Angels and Demons

WARNING: Spoilers for up to Chapter 61/ Episode 27 (ish)

It was difficult for me to pinpoint the moment in my life when the line between angels and demons became pliable. As a child, like most children, I was naively convinced of the polarity of the world: that there existed a concrete, un-crossable boundary that separated good from evil, and protected those of us on the right side. But as time went on, I found myself growing less certain of the distinction. Kira was evil- Kira would always be evil- but me, Near, Roger, even the other children… Were we good? Were we evil? There seemed to be no-one who could say besides God, and at that time I was finding it increasingly difficult to communicate with Him.

So I thought and studied and read, and allowed my ambition to swallow my life until angels and demons were replaced with winners and losers, and morality was dictated by the educative red pen. There was something about Near that infuriated me- it might even have been the fact that he had never subscribed to the childish worldview that I was still discarding, slowly, like a chrysalis- and I determined to beat him no matter what.

This decision became horribly relevant after L died.

If Kira remained as my ultimate evil, then L was my ultimate good. I respected him because of his morals- but also because of his methods. I was young, but it had not escaped me that he would go to extremes to achieve results. I liked that; it reminded me of me. In a way it confirmed that my attitude towards Near was the right one.

Taking up L’s title and continuing his work along with Near would be the most wonderful and the most humiliating offer that I would ever reject. I had no use for half a throne, half a mantle, and the thought of Near being able to influence my actions sickened me to the pit of my stomach. If my idol was gone, I would just have to continue his mission independently. No matter what… I knew that L had meant it. I would mean it too.

Mine became a world full of death. I never killed a person in cold blood- never watched my hands close around another man’s neck or felt blood ooze out around the hilt of my knife- but I organised many murders, and even witnessed a few of them. I didn’t feel justified, and sometimes, even as I sat in the heart of the Mafia’s nest and followed their creed, I wanted to kill every single one of them with my bare hands. But I needed them to fulfil my goal- and I could never allow myself to doubt my ambition. God became stale, and His teachings redundant. God divided life into heaven and hell. He knew nothing of the world in which I found myself.

Shortly before the kidnapping of Sayu Yagami, I was walking- walking! - through the streets of Los Angeles. I was considered the de facto leader of the group, but I hadn’t been supplied with a car, and my motorbike was elsewhere. This, added to Director Takimura’s frustrating lack of real information, had boiled up into a fury inside my gut, which had led me to leave the headquarters in disgust a few hours earlier.

As I turned a corner I heard a faint snatch of song: the first line of an old hymn I had sung as a child. Before I became aware of myself, I stopped dead in the street, the words to the next line bubbling up in my head and falling from my lips in a soundless murmur.

The singing was coming from a chapel on the other side of the street- an evening service, probably. It was quiet and sombre, and although the chapel was large, I could only hear about twenty voices. The night was dull and overcast, and from where I was standing none of the colours of the stained glass windows could be seem- the glass seemed dark and made of shadow, apart from the yellow glow of a chandelier in the window closest to me. But I knew that on the inside there was warmth and beauty and people united in hope. To the singers, doubt was a faraway word, and murder was inconceivable.

I stood there for a while, reciting the words of the hymn inside my head as they were sung and released over the road. The steady noise of the traffic was somehow stifled by the tiny choir, and I became unaware of my feet, aching and stiff from the walking I had been forced to do in my ill-fitting boots. But as soon as the hymn ended, the melody faded from my mind once more, and I walked on, thinking angrily of cars and kidnaps.

I could not join those people in that secluded place, praising their angels who were good and striving to avoid their demons who were bad. I no longer knew which I was.