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Fifty Days	By : sashocirrione Category: Death Note > Het-Male/Female > L/Misa Views: 2868 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Death Note, and I do not make any money from these writings.

Chapter List
- 19
- 20
- 21
CHAPTER 20: Nightmare
When L returned to headquarters, the first thing he saw was Wedy and Matt standing off in a corner of the ground-level warehouse, in a cloud of smoke, cigarettes hanging from both their lips. A fan on the ceiling high above them was sucking up the top of the column of smoke and making it swirl in odd ways.
L approached and said, "How long has this been going on?"
Matt said, "Five months."
"I'm not surprised you were able to hide this from Roger, but it's going to be different here from now on."
L plucked the cigarette from Matt in a quick motion, flung it to the concrete floor and ground it underneath the heel of a worn-out tennis shoe.
Matt said, "Hey! Wedy gets to smoke!"
"Wedy is an adult. From now on, both Watari and Wedy will be watching you to prevent you from smoking, and both of them are extremely smart."
Wedy blew out a long stream of smoke and said, "I'm not a babysitter."
L said, "Wedy, I'll pay you an extra week's salary each time you find Matt smoking and stop it."
Wedy gave a short, sharp nod. "Okay."
He looked at Matt. "And you two are not going to start an arrangement where you purposely get caught so Wedy can cash in. I'll catch on and deduct all that pay. Matt, you'll either break the habit, or you'll learn to be incredibly sneaky. Either way you will have gained something quite valuable."
As L began walking away, he mused out loud, "Yes, either outcome would be valuable. Perhaps this should be your Christmas gift?"
Matt said, "No way! You're kidding, right?"
"Of course, Matt. Don't take it so seriously."
Just before L went through the door into the rest of the building, Wedy called out, "How much do I get if I catch him leaning close and sucking up second-hand smoke?"
"Ten percent of what you'll get if you actually catch him smoking."
L spent a few hours watching the additional, still-unfolding footage from the Amane family reunion that was continuing without him present, while simultaneously looking up information to determine who the mysterious stalker had been in Yumiko's story. Soon, it was clear there was only one person fitting the story. Masanori Fujita had been found dead in an alley in the right time frame and place, and the coroner's report said he'd died of a heart attack.
He had no criminal record, so Kira could not have coincidentally killed Fujita just as he'd been about to attack Misa. It could only have been someone on the scene, which meant Misa herself or Rem. And, from the details of Yumiko's story, it seemed extremely unlikely that Misa knew about death notes at that time or was aware of Rem yet.
So, this was an experiment, an already-completed one, of Rem killing for Misa's sake. And, it had gone off without a hitch. Whatever conditions were required to stop a shinigami from killing had not been present in that instance. What factors made the difference? Would there need to be many tests in slightly different circumstances to identify the crucial, shinigami-stopping characteristics?
This was bad. In Misa's current situation, only a very limited number of unsuspicious tests could be set up. Rem wasn't an idiot; she'd quickly catch on. By the third or fourth test, if not earlier, she would suspect it was all a set up, a betrayal. Perhaps only one test could be risked, and for it to have the highest chance of yielding valuable information, as much research as possible needed to be done first. Ryuk was the most likely source for the right kind of information, but if Rem was asked about the stalker incident, as long as she wasn't peppered with too many questions, some valuable clue might slip.
This related too intimately to Rem's weakness, though, so great care would need to be taken in asking her about it. Since the incident wasn't public knowledge and had apparently remained a secret up until now, if it was even mentioned around Rem she might suspect that Misa was still being investigated, and if there was any potentially damaging knowledge connected to the incident she might just kill to protect that secret from spreading further.
So, a fake leak needed to be created. Once the incident was generally known by the public, Rem could be asked about it in a more natural way.
L pulled his cellphone from his pocket and called Watari, saying, "Watari, have you watched the video of Misa's relatives from today yet?"
"Some of it."
"Yumiko told me a story about Misa being attacked by a stalker and dying of a heart attack. I need you to hire someone to get close to Yumiko, perhaps socially, perhaps at her workplace, and extract that story from her, then leak it to the press. Once it appears in the tabloids I will ask Rem about it."
"I will review that video footage now. I can probably have someone in place within three or four days."
There was a pause, and then Watari added, in a somber voice, "I am sorry that Aiber is no longer with us."
L said, "Yes. I am sorry too," and put his cellphone away.
