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.

"My colleagues agree," he said with a sad smile. She seemed so young, younger than Yagami Sayu. Even after Light's death, Kira's objectives had shaken the world, razed its principles, so everyone was afraid. A stab of regretful anger ran through his nerves -

"What was it all for?"

The tears fell, blurring the gun in his shaking hands, but he could see him, falling, dripping blood, shot after shot -

No. He typed frantic keystrokes against the keyboard, almost mindlessly entering details into the program. Because how could he? How could Light -

No. No no no - not when the girl was shaken up as it was. Not when there was someone to see. Because God forbid anyone else find out, not after Misa -

His hands were shaking. He was sweating, feeling like he was being punched by the unyielding fists of a storm, and trembling fingers tried to grasp his coffee, just so he could do something, anything, to distract him, even if it was clearly bad.

"Matsuda-san." Aki's legs dangled down from the chair to touch the carpet as she looked him in the eye. He was reaching for his coffee but at the same time pulling away, "Pardon me for saying, but I don't think you need that right now." Her quiet voice stirred the air of the office gently, the way Near's voice had echoed through the Yellow Box, shaking his soul from the inside.

"Right, of course." Why did he choose to deal with her? Why couldn't it be someone from the NPA who had dropped the Kira case? It was supposed to be a textbook robbery.

  "I...I can...talk to someone else if I'm upsetting you..." she was whispering at this point, the walls caving in again, and she wanted to go home. She wanted to go back to Sasaki-obasan, forget everything. Forget justice, just for one hour. Forget Kira.

  "No, please don't worry about that," Matsuda smiled, though he felt invisible fingers prodding deep into his spine, wanting him to scream. "Kataoka-san, we'll look into this matter to the best of our capacity. We'll find them." He looked at the screen in front of him, displaying the girl's details:

片岡 亜希 | Kataoka Aki

Sex: F

DOB: 94/11/10 [November 10, 1994]

Occupation: Student, 妙大学 (Myō University)

Next of kin:

Formerly mother 片岡 アイエカ | Kataoka Ayeka, deceased.

Formerly father 片岡 順平 | Kataoka Junpei, deceased.

If needed please contact 佐々木千春 | Sasaki Chiharu.

  "Thank you for your time, Matsuda-san," Aki said, as she stood, feeling horrible as she glanced at his shaking hands, seeing the beads of sweat on his temples. Kira had awakened memories for him too. "Please let me know if you find anything."

  She bowed, her backpack nestling between her shoulder blades. It was the true weight of the world, her father's world and her own, contained in a sack she was trying to carry, as she turned to leave the police station, preparing for the cold embrace of the rain. It splattered against the windows and the sidewalks and people's umbrellas, kicked up in puddles by skidding wheels.

    Matsuda watched as she left, pulling her hood over her head and opening her umbrella. It was decorated with paper cranes like the ones hanging from her hairpiece.

  She seemed colorful, whimsical, but gray at the same time, and as he looked at her details again he felt it. It was something bittersweet, ironic, that he couldn't quite articulate.

  As Aki stepped into the rain, the cool breeze drawled around her, whispering in a language she couldn't understand. The wind knew what she was hiding and it was whispering amongst its currents about who she was, what she had done, but as long as everyone around her couldn't hear the wind, she was safe.

  "Hey, be careful -"

  She turned at the hiss of warning, eyes widening as she looked for who had spoken. It sounded like a young woman, but nobody had approached her and she would've noticed anyone near her -

  Her foot fell on something softer than concrete. It seemed to compress. 

  She looked down at it.

  A notebook...?

  It was a violet journal, decorated with a Magellanic galaxy print. A strange unreadable script flourished on the cover.

  She picked it up, feeling the glossy, leathery cover, confused as to why it wasn't ruined by the rain. Did it belong to someone? She tried to dry it, looking for a name, but it was blank on the outside. The pages were soft and thick, a little damp. She decided to open it, to see if someone's name was on the inside.

  Blank. Completely blank, save for a brightly orange thread that seemed to be a bookmark through the spine. At least until the front page came unstuck from the back of the cover -

  Oh no.

  Her eyes widened, chest tightening, and on reflex she shoved the book into her coat and ran, shaking, as the wind whispered around her.

  Be careful.