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If I decide to jump off of the balcony into the sprawling traffic, will I splatter? Will it be ugly? Will I be free?
Misa knows feelings like these are taboo and deeply concerning and yet everyday at exactly five pm when the sun dipped below the giant church, splintering the sides in rays of gold, the feeling to join the dead came back full swing.
Misa had always been suicidal. The urge to crawl into a beautiful grave whenever her mother raised her voice or hit her square across the face for all of her math grades, when the boys teased her for being a crybaby and when the girls scrawled rude pictures of her in the bathroom.
“The only heir to the Amane family is dumb as rocks. The only saving grace is her massive tits and good looks. Other than that, she’s good for nothing.”
Words spoken by her very old relative when she was thirteen just made the urge to die stronger. The only saving grace was her gentle and somewhat distant father who loved with all his heart and put up with his wife and her scatterbrained daughter. Her mother was loving but only the way an older religious woman from Japan would be to her daughter. She loved from afar. Coldly, but with high expectations that Misa couldn’t get close to.
Misa went along with her parents and their hopes and wishes despite wanting desperately to scream at them for forcing her in another stuffy dress and never once showing her the kind of kindness that went beyond superficial. They never discussed art or culture, their love for each other was distant and performed and they were aghast that their daughter wasn’t a son.
She tried her hardest to please them, but her life was full of sorrow the moment they admitted she would never be the daughter they wanted.
And then the home invasion happened without any lead up or warning. Misa went downstairs after an argument with her mother after her mom learned that Misa got into a highly selective university.
“Who did you sleep with to get this?” She asked, already in her late stages of dementia. Misa had been taking care of her from home.
“I got in, myself!” Misa shouted. “Why won’t you believe me?!”
And she did. She studied harder than the gifted girls at her high school, pushed her brain to the limits of what it could go to and worked on her portfolio entirely by herself. There was no one around to guide her and it turns out the process was quite easy when you only had yourself to rely on. Even if it was the fashion program, it was still the best school in all of Japan.
She thumped down the stairs bearing a clatter wondering if her mom knocked something over or was having one of her panic attacks and saw in slow motion both of her parents lying in a heap on the floor, a man over them with a large black gun, breathing heavily, eyes fixed on her mother with a hole in the side of her half balding head.
She doesn’t know what happened after that. She knows she woke up in the hospital, being prodded with questions and tools. Her brain only worked at a snail's pace, losing any hope or joy for a possible future where she could ever be clear headed.
That was the first day the shackles landed on her. Misa felt a weight, a pull from deep within her chest that glued her to the ground.
Stay human it told her.
Stay back in the past. No need to progress.
One thing leads to the next. Perhaps Misa had auditioned for an agency or maybe they felt a hint of sympathy for the poor messy girl who waltzed around on the street in a loose black dress and no shoes, swinging her arms around carelessly, somewhere between a scream and a song in the gentrified parts of Tokyo.
“Hey there, Miss. Would you like to be a model?”
The snap of a camera, fittings taking seven hours each, shouts of crew, heavy equipment and the smell of hairspray were her home the next year. Misa was good, really good at modeling which made her want to laugh herself silly.
“It takes a lot of energy.” She would mutter to herself backstage, “Who would have thought standing in front of a camera would be a career?”
She really wanted to be a fashion designer, but in between unsuccessful court hearings and her modeling career doing so much better than she ever imagined it would, the dream was dashed like a reusable bottle of foundation was thrown into the garbage.
So many empty bottles. Misa would wonder out loud to herself, And they were once full.
Product, money, ever changing billboards of the same material items. Cash in, smile for me honey, so many used bottles scattered around the floor.
When I was a little girl, I used to treat everything with care. Misa would say to herself after yet another shoot, scrubbing her eyes clean with makeup remover.
Whatever happened to me? Why do I care for this shit?
She felt the same way when her stalker confessed to her on the street. She thought about the empty makeup bottles, dirty sponges, ugly bright lipstick stains on white dresses and couldn’t do it anymore. She told him no after a year of confining herself to a chair and being forced to say yes.
He didn’t take it well and attempted to kill her. Misa closed her eyes, simply bending to his will and sunk to a lower level refusing to look up at the sky.
He had a knife and that meant he was going to kill her. Misa wouldn’t have to step into another courthouse hearing or pose for another photo, she’d be a dried up sponge, an empty bottle, disposable and free.
Only he didn’t die. He must have had a heart attack in the middle of the street or something. Misa didn’t stay around long enough to find out.
