Rain crawled in winding trails down the windowpane, distorting the lights outside into a blurred halo. Inside, there was only the scratch of a pen across paper, and... the crisp sound of some being biting into something.
I laid down the final stroke. The fates of three political leaders were sealed. The sense of emptiness brought on by the mental strain arrived right on schedule, but I had long since grown used to it. I had even begun to enjoy this process of stripping away everything superfluous and drawing closer to pure "existence."
"Crunch... crunch..."
The sound came from the corner of the sofa. There, a figure far taller than an ordinary human, his skin an eerie pale blue, sat cross-legged, holding a brilliantly red apple between thick fingers and munching away with relish. The folded, heavily creased wings on his back occupied almost half the corner. His hollow sockets held no eyes, yet seemed able to pierce through matter and gaze directly at the essence of the soul.
Ryuk.
My shinigami. Or rather, the sole, eternal spectator at this feast.
"Apples in the human world always leave something to be desired." His rasping voice sounded like sandpaper scraping rotten wood, steeped in an age-old boredom. "But watching you 'work' keeps getting more interesting. Much more interesting than watching hundreds of years of dull lifespans in the Shinigami Realm."
I did not look at him. My gaze remained on the notebook as I felt an invisible hand sever the threads of those three political leaders' fates. "Interesting?" My voice was calm and level, devoid of emotion. "To you, this is just a play?"
"Crunch!" Ryuk took another enormous bite of the apple. Juice ran down the corner of his mouth, but he paid it no mind. "A play? No, no,