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They are one and three years old, when they arrive. It feels like they were born there, like they sprouted up from the ground and were plucked away, soil clinging to their skin. He feels, knows, that they are twins.
He, older and therefore wiser in every aspect, is given a great responsibility. One day, while the other children are playing outside, Wammy leads him into a room. A room with a crib. Child, the old man grasps his shoulder, would you like to watch over the babe?
And he replies, with all his knowledge, he's a whole year old, he isn't an infant anymore. And Wammy laughs; his eyes squint and his cheeks turn rosy, and the grip on his shoulder tightens for a fraction of a second. The boy doesn't get what's so funny.
The 'babe' is lucky. He has a name.
--
The older lugs around tiny, skinny Lawliet everywhere he goes. He teaches him things, like how to steal candy from the topmost cupboard, climbing on rickety chairs with books haphazardly stacked on top, and he feels great delight at seeing Lawliet fall. L is for loser, after all, and the younger cries and cries.
Of course, Lawliet is lucky. He walks the incident off, not a single broken limb, his bones are too pliable and young. Cartilage.
--
They both show an aptitude for, well, everything. Lawliet, L, does everything the house throws at him with efficiency. He is an unfeeling machine; he solves math equations well beyond his years while reading case files on mangled women and disfigured men. The boy who watches him is all appetite. He slurps on strawberry jam and pretends it's blood, picks apart squirrels and sees how their hearts stop ticking. They are six and eight years old.
Wammy sees something in L. He doesn't look so warmly at the older boy anymore.
Lawliet gives him a name, of sorts. B. For second best. Second place, he doesn't say.
--
B whispers through the door, L, let me in. He sticks his ear against the wood, waiting for the telltale rustle of fabric and bare feet padding across the floor.
The door between them opens, and B slinks past him. Wide eyes turn to B, and he thinks of squashing L like a bug. He already is a bug, B thinks, with those terrible eyes. He imagines the kid's scrawny arms splitting into even scrawnier legs, which would squirm around and crawl up the wall.
Was there something you needed, L whispers back, unnerved by the way B stared at him. The way B always looks at him.
The two stand in the middle of the room, with the same slouch. L closes the door.
--
B feels ugly. His hair is curly and light, the strands bounce with every step he takes. His eyes are bright and frenzied despite the dark circles beneath them. He's nimble, sure, but he's not as lithe as he should be.
He looks in the mirror, index finger in his mouth, but no matter how much he gnaws at his nail and chokes on his blood it doesn't look just right.
He doesn't look like L at all.
--
Hither, hither, L's voice whispered in his ear. And he snatches it, clasped between palm against palm. He swallows it whole, and it goes down his throat, past his lungs, into the hole in his chest.
When he opens his mouth, L's voice comes off of his tongue.
When he speaks, it's with the same drawl, the right cadence, the exact boredom he hears from his mirror.
--
Index finger and thumb. B uses those to pick up his pencil, other fingers splayed out in the air. He sits hunched over with his knees pressed to his chest.
Even without looking, he knows. Everything is just right.
--
Wammy's been staring at him all day. You two look like twins, he comments, oddly grave-sounding.
B grins, squints his eyes back at Wammy, and says we are. The bathroom door is closed behind him, hiding splatters of black dye and chunks of hair strewn over the sink.
The old man gives him a long, hard look. You sound like each other, now, too.
And B beams.
--
Wammy, in a flurry of suitcases and haphazard goodbyes, takes L and leaves the next morning.
They are thirteen and fifteen years old when B loses his mirror twin.