Chapter Text
Mikami’s mornings unfolded like clockwork, every second accounted for as though the structure itself were a form of worship. The alarm blared at exactly 5:30 a.m., and he silenced it with a single motion. There was no hesitation, no indulgence in a second of wasted comfort. He rose almost immediately, folding the sheets into sharp corners until the bed looked untouched. He treated the mundane task with the same intensity as any legal ruling. cleanliness, order, and discipline was a reflection of justice, was it not? If Kira saw everything, then even this was an act of devotion, but just merely pieces of it.
The bathroom mirror reflected back a face that he inspected as if it were not his own but a tool entrusted to him by God. His toothbrush glided across his teeth in even counts of thirty, no more, no less. His hair was parted with perfection, the comb strokes counted and repeated until he was satisfied. Every movement was measured and controlled in a silent, yet desperate way to maintain order: the very thing he raved for. To falter even in routine would be weakness, and weakness was unforgivable. Outside, the streets buzzed with noise—the heavy thrum of traffic, footsteps rushing toward trains, scattered voices rising and fading, often on the topic of kira. Mikami barely heard them. He walked the same route every day, shoes hitting the pavement in precise rhythm, each step counted until a near by person or noise was worth his curiosity. The people who brushed past him were insignificant, unworthy, yet he still studied their faces, silently categorizing: corrupt at most. He imagined how many of them would already be marked in the notebook if his god willed them to be useless and or a danger to society. Sometimes he almost believed he could sense it—the faint aura of sin hovering around strangers, just waiting to be erased.
And yet, the thought that plagued him would always return. Am I enough? His devotion was unwavering, his discipline unshakable, and still the fear gnawed at him, incessant like a judges gavel. somewhere in the world, another servant might be striving harder, bleeding deeper, reaching further into the realm of sacrifice. The possibility stung like a cruel test. He hated it, yet clung to it, because the imagined rival only sharpened his own fervor. To be the greatest devotee required vigilance, and even more importantly required proof. It required that his loyalty never waver, even in thought.
At the courthouse, Mikami moved with the same rigid pace he carried everywhere, but here it sharpened into something even heavier. He flipped through his assigned case files one after another, his fingers grazing the paper like he was skimming through lives instead of ink. What a strange feeling. Each name was dissected and measured against his private standard of justice. His pen struck down with clean, exact strokes, signatures cutting across the page. Every letter had to be perfect. No smudge, no hesitation, even when his hands shook with vigor. He wanted to be elsewhere and it was starting to show, his eyebrows furrowing with intensity at the end of his signatures.
His colleagues glanced over sometimes, whispering about his recent severity, about the way he seemed carved out of stone. Mikami heard them—of course he did—but their words only confirmed what he already solidly believed, that they were soft and distracted. Human, at most. He felt he wasn’t meant to be like them. He corrected mistakes in documents with an almost surgical precision, red marks lashing through error after error until the page was stripped clean. When someone stammered in presenting their argument, he snapped, voice flat and cold, because weakness in speech reflected weakness in thought, and weakness couldn’t exist in a system meant to uphold order.
By the time he returned home, night had already fallen in a thick blanket over the city. His apartment was dark, pristine and stripped of excess. He preferred it this way—emptiness left no distractions. He placed his briefcase exactly against the wall, adjusted its angle until it aligned with the floorboard, allowing himself to sit at the kitchen table: the one he never sat at. His glasses caught the faint overhead light, and he sat with his hands folded, staring at nothing. The longer he sat, the more the day’s composure eroded into restless hunger, alike a dog breaking into a slaughterhouse. Devotion at work was not enough. Devotion in thought was not enough, either. The title of “God’s most faithful servant” could not be earned in routine alone, so something had to be implemented.
The ink with which he wrote had never been enough for Mikami. It dried too quickly, bled too thin, and left behind only the dull scratch of a pen on paper. Despite his constant urgency when making entries, there was no weight in them—no gravity and no truth. Devotion deserved more than something so ordinary, he felt Light deserved the purest form of faithfulness. Justice demanded more of him.
It demanded his lively hood, his Blood.
And so, after a painstakingly long staring competition with the wall, Teru picked himself up and walked towards his room with purpose. He began to prepare himself the way a priest would before some sort of liturgy. The desk was cleared until nothing remained but the notebook, waiting in silence, and the small rusty exacto blade. He had set it there hours earlier, polished, angled just so beneath the light, as though even steel had to be consecrated before it touched him in the name of the lord. His fingers hovered over it for a long time, steady but reverent, and in that pause his mind surged with divine notions of his god—of the perfection of his will, of how even the act of dying would be a sanctification when performed in His name. He could feel his blood pulsing to the beat of his heart at the tip of his finger.