Aiber would have been perfect for this job, and he would have loved it, but he had unknown compulsions that made him unsafe to be around, and only a few days to live anyway. He deserved to be with his family, and he was. Aiber's acting ability should leave his wife and son blissfully unaware that this was anything other than a vacation. That's the way he wanted it.
The guards sent for Aiber's own protection had watched everything from a distance, staying back so the family would never notice. They had reported that Aiber hadn't ever tried to run off, and he didn't do anything weird, so whatever compulsions Misa had placed on him, other than the already-obvious not hurting others and the restrictions on what he could talk about, probably didn't apply to his current situation.
Aiber had dismissed the notion of putting morphine or some other painkiller into his system on the last day to avoid the pain of the brain aneurysm. He wanted to be completely himself to the end, and for his family to have no suspicion that his death was somehow related to drugs.
But Hideki Ryuga and his servants were another matter. They were still blissfully unaware of their impending fate, but it was time to take care of that matter very soon. They were scheduled to die only four days after Aiber. It would be completely immoral to let them burn to death in the mansion as it had been written. They all needed to be ensured painless deaths.
The authorities, in the form of NPA Deputy-Director Kitamura and a select few people within Interpol, knew that "one of L's operatives" had kicked the regular police off the scene of Misa's attempted suicide and stopped them from investigating it for any possible crimes committed there. None of them knew why L had asked for that, but it would, of course, be speculated that it must involve the Kira case.
As soon as a large number of people who had been at the scene turned up dead, in whatever way they died, there would be questions. The authorities always wanted dead people to be explained, and even L wasn't exempt from that. And yet, Rem would want the deaths to seem to result from the mansion naturally burning down, so as to not cast more suspicion on Misa. Faking the same result and trying to hide it from the authorities wouldn't be good either. It would be clear the victims had died elsewhere and then had been transported to the scene, or even if that wasn't clear, there would still be many questions. It was going to be something of a mess no matter how it was handled.
Misa's killings of newscasters and police officers for her Kira videos the previous spring had been a mess as well. The authorities had been quite displeased about how that had been managed. A lot more people would die this time, and the questions would be more angry and insistent. But, it was time to start dealing with this. Every single one of those people had to be accounted for.
As soon as L picked up his cellphone and dialed Deputy-Director Kitamura's number, Matt and Wedy wandered into the room. L spun in his chair and held up a finger to indicate silence.
Kitamura said, "Who is this?"
L said, "This is L. I need to ask a favor."
"L? I'd like to know what's going on! All the men I sent to you are dead! They were found last month in the aftermath of a riot in a skyscraper, and nobody could figure out who owned the skyscraper."
L said, "Yes, I know. That was the investigation building for the Kira task force. Only a few of my employees escaped alive, but none of your officers did. The investigation has recently re-formed in a new location. The survivors were in hiding and it took me a long time to track them all down and determine which ones were not being controlled by Kira. Some of my people are dying even now."
Kitamura paused, and L heard him swallowing thickly even over the phone.
L continued, "Kira can schedule deaths in advance. I do not yet know of any way to prevent these deaths, but I can make them less painful by interfering with Kira's control over those victims. I believe Kira has scheduled the deaths of a large number of civilians for being burned alive on December twenty-first, at seven PM."
L heard him gasp on the other end of the phone.
L continued, "I would like the NPA to take these people into protective custody in complete secrecy. I believe they will then die of heart attacks at the same time they otherwise would have burned to death. It is important that Kira doesn't realize we've interfered with his plans, so the bodies need to be delivered to the scene where the victims would have died, and a fire staged there. I will supply you with a list of names and addresses for all the victims."
"Is Kira any closer to being caught? What is going on? It's been over a year with no progress!"
"I am sorry. The less you know about my activities and deductions, the less likely it is that you'll be personally targeted by Kira. If I die, all my data will be automatically sent to other detectives who will come forward to help you, so my efforts so far will not be wasted. I cannot tell you anything else, but I do need to warn you about something."
"What?"
"This involves a celebrity again. You will need to pick the involved officers very carefully so there won't be any leaks. When I had you falsify drug charges for Misa Amane last spring, there were no repercussions for that. I know I can trust you again."
"Who is it?"
"The pop idol Hideki Ryuga is scheduled to die, along with all his servants."
"How could that possibly benefit Kira?"