Two weeks later, a voice, raspy and a bit inhuman yet warm and dry like crusted honey spilled into Misa’s apartment. At first Misa wasn’t sure if she had somehow disappointed her mother so much that the devil himself had come to take her to hell. She dropped to her knees and begged the creature for forgiveness in hopes that whatever she didn’t do to save her parents would be as acquitted as the man who killed them. Her voice trembled and her knees buckled against the carpet, looking every bit the pitiful and innocent sacrifice she longed to emulate.
Misa loved being innocent. She truly believed she wasn’t meant for any kind of punishment or violence against her.
“No, Misa.” The demon said, “I am not the devil. I am a woman.”
A woman? What a strange way to phrase something like that? Besides, this creature should meet her mother. But she was intrigued and looked up, feeling for the first time ever in her life, truly willing prey.
The woman devil, if she wanted to call her that, was impossibly tall and so malevolent in appearance and stature. Bones instead of skin, reptilian eyes staring back at her, claws the size of rules, fangs that glittered in the dark.
And yet, gentle, hunched over, beaten and corpse like in beauty.
So ancient and sad, alone in a human girl's apartment. The creature explains her name was Rem and that she was a god of death.
Death had come for Misa once more and this time it landed in her possession as a means of control. Rem had a notebook in one hand that she passed over, a notebook to control when and why and how someone would die.
Irnoic that a suicidal girl was given the power to end one’s own life.
Misa took the death note and held it in her arms like a stuffed animal to go to sleep with. She half wished she could write her own name in the death note and be done with it. But that was a fool's dream.
Rem lingered and soon the lingering turned into cautious curiosity into Misa’s daily life. She wondered why Misa hadn’t used the death note yet, Misa told her there was no need to.
In the quiet of the apartment or backstage of a shoot or a tv commercial, Rem started to voice her opinion on Misa’s life. The insistence on making wiser spending choices, not sleeping in late and saying no when directors would be too hands on. She wasn’t a distant girlfriend of Misa’s who only treated her with apathy and false kindness.
She was a bit too invested in Misa’s well being in a way not even her mother could be. And maybe it would irritate Misa if her kindness wasn’t so alluring or attractive.
Normally, attractiveness existed in men, polished movie stars or athletes, father figure types and strong thick hands willing to guide you through life. You were supposed to place your entire bet on reading a man’s social cues or winning a way into his heart by being everything he ever wanted; an attractive woman.
You were supposed to be an attractive woman, not want to be with one. And Rem was far from attractive in a conventional sense. But Misa was an orphan and a whore to others who didn’t know her.
She supposed they cancelled each other out.
So Misa and Rem coexisted together, not quite friends but far too close and pining to remain familial.
When news of Kira broke, at first Misa was skeptical, then she grew intrigued and slightly jealous that someone with an obvious Death Note was getting attention for simply using the damn thing.
Then the news about her parents' murderer broke when she was changing into another lace and goth outfit and for the first time in years, with Rem watching over her in the tiny studio, Misa allowed herself to bawl on the floor, tasting her snot and swallowing her salty tears.
She allowed herself just a moment to be a bit ugly just like the monster who eyed her a bit too long or whispered promises of something found only in romance novels or marriage vows.
And it felt so good to be this way. She tore out her hair ties, made a mess of things on the floor and kicked the ground in glee.
“Kira did it!” She shouted, “Kira killed him! I’m free!”
She knew she would have to thank him, she knew that whatever happens, Kira gave her the strength to do away with her pretend femininity, he gave her the courage to cry freely and openly on the floor.
“Oh Misa.” Rem said above her, “You deserved this.”
“I could kiss you if I wanted to, Rem.” Misa told the monster in return.
She didn’t that day and perhaps she was a bit wicked for suggesting that Rem was in love with her after she sent tapes out to the police task force.
Then she saw who Kira was and to her shock, the man was handsome enough to provide safety and comfort although she was more interested in his accomplishments and feats than his appearance. She met him on a whim and she guessed it was love the way she cried in his arms.
The rest was brutal history. After Light killed L, he ruled with quiet intensity brooding in his study or mourning an intelligent counterpart. Misa wasn’t invited not because he shooed her out but because she simply could never be in Lights world the same way Rem had ceased to exist in Misa’s.
So Misa gazes out into the sky, acting as the second Kira, utterly and completely trapped in an apartment filled with lace and glass. She thinks most days about Rem, about how Rem told her she loved her and about how that love caused her own demise.
