Disclaimer: I don't own Death Note, I'm making no money off this. Quote is an extract from The Ballad of Reading Gaol. Yes, it's Wilde.

Note: This is a short short thing that's going to be acting as a preface to something I might write. Otherwise, it'll stand alone. I penned it a week or so ago when my NaNoWriMo was giving me hell, read it over today and decided I quite liked it, so would post it as an incentive to myself to actually write this damn story. It will essentially be Matsuda between 7pm and midnight on January 28th, 2020. Mostly rambling narrative, done semi-stream of consciousness style. And it'll be rockin'. For me to write, if not you to read :D Also - yes, I know I need to stfu with the silly Biblical titles. But I DON'T WANNA.

Anyway, guys. Hope it's going good with you. Enjoy.

x

Damascus

-

Some love too little, some too long
Some sell, and others buy
Some do the deed with many tears
And some without a sigh
For each man kills the thing he loves
Yet each man does not die

-

It is seven o'clock. It is the twenty-eighth of January, 2020, and time keeps passing by. Sometimes when it is too late in the evening to do anything new and too early to wind down for the night, things happen in the world when nobody is watching.

At five minutes past seven Matsuda leaves his apartment. He is wearing slacks, a plain white shirt, and a coat. He hasn't though to bring a jacket because he thinks the coat will be warm enough. It doesn't occur to him that if it is too heavy he will have to take it off, or if he goes inside it will be unseemly, and then a wind through the door could chill him through the thin sheen of the shirt. It doesn't occur to him that once he take his coat off he is sure to forget it, and then, if it rains, the shirt will stick to him, cling to him, bind his arms to his chest and make him sneeze for days to come.

None of this occurs to Matsuda because it is January, and ten years ago today, Light Yagami died.

It is cold outside and Matsuda wonders if he turned the iron off. He doesn't iron things often, but today, he found himself aimless, restless, and he did everything – he ironed, he cooked something that turned out to be inedible. He went to the gym and realised that he was pushing forty now and had never been good at this kind of thing anyway. He called Ide but they've long since parted ways, and while Ide still likes him and still sees him, on this day every year they all have their own problems to deal with. To begin with, they helped Matsuda – they knew he was hurting, knew there was something eating at him inside that he couldn't get to, couldn't dig out. Some kind of poison chewing at him, perhaps, some demon festering in his innards.

After five years they decided that it was best to pursue a policy of tough love, and every year now, they leave him to it, to struggle through, to heal himself. No one should be mourning this long, no one should feel guilt for ten years.

Matsuda does. Matsuda does for reasons he can't explain, reasons he's only ever half admitted to, in a dull, hazy period between sleep and waking when everything seems clear and simple and beautiful and right. And then consciousness wraps thin tendrils around his mind, pulling it into a world where nothing is simple and nothing is defined, and everything is tainted and marred and broken. He thinks he could have put it back together if he'd just be left for five minutes to do it – only, he's been left for more than five minutes, he's been left for ten years. Sometimes it feels like he's been on his feet every minute, cramming sleep between new cases and obsessive, extensive hobbies, and then he sits down, and looks back, and realises that for the last ten years he has barely been alive.

He has barely done anything.

He has done nothing.

Matsuda is decomposing, in some dark recess of his mind, where the sunlight never reached even when he stood out in it full force, all those years ago when he was happy and in love and no one was dying or dead. Now the sunlight doesn't even reach his face, reach his eyes, so the corner of his mind where nothing ever grew is rotting away, falling apart, into pieces that will shatter when they hit the ground and burst, like the shadow of a bubble, when they touch against silk or satin.

Breaking apart, he is. Somewhere. In him breaking – things fall apart and oftentimes when it is dark and no one is awake in the city except him – in that moment after midnight when time shifts and stops and even the waking are sleeping and the sleeping are dead, he is alive in that moment only. Thinking and dreaming and remembering and oh God what has happened to him. What has he been doing with his life, and when did he turn forty? When did he get here, how did he get here, where the hell is everyone and why, why, why can't he get his head around anything at all anymore?

So at five past seven Matsuda leaves his apartment in slacks and a shirt and a coat, because he can't bear to be inside anymore, with his thoughts chasing each other around the room, and all the lights are off because he can't afford the electricity. He thinks that he did turn the iron off. When he leaves his apartment, he turns right to go to work, and right to go out, and right to go for food. He doesn't remember what lies to the left, and tonight, because he doesn't want to go anywhere he remembers, he goes that way.

In the morning he probably won't remember what was down that way and will keep wondering. He will probably be wondering what lies down the road when you turn left from his apartment for the rest of his life, and he will probably die with the question on his lips.

At eight minutes past seven, he turns left.