Chapter Text
“This is for you. Happy birthday!” he said, taking a small velvet box from his pocket and giving it to his sister.
“Thanks!”
It was his sister’s eighteenth birthday, and he had bought a silver four-leaf-clover necklace for her. He heard his sister open the box and gasp.
“It’s super cute! Thank you so much!” She threw her arms around his torso, and Light ran a hand through her hair, using his free hand to pat her back lightly.
“I’m glad to hear you liked it.”
The corners of his mouth raised into a smile. He had spent a long time pondering what to get her for her birthday, so he was relieved to see she had liked it so much.
“By the way, Alice is coming later. We’re going to the mall in about two hours, so I should start getting my makeup done!”
“Alright. I will be heading back to my room, then.”
He left the living room, walked through the corridor, and turned the knob of the second door to the left. The door opened with a faint creak and he entered the room, closing the door behind him. He felt like reading, so he took one of the books in his bookcase he still hadn’t read — a biographical book about the mathematician Emmy Noether — and laid on his bed.
A few minutes after he had started reading, he felt someone tapping his shoulder. Puzzled at the identity of whoever — or whatever — had touched him, he got up from his horizontal position and stood up.
“Clover? Is that you?”
No response.
He felt a chill running up his spine. After all, if it had been Clover, he would have heard her opening the door. But if it wasn’t his sister, then who had tapped his shoulder?
His trail of thought was interrupted by a faint sound coming from his bookcase, as if someone was rummaging around it. He froze momentarily, and the sound soon stopped.
“What the hell…?”
With careful steps, he closed the distance between the bookcase and him. He ran his hands over the books to check if something was different, and he noticed a book was missing. More specifically, a book written by someone with a surname starting with an S, considering he arranged his books by the writer’s name.
Still confused, he decided to go back to his bed and continue reading, only to find out the book he had been reading was also missing from the bed.
Alright, that’s enough, he thought. He opened his door.
“Clover?” he shouted. “Could you please come here?”
He heard his sister’s voice coming from her room at the other end of the corridor.
“Is it an urgency? I’m doing my makeup right now!”
“Could you stop that for a second and come to my room? I need help with something.”
She sighed, and he could hear her closing her makeup bag with a grunt. Her slippers tapped gently against the floor in a rhythmic motion as she went to his bedroom. She stopped in front of the door and spoke.
“What is it?”
He pondered for a second how to phrase the situation so his sister wouldn’t think he was going insane.
“There’s… One of the books from my bookcase is missing, and I don’t know where it is, could you help me find it?”
“Really?” she deadpanned. She didn’t sound amused. “You called me to look for a book?” She sighed and walked past Light into the room. “Okay, I guess I might as well help you, since I’m here now. Any ideas?”
“Do you see anything on the floor?”
“Nope.”
He thought that perhaps the book he had been reading had fallen between the bed and the wall, and was possibly under the bed.
“Perhaps it is under the bed?”
She knelt beside the bed and looked under it.
“Ah-ha! Here it is! Well, actually, there are two books here. Geez Light, what kinda classification system is this?” she joked. “Ew, they’re all dusty!” She blew on them and pressed both dust-covered books against Light’s chest.
“I assume one of them is a biographical book on Emmy Noether?” He sat on his bed, placed the books on his lap, and wiped the rest of the dust off them with his hand.
“Yup!”
“Which is the other book?”
“Uh... something about morphic resonance, or something like that. Dunno.”
“Let’s see…” The man ran his fingertips over the dots in an experienced motion. “The Presence of the Past: morphic resonance and the habits of nature, by Rupert Sheldrake. Interesting… I don’t recall reading this book recently. In fact, I’d say the last time I read it was years ago.”
“Gee, no wonder it’s so dusty!”
“That’s not the problem, Clover. I know that book was in the bookcase yesterday.”
“Well, I didn’t move it, if that’s what you’re thinking!”
“I know. The question is — how did it get there?”
“Dunno. Maybe a ghost put it there,” his sister joked.
A loud thud caught his attention.
“AAAAAAIIIII!”
Clover jumped and grabbed his arm. Light was glad his mother had left to buy groceries, or else they would have had to explain a lot of things.
“What's the matter?!”
“The… the book! It flew on its own!”
“What?!”
The Presence of the Past: morphic resonance and the habits of nature. Rupert Sheldrake.
Light racked his brains trying to come with an explanation for the phenomenon.
Morphic resonance .
Nine years had passed, and yet, the horrors of the Nonary Game were still fresh on his mind. He thought back to those nine days, and he remembered the other eight children that were trapped in the Gigantic with him.
He was reminded of the nine four-leaf-clovers, of the leaf words.
Of Akane’s death.
Akane. She had been burned to death by the madman who had kidnapped them. What had been of Aoi, her older brother? The one who had led the way for the younger kids alongside Light back then?
Maybe it was a sign. That he should try to reconnect with the other children from the experiment, or that he needed to reach out to Aoi.
He shook his head. No, that can’t be. It wasn’t rational. Ghosts didn’t exist, it wasn’t as if Akane could go around his room throwing books around, could she?
“Please, help me…” A thump indicated that another book had been thrown from the shelf. “Can you hear me? Or notice me, at least? ”
Clover shrieked again and clutched her brother’s arm with even more strength than before. “The— The book! It moved on its own!”
But Light didn’t care about the book. The voice had been so faint that he thought he had imagined it, but there was no mistake — even if nine years had passed, he could never forget that voice. That voice no one would have expected to hear ever again.
Akane’s voice.