What if Ayanokoji tried to solve the Kira case?

The Abyss Between Eyes

The night draped itself across the city like a suffocating shroud. Ayanokoji stared out of his window, gazing into the black void that stretched beyond the school's perimeter. The world outside seemed dead—silent and indifferent. But inside, within the minds of those who inhabited this world, a storm raged. It was the kind of storm that shattered the fragile illusion of peace, a slow descent into madness, one that Ayanokoji had carefully and deliberately set in motion.

He could feel it—Kira's eyes. Somewhere, they were watching him. Maybe not consciously, but there was an unspoken awareness between them, like predators circling each other in the dark. Ayanokoji's lips curled into the faintest smile. Fear wasn't something he had experienced for a long time, but if he was being honest with himself, the thought of Kira fascinated him.

A being who held life and death in his hands. A god.

How absurd.

Yet, wasn't that what power had always been? The ability to crush another soul, to dictate the terms of their existence, to make them beg, confess, and repent—not to some divine entity but to the faceless man behind the curtain? Power was never about divinity; it was about control, pure and simple.

Control of the mind. Control of perception. Control of fear.

Ayanokoji understood this better than most. Kira might have the Death Note, the tool that could end a life with a name and a face, but Ayanokoji had something else—an understanding of human nature, a mastery over the invisible strings that made people dance. In this sense, he wasn't much different from Kira. Only, his way of killing wasn't direct. His way of killing was far more insidious.

It wasn't hearts that Ayanokoji targeted; it was the soul, the very essence of a person's identity.

He turned away from the window, his mind buzzing with the quiet hum of a thousand calculations. It was a strange sensation, this game. Ayanokoji had always been an observer, someone who calculated every possibility before making a move. But with Kira, it was different. He was a participant, not just a puppeteer.

As he sat at his desk, Ayanokoji thought of Fyodor Dostoevsky—the way the Russian author had described the internal turmoil of Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment. The anguish, the dread, the suffocating weight of moral consequence. It wasn't the act of murder that tormented Raskolnikov; it was the idea of being caught, the unraveling of his own mind under the pressure of guilt and paranoia.

But Ayanokoji was not Raskolnikov. There was no guilt here. No moral hesitation. Only the cold, clinical pursuit of knowledge, of truth.

The thought occurred to him: Was Kira feeling the same pressure? Was this game starting to take its toll on him? Ayanokoji imagined Light Yagami, the man behind the mask of Kira, sitting alone in his room, the weight of his god-complex pressing down on him like a vice. Did Light even realize how deeply he had been drawn into this spiral of madness? Or had he already accepted his own descent into the abyss?

The quiet thrill of the hunt stirred in Ayanokoji's chest. He opened his notebook, flipping to a blank page, and began to jot down his thoughts, every movement deliberate and controlled.

"The question is not whether one can act as a god, but whether one can maintain their humanity in the process."

A pause.

"What happens when the predator realizes he has become prey?"

The Kira Investigation Task Force Headquarters

Across the city, in a nondescript office building, the tension was palpable. Light Yagami sat at the far end of the room, his expression perfectly neutral, his hand resting casually on the table as the task force members reviewed the most recent reports.