In a surge or devotion, just as his order called, Mikami picked up the blade and gently wiped his finger over the tip. The release of his gore called to him so clearly as he felt the metal scrape, teasing the release as a revolting smirk curled in his lips. However, Before the idea could intoxicate him any further, he needed to think logically and practically about this process. His heart rushed urgency, but he had to trust his brain and follow order.
His first thought was to collect the blood in a jar, to keep it as one might keep ink. It seemed practical—tidy, efficient, lasting. With a small jar, he could dip his pen continuously , ensuring each stroke carried the same weight and permanence. Mikami had considered this carefully. But the thought was not without precedent, he had always been particular about his tools. His collection of pens was a quiet obsession—polished steel nibs arranged by balance, weight, and the subtle differences in the way they touched paper. He had tested each one against scripture, against journals and copies of laws and rulings, measuring the gravity of their lines as though the pen itself carried some innate sense of justice. But there was one pen set apart from the rest, one he guarded from casual use. It was of the same make as the others, yet it belonged only to the Death Note. Its nib had not been dulled by trifling words or wasted lines; every letter drawn from it had been inscribed just as God willed. To Mikami, the pen itself was sanctified, and to use it was to bind himself closer to lights embodiment.
So when the thought of the jar returned, it seemed fitting that the blood—his own lifeblood, no less—should be fed to that pen alone. There was no higher proof of devotion, no purer ink or ancient liquid with which to transcribe this kind of judgment.
When at last, the moment arrived and mikami had to extract his depraved liquid.His eyes darted to the blade, steady hands lifting it from the desk with the reverence of a priest. The air seemed to still around him, heavy with intent, as though even silence understood the sanctity of what erotic sacrifice he was about to make. He held the edge over his arm and studied the skin there, pale and unmarred, like the untouched surface of a page. It almost felt wrong to mar it, but no sacrifice could never be clean. With a single, shaking motion, he drew the blade across himself—almost recklessly, trying to keep the calm exactness of one accustomed to this kind of ritual. Mikami let out a trembling sigh, followed by a stifled moan when he lifted the blade. The line welled red immediately, his fat bright and solemn, the blood gathering into slow, deliberate drops. When the first fell to the waiting jar, he breathed in and out, his breath hitching with adrenaline. Mikami continued to let the crimson rise from the lone gash, slow and obedient, until it dripped once again.
But as he watched the lone second drop slide into the jar, satisfaction slipped away from his expression. One cut—one thin trickle—felt like a sorry excuse for the grandeur of his intent, his REAL plan. Justice was not singled out, half assed measures. Devotion could not be proven with a token offering, as though his God would be moved by just scraps of sacrifice. Mikami’s jaw tightened, shame rising hot in his chest. The first line across his skin seemed suddenly meager, almost. He lifted the blade again, firmer this time, and pressed it deeper, drawing another path beside the first. As it slid, this cut was wider and opened like an eye of sorts, fat bubbling up to the surface. More blood welled up, warm and insistent, spilling across his arm before dripping into the jar to the strong rhythm of his heart.
His pulse quickened, his blood now pouring at a sickening rate. His head fell weak and airy, but kept his sacred promise to work himself far beyond what was physically comfortable for him. This body meant nothing to him, not as much as the soul. He panted and winced at the now aching, stinging sensation of the gash. When the wound is first opening, the eroticism of it rings through your body like an orgasm, making the next cut sound all the more appetizing. Hurt aside, mikami kept his eyes steady on the flow of his blood, guiding it still into the jar.
‘This will surely please his exellence.’ Mikami thought to himself, the loss of blood lifting his head high off his body. Embarrassingly enough, despite this moment needing to be holy, Teru could feel a feverish knot tightening in his stomach. The sight of jar so quickly filling to the top was shocking and salacious to say the least, but thank god mikami thought ahead. He shifted the second jar over to the opening of the hot gash, letting more of his liquid poor into it with a big sigh. A smile curled deviously into his lips, feeling a heat rise in his lower section. Nothing was more pathetic than getting hard over losing blood.
But suddenly, mikami’s phone vibrated across the desk, rattling faintly against the first, already filled glass jar. His eyes shot over, quickly grabbing the phone with his free hand. Mikami had little contacts in his cell phone, and only one he was anticipating a call from.
Light.
He seized the device with blood-slicked fingers, smearing red across the smooth surface, and pressed it to his ear with something close to desperation. There was no sound on the other end for atleast 4 seconds, giving Mikami time to battle his heart beating irregularly with excitement.
“God,” he rasped, his voice already uneven, heavy with the labor of his sacred offering. The bloodloss was ever so slowly catching up to him.