Himself

Himself (彼自身, Kare jishin) is the third chapter of volume ten and eighty-second chapter of the Death Note manga series.

Plot
Light knows that Aizawa has accepted Near's offer to meet, but he has made Misa give up the Death Note and got rid of all of the evidence. Besides, stopping Aizawa would seem suspicious.

In New York, Aizawa is picked up by car by Stephen Gevanni who then gets him to wear a blindfold. They then drive around for a couple of hours until Near, who is watching through cameras, is satisfied that Aizawa is not being manipulated by Kira.

Aizawa arrives at the new SPK headquarters and is reunited with Mogi. Before having the blindfold removed, Near asks if he had cameras and wires when he followed Mogi to the SPK's old HQ under Mello's direction. Aizawa answers that he did. Near assumes that the cameras were brought along so that Kira could try to see Mello's face and kill him, and that Aizawa is not a follower of Kira who can kill just by looking at a person's face. He allows him to remove the blindfold.

Aizawa tells Near that he still doesn't completely trust him and that he will only give limited assistance. However, he does feel that there is a possibility that the current L is Kira, especially if the "13 day" rule is fake—which is dependent upon trusting Mello who is a confirmed enemy. Near admits that Mello's methods are extreme, but it's all out of a desire to catch Kira who killed the original L. Mello and Near idolized L whom they respected and longed to be like and that is why they want to capture Kira. Aizawa feels the same for his late superior, Soichiro Yagami.

Without naming names, Aizawa tells Near that the late L placed two suspects, whom he believed to be Kira and the Second Kira, in seclusion for more than 50 days. They weren't exonerated until the "13 day" rule was discovered following Higuchi's arrest and the seizure of his Death Note. Near guesses that one of the detained suspects is now the current L and Aizawa confirms this.

Aizawa also describes how, as a test, Soichiro Yagami pretended to shoot the suspected Kira and Second Kira, announcing that he was going to kill Kira and then himself. Near, who has his back turned on Aizawa, reacts to those words but stays silent.

Aizawa goes on to explain that at the time they were not aware of the Death Notes and assumed that the Kiras would use some other power to kill Soichiro first. When he was not killed, they concluded that the suspects could not be Kiras and L released them.

Near asks if the suspected Kira got locked up of his own free will and Aizawa has to admit to himself that that was the case. Without waiting for an answer, Near concludes that Kira predicted his confinement, wrote the fake rules within the real rules and gave the notebook to someone else. He then waited for L to catch that person and discover the 13-day rule. Aizawa believes that this theory makes sense, but it is all based on assumptions.

When Near asks Aizawa for the names of the two suspects, he refuses to name them, stating that he is a Japanese police officer working under L. However, he does agree to give more details without naming names. He also tells Near about the Shinigami Eyes and the deal involved, something that he was not aware of before.

As Aizawa and Mogi are about to leave, Near points out that getting the Death Note off Kira and the Second Kira will be difficult and people who resisted 50 days of imprisonment are not likely to just confess. He also doubts that the Second Kira is still committing murders and that it is likely that the Death Note has been passed on to a third party. He offers them another phone number with which to keep in touch.

Aizawa and Mogi are blindfolded and driven away by Gevanni. After they have left, Near tells Anthony Rester and Halle Lidner that the most important aspect of the conversation were the words used by Soichiro Yagami when he announced that he was going to kill Kira and then himself. Near believes that only a devoted father would say something like that and so the current L and suspected Kira must be Light Yagami.

Conception
Tsugumi Ohba said that the chapter's title "Himself" relates to when Near learns about Soichiro's plans to kill Light and himself. It also relates to Aizawa acting on his own away from the task force.

Chapter Guide
Itse