Afterword

Let me explain.

Beyond Birthday had the eyes of a shinigami congenitally. It was not particularly difficult for him to track down people with the initials B.B. or to find people who were fated to die on a certain day at a certain time. After all, there are over twenty million people in Los Angeles.

Killing people was, for him, normal.

Killing people who were fated to die anyway was no effort at all. Mmm, I guess I should explain the idea of the eyes of a shinigami. The phrase is only too familiar to me, but if I don’t explain it, some of you will cry foul. The eyes of a shinigami. These eyes could be given out by any shinigami in return for half the recipient’s remaining life. They allowed the recipient to see people’s names and remaining life.

Normally contact with a shinigami was a prerequisite for acquisition, but Beyond Birthday had traded nothing—he had seen the world through those eyes since before he could remember.

He knew your name before you said it.

He knew the time of death of every person he met.

I hardly need to explain just what effect this would have on his personality. You might think they would hardly be useful without a Death Note, but that is simply not the case. The ability to see someone’s remaining life is the ability to see death. Death, death, death. Beyond Birthday lived his life unceasingly reminded that all humans would eventually die. From the time he was born he knew the day his father would be attacked by a thug and die, knew the day his mother would die in a train crash.

He had these eyes before he was born, which is why he called himself Beyond Birthday. Which is why a child as strange as he was taken in by our home, sweet home—Wammy’s House.

He was B.

The second child in Wammy’s House.

“If only I could see the death of the world,” Beyond Birthday murmured, on August 19th at 6 a.m., just as he woke up. He was lying on a simple bed on the second floor of a prefabricated storehouse borrowed under the name of a dormant company, in the suburbs of the west side of town. One of many hidden lairs located across the country, around the world. Why West L.A.? Because on that day, Naomi Misora, the suspended FBI agent fronting for the century’s greatest detective, L, was going to be there.

“Naomi Misora. Naomi Misora. L’s hands. L’s eyes. L’s shield. Ah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! No, that’s not right... I should laugh more like this... Kya ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Yeah, that’s better.” Kya ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.

Kya ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.

Laughing wildly, Beyond Birthday got out of bed. A harsh, cruel laugh, but an unnatural laugh, a phony laugh. As if laughing was just another task he had to perform.

Beyond Birthday remembered how he had attacked Naomi Misora three days before, on August 16th, in the alley downtown.

Of course, he had known when she would die—had seen how much life remained. Naomi Misora’s life.

It was not that time, on August 16th, but much, much later.

Which meant...

If he attacked her with intent to kill, he would absolutely fail. He knew that he would. Ensuring his path of escape was far more critical. Naomi Misora was nothing but L’s servant, and if she died there would be dozens of replacements—from the FBI, the CIA, and the NSA—even the Secret Service. So he had only been testing her. Seeing if Naomi Misora was capable of being L’s substitute.

“Hmmm... mmmm... hmmm... Huh huh huh huh... no, hee hee hee? I could go with ho ho ho ho, but that’s a little too jolly… anyway. Oh, Naomi Misora, you are pretty good. A shame to waste someone like you in the FBI.”

She had passed the test, so far.

Today she would visit the scene of the third murder, and she would most likely find the message Beyond Birthday had left for her. Then she would try to prevent the fourth murder, the victim Beyond Birthday had selected.

That was good.

Only then would the competition begin.

Only then would the real game start.

The competition between L and B.

L and B’s puzzle.

“If L’s a genius then B’s an extreme genius. If L’s a freak, then B’s an extreme freak. Now it’s time to get ready. There are things I must do before B can surpass L. Henh henh henh henh.” This thought was the only thing that made him laugh without needing to think about it. And those that know will recognize the laugh of the shinigami.

Still grinning to himself, he faced the mirror, brushed his hair, and began applying his makeup. The reflection of himself in the mirror. Himself. As always, he could not see his own time of death. No more than he could see the death of the world.

So, August 19th.

Naomi Misora was in the west side of the city, in the townhouse where the third victim, Backyard Bottomslash, had lived. She had shared the place with a good friend of hers, but she had been killed while her friend had been out of town on business. Like the second victim’s mother, the roommate had moved back in with her parents after the murder.

Backyard Bottomslash’s bedroom was on the second floor. There was a thumb turn latch just below the knob. And two holes on the walls where the Wara Ningyo had been. One on the far wall, directly opposite the door, and the other on the left hand wall. The floor was covered in a frankly bizarre number of stuffed animals for a twenty-eight-year-old, and the entire room was ornately decorated.

There were stuffed animals piled against each wall. In order: two, five, nine, and twelve. Twenty-eight in all. While the room had been cleaned, it still smelled faintly of blood, which destroyed the effect of the decor.

“Where is Ryuzaki?”

She glanced down at the silver wristwatch on her left hand, and saw that it was already two thirty in the afternoon.

They were supposed to meet at two.

Misora had been here since early that morning, checking the place out in advance. She had searched the entire house, not just this room, but five hours later she had completely run out of things to do and was rather bored. And she had failed to uncover anything of interest, which had left her feeling frustrated.

She bit her lip, annoyed that she had been unable to figure anything out without Ryuzaki around.

Then the phone in her bag rang. She answered quickly, assuming it was L, but it was her boyfriend and coworker, Raye Penber.

“Hello? Raye?”

“Yeah... let me speak quickly, Misora,” Raye said, in a low voice. At this time of day there must be other people around him. “I checked up on what you asked me.”

“Oh, thanks.”

She’d asked him on the 16th, and it was now the 19th, and he was a very busy FBI agent, so this was pretty fast work. When she thought about how much he did for her, she found herself wanting to thank him every time she spoke to him.

“So?”

“Basically? There is no private detective named Rue Ryuzaki.”

“So he’s unlicensed?” An unprivate detective. He had said so himself

“No. There are no records of anyone named Rue Ryuzaki at all. Not just in America, but in the records of every country in the world. The name Ryuzaki is reasonably common in your home country, but none of them are named Rue.”

“Oh. He speaks Japanese like a native, so I thought he might he from there... so it’s a fake name?”

“Presumably.” Raye was silent for a moment, but then blurted, “Naomi! What are you doing?”

“You promised not to ask.”

“I know I did. But your leave of absence will be over next week, and I was just thinking about the future... are you coming back to the FBI?”

“I haven’t thought about it yet.”

“I know I always say this, but...”

“Don’t. I know what you’re going to say, so don’t say it.”

“I don’t have time. I’ll call again.”

Misora hung up without giving him a chance to respond. She spun the phone around between her fingers, feeling a little guilty. It wasn’t that she hadn’t thought about going back, but that she didn’t want to think about it.

“Next week already? Nah focus on the case at hand.” This might be running away, but since Ryuzaki still wasn’t here...

(She’d suspected the name was fake from the moment she met him, so she didn’t particularly care...

although she did wonder why he’d chosen that name in particular. But the real problem was why the victim’s parents had hired a private detective that didn’t exist)... Misora told herself to forget about it and go over the facts they had uncovered one more time.

First, the message left by the killer downtown, at the second crime scene, Naomi Misora had figured it out about an hour after they had found the missing link, that the victims were all connected by their initials. It was the eyeglasses the victim, Quarter Queen, was wearing. While she never got down on all fours the way Ryuzaki did, Misora had checked the room over from every conceivable angle, until her eyes ached from looking—without finding anything. Then she wondered if there was something on the victim’s body, like the cuts on Believe Bridesmaid’s chest, and had looked at the photos of the body again, but there was nothing there by the little girl lying face down, with her eyes crushed in...

When Misora was at her wit’s end, Ryuzaki had said, “Maybe the damage to the eyes is a message.” It sounded reasonable... in fact it seemed like the only possibility. Which meant... her eyes?

Misora had gone back to the cabinet and taken out the album of photographs again. She looked through them once more, checking every picture of the little blonde girl.

And realized...

that there was not one picture of her wearing glasses.

The only picture of her with glasses was the one of her dead. Not because there wasn’t a problem with her eyes—her chart was in the file, showing her right eye at 0.1 and her left at 0.05—but that she almost always wore contact lenses. After her death, the killer had put the glasses on and taken the contact lenses away They were disposable lenses, so the investigative team had not noticed them missing. Misora had contacted the victim’s mother, who had confirmed not only that Quarter Queen almost never wore glasses, not even at home, but that the glasses she was wearing in the crime scene photograph did not belong to her.

“Surprisingly hard to notice... who would ever think to ask if the glasses a murder victim was found wearing belonged to them? Literally a blind spot... perhaps that’s what the crushed eyes mean?” Ryuzaki had said. ‘And the glasses looked so natural on her... making it even less likely that the police would notice. She never realized that she was meant to wear them.”

“Urn, Ryuzaki... that’s getting a bit facetious.”

“I was joking.”

“That’s what being facetious means.”

“Then I was serious.”

“Still facetious.”

“Then I was deadly serious. Look! Don’t you think she looks better?”

“W-well... I suppose...”

Facetious.

The mother had first seen her daughter’s body in the morgue, and the glasses had already been removed. Which was probably all according to the killer’s plan... by this point in time, what else could they think?

“The third murder happened in West L.A., near Glass Station— glasses. Very literal. But this doesn’t give us the address, only the neighborhood...”

“No, if you narrow it down that much, then you can probably narrow it down all the way, Misora. All you have to do is look for someone in the area with the initials B.B., and you can fix on the address. In other words, the killer has assumed that by the time the second murder occurs, we would have figured out the missing link.”

“Oh? But... we were only able to figure out that Q was actually B because the third murder had already taken place. At the time of the second murder, how could anyone have worked that out?”

“You don’t need to. I mean, even at the third murder, there’s no real way to tell if B is the main letter and Q the reverse, or the other way around. The fourth murder could be another child with the initials Q.Q. and flip the idea. It’s possible he’s mainly killing children, and is really after Qs. From our current data, we have no idea why he’s aiming for B.B.s, or why he’s after Q.Q.s. But that doesn’t matter. All you have to do is find everyone with either set of initials.”

“Oh... oh, right

But on August 16th, they were speaking in hindsight, they were much too late, and the third murder had long since happened. Just to be sure, she had checked, and within five hundred meters of Glass Station there was no one with the initials Q.Q., and only one person with the initials BR. the third victim, Backyard Bottomslash.

The eyeglass message was very simple compared to the book shelf message at the first scene, but they had only been able to solve it because they already had the phrase Glass Station in mind—otherwise, who would ever be able to figure out that putting glasses on a corpse was a message from the killer?

The very simplicity of it was exactly what made it even more difficult than the first murder. Now Misora had to stop the fourth murder, but would she be able to figure out the message left at the scene of the third? She was more than a little worried. Once again, it was Ryuzaki who had brought up the topic of the victim’s crushed eyes, it was Ryuzaki who had suggested she look at the photo album carefully—without him, she would not have figured it out. Or at the least, it would have taken a lot more time. At this point, it was noon, so they decided to get some food and figure out how to move next. Ryuzaki invited Misora to eat with him, but she declined. There was no telling what hideous sweet or poison he would foist on her, and she needed to speak to L. The mysteries they had uncovered had reached a level that demanded reporting. She moved well away from the apartment, looked around her carefully, leaned against a wall, and dialed.

“This is L.”

“This is Misora.”

She was getting used to the synthetic voice. She quickly explained what had happened that day, and what they had figured out, wasting no words. She felt herself getting a little worked up when she was explaining why the victim had been lying face down, but repressed it. At least, she thought she had.

“Okay. I understand. I was right to pick you, Naomi Misora. Honestly, I did not expect such impressive results.”

“No... not at all. I don’t deserve the compliment. More importantly, about what I should do next. . . any thoughts? We don’t know when the fourth murder will occur, so I thought maybe I should head right over to West L.A. now

“No need,” L said. “I’d prefer that you secure your footing. Based on your report, there is plenty of time before the fourth murder occurs.”

“Eh?”

She hadn’t said anything like that... had she?

“The killer will take his fourth victim on August 22nd. You have six more days.”

“Six days?”

That was nine days after the third murder. Nine days, four days, nine days and nine days again? What was he basing this assumption on? Misora was about to voice this question, but...

“I’m afraid I don’t have time to explain right now,” he said. “Please try and work it out for yourself But the next murder will occur... or the killer will make his next attempt on the 22nd, and I would have you act on that assumption.”

“Understood.”

He didn’t sound like he was in the mood for arguments. But August 22nd... come to think of it, the LAPD had received the crossword puzzle on July 22nd. The same day of the month. Was that a connection?

“In that case, over the next six days I will make careful preparations and investigate the third crime scene.”

“Please do. Oh, and-—Naomi Misora, do take all precautions for your own safety. You are the only person who can work for me on this case. If you fall, there is no one who can replace you.” He must be referring to the fight in the alley. She was caught off guard by this. No one who could replace her? For L it might be a very casual pronouncement, or just an outright lie, but Misora found it hard to believe it was even being applied to her.

“Don’t worry. I wasn’t hurt.”

“No I mean, take care not to place yourself in a situation in which you might be attacked. Avoid back roads, alleys, and other deserted areas. It might take longer, but stick to crowded areas and busy streets.”

