"Mello-Kun?" The young girl smiled up at her 'Nii-San'- at least, that was what she called him.

"Hm?" He had barely heard her. His azure eyes scanned the room for something unknown. Silence settled upon them as he did so, her own brown orbs appraising him with open admiration.

Many other young boys watched with jealousy in their eyes. She may not have been the most attractive girl in the world, but she was decently good-looking.

The only male with no expression on his face was the small white-haired one; Near. Slim fingers placed numerous blank puzzle pieces together as he kept his sterling eyes to the ground.

Fierce blue and squinting, he eyes of his enemy locked on their target; a boy with auburn hair and a portable gaming system clutched in a firm grasp. Hunched over to the point of looking like his back was made of rubber, a Eight-Year-Old Mail Jeevas was the spitting image of his older self- with the absence of his precious orange goggles and no cigarette dangling from his lips the only marking that time had on him.

"Can I talk with you and Matt-Kun?" A seven year old Emiko Hinoushi smiled slightly, but her idol merely nodded no.

"It's private."

The smile dropped off her face with lightning speed.

She may not have been the one to inherit L's title, but she wasn't dumb enough not to know that her two best friends would be leaving her.

One of them, the boy she had fallen in love with.

If there was anything the recent years had taught the now eighteen-year-old Emi, it was to always sleep with a gun under your pillow.

Once more being woken in the night by an intruder in her small apartment stationed in the Slums of Japan, the brunette female tossed her beloved pistol on the counter of her kitchen and started her tea brewer.

She had never been much of a coffee person.

Honey and lemon was next on her list. Stumbling sleepily to the cabinet she kept her spices in, he pulled on the crude handle, letting it swing open on its one hinge- the others had been absent long before she moved in.

Pale, bony fingers sifted though multiple items- things that looked light they hadn't seen the outside of the small containment are since the early eighteen hundreds, things with labels in different languages, and an assortment of spices that looked like drugs.

Hand falling into something sticky, she grasped the bear-shaped container of honey and pulled, knocking other things out of the way in the process. Clattering filled the room as she placed the messy container on the counter and mused on how the honey always seemed to be in the back of the cabinet- even though it was the most-used food item in the apartment.

Lemon from the crude fruit bowl and a knife to cut it with were obtained with much more ease, and her morning cup of tea was ready in a little under seven minutes.

This late in the game, it's the hot drink that remains the only constant in her life.

It's sweet and normal- the polar opposite of her life.

Nothing good comes from trusting those who betray for a living.