"Kira is insane, and it is not unusual for insane people to become obsessed with celebrities."
Kitamura sighed and said, "Very well. I believe I can do that for you. There is one more thing. An officer who used to be on your team has been asking to join it again. Since I do not have contact information for you, I could not ask you previously. Do you need more personnel?"
"I assume it is Hideki Ide?"
"Yes."
If any of those pieces of paper were from Ryuk's notebook, it might be useful to have one additional person searching for Ryuk. Time could end up being a critical issue. Ide had been one of the few to not quit after Kira killed the FBI officers, so he was trustworthy to that extent and willing to risk his life, but he'd also been belligerent and he'd refused to go to the in-person meeting, quitting the task force over the issue of whether he trusted L or not.
If Ide was kept at arm's length and never allowed to know much or visit headquarters, he might be useful. One extra person wouldn't be a tremendous security risk, and it might cut down the required searching time. And, Ide was actually Japanese. He would blend in more easily than Wedy, Matt or Watari, being a low risk for getting noticed by Kira. It was worth thinking about.
L said, "I will contact Ide myself if I need to. By tomorrow morning, I will send to your office a letter with detailed instructions and identifying information for all the victims, and I will contact you once a day until the operation is completed in case any issues come up. It is important that Kira is fooled. If even one person escapes from protective custody, it could be a disaster."
Kitamura said, "You will be able to count on us, L. But what will I do if the people in protective custody don't die? There could be a media backlash against the NPA from arresting a celebrity for no reason."
"If that happens, I will either bribe Hideki Ryuga to not talk about it, as I did last spring with Misa Amane, or I will take complete responsibility and let the media know I ordered those arrests. It will be an embarrassment for L, not for the NPA."
"I look forward to receiving your instructions."
L put away his cellphone and turned his chair to face Matt and Wedy.
Wedy quietly said, "All those people are going to die."
L said, "Yes. We will have it staged by the NPA to seem that they burned to death in the mansion, just as it was written. That way, Rem shouldn't be upset. The only thing we can do for those people is to reduce their pain."
Matt said, "And, Hideki Ryuga got his arm put back on and everything. The magazines are even talking about him possibly doing another movie!"
L replied, "We can't tell any of them what will happen. The protective custody needs to be a surprise, so there won't be any leaks to the media."
Wedy said, "The media will be all over the story anyway. It'll be another weird twist to the Misa train wreck, so it'll be irresistible."
"Yes," L said, "but only the crackpots should guess anything like the truth, even after the next leak I'm going to create, so it shouldn't alarm Rem too much."
Wedy said, "What leak?"
L spun his chair to turn back to the computer, and with a few keystrokes set video of Yumiko's story playing on the largest monitor. Then, between bites of doughnuts and sips of coffee, he explained his deductions and his intention to leak the story.
When he'd finished, Matt said, "After that gets out, I'm sure there will be articles claiming Misa is Kira."
L said, "Yes, but there won't be any proof, and it will probably only be tabloid articles. Considering that over seventy celebrities have already been accused of being Kira by the media just in the last month, it shouldn't mean much. However, if those articles do alarm Rem, we could then use them to get Rem to tell us who the new Kira is. Rem might worry that the new Kira will figure out Misa was the previous Kira and write down Misa's name."
Matt said, "I've got everything set up with Watari to test the scraps of paper tomorrow. I just need you to visit Misa and have Rem fly down to your car afterward to talk."
L said, "Good."
Then Matt was suddenly striding forward, and he pointed accusingly at the plate of doughnuts L was eating from. "Ryuzaki, you say I can't smoke, but this is unhealthy too. You could get diabetes and die. You're a hypocrite."
"Yes, I am," L agreed, "but these doughnuts are better for me than you think. Watari keeps track of everything I eat, and he sneaks healthy things into my food. Most of the baked goods have extra fiber, vitamins and protein added. Those pancakes we ate yesterday morning had shredded pumpkin and zucchini in the largest undetectable amounts that it is possible to add. Watari is a genius with cooking."
Matt sputtered, "Let me smoke!"
"No," L said, with another bite of doughnut, "if you want to smoke, you'll have to earn that privilege by being sneaky enough to do it while Watari and Wedy are both trying to stop you. Now, is there anything else?"
Matt said, "I've done up an analysis of the Kira-related Internet posts. About fifteen percent are from cyber cafes and other anonymous places like that, so there's not much hope of finding those people unless they keep going back to the same places. Should we be staking out those locations too?"
