In The Spaces Between Words

---What Child Is This---


“Ryuuzaki,” Watari’s voice, slightly raspy with age, carried through the computer speakers with the barest hint of static.

L swiveled his chair and rolled closer to speak into the corresponding microphone. “Yes.”

“I have established contact with Aiber and Wedy. They should be arriving the day after tomorrow.”

“Thank you, Watari,” the detective replied around a mouthful of strawberry cheesecake.

Light absently wondered who Aiber and Wedy were as he flipped the page of the newspaper he was reading. He imagined people as peculiar as the one they were working for albeit perhaps a little less socially inept. On second thought, he realized that they were unlikely to be as strange as L, since the other’s level of eccentricity was far from common. He skimmed through the fourth page of local news, bored. People attributed totally unrelated deaths to Kira, and he had lost count of how many times he’d read the name in just one page. Seriously though, what did the death of an average old man apparently ten years before his time according to a supposedly reputable fortune teller have anything to do with Kira? The guy was seventy-two and had neither a criminal record nor a connection to Yotsuba or the investigation, although a heart attack had indeed been the cause of death. The things some people said were just plain ridiculous, and the media seemed content to propagate their idiocy.


Turning to the business news section, he noted that Yotsuba’s share prices were still on the rise, having closed higher yesterday than the day before. The sudden death of a rival company’s Chief Executive Officer in a car accident while on holiday in Miami had caused the company’s stock prices to crash. The launch of another rival company’s new product had also been postponed due to the death of the Research and Development Lead in a fire at his home. Assuming it was indeed his work, Kira was definitely backing Yotsuba. Light glanced sideways at a certain private investigator who was now about halfway through his slice of cake, munching quietly as he scrutinized the rows and rows of surveillance camera monitors before him. It hadn’t taken him very long to notice that the sugar-addict always ate whatever fruit that adorned his cake last. He rather doubted that L was the save-the-best-for-last sort though, so perhaps the other didn’t like fruits nearly as much as he did cake.

Just as he finished the thought, he saw Matsuda approach the detective out of the corner of his eye. “Anou… Ryuuzaki..?”

“Yes, Matsuda-san?” L responded without so much as a glance in the other’s direction.

“Um… Do you like strawberries very much?” the former policeman asked hesitantly.

Wide raven eyes blinked once as their owner turned to stare piercingly at the slightly older man. “Why do you ask?”

“Well, I see you always eat the strawberry last, so I thought you may have been saving the best for last…” Matsuda reasoned sheepishly, scratching his head a little.

“Ah…” L nodded, understanding. “To the contrary, Matsuda-san, I find the fruit secondary to the cake. I eat it last because in case I don’t finish the cake, I’d have eaten more cake instead of the fruit, which is no loss to me,” he explained around another mouthful of cake.

“I see.”

Light smirked briefly in mild satisfaction; he had been right after all. He spent another fifteen minutes skimming through the World News section before closing the tabloid and tossing it carelessly onto the desk in front of him.

L watched out of the corner of his eye as the Japanese daily was tossed onto the desk in a strangely elegant arc. Perhaps Light was still killing criminals and the other Kira was responsible for the deaths benefiting Yotsuba. No, that was unlikely, since the brunet rarely read the papers or watched the news, and criminals died everyday. Yet if criminals died tomorrow… No, there was no way to determine that Light was the one killing unless he caught the Yagami boy in the act, which was difficult, since he had no idea what to look out for; he still didn’t know Kira’s method of killing. The younger genius also hadn’t done anything suspicious in the time that they had been chained together. Had he been wrong? But if his theory was right and Light had indeed just forgotten about ever being Kira, then that didn’t prove anything.

Light pushed off with his foot to wheel his chair closer to the insomniac’s and reported, “All three members of the robbery gang reported on the news yesterday have died of heart attacks. The serial rapist arrested in Italy the day before yesterday has also died of a heart attack in prison. The CEO of one of Yotsuba’s rival companies died last night in a car accident in Miami and a fire burned down the house of another rival company’s R&D Lead, killing him and thereby postponing a new product launch. Yotsuba’s share prices continue to rise steadily while other companies’ have either fallen or remained unchanged.”

“It looks like more and more deaths are supporting the theory that Kira is connected to Yotsuba,” the oddball mused, turning to face him as he finished his last mouthful of cheesecake. If he hoped for a telltale change in facial expression, he was as usual sorely disappointed for the other boy was staring at his face and seemed to have heard naught of his baiting statement.

“Mmhm,” the brunet agreed distractedly, busy wondering exasperatedly how the raven-haired eccentric had managed to get a glob of fresh cream on his forehead of all places. He reached out and cleaned it off with his index finger. “You eat like a toddler,” he grumbled, licking the cream off the digit when he couldn’t find a tissue nearby to wipe it off with. “How old are you anyway?”

“Hmm…” L gazed up at the ceiling contemplatively as he nibbled on the strawberry, wondering if he should tell his prime suspect personal data like that. “I’m twenty-five this year,” he said at last, deciding that there were probably enough orphans born in America in 1979 for it not to be a particularly risky piece of information.

Even if Light really were Kira, he couldn’t exactly run a search on the above criteria unnoticed while chained to him. Sometimes, he wondered just how much of their friendship was all a lie, but as if reading his mind, the brunet would choose that precise moment to do something so seemingly sincere, L would begin doubting and second-guessing himself all over again. Lost in his thoughts, he failed to notice how his revelation had been met with a moment of stunned silence from the whole team.

“Well, I suppose that makes sense,” the younger genius said slowly as everyone else returned their attention to the respective tasks they had been working on.

“Yeah… Figures that a detective with that kind of reputation should be at least around that age,” Matsuda agreed as he helped Mogi sort the stack of Yotsuba Corporation employees’ profiles in alphabetical order by department.

L blinked. Twice. He turned to Light. “Is something the matter, Light-kun?”

“Not really. I guess we all thought you were somewhat younger, that’s all,” the Yagami boy replied, stealing the older man’s strawberry for a small bite before putting it back on the small plate. The other’s childlike demeanour made it hard to believe that he was seven years his senior.

The sound of Watari chuckling to himself was heard through the speakers accompanied by a bit of static as the sugar-addict shrugged and popped the half-eaten berry into his mouth. He smiled slightly to himself as the tangy sweet juice flowed over his tongue and decided that he rather liked strawberries after all.

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A/N: Thank you for reading! Please review!! <333