L had earned a certain degree of hostility from other detectives, and the jealous ones called him a hermit detective, or a computer detective, but neither one of these is a particularly accurate representation of the truth. Naomi Misora had also tended to think of L as an armchair detective, but in fact, L was quite the opposite, a very active, aggressive individual. While he had absolutely no interest in social conventions, he was certainly not the kind of detective to shut himself up in a dark room with the shades drawn and refuse to come out. It is now common knowledge that the three great post war detectives, L, Eraldo Coil and Danueve were all actually the same person. Certainly, anyone reading these notes is almost certain to know... though they may not know that L engaged in a war with the real Eraldo Coil, and the real Danueve, and emerged victorious, (Claiming their detective codes. The details of this detective war I will save for another occasion, but in addition to those three names, L possessed many other detective codes. I have no idea how many, but there were at least three digits’ worth. And quite a number of those were fairly public detectives—just like, as anyone reading these notes must know, he appeared before Kira, calling himself Ryuzaki or Ryuga Hideki.) Of course, Naomi Misora had no way of knowing his, but in my opinion, the name L was, for him, just one of many. He never
had any direct connection to that identity. He never thought of himself as L, it was just the most famous and most powerful of the many detective codes that he used during his life. The name had is uses, but lacked obscurity. L had a real name that nobody knew, and nobody will ever know, but a name which only he knew never defined him. I sometimes wonder if L himself ever knew exactly which name was written in the Death Note, which name it was that killed him.
I wonder.
But back to the Los Angeles BB Murder Cases.
“Ryuzaki…“ Naomi Misora said, looking over the black business card be had handed her without bothering to hide her suspicious. “Rue Ryuzaki, right?”
“Yes. Rue Ryuzaki,” the man said, in the same unruffled tone. His wide eyes stared at her through the dark circles around them, and he nibbled at his thumbnail.
They had moved out of the bedroom into the living room of Believe Bridesmaid’s house. They were sitting opposite each other on expensive sofas. Ryuzaki was seated with his knees up and his arms wrapped around them. Misora thought this looked a little childish, but since Ryuzaki was obviously not a child, it seemed a little creepy. The fact that she failed to comment on it at all was because she was much too grown up. To escape the awkward silence, Misora looked down at the card again—Rue Ryuzaki: Detective.
“According to this, you’re a detective?” “Yes, I am,”
“You mean... a private detective?”
“No, that term would not be very accurate. I feel the word ‘private’ carries with it an excess of neurotic egotism... you might say that I am an unprivate detective—a detective without ego.”
“I see...”
In other words, he didn’t have a license.
If she’d had a pen, she would have written “idiot” on the card, but sadly, there were no writing implements within reach, so she settled for putting it down on the table as far from her as possible, as if it were unclean.
“So, Ryuzaki... let me ask again, what exactly were you doing down there?”
“Same as you. Investigating,” Ryuzaki said, without the slightest change in his expression. His black-rimmed eyes never blinked. Rather unsettling.
“I was hired by the parents of this house’s owner—by Mr. Bridesmaid’s parents, and am currently conducting an investigation into the killings. It seemed to me that you were here for much the same reason, Misora.”
By this point Misora no longer really cared who this Ryuzaki was—private detective or unprivate detective, she wanted nothing to do with him. The only problem was how much of her conversation he had heard from under the bed... which in a worst-case scenario could affect her future career. If any information about the mysterious L was made public because of her, she would have to do a great deal more than simply resign. She had casually broached the subject, and he had claimed that the bed muffled
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