"Perhaps. It all depends on if we really have Ryuk's paper, and whether those places are enough of a priority to use valuable time and personnel on that small chance. Remember, the new Kira couldn't have been too paranoid before becoming Kira, or otherwise that person would have been too protective of his or her identity for Misa to have found such a person through the Internet. If Misa found the new Kira through the Internet, then we are looking for a person who was once willing to tell their name to a stranger on the Internet, or at least put their photo there for Misa to see with her eyes."
Then Watari came into the room and said, "Ryuzaki, are you ready to go?"
L placed a few more sugar cubes into his coffee cup, picked it up in one hand and his plate of doughnuts in the other hand and said, "Yes."
After that, it was five more hours of driving around, eliminating people from Matt's list, all without seeing a single sign of Ryuk. It felt good, though, to be immersed in routine tasks, no matter how frustrating it was, or how often L wondered if the entire idea of Matt's list was a waste of time.
But then, L reminded himself that there had been two long stretches without any new leads while chasing Light. First, the months-long stretch between taking the surveillance cameras out of Light's home and meeting Light at To-Oh University, and second, the time between when Light erased his memories and when the Yotsuba-related deaths were first noticed. Patience was a requirement in a case that left as few clues as Kira's method of killing did.
How had Misa chosen a new Kira? Perhaps it would be easier to keep encouraging the Misa-is-Kira theory in the tabloids until Rem was forced to protect Misa. But, would Rem protect Misa by telling on the new Kira, or by killing the new Kira? If Rem killed the new Kira, Ryuk might respond by finding yet another Kira on his own, and then catching Kira would take that much longer and be even more complicated.
Plus, there was the risk that the new Kira might actually kill Misa, and a bereaved Rem would probably just kill everyone in revenge. Rem might even go on a super-rampage and kill anyone who had any slightest relationship to the Kira investigation, such as everyone in the NPA.
When L returned from working on Matt's list, he was more tired than he remembered being in years. It was a deep-down exhaustion, not just of sleep deprivation, but a depletion of long-term stamina and a wearing out of the emotions. When he caught his reflection in the mirror while brushing his teeth, the bags under his eyes startled him. They'd been such a near-constant feature of his face for so long that he thought he was used to them, but they were worse than ever, great, puffy, purplish-black messes, resembling prunes.
L spit into the sink and gripped the edges tightly, looking at himself as if a stranger was gazing back from the mirror. His frame was thinner, the contours of bones clearly showing through his shirt, his face sharp and drawn. His hair was longer. He hadn't had Watari cut it since before his captivity, and it was almost hiding his eyes. The eyes themselves looked haunted.
His body felt wrong, there was too much that was different about it. He resolved to get a hair cut the next morning and to try to put on a little weight, but the feeling lingered, of not being himself. As L got into bed, it still troubled him. He felt as if he was wrong, as if he'd made some terrible mistake and couldn't take it back.
It was such a persistent feeling that he didn't go to sleep despite his extreme exhaustion, and instead went over all the details of the Kira case again as he lay on his back, staring up into the darkness. He thought about all the little details of his current predicament, trying to see any flaws, trying to have insights about what to do. Nothing useful came to mind, and his exhaustion muddled his thoughts, and at last he decided he was thinking in circles and rolled over to his side, curling up and trying to go to sleep.
But, every time he started to drift off to sleep, he had the feeling he was sliding into a nightmare and jerked awake. He felt beyond exhausted, and he started sweating even though the room was slightly on the cool side, and the sweat chilled and stuck to his skin, making the blankets feel clammy and unclean. The nightmare feeling wouldn't go away, and at last he gave up fighting it and fell into a deep sleep.
He woke up terrified, his heart pounding almost painfully in his chest, his hands and torso slipping and sliding in something disgusting. It was a puddle, no, it was mud. He could feel it squishing between his fingers, and he could smell the mud, along with something else, a stench like dead insects rotting on a hot windowsill. The room was dim, but he could still see, and the door opened.
She was there. Misa. She was in a plain white hospital gown. Blood was dripping down the side of her head, colored almost black in the dimness, syrupy-looking and thick, and she had all the tubes and wires that had been attached to her in the hospital. Her breathing was labored and loud, the only sound he could hear. She came closer, her limbs stiff, her movements almost doll-like, the wires and tubes, so many of them, trailing behind her out the doorway, leading who knows where.
