The one charm about the past is that it is the past.
— Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

"I don’t get it," L admitted.

They were having tea in the kitchen again. Dusk had fallen. The lampshade cast cozy, patterned shadows on the ceiling and walls, like interwoven leaves.

"What’s there not to get?" Makishima said, a hint of impatience in his voice. "Words. The world is made of words. Every story told becomes real. 'The world is a text' — you haven’t read Derrida, obviously, but that’s basically what he wrote about. You asked me to find a way out of here, and I did. We’re no longer trapped in a little house with a dozen bookshelves. Our world is infinite now."

"Technically, I found the way."

"We found it," Makishima conceded.

L nodded, satisfied. He reached across the table for the sugar, and Makishima, for what must have been the tenth time that evening, caught himself staring at the dark pattern revealed by the neckline of L’s T-shirt — a mark like some strange, unseen flower, just below his collarbone, near his heart.

"Stop staring," L said.

"Not like I care. I’ve got my own."

"Not like mine."

Makishima wondered if L felt the same unease he did. After what had happened there, in the book (was it a book?), on the playground (was it a playground?), on the other side of reality (or was this world the other side?) — after that, Makishima had felt as if he’d been split open like a suitcase, his soul laid bare, raw and vulnerable. He hadn’t been ready for that.

"No. Not like yours..."

His own marks lay hidden under long sleeves — two symmetrical crescents on his wrists. They looked nothing like the scars of a suicide attempt, and yet every time he saw them, that’s exactly what came to mind.

Maybe because once, a long time ago, he really had been a suicide. A successful one, at that.

He had no idea why, after their journey into that last book (who knew magical realism would turn out to be such a practical genre?), their bodies still bore these marks in the places where wounds had once bled. Metaphors lose their charm when taken too literally. So here, back in the familiar world, the scars had the appearance of intricate tattoos rather than injuries. They served no functional purpose anymore.

L and Makishima had already tested their newfound knowledge: now, whenever they entered a book, they could perceive the story both as a living world and as text — like those hidden 3D images in children’s books, where if you looked at the pattern just right, an image would suddenly appear.

So, the world was made of words (Makishima had always suspected as much, hadn’t he?). And to rewrite it, any writing tool would do — even something as mundane as a ballpoint pen. No need to carve words into skin, smearing themselves with blood.

And yet, the marks remained — a flower on one chest, crescents on another’s wrists. A testament to something. A reminder of pain, of helplessness, of absolute honesty. Every time Makishima saw them, he felt unsettled.

"So now we’re on our own, huh?" L said.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, nothing’s tying us together anymore. I’ve always annoyed the hell out of you. Well, now you don’t have to put up with me. I want to go back to Death Note. I think I know which moment needs rewriting."

"Rewriting it… to what end?"

"To make sure I don’t lose to Light." L paused. "No, earlier than that. To stop Light from becoming a monster."

The first thing he thinks about is saving Light… The thought sent a dull, unpleasant feeling through Makishima, like a toothache. No matter what L said about Light, he had loved him. Deeply.

"…I think I need to go back to the very beginning," L went on. "He has to realize right away that he’s doing something wrong. Right after his first kill? No, earlier. Before the notebook ever falls into his hands."

"But then you two would never meet. And the story wouldn’t exist."

"So what? I’ll survive. And a lot of people won’t have to die... What about you? Going back to your own story?"

"Yeah. I guess."

Wasn’t that what they had both wanted all along? They had fought their way through a dozen ridiculous stories with one goal: to escape and rewrite their own.

"So this is goodbye?" Makishima asked, surprised by the uncertainty in his own voice.

"I enjoyed traveling with you," L said. "We saw some… strange things."

"I liked it too. And you didn’t annoy me. Well, at first you did, obviously, but I got used to it." Makishima smirked, then, to his own surprise, added: "I even felt kind of special, you know? That you chose me to help you find a way out."

A quiet panic gripped him: they were about to part ways, and he might never see L again.

"Listen… If you ever get tired of that psychopath of yours playing god, I wouldn’t mind filling in for him sometimes," Makishima said awkwardly. "I mean, we can meet here again if we ever get bored. And… go somewhere else together."

Why had he said that? He had no idea why he wanted to keep this absurd, irritating, utterly unlike-him person around.

And L probably had no need for him, either.

But L’s face lit up.

"Yes! I was thinking the same thing. No matter how far apart we are, we can always come back here. To the same point in space and time. Well, we never figured out what this place even is, exactly, but I’m sure we can phrase it somehow. Like… 'that morning when we met in the library.'"

"Then let’s put it to the test."

Makishima Shougo had almost forgotten how repulsive the world of the early twenty-second century was.

Well, maybe not every world, he corrected himself, but the one that, by some unfortunate coincidence, happened to be his home.

When he saw the looming, all-too-familiar silhouette of the NONA Tower again, a stupid joke came to mind: “Characters who misbehave in Psycho-Pass get reincarnated into Psycho-Pass.”

Not very funny, really.

But this time, he had the power to change something in this rotten world.

To truly change it.

He flips through the pages of the book — cities, nations, political conflicts, human lives rush past him — then picks up a pen.

(On another level of reality — he presses the tip of the pen against his wrist, breaking the skin, dipping it into his own blood.)

(The world shifts.)

He rewrites the story.

At first, Makishima tries to do something about the Sibyl System. To finish what he started from the very beginning.

What happens to Japan after Sibyl System’s fall... well, it’s not like he wasn’t prepared, but reality manages to exceed even his most pessimistic expectations. He knew chaos would reign — but he believed that amidst that chaos, he would finally see the kind of People who could rise above the herd, above the limits of the crowd...

Instead, all he sees are murderers, looters, rapists, weeping women, abandoned children, bewildered old men. Fear, rage, cowardice, cruelty, helplessness, despair.

And nothing else.

Makishima Shougo walks through a city torn apart by civil war, like the goddess Morrigan stepping over the bodies of fallen warriors on the battlefield, and realizes that he will never find anyone worthy of the free world he always dreamed of. No one who even wants that world.

Deep down, perhaps he always knew that Sibyl was never really the problem. “People will figure out for themselves whether they like the world they live in or not,” right, L?

The problem wasn’t Sibyl.

The problem was him.

Maybe, instead of trying to fix the world, he should have started by fixing himself. What made Makishima Shogo who he is? Where did it all go wrong? How does one make him happy?

The pages rustle as he flips through them. Words race across the paper. He rewrites his own character.