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In the years since the Kira case, with Near at the helm, L and Watari buried in the plot beside the west wing, what was once called Wammy’s House changes.
It takes seven years to fully dismantle the program. The youngest children need to find foster homes or new families or other, carefully vetted, well-funded programs to matriculate into. The older children are graduated and placed in the best universities around the world—set to become the everyday successes of tomorrow. Tsinghua, Juilliard, Cairo, LSE, Tohoku, ETH Zurich. The residual funds are allocated appropriately to make sure that everyone is well taken care of. Study funds and stipends, merit grants and insurance.
Personally, Near sees to the edge cases. Kids who, according to the headmasters and the instructors, never lived up to the promise of their aptitude testing—the weak, the attention deficit, the headcases. He speaks to each one— Do you want to live alone? Do you want to learn a skill and work? Do you want to go back to where they found you? What are your medical needs?
It’s dispassionate work that he takes on in his limited spare time. The dismantling of the program was not necessarily his idea, but he saw it to the end.
By 2024, L Lawliet has been dead for almost two decades. Enough time for a child to grow and have a child of their own. Near has no children—will never and can never—and finds this fact amusing.
At exactly 13:23 GMT on 21 October 2024, Near celebrates a homecoming of sorts.
—
The grounds have been left to wither. The estate is unsellable—or, nobody wants to bother selling it to a London financier’s portfolio. After all, it was a school, a Boarding House. Renovations would be required.
When Near is driven into town and left there— “I’ll get there from here, thank you,”—he overhears, in a quiet cafe, that the children think the mansion on the hill is haunted. “Halloween” is an American holiday that is not celebrated in England. The evening is foggy and limpid. The sky threatens an afternoon rain.
He arrives at the wrought iron gates at 15:13. He knows there is nothing for him here. But he’s already been given this time to pay his respects. A holiday of sorts. Never in the past twenty years has he kneeled before graves. He expects he won’t today, either. There is nobody here to pay respects to. Mello is buried in an unmarked plot in a quiet district of Tokyo. The stake on the eastern edge of the property in Winchester— In Memoriam, Mihael Keehl —is growing moss, stuck in empty earth. Near stops by this landmark, first. Many colleagues and coworkers, commanding officers and cadets, have died since Mello. Near has not kept track of many of their names.
Mello’s memorial has not been cared for. They stopped sending groundskeepers to the property in 2019. Near carries a book in one hand, his plastic cane in the other. He stares at the spike, leans on the arm brace, and considers paying his respects. This isn’t what he came here to do. Mihael Keehl—no, Mello —has been dead for more than a decade. In that time, Near has solved more than five hundred cases. A-Kira. The Hong Kong murders. The Dubai trafficking ring. A few stray Death Notes.
In the years elapsed, the loss has simmered. Like soup, which Near has seen others make (his current partner, a junior professor from Leeds, is fond of cutting the mirepoix into centimeter by centimeter cubes), the thought of Mello is turbid. It wafts around him constantly. However, there is no room for the what if. There is only the course the universe bent, that day.
Near, in his own way, has paid his respects. Said his thank yous, if he owes the thanks. He bows, as far as he can manage, to the spiritless grave. In Tokyo, Mello’s bones are rusting in the temperate soil. Were he buried here, at near fifty latitude, he may still have his skin, in death. But this is unimportant. He would not wish to be buried here.
Near bows, and says two prayers for the dead. He knows a Latin version as well as a Hebrew. To this day, he does not know if Mello died religious—died believing in any gods beyond those he had met and been scorned by. Near has been told not to pass judgment on the irrationality of faith, so he has learned the hymns. The grass grows tall around Mello’s stake.
One year, Near had gotten angry about it. Back when he was twenty one or twenty two—inconsequential—and having been kept awake on guileless tasks and insomnia for forty hours, Near had raged at a silent room over it, and never again. And the anger was not for the death, nor about his inheritance, his duty. Not Mello’s mistakes nor his sacrifice. Likely, looking back with the hindsight and wisdom of a man ten years older, Near images he had experienced as much grief as he was capable of, that night. There was no grave to stand over, and there was no body, in the small room in Cape Canaveral. No surviving images of him. No letters. It was triggered by a smell (something sweet burning), of all things. And had subsided with the yellow dawn.
The frustration was likely at being left alone. Of his own inefficacy in his first trial, and the acknowledgement that a man like Mello had deserved to live to see more days.
Next, Near walks slowly towards the house itself. A jackrabbit sprints across the lawn in front of him. A hawk circles to the north.
—
The previous L and the previous Watari are laid to rest on the other side of the property. Near takes several breaks in the grass before he reaches the place. There are four headstones in the shade of pine trees. A, L, and Watari are stranded where they made their own graves—where graves were dug for them by men from the town.
Near has heard the story of A. The first successor, and the first to break under that burden. It is a history long past, by now. What he knows is Aslan died in pain and would have wanted to be buried on the Mediterranean Sea where their parents had been buried. But A were put to rest beneath the pines in the cold earth of Winchester. This is what happens when you die—taking your own life is your final choice. He touches the cold stone.
It’s over. There will be no successors after me. The world doesn’t need L, anymore. No matter how many times Near has said this—to his current team, to his previous team, to Watari (Roger), it has been a platitude. Standing in front of Aslan, he believes it. Surprises himself in his belief.
There will be no more after me.
Quillish Wammy is buried under a four meter obelisk. It is dark black, made of a marble that cost £50,000. Near hopes he rots, even here, in the cold, damp, dark country. It’s a rare spite, Near clings to. Idle, uncaring, but felt, especially as he scans up and down the monument. What a beautiful thing. Compensating, no doubt, for the course of his life. He died, perheps, believing he had succeeded.
Near does not remember piecing the Kira case back together. This is another thing he’s filed away, hid the key. Thousands are dying while you retrace your predecessor’s steps. Thousands are dying. Thousands are dead. You have nothing.
But that was not Wammy’s first mistake. In the course of them, hardly the worst. It was a good idea, from those eyes. But many good ideas from that inventor’s mind laid ruin to people, places, and things. A petrochemical engineer fond of orphans.
L has a simple headstone. Near is unsure if it was his choice. It has his full name. The date of birth and of death
31 October 1979 - 5 November 2004.
The year Near reached his 26th—the year L had not reached before dying—he did not celebrate. His predecessor's life was far in the past, by then. Near didn’t think about what it meant, to turn 26. The realization of who he’d outlived came days after. Idly. That L had been considerably young, compared to the typical man, to die. He died young and left a large name, one letter. He honed a skill in less than two decades, created the shape of a man that others were made to fill, and died unceremoniously before 27.
Roger, his cirrhosis and his pacemaker, is the only man alive to call him “Near.” And only sometimes. All others have other names. There is Nate. There is usually L. So subsuming is the identity that even years before his 26th, it was no longer “the first L” and “the successor.” Only—I am L.
Nobody has visited the graves over the years.
None leave him so hollow, so wanting, devoid of anger and trying, honestly, very hard, to imagine rage.