“I’m fine, L. And I can take care of myself. I’ve trained in martial arts.”

“Have you? In what? Karate? Or judo?”

“Capoeira.”

Even over the scrambled line, she could tell L wasn’t sure how to respond. She admitted Capoeira was an unusual choice for a Japanese FBI agent. Misora felt a moment’s gleeful pride, as if she’d outsmarted L—though she knew she had done nothing of the kind.

“Yeah, I thought it was crap till I actually started it, but I got involved in street dancing in college and joined a Capoeira group as an extension of that. It’s actually a really effective form of self defense for a woman. The basic techniques all involve dodging your opponent’s attacks, which means it isn’t possible to overpower a block like it is in karate or judo. We can never match a man for power. And the acrobatic, tricky movements in Capoeira give you time to get a good look at your assailant.”

“Really? That makes sense,” L said, sounding impressed.

Genuinely impressed, not just saying so.

“Your description makes it sound interesting. If I have time, I will have to look at some videos... but however confident you are, if they have a gun, or outnumber you, the situation changes. Take all the precautions you can.”

“Of course. Don’t worry, I always do. Um, L?” Misora said at last.

‘What is it, Naomi Misora?”

“I was wondering... you’ve figured out what the killer’s goal is, right?”

“…Yes,” he said, after a long pause.

Misora nodded. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have been so sure when the fourth murder would occur. But he had told her to figure the reason out for herself. Which meant he had enough information to identify the killer now? Just as this thought crossed Misora’s mind, L destroyed her chain of thought with a single phrase.

“To tell the truth, I always knew who the killer was.”

“...Eh?”

“The killer…” L said, “…is B.”

We were raised at Wammy’s House in England, in Winchester, as L’s successors, as L’s alternatives, but that does not mean we knew anything more about L than anybody else. Including myself, only a few of us ever met L as L, and even I know nothing about L before he met Watari—Quillish Wammy, the genius inventor who founded Wammy’s House. Nobody knows what’s going on in L’s head. But even so, I know how Watari felt. Looking at L’s incredible talents from the perspective of an inventor—of course he wanted to make a copy, of course he wanted to create a backup. Anyone would feel the same.

As I have already explained, L never appeared in public. L knew that his own death would increase the crime rate all over the world by a few dozen percentage points. But what if they could copy him? What if they could make a backup?

That was us.

L’s children, gathered from all corners of the world.

Children gathered together, never told each other’s names.

But even for a genius like Watari, creating a fake L was easier said than done. Even for Near and I, who were said to be the closest to L. . . the more we tried to be like him, the closer we got, the farther away he was, like chasing a mirage. So I hardly need to tell you what it was like when Wammy’s House was first founded, when he was still experimenting. The first child, A, was unable to handle the pressure of living up to L and took his own life, and the second child, Beyond Birthday, was brilliant and deviant.

B stood for Backup.

But B tried to surpass L, not become him... no, that might not be right. I have no way of knowing the inner workings of his mind. He... their generation was not like the fourth generation, with Near and I, all the children bound only to the one with the serial L. They were prototypes, never even given the L

code, expected to fail. I prefer to refrain from idle speculation based on my own experiences, but, well, Beyond Birthday may have thought something like this:

As long as there was L, B would never be L. As long as the original existed, the copy was always a copy.

The Los Angeles BB Murder Cases.

L.A.B.B.—L is After Beyond Birthday.

This reading is why I think this name is so much closer to the killer’s intentions than the Wara Ningyo Murders, or the Los Angeles Serial Locked Room Killings. I wasn’t talking about the names on a purely stylistic basis. Whether Beyond Birthday had put that much thought into it I have no idea, but if he had a specific reason for choosing to commit his murders in L.A., then that is probably why. I am sure he had a much more personal obsession with L as an individual than Near or I ever did. I can understand why someone would become a criminal in order to fight against a detective, which is why I can write about it like this, but even so. What did he hope to accomplish by killing unrelated people?

Or perhaps B simply wanted to meet L. Then he could use the eyes of the shinigami he’d been born with and see L’s real name, see when L would die. He would be able to find out who L was. Beyond Birthday had never told anyone that he had the eyes of a shinigami, and it would not surprise me at all if he believed himself to be some kind of shinigami.

So this all boiled down to a strangely shaped battle of detection between L and B. It was not exactly the same as the detective wars L had waged with Eraldo Coil and Danueve, but just as the greatest of detectives makes the greatest of criminals, a specialist in investigation is also a specialist in murder.

From this perspective, this was nothing but a detective war.

Beyond Birthday challenged L.

And L accepted the challenge.

To put it bluntly, the Los Angeles BB Murder Cases were nothing but an internal struggle, a civil war within our home, sweet home— Wammy’s I-Inuse Unfortunate for the victims that got mixed up in it, but even if Beyond Birthday had not killed them, all those victims were fated to die that day, at that time, for some other reason, so logically and morally, their deaths were unavoidable. So in the strictest sense of the word, the only one who really got mixed up in their war was Naomi Misora.

“Mmm… mm... mm-hmm-hmm hmmm... mm, mm, mm... Zo zo zo zo... no, that’s a horrible laugh...

henh henh henh.”

He was ready now.

He cracked his neck...

And Beyond Birthday began to move.

Page 5: Clock

Ryuzaki finally reached the townhouse where the third murder had occurred at just past three.

“Sorry to keep you waiting, Misora,” he said, not appearing the least hit guilty about showing up an hour late.

“Don’t worry, I wasn’t waiting. I started without you,” Misora said, as sarcastically as possible.

‘I see,” Ryuzaki said, going down on all fours and scuttling over toward her. She was getting used to it, but it happened so suddenly she almost jumped. She hadn’t seen him for three days, after all.

On August 6th, after speaking with L, she had gone back to Quarter Queen’s apartment and told him that the fourth murder would happen in six days, on August 22nd. Naturally, Ryuzaki had asked her how she knew, but Misora had no idea. And she couldn’t just say that L had said so.. .but while she and Ryuzaki talked the matter over, Misora had figured it out. Her answer was more than convincing, hut she didn’t feel like explaining it to Ryuzaki, so she simply stuck to her guns. In retrospect, Ryuzaki had let the matter drop a little too easily... but they had eventually decided to investigate the third crime scene, Backyard Bottomslash’s home, on the 19th. In the meantime, both Naomi Misora and Rue Ryuzaki would look into the background of the case and make other preparations for their investigation.

Misora had spent the time staying in regular contact with L, advancing her own theories and obtaining a range of useful information as a result (including some new discoveries the police had made and L

had relayed on to her), but the truth was that, on the 19th, even after arriving at the third crime scene and spending several hours investigating it alone, she felt like she had made no significant advances since downtown on the 16th.

“Did you already check the bathroom, Misora?”

“Of course. You?”

“I glanced inside before I came upstairs. But that bathtub’s ruined. Painted like that, the only person who would dream of climbing in is Elizabeth Báthory.”

“He wipes every single fingerprint, but not a drop of blood. Finicky types are always like that. The killer honestly doesn’t give a damn about anything but himself.”

“Yes, I agree,” Ryuzaki said, but despite his words he seemed to have no problems crawling around the blood-spattered floor... or did he just not care? Just like the killer... Misora watched his movements carefully.

“I don’t think there’s anything here,” she said. “I went over it pretty carefully.”

“My, my. I never thought I’d hear you be so pessimistic, Misora.”

“I’m not... just, Ryuzaki, I feel like the focus of this scene must be the severed limbs. The left arm and the right leg cut off... this is the biggest difference from his previous victims.”

“Like you mentioned before, something that should be here, but isn’t? In that case, what we have to think about is why the killer dropped the right leg in the bathroom and only took away the left arm. A whole arm. Not nearly as easy as taking away two volumes of Akazukin Chacha.”

“And they still haven’t found the arm... it’s not that easy to dispose of body parts, so if the killer took it with him, then there must be a good reason for it. I don’t know if that’s the message... or if it isn’t a message, there might be some kind of mark on it that the killer doesn’t want us to see.”

“Possibly. That makes sense. But crushing the second victim’s eyes pointed to our blind spot, and to glasses, so carrying away the left arm must mean something.. .but once again, it’s the right leg that bothers me, Misora. The killer’s treatment of it is so muddled. You yourself said that disposing of a body isn’t easy, but neither is cutting one up. It must have taken ages. It doesn’t strike you as rather dangerous to do something like that in a townhouse? There are houses on either side, sharing walls, and they might notice at any moment.”

“Both limbs were cut off right at the root... the body was found over there. Right, pictures, pictures Misora flipped through the folder she had already taken out and produced the photographs of the third crime scene. The same picture that had helped them figure out the message at the second scene. She held the photograph up, lining it up with the room and pinpointing where the body had been. “It was over here, lying on its back, with the right arm and left leg flung out wide... hmm…”

“Well, if your theory is correct, we have plenty of time before the next murder takes place. Let us be thorough. Speaking of which, don’t you think it’s time you explained why the fourth murder will happen on the 22nd?”

“Yeah, I suppose.”

Misora put the photographs away and turned toward Ryuzaki. He wasn’t facing her. They’d known each other five days and had met three times, and it was becoming clear that Ryuzaki was not aware that it was customary to face the person you were speaking with. But by this point, she was hardly going to dwell on something so insignificant.

“It’s such a simple matter it almost seems like a waste of breath. The third murder happened on August 13th, right?”

“Yes, you don’t even need to check.”

“There were Roman numerals on the first victim’s body, but this time we have Arabic numerals.

Thirteen... 13. If you write a one and a three next to each other... they look like a B.”

“Yes,” Ryuzaki nodded.

This was so simple she had worried that he would laugh at her but he seemed to be taking it surprisingly seriously.

“Come to think of it, I once saw a children’s game show where they asked what one plus three equaled, and the answer was B...”

“Exactly. B.”

“B.B.? But Misora, that works for the third murder, since it took place on August 13th, but what about the other dates? The cross word puzzle reached the LAPD on July 22nd, the first murder wis on July 3

1st, the second on August 4th. and you’ve predicted ilu fourth on August 22nd.. .none of which form the letter B.”

“Not at first glance. But apply the same principle following a different pattern. The easiest is the first murder...July 31st. Three and one. Reverse the two and you get thirteen.”

“Okay, I’ll grant you the 3 1st. That seems reasonable enough But what about the fourth and the two 22nds?”

“Same thing. Just change the pattern. Take the problem you mentioned from the children’s game show one plus three. August 4th four is the normal answer to that equation. And August 22nd if you take one from the tens place and put it in the ones place you end up back at thirteen,” B.

Thirteen.

“In other words, every day the killer takes action, the 22nd, the 31st, the 4th, the 13th...the tens place and the ones place add tip to four. In each month there are only those four dates that do that. Only four.

And something happens on every one of those. Also, the Wara Ningyo started out at four. One plus three equals four. And this might just be a coincidence, but worth putting on the pile the gaps between the cases, four days and nine days, if you add four and nine, you get thirteen... B.”

“I see. Not bad,” Ryuzaki said, nodding. Misora beamed.

“Picking up on the similarity between thirteen and B is a pretty good idea.”

“Isn’t it? So the fourth murder will happen nine days after the 13th, on the 22nd. Nine, four, nine... I considered the possibility of another four, and the murder happening on the 17th, but it seemed far more likely that it would be the 22nd. After all, something already happened on that day last month.

And there’s absolutely no way to get from seventeen to B, no matter how hard you try. So the fourth murder can only take place on the 22nd.”

The 17th had already passed, and there had been no related murders in Los Angeles on that day. She had been a little worried, but the strength of L’s declaration had kept her calm. She had told herself that four days and nine days adding up to thirteen had been pure chance, an irrelevant coincidence that the killer could afford to ignore.

“If I could add one thing,” Ryuzaki said. “That particular method of transforming twenty-two to thirteen is a little forced. Bending the argument to suit your purpose—there’s no reason to move the one from the tens place like that. It’s not like switching the numbers from thirty-one to thirteen. That explanation was clearly created after the fact.”

“Eh... but, Ryuzaki..

“Don’t misunderstand me—I fundamentally agree with your reasoning. Just not that particular point.”

“But... then...” If he refuted the most important date, the entire argument fell apart. He had effectively refused to agree with anything she’d said.

“But I have a suggestion. Misora, you were raised in Japan, right? Then you are more familiar with Japanese numerals than I am.”

• . Numbers in kanji?”

“Visualize the kanji for twenty two.”

The kanji...

She pictured the characters in her mind, but they failed to suggest anything.

“Well?”

“No, I don’t know what you...”

“Oh... then let me try a hint. Misora, imagine that the middle kanji, the kanji for ten: is a plus sign.

Which means 1 is actually two plus two.”

“Oh.”

That wasn’t a hint. It was the answer.

“Add them together and you get four... and you already explained brilliantly that four was one plus three. After all, if one plus three is B, then we have to put one and three together, which is the same as one plus three, which create the shape of the letter B. That’s exactly why we can read twenty-two as I.

We just need enough reason to add the numbers together. And with this condition, your reasoning for placing the fourth murder on the 22nd sounds accurate. I was somewhat bowled over by the force of your conviction earlier, and was a little nervous about following your lead, but now I feel as happy as if I’d drunk a mug of molasses.”

