Curtain

Curtain (幕, Maku) is the ninth chapter of volume twelve and the one-hundred-seventh chapter of the Death Note manga series. It is the penultimate chapter of the manga.

Plot
As Light finally notices Ryuk standing there, he asks him to write everyone's names in his Death Note. Everyone is shocked, except Near, who is confident that Ryuk won't help Light: if Ryuk could do that, then Light wouldn't have gone through all this trouble in the first place.

Light still begs Ryuk to write the names down in his notebook. Ryuk then takes out his Death Note and answers, "Yeah... I'll write." Everyone starts to shoot Ryuk, but it's all in vain. Light laughs evilly and tells them that they're all going to die. But to the shock of everyone, Ryuk says that it is Light who is going to die, and writes Light's name down. He tells Light that it's been fun, but there's no way that Light's going to get out of this one. He doesn't want to wait until Light's out of jail or until he dies a natural death in order to get the Death Note back. He warned him that he was the one that was going to write Light's name in his Death Note. That was the deal they made when he received ownership of the Death Note.

Realizing that he's going to die in forty seconds from a heart attack, Light flails anxiously in disbelief and screams, "I don't want to die!" repeatedly. In a flashback, he remembers when Ryuk told him about where Death Note owners go after they die. According to Ryuk, they go the same place that everyone goes to because there is no such thing as heaven or hell. "All humans are equal in death." Finally, Light collapses and dies.

The chapter ends on a black page with the following lines: "All humans will, without exception, eventually die. After they die, the place they go is Mu. (Nothingness)"

Conception
Tsugumi Ohba said that the chapter title "Curtain" was given as Ohba explained that he was trying to represent a curtain with the final two pages being entirely colored black. He said that he also considered the word "Black Curtain," in Japanese the word refers to a person behind the scenes orchestrating the events, but Ohba felt it would not be good to inadvertently make readers believe that a new character was appearing. So in the end Ohba chose "Curtain" for the title of the second to last chapter.

Ohba also added that he considered using title "Nothingness" but felt it would reveal too much, and also that he already used the word "Black" for Chapter 43.

Trivia

 * In the Japanese live-action film series, the battle is kept between Light and L, but some aspects of this ending were used. In the film Death Note: The Last Name, Light is cornered by L instead of Near at Task Force headquarters and exposed in front of the Task Force. Light asks Ryuk to write down a name, and Ryuk writes down Light's name.