While Light Yagami was still agonizing over how he could contact the second Kira before the police, led by L, reached them first, the unexpected happened.
Misa Amane, played by Taylor, came to him on her own.
Her sudden appearance startled everyone. It was not only Light's mother and sister who were frightened; even Light himself, who was used to calculating every move with almost inhuman composure, felt the ground shift beneath his feet for a brief instant. This girl had crossed every barrier he was still trying to work around. Worse, she had done it with a smile, as if placing her own life in his hands was the most natural thing in the world.
Through Misa, Light learned two crucial secrets about the Death Note.
The first was that someone who possessed the eyes of a god of death could not see the remaining lifespan of another Death Note owner.
The second was even more terrifying: the way to kill a god of death was to make them fall in love with a human and use the Death Note for that human's sake.
"Why would she tell me something this important?"
Even after hearing all of that, Light did not lower his guard. On the contrary, the more Misa opened herself up, the deeper the shadow in his eyes became. The fact that she said, with an almost sick devotion, that she did not care even if he used her did not move him. To Light, love was not something to receive. It was a weakness to exploit.
And deep within his mind, a cold conclusion had already begun to form.
If this woman knew he was Kira, then he had to find a way to kill her.
But that intention did not escape Rem, the god of death who accompanied Misa. Sensing the poison hidden behind Light's calm expression, Rem threatened him without hesitation: if Light tried to harm Misa, his name would be written in the Death Note.
For the viewers, who watched everything from a privileged perspective, Misa was not lying. She truly loved Light. She loved him with such absolute intensity that it no longer felt like love, but a kind of distorted faith, a complete surrender of her own existence.
Light, however, did not see a girl in love before him.
He saw a tool.
A dangerous, unstable tool, but one far too powerful to discard.
In the end, faced with Rem's threat, Light abandoned the idea of killing her. Not out of pity. Not out of guilt. Only because it was not convenient yet. If he could not eliminate her, then he would use her until her last breath.
After making that decision, Light pulled Misa into his arms with carefully measured tenderness, his face showing a softness that never reached his eyes.
"Thank you. Those eyes of the god of death that you bought with half of your life… let them become my weapon. Let's create it together. A new world where the two of us can live happily."
Misa, wrapped in that embrace, burst into tears of joy.
"T-thank you… I'll do my best to make you fall in love with me…"
Under the silent gaze of two gods of death, in an atmosphere that was strangely romantic yet far too tainted by darkness to truly be called love, the two of them made their vow.
Then the camera shifted.
Light's face filled the screen.
Alex raised only one corner of his mouth, almost imperceptibly. But in that tiny movement, there was a cruel euphoria, a monstrous satisfaction, the ecstasy of someone who had just watched his trap close exactly as planned. His eyes gleamed with a joy so twisted that, for a second, the entire theater seemed to lose its warmth.
In cinemas around the world, viewers felt a chill crawl up their spines.
It was the kind of acting that did not need screams, tears, or exaggerated gestures. A single look was enough to reveal the rot inside a soul. Just as a great actor could convey the loneliness of an undercover agent through nothing but the way he held a silence, or turn the crushed humility of an ordinary man into something that pierced through the screen and struck the audience in the chest, Alex did the same with Light Yagami.
He was not merely portraying the character's intelligence.
He was revealing his deformation.
His madness.
His poisonous beauty.
His total inability to love anything except his own idea of divinity.
Although Alex did not have much admiration for certain closed circles within the entertainment industry, he knew there were people in that screening who understood what they were seeing. Ordinary viewers were already cursing Light without restraint, furious at the character's coldness, calling him a scumbag, a monster, human trash. And honestly, it was hard to disagree.
Sitting beside Alex, Nadia could not help whispering, half indignant and half fascinated:
"Alex, the protagonist you're playing is such a jerk…"
Chloe immediately nodded, wrinkling her nose.
"Yeah. He's way too hateable. Be careful, people might start hating you because of him."
But the professionals present saw another layer. They were not merely reacting to the character. They were stunned by the precision of the acting.
"You didn't put any scene this difficult in the script you gave me, did you?"
Jay asked in a low voice, clearly worried.
Damn it. Just that look alone was something he felt he would never learn, even if he spent his entire life trying.
Alex simply made a reassuring gesture, as if telling him not to worry. To be honest, the role he had reserved for Jay suited his natural energy quite well. Jay also knew his own limits as an actor, which was why, when he was younger, he often said he preferred to play characters whose personalities were close to his own.
Even if, in the end, many of those movies had not exactly been masterpieces.
"So the protagonist has won now, right?"
Wallace murmured, his eyes fixed on the screen.
Ruby, sitting beside him, also felt that made sense. After all, the two Kiras had finally joined forces. All Light had to do was find a way to make L appear in front of Misa. Once she saw him, she would discover his real name, and Light would write that name in the Death Note.
Game over.
But when someone quietly checked the time on their phone, they noticed something absurd.
Not even one-third of the movie had passed.
People always said Alex's works did not waste a single second, and that was not an exaggeration. More than half an hour had gone by, yet there was not a single unnecessary scene, not one empty line, not even a moment of rest. Everything felt like part of a mechanism wound far too tightly to allow distraction.
After officially exchanging contact information with Misa, Light believed victory was already in his hands. The next day, after classes, he would go to the investigation headquarters, take a photo of L, and hand it to Misa. After that, all he would have to do was wait.