And yet, Misa didn’t care. She was flippant with the Shinigami, showing interest in Light and Lignt alone. Rem was a means to an end for her, a convenient chess piece to be discarded in Light's game of chess. Rem couldn’t hold her like he could, she couldn’t fulfill the promise of marriage the same way a human man has shown to do time and time again and until the end of time.
Rem was a monster who loved a human girl. Misa was a human girl who loved a boy. Rem simply cared a bit too hard and Misa was too callous.
“Hey Rem,” Misa purred drunkenly over a bottle of cherry wine, naked and watching true crime on the lone tv in her apartment, “Why do you like me? Is it cause I’m pretty?”
A tease. A mean tease that fueled Misa’s bottomless pit for a sky high ego that could rival Light’s. Rem however wasn’t fazed by her cruelty.
“It’s because I find you all the things I wished could be in humans.” Rem answered, raspy and a bit wistful, still standing aloofly to the side against the curtains, “You love with your heart, cry when you are scared and aren’t afraid to see the good even in monsters like Light Yagami.”
“I am a heartless bitch you know,” Misa reminded her, tugging the covers around her naked body, “I could dispose of you if I wanted to.”
“I know.” Rem said, “And yet I would let you.”
“Why?” Misa sat up, not caring one bit if her naked body was exposed to the monster. “Why would you let me be cruel to you?”
“Because you are a selfless human, willing to give her life for a man who doesn’t love you.” Rem responded.
And just like Rem predicted, Misa succeeded those expectations when she helped Light kill L. Perhaps to prove Rem wrong or maybe because Rem was right.
Light didn’t love her, in fact Misa wasn’t sure if Light loved anybody. She couldn’t blame him for her predicament nor did she hold any resentment for his dismissive behavior.
She was stuck in the high tower, contemplating her own death not because Light existed, but because Misa threw away the only connection that actually treated her like a human being.
Why? She remembered asking, her brain half rotted from the months spent in solitary, Why does Rem care for me the way she does? What about me is so special?
I want to die. Why won’t she let me die?
“Give it up.” Rem once told her, “You can’t kill me.”
If only Misa wishes she could. If only Misa had died that day with her parents so she wouldn’t have to deal with this guilt at slaughtering her only friend like a pig with little remorse or care.
Misa stared out the window yet again waiting for Light to come home, her outfit a painful reminder of just how little she cared about herself; just a stained white shirt with slightly day-old underwear, her long blonde hair in clumps around her scalp. She nurses a wine glass in one hand, the other is trying to wiggle the tangles out with her finger.
It hurts but Misa wants to feel pain, the more she pulls, the more she reminds herself that she indeed deserves this for what she did to Rem.
“Gelus became neither sand nor dust and faded away forever.”
If that’s true, then the only reminder of Rem’s existence was the notebook she left behind. Nothing more and nothing less.
With Rem gone, Misa was vulnerable to the den of wolves that had been clawing their way to capture her, tear her body apart and drag her away from safety.
Misa was truly alone and Rem was the regret she carried with her forever. She almost forgot how young she was, how utterly naive others viewed her as. 21 was still a child in some households.
Misa was a stagnant wife who dreamed of death alone on New Year’s Eve and looking every bit the ugly soul she thought she was.
A fitting end for someone like her. She only hopes that Rem gets whatever revenge she desires in the end.
So in the dark, when the sun creeps over the church down the slope of the tower, a tear spills from Misa’s eye and slides thickly on her cheek.
“I’m sorry, Rem. I’ll join you soon, I hope.”
“Happy new year.”
She pulls back the screen door and tiptoes to the balcony, hands gripping the rails as she tries not to think about what waits her down below. Light is still plugging away at whatever operation he’s doing. He won’t care if his future wife is dead.
Misa sighs, swinging one bare leg onto the rail, willing herself not to look down at the city below. Sweat blossoms beneath her palms and her leg trembles.
Misa, you’d die for him? Rem’s voice echoes in her head.
“No, Rem.” Misa tells the sky, “I’m dying for you.”
Just as she’s about to stand on the beam, a hand, a figure, something not human and smelling of sweet rot pulls her back into the arms of death away from the balcony. Misa barely has time to look back up at her savior before, she knows the voice that whispers in her ear, refusing even in oblivion to let her lover die.
Rem’s ghost gently kisses the inside of Misa’s ear as the memory of being hugged fades away like her own elusive lover.
A figment of her imagination but a promise attached.
Love. Move forward, and one day we will meet again soon.
“Okay, Rem.” Misa says, “I’ll hold off until then.”