Chapter Text
Mello knew something was wrong the second the plan became easy. Easy had never liked him.
Takada’s route had landed in his hands wrapped in the kind of luck Mello had learned to distrust. An “anonymous NPA leak,” delivered through two cutouts and one burner number, clean enough to pass, dirty enough to look real. It listed Kiyomi Takada’s departure time, her security formation, the gap in the convoy near the underpass, even the three-minute dead zone where the nearest traffic cameras would be rerouted for “maintenance.”
Perfect. Too perfect.
Across the room, Matt sat with one boot on the dashboard of his stolen car, smoke curling from his cigarette as he tapped at a handheld console. The glow of the screen reflected in his goggles.
“You’re staring at the paper like it insulted your mother,” Matt said.
Mello bit off another square of chocolate. “It’s being polite. That’s worse.”
Matt gave a thoughtful hum. “Paper with manners. Terrifying.”
They were hiding in a garage, under a closed pachinko parlour.
Mello had gone over the abduction plan six times. Takada’s car would leave NHN. Matt would act as a decoy, blocking the support vehicles. Mello would cut her off, force her into the truck, take her phone, strip her of every possible scrap of the Death Note.
It was reckless, ugly. It was theirs. That was the problem.
Mello flipped to the last page of the packet again. “Read this.”
Matt didn’t look up. “I already did.”
“Read it again.”
Matt sighed dramatically and lowered the console. “Fine. Possible external interference: one male, early twenties, red hair, goggles, smoker, western import vehicle, probable auxiliary to Subject M. Rude. They didn’t even say handsome.”
Mello’s eyes narrowed.
Matt blinked. Then, slowly, he took his boot off the dashboard. “Wait.”
Mello slapped the page against the hood of the car. “The tip is supposed to be about Takada’s security. Not us.”
Matt leaned over the page. The cigarette hung forgotten between his fingers.
The line was small, almost administrative. A note in the corner, probably copied from a larger briefing. Auxiliary vehicle likely to enter from east lane. Red. Temporary plate: 48-79.
For three seconds, neither of them moved.
Then Matt whispered, “I changed that plate forty minutes ago.”
“In this garage,” Mello said.
“Underground.”
“With the signal jammer on.”
Matt looked toward the ceiling. Mello did too.
There was one camera in the alley outside, a broken municipal traffic camera they had deliberately parked under because Matt had looped its feed weeks ago.
Only one other group had ever gained access to that feed after Matt: the SPK.
Matt exhaled smoke through his nose. “Near.”
Mello’s mouth twisted in disgust around the name: “Near.”
He stared at the line until the whole plan unfolded backwards.
Near had not needed to kill them himself. He had only needed to place the right information in the right hands and let everyone else do the work.
The Takada route was real enough to tempt Mello, but altered enough to be deadly. Takada’s security would be warned of an abduction attempt without being told who had arranged the warning. They would see Matt’s car coming before Matt reached the underpass. They would have positions prepared, weapons ready, and permission to treat the decoy as an immediate threat.
Matt would be the first casualty.
Mello’s hand closed around the page.
After that, Mello would either succeed in taking Takada or die trying. If he took her, Kira would learn almost immediately, because Near would make certain the information reached the right channels. Light would not need to know Near had arranged anything. He would only need to know that Mello had exposed himself.
If Takada’s guards didn’t kill Mello, Kira would. If Kira failed, the police would come next. And if by some miracle Mello survived all of that, Near would still have the cleanest position on the board. He could claim Mello had acted recklessly, Matt had followed him into danger, and the disaster proved exactly why Near was the only one fit to inherit L’s name.
There would be no fingerprints, no confession, and no direct order. Only a route, a leak, and two dead rivals.
Matt read Mello’s face and went very still.
“He didn’t set a trap for Takada,” Matt said.
Mello’s voice came out flat. “No.”
“He set one for us.”
Mello looked down at the note again.
Temporary plate: 48-79.
Near had known, watched, waited for Mello to do exactly what everyone expected him to do: charge straight at the case, straight at Kira, straight at death.
This time, Matt would have gone with him.
Mello folded the page slowly. Near had miscalculated one thing: Mello had noticed before the engine started.
Mello crushed the chocolate wrapper in his fist. Matt stared at the page. For once, there was no joke ready.
“You know,” he said quietly, “I was really hoping I’d get killed by someone with better hair.”
Mello grabbed him by the collar and yanked him away from the car just as the garage door rattled. It didn’t open; just rattled. Someone outside was checking the lock.
Matt’s expression went flat. He dropped his cigarette, crushed it under his heel, and pulled a pistol from beneath the seat.
Mello was already moving. “Back exit.”
“There is no back exit.”
“There is now.”
Matt looked offended. “That wall is structural.”
Mello kicked over the coffee can near the workbench, grabbed the plastic container beneath it, and tossed it to him.
