Seven years.

Light Yagami had spent seven years convincing himself that the situation was under control.

Near watched him. The Task Force watched him. Mello kept appearing like a stain that refused to be scrubbed away. Kiyomi demanded certainty. Misa demanded attention. Every day felt like standing on a floor that could collapse beneath him at any moment.

And yet, somehow, none of that was what irritated him most.

The real inconvenience was the distance.

He could no longer appear whenever he wanted. He could no longer linger outside familiar streets, quietly observing routines that had become more familiar to him than his own reflection. Near's surveillance had made that difficult. Risky.

Ryuk found it hilarious.

"Seven years, Light," the Shinigami laughed from where he sat by the window. "You know, for a guy who claims everyone is a tool, you've spent an awfully long time staring at the same human."

Light ignored him.

Because Ryuk didn't understand.

It had never been about usefulness.

If it had been, she would've disappeared from his life years ago.

Instead, he had woven her into it.

A conversation here. A secret there. A coincidence too precise to be coincidence. A crisis he happened to solve. A danger he happened to know about first.

Piece by piece.

The same way a spider built a web.

Not because the fly was important.

Because the web belonged to the spider.

Light stood in the darkness of her apartment, gaze fixed on the city lights beyond the window.

"If something stands in the way of what I want, I remove it."

His voice was calm.

Near could accuse him. Aizawa could doubt him. The entire world could stand against him.

None of that changed the conclusion.

"And now, when everything is so close..."

He finally looked at her.

"...you think you can just walk away?"

For a moment, silence lingered between them.

Then his expression shifted.

A tiny detail.

A movement.

A bruise.

The sort of thing most people overlooked.

Light never overlooked anything.

His eyes narrowed.

The room seemed to shrink.

"What happened?"

No answer.

His pulse accelerated.

Not from concern.

Not entirely.

From calculation.

From anger.

Someone else had touched something that belonged to him.

The realization settled into his mind with horrifying clarity.

Ryuk's grin widened.

Light took a step forward.

Then another.

"What happened to you?"

His voice had become dangerously quiet.

He studied every mark, every movement, reconstructing events the way he reconstructed crimes.

A stranger could have mistaken it for worry.

It wasn't.

Worry implied helplessness.

Light Yagami hated helplessness.

The feeling twisting inside him was far uglier than concern and far more possessive than love.

Because after seven years, after every lie, every risk, every boundary he had erased between them, the thought of someone else leaving a mark before he did felt almost unbearable.

And that was the part Light never admitted.

Not to Near.

Not to Ryuk.

Not even to himself.