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“If you can’t say it, maybe you can write it down.”
The therapist said that to me. I shrugged, but it turns out it was a homework assignment and not a suggestion. She said I don’t have to show it to her if I don’t want to, that it’s for me, to see if it will “help me find my words.”
Barf.
She’s pretty condescending, but you know how Mom always feels better if she has something she can be doing. Well, I guess moms are all like that, more or less, but it’s more pathological with her. Since you’re dead and Dad’s dead and I’m crazy now. She wants to do something to fix me. She wants to make something better. So she takes me to therapy, and it seems to give her some peace. Maybe it’ll help me! I don’t really think so, but it’s worth a try, right?
Mom has all these books all over the place. There’s some piles for you and some for me. Yours are mostly about “the psychology of evil.” You know, the dark triad all that goofy stuff. There’s even some actually about you. “Reflections on a Post-Kira World.” “Profiling A God.” “How They Caught Him.” It’s all about what you’d expect. I never liked all that stuff, but I remember you did. You bought all those magazines when--
You must have thought we were so stupid.
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You bastard you prick you selfish conceited moron you monster you !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I could write forever and it still wouldn’t be enough. How could you? How could you do this? All those people! How could you do this to me? You didn’t even come to dad’s funeral! Were you too busy murdering people?
When I was studying for entrance exams you said you were busy. You said I was too old to be leaning on my big brother, that I’d need to do my homework myself eventually, and when I said pretty-please you closed the door in my face and you locked it. Since when were you too busy to help me with homework? Now I know what you were doing instead.
I am shaking with rage. There is so much inside of me that it feels impossible. No one has ever been angrier in the entire history of humankind. It hurts so much I think that if I could make any sound come out of my mouth at all it would only be screaming.
The enormity of it. There isn’t a hell deep enough to burn you in, they’ll have to make a new one just for you.
I hope it hurt when you died! I hope you suffered! I hope you were alone and in agony and I hope you still are!
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Just so you know, I used to sneak into your room all the time. You thought I stopped, but I didn’t. You had the N64 in there, stupid. If you didn’t want me breaking in, you should’ve put it downstairs. Anyway, I’m not sorry. I was sorry before, but I’m not any more.
I was thinking about it because your room is still how you left it and it’s always there, lurking. Mom says it’s untouched, anyway, and who knows if it’s true. When they came
I never told you what happened exactly. Not that there’s a point. You’re dead.
Whatever. Writing it down clearly might help. Sometimes I feel like my mind is just an incomprehensible pile of junk. Nothing makes sense. It’s hard to remember things. Maybe writing it down properly will help me remember and keep my thoughts in order. It doesn’t feel like I could possibly be remembering it right. It was so strange, and I wasn’t all there at the time. I wish you’d been there, you were always so good at knowing what someone wasn’t saying.
Matsuda-san knocked on the door. I remember Mom’s shoulders sagging when she saw him, because it was just like when we got the news about Dad. Something in his face, I guess, or just the fact that it was him and not you, and we hadn’t heard from you in what felt like forever. I don’t know how long it was really.
I don’t remember what he said exactly, but he came in and introduced this horrid little boy in pajamas. He looked totally insane, and his name was “Near” which is not a name at all. Having an albino child genius detective who says he works for the CIA tell you that your brother died is… It was like a nightmare, something out of Twin Peaks. (You’re dead, so you can’t scold me for saying that when I was too scared to watch the show with you.) His Japanese was very good, and that made it weirder somehow.
So Matsuda-san came in with this boy, Near. They sat down in the living room. (This was in the cabin, not the house.) Near sat on the floor instead of on a chair.
I remember Near staring at me. I don’t remember quite what he said, or Matsuda-san. They said a lot of things, and didn’t say a lot of things.
You were dead.
Near had been investigating the Kira case, and they had obtained conclusive irrefutable evidence that it was you all along. They presented this evidence to you and the rest of the investigators and you confessed. Then you tried to kill them all, and they were forced to kill you.