When she got close enough to place a knee on the bed, L could see her eyes well for the first time, and they were those same dead-fish eyes he remembered from the first hospital visit. Those eyes weren't alive, they weren't alive at all. Misa's movements were zombie-like as she crawled into the bed, and L didn't want her, he willed her to go away, but he could feel arousal stirring between his legs. The smells were getting stronger, assaulting him in waves with several kinds of rot, the dead insects, the blood, and now something like spoiled food.
By the time Misa had grabbed his ankles and began slowly, painfully pulling herself up his body, L was completely erect and hard. He was sickened, completely sickened, his stomach twisting in knots and different types of stenches overwhelming his nose, but his penis wanted this, as sick as it was. His penis wanted to feel a woman's enclosing heat, and it didn't much care who that woman was.
L tried to scramble out of reach, even though some deep recess of his brain told him that Rem would kill him if he didn't do this. But he merely slipped in the mud, sliding in place, even sinking deeper into it, and Misa relentlessly pulled herself up his body. Her hospital gown flared open for a moment and he saw right between her legs, no underwear in the way. Her vagina was right there, all soft pink folds. He hated himself for wanting it.
But the tubes and wires were scraping against him. Her blood was running down the side of her head and dripping onto him. At this close distance, the blood was looking very red now, and the smell of it was overpowering. Misa's weight was pushing him down into the mud, and he was sinking, feeling it ooze up around him on every side. He was stuck, he couldn't move. She was pushing against his hips and trying to mount him, positioning herself above his straining erection. He scrambled in place, trying to avoid her, trying to push her off, and her eyes were the most terrifying of all, so completely devoid of anything resembling life.
A sudden insight came to him, and he said, "No. This is a dream."
He kept pushing back at her, just barely keeping her away from his erection. He tried to wake up, put his full concentration into it, but nothing happened. His limbs had a slow, half-paralyzed feeling as if he were drowning in syrup and his thoughts felt sluggish as well, as if they couldn't completely make connections that would ordinarily be easy. Misa's damp sex brushed against the head of his penis and sent an electrifying jolt through his body.
He slapped her face and one of the tubes slipped free, spilling some kind of gray liquid all over his chest. It smelled like rancid gravy.
L wanted to throw up. He was so dirty. He was a horrible, filthy person.
Anyone but Misa would be better. He concentrated on her fiercely.
Please be someone else. Please be someone else.
Various attractive women he'd known or seen pictures of flashed into his mind. If he needed a woman, it should be one of them instead. Perhaps Naomi Misora. Yes, if not for her prior attachment to Raye, and her later death, she might have been a very good match.
L tried to imagine Misa into becoming Naomi. The tubes and wires suddenly melted away, and Misa's blonde hair turned dark. In the next few moments, she changed into Yumiko. Yumiko's eyes were angry, and she wore sensible business attire with a brown skirt that went to her knees. It was an improvement over Misa's zombie-eyes, but... Yumiko was scary as well.
L tried harder, poured his whole energy into turning Yumiko into Naomi, but she stayed Yumiko and started pulling up her skirt. When it was all pushed up to her hips, revealing no underwear and a vagina that looked just like Misa's, she began to position herself above L's erection.
L watched in horrified fascination, unsure if he wanted it or not but no longer struggling. Yumiko pinned him, an angry sneer on her lips, and then lowered herself and he began to slide into her and it was delicious and exactly what he needed, and he cried out as he rocked up into her. Hot shame burned his face, but his pleasure was rising incredibly fast, all the pent-up pressure of his overwork feeding into his need for release.
Then he grabbed her hips and thrust up into her hard, and suddenly he was coming helplessly, feeling his seed spilling inside her enclosing warmth in pleasurable waves. He whimpered, and then with absolutely no warning Yumiko was Misa again, and his stomach twisted sharply. This time Misa had a normal face, with eyes that were alive but sad, and no tubes or wires. She was completely nude. She studied him with a wistful look and then began reaching down with one hand as if to brush the hair out of his eyes.
L screamed and pushed as hard as he could with his arms while kicking at the same time with his legs, and this threw Misa completely off the bed and high into the air. Her body slammed into the wall with a sickening thud and blood was running down the side of her head once again.
L said, "Don't touch me! You're a rapist. You're a rapist."
