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The words had been imprinted on L’s wrist since before he could remember.
I am Kira.
Much like the majority of the human population, he’d been born with a saying tattooed on his arm, representing, so he’d been told, the last words his soulmate would ever say to him… if one was to believe in such a thing. While L didn’t doubt the power of the human soul, with over 7 billion people in the world, only having one person who was perfectly compatible for you seemed unlikely. The odds of meeting this one ‘special’ person were even lower, much less than one percent.
But you couldn’t bring logic into these things. Like it or not, he, like most other people, had the words on his wrist, but unlike the gushy romantics who kept their quote on display and surrounded it with little tattooed flowers and hearts, L preferred to keep his hidden under long sleeved shirts. Besides, he’d decided that the quote itself was negligible. It seemed to be referring to someone introducing themselves to him, providing their name and then presumably leaving forever, which wouldn’t be a huge disappointment. After all, love and romance, even sex, all seemed to be very stressful and unnecessary affairs.
Perhaps he would be more worried about his quote if it was more dramatic. Watch out for that car! for example. Or Thus with a kiss, I die, as he’d read about when he’d first consumed Shakespeare after he got to Wammy’s. Quotes of that nature implied suspense and intrigue, a sense of danger, dying on a case perhaps. Implying bodily harm to himself or his lover.
On the other hand, Mello was always yelling about how much he hated his quote for its mundanity. I’ll be back for dinner, honey. Although L thought that the entire notion of soulmates was absurd, it did strike him as being rather funny when Near would tease Mello by calling him ‘honey’, causing Mello to loudly proclaim that was the dumbest name he could ever think of and “Screw you, Near, shut up!”. Near, by lucky chance, had been born with blank wrists, and he was constantly the envy of Mello and, secretly, L. In terms of his private and professional life, L kept his quote under wraps so that no one was sure if he had a one or not. Watari was the only person who even knew that L had a sentence on his wrist, and thankfully he kept that information secret. L didn’t want the information to be used to exploit him in some way, and he could do without Mello and Near teasing him relentlessly about who Kira might be.
It would be so much better to go through life without all of the fuss and drama that having a quote entailed, and L couldn’t wait until he heard his line and was done with it all. Maybe he and this Kira could just pass one another like ships in the night, meeting and both deigning to continue their separate ways. That seemed like that kind of person who would be his soulmate, after all. Someone equally reserved and individualistic. Perhaps their quote read, And I’m Ryuzaki or Pleased to meet you, I’m Eraldo Coil. L did go by many names after all. A simple introduction, and that would be the end of it.
Tugging absentmindedly on his sleeve, L settled down in front of his computer to check the news, just to see if anything piqued his interest. He was in the middle of a dry spot between cases and he had time to kill. Then again... there was that case that had first broken a few days ago surrounding the suspicious string of heart attacks inflicting criminals in prison. The police hadn’t made a move yet, but there was less than a twenty percent chance of all those deaths being accidental, and the odds decreased with every new death reported. L opened a new browser to check up on the reports, stopping, frozen, as a flashing headline assaulted his eyes.
Deaths of Criminals Now Suspicious: Civilians Calling Kira Their Savior
...
Kira.
Already knowing what he would find, L slid up his shirt to expose his pale wrist, the words seeming to glow with a deadly hue.
I am Kira.
“Oh, shit.”