Peak volatility: 3.7 sigma. Spillover range: controllable.
White text, cold terminology, clung to the phone screen with the precision of a scalpel slicing tissue. Five seconds later, it vanished, leaving only the screen's dead-black background and a fleeting afterimage on my retinas.
Controllable.
He was measuring me. With his model, his sigma, his risk parameters. He had defined Metis's brain death and the worldwide blue screens as an event with a volatility of 3.7 sigma, then casually slapped the label "controllable" on it.
He was trying to digest it. Trying to understand. Trying to use the cold mathematical language he knew to label a storm he could not begin to comprehend, then shove it into some corner of a database and pretend everything remained under control.
Laughable. Pitiful. Pathetic.
But... it also revealed a hint of information.
Sigma. A statistical concept measuring deviation from the mean. 3.7 sigma meant an extremely low-probability event. He considered my actions an "extremely low-probability" outlier, but one that had not yet strayed completely beyond his predictive model ("controllable").
That meant he really did have a model. A model built on vast amounts of data analysis, intended to predict my patterns of behavior. Shao Guoping? Zhou Huaian? Zheng Guodong? Even earlier targets? The times, locations, and circumstances of their deaths... he had fed all that data into the model.
He was trying to calculate me.
And my latest "information silence" judgment had pushed that model's volatility to 3.7 sigma.
It hadn't reached its limit yet.
I needed to be a little crazier. I needed to push the volatility beyond his "controllable" range and make his model collapse completely.
The next target. It had to be unpredictable. It had to defy all logic. It had to be like a pure, randomly descending natural disaster, turning all his data analysis into wastepaper.
The target needed to... come without warning. Someone who, to everyone-including his model-absolutely should not be "judged." An ordinary person, someone who could even be called "kind," whose death would nevertheless trigger a chain reaction, indirectly exposing some immense evil.
A... misfire. A "mistake" by the Judge.
But this "mistake" had to be meticulously designed, ultimately pointing toward a target I knew deserved to die, but could not yet touch directly.
My gaze went blank, piercing through the screen as I trawled the torrent of information for its most inconspicuous specks of dust. Charitable donation records? Community service lists? Reports of good deeds?
Found her.
Chen Jing. A retired teacher in her seventies, universally regarded as a good soul in her community. For decades, she had supported impoverished students while living an extremely frugal life herself. She was also... one of the public faces of the city's largest charitable foundation, the Morning Star Foundation. Cross-checking Sun Ming's emails against Zheng Guodong's final words had confirmed that the Morning Star Foundation was one of the most important channels through which Zhou Huaian and his associates laundered money. Mrs. Chen knew nothing about it. She sincerely believed she was doing good. Her image and reputation were the perfect cover for those filthy dealings.
Her death should be an accident. A pure tragedy that appeared to have nothing to do with any conspiracy. But that tragedy had to tear away a corner of that cover.
I walked to the desk and opened the Death Note, its pages cold. As the tip of my pen touched down, it carried a cold compassion unlike anything I had ever felt before.
[Chen Jing]
Cause of death: accident. Time: tomorrow evening, on her way to visit the children at an orphanage run by the Foundation. Cause of death: while passing a construction site, she is struck in the head and killed by a small number of accidentally falling bricks (note: control the force, make it fatal without excessive gore). No confession required. No performance required.
Simple. Clean. Like a cruel joke played by fate.
But timing was everything.
Tomorrow evening was precisely when the Morning Star Foundation would make its routine monthly disclosure of its accounts and take brief questions from the media. News of Mrs. Chen's death would land like a bomb in that carefully prepared public relations show. Amid the grief and confusion, certain investigative reporters who had been watching the Foundation might discover tiny cracks exposed by the sudden disruption in accounts that had never been perfectly concealed to begin with.
Those cracks would be enough to become the final straw.
This was the... sacrifice prepared for another, true target.
The following evening.
The setting sun bathed the city in warm golden light.
Mrs. Chen Jing carried fruit and books she had bought for the children. As always, she smiled and greeted her neighbors as she headed toward the orphanage.
As she passed the perimeter of a construction site.
A brief, teeth-grating scrape came from above.
Several loose bricks broke free of the safety netting and fell straight down.
One of them, as though it had eyes, precisely, gently... kissed the back of her head.
She collapsed limply without so much as a groan. Fruit rolled across the ground, and books scattered.
Gasps and screams instantly erupted around her.
The news spread quickly.
At the venue for the Morning Star Foundation's monthly financial briefing, preparations were nearly complete. The Foundation's spokesperson had just stepped onto the stage when the terrible news arrived.
The venue erupted into an uproar, and the briefing was hastily terminated. Amid the grief and confusion, several media outlets that had been secretly investigating the Foundation's accounts took advantage of the chaos to obtain screenshots of internal transaction records that were normally difficult to access...
Cracks quietly appeared.
In my room, the screen displayed breaking news of Mrs. Chen's accidental death and a brief report on the cancellation of the Foundation's briefing. The comments were filled with sorrow and condolences. No one connected the accident to the Judge. It was far too unlike my usual style.
In the corner, Ryuk tilted his head, unmistakable confusion appearing in his scarlet eyes for the first time. He looked at the news on the screen, then at me. His enormous claws scratched his scale-covered forehead with a dry rasp.
"Uh... killed the wrong person?" he muttered hoarsely, utterly baffled. "Gone senile? Or eaten so many apples you're hallucinating?"
I ignored him.
I was waiting.
Waiting to see how the man who measured everything would measure this "accident."
This time, the response came faster than ever before.
Within barely fifteen minutes of the news breaking.
The screen of the phone on the desk lit up by itself again.
No ringtone. No vibration.
Only white text, appearing line after line, calmly and rapidly, like a machine log.
[Event type: accident (?)] [Assessment of target's social value: positive] [Correlation analysis: match with known patterns: 0.3%] [Volatility calculation: ...error... insufficient data... recalculating...] [Model revision: introducing new random variable 'irrational choice'... weighting pending...] [Risk assessment: indeterminate...] [Recommendation: raise monitoring level to 'Omega'...]
The text stopped scrolling.
The final line remained alone in the center of the screen, flickering with cold white light.
[Volatility: incalculable]
The screen went dark.
Dead silence enveloped the room again.
I watched the screen turn black once more, and the corners of my mouth slowly curled upward.
Incalculable.
Good.
Mentor.
Your sigma,
Your model,
Your control...
Had it finally,
Collapsed?
Welcome to,
My hell.
How did it feel?
Before you continue