His greatest enemy would die.
But what Light never expected was that L, who normally never showed up at the university, would come to Harvard the very next day.
And by coincidence, Misa was also there, taking part in a film shoot.
The three of them met.
Light was shaken for a fraction of a second, but he regained his composure almost immediately. He pretended everything was normal, handled Misa casually, sent her back to the set, and, in front of L, kept wearing the mask of an exemplary student. He only said that they would meet after classes at the investigation headquarters.
As he walked away, Light turned slightly, took out his phone, and smiled inwardly.
"Fine. This actually saves me time. Now I just need to call Misa and ask for your name. This battle… is my victory."
The call had not even fully connected when L's phone rang first.
"Hello… ah, yes… I see… understood… then that's that."
L responded with his usual calm, nodding a few times before turning to Light.
"Yagami, I have some news that might not be very good for you."
"Hm?"
Light, who had not gone far, stopped and looked at him.
"We have confirmed Misa Amane as the prime suspect for being the second Kira. She has already been arrested."
Light's pupils contracted violently.
He almost failed to control his expression.
In front of the massive screen, millions of viewers around the world were also frozen in shock. Everyone already knew that Alex's works moved at an intense pace, but no one had imagined they could be this suffocating. If L had acted just one minute later, Light would have obtained L's real name through Misa and killed him without leaving a trace.
"We searched Misa's residence and found a large amount of videotape material connected to the second Kira. The evidence is essentially conclusive."
L explained unhurriedly, as if he had no idea that, only moments earlier, he had been standing with one foot in the grave.
"That woman… she didn't destroy the evidence?!"
Light screamed inwardly.
And the viewers felt their scalps tingle.
"What the hell! This is way too intense."
"Alex is terrifying. No one can predict that he would write the story like this."
"Wasn't this girl supposed to help him? She's completely dragging him down."
"It's over now. Misa has been arrested, and she knows Kira's true identity. The protagonist has lost everything."
Countless people who had watched the first half of Death Note in theaters, on Netfi, or through shared files half a year earlier felt the same thing at that moment.
It was the familiar formula.
The familiar flavor.
Whenever Light or L seemed to gain an overwhelming advantage, whenever the audience believed that this exhilarating battle of wits would finally end with one side's absolute victory, the other would rip the entire board out from underneath the game and reverse everything in brutal fashion.
And now it had happened again.
Just when everyone thought Light had gained a devoted girl with the eyes of a god of death, someone willing to love him unconditionally and die for him, when everyone believed he had reached the point where crushing L would be effortless, L answered with a decisive, devastating blow.
The game turned in an instant.
It was electrifying.
It was cruel.
It was impossible to look away.
Even so, when the viewers realized that the movie had not even reached the halfway point, they understood one thing: Light would definitely find a way to strike back.
But how?
In such a desperate situation, with Misa captured, evidence gathered, and the police closing off every possibility, no one could imagine a way out.
No one except Light.
Or rather, no one except Alex.
"A genius…"
In the theater where Alex was attending the premiere, even artists who were used to considering themselves superior began murmuring the same thing. Many of them did not want to admit it. Their pride would not allow it. But in front of those scenes, denial would only be ridiculous.
They could never write a script like this.
They could never reach acting of such precision.
People called Alex the emperor of the domestic film and television industry.
Perhaps, before long, there would be no need to limit that title to a single industry at all.
However, just when everyone thought Misa was nothing more than a burden, the story revealed another side of her.
Her love for Light had already gone far beyond any healthy notion of devotion. It was total obsession, a surrender that bordered on collapse. Even while imprisoned, bound, blindfolded, deprived of control over her own body, and pushed to the edge of mental breakdown, she did not betray Light.
"Kill me… please… kill me already…"
Three days passed.
Misa could barely speak anymore. She simply kept her head lowered, murmuring those words in a weak, broken voice, as if every syllable scraped against the bottom of her throat.
L and the police, unable to see Rem, believed that the girl had broken under pressure. To them, that request was only the despair of someone seeking release.
But the viewers knew the truth.
Misa was not speaking to the police.
She was speaking to Rem.
She was asking the god of death to write her name in the Death Note and kill her immediately.
Not only to free herself from the pain.
But also so that she would not become a burden to the man she loved.
Realizing this, the entire audience fell silent.
Even those who, minutes earlier, had been cursing Misa in their hearts, calling her useless, reckless, and disastrous, now stared at the screen with complicated expressions.
What kind of love was that?
How much did someone have to love another person to still be willing to die for them in a moment like this?
Misa was a character full of shadows. She did not care about the world, she did not care about the innocent people who died because of her actions, she did not care about the friends who helped her, and she did not even care about herself. Her devotion was dangerous, selfish, and devastating. Because of her, many people who had nothing to do with her tragedy lost their lives.
But one thing could not be denied.
Her love for Light was real.
Distorted, suffocating, terrible.
But real.
Now, if anyone asked Alex whether he would want a girlfriend like that, his answer would be immediate.
No.
Absolutely not.
That kind of woman was far too terrifying.
He could admit that his tastes were broad. Tsunderes, cute girls, mature women, students, forbidden crushes, morally questionable fantasies within fiction… he could understand plenty of things.
But yandere?
Better to keep his distance.
A very long distance.
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