That metaphor gave Misora heartburn.

But apparently Ryuzaki believed this was why she had said the fourth murder would take place on the 22nd. Not full marks, since his reasoning for the actual date was better than hers, but she could relax a little.

“But Misora,” Ryuzaki said. “One more thing.”

“Yeah?”

This was the second one more thing.

It caught her off guard.

“Your theory is based on the assumption that when the killer chooses his victims, he requires that they have the initials B.B. But like we discussed, there is still a possibility that the killer is after Q.Q., not B.B.”

“Oh, yeah...”

If the fourth victim turned out to be a child with the initials Q.Q., lying face down, then their theories would be thrown out the window.

“If it is Q rather than B, then your theory doesn’t hold water. You would have created it from nothing, forcing it into existence based on faulty logic. Based on coincidence.”

“Coincidence... that the number thirteen looks like a B? But it’s so blatant… and Q just fits in there so neatly...”

“Yes. I agree. I don’t believe any of it was coincidental. But your theory is based on hindsight. Created after the fact. I want to know why you chose to build your theories on B, not Q.”

“Well...”

Because L had said so. Rather firmly. “The killer is B.” She’d known in advance. But she couldn’t tell Ryuzaki that. She had to keep L a secret from him. She couldn’t let her guard down and let something slip, no matter how much they spoke.

“I guess with three victims... there were two Bs to one Q, and B just seemed more likely. I thought about Q afterward, of course, but I couldn’t find any patterns that related to it she said, trying to cover.

But even as the words left her mouth, she knew they sounded unnatural.

And sure enough, Ryuzaki dismissed it, “That’s so arbitrary. Nothing to support it at all.” Her good mood was gone now. She bit her lip—she had reached those conclusions working backward, trying to figure out a reason for what L had said. L’s word supported it, so it was probably right, but that didn’t change anything

“The killer is B.”

“What?”

“No, I mean, he’s so obsessed with the letter B. Maybe that very obsession is part of the message, and the killer’s initials are B.B. as well.”

“Or maybe they’re Q.Q. Like you said, a lot of elements of the case do point to B, but it’s also possible we simply haven’t stumbled across the signs pointing to Q.”

“Yeah...I suppose so”

“That said, I do think B is more likely than Q as well. More than ninety-nine percent,” Ryuzaki admitted.

Essentially retracting the last few minutes.

“There’s a good chance the killer’s initials are B. The victims are all B.B., and the killer is too... things are getting interesting.”

“Interesting?”

“Yes. Anyway, be careful next time, Misora. If you agree with something, you must have sufficient reason to agree with it. If you disagree with something, you must have sufficient reason to disagree with it. However accurate, a deduction based on a fallacy means you have not defeated the killer.”

“Defeated? Ryuzaki, is this really a matter of winning and losing?”

“Yes,” Ryuzaki said. “It is.”

Because this was war.

L was said to never move on a case unless there were more than ten victims or a million dollars at stake. The only exceptions to this were cases at difficulty level L (extremely fitting), or when L had personal reasons compelling him to get involved. The Los Angeles BB murders were both of these. I hardly need to point out the difficulty by this stage of the story, and L was essentially fighting his own dead copy. The current head of Wammy’s House had told Quillish Wammy/Watari, who had told L

about B’s disappearance in May, and ever since L had been looking for him even as he solved his other cases. Wammy’s House only knew him as B—they did not know his real name, Beyond Birthday, so this search was near impossible, but L at last picked up his trail when the murders started—which is why L knew who the killer was. He had not been looking for a killer so much as he was looking for a case. L had been waiting, expecting Beyond Birthday to do something to challenge him. L could move any policeman in the world, but in this case, he did not ask anyone for help except Naomi Misora...

more than likely, for this reason. I don’t think L really put that much stock in honor, but everyone is embarrassed by their own sins, and nobody wants those missteps to become public knowledge.

L was the goal of everyone in Wammy’s House.

Every one of us wanted to surpass him.

To step over him.

To step on him.

M did, N did, and B did.

M as a challenger, N as a successor.

B as a criminal.

“Ryuzaki, did you find anything new?”

Now that they had finished debating the matter of dates, Misora took a breather, went down to the kitchen on the first floor, made two cups of coffee (with normal amounts of sugar, obviously) and carried them back up to Backyard Bottomslash’s room on a tray. She was holding the serving tray in both hands, which made opening the door rather tricky. Since the handle was at waist height, she was able to reposition herself a little bit and hook the tray on her belt buckle. She found Ryuzaki lying in the middle of the room, flat on his back, with his arms and legs flung out to the side. Misora froze in the doorway.

“Find.., something?” Misora repeated, for no reason at all.

He wasn’t going to make a bridge and start crawling around with his back to the floor, was he? Like something out of a horror movie.. .Misora gulped nervously, but to her great relief, this was apparently too weird even for Ryuzaki. But what was he doing?

“Urn, Ryuzaki?”

“I’m a corpse.”

“Hunh?”

“I have become a corpse. I cannot answer. I am dead.”

She understood this. The word ‘understand’ has a connotation of acceptance, which she sincerely wished to avoid, but it seemed clear that Ryuzaki had adopted the same pose as the third victim.

Obviously, his left arm and right leg remained attached to his body, but with that in mind he did match the pictures of Backyard Bottomslash’s bitter end. Prom a practical standpoint, Misora could not see any point to his behavior, but she was not the kind to interfere with other people’s methods of deduction. Instead, Misora tried to figure out if, on her way to the desk, she should step over Ryuzaki or go around. She did not want to step over him, but it irritated her to go around.

“Um… mm?”

And then she noticed. At least, she noticed that she had noticed something. But what had she noticed?

Something had caught her eye... no, before that, the moment she opened the door her attention had been overwhelmed by the spectacle of Ryuzaki playing dead, so how could it have? That wasn’t it. Then what would she have seen first if Ryuzaki were not lying there? If Ryuzaki had not been in the way of her carrying the coffee... if he had not been there... then nothing. The room would have been perfectly ordinary, if a little frilly. She could barely smell the blood. The only thing out of place was the hole in the wall... the hole?

“The mark left by the Wara Ningyo?”

It was just a hole, and hard to make out. But if it was not a hole, but the Wara Ningyo? Then the first thing that would catch her eye upon opening the door, just based on line of sight, was not Ryuzaki playing dead, but the Wara Ningyo. The moment she opened the door, she would see the Wara Ningyo... one of the dolls had been carefully placed in exactly that spot. And all the Wara Ningyo had been nailed to the walls at exactly the same height (at about waist height, if you were as tall as Misora) but the distance from the walls on either side changed depending on location. But at each location, when she had opened the door...

A hole.

“Excuse me, Ryuzaki”

Still holding the coffee tray, Misora stepped... no, vaulted over Ryuzaki. At least, she meant to, but she was so distracted she missed her landing, and stomped on his stomach. In boots. And she reflectively tried to keep her balance, and avoid dropping the tray, which left her putting her entire weight on Ryuzaki’s abdomen.

“Gah!” said the corpse.

Naturally.

“S-sorry!”

If she had spilled the coffee on him as well, Naomi Misora’s reputation as a klutz would have been cemented forever, but in actual fact, the matter did not go that far. Her martial arts experience had honed her sense of balance. She put the tray down on the desk and picked up the police file. She checked to see if she had remembered correctly.

“What is it, Misora?”

Ryuzaki may have been an impossibly weird freak of a man, but even he did not go so far as to rejoice at the pain of a woman stepping on him. He stopped pretending to be a corpse, rolled over, and crawled toward her.

“I’m looking over the charts of the crime scenes. In each of them... I noticed the same thing. About the locations of the Wara Ningyo.”

“The locations? What do you mean?”

“When we investigated the scenes, the police had already taken the dolls away, so I never noticed before... but there is a noticeable trend in the placement of the dolls. This scene included—when you open the door to enter the room, the first thing you see is a doll. There is a doll directly opposite the door—the killer arranged it so that when you come into the room, the first thing that catches your eye is a Wara Ningyo.”

“Oh yeah...“ Ryuzaki said, nodding. “That’s certainly true for this room, and now that you mention it, I remember seeing the hole in the wall when I went into the first and second rooms as well. But Misora, what does that mean?”

“Er... um...”

What did it mean? She felt like it was a major discovery, and had stomped on Ryuzaki’s belly in her enthusiasm, but now that he asked she didn’t have an answer. Awkward. She couldn’t admit the truth, so she scrambled to string something together.

“Well... it might have something to do with the locked rooms?”

“How so?”

“At all three scenes, the person who discovered the body opened the door and came in. Using a spare key or breaking the door down. They all came into the room… and saw that creepy doll on the wall.

The Wara Ningyo was the first thing they saw No matter what, their attention was drawn to it, Maybe while their attention was distracted, the killer, who’d been hiding in the room, slipped quietly out the door...”

“As classic a locked room detective novel trick as the needle and thread. But Misora, think about it. If you wanted to focus someone’s attention, you wouldn’t need the doll.”

“Why not?”

“If there was no doll, then the first thing they would see is a dead body. Just like you froze when you came into the room and saw my corpse. All he had to do was slip out of the room when someone came in and was staring in shock at the body.”

“Ah... right. Of course. So... did he want the person who found the body to see something besides the body first? I can’t think of any reason why, but...”

“Neither can I.”

“If he didn’t want them to notice the body at all, I would understand, but what could he gain from arranging it so they didn’t notice the body for a second or two? But in that case, why put a Wara Ningyo there? Is the placement just a coincidence?”

“No, I’m sure it was deliberate. It makes no sense to dismiss it as coincidental. But approaching it from this perspective doesn’t strike me as very effective. Like I said before, rather than focusing on the Wara Ningyo and the locked room, I would prefer... I think we should concentrate on figuring out the message the killer left behind.”

“But, Ryuzaki... no, you’re right.” She almost argued but stopped herself. It certainly was worth pursuing, but she didn’t have any follow-through at the moment. First they needed to identify the fourth victim, or at least the location. There were Wara Ningyo at all the scenes, but the message was only in this room, and they needed to find it as soon as possible. “Sorry. I was wasting valuable time.”

“I would rather you apologize for stepping on me, Misora.”

“Oh, right, of course.”

“You mean it? Then as a token of your contrition, would you do something for me?”

“Okay..

Could he be more blatant? But she had stepped on him.

Very hard, with her full body weight.

“What?”

“Would you pretend to be dead, Misora? Like I was a moment ago. The victim, Backyard Bottomslash, was a woman, so you might provide more inspiration than I did.” Apparently this private detective was unaware that most people possess something called self-respect.

But this was not the time to point this out to him. If she did, Naomi Misora felt she would be well on her way to earning a reputation as a tsundere-- prickly to hide her inner drippiness. And the matter was urgent--- she was willing to try anything that might help. She wasn’t sure if this was one of those things, but by this point she was even willing to try crawling. Peeling oddly resigned, she lay down on the floor. The room looked really different from down there.

“So? Anything?”

“No, not at all.”

“Oh. Yeah, I thought not.”

Futile.

Ryuzaki sat on the chair with his knees against his chest, pointed out that the coffee Misora had made was getting cold, and drank his. Misora had put sugar in the way she liked it, and half expected him to complain, but he didn’t say anything. Apparently he was capable of consuming non-sweet things too. It seemed she could get up now, but it felt more awkward to do so than to stay down here, so she didn’t move.

“Whew... hot coffee helps the pain in my belly,” Ryuzaki said.

He seemed so nonchalant, but he just wouldn’t let that go.

“Ryuzaki. . .was this the same as the first victim? After she died, he took the clothes off, then cut off the arm and leg, and then put the clothes back on?”

“Yes. What of it?”

“No, I know it’s easier to cut up a body without the clothes getting in the way Clothes are pretty sturdy, really. They get tangled up on the blade. But once he has the clothes off, why does he put them back on? Why not leave his victims naked?”

“Hmm...”

“With the first victim, putting the shirt back on hid the cuts on the chest, or at least hid that they were Roman numerals. But this time.., it must have been a pain in the ass. Putting clothes on a corpse.. .on anyone who can’t move themselves...”

“Misora, the leg he abandoned in the bathroom was wearing a sock and a shoe.”

“Yeah, I saw the picture.”

“Then, I mean, perhaps the killer’s goal... no, the killer’s message has nothing to do with the clothes or shoes, but only to do with the severed limbs. Which is why he put everything else back the way it used to be.”

Put everything back.

But then...

“But then... the left arm and the right leg. He left the leg in the bathroom and took the arm with him...

why? What was different about the left arm and the right leg? An arm and a leg Misora muttered, staring up at the ceiling.

Ryuzaki looked up at the ceiling as well, and said slowly, biting his thumbnail, “Once.. on a different case... something happened that might help here. If you’d care to hear it?”

“Go ahead.”

“It was a murder case, and the victim had been stabbed through the chest. Afterward, the ring finger of his left hand had been cut off and carried away. After his death. Can you guess why?”

“The ring finger of the left hand? That’s easy. The victim was married, right? The killer must have cut it off to steal the wedding ring. Wedding rings have often been worn so long they can no longer be taken off.”

