Chapter Text
“Genius is the capacity to see
ten things
where the ordinary man
sees one.”
-Ezra Pound
Raito’s first symptoms of schizophrenia emerged when he was 7. Even at that young age, it was clear to the teachers at school that Raito was exceptionally bright so it struck them as a little unusual that a child as mature and precocious as that still had an imaginary friend. His name was Ryuk, Raito informed them, and he was a shinigami. When his mother humored him and said she couldn’t see or hear Ryuk, but if he’d like to stay for dinner, the Shinigami was more than welcome to, 7 year old Raito had frowned, looked suspiciously at an empty corner of the living room, and said rather petulantly, “he only likes apples.” Afterwards, Sachiko noticed that her son stopped talking to himself quite as much wherever she might catch him, but she simply chalked it up to Raito finally growing out of the last of his childish fantasies.
When Raito was 10, the school counselor called home one day, concerned about the boy’s social development. She was worried that Raito might be having some problems at home because she’d noticed that the boy didn’t like to hang around with other children and preferred to sit by himself during breaks, talking to empty air. That wasn’t to say the other children didn’t like Raito; he was charming, polite, handsome, intelligent, and generally very likeable, but he was also aloof towards his classmates and tended to rebuff their attempts at getting him to join in on their games. The counselor thought that maybe it might be helpful for Raito to be put into some mild therapy. “I’ve seen a lot of smart and talented boys like Raito, who see the world in an entirely different way than normal people and who often feel isolated from their peers because of their unique perspectives. It might be beneficial for him to deal with these issues now, before they escalate into something worse in adulthood.”
So Sachiko argued with her husband who thought their son was perfect and didn’t need to see any shrink. “It’ll only make him stand out more! I don’t want my son to think there’s something wrong with him when there isn’t.” But eventually, Soichirou relented and they signed Raito up for a few sessions with a child psychologist just to test the waters. Things seemed fine, Dr. Namiwara, was young and enthusiastic and although she reported that Raito seemed reluctant to open up to her about his problems, she was confident that they were making good progress.
And so another few months passed in this manner, until the straw that broke the camel’s back…
Raito came home one day, raving at the empty air.
They still weren’t entirely sure what had triggered such a reaction. As far as the teachers knew, Raito had been fine when he’d left that afternoon, but by the time he arrived home, the boy was practically hysterical.
Even now, the vivid memory still terrified Sachiko: the sound of a slamming door as her barely 11 year old son had come barreling into the house, hands over his ears, screaming “shut up, shut up, shut up” like a mantra. Alarmed, the young mother had come running out of the kitchen, her hands still wet with dish detergent to see Raito knocking his head against the wall of their home, nails digging into his scalp until he drew blood. She’d tried to pry Raito’s hands from his ears but the boy had only struggled harder and pleaded at her with tear filled eyes for “the voices to stop.”
“Ryuk keeps asking for apples,” Raito had said. “But I can’t give him any more, I just can’t…”
Terrified and unsure of how to best handle her prodigy son’s suddenly alarming behavior, Sachiko had called first an ambulance and then her husband. The paramedics had given Raito some sedatives to keep him calm during the ride to the hospital and by the time Soichirou had come bursting into the emergency room an hour later (having run out of a briefing meeting citing extreme family emergency), Raito seemed generally to have recovered.
When questioned, he refused to explain what he’d been thinking and in fact seemed rather frightened to speak to any of the white-coated doctors at all. It was only after much coaxing and enticing that the young boy had finally admitted one small segment of the truth. He was still talking to Ryuk.
The Shinigami who only Raito could see had a fondness for apples. Normally the two got along just fine and sometimes Raito even found himself enjoying Ryuk’s company, but the death god had been particularly obnoxious that day and simply wouldn’t take no for an answer. He wanted apples and the constant yelling and empty threats had worn the boy down.
When the doctors asked if Ryuk was still there with them, Raito had hesitantly pointed to an empty corner of his hospital room. “He’s standing right there,” said Raito shyly. “He’s eating an apple.”
They diagnosed him with early onset undifferentiated schizophrenia. It was a long name that held about the same amount of meaning as a death sentence to Sachiko. It was also a mother’s worst nightmare.
The doctors originally suggested that they institutionalize Raito, but impressed by Raito’s extremely high level of functionality and at Soichirou’s vehement protests, they agreed to settle for intense therapy and a mild anti-psychotic. Raito was released three days later.