Near said that his intent had always been to arrest you, not kill you, and that he wasn’t going to pursue the death penalty. It seemed important to him that we know that, I guess.
Mom started crying, but she didn’t say anything, I don’t think. Or maybe she did, something like “not my perfect boy” ? I don’t know. That seems like something she would say.
To tell you the truth, I don’t know if I really remember all of this, or if I just remember Mom telling me about it. It’s a blur. I do remember Near, I know that much, and I must have heard it all because I was sitting right there.
I remember that Mom and Matsuda-san were very emotional and Near wasn’t. He explained it all very calmly. You had a magic notebook of death. You’d gotten ahold of it in high school somehow and used it to kill criminals. You infiltrated the investigation, killed cops, killed that famous TV detective, and Misa was in on it too. There was a shinigami involved somehow, and other people as well. Mom said she didn’t know how many people he said were involved. She was overwhelmed.
Near gave us a drawing of the shinigami (we still have it, it looks gross) and offered to let Mom look at the notebook. She told me she looked at it and she didn’t know why. She said she thought it might help, somehow, but it didn’t. I didn’t see it. I don’t remember that part at all. I think somewhere during the explanation of all the magic I just couldn’t deal with it any more.
Mom was so upset that we couldn’t see your body. She still is, I think. I don't know if I'm upset about it. They gave us your ashes, or they said they did at any rate. It’s not like we could tell.
Mom said that they said that they’d destroyed the notebook and put its ashes in with yours. That seems wrong to me, that it would be mixed up with you for the rest of time. It seems wrong to me that she’d bury you near Dad, though. I guess it doesn’t matter what you think, if you can’t speak.
One last thing. Near said he would keep you anonymous, if Mom and I wanted. That the world didn’t need to know Kira’s name or who he was at the end of the day. They only needed to know it was all over. Of course Mom didn’t want anyone to know. She couldn’t bear to think of people thinking of you like that. She didn’t want to ruin Dad’s reputation, either.
She didn’t ask me. Or maybe she did, and I just wasn’t there at the time. I don’t know what I would have said. I don’t know what I would say now. Sometimes I want everyone to know what you did, I want everyone alive and everyone for all time to know and to hate you. Sometimes I think if I can distribute the hatred and anger in me across billions of people then maybe it’ll shrink to a manageable size.
Other times--
I laid all that out just to say they didn’t search the house. Mom said that Near said they didn’t search the house because he said they had all the evidence they needed already and it would be pointless. So your room should be just how you left it, assuming he told the truth. He seemed honest, though I guess I’m not a good judge of that kind of thing and I wasn't all there at the time. Mom had so much trouble going through Dad’s stuff, I don’t know if she’ll ever be able to do yours. Sometimes just looking at your door makes her cry.
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My therapist told me to imagine you sitting in a chair across from me. “What would you want to say to him?”
I don’t know why she thought that would work. I did try, I promise. I opened my mouth and everything. No words came out. But if I’m being honest, it’s none of her business what I would say to you, so I didn't try as hard as I could have. That's something I haven't told anyone: maybe I don't want to talk any more. Maybe I'm done with talking!
If you were in a chair across from me and I said something to you, I think I would cry, and that would be embarrassing. If I cry while writing it isn’t as bad, because I can still make the words come out just fine.
You used to call me a crybaby. Remember that? You never cried, even when we were fighting, and I always cried when I was upset. Even when I was mad, I would start crying! A lot of kids are like that. They get too full of feelings and it starts leaking out. Not you, though, and you were such a snot about it. You were so stuck-up. As if not crying is enough to win an argument about whether or not Fujiko Mine is a bad guy. She’s in the gang, nii-chan, so she’s not a bad guy. I get the last word on that forever!
I don’t know. If you were here, then things would be different. You can’t be here. That’s the whole point! Things would have had to go so differently, I don’t know what I would say in that hypothetical situation.
If you appeared as a ghost, I’d tell you to go back to hell. Maybe I could make myself talk enough to do that.