“Yes. The killer was after money. Afterward, we successfully tracked down the ring on the black market and were able to trace it back to the killer and arrest him.”

“But... that’s certainly an interesting story and everything, but Ryuzaki, no one would cut off an entire arm to steal a ring. And Backyard Bottomslash wasn’t married. According to the file, she wasn’t even seeing anyone.”

“But there are more rings than wedding rings.”

“But you still wouldn’t take the entire arm.”

“Yes, you’re right. That’s why I only said it might help. If it didn’t, then I apologize.”

“Not worth apologizing for, but there was no ring... no ring...” So, something besides a ring?

For example... a bracelet.

Not around the finger, but around the wrist... no, that was retarded. It made a certain amount of sense that you would need to cut off a finger to get a ring, but no matter how generously you looked at it; there was no reason to cut off an arm for a bracelet. Nobody would do that. And this killer wasn’t after money, anyway. If he was, the second victim didn’t fit.

“…”

Misora slowly reached her left arm out toward the ceiling. Holding it away from the floor. She opened her hand and stretched her fingers out all the way, as if trying to grab the fluorescent light overhead.

There was a ring on her finger. An engagement ring from Raye Penber. An engagement ring that still seemed about as real as a joke between two children to her, but was it possible someone would cut off her finger, her arm, to steal it? What if it was a bracelet? No. Using herself as an example just made it seem all the more unlikely.

Holding her arm up like this had allowed her sleeve to slide down toward her shoulder. Her wristwatch came into view. It was a silver watch. A present on her birthday this year, February 14th, again from Raye Penber. So if it wasn’t a bracelet, but a watch? It was silver, so it wasn’t cheap... a watch?

“Ryuzaki. Was Backyard Bottomslash right or left handed?”

“According to your file, right handed. What of it?”

“So... chances are she would have worn a watch on her left arm. So perhaps what the killer took away...

was a watch,” Misora said, from her position on her back on the floor. “The right arm still had a sock and shoe. So the arm he took away more than likely still had a watch on it.”

“He cut off the arm to steal the watch? But why? Misora... you yourself said that it didn’t make any sense to cut off an arm to steal a ring. So why would someone do that to steal a watch? If he were after the watch, he would have just taken it. Watches aren’t like rings. They never get stuck. There’s no reason to cut off the arm.”

“No, I don’t think he was after the watch either. But maybe the watch is this scene’s message. If only the watch was missing it would be too obvious, so he took the arm too...”

“As a form of misdirection? I see... but in that case, we still don’t know why he cut off the right leg as well. I doubt she wore a watch around her ankle. And even as a case of misdirection, there’s still no need to take the whole arm—the wrist would have been plenty.”

“Yeah, true enough, but still... the watch idea itself still seemed like a good one.” She felt like she was nearing the truth. If that same unnatural fixation, to use a cliché phrase, that she’d encountered at the first and second scenes was working here, than she felt like it would manifest itself this way...

“Left arm... right leg... left wrist... right ankle... left hand... right foot... watch... clock... timepiece...

ticker.. both hands and feet, both arms and legs... or are the bits left behind what really matter’ Not the left arm and right leg, but the right arm and left legs? The four limbs...”

“Plus the head is five.”

“Five… five minus two is three… three. The third scene. Limbs... and the head make five... the head?

The neck... the neck, and one leg, and one arm...”

Misora was stringing words together as they came to her—but she was just spinning in circles, like a lost child, afraid of running into a dead end. The more she babbled, the more she lost the feeling that she was on to something. The hands of her compass were spinning...

“If five minus two is three, then he could have cut off both arms or both legs, or the left arm and the head... if the left arm had to be one of them, then why the right leg?” Purely to fill the silence, Misora forced out a question that had not occurred to her, a question she did not even consider worth asking. but Ryuzaki took her up on it.

“The head and arm and leg left behind are all of different lengths...” For a moment, she didn’t know what he meant. It seemed like a total non sequitur, and her mind couldn’t keep up with it. But an arm was longer than a head, and a leg was longer than an arm, but so what? Was Ryuzaki just blurting out whatever crossed his mind the way she was? But that wasn’t going to help guide her compass needle...

“Needle? Or hands...”

“What about needles?”

“No, hands...”

The classic locked room trick with the needle and thread. But that had nothing to do with this... but hands? Could that be...

“A clock! Clock hands, Ryuzaki!”

“Hunh? Clock hands...?”

“The hour hand, minute hand, and second hand! Three of them! Each of different lengths!” Misora slapped the floor hard with her upraised arm and used the impact to push herself up to a sitting position. She moved quickly over to Ryuzaki, grabbed the coffee cup from him, drank the contents in a single gulp, and slammed the empty cup down on the table as if trying to break it.

“At the first scene he took Akazukin Chacha away to point us to Insufficient Relaxation, at the second scene he took the contacts to point us toward the glasses, and here at the third scene, he took away the wrist watch... and turned the victim into a clock!”

“The victim... into a clock?” Ryuzaki’s deep-set eyes stared at her with a calmness in stark contrast to her own excitement. “By clock you mean...”

“The head is the hour hand, the arm is the minute hand, and the leg is the second hand! That’s why the killer took the watch with him, and that’s why he didn’t just take the watch or just cut off the hand, but cut the arm off at the root and had to cut one of the legs off as well otherwise, there wouldn’t be three hands left!”

All that came out in one breath, and at last Misora felt her feet on the ground again. She took a picture out of her pocket the picture of Backyard Bottomslash’s corpse. On her back, her arms and legs... no arm and leg spread out, the left arm and right leg missing Backyard Bottomslash.

“Look at this, Ryuzaki. See? The head is the hour, the arm is the minute, the leg is the second, so this is 12:45 and twenty seconds.”

“Mmm. When you put it that way...”

“When I put it that way? It’s obviously the message he left behind. And he tossed the leg into the bathroom because it was only the watch he needed to take away, and he wanted to emphasize that!”

“…”

Ryuzaki fell silent, apparently thinking.

“Let me see that,” he said, taking the picture from Misora’s hand. As she watched him pore over it, turning his head at all sorts of strange angles, Misora began to feel like her theory was completely wrong after all. All of this was only useful if it led to a message, and if he said that it was a baseless coincidence it would all fall apart—her deduction had no proof, could never be proven. It had been produced by pure instinct. The battle decided by instinct—by her instinct she would be victorious, or fail.

“Misora.”

“Yes? What?”

“Assuming your theory is correct... from this picture, there is no way to be sure that the victim’s clock is pointing at 12:45 and twenty seconds.”

“I mean, look,” Ryuzaki said, holding out the picture.

Upside down.

“Hold it like this, and it’s 6:15 and fifty seconds. Or like this...” He turned the picture sideways.

“Three o clock and thirty-five seconds. And if you turn it 180 degrees again, 9:30 and five seconds.”

“Oh.”

Of course. He was right. The picture was taken with the body vertically, so she had just assumed that the head... the hour hand was pointing directly upward, at twelve o’clock. But if you really looked at the victim as a clock, that was not necessarily the case. It might be, but it might not be. Just change the angle of the picture and there could be infinite possibilities. Or at least 360. The hands might not move, but the numbers could be placed anywhere around them. There was no clue indicating how to place the numbers.

“If the victim represents the three hands, then this square room is presumably the numbers. The victim was lying in the center of the room, after all. And the victim was placed like this, parallel or perpendicular to the walls of the room, so I think we can assume it is one of the four patterns I mentioned- But four patterns is still too many. We need to at least get it down to two, or we can’t really say we’ve solved the killer’s message.”

“The room... is the numbers?”

“Now that I think about it, the first message involved Roman numerals... which are often used on clock faces. But there are no Roman numerals in here. If only there were some hint to tell us which wall goes with which number..

Which wall was which time...? But there was nothing out of the ordinary on any of the walls, nothing that might indicate a number. One wall had a door, and the opposite wall a window. Another had a walk-in closet... or was it directions? The compass again...

“Ryuzaki, do you know which way north is? If north is twelve...”

“I already thought of that, but there’s no logical reason to assume that north is twelve. This isn’t a map, after all. It might be east, or west, or south.”

“Logic... logic... yeah, yeah, we need proof, or at least something reasonable... but how can we tell which wall? There’s nothing...”

“Indeed. It feels like there’s a wall blocking our path, too tall for us to climb over.”

“A wall? Good metaphor. A wall... a wall...”

A wall? The Wara Ningyo were on the walls. There had been two of them in here. Did that connect?

Did the dolls finally have meaning here? Misora half forced herself to decide she couldn’t see anything else that might be a hint, and pushed her thoughts into that channel. The Wara Ningyo. Wara. Ningyo.

Straw dolls. Dolls. Stuffed animals? Stuffed animals... in the frilly room. Too many dolls for a twenty-eight-year-old woman...

The stuffed animals piled against the walls.

“I got it, Ryuzaki,” Misora said.

This time she was calm.

This time she did not get worked up.

“The number of stuffed animals... the stuffed animals on each wall. The number of animals is pointing to the time. See? There are twelve of them against the wall with the door. And nine over there… twelve o’clock and nine o’clock. If we view the whole room as a clock, then the door goes on top.”

“No, wait a second, Misora Ryuzaki interrupted. “Twelve and nine are certainly true enough, but there are five dolls over here, and only two on the fourth wall. If we use four numbers to indicate a clock face, then they should be twelve, three, six, and nine. Not twelve, two, five, and nine. These numbers don’t fit.”

“Of course they do. If we count the Wara Ningyo.”

Misora looked again at the two holes in the wall.

“If we add the Wara Ningyo to those two stuffed animals... we get three. And if we add the Wara Ningyo to those five stuffed animals... we get six. This makes it work. The third crime scene itself is a clock. The entire room is a clock.”

Misora put the photograph of Backyard Bottomslash down on the floor, where she had been lying a moment before, and where Ryuzaki had been lying before that. Carefully, making sure it was the right angle.

“6:15 and fifty seconds.”

Page 6: Failure

And at last, August 22nd.

The day the man behind the Los Angeles BB Murder Cases was to be arrested... but we can say that because we have history to tell us, and like all historical events, when it was happening in real time, none of those involved knew that, and the way events unfolded was hardly smooth sailing. In fact, Naomi Misora’s day started with any number of inconsistencies and anxieties.

6:15 and fifty seconds.

They had managed to read that as the message left behind by the killer at the third crime scene, but was that 6:15 in the morning? Or in the evening? After they had solved the clock puzzle, Misora had searched the scene all night looking for anything that said “a.m.” or “p.m.” She found nothing.

“If we’ve looked this hard and found nothing, then maybe it doesn’t really matter,” Ryuzaki had suggested. “He made the victim look like an analog clock rather than a digital one, so trying to find something to indicate a.m. or p.m. might be a waste of time.”

“Yeah.” Misora nodded.

Regardless of whether this was true or not, they had to assume it was. She began to decipher the message both as 6:15:50 and 18:15:50. The first scene had pointed them to Quarter Queen, and the second scene to Glass Station, so what was the third scene pointing toward? Misora and Ryuzaki both turned their energies toward this problem, but it was Ryuzaki who first came up with something.

061550. The construction approval number for a condominium. In Pasadena, in the valley, a massive complex. The sizes ranged from two bed room to four bedroom, with over two hundred condos in all.

And a woman named Blackberry Brown lived in condo number 1313. Her initials were B.B., and her condo number was too.

“It must be her,” Misora said. All condo approval numbers began with zero, so there was no 181550.

She had been worried about the am/p.m. thing, but now that they’d found the answer, she could relax.

As Ryuzaki had said, with an analog clock it really didn’t matter. Misora was greatly relieved, but Ryuzaki himself did not look very cheerful. Not that he ever did, but even so, he seemed particularly down.

“Something wrong, Ryuzaki? We’ve finally figured out what the killer’s going to do, and can get ahead of him! We can lay a trap for him. Prevent the fourth murder, and if we’re lucky, catch the killer as well. Nah—no luck about it. We will catch him, and catch him alive.”

“Misora,” Ryuzaki said. “The thing is, there was another candidate in the condo. Another B.B. A man named Blues-harp Babysplit, who lives alone in room 404.”

“Oh...”

Two people with the target initials. In a massive complex of two hundred condos, not everyone lived alone there were any number of people with families. Even if you downplayed that number there were easily four or five hundred people... and simple arithmetic suggested that one out of 676 people had the initials B.B. It was not particularly surprising that there were two of them in the complex. It was statistically reasonable.

“But,” Misora said, “no matter how you look at it, room 1313 is our target. Thirteen is a code for B, Ryuzaki. And 1313 is B.B. The fourth murder... judging from the number of dolls, the final murder...

what better location could the killer ask for?”

“I suppose...”

“I’m sure of it. I mean, 404?”

Certainly, four was one plus three, which was B, but faced with a choice between 1313 and 404 the killer would undoubtedly choose the former. No matter who the killer was, Misora was sure he would choose the former. But Ryuzaki apparently wasn’t.

“Ryuzaki, do you know how rare it is for there to even be a thirteenth floor or a thirteenth room in America? They usually skip that number. I’m sure the killer would want to take advantage of that.. .in fact, he probably chose this building specifically because it did have a thirteenth floor.”

