The Other Side of the Mirror

This literally was the middle of nowhere.



To his left—nothing, what a surprise! To his north—toward the outskirts starting from the mansion—asphalt… and more nothing.



Peeking over the corner of the mansion, sliding more toward the south in the scale, was a big patch of empty lot and soil.



Great—not only was he surrounded by absolutely nothing, but surrounded by highly trained, brilliant orphan children raised to become a copy of his lover that wanted to kill him—let’s not forget the ones who almost succeeded in their attempts once upon a time when the world was still plagued by Kira’s reign.



Plus, there wasn’t an otherworldly device under his control and surveillance to keep tabs on the world’s arising scum to entertain him in the least. That alone already deemed any inkling of potential to torture annoying Wammy heirs’ with a brilliant, well-thought, 20-steps-in plot useless.



At least he had talked L out of taking him along in his pointless trip to that science laboratory that had been blown up to smithereens mysteriously. Being pretentious in front of people he had a slight interest in that would serve him for something was one thing—being pretentious in front of people that couldn’t be of any use to him was a whole different world; nothing in exchange for letting people bask and soak up his holiness?



Absolutely not. Brad Pitt would probably pay to look as good as him. Everyone else was as undeserving when they weren’t of any use—not even for information.



“Raito-kun,” The familiar monotone voice caused the relaxing Light to nearly jump off his chair. L had gotten back from his personal investigation this quickly? That seemed more than odd.



“Back so soon? I thought you’d take longer to get some DNA traces or something.” Playing it off smoothly, Light smoothed his slender fingers over the slimming fabric of his attire, relaxing the tense muscles of his body backwards into the long pull-out lounging chair.



No response. He should have seen that coming.



“L?” That glowing ochre gaze narrowed thin from the naturally almond shape of his eyes, almost squinting from the honey tresses cascading diagonally lightly over his eyes. The angle gave his features a supple effect, highlighting the contours of his face and making the natural definition of bone structure look lifted and rounded. The lighting did his face quite the justice others wouldn’t; he seemed even more terribly beautiful than he ever appeared at first sight.



Pompous, arrogant, well-endowed bastard…



L wasn’t still responding. Instead, he quietly stalked toward the chair Light was sitting on, staring with his usual faux wide-eyed curiosity in his lover’s direction, spine dipped in its usual forward arch, hand –in-pocket, thumbing his slightly parted lower lip.



Okay, the silent treatment it was.



Dismissing it quickly, Light structured his body in such a way that it was curved and splayed, exposing just a teasing inch in all the right places before patting the lawn chair next to his invitingly.



“Come and sit down with me, then.”



The detective, still gaping childishly in the other’s direction, studying the sultry movement and airy mannerisms of his talented lover, could only but gape widely while silently retrieving to sit on the other available lawn chair, dipping his feet first to favor his usual crouch-like position, letting the wild choppy tufts of dark hair cover and darken most of his facial features the sunlight couldn’t alight. It gave him more mystery than just being an animatronic voice behind a laptop with a Gothic-font “L.”



Kira stared back questioningly, slender eyebrow perfectly arched around the jut of brow bone. Something about his raccoon looking lover seemed off today but he couldn’t quite place a finger to fathom what it was. L on itself was a strange creature with odd habits and an overall abnormal appearance. His mannerisms were alien to the world thanks to his secluded childhood and his thinking patterns would have most of humanity’s brain cells on fire. But to Kira, who knew L the most—his way of thinking, the course of action on his thoughts, the endless grinding gears of brilliant deductions—something from the already unusual aspects of the physically deceptive detective was off.



“Find anything interesting, L?”



Although it might have looked like Light wasn’t paying the slightest attention, his sly ocher gaze was scrutinizing down to the last detail that would have looked out of place on his opposite through a razor thin squeeze of the skin around his eyeballs—of course, other than the obvious already naturally off features.



If it weren’t for those stray patches of carelessly unkempt hair dripping endlessly over his facial features, Kira would have at least the advantage of deducting what felt so unusual about his odd, panda-esque lover.

It was this exact unperturbed silence between the two that was flagging down red-beamed signals in Light’s head. The detective wasn’t this disturbingly quiet and usually with just a few prodding questions, it would have him reciprocating a conversation with a simple relief of a few spared words…



But that wasn’t obviously happening at the moment.



And Kira’s mind, still being wounded from the untimely happening at the Yellowbox AND his ego levels on the floor, reverted to the most paranoid of places—the worst of the worst, what women resorted to immediately when nothing else made sense… what simply made them petulant about their significant other—this was simply war between the lovers.



