The Notebook in the Grass
Rain streaks the classroom windows in thin, hesitant lines, and beyond the glass, Tokyo blurs into a smear of grey rooftops and neon signs drowned by the storm. Light Yagami watches a single drop race another down the pane, and even in that small, meaningless contest, some part of him calculates which will win before either has finished falling.
The teacher's voice drones on, flat and mechanical, reciting theorems that Light memorized two years ago from a textbook meant for university entrance exams. Around him, forty other students hunch over their desks, pens scratching, brows furrowed, as though the equation on the board were some ancient, indecipherable text rather than a first-year problem in differential calculus.
"Yagami-kun."
He straightens, not out of surprise, but because the sound of his name pulls him back into a room he had already left behind in his mind. Mr. Tanaka stands at the whiteboard, marker poised, and there's a flicker of something like hope in the man's expression — hope that this problem, at least, might stump the school's most infamous prodigy.
"The value of x," Light says, without rising, without even glancing at his notebook, "is negative three, or…