“But remember, Misora. The number of days between the murders. The crossword puzzle reached the police station on July 22nd, the first murder happened nine days later on July 3 1st, the second murder four days later on August 4th, and the third murder nine days later on August 13th, and if the fourth murder is to happen on August 22nd, that will be nine days again. Nine days, four days, nine days, nine days. But why was it nine four-nine-nine and not nine- four-nine-four? Even though nine plus four is thirteen.”

“Well...”

It was Misora who had first pointed out that nine and four were thirteen. But since nothing had happened on August 17th, she had assumed it was just a coincidence. She hadn’t been able to find a connection between seventeen and B, and it just hadn’t seemed like that big of a problem. Misora had no idea why Ryuzaki was bringing it up now.

“We have a four. But three nines… it’s so unbalanced.”

“Yeah, but... alternating was…”

“Not alternating. Four and nine should be viewed as a set, and the numbers as a series of thirteens. But that hasn’t happened... this doesn’t strike you as odd?”

“But room number 404 gives us three fours and three nines.”

“Oh...”

Was that what he meant?

“If it had been any room number other than 404, I would have agreed one hundred percent, no, two hundred percent that the fourth victim would be Blackberry Brown in room 1313, but since yet another B.B., Blues harp Babysplit, lives in a room with two fours in the number... I can’t ignore that.”

“Yeah... I agree.”

When he explained it like that, Misora was starting to think that room 404 was actually more likely.

After all, she had been a little bothered by the gaps between the murders. Was it really okay to dismiss them as coincidence? Nothing had happened on the 17th, but that was after the fact. It had never really locked into place. But if the final murder were in room 404, it would take care of that a lot better than room 1313.

Misora clicked her tongue.

They hadn’t been able to decide if the dock was a.m. or p.m., and now that they’d found a good candidate for the final murder scene, there were two potential victims… all this work, and the final piece refused to fall into place. It bothered her. She was sure they’d read the message correctly, but still doubts remained. There was every chance this would lead to some decisive mistake...

“Oh, well,” Ryuzaki said. “We’ll just have to split up. Fortunately, Misora, we have each other.” They might be working together, but nothing further.

But this was not the time to point that out.

“One of us should wait at each of the scenes. You take room 1313, Misora, and I’ll take room 404.

After all, Blackberry Brown is a woman, while Blues harp Babysplit is a man. Seems like a natural arrangement.”

“And do what, exactly?”

“Just as you said, Misora. Lie in wait. Today or tomorrow, we should speak to Blackberry Brown and Blues-harp Babysplit, and get them to cooperate with our investigation. Obviously, we can’t tell them they’re being targeted by a serial killer. If they know too much the media might find out about what’s happening and blow the whole thing.”

“But they have a right to know?”

“And a right to live, which is more important. We will pay an appropriate fee, and borrow the room for the day.

“Pay?”

“Yes. The simplest means. Fortunately, my patrons are providing me with expense funds deep enough to cover the charges. If we solve the crime, they will be only too happy to pay. If this were an ordinary murder, this would never work, but these victims were only being targeted because of their initials, and there is no real reason for them to die. Their murders only have meaning if they are killed in their own room—-whether that be 1313 or 404. So if we pretend to be them, and wait in their rooms, we should be able to meet the killer. Obviously just in case, we should have Blackberry Brown and Blues-harp Babysplit stay in a safe place all day on the 22nd... put them up in a luxury suite at a four-star hotel, for example.”

‘And then we... I see.

Misora put her hand to her mouth, thinking. Buying the potential victims’ cooperation sounded fine...

she didn’t know who the patron was backing Ryuzaki, but she should be able to get that kind of funding herself if she asked L. Ryuzaki would become Blues-harp Babysplit, and she would become Blackberry Brown...

“And we shouldn’t call for police backup, right?”

“Yes. We might be able to protect the victim’s life, but the scale of the operation would be too large.

The killer would be more likely to escape. And our deductions are not enough evidence to make the police take action, anyway. Our reading of the killer’s message is accurate at a ninety-nine percent chance, but however good it sounds, we have no proof. If they tell us it’s all rootless speculation, we’d be done for.”

“‘Rootless.”

“With nothing to support it.”

She was pretty sure there was a different word for that.

But he had a point.

If she asked her boyfriend in the FBI, Raye Penber... no, she couldn’t do that. Misora was suspended and she’d told Ryuzaki she was a detective. Her actions of the past week could get her in hot water if the agency found out. Even if she was really working for L she couldn’t exactly admit that in public...

“The killer is presumably working alone, but, Ryuzaki, when ii comes time to arrest him there will be a struggle.”

“Don’t worry. I can take him one on one. I may not look it, but am quite strong. And you’re trained in Capoeira, right?”

“Yeah, but...”

“Misora, can you use a gun?”

“Eh? No, I ca... can, but I don’t have one.”

“Then I shall prepare one. You should be armed. So far this was merely a detective war with the killer, but from here on our lives are on the line. You should be ready for anything, Misora,” Ryuzaki said, biting his thumbnail.

And so...

With any number of inconsistencies and anxieties, Naomi Misora spent the night in a hotel in West L.A. She called L from her hotel room and asked him for financial backing, and to check up on all the evidence they had uncovered. She wondered if L would suggest that lying in wait was too dangerous, and they should make the safety of the potential victims their first priority, wondered if he would oppose the strategy Ryuzaki had suggested, (part of her had hoped he would), but L seemed to be quite in favor of it. Misora asked him two or three times if she could really trust Ryuzaki, but he said again that there was no harm in letting him proceed. But of course, by the 22nd, everything would be resolved...

“Please, Naomi Misora,” L said. “Whatever you do, please catch the killer.” Whatever you do.

Whatever.

“Understood.”

“Thank you. However, Misora, while it is true that we are unable to ask for help publicly from the police, I can supply some private backup. I plan to station a few individuals working directly for me in the area around the condominiums. They do not need any solid proof to activate, Of course, they will keep their distance, but...”

“Okay, sounds good.”

When her conversation with L was finished it was past midnight—it was already August 21st. She would have to spend the entirety of the 22nd in Pasadena, which meant she had to arrive early on the evening of the 2 1st. With all that in mind, she knew it would be a struggle, but she climbed into the hotel bed, hoping to get a good night’s sleep.

“Wait,” she murmured.

As cobwebs formed over her mind, she murmured, “Now... when did I tell Ryuzaki about the Capoeira?”

She didn’t know.

And there was one other thing she didn’t know.

Something she didn’t even know she didn’t know.

Something that she was never to know. No matter what she did, she had no way of knowing. That this killer, Beyond Birthday, could tell someone’s name and time of death just by looking at their face, that he had been born with the eyes of the shinigami—she had no way of knowing that fake names were useless with him, completely and utterly pointless.

How could she have known?

Even Beyond Birthday himself could not explain how he had been born with the eyes of the shinigami, how he could use them with no payment, with no arrangement. Neither Misora nor L knew why, and, obviously, neither do I. The closest thing to an explaination I can offer is that there are shinigami stupid enough to drop their notebooks in our world, so there might well be shinigami stupid enough to drop their eyes. Either way, it was completely absurd to expect humans who had no idea shinigami even existed to be on the lookout for their eyes.

Even so, even with that in mind, she might have guessed. After, B looks like thirteen, and thirteen is the number of the tarot card named Death...

And so.

With any number of inconsistencies and anxieties, and one significant failure... the story’s climax arrives.

Case study.

I had originally intended to keep the reasons for Naomi Misora leave of absence (which was effectively a suspension from duty) out of these notes—had planned to remain vague about all the details. If I could, I absolutely would stick to that plan. I mean it. Like I said before, she was the single greatest victim of the fallout from Wammy’s House, and intruding on her private... or at least personal issues is something I am very reluctant to do. Which is why I have casually avoided any specific mention of it so far. However, since I now find myself attempting to describe the look in Naomi Misora’s eyes as she grasped the gun Ryuzaki had given her in both hands (It was a Strayer-Voigt Infinity model), I can no longer skirt the issue. I can’t just fast forward to the next scene without explaining the reasons behind that look.

That said, it’s not a terribly complicated story. Putting it as simply as possible, the team she worked with had spent months secretly investigating and infiltrating a drug cartel, and she had blown the whole operation—because at a critical juncture, she had been unable to pull the trigger. While she did not customarily carry a gun with her, it was different on duty—nor did she have any intention of making pathetic excuses about not being able to shoot another human being. Naomi Misora was a trained FBI agent. She did not imagine her hands were clean, or that she was above such things. But she had not been able to pull the trigger. Her gun had been aimed at a child of only thirteen years... which didn’t in any way excuse it. Thirteen or not, he was a dangerous criminal. But Naomi Misora had let him get away, and the secret investigation that many of her fellow agents had poured countless hours and an unbelievable amount of work into ended with nothing to show for it. Everything was finished. They had arrested no one, and while no one had died, there had been some agents injured so severely they might never be able to return to active duty—horrific results, considering the efforts squandered.

Despite her own weak position within the organization, the fact that she had only been forced to take a leave of absence was rather lenient.

Naomi Misora honestly did not know why she had been unable to pull the trigger. Perhaps she did not possess the proper self awareness... the proper resolve that an FBI agent should have. Her boyfriend, Raye Penber, had said, “I guess you couldn’t live up to your nickname, Misora Massacre,” somewhere between sarcasm and trying to cheer her up, but since she didn’t understand it herself she hadn’t protested.

But Naomi Misora remembered.

The moment she’d pointed the gun at him...

The eyes that child had turned toward her.

Like he was staring at something he couldn’t believe, like the grim reaper had just appeared before him.

Like it was absurd. He could kill other people, but he had never imagined that he might be killed himself. But he should have known, he should have been ready to die the moment he first took a life.

As any criminal would. As any FBI agent would. That threat hung over them all. She was part of the system. That child was part of the system too. Perhaps that had weakened their resolve. Perhaps that had numbed them to the threat. Perhaps their fears had rusted over. But so what? Given that child’s upbringing, he not only had no chance to reform, he never had a prayer of living right to begin with.

What had Misora expected from someone like that? How cruel was it of her to have expected anything?

She knew as well as anyone that that child was living the only way he could. He had always been doomed. But did that mean he had to accept his fate? Was there only one way to live, one way to die?

Was human life... was human death all controlled by some unseen hand?

Obviously, she harbored some resentment toward those who had used this failure as an excuse to expel her, but when she thought about the difference between the thirteen-year-old she had failed to shoot and the second victim in the Los Angeles BB murders, Quarter Queen, she began to feel like the whole affair was ridiculous.

Misora did not have a strong sense of justice.

She did not believe herself to be ethically or morally superior.

She did not approach work with any kind of philosophy.

She was where she was because her entire life had been like walking through a town she didn’t know—

if she lived her life over again, she was sure she’d end up somewhere completely different. If som( one asked her why she was working for the FBI, she would ncvci have been able to answer.

She was good at it, but that came from her abilities.

Not her thoughts.

“...What if the killer is a child?” Misora murmured, despondently.

“Thirteen... only thirteen...”

And she put the gun down beside herself, making sure the safety was on. Next to it were a pair of handcuffs, also supplied by Ryuzaki, intended for the killer. She was in condominium 1313, where Blackberry Brown lived. A two-bedroom condo, and the only room with a thumb turn lock was the room opposite the entrance.

Nine floors below her, in condo 404, Ryuzaki was also watching for the killer to arrive, taking Blues-harp Babysplit’s place. He had insisted he was strong, but he seemed so scrawny and hunched over that she found it hard to believe, and was more than a little worried. He had seemed utterly confident when they had met up before taking their places, but.., she had her doubts.

At this stage of affairs, Misora had absolutely no idea which room the killer, the man L called B, would come to—here to room 1313, or to Ryuzaki in 404? She’d been pondering the matter every second she could spare, but had honestly been unable to reach anything like a conclusion. And she was still bugged by the a.m./p.m. thing from the third scene... but there was no point in worrying about that now. All that mattered was to convince herself that the killer was coming here, to room 1313, to kill Blackberry Brown, and then to act accordingly. She couldn’t afford to waste time worrying about other people. Or she could put it another way—B would come after her... in L’s place.

She looked at the clock on the wall.

The digital display showed nine am. Exactly.

Nine hours worth of August 22nd had already passed. Only fifteen hours remained. She was not going to get any sleep today. She would have to remain awake for at least twenty-four hours. She wasn’t even allowed to take a bathroom break. Ryuzaki had advised her not to stretch her patience thin... she needed to be able to react the moment someone entered the room. But now it was time to call L again. She took her phone out of her bag and dialed according to instructions. Making sure the door and curtains were closed.

“L”

“Misora. Nothing happening here. I spoke to Ryuzaki earlier, mu nothing has happened on his end either, No signs of anything out of the ordinary. I’m starting to feel like we’re in it for the long haul.

“I see, Don’t let your guard down. As I said before, your backup is in position around the condominium, but if anything happens, they aren’t close enough to respond immediately.”