Visibly, Kira’s gears began to turn backward. The slender arch of brow accented itself more in the middle area as the full beginning lowered, knitting into an irate little scowl. “L, if you’re not going to talk to me, why are you even here? It’s easier to deal with you when you’re not being such a frustrating asshole.” Slender fingers immediately rose from their relaxed, perched position to pinch the bridge of his nose.



“Sumimase Raito-kun.”



If it weren’t for his apologetic low tone, it would almost seen that L was trying to elude the situation—even though he had been the one to appear there in the first place.



Just when Light whirled hastily in order to keep wasting his precious time and energy in arguing a moot point with his strange lover, he found himself slightly surprised—and not to forget offended; you just didn’t walk out on your highness without him having the last word in the problem—to not see the slouching crouched form of the mongoloid detective on the lawn chair but instead empty with the dent prints of his weight left behind… he was trying to elude the situation. Giving Kira the silent treatment was just all part of his plan to rankle him.



Not too far from the rising plastic, however, was a book. Black velvet in hard cover with white folding cover half its size right over it. In silver looped letters, it read, “LABB Murder Case.”



And a curious Kira reached over tentatively and grabbed it…

















* * *















The ride back home was unusually quiet… even for Mello.



Even though L was always quiet in car rides—or anywhere, really—Matt at the least spared a few ice breaking words, providing always that sparking point of ignition to a fiery conversation.



Today, however, he hadn’t even spared a glimpse in his blond lover’s direction. His eyes were too engrossed on the gaming device at hand—and who knows what other digital tech gear he had managed to store in his pockets in order to keep himself entertained and or provide a helping hand in their scouting session at the science lab.



Which brought at hand another issue to Mello’s already gorged paranoia—he would normally discuss the findings and clues left behind in such mannerisms (he had even written a book about such a thing even if it was for the purpose of discussing a psycho killer’s relation to the person he looked up to the most)—but this was an unnerving paradigm—all of it. All of the recent discoveries, the happenings; it was all too coincidental, too alike, too leading and yet misleading in the same direction—it all had one name in hands and because of that name and the current state of who the name belonged to was why this precise conclusion was too wrong and too bloody disturbing for words to give it any appeal in the least. L himself couldn’t come up with a reasonable explanation—other than the slight comforting thought executed to Matt and Mello that it might have been someone trying to send them on a wild goose chase with clues from their past about an already dead person for their personal entertainment.



When Mello kept pursuing the conversation futilely—L kept arguing back the point with, “He doesn’t exist anymore; you should know best.”—it was Matt’s turn to finally intervene and end with a nice, “Shut the fuck up all of you, the monster is dead thanks to the man the detective we were raised to become as loves,” spiced with a nice wry undertone and a finishing grunt for further effect of his emotional regards in that particular department.



After that little fiasco in the car, everything had gone way too quiet. The stoic detective hadn’t even prompted his most famous analytical questions to file away in his head for future reference regarding the piece of information that had left them all in… well… veritable shock…



It remained that way until the limousine finally arrived at the manor.



“Mello, I need you to trace any fingerprints left on that card and Matt to run down any possible DNA matches.” And those were the parting words the detective left his successors with before disappearing into the endless labyrinth of his manor.



Both redhead and blond heirs exchanged an incredulous look.



“You heard the boss, Mell.”



“Matt…” but the clad figured blond hesitated, stuffing a gloved hand into his pocket before pulling out a half-wrapped chocolate bar and snapping off a piece.



Matt, having way too much experience with his lover in these cases, knew already where the conversation was being honed to and immediately halted Mello’s breath before it gathered to breathe out another word.



“No. Ah ah…” his fingers were agile to press against those luscious little creamy lips as they began to move.



“Shut it. I don’t want to hear it. Just because a left glass door said LAB and had an extra carved ‘B’ into it or because there was a tarot card left behind that meant death doesn’t mean anything,” he said, his arms now holding his lover’s shoulders, looking him straight in the eye behind the thin film of his yellow-tinted goggles.



“Now stop the paranoia, forget about the hypothesis or whatever about this case and just find fingerprints so we can catch this dumb prankster.”



His lips were quick to steal a little savory kiss from the chocolate-tasting mouth of his leather wearing lover before stalking off to his usual chamber filled with electronics.



Mello, however, who had stayed behind watching the redhead’s body as it disappeared into the hallway, was not at all convinced by this little comforting charade everyone else was pretending was the idea most likely to happen.



