Categories > Anime/Manga > Death Note

Hanami

by queasy 1 review

Rem and falling flowers.

Category: Death Note - Rating: PG - Genres: Angst - Characters: Misa, Rem - Published: 2005-06-18 - Updated: 2005-06-18 - 378 words - Complete

5Insightful
Ficlet for Karcy.



Hanami (dissolution)

In the timeless space where the shinigami exist, there is no colour and no sound. Nothing moves, nothing changes. They sit about, casting bones and talk of the things they see in the human world things the humans say and do; things that often bear a stultifying similarity to one another, barring the endless parade of players blurring one into another. Some just sit alone and watch the human world. Some just sit.

They are as changeless as their realm, their lifespans interminably extendable. The mortal cycles of the human world zip by too quickly to concern them.

Rem sometimes watches humans planning for the hanami: watching the weather reports, preparing the food and drink, staking out their spot under the trees. Then the flowers bloom and fall.

Rem doesn't watch the flowers; they are beautiful and transient, but for all that, they will be born anew each year¸ with hardly any consequential differences from those of the year preceding, and in her eyes ultimately as dull and meaningless as anything in the realm of the shinigamis. Rem watches Misa.

Misa is a pretty girl. That is nothing special. She is clever, she is shallow, she is self-centred and willful, sometimes silly, and none of those are qualities not shared by countless other pretty girls who came before, who exist now, who will come after.

It doesn't occur to Misa to be afraid of or repulsed by Rem, and Misa doesn't allow Rem to watch her. Misa listens to Rem explain the use of the Death Note, tells Rem her plan to get in contact with Kira, asks about the realm of the shinigami and talks to her about the various interesting things she encounters, even as she burns out her life with her single-minded determination to find Kira and repay her debt.

Misa doesn't need to forfeit her Death Note to forget Rem, but Rem doesn't take that personally Misa disregards eveyone equally, from the petty criminals she uses to attract Kira's attention to the police officers who threaten to interfere with her, to fans and managers and people on the street. In Misa's worldview, a shinigami is no greater or lesser than any human.

Ryuk has his weaknesses, Rem has hers.
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