Matt caught it, read the label, and grinned. “Explosives?”
“Chocolate money.”
Matt stared.
Mello rolled his eyes. “The explosives are under the chocolate money.”
“Right. Of course. Normal place.”
The garage door clanked again. Outside, someone spoke into a radio.
Mello planted the charge against the rear brick wall while Matt slid into the driver’s seat and brought the engine to life.
“Matt,” Mello said.
“Yeah?”
“When this blows, drive.”
Matt’s grin flashed in the dark. “That was emotionally intimate for you.”
“Drive.”
The explosion punched a hole through the wall and set off every alarm in the building above them.
Matt drove. They burst into the alley behind the pachinko parlour in a shower of brick dust, sparks, and what appeared to be three decades of rat faeces. A black van screeched to a stop at the far end of the alley. Men poured out.
Matt spun the wheel. The car clipped a row of trash cans, launched one into the windshield of the van, and shot into traffic.
Behind them, Tokyo blurred into headlights and alarms. Mello braced himself against the dash, hair whipping across his face. “Takada?”
“Convoy still moving,” Matt said, one hand on the wheel and the other stabbing at a hacked phone mounted beside the radio. “Security formation changed. Two cars peeled off toward our original route.”
“Snipers?”
“Probably.”
“Near?”
Matt’s mouth tightened. “Smiling, I assume.”
Mello looked back through the rear window. Car lights swarmed behind them.
He had spent his life refusing to be second. To L. To Near. To fate. To God, if God had the bad taste to play favourites. But this was no longer a contest. Near had not beaten him. Near had tried to erase him.
Mello’s rage sharpened into something colder.
“Make him think it worked,” he said.
Matt’s fingers froze over the phone. “Sorry?”
“Takada’s security expects us on Route C. Kira expects an abduction attempt. Near expects bodies.” Mello sneered. “Give them bodies.”
Matt glanced over. “I’m going to need you to define that in a way that doesn’t involve my actual body.”
“Crash the car.”
“Absolutely not. I love this car.”
“It’s stolen.”
“That doesn’t mean our relationship isn’t real.”
“Crash it remotely.”
Matt relaxed. “Oh. Fine.”
They switched vehicles under a railway bridge three minutes later.
Matt mourned the car loudly while Mello dragged him into a laundry truck.
“You’re grieving a felony,” Mello snapped.
“She had personality.”
“She had bullet holes.”
“She was complicated.”
Matt’s fingers flew over the small laptop he had pulled from his coat. On the screen, the stolen car sped on without them, guided by a brick on the accelerator and a wire looped through the wheel.
Mello watched the GPS marker approach the underpass. Security vehicles closed in. The car vanished into the camera's dead zone. Then the screen flashed white.
Far away, the crash rolled beneath the city like thunder.
Matt winced. “Rest in power, darling.”
Mello rolled his eyes.
A news alert appeared six minutes later. Fiery crash. Possible suspects dead. Takada unharmed but moved to an undisclosed location. Police investigating.
Near would see it. Kira would see it. The world would see exactly what Near had wanted it to see.
Mello leaned back against a stack of towels and closed his eyes. For the first time in years, no one was looking at him. It felt almost like dying. It felt almost like freedom.
Then Matt said, “So, we’re ghosts now.”
Mello opened one eye. “Temporarily.”
“Cool. Where do ghosts go?”
“Somewhere without extradition.”
“Somewhere with Wi-Fi?”
“Matt.”
“And snacks. Ghosts need snacks.”
Mello glared at him and sighed exaggeratedly.
Twenty-four hours later, the newly deceased Mail Jeevas and Mihael Keehl boarded a cargo ship under the names Percival Mango and Clive Bananas.
Mello didn’t speak to Matt for the first six hours.
“This is cruel,” Matt said, lounging on a crate of canned pineapple. “Percival Mango is a dignified name.”
“You made me Clive Bananas.”
“It suits you.”
“I had a gun when you chose those names.”
“Yes, but I had the passports.”
Mello slowly unwrapped a chocolate bar.
Matt pointed at him. “That is not a healthy coping mechanism.”
“You named me Bananas.”
“A man named Clive Bananas should not eat that much chocolate. It confuses the brand.”
Mello threw a pineapple can at him. Matt ducked. The can hit a sailor.
That was how they were discovered, not as internationally wanted criminals, but as “the two idiots hiding behind the fruit shipment.”
Fortunately, the sailor accepted a bribe, two cigarettes, and Matt’s solemn promise that they were not pirates.
“Aren’t we pirates?” Matt asked later.
“No.”
“We’re on a ship under fake names with illegal money.”
“We are fugitives.”
“That’s pirate-adjacent.”
Mello rolled his eyes.
Three days later, they reached Saint Ludo, a tropical island so small it appeared on maps only when the cartographer was feeling generous.