“I know”

“Additionally, a few minutes ago I dispatched two people to the condo itself. I wasn’t sure if they could be there in time, but the weather was on our side. We were lucky.”

“Eh? But… that means.,.”

To avoid tipping off the killer, they had not even put security cameras or bugs in the rooms, much less the building and the applied to extra people as well. They couldn’t risk being noticed.

“Don’t worry There is no chance the killer will notice. One them is a professional infiltrator, and the other one is a professional trickster. I can’t tell you more, since you are an FBI agent, but specifically, a thief and a con-man. I had one posted near each room.”

“A thief… and a con-man?” What was he saying? Was this some sort of joke?

“So, Naomi Misora,” L said, wrapping up.

But Misora hastily stammered, “Um, er, L...” but then she hesitated, not sure if she should ask this or not.

“You know the killer, right?”

“Yes, as I said. He is B,”

“I don’t mean like that... I mean, he’s someone you know personally?” On the 16th, L had said he had known all along that the killer B, and she had sort of known ever since, but two days before, he had said something that changed her guess to conviction. Whatever you do, please catch the killer. The century’s greatest detective, L, would never say that about some ordinary indiscriminate serial killer. And the way his name was just one letter long...

“Yes,” the synthetic voice agreed.

As if he didn’t mind being asked at all.

“But Naomi Misora, please keep that in the strictest confidence. The backup I have stationed near the condo, and the thief and con- man inside it have not been told what case they are working on. They are better off not knowing. Since you asked, I don’t mind telling you, but generally speaking it was also something you were better off not knowing.”

“I know. Either way, whoever B is, he is a dangerous criminal who has claimed the lives of three people for no good reason. But there is one thing I wanted to ask.”

“What?”

“You know the killer, but you have nothing to do with him?” This was...

To Naomi Misora, this was about the same as asking if you could pull the trigger on a child.

“I have nothing to do with him,” L said. “To be completely accurate, I do not even know B. He is simply someone I am aware of. But none of this affects my judgment. Certainly, I was interested in this case, and began to investigate it because I knew who the killer was. But that did not alter the way I investigated it, or the manner in which my investigation proceeded. Naomi Misora, I cannot overlook evil. I cannot forgive it. It does not matter if I know the person who commits evil or not. I am only interested injustice.”

“Only... in justice…” Misora gasped. “Then... nothing else matters?”

“I wouldn’t say that, but it is not a priority.”

“You won’t forgive any evil, no matter what the evil is?”

“I wouldn’t say that, but it is not a priority.”

“But...”

Like a thirteen-year-old victim. “There are people who justice cannot save.” Like a thirteen-year old criminal. “And there are people who evil can save.”

“There are. But even so,” L said, his tone not changing at all, as if gently admonishing Naomi Misora.

“Justice has more power than anything else.”

“Power? By power... you mean strength?”

“No. I mean kindness.” He said it so easily. Misora almost dropped the phone The century’s greatest detective, L. The detective of justice, L. Who solved every case, no matter how difficult... “I misunderstood you, L.”

“Did you? Well, I’m glad we cleared that up.”

“I’ll go back to work now.”

“Very well.”

She folded her phone and closed her eyes. Whew.

She did not find herself spinning.

She had just heard a word that sounded good to her. She’d been told something she needed to hear.

Perhaps she’d just been manipulated.

None of her problems had been solved. Her confusion remained. She still lacked resolve. She felt like something had changed, but by tomorrow it would undoubtedly be back to normal. But even so, for the moment, she was not going to make a fast decision, she was not going to turn in her resignation. When her leave of absence ended, she would go back to the FBI. In that moment, Naomi Misora made up her mind. And the killer from this case might make a nice souvenir.

“So, in one hour, I have to call Ryuzaki... hope he’s okay.” Blackberry Brown and Blues-harp Babysplit. Two B.B.s. Room 1313 and room 404... Had there really been nothing in the third scene that could have eliminated one of them from consideration? She couldn’t shake the idea that there had been. They had not been able to trim the possibilities down all the way because they had not done everything they could, they had not done everything they should...

“Oh. I see. That’s why Q.Q.?”

She had hit upon something. The reason why the second victim had been Q.Q., not B.B. The reason he had turned the child over, turning b into q. To prevent the possibility of there being someone else with the same name. The type of message left behind at the first scene... a message pointing not at the place, but at the victim targeted... that kind of message always left the possibility of someone else with that name. Which is why he had chosen Q.Q.—much less common than B.B. Quarter Queen. Misora had no idea how many other Believe Bridesmaids or Backyard Bottomslashes there were in Los Angeles, but she did know that the girl had been the only Quarter Queen. Which meant they were right, and the link had been the Bs, not the Qs.

B.B.

But even though the killer had worked so hard to make sure the message could only be one person, why had the final problem allowed for two candidates? She must be overlooking some critical piece of the puzzle. There must be something she should have done...

The crossword puzzle.

She had never tried it.

Now that she thought about it, there were any number of problems she had been putting off thinking about. Not only the problem of which room. If they caught the killer, then everything would be explained, or...

“...The locked rooms. Did he really just have a key?”

In that case, he must have gone about his murders after preparing the key in advance... he must have investigated his victims for some time before the murders took place. They had done everything they could to avoid detection, but it was more than possible he knew Misora was waiting here for him...

“A needle and thread locked room.. .and the needle ended up being a useful hint at the third scene.

Even if it was just free association...”

Needle hand. Clock hand.

And she had been surprised to find that the Wara Ningyo had a practical meaning... the previous scenes had suggested they were nothing but a metaphor for the victims. But they had been counted with the stuffed animals, adding up to the numbers of the four clock sides. So perhaps some of those stuffed animals didn’t belong to the victim... to make sure the numbers matched. Seemed likely.

Four, three, two... the number of Wara Ningyo was decreasing. The last one would appear at the fourth murder scene.

If there was a fourth.

“The final Wara Ningyo... I assume it’ll be placed directly opposite the door? Seems most likely... most significant... but what is the significance? The first thing you see when you step into the locked room…

catches your eye before you see the body...”

Without any clear idea what she was thinking, Misora stood up and moved over to the door. Turning her back to the door, she looked around the room—it was just a room, nothing out of the ordinary. At the moment, it wasn’t even a crime scene. Nothing here but the signs of Blackberry Brown’s life.

“The Wara Ningyo were always nailed at about the same height... the horizontal placement was all over the place, but the vertical was basically the same. About waist height on me... so about this high...” Misora crouched down.

Naturally this meant she was sitting in a position very like Ryuzaki’s habitual knee hug, but she tried not to think about that. If he was right, and this did make deduction easier, then it was even a good thing. She was alone in the room anyway. Assuming the fourth scene would follow the rule, and the Wara Ningyo was to be placed opposite the door, then from this position her eyes would meet the doll’s, their sightlines at exactly the same height. Of course, Wara Ningyo had no eyes, and this wasn’t getting her anywhere.

“Just because they were mixed in with the stuffed animals, there was no need for it to be opposite the door... if the placement is significant. . . the placement... or is it just another manifestation of his finicky nature... ow!”

Thinking too hard in an awkward sitting position had caused her to lose her balance and thump the back of her head on the doorknob. Rubbing the pain away, Misora turned absently to look behind her...

and...

Her eyes lit upon the doorknob, and.

And just below it, the thumb turn lock. The latch.

Misora’s head snapped around so fast it made an audible whooshing noise, and she looked at the opposite wall again. There was nothing there, just an unbroken stretch of wallpaper. But Misora had just been imagining a Wara Ningyo hanging there. But a Wara Ningyo nailed at that height was not opposite the door.

It was opposite the doorknob.

The doll was directly across from the thumb turn lock.

“Oh... how did I not notice that?!”

Waist height—she had known that was where the Wara Ningyo were placed since she first saw the police file. At the first crime scene, when she had turned the thumb turn lock she had consciously noticed that the grip was at her waist height, and at the second scene she had thought clearly that the design of the apartment door was different, but it was of the same construction,, .and at the third scene she had turned the knob and opened the door while balancing a serving tray on her belt buckle. And it was easy enough to figure out that the Wara Ningyo and the thumb turn locks were at the same height.

She did not even need to open the file and corn pare measurements. But so what? So what if the Wara Ningyo were nailed to the wall at the same height as the thumb turn locks.., and the Wara Ningyo were placed directly opposite the latch of said thumb turn lock? Was there some reason for that?

She was headed for an answer she should not have headed for.

She would reach an answer she should not reach.

At this rate... she knew she would.

An answer that would overturn, uproot everything she had believed about this case.. .and she couldn’t stop herself. She was past the point of being consciously capable of interrupting her deduc tions.

Assuming that there was to be a Wara Ningyo placed on the wall opposite the door at the fourth scene...

proof by contradiction. Four dolls, three, two, one!

“No, that doesn’t make sense... that can’t possibly be true… the locked room trick? The needle and thread locked room... the needle was at the third scene… and the thread? Under the crack in the door...

the crack... the space... no space, tightly packed...”

A locked room.

A locked room... was usually created to make it look like the victim had committed suicide. But in this case, there was nothing like that... which meant if you flipped the idea... then the locked rooms existed to make a suicide look like a murder.

What then?

What then?

“Ah...”

In truth...

All along, Naomi Misora had done nothing that Ryuzaki had not manipulated her into. There was no point now in going back as far as the similarity between q and b they had discovered in the bookshelf message, but her conclusions about the date of the murder had changed shape dramatically while she was talking to Ryuzaki, and the notion that the third murder looked like a clock... Ryuzaki had led her to that from the moment she noticed the watch was missing. He had brought up the wedding ring, he had pointed out that the head and arm and leg were different lengths, he had suggested the walls as sides of the clock... Naomi Misora had been controlled like a puppet on strings.

“Oh, right... how did he know?” But now at last.

Naomi Misora figured something out on her own.

Truth.

And justice.

“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaauuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuugggggggghhhhhhhhhhhh hhhhh!”

Completely forgetting all notions of how she presented herself, Misora let out a howl that cracked the air around her. She jumped to her feet, leapt across the room, and grabbing her gun and handcuffs off the table, she spun around, flipped open the thumb turn lock, and burst out of room 1313.

Elevator.

No, not enough time. Emergency stairs.

Racking her brain for details of the complex’s floor plan, which she had poured over the day before, Misora headed for the emergency stairs, kicking open the door and hurtling down them three or four stairs at a time.

Down.

Nine floors down.

“Damn it... damn it, damn it, damn it, damn it, damn it! Why why why why why... how can this be?!

It’s so god damn obvious!”

It pissed her off.

Wasn’t the truth supposed to set you free? When the truth revealed itself, weren’t you supposed to feel better? But if this was how things really were, then...

The century’s greatest detective, advertised as solving every case imaginable, how great must his burden be, how much pain must he go through at every single moment... past, present, and future A burden so great it would leave you hunched over.

A bitter taste in your mouth that would leave you longing for sweets.

She was going so fast she almost missed her floor and had to brake hard. She paused for just a second to catch her breath, then opened the door and checked once more to make sure she was on the fourth floor. Which way? Right? Left? The complex shifted half way up, and the corridors ran in different directions than the thirteenth floor... 417 was on her right, and 418 beyond it, so this way!

“Aiieeee!”

Someone screamed.

Misora stiffened, but it was a woman’s scream. She turned to look, and a resident had apparently come out of her apartment and seen Misora holding a gun. Distracting! Misora stepped away from the resident, running down the hall.

Toward room 404.

“R-Ryuzaki!”

Right round the next corner and she was there.

The front door wasn’t locked. She stepped inside. 1313 had been a two bedroom, but this condo had three. One extra room. Which room? She had no time to think. She had to start with the nearest one.

The first room—wrong. No one inside. Second room—the door wouldn’t open. A thumb turn lock!

“Ryuzaki! Ryuzaki, Ryuzaki!”

She knocked... no, knock isn’t strong enough, she pounded as if trying to break the door down. But it was sturdy and would not budge.

There was no answer from inside.

Ryuzaki did not answer.

“Hah!”

She half turned and kicked the doorknob with her heel. It stood a better chance than her fists, but the door wasn’t breaking that easily. She kicked it again, just in case, but with no more success.

Misora aimed the gun.

Infinity.

Seven in the cartridge plus one in the chamber, a .45.

She aimed right for the lock.

“I’m pulling the trigger!”

Once, twice... she shot the lock.

The thumb turn lock and the knob burst off She threw her shoulder into the door, and the first thing that hit her eyes was the Wara Ningyo. Nailed to the wall, directly opposite the door.

And next...

She saw a man on fire, in the corner away from the door. Flailing his arms around, unable to stand the pain of the flames rolling across him.

Ryuzaki.

It was Rue Ryuzaki.

She saw his eyes through the flames.

“R-Ryuzaki!”

The heat was so intense she could barely look at it.

The fire was spreading to the room.

A blast of heat struck her skin.

She smelled gasoline.

Strangulation, blunt force trauma, stabbing... and the final victim was fire!

She glanced at the ceiling—there was a sprinkler, but it had obviously been tampered with. It wasn’t functioning. The alarm had been disabled as well. Misora forced herself not to panic, but forced herself to take action. She bolted back out of room 404 into the hail, back the way she came. She’d seen a fire extinguisher on her way here. Just over... there! She grabbed it and ran back. She didn’t need to read the instructions.