There was still that little annoying gut pang nudging him constantly, telling him otherwise.



Still conflicted between the war of unethical and reality, he decided to give it up, flaunting the tarot card about to be examined for fingerprints between his index and middle finger up to his eye level. He wasn’t too much of an expert when it came to this area of expertise—divination and the like—but like many of the psychotic maniacs out there that killed with an incentive—by numbers, specific letters on a name, seven deadly sins, you name it—this death card from the Major Arcana deck had prickling chills leaving a cold aftermath down the length of his spine and of his arms.



It was silly to let such a thing like that signify some impending doom in his life or any of their lives—he was a Wammy raised and born to see the ugly and keep a calm, serene semblance on the face of justice or the opposite and for God sakes’, he had seen the worst of it during his years in the Russian mafia after leaving Wammy’s—but the fact that it kept appearing in his life like an incurable disease was probably the cause of his concerns.

He had signed up for this, however. It was his burden to bear and just like every other problem—i.e. the Kira case and knowing what had happened back in the L.A.B.B. murder cases—he would face with the same façade.

















* * *

















Did the ceiling always looked so warped?



Or was it just those small little icicle-looking paint dots making it an endless sticking out sea?



No, no. It never looked so grainy… and it absolutely didn’t move in small wavelets towards the light.



Maybe something was just wrong with him.



…sugar withdrawal. That was it. It explained a lot, for once.



Getting up from his laying position—it definitely explained a lot as he wasn’t contorted in his usual spine-bending position—the world slowly shifted in one big motion blur until it settled along with his stop like an awful vertigo hit without the dramatic falling back down into the bed.



When had he gotten so tired? The world’s greatest detective didn’t get tired.



His obsidian eyes averted through the room in search for something that would only warm his heart’s content: sugar. Lots of sugary confections topped with whipped cream, dipped in chocolate, covered with syrupy gooey red strawberry sauce, anything filled with globs of cream, sprinkled with powdery white sweets, swirled with vibrant attractive colors and only gourmet or top notch in its variety. L only ate but the best of the best—he had all the money in the world to afford it, why get poor quality?



His feet began to drag him along the pathway through the room’s long carpet and out the door that led to a spiral chamber of sorts filled with other little rooms of the same kind—guest rooms.



The chambers adornment consisted of fine gold and red velvet—very cliché for a manor, someone would think they were coursing through a castle instead—woven silks, Victorian-inspired furniture and world-known one-of-a-kind paintings. The golden trimmings on the wall crafted and spiraled in violent tendrils towards the hallway exit, embracing both walls in the same flowing direction until they thinned halfway through the hallway and disappeared in their last peak.



The hallway itself, on the other hand, was very plain and simple. Only a few very nature imageries hung on either side of the walls besides the torch lights illuminating the way. Some of them, more so toward the end of the hall, were out flooding a dark abysmal wall creating the typical haunted house illusion of getting lost into the horror of swallowing darkness, knowing the creepies were hiding there waiting to attack their bait.



L wasn’t afraid of anything… he wasn’t supposed to be, but there was just that small tingle of fret he got whenever he saw a patch of darkness enough to hold a person—or anything potentially dangerous that would jump at him.



But he knew better. There was nothing there that he had to worry about—besides a lover who killed with a pen and a notebook, a teenager who had high connections in the mafia and techie who probably had the ability to hack into his system without leaving a trace.



Yep. Absolutely nothing to worry about.



The detective looked at his surroundings—the wall of darkness was just inches away, but nothing was swooping past him anymore…



He had stopped cold right halfway through the hall exactly where the darkness met the dim border of light without noticing, gawking at the endless sea of black soon to surround him. He took a deep breath, his shoulders visibly rising and falling back with the action, and stepped a little too quickly for his taste into the dark portal leading to his heart’s desire.



Everything was going beautifully so far despite his irises had expanded way too much to find any seeping grain of lighting color, breaking his concentration a little. Instead, his feet felt along the way carefully, caressing through the grainy tendrils of the carpet until something slick and ice cold lightly ran through the straining bones of his feet.



All bets were off now. He jumped slightly at the feeling, trying hard to keep all noise pushing his vocals to scream his fret inside to break into a quick sprint through the hall and finally into the dining hall to push past the double-doors to the kitchen.



Finally! Glory and sweet success, his lust for sugar could be satiated.



Quickly breezing toward the fridge, the detective thumbed his lip searching in his head what would he grab first to stuff into his mouth before he’d begin twitching because of sugary withdrawal but to his dismay, when the first swooping gust of the fridge exposed its contents inside, L almost fell backwards into the floor at what he found.



