Worlds Apart (Death Note)

Fourteen - You Know Where You Want To Go

FOURTEEN

You Know Where You Want To Go

“So much walking,” I whisper to Ryuk, hours after I have rejoined my unit, of sorts. How even more boring for him walking must be. Hovering.

I have fallen back to a rear position in the group in the hopes of avoiding detection, as I whisper to the god of death. Only once those words have escaped my lips do I realize that I opened up the conversation by stating the oh-so obvious.          

“They obviously have more people to visit,” I add, before somewhat heartening myself with the thought that, from now on, rather than ending up alone in a house at night, since I am never invited in to visit with anyone, I will have Ryuk’s company, for better or for worse, when he is not off tending to his tree or off enjoying my apples. He has told me that he usually remains with the death note owner, but I suppose that the rule is different now, because Earth is. I wonder if, at times, I believe him away when he is in fact still near me, but invisible to me. One can see the shinigami attached to a death note once one has touched his notebook, but what if he does not want to be seen? What power does he have in that situation? I certainly do not know, and Ryuk is not about to list, to write a book about himself, about shinigami. He did record the rules of the death note, but he will not record the rules of a god of death.

Whenever he leaves me, he leaves me with my borrowed weapon, with his weapon, and he obviously has no worries in doing so. I wish that that were so because he believes that I will not use it again, but . . . Well, the more I think about the death note, the more questions I have, and I am currently wondering if he is the one who makes happen what a death note owner writes within the notebook, since he must be the true power. That would explain why he does not fear leaving it behind with me, if it is powerless without him.

There is so much that I do not know, including why the people I travel with still do not invite me in. Do they believe that I would not enjoy playing games and easing some of my boredom? Do they believe that I prefer to be alone, since I do not ask to join them? I realize that I am not inviting them in either, but they must know that the houses that I enter are always empty, since I have no one to visit, and what does that tell them, about me? Perhaps I am supposed to make friends, along this long route of travel, friends that I can later visit again. Should I then knock on doors until I find someone who is not being visited and . . . Or maybe the people in my group just want to give me my space, and not make me feel like I have to accept an invitation that would place me where I do not want to be, which is a much different attitude than at home, where I was always being told where to be and what to do. What, uh, game to play.

I am certain that they talk more, that they converse, when they are within a house for the night, or what would otherwise be the point of visiting people? Just to stare at one another? Furthermore, I do hear louder words, louder sounds, now and then, coming from within those houses, including laughter and exclamations, and, surely, when the sounds of greater emotions are not travelling out to where I am apart and alone, quiet conversations are taking place, ones of significance, in contrast to the sparse words of little import that are exchanged when we walk. As we travel, it is mostly faces and/or eyes that acknowledge this or that, including the presence of others. When I now turn to look at Ryuk, his own face, however, in no way acknowledges what I just said. I turn forward again.