The anti-psychotics seemed to have a positive effect in the coming months although Dr. Namiwara reported that Raito was resistant in therapy and couldn’t quite grasp the fact that something he could see and touch and hear wasn’t real. Nevertheless, the boy was making progress, albeit slowly. Even with the illness, Raito still managed to excel in his studies. He took up tennis for the first time, another positive sign said the doctors—that Raito was showing an interest in extracurricular activities, and quickly rose to junior national championship status. And finally, when Raito was not yet 15, he took the high school entrance exams and scored the highest in all of Japan essentially guaranteeing his placement at the most prestigious high school in Tokyo. Both Sachiko and Soichirou were ecstatic, and offered to celebrate by taking the whole family out to any restaurant of Raito’s choice. But Raito, being the kind and thoughtful brother that he was, simply let Sayu choose instead.
Sayu was a bundle of joy almost the complete opposite of her brother. Lighthearted, cheerful, and wholly innocent, a part of Sachiko was ashamed to say that she’d been relieved that her second child was normal in every sense of the word. Although Sayu didn’t seem to have Raito’s meteoric intelligence (she was only slightly above average in that sense), she had a kind and sweet disposition and like every other young girl, she enjoyed hanging out with friends after school and going shopping with her mother. Sachiko and her husband had tried their hardest to shield Sayu from the full knowledge of her brother’s illness and they were lucky in the sense that Raito’s psychotic breaks never seemed to happen while his sister was home. But nevertheless, Sayu was an intuitive girl who sensed that something about the kind, intelligent, model big brother she’d come to admire was cracking under pressure. All she knew was that her brother was sick, but with what, Sayu had no idea.
That is, until one of Raito’s last days of junior high school rolled around. Sachiko had been concerned because Raito had been unusually jumpy for the past few days, he’d been tired and withdrawn and generally just a little off. So when the school principal called her home to inform her that Raito had assaulted a fellow student, Sachiko felt her heart leap into her throat. The story went like this:
Somehow rumors about Raito’s condition had slipped out to the other students and Raito’s classmates who had at one point worshipped and admired him, turned against him one by one. There were whispers behind his back and condescending laughter. The other children gossiped that Raito was crazy and avoided him like the plague. Some parents, concerned about safety, pulled their children from Raito’s classes. Nevertheless, Raito had calmly endured all the abuse silently and with no more reaction than a cold and indifferent stare until the pressure built up past his breaking point.
A group of boys had cornered Raito in the courtyard after his tennis practice ended and purposefully antagonized him with malicious comments. Even then Raito had silently ignored them and made to leave until one of the boys had spitefully called after him, “Are you going to become one of those crazy serial killers we see on TV? Then your daddy’s going to have to kill you like he does all the other bad guys…”
Raito snapped.
Reflexively, he’d launched himself at the boy, punching and biting and kicking like a feral animal. It had taken two teachers to pull the two apart, and with Raito’s mental history, the teachers had immediately contacted the local hospital.
The principal, understandingly, was not going to be pursuing corrective action. Given the circumstances, it was safe to say that Raito had been provoked, but something had to be done about his condition or Raito would not be allowed to return to school.
The hospital informed Sachiko that the level of anti-psychotics in Raito’s bloodstream was frighteningly low, revealing that he had probably stopped taking the drugs weeks ago. When asked as to why he’d stopped, Raito simply said “Ryuk told me to.” With his condition escalating, the doctors were pushing more than ever for drastic measures.
Given the current situation and the fact that Raito’s psychotic breaks had been coming more and more frequently lately, Sachiko felt they had little choice but to institutionalize him.
It broke her heart in so many ways to have to do this to her own son, but if it was the only way for him to get better…
While Soichirou made arrangements, Sachiko contacted Hibiya High School (“the best public high school in Japan”) to inform them of Raito’s situation and that he might not be able to attend in the spring as originally planned. Hibiya was surprisingly sympathetic and graciously agreed to postpone Raito’s enrollment until personal matters were sorted out. So it was with a heavy heart, that Sachiko, holding young Sayu’s face against her shoulder so that the younger girl would not have to see her brother’s crazed thrashing, watched as her first born was carted away to a mental institution.
The asylum wouldn’t allow visitors for the first week while Raito settled in because they said he was much too volatile. It took Soichirou’s angry protests and threats before they relented and even then a part of Sachiko wished she’d never come. To see her only son trussed up in a straightjacket, head lolling against his chest, slumped lifelessly against the wall of a padded, windowless, room broke her heart.