There, standing meticulously organized on every section inside the freezer doors and levels, were bright red jars of Smucker’s Strawberry Jam—nothing else.



A sudden mixture of anger, surprise and a big chunk of fear flooded the usual bored expression of his eyes.



First of all, where the fuck was his endless arsenal of diabetic inducing sweets?!



But most of all, who’s idea was it to fill the fridge with strawberry jam? This sick joke had gone way too far… but wait—L’s body went livid.



The clues, the numbers, the letters… the touch to his feet like a feathery tangible ghost… and now the jam…

Could it be? Could Beyond Birthday really be alive after all these years?



No.



“You like what I did with the fridge, Lovely?”



The voice had been a little off, but it had been so long that he had heard it, it might have actually changed throughout the course of his existence. So he slowly twirled around, expecting to see the ghosting mirror of horror that was himself in lively person but instead he found…



Himself!



His heart dropped to the churning pit of his stomach which was twisting lovely knots and sending up a horrendous tasting serving of bile, leaving a bitter aftermath in his tongue.



Only all the contortions were WRONG. The height was a tad shorter than what he expected, there slim muscles outlining that dreadful white long-sleeved shirt, the skin was a lovely sun-kissed shade instead of ghostly pale alike his... the eyes weren't that deep set of crimson filmed by a layer of black contacts--instead they were a deep shade of sepia in the low light--and the make up didn't quite match the rest of the skin color seeping from the neck down to the muscly outline of shoulder blades.



It was Kira... wearing a wig, his clothes and designer shoes--even though he wanted to pull off the horrendous L outlook, he couldn't bear to not wear any shoes with in this kind of temperature. But it was Kira, not the thing he most dreaded to see when he turned around, not that thing from his nightmares, not the thing he mostly feared above all in this surreal world.



And he was just standing there, smug expression curling the side of his mouth, eyes glinting with new mischief and the usual air of know-it-all exerting from his very presence like its own aura.



“You did this… you did all of this.”



Light’s eyebrows pulled the most innocent and beautiful expression it had ever been able to act off flawlessly; his body arched back toward the counter in casual relaxation as if nothing of the usual had gone by.



“Did what, L?”



“The jam in the fridge.”



He wavered for a second and ended up nodding casually. “Yeah, I set up the jars of strawberry jam in the fridge.”

“You also set us up with the building, the tarot card and the painted ‘B’ on the window, scaring Matt senseless and caressing me on my way here.”



Light’s eyebrows narrowed toward the middle—a lot of those things mentioned above were definitely not of his brilliant doing.



“Ie.” He stated so nonchalantly, the impish grin covering his features almost seemed too much for, covering too much space and lifting too much of his cheekbones.



“Why.” It wasn’t even a question, it was a demand.



“More importantly, how…” L continued, cutting Kira off in the midst of his gathering breath.



Kira stopped his position and picked up the perfect aligning posture of leaning back, reaching around and producing the book he had found earlier. “You never told me Mello had written a book about the LA BB murder cases, L. How very rude of you, I killed him, I have the right to know.”



L, clearly not amused by Kira’s usual antics, stole the book in one fluid movement from his hand—quick reflexes paying off—and flung it to the trash bin nearby.



“It’s none of your business, Raito-kun. Would you care to have some cake with me?”



Of course, that statement meant, “Would you care to sit with me and watch while I eat cake and you sip tea?”



L never shared his cake… ever.



Out of the corner of his eye, he took a peek at a quick white and black blur whirling back into the hallway leading to one of the abandoned wings of the manor—no one ever went there, there was no reason to. It held things L didn’t advertise—like a ballroom and other rooms for those formal high-class England parties…



And behind the momentarily whirl of color was an empty jar of jam rolling in the opposite direction toward the library…



















--------------------------------------







Hey guys, sorry for the delay again. I’ve been trying to catch up with orientation for college, life, friends, driving… etc. You know, all the good stuff life offers ;)



Anyway, my muse didn’t quite end there for this chapter but the ideas writing themselves on these pages have told me to leave what I have in mind for the next chapter so you’ll guys will have to wait a bit more >:] but not too long, don’t worry. I’m already typing the new chapter as we speak—I found a new way to coordinate my writing time, yay!—so you guys won’t have to wait an eternity to find out what will really happen.



Trust me, it will be worth the read. ;)



Thank you for all the wonderful reviews left! I really appreciate it a lot and for the votes. Hope to satisfy you with the next chapter!



-Bio