. Matsuda looked at her, eyes concerned. "Are you alright?" He leaned forward, as if he wanted to put a hand on her shoulder.

  Damn it. Making herself smaller was not going to make the problems go away. She forced her eyes up to look at him, the words breaking from her mouth.

  "They broke into the window behind me," she said, "while I was making lunch. So they had to have seen me there. The man who grabbed me first had chloroform on him, knew how to choke someone out. The dosage was right for someone my size, judging from the amount of time he took to knock me out, but I suffered little permanent effect, meaning he didn't intend to cause too much harm. If he'd wanted to do that it would have taken less time for me to faint, and there would be more substantial traces of chloroform around my house. From that I gather they knew my physical appearance well enough to dose me."

  She paused at the look on Matsuda's face, then bashfully added, "They stole a lot of things too, so there had to be someone waiting to haul what they took, since a lot of the things I lost were gadgets."

  She'd come home with Dr Sasaki for a day, just to see what was left of her house. Now she carried a backpack that contained most of it - clothes, a few personal articles, her father's laptop. Her fakes had worked, and she knew what they were after from what they stole, but it was impossible to tell this to Matsuda, unless she wanted to be arrested.

  If he found out she was AZRIEL, she'd be done.

  Matsuda's stare was the dumbfounded look of a fish observing a human through its tank. As she sat with her heels pressed into the seat of the chair, spilling deductions, she reminded him, stupidly, of Ryuzaki, Near, even, although she sounded so uncertain and afraid. In Aki he saw intelligence, but none of the confidence of either of the detectives.