She pointed the end of the hose at the ball of fire, at Ryuzaki’s body, burning red, and squeezed the handle hard. White foam sprayed out, coating the room, far stronger than she’d expected. She almost lost her balance, almost fell over backward, but grit her teeth and held on, not letting the hose move off Ryuzaki.

How long did it take?

Ten seconds? About that.

But Misora felt like the day was going to end before he stopped burning.

The fire extinguisher was empty... the fire was out.

The white foam began to subside.

And in front of her, a black, charred body. No, that was an understatement, soft pedaling it. A better description would be a red-black mass of flesh. It looked like the flames had burned it all the way through.

The smell of gasoline hung in the air, along with the smell of burning hair and skin. Misora covered her nose. She glanced toward the window, wondering if she should get some ventilation... no, she couldn’t risk a backdraft. As if afraid that any sudden movements would cause his body to crumble, Misora stepped gingerly toward Ryuzaki. He was curled up, on his back. She knelt down beside him.

“Ryuzaki,” she said. He didn’t answer. Was he dead? “Ryuzaki!”

“Ah... unh...”

“Ryuzaki.”

He was alive.

He was still alive.

He was burned all over and needed serious medical treatment immediately, but this came as a relief.

She heard a sound behind her and turned around. There was someone there—the woman who had screamed when she saw Misora with the gun. She must live here. She had heard the gunshots and the fire extinguisher, and timidly come to see what was happening.

“D-did something happen?” she said.

Misora thought that “What happened?” would have been a better question, but...

“FBI,” she said.

FBI.

She identified herself like that.

“Call the police, the fire department, and an ambulance.” The woman looked surprised, but nodded and left the room.

Misora wondered if, in fact, this woman was the thief or the con man that L had sent here, but she could worry about that later.

She turned back to Ryuzaki.

Turned back to the red and black charred body.

And slowly took his wrist, still very hot, and checked his pulse... a little uneven, and very weak. He might be done for, might not make it to the hospital, might not last until the ambulance arrived.

In which case.

She had something to tell him.

She had something to do.

“Rue Ryuzaki,” she said, putting the handcuffs on his wrist. “I arrest you on suspicion of the murders of Believe Bridesmaid, Quarter Queen, and Backyard Bottomslash. You do not have the right to remain silent, you do not have the right to an attorney, and you do not have the right to a fair trial.” The Los Angeles BB serial killer, Rue Ryuzaki, Beyond Birthday... was in custody

---last page…---

Nothing left but the explanation.

There’s not much left to write about here, so I’ll settle for summarizing the key points. My great and respected predecessor, the man whose actions were a strong influence on me personally, B, B.B., Beyond Birthday—obviously, I need hardly explain again that the murders themselves were not his purpose. So what was he doing? Again, I hardly need to explain—he was challenging the man he copied, the century’s greatest detective, L.

A matter of winning or losing.

A contest.

But in this case, what would mean B’s victory? How would he determine that L had lost? In an ordinary detective war, whoever solved the mystery first would win. Or if we look at the battle between L and the murderer Kira, L would win if he could prove who Kira was, while Kira would win when he killed L. But what about B and L? Beyond Birthday developed the following theory Since L could solve every case no matter how challenging, if he created a case so difficult that L was unable to solve it, B would have defeated L.

That was the Los Angeles BB Murder Cases.

He knew that the moment he took action Wammy’s House and Watari would alert L, so he did not even bother trying to stop them. He could only guess at which stage of his plan L would start to come after him, so he prepared things carefully, ready for L’s entrance at any point. Beyond Birthday was careful, and finicky—and when L actually stepped in, on August 14th, just after the third murder, the timing was not ideal, but not bad either.

Of course, L would not move himself, but would carefully choose a pawn or two to work for him—at most three, probably two, and if B was lucky, only one. Beyond Birthday was lucky. The eyes of the shinigami told him the pawn’s name at once -- Naomi Misora. An FBI agent on a leave of absence.

But what really mattered is that she was only working for L, and not L himself Beyond Birthday was not battling Naomi Misora. He only cared about beating the one hiding behind her.

Which is why.

B approached Naomi Misora, calling himself Rue Ryuzaki. Rue Ryuzaki-- L.L.

For anyone from Wammy’s House, there could be no higher goal than identifying yourself with that letter—and Beyond Birthday seized this case as his chance. Even Naomi Misora knew what had happened to detectives falsely identifying themselves as L, and B was from Wammy’s House, so he knew better than anyone so this choice suggests the strength of his decision. He never once intended to survive he had made up his mind. He was ready.

And, as Ryuzaki, he had played the fool, observing Naomi Misora, occasionally guiding her skillfully, from the first scene to the third, making sure she gathered and deciphered all the clues and messages he had left behind. Compared to the challenge he had faced persuading the victims’ family members to hire him to solve the case, leading Misora was undoubtedly a walk in the park. All the while testing her from this angle or that, seeing if she was worthy of serving as L’s replacement...

Misora had contacted L on any number of occasions during her investigations. And she had clearly received instructions from L to allow this mysterious private detective, Rue Ryuzaki, free rein. He had expected this—he had sent the crossword puzzle to the LAPD for just that reason. If someone appeared who had the sort of internal document that only someone like L could possibly obtain, even the century’s greatest detective would be unable to dismiss him lightly—even though, in fact, Ryuzaki had the documents only because he had created them in the first place.

Misora had performed much better than he had expected. Like the moon has its dark side and every coin has two sides, Ryuzaki’s hints had been blatant and yet unobtrusive and any ordinary detective would never have been able to take them to their logical conclusion so effectively. She was everything he could have hoped for. The first three scenes all had clues that needed to be solved for his plan to proceed smoothly, but Ryuzaki could not be seen to solve too many of these on his own—just as L was using Misora to go after B, B was using Misora to go after L. Rue Ryuzaki could never be anything more than a suspicious private detective—not to be trusted, but not attracting too much attention from L either. As far as Beyond Birthday was concerned, the first three murders only served to set up the main act, the fourth murder. Misora had been the first to use the word camouflage, but in that sense, the first three murders were all camouflage, disguising the truth behind the fourth murder.

At the third scene, the clock had pointed to a large condo complex in Pasadena, in the Valley, where there were two B.B.s. This had not been hard for B to locate, with the eyes of the shinigami—that said, it had not exactly been simple to locate a place that matched the necessary conditions. Room 1313, Blackberry Brown. Room 404, Blues-harp Babysplit. Naomi Misora was working alone, which allowed him to avoid the need to use the backup plan he’d created in case L sent more than one person. If there had been two investigators, it would not simply have been a matter of finding a third B.B.

Misora in room 1313, and himself in room 404. Honestly, it did not particularly matter which room.

Misora was in room 1313 for no better reason than that she was a woman.

And then Ryuzaki attempted suicide.

Turned the thumb lock by hand, nailed a Wara Ningyo into the wall, broke the sprinkler system, turned off the alarm, wiped the place for fingerprints, showered himself with gasoline, and lit himself on fire.

He had chosen himself to be the fourth victim. Beyond Birthday, the final B.B. That Rue Ryuzaki was a fake name did not even require L’s resources—Misora was an FBI agent, and could find that out for herself quickly, and if she dug a little deeper would be able to find out that his real name was Beyond Birthday B.B. More than acceptable as the fourth victim—and a highly appropriate end for the mysterious private detective.

Immolation. Burning to death.

Naturally, his face and fingerprints would burn as well—he had always disguised himself with heavy makeup while he was with Misora, and he had never left a picture behind, so even if someone directly affiliated with Wammy’s House inspected the body, they would have no idea that Rue Ryuzaki/Beyond Birthday was B from Wammy’s House. He had left nothing to connect Beyond Birthday to B. He had no intention of hiding his own identity (he wanted them to find out he was Beyond Birthday, to find out he was another B.B.), but he had to hide that he was B from Wammy’s House. The reason he changed his methods of killing from strangulation at the first scene, to blunt force trauma at the second, to stabbing at the third was partly experimental, partly motivated by curiosity, but far, far more important was to make it seem only natural that the fourth murder was done with fire. And there was also the matter of the injuries done to each of the previous corpses—even Beyond Birthday was unable to damage his own body after death. It would never do to leave such an obvious discrepancy. With a burned body, it was impossible to tell if such damage had been done or not.

At the fourth scene, as I hardly need to explain, there was no message. There was no reason to leave one. B was presenting the Los Angeles BB Murder Cases to L as a case that could never be solved.

That L could not solve.

In other words, he had never prepared any clear solution to it— since the killer had committed suicide, disguised as the fourth victim, there was no longer a killer to catch, and no clues left to catch him with.

Which is why the difficulty had escalated so dramatically from murder to murder. Particularly the message at the third scene, with its deliberate ambiguities—am. versus p.m., and room 1313 versus 404. So when no message was discovered at the fourth scene, Misora, and therefore L, would believe they had simply overlooked

it. Something that should be there, but wasn’t—and it was a lot harder to discover something that wasn’t there than something that was. Especially if the missing thing had never been there in the first place-in that case, there was no way they would ever find it.

But how would they prove it?

A problem with no solution could only have one answer—that it could not be solved. But that answer conflicted with the fairness displayed in the first three murders. Which tied their hands. Unable to find something that wasn’t there, L would have to continue searching for B—who no longer existed. The metaphor of the gradually decreasing Wara Ningyo established from the beginning that there would be only four victims, so the lack of further murders would not lead to the conclusion that the killer had passed away. L would be left chasing after the mirage of the deceased B. L would be forever followed by the mirage of the deceased B. L would spend the rest of his life trembling in fear of B’s shadow.

L would lose.

B would win.

B was the top, and L was the bottom—L would grovel at B’s feet.

The copy would surpass the original.

Or so he thought.

In reality this did not happen, and the dizzying amount of time he had spent preparing for his crimes was all for nothing, destroyed, blown to smithereens—because he had focused all his energies on L, and never once viewed Naomi Misora as anything more than a pawn. All his attention was on the man behind her, and he never even saw Misora standing right in front of him. Even as he believed himself to be praising her skills, he ultimately underestimated her. She had done better than he expected—that very expression is, essentially, arrogant. If you ask me, even without Ryuzaki’s hints, she might well have deciphered the messages at almost the same speed.

Naomi Misora.

The key had been the locked rooms. The locked rooms. Ryuzaki had said over and over that there was no need to think about them, that the killer had probably just used a spare key, because even he knew that focusing on that point could mean trouble. Beyond Birthday had a fair idea where the weaknesses in his own plot lay.

But those were weaknesses that would be forgotten once the fourth murder happened, and if he could just hold out till then, if he could just distract her until then... then B would have won. That Misora figured it out just before the fourth murder was complete can only be described as a stroke of good luck.

At the first scene, and the second, and the third, the Wara Ningyo had been directly across from the door, and the dolls had been at the same height as the latch of the thumb turn lock—she had to notice both these things to figure it out. At the third murder scene the dolls had been counted along with the stuffed animals, which had seemed like a reasonable enough idea, but that was not their primary function. And their function as a metaphor for the victims was, again, not their true purpose.

Specifically, let us look at how the locked rooms were created. The doors were locked with a thread.

The thread from a needle and thread. Misora had suggested running a thread under the door, looping it around the latch, and pulling on the thread to make the latch turn. Ryuzaki had denied it, but it had been a close call. She had been so close, but with that method, the force would have been pulling in the room direction, applying pressure to the door itself rather than the latch. As Ryuzaki had explained, the only effect would have been to pull outward on a door that opened inward.

But she had been very close.

At what she believed to be a potential fourth crime scene, Misora had crouched down in front of the door, putting her line of sight at waist height, and looked at the opposite wall—and imagined there was a Wara Ningyo there. Pinned to the wall across from her. Of course, the doll had to be physically pinned to the wall. There was no way it could just float there on its own—that would be magic, a scene out of a horror movie. It had to have been pinned there— which means there had also been something pinning it there. The holes in the wall at each crime scene—without even looking at the photos of the dolls in her files, Naomi Misora was Japanese, she knew about them as part of her culture.

Wara Ningyo had nails through them.

Long, thin nails.

And what mattered to the killer was not the doll itself. . .but the nail. The Wara Ningyo were nothing but a dramatic bit of misdirection. The shape of the nails.. the nail’s head. The thread went under the door, around the head of the nail, and from there over to the side wall, around another nail head, and finally back to the door itself, around the latch of the thumb turn lock—at the same height as the dolls.

Obviously, this is a simplified description to make it easier to understand, and the operation was actually performed in reverse, starting at the lock, then going to the side wall, the opposite wall, and back under the door, but. . . essentially, the thread sketched a big triangle in the middle of the room.

And if you pulled the string then...

The latch of the thumb turn lock would turn.

Click.

