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XVII

The Fallen Notebook

Es stood up with a jolt.

He felt an uncanny chill along his spine.

Although the feeling was unfamiliar, instinct told him it was related to the killing notebooks. Oddly specific, yet he did not doubt it. Shinobi always trusted their instincts. There was no rational argument for why killing notebooks were concerned. It would be nonsense to anyone with any semblance of sanity -- they often say the most brilliant minds were mired by insanity and every genius was crazy -- but he never disregarded his instinct.

He defined the keywords clearly: killing notebooks on the human plane.

A few mirrors appeared around him, each one showing a different angle of a black notebook. A notebook labelled as the Death Note. A notebook just deposited by one of the creatures with the eyes to see names and lifespans.

Then he noticed another mirror.

One of the hideous creatures was displayed on it. The being must have had another besides the one on the ground in front of a school. The being left without a backward glance, leaving the notebook lying innocently on the grass just waiting for someone to notice it.

Noel opened his golden eyes and yawned while staring curiously up at the mirrors. He batted at the one with the scarlet-eyed creature and hid behind Es' back where he peered at it with wide eyes. The cat then blinked up at Es, playing innocent, but the blond only laughed.

Es beckoned the cat forward -- Noel usually slept but was frolicsome when awake -- and Noel padded over, making himself comfortable on the blond's lap before staring unblinkingly at the mirrors.

Es zoomed out of the images of the notebook he now knew as the death note. He noticed Japanese on signages and was soon able to figure out the location -- Daikoku Private Academy (an abrupt reminder of his chūnin instructor from shinobi academy) in Kanto, Japan. This was why people thought S saw everything. Though he certainly could not see everything, Es can see anything. As long as he saw whatever that he needed to see, the illusion that nothing escaped his gaze was produced. He could see through another's eyes if he set his mind to it -- they required effort to pinpoint, but reflections formed on the surfaces of eyeballs too.

"Death note, huh?" Es mused aloud as a black notebook seemed to materialise in a free hand.

He had left his notebook in a distant corner of his mirror realm for all this time and did not think about it since. They were no longer unintelligible scribbles. He recognised the cursive script as French. He could read, Carnet de Mort. In other words, the Notebook of Death. He wondered if there was also a Notebook of Life. How strange it was, a book that dictated how one died. If such a book existed, what was the liberty people of this world preached? Was it the freedom to live what was left of their lifespans as they pleased? Es has found himself debating philosophical questions more and more as he lived in this world so different yet so similar to the world where he was born.

Perhaps the right of choice that they referred to was an illusion.

When he wrote in the death note, all specifications of the events leading to the person's death can be included. For instance, Es could devote an entire page to writing out events worth twenty years of life which led to how a person died at a specific day and time. He could rob the person of their freedom and liberty without them even realising it. They would live with the illusion of freedom, never realising that they were already dead. That they were like a marionette as they followed the commands of another without self-awareness.