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The Yagami family is picture perfect. Two loving parents, two wonderful kids. So perfect that their house is littered with photos of them, even in the bathroom. As L pees, he observes a framed portrait of the four of them at Disney world, Light and Sayu sporting Mickey and Minnie mouse ears respectively.
Outside, he can hear them chattering. Sayu is still away at school, so it's just Light and his parents. Though all of them speak fluent English, they prefer Japanese among themselves. Even when speaking with L, they somehow end up swapping back, leaving him in the awkward position of reminding them that he doesn't understand.
Light has told him that really, his Japanese isn't all that great, he speaks like a child. He's much more comfortable in English. But to L, whose vocabulary caps out at konnichiwa and arigatou gozaimasu, Light might as well be the poet laureate of Japan.
And really, it's L's fault for not learning by now. He should be able to pick it up easily; it's not as though he has no experiences with languages. He learned French in high school, and when he realized Spanish would be more useful, he taught himself from podcasts and YouTube. He even took a semester of Russian freshman year, for a fun challenge, so it's not like he isn't familiar with writing systems besides the Latin alphabet.
And yet. Something has stopped him from facing Japanese.
He isn't lacking in exposure. Light often calls his parents with L nearby, so he's gotten used to the sounds of the language. Maybe he's been hoping that just hearing this, over and over, will be enough to unlock the puzzle in his mind. But of course he knows it's not that simple.
There are resources online, of course. Duolingo and the like. A thriving Reddit community, although largely populated by teenagers who call themselves Kylie-chan and punctuate their sentences with desu. He does not, at all costs, want to become a Kylie-chan.
He flushes the toilet and begins washing his hands. The soap is Softsoap milk and honey flavor, just the same as what Light uses in his apartment.
He can hear Light speaking outside. They're talking about him, now, though he has no idea what they're saying. Light always uses the English pronunciation of his name, even in the middle of a Japanese sentence. Elle, like the French pronoun, a sound that normally doesn't exist in Japanese. It makes it easy to pick out.
His mother — she'd insisted he call her Sachiko, but that level of familiarity felt wrong — responds. She pronounces his name Eru. He doesn't know what she's saying about him.
Their towel is pink, fluffy, and soft. He dries his hands and gazes into his own eyes. Pitch dark eyes, even darker than Light's, with dark circles underneath that stand out against his pale skin. Like a panda. Below is his nose, large and pointed, almost a beak, and under that his angular chin. He closes one eye and then switches to the other. How much of him is Elle? How much of him is Eru?
He casts one last look at the Disney World portrait and steps out of the bathroom. Light nods at him and switches back to English. "Are you ready to eat? Mom just finished cooking!"
He follows Light to the table, past the school portraits of the kids on the walls. He sits down across from him, and notes that above his partner's head is a picture of his parents at their wedding. Both of them are smiling.
Mr. Yagami has just finished setting the table. Mrs. Yagami brings out noodles, and meat, and rice, and if L was a better son-in-law, a better son, he would know the names of all the dishes. They sit down, father beside L and mother beside Light.
"Itadakimasu."