Character Profile: Ryuuku

Ryuk is a Shinigami (Death God) that follows Light around. Since he was the one to drop the Death Note in the human world, he must follow the current holder of the note which turns out to be Light.

Ryuk doesn't say much, he just laughs and makes comments about Light's actions with the note. He does tell Light that apples to Death Gods are what cigarettes are to humans. And so, almost anytime you see Ryuk he'll have an apple. Though there was a time when Light stopped giving him apples and the reaction was he twists his body upside-down and is pretty much stuck like that until he gets another apple.

Ryuk can only be seen if someone has touched the Death Note. He is the one who wrote the instructions about how to use the Note in the one Light has, and he is the only Death God with two notebooks. At one point, Rem gained a second one through Jealous, another Shinigami who died. She happened to be there when he died, thus letting her obtain another Death Note. But Rem gives it to Misa because she's the reason he died.

The Death Note that Ryuk found actually belongs to a shinigami named Sidoh. Sidoh lost it and was asking around the shinigami realm for anyone who had seen it. He eventually learns that Ryuk has it, so he goes to the human world to retrieve it. When he meets up with Ryuk he finds that Ryuk doesn't have it anymore. Eventually he receives the notebook from Light in which (due to the explosion) Mello had lost and Light gets it back and returns it to Sidoh.