Essentially, he used the nail heads as pulleys, turning the power vectors diagonally. To be even more accurate, the Wara Ningyo was not placed directly opposite the door, or directly opposite the thumb turn latch, but directly opposite the gap under the door. This method prevented the dynamic force applied to the thread to be dispersed by the door. The thread did not touch the door, but simply passed under it, heading directly for the nail in the Wara Ningyo opposite— and all the force applied was transmitted in that direction. Then the nail head acted like a pulley, turning the direction of the force twice, and leading it to the thumb turn latch. Once the door was locked, obviously, he then had to recover the thread, so he had to use a particularly long one doubled over on itself.. .which explanation is just a bonus at this stage. As soon as he was sure the door was locked, he let go of one end of the thread and pulled on the other, successfully gathering all the thread to his side of the door. Anyone could pull this off, as long as they used strong thread that wouldn’t break. If you have time, try it in your own room. As long as you are allowed to hammer nails into the walls.

Despite this tedious explanation, the exact nature of the locked room trick is completely unimportant.

Well... perhaps not completely, but to focus too much on the trick itself is to miss the real point. What really matters is that to pull this trick off, you need at least two dolls—because you need two nail head pulleys. At least two. One on the opposite wall and one on the side wall. Four dolls, three dolls, two dolls—the trick worked at the first three scenes. But at the fourth scene, where there was only one Wara Ningyo, the trick could not be used. With only one pulley opposite the door, the latch would not turn.

The thread would not make a triangle, and would simply go over and come back in a straight line. So, as I have already mentioned, the final victim, Rue Ryuzaki, turned the thumb turn latch by hand. We only know that because the locked room trick was solved before the fourth murder took place—

otherwise, the fact that the locked room had been created even with only one Wara Ningyo would simply have been dropped into the file with all the other data. The weakness in his plan would evaporate—as long as the locked room remained a mystery until the fourth murder, it would remain one forever.

Naomi Misora was just in time.

Ryuzaki himself had asked absently, “What for?” Why had the killer made a locked room that he did not need? That question. A game, for fun... a puzzle. Locked rooms were designed to make a murder look like a suicide... but in this case, the locked rooms existed to make the fourth death look like it wasn’t a suicide.

To provide L with a mystery he could not solve.

Even if he could not solve it, it did not mean there was no answer.

Namely: it was unsolvable.

According to Ryuzaki’s scenario, Misora would come running down the stairs when he failed to answer his phone as scheduled to find the Wara Ningyo on the far wall and Beyond Birthday burned to death—

and if she had not yet figured out the locked room mystery, then everything would go as B planned, his plot executed perfectly. Since the locked room had been created even with only one Wara Ningyo, nobody would ever think of the triangulation technique.

If the police had not taken the dolls and the nails that held them in place away as evidence, Misora would probably have figured it out faster. But this was not a matter of luck, but all part of Beyond Birthday’s plan. He knew all along the police would investigate the scene first. Beyond Birthday had coldly calculated that by the time L’s pawn arrived at the scene, the actual Wara Ningyo and the actual nails would be long gone. The third scene was the only one where they might remain—and in that case, they were counted with the stuffed animals to make the numbers on the sides of the clock face, which would distract her. So the only thing that did not go according to Beyond Birthday’s plan was Misora’s investigative ability.

No, not ability

Inspiration.

But figuring out the locked room trick, figuring out that the way the killer had locked the doors would only work at the first three scenes did not tip off Naomi Misora. Rather, she had begun to wonder how the killer planned to lock the door at the fourth scene. Or to wonder if the theory was completely misguided. Her suspicions did not immediately turn toward Ryuzaki. Of course not—she had been told no details about the connection between L and B, so it never occurred to her that Ryuzaki might have a reason to do something like that. She kept saying he was suspicious, but her suspicions had never reached any definite form. To theorize that the fourth murder would actually be a suicide required her to realize that the message had pointed to two possible murder scenes, that the two of them were lying in wait for the killer, and since one of those two people was her, the other one had to be the killer...but Naomi Misora was not proficient in the kind of mathematical deduction that was required to logically prove who the killer was.

But she had figured it out.

Because he had known.

He knew that Naomi Misora knew capoeira.

And in this case, the only people who knew that were L, who Misora herself had told, and the man who had assaulted her in the alley downtown—the killer. Misora had used a capoeira technique while fighting him. She had driven him off with her capoeira. Since the idea that Ryuzaki was L was comically absurd and completely unthinkable, then it stood to reason the man who insulted her was Ryuzaki... which led Misora to the truth.

Failure.

Beyond Birthday, Rue Ryuzaki’s one and only failure. The only failure the killer who never made mistakes had made. If he had just rated Naomi Misora a little bit higher, he would never have let that shp. But it was too late. He might have been born with the unbelievable eyes of the shinigami, but he had no eyes for judging people... Probably a little too pat a conclusion to draw. A neat turn of phrase, to be sure, but that doesn’t salvage it.

It is now an eternal mystery exactly how much of the truth L grasped and when. He might have known everything all along and put Misora into action based on that, and he might well have never figured anything out and been saved by heL Either way seems perfectly possible. But let us not think of such petty things. L is not someone we should speak of in such petty terms. As long as one thing is clear, nothing else matters.

B lost to Naomi Misora.

In other words, he lost to L.

Losing twice in one battle, unable to die the way he had planned, Beyond Birthday was taken to the police hospital, ending the serial killings that had begun a month before, on July 3lst...no, July 22nd, when the warning first reached the police station. Apparently B had poured gasoline on himself at almost exactly the same moment Misora had arrived at the truth. It took a full minute before Misora burst into room 404. It would not have been at all surprising if he had died of smoke suffocation before she got there, or died before he reached the hospital, before the ambulance arrived. But he did not die.

He did not die. His body was stronger than he believed, and his life went on longer than he thought.

The hardest part of killing someone is to actually kill them—if he had been able to see his own life, I’m sure Beyond Birthday would have chosen a different method. My poor, poor predecessor. Not only was he utterly and completely defeated, but he survived, driving home his embarrassment...he must have longed for death. Accept my condolences, B.

And with that, there is nothing more to be said in these notes about the Los Angeles BB Murder Cases.

If I had space left over I had intended to carry right on into the other two stories I heard from L: the story of the detective war between the three greatest detectives, all solving that infamous bio-terror case, with guest appearances by the last of the alphabet, the first X to the first Z from Wammy’s House; and the story of how the world’s greatest inventor, Quillish Wammy, aka Watari, had first met L, then about eight years old—the case that gave birth to the century’s greatest detective, the Winchester Mad Bombings that occurred just after the third World War. But however objectively I look at things, I do not have the space or the time. Oh well. In that case, to close off the file, I will wrap things up with a small description of something that happened to Naomi Misora a few days later.

With all that had happened, Misora’s return to work was put off until September. Capturing Beyond Birthday had proved to be far better for her than she had ever expected, and nobody uttered a word about her acting independently during her leave of absence. While she was not popular at work, nobody denied that she was good at her job—at least, not outwardly. It was not hard to imagine that L had pulled a few strings on her behalf. From an even more practical standpoint, it was also not difficult to imagine who was the real source of the money deposited in Misora’s bank account by a company she’d never heard of before.

On September 1st, she left her house on foot, headed for the nearest subway station. When she reached her office, her superior would return her badge, her gun, and her handcuffs. The thought was a little embarrassing, and she felt a few butterflies in her stomach, but when it was over she would be back to her old life.

She had spoken to L only once after the killer was arrested. He thanked her for helping to solve the case, and told her just a little about the background of the case. That B had been a candidate to succeed L, and that the pressure of that had driven him off track. At last she felt that she could understand Ryuzaki’s previously incomprehensible actions, but she also felt like she only imagined that she could.

It all boiled down to the entire case being a challenge for L and he had killed people, and tried to kill himself, for that alone... but while murders could be dismissed as simple madness, committing suicide for such a stupid reason could not. Before he became like that, if only someone had stopped him... but that just shows ho intent he was on his purpose. His own life was as meaningless as the lives of his victims, nothing but a tool in Beyond Birthday’s quest t surpass L. It mattered more to him than his own life. Perhaps he was less intent than desperate. Nobody could have stopped him.

That was his resolve.

Which made him... so very strong.

Had he really been strong?

Misora wondered, remembering how he had nervously chewed his thumbnail.

Strength.

Strength Misora could never hope to imitate...

The station entrance had just come into view, and standing in front of it was an awkward, uncomfortable-looking man.

A young man, with an intense expression.

There were lines under his eyes so dark she wondered if they were actually done with makeup. Like he hadn’t slept in days—or like he had never slept in his life. Like his sense of justice would not allow him time to sleep, since he had so many difficult cases to think about, battling unfathomable pressure on a daily basis.

He wore a long-sleeved white shirt and blue jeans.

His bare feet were crammed directly into beaten sneakers. She had a strange sense of déjà vu.

Like she’d seen him or met him once before.

There was something about him that reminded her of Rue Ryuzaki—of Beyond Birthday. But the resemblance was backward, like this was the original, and the other had been a copy.

“Um, have we...?” she asked, even though he was hardly blocking the entrance bodily, and she could have simply ignored him and walked on inside.

The young man instantly leapt at her.

Leapt at her? No, that’s not right. He actually tried to throw his arms around her.

“Huh?! No!”

Misora instantly bent backward, brushing off the man’s embrace, and moved smoothly on to the offensive. She lowered her upper body backward, spinning once in the air and raising her back legs like a scorpion, slamming both heels down onto the man’s shoulders. Both blows hit hard, and the impact knocked him off balance.

With a thunderous crash, he tumbled down the subway stairs.

Whoops. A little overboard.

Certainly, he had assaulted her, but Misora quickly righted her- self and ran down after him. “Are you okay?” she asked.

He was lying on his stomach like a crushed frog.

“I see,” he muttered, seemingly talking to himself. “Watching videos and seeing it for real is quite different, but now I think I understand.”

“Hunh?”

What was he talking about? Had he hit his head on something? Her first day back at work, and already in trouble...

“Um... can you stand?” Misora said, reaching out toward him. The man looked up at her, his eyes in shadow, as if two holes were staring at her.

“Thank you,” he said, and took her hand. Misora pulled him upright.

“Are you injured? Does it hurt anywhere?”

“I’m fine, thank you,” the man said, not letting go of her hand. Even on his feet, he did not attempt to move away. They appeared to be shaking hands. Like warriors on a battlefield, exchanging a firm handshake after surviving yet another bloody fight.

“You are very kind,” he said, with something like a smile, and at last let go of her hand. Then he tottered away as if nothing at all had happened, slowly climbing the stairs again.

“Ah. . .w-wait! Just a second!”

Misora had almost let him go, but a moment later she ran after him, circling around in front of him again. She was an FBI agent and could not let an assault crime go unpunished. The young man was sucking his thumb. He did not appear to be at all nervous.

“If you aren’t hurt, then you’ll have to come with me. Sexual assault is a serious crime. You can’t go around throwing your arms around women. What were you thinking?”

“Don’t just stand there. Say something. This attitude won’t make things easier for you. What’s your name?”

Naomi Misora had asked his name.

The young man nodded.

And answered.

“Please call me Ryuzaki,” he said, unperturbed.

Just like someone else had.

And a few years after his arrest, on January 21, 2004, serving a life sentence in a California prison, Beyond Birthday died of a mysterious heart attack.

Afterword

Totally irrelevant to you who don't give a damn. but I am very bad Tat remembering people's names, and no matter how many times I hear them I can easily forget. When you reach my level, using a roundabout expression like "bad at remembering names" is far less accurate than declaring aggressively that you are good at forgetting them. Additionally. I am very good at losing track of things. The pen I was using just a moment before. the shoes I was wearing just a minute ago, even the book I was reading a second ago just vanish into thin air. But this is just a matter of losing track of them, not actually losing them. and I can always find them again soon enough (in other words, I am just as good at finding things as I am at loing track of them), but unlike things, people's names. once forgotten. are not soon remembered. They say that all memories remain inside the brain even after you have forgotten them, but I am sure that is an outright lie. At the least. forgotten names have been completely erased. What do I do when I've forgotten a name? Nothing much. Frankly, when talking with an actual person, there aren't that many opportunities to address someone by name. Unlike in fiction, it is perfectly normal to hold a conversation with someone whose name you do not know, which can be said for occupations and labels as well as names. Whoever this guy is I have absolutely no idea, but it seems like we have apparently met several times before and he obviously knows me—l have had any number of conversations like that. and they usually go pretty smoothly. "Oh, but maybe he only half-remembers me and is just making conversation without really being sure who l am,” l wonder, and the conversation ends. That said, l once did this with someone l had honestly never met before, which depressed me. "He must have thought I was such a nice guy! So wrong! l'm really painfully shy! Antisocial!" But it was too late. Why am I talking about this? Because I don't need a Death Note, but I wouldn’t mind having the eyes of the shinigami.

This book is a spin-oFf of the massively successful Death Note man- ga by Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata. I wondered what a spin- of? novel would be like, and now I know. I am completely honored to have worked on something by people who have both dramatcally enriched my life. Personally I found this job to be extremely stimu- lating and very worthwhile. When I first started working on it the projected subtitle was Mad About L, but the tone of the piece was more serious than I had imagined. Instead, it became Death Note: Another Note: The Los Angeles BB Murder Cases. 

I wish you all sun, sea, and books. 

NISIOISIN