I’ve been having nightmares where it’s your fault. Your hands are around my throat and I can’t speak because your grip is so tight. I can’t see your face but I know it’s you, and I want to tell you to stop but I can’t get the words out. My vision is dark and all I can see is your stupid tie and that ugly watch Dad gave you that you were so proud of. Because it made you feel like such a grownup to have a big-boy watch. You never took it off, even though it made you look like an asshole. What kind of teenager wears a watch every single day? He didn’t give me a watch. Girls don’t need to know what time it is, I guess.
You never say anything to me. Not in the imaginary ghost-chair or in the dreams. I don’t remember your voice that well now. When was the last time I saw you? What was the last thing I ever said to you? It was probably “okay, bye!” or something like that. What was the last thing you said to me?
I don’t remember. I can’t even guess.
I want to pore over every conversation we had for clues, but when I try you slip away from me. I can feel my memories warping around this knowledge. You weren’t who I thought you were. All along, maybe all your life, you were lying. Every word out of your mouth. You were a monster wearing human skin. You weren’t my brother.
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I miss you. I wish you were here. I wish you were alive. Why did you leave me like you did? Why didn’t you call? Why didn’t you at least stop by when I was in the hospital? You went to see Dad when he had a heart attack, but when your sister gets snatched off the street and chucked on a plane to America by the mob you don’t have a couple of minutes to say “hi, sorry about that, my bad”?
I need you to explain this to me. You were so good at it. You could make me believe anything. Remember when you told me that if I watched TV too close to the screen I’d go blind?
I wish you’d said something to me. Anything at all. I wish you had at least cared enough to lie to me. I wish someone had cared enough to lie to me.
You keep strangling me in my sleep, Light, and you won’t even let me have enough air to ask you what I did wrong.
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Your desk nearly caught fire today.
By the way, your doorway is too narrow for a wheelchair. All the doorways were, but Mom got a bunch of them fixed when she had the staircase redone. I have a chairlift like an old lady now.
Of course she didn’t get your door done, because it’s not a room we use.
I had to park the chair outside and crawl. It was dusty in there and it got on my clothes while I was scooting around on the floor. Apart from the dust it was clean, though. You weren’t living here, after all. Your test prep books are still on the desk shelf.
I was going through your desk, looking at your stuff, and one of the drawers had a false bottom. Embarrassing shit. (You’re dead; I can swear at you if I want to. Save your stern disapproval for the devil.) Of course I wanted to see what you were keeping under there. I figured it wouldn’t be anything incriminating, because you wouldn’t have left it here even if it was hidden away, but I thought there would be something.
I think I was hoping for a diary. A helpful little guidebook where you wrote down just what you were thinking that whole time. Why you did it, what you thought about it, what you thought about me. If you thought about me at all!
I tried to pry up the false bottom and it caught fire a bit. It was pretty funny, honestly. Apparently you had a plastic bag of gasoline in there connected to an elaborate booby trap. Just who did you think you were? Some kind of Rube Goldberg Machiavelli? Is this where you hid your murder weapon? You moron. You could’ve burned the house down!!
The gasoline ate through the bag and evaporated ages ago, and there wasn’t anything in the bag. There was still a bit of something left to catch, but only enough to be startling. The funny little device you put in there was enough to make up for the disappointment of no diary.
It’s such a kid thing to do. Setting a trap to explode your desk if someone tries to find your secrets. Very secret-fort, no-girls-allowed type of stuff. You never seemed that interested in tinkering, but I guess there were a lot of things you were interested in that I never knew about.
I found cram school notes and stuff like that, but nothing personal. I couldn’t find anything where you’d written your thoughts down. No ideas or daydreams or doodles or anything. Not even on your computer. Just schoolwork and news and exam prep. The perfect honor student.
I guess it was stupid to think I could solve you by looking through your childhood bedroom. Near was right; there was nothing to find in there.