Saint Ludo had white sand, blue water, palm trees, and a local population completely uninterested in international murder investigations as long as tourists paid in cash and did not insult the fish stew.
The island also had one internet café, one police officer, seven goats, and a hotel called The Sleepy Coconut, whose sign depicted a coconut wearing sunglasses.
Matt stopped in front of it, hands on his hips.
“I trust him,” he said.
“It’s a coconut.”
“Look at his confidence.”
They checked in as Percival Mango and Clive Bananas. The hotel owner, a woman named Sela, didn’t bat an eye.
“You boys are running from something?” she asked.
Mello’s hand moved very slightly toward his coat.
Sela slapped two keys on the counter. “Relax. Everyone who comes here is either running from something or selling terrible handmade jewellery. You don’t look artistic.”
Matt looked wounded. “I could make jewellery.”
“You look like you would make a necklace with batteries in it.”
“I feel seen.”
Their room had one bed, one hammock, and a lizard on the ceiling that Matt immediately named Roger.
Mello claimed the bed. Matt claimed the hammock. Roger claimed the mosquitoes.
The first night, Mello slept with a gun under his pillow and woke at every sound.
The second night, he woke because Matt had fallen out of the hammock.
The third night, he woke because Roger had fallen onto Matt. The screaming lasted eleven seconds. Mello timed it.
By the fourth day, the seriousness of their escape had begun to rot in the sun.
Matt bought a shirt with flamingos on it and insisted it was camouflage. Mello bought sunglasses and wore them exactly once before a child told him he looked like “an angry movie vampire”. Matt laughed so hard he walked into a palm tree.
They needed money, which became their first problem. Their emergency cash would last a while, but not forever. Matt suggested online fraud. Mello suggested underground gambling. Sela suggested they stop scaring customers and get jobs.
That was how the two most wanted dead men in the Kira investigation became temporary employees of The Sleepy Coconut.
Matt was put in charge of the front desk because he was “good with machines”. Within one afternoon, he had upgraded the hotel booking system, fixed the router, pirated three movies for Sela’s nephew, and accidentally listed the hotel as a luxury wellness retreat for divorced dentists. Bookings tripled.
Mello was assigned to the kitchen. This lasted nine minutes.
“You cannot threaten soup,” Sela told him.
“It was burning.”
“So you threatened it?”
“It listened.”
After that, Mello was moved to beach service, where his job was to hand tourists towels and not look like he was planning a coup. He failed.
A German tourist asked for extra sunscreen. Mello gave him one bottle and a stare so intense the man apologised for his ancestors.
Matt started a chalkboard behind the desk.
DAYS SINCE CLIVE BANANAS INTIMIDATED A GUEST: 0
Mello broke the chalk. Matt replaced it with a digital counter. Mello broke that too.
The fifth day brought the goats.
No one knew who owned them. The goats moved around the island like a criminal syndicate, silent and organised. One of them, a black-and-white menace with yellow eyes, took an immediate dislike to Mello.
The goat chewed the end of his coat.
Matt nodded gravely. “He’s trying to remove competition.”
Mello lunged. The goat dodged. Matt laughed. The goat stole his cigarette case. Matt stopped laughing.
“Okay,” he said, taking off his goggles. “This is war.”
By sunset, two geniuses raised by Wammy’s House had constructed an elaborate goat trap involving a laundry basket, mango slices, fishing line, and a fan.
They caught Sela’s nephew. The goat watched from the roof.
Mello stood in the courtyard, fists clenched, sand stuck to his boots, hair damp from the ocean air.
“I have beaten mafia bosses,” he said.
The goat bleated.
Matt, who was freeing the nephew from the basket, said, “He says citation needed.”
Mello glared at Matt, then at the goat. The goat glared back with unsettling confidence.
Matt looked between them, considered the resemblance, and said, “I’m naming him Near.”
“No,” Mello seethed.
Matt shrugged. “What? It’s probably the only chance Near has of being horny.”
He looked extremely pleased with himself. Mello stared at him for one long, silent second. Then he turned on his heel and walked away.
Matt called after him, “That was a good joke!”
The goat bleated.
“See?” Matt said. “Near agrees.”
That night, Mello sat on the beach alone.
The comedy of survival had limits. Eventually, the laughter drained away, leaving the dark underneath.
The moon silvered the water. Somewhere behind him, music played from the hotel bar. Matt was probably cheating tourists at cards or being cheated by Sela, who had the eyes of a woman who had never lost anything by accident.
Mello unwrapped a chocolate bar carefully. He thought of Near. Not the boy in white, stacking toys, nor the rival across the board, but the person who had decided Mello and Matt were acceptable losses.
Mello had understood sacrifice. He had demanded it of himself. He had thrown himself into fire because the case mattered more than his pride, more than his body, more than sleep or mercy or even a future.
