5Before Dawn
It was… odd, how life kept passing by so normally. There was too much normality and no way to shatter it.
Before Sayu left for school, her mother would hand her lunch, kiss her on the cheek, and wish her goodbye. Light, like normal, would smile in greeting before rushing out ahead of her (she tried not to shudder everytime it happened- but sometimes his smile was just to sharp for her to bear). Her father was never there in the morning. Like always.
She would come back from school, usually to the greeting of her mom, and rush into her room to get her homework done as quickly as possible. She would hang around for a few hours. Then dinner.
The whole family was there. Like always.
Light sat right across from her, grinning and chatting. Like always.
Just. Like. Always.
(sayu always made sure she was smiling too, because her parents would notice that but not-)
She wondered how long the fragile peace would last.
The demon was the scariest part. The weirdest. (not that finding out that your brother was a serial killer with a twisted sense of justice wasn't weird and scary and twisted, but there was just something so cutting, so… weird about ryuk)
It was hard not to tremble at just the sight of it. The demon with its large, wide eyes and long claws, its odd craving of apples. How she would find him wandering through the halls late at night. She shivered just thinking about how it had always been there- for months- she had just never seen it.
Sometimes it would laugh at things that weren't funny. Like how she flinched whenever her brother fixed his eyes on her for longer than two seconds. Its laugh was terrifying, loud and scratchy, like it could puncture the sky if it reached high enough.
Humans, Sayu thought, were easily scared of what they did not understand and she was no exception. But, she didn't want to understand. Not why the death god was lounging around her house, not why her brother was a killer.
All she wanted was her brother back. Her kind brother who would tease her- who she worried about because all he did was study.
Sayu wanted that life again, because the life she lived now was just so stifling. Should she turn in her brother? To whom? Her father, maybe. But that would…
All that would do is tear her family apart.
(there were no options, she knew, but to just let it happen. her brother wouldn't hurt her, and she didn't want to hurt him either)
"Sayu," Light said one day when they were alone in the house, "Did you see the broadcast?"
She stiffened at the sound of his voice, "What broadcast?"
He sighed, almost like he was disappointed, and turned on the TV, "I think you'll like it." He said, "The game is more fun now."
But, despite the calm and the nonchalance that he tried his best to emmit, Sayu noticed that his teeth were grit.
(this moment, she felt, was almost like a peace offering of sorts. an olive branch.
which would have been nice, if her brother wasn't kira and didn't currently have the greatest detective in the world hot on his trail.
she was too afraid to deny him though. afraid and blinded by nostalgia. like the fool she was)
'But like love
the archers
are blind
Upon the green night,
the piercing saetas
leave traces of warm lily.
The keel of the moon
breaks through purple clouds
and their quivers
fill with dew.
Ay, but like love
the archers
are blind!'