The nurse who was their guide was falsely sympathetic. “I’m sorry you had to see him like this. Raito-kun was very resistant to treatment when he first arrived and assaulted one of our nurses so we had no choice but to put him in here for his own safety. The doctors have him on some very strong anti-psychotic medication right now that always hits the patient hard when they first start up. It’s unfortunate that patients have to hit rock bottom first before any improvement can be made but I suppose that’s the way life works, haha. I’m afraid he’s going to be very out of it for a few days while we fiddle around with the drug dosage, it would probably be better if you waited until we called before you come back…”
In the coming months, Sachiko accompanied her husband to visit Raito a total of five times before she lost the courage to continue. Every time, Raito seemed to be even worse off than before, his once silky brown hair had dulled without proper care and he had already lost a lot of weight. The last time she’d seen him, Raito had been muttering nonsense to himself, his eyes, wide, diluted, and unseeing darting aimlessly around the small room. It was his eyes that were the worst for her. When Raito had first been born, premature and pitifully underweight, Sachiko had held the wailing baby gently in her arms for many a long night. Although the baby had been very frail, its eyes were unusually bright and attentive and seemed to hold a particularly brilliant spark. At that age, Sachiko had already known somehow, instinctively, that this child was special, and so she had named him “Light” because of the intelligent light she saw in his eyes. It was a strange name, she knew, to give to a boy, the kanji for “tsuki” but pronounced in English. An unusual name for an unusual child. But to look into his eyes now, so heavily drugged and dazed that the spark she’d once seen even at his most helpless had long since dulled and faded out, that hurt her more than anything else.
As if by some miracle though, Raito did recover, Soichirou reported. It took a few weeks but they eventually released him from solitary when the medication began to work. They gave him a bed in his own room, which had a view of the inner courtyard of the facility and prescribed drugs and nutrients through an IV for the first few days. Soichirou said that Raito had still been a little groggy and spent most of his days sleeping. A few weeks later though, he reported that Raito seemed generally very lucid and had even started interacting with some of the other patients. The psychologists at the hospital said that he was incredibly intelligent and a wonder to have conversations with and although Raito was still hearing voices, he’d begun to accept that “Ryuk” was not real. When the doctors deemed him stable enough, Sachiko came back to visit with Sayu in tow. The young girl had been begging for days for her parents to allow her to visit Raito and she had missed her brother dearly. The two of them came up on a Saturday with some of Sachiko’s homemade bento boxes containing all of Raito’s favorites and were pleasantly surprised to find the young teen sitting up in bed, reading classical English literature in the original text.
Sayu had leapt into her brother’s lap without preamble and wrapped Raito in a fierce hug, which the surprised teen had reciprocated after a while. The young girl then immediately launched into a recap of the past few weeks, catching Raito up on all that he had missed, while Sachiko smiled kindly and poured some of the tea she had brought in a thermos for Raito. After they finished eating (Raito had unfortunately left much of his meal untouched citing that his appetite had yet to return in full), Sayu begged and whined until her brother relented and helped her with the homework problems that she had been putting off while Sachiko bustled around the room, cleaning up, straightening the few personal effects that Soichirou had brought for Raito in the hospital, and generally fussing about how thin her son had gotten in the interval. The nurse eventually had to kick them out when visiting hours ended so Sayu reluctantly packed up her things, promising that they’d return tomorrow, and let her mother usher her out of the room so her brother could finally get some much-needed rest.
Once outside, Sachiko had adjusted her purse against her shoulder, absentmindedly listened to her daughter’s excited ramblings about how she would bring a get-well card next time for Raito, how much better he was looking, etc and smiled. Somehow seeing her son act a bit more like himself again made her feel lighter than she’d felt in a long time.
A couple months later, when the doctors finally gave them the ok to let Raito come home, Sachiko was overjoyed. She cleaned the house from top to bottom and prepared a feast of all of her son’s favorite dishes for dinner. She and Soichirou sat through a thorough meeting with the doctor where he explained in detail which drugs Raito was to take and when, symptoms they should look out for, things to keep in mind when taking care of him, etc. The agreement was that he would need some time to recover since many of his muscles had atrophied and since it had been a while since he’d last been immersed in society. Despite all the medications that Raito was now on and the fact that he was still required to check in with a psychiatrist at least once a month, Sachiko still felt that this was a solid step towards her son’s ultimate recovery. Afterwards, they packed up Raito’s things and drove him home. During the ride, Raito seemed a bit withdrawn as he stared out the window, answering his parents’ questions with single word answers and generally retreating into his own mind.
Sayu ran out to meet them after they pulled up in the driveway, ushering her brother happily into the house (while their father carried the suitcases). Sachiko was so relieved to have her son back, she didn’t comment on the way Raito didn’t contribute much to the dinner conversation, or the way he moved his food around his plate but didn’t really eat, or the way he would wince and pinch the bridge of his nose sometimes as if he had a bad headache. She didn’t even complain when her son excused himself to go get some rest, simply chalking it up to the stress of readjusting to living at home again. And if Raito’s eyes seemed to darken slightly on his way up the stairs, Sachiko pretended not to notice.