But Matt… Matt had been sitting in that car because Mello had asked him to. Matt would have died because Near had counted on loyalty. That was what Mello could not forgive.
“You’re brooding loudly,” Matt said behind him.
Mello didn’t turn. “That doesn’t make sense.”
“You’re doing it anyway.”
Matt dropped beside him in the sand. He smelled of smoke, sunscreen, and hotel rum. For a while, neither of them spoke. Then Matt held out the stolen cigarette case.
“You got it back?”
“From Near the goat? Yeah.”
“How?”
Matt looked pleased. “Diplomacy.”
Mello looked at him.
“I traded your chocolate.”
Mello turned slowly.
Matt pointed toward the ocean. “Beautiful night, isn’t it?”
“I’m going to drown you.”
“You’d miss me.”
Mello looked away. That was the worst part. He would.
Matt’s voice softened. “We’re alive.”
Mello stared at the waves. “For now.”
“Yeah. That’s usually how alive works.”
“Near won.”
“No,” Matt said.
Mello glanced at him.
Matt leaned back on his hands. “Near thinks we’re dead. Kira thinks we’re dead. The police think we’re dead. A goat thinks we’re idiots, but that’s unrelated.”
Mello snorted.
Matt smiled faintly. “Near didn’t get rid of us. He lost track of us. Big difference.”
Mello considered that.
Above them, the palm leaves shifted in the warm wind.
“So what?” Mello asked. “We hide here forever? Serve towels? Fight livestock?”
“Not forever.” Matt pulled his goggles down over his eyes and grinned at the stars. “Just until Clive Bananas is ready for revenge.”
“Do not call me that.”
“Sorry. Mister Bananas.”
Mello shoved him into the sand. Matt came up laughing.
A week later, Percival Mango and Clive Bananas were banned from the island’s only karaoke night after Mello threatened the machine for skipping a verse and Matt hacked it to play the same bubblegum pop song nine times in a row whenever anyone selected a ballad.
Two days after that, they were hired to repair the police station computer and accidentally discovered the officer had been using the international wanted database to store recipes. Matt carefully moved the recipes into a folder labelled Definitely Not Fugitives. Mello made him change it.
Three days later, the goat called Near ate Clive Bananas’ passport. Matt said this was symbolism. Mello said this was dinner. Sela said that if anyone cooked the goat, they would be paying for it.
At the end of the second week, a postcard arrived at The Sleepy Coconut. No stamp, no return address. On the front was a picture of a white chess piece. On the back, one sentence. I know you are alive.
Mello read it once. Matt read it twice. The joke went out of Matt’s face.
Then Matt flipped the postcard over. Below the message, in smaller handwriting, someone had added: Your aliases are terrible.
Mello’s expression went volcanic. Matt covered his mouth. His shoulders shook.
“Matt.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You are not.”
“I’m really not.”
Matt folded over laughing so hard he nearly fell off the porch.
Mello seized the postcard, marched to the front desk, borrowed Sela’s pen, and wrote a reply on the back of a hotel cocktail menu.
Near,
You tried to kill us and still have the nerve to criticise our names. That is exactly why no one liked you at Wammy’s.
He paused, then added:
Also, I am not Clive Bananas.
Matt leaned over his shoulder. “You signed the hotel register as Clive Bananas.”
Mello drew the pen through the paper.
Matt gently took it from him and wrote beneath:
Dear Near,
Wish you were here. A goat has your eyes.
Love, Percival Mango.
Mello stared at the word love. Matt stared back innocently.
“You’re making us look unserious.”
“We’re legally dead on a tropical island under fruit names. That ship has sailed.”
Mello looked toward the beach, where Near the goat stood triumphantly on a deck chair, chewing what appeared to be someone’s hat. For the first time in a long time, Mello laughed.
It startled him. It startled Matt too. It came out rough and incredulous, like something dragged from the bottom of his lungs. Matt’s grin softened.
Mello folded the cocktail menu.
“Fine,” he said. “Send it.”
“To Near?”
“To Near.”
Matt raised an eyebrow. “That’s a terrible idea.”
“Yes.”
“Dangerous.”
“Yes.”
“Petty.”
Mello smiled. Matt smiled back.
“Good,” Matt said.
That evening, as the sun dropped into the sea, two dead men walked barefoot along the shore, plotting revenge between arguments about whether the goat was a spy. Behind them, The Sleepy Coconut glowed with multicoloured light garlands.
Ahead of them, the world waited. Near had wanted them gone. Instead, he had given them the one thing neither of them had ever known how to take: a pause. And a chance to become impossible to predict.
And somewhere far away, in a clean white room full of toys and quiet calculations, Near received a cocktail menu with a cartoon coconut on it and understood, perhaps for the first time, that the board had changed.
At the bottom, beneath Matt’s message, Mello had added one final line.
Your move.