Misa was stuck to the wall, like a fly stuck in a spider's web. She struggled there, grimacing in pain, more and more blood running down her body and beginning to pool under her feet. A chunk fell off the side of her head, with garishly red blood and sharp white bone and gray fragments of brain and long blonde hairs rooted in the skin. Then a straightjacket was growing around her, and the metal frame she'd been strapped in when she'd first been confined, and that same blindfold. The blood was still running down from the side of her head, impossibly too much of it, in big syrupy globs, and her mouth was moving as if she were speaking but no words came out.
L tried to wake up, pushing for it with every bit of willpower, but he still couldn't. It felt like he was trying to swim upward to a surface but something was holding him down. His thoughts tried to move. What was required to dispel nightmares? His heart was beating so fast it was painful again, and the sight of Misa's soundless talking was filling him with an intense creepiness and making the hair on the back of his neck prickle. You needed to confront nightmares directly, was that it? L couldn't remember.
He turned to face Misa directly and said, "You raped me. You did. You are a rapist."
A sudden cold sweat chilled his entire body, and he had the feeling something horrible was about to happen. Misa's lips kept moving silently, the blood pouring down from her head as if from a faucet. The pool of blood gathering on the floor was spreading out, trying to reach the bed. If it covered the entire floor, he'd be trapped, or he'd have to walk through it.
He put as much force into his words as he could and shouted, "You are a rapist."
A child's voice suddenly came from the bedroom door, saying, "Daddy!"
L turned to look, and he saw a toddler, just old enough to walk. He couldn't tell if it was a girl or a boy, but the child had his eyes, and hair like his, and its face looked similar to Misa's youngest cousins.
The child said, "Daddy, Mommy is bleeding. Did you hurt her?"
Suddenly L was sitting up in bed, gasping and shaking, and things felt real again. The nightmarish phantasms were gone, as was that sluggish, paralyzed feeling. He breathed in and out, trying not to think about the nightmare. Then he reached next to the bed and flipped on the light. The brightness suddenly flooding the room dispelled most of the creepy feelings. L shifted in place, and felt the semen that had wet his crotch area. He curled in place, sitting with his knees to his chest and pulled the blankets up around him, trying to cover up every part of him except his head with multiple layers of protection.
Just then, he heard a knock on his door. L said, "Watari?"
The door opened, revealing Matt. L stared uncomfortably.
Matt said, "Um, a nightmare? Are you going to stop screaming soon?"
L said nothing, he couldn't think. In the next moment, Watari appeared behind Matt.
Matt said, "Who is a rapist?"
Watari pushed past Matt and walked over to stand by the side of the bed. Watari said, "Ryuzaki, I think you have been pushing yourself too hard. Even by your standards, you're not sleeping much. These things are bound to happen if you don't slow down and give yourself rest."
L said, "So far, it is only about one nightmare per week. I think that is a good outcome considering everything. I should move my bedroom far from anyone else's."
Matt looked as if he sensed the uncomfortable atmosphere, and then he turned away and left the room.
Watari said, "If you did not push yourself to complete that list, you would have more time to heal. The mind needs rest as well as the body. In another day, we could be in a situation where we can add many extra workers to look for Ryuk. Anyway, I have a feeling we might not find Kira that way. You were able to locate three previous Kiras without being able to see their shinigami. There are avenues of investigation you haven't explored yet."
"Yes, but for every trick I've thought of, I need to wait at least a few weeks for it to have a good chance of working. I can't just wait helplessly. Working all the time helps me to not think about things. I need to keep myself distracted."
"Distraction and denial do not create good mental health."
L sighed. He didn't want Watari to be right about this, but he'd never felt so exhausted in all his life. It was like a numbness creeping into his soul, and he didn't feel like he was really himself. He felt as if he might lose a part of himself forever if this continued.
L said, "I will cut in half the amount of time each day I spend working on eliminating suspects from the list. I will also do something vacation-like for Christmas."
Watari gently said, "Do you want to come home?"
Home. Wammy's House, of course, though the kids he'd known well when he actually lived there were all moved away, or dead. It wasn't home, but it was the closest thing to a home for L. L turned the concept over and over in his mind. Would it be good to go there? The case would need to be put on complete hiatus for a few days, except for things that could be done over the phone or the computer, but there likely wouldn't be any breakthroughs soon, and if there were, he could always rush back.
"Yes," he said, "I want to go home."
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Fifty Days