It was weird to sit at your desk. The chair used to feel bigger. Back when I’d bring my homework up. I’d sit in the chair and you would lean over the back of it to explain it to me, then you would rest your chin on my head and tell me to show you I understood. I remembered that so vividly. I could almost feel you there, leaning over me again, somehow still so much taller.
Did you ever think about killing me?
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Everywhere I look in this house, I think of you. I wonder how many rooms you killed in. Did you do it in the living room? At the dinner table? A few names written down over breakfast before school? It’s like everything here is soaked in poison. You are poison to me now. How can I sit where you sat? How can I eat where you ate? How can I live here, the home of the most prolific serial killer of all time, and act like I’m okay? How could you?
I’m scared there’s something wrong with me, too. We’re related. What if it’s in me, too? What if that’s how this ends? What if I snap and I hurt people and no one can stop me?
I guess I don’t need to worry about that. I’m just your stupid little sister, after all! I was never as smart as you. They’d catch me. I could never be as good as you at anything. You were such an overachiever, even as a murderer.
We sat and talked at this same table. I remember you smiling over rice, I remember you making conversation about school, I remember when you said you wanted Kira caught. You told Dad that you would catch Kira. I thought you were being pretentious, I think I told you so, but I also thought you were so brave. My brave big brother. What a fucking joke.
I want to burn this place to the ground. I want to eradicate it. I want to turn all traces of you left to ashes and start over somewhere else. Somewhere no one knows I ever had a brother. Maybe I will.
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“It’s important to remember and validate your positive memories as a part of your story as well as your feelings of hurt.” So says the therapist. That sounds like a polite way of telling me I’m being too depressing, which is not what you want to hear from a therapist. I don’t even tell her that much. I don’t write fast and I always feel so awkward writing while she stares at me. I think if you don't want to hear bummer shit all day then you shouldn't be a therapist.
You’ve spoiled everything. What you did isn’t some contained thing, it’s leaking everywhere. It reaches back through my whole life. There aren’t any positive memories left, not that I had a ton to begin with. You were such a brat.
When you made bitchy comments about the dramas I watched during dinner, was that normal? What about when you rolled your eyes at me for putting on mascara before school? When you laughed at me when you beat me at Mario Kart over and over and over again? I thought you were just doing what older brothers do. Now that all looks sinister in retrospect.
You always won at Mario Kart. You always won at everything. You practiced on your own to make sure I’d never get better than you at Mario. You hated losing so much. Did either of us even like that game? I didn’t. It was too hard. I just wanted to play with you, anything would have been fine. It always had to be games with you because you didn’t see the point of playing with dolls. You wanted something you could win, so it was Mario Kart and chess and Old Maid and Gin Rummy and mahjong. You beat me every time and changed the game if I ever started getting good. Sometimes you’d make up fake rules just to make it harder for me to win!
Light, is it possible to un-know something once you’ve found it out? Could you do it? Is that how you lived with yourself? I wish you’d taught me how to do that instead of how to do long division.
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If it had been up to you, what would you have done?
Would you have told me? Would you have told the world? I’ve tried to imagine if they’d arrested you instead and sentenced you to a thousand years in maximum security and if they’d let you have a say, but I just don’t know. Did you want attention or not? You started a cult and took over the world, but you never came out and took credit. Were you afraid they wouldn’t like Light Yagami? Did you want to leave yourself an escape route? Or was it just a practical thing?
You always pretended like you didn’t care about attention and awards, but it was so obvious that you only acted like that because you knew people would praise you more for being humble. You wanted it to seem like all of those awards fell into your lap and you weren’t even trying. You loved to be at the center of attention so you could pull that “who, me?” routine.
I think you would have told everyone. You had nothing left to lose, and you clearly didn’t care about me or Mom, so why not let the whole world know? Your name would go down in history, the ultimate overachiever, and no one would ever forget that it was you who did it.
But I don’t know if you would have told me. When I think of it, I think of you telling me that you did it for me. You wanted to be the ultimate big brother and make the world safe for me and deep down this was about me. It was all my fault. If I had been stronger, if I hadn’t been such a crybaby, then you wouldn’t have felt the need to Ugh! I know it isn’t like that. That isn’t who you were.
I think you forgot about it, but I never did. You were the sort of kid who forgot inconvenient things, and I was the sort of kid who held a grudge.
You were fifteen, I think. You had cram school most days, but not that day; that day you went home after school, and you walked right past me on the way. These girls from my class were picking on me. They had me backed up against a chain-link fence, calling me names and stuff. One of them grabbed my bag and dumped it on the ground so my homework fell in a puddle.
You were walking home on the other side of the street. You saw me, saw what was happening, slowed down, and then you just kept on walking.
I didn’t need your help. I wasn’t some helpless baby about it – I told the girls to buzz off, picked up my stuff, and went home. I didn’t get hurt. But I remember you doing nothing, and I don’t think you do.
Some of those girls sent me cards when I was in the hospital. Lots of people sent cards. It's what people do. You didn’t.
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I wonder what you would have done if you’d ever found out about my shoplifting phase. Are you shocked to hear that I had one? It was all the rage in high school! And my grades were just okay, so Mom and Dad didn’t want to give me much pocket money.
It was sort of like doing a ghost challenge. It was a test of bravery. If you didn’t steal anything, it was because you were chicken, so of course I had to do it at least once.
We’d go to the mall and steal little things. Makeup and lip gloss and nail polish. Stupid things we didn’t need, small enough to fit in a bag or a pocket or a bra. We thought we were good at it, but considering how much we giggled I don’t think we were. I think some places stopped reporting shoplifters as much, especially kids, because they didn’t want blood on their hands.
It was a fun kind of scary to us, not a real kind of scary. We didn’t really think we could die. But looking back on it, we got lucky. We could have gone somewhere where they didn’t mind calling the cops on dumb kids. I wonder how many girls like me you killed because they didn’t have a thousand yen for the brand-name eyeliner.
You always had more than enough pocket money for whatever you wanted, didn’t you? You never knew what it was like to want something that you couldn’t have. You always got everything you wanted. You got the whole world.
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What else is there to say that hasn’t been said by somebody already? What point is there in saying anything when you can’t hear it? The stupid imaginary version of you in the chair my therapist is such a fan of will never say what you would have said. All I can do is imagine based on what I know, and I don’t know anything. Everything I thought I knew was wrong.
I miss you; lots of people do. I hate you; lots of people do.
I think I knew you in a way no one else did, but even that might be fake. I have no way of knowing, because you didn’t leave anything of yourself behind.
I could spend the rest of my life chasing after you, trying to piece together enough information to allow me to understand who you were. I could devote myself into being a refutation. I could become a defense attorney or a doctor, saving lives instead of ending them. I could make you the center of my universe. I could let you keep everything you took from me.
I don’t know. I don’t know what I’ll do with myself.
I asked Matsuda-san for your watch. He said it was impossible, but after I kept going after him about it, he said he’d see what he could do.
It came in the mail today, along with a note from “N” explaining the secret compartment and what you used it for. Very James Bond, nii-chan. I bet you were proud of it.
The watch isn’t as big as I remember. The wristband is big on me, but not as much as I’d expected. You must have lost a lot of weight.
There’s blood on the watch. I think it must be yours. Some of it seeped under the glass onto the clockface and congealed there. It’s broken, too. I don’t know if the battery died or if it stopped when you hit the ground dead; either way, I think I’ll leave it be.
The compartment still works, though. Of course I opened it. There’s a bit of lined paper tucked into it, stained with more old blood. It says “Nate Rive.” The first name you wrote in pen. The last name is in blood, and the last letter is just a big smear. The paper is warped and crinkly from getting wet and drying.
I don’t know why he gave this to me. The note didn’t say. Maybe it’s a test? I don’t really know.
I’ll take your watch, and I’ll take your Nintendo 64. Let the rest burn.