After that, Mello owned Wammy's House.
When he swaggered through the hallways, the other students stopped to stare. They whispered to each other in hushed voices. "Mello is invincible." "Mello rose from the dead." Their faces were full of awe and reverence, tinged with fear. Matt had always looked at him that way, but now everyone was looking at him that way. Some couldn't meet his gaze, others couldn't look away. He knew they had all seen the truth in that moment when he stood up, rosary in hand, and faced them. They had seen the power of God, the power he possessed that none of them could touch. His only injuries on that day had been a few scrapes and bruises from the broken window and the bush, and a cut on the palm of his hand from gripping his rosary too tightly.
No one got in his way. When he wanted something, his classmates tripped over themselves to get it for him. They competed with one another to curry favor. If he spoke harshly or glared, they cringed in fear. Once, he made Temper cry just by staring her down.
Even the teachers and staff showed deference to him now. Roger actively avoided him. Mello's word was the final one on everything in the House.
Near returned from the hospital after five days. His right arm was in a sling and his head was still bandaged. Mello turned up his nose and ignored him. It would serve no purpose to beat him up a second time, since it would be so laughably easy. The point had been made—he could kill Near in minutes if he wanted to. What he needed to do next was beat him on purely intellectual grounds, according to the rules that L had laid out for them. Only then would he see his enemy fully defeated and humiliated.
With the fight against Near effectively stalemated, Mello's attention turned inexorably to Jury. Suddenly he couldn't remember why it had seemed so important to invent an elaborate revenge against him. Brute force methods would get the job done just find.
That dithering and delaying had come from the old Mello, the weak Mello. Now he didn't hesitate. He tipped Jury's meal trays onto him at lunch, shoved him in the hallways, threw things at him during class. He flooded his bedroom by lighting a match under the sprinkler, set a pile of his schoolwork on fire on the front lawn, had Matt hack his computer and corrupt his files. He contrived to get himself on the opposite team of Jury whenever sports were being played, and started "accidentally" injuring him during the games. He gave him a bloody nose once with a particularly well-aimed kick of the soccer ball.
And, of course, he beat Jury up whenever he could catch him alone. Jury tried to keep himself surrounded by people at all times, but Mello nipped that trend in the bud by threatening some of the kids who hung around him. Kentin and Linda both abandoned their friend with an alacrity that Mello found quite satisfying. One warning was all it took before they were quaking in their boots, afraid to make eye contact or draw his attention in any way. They well knew that they had earned his enmity right alongside Jury on that day, and that they were damned lucky to be escaping punishment. He gave them the opportunity to run trivial errands for him to stay in his good graces, and they leapt at the chance. On several occasions he caught Jury giving one or both of them dirty looks, and he also saw the way they averted their eyes in shame.
It didn't take long before Jury was quite without allies. He started to fray at the seams, looking over his shoulder fearfully and bursting into public tears at the drop of a hat. Mello was thrilled. With him totally cowed, his conquest of the House was virtually complete.
Their battle came to a head during a class change one afternoon. Mello happened to walk by Jury chatting with Daniel at the top of the stairs. Jury was facing away from him, completely oblivious. The opportunity was just too perfect.
Jury screamed like a girl as he tumbled down the stone steps. He came to rest at the bottom in a twisted pile of limbs, whimpering pathetically. Students dashed towards him to help, but stopped short in fear when they saw Mello staring them down from the top of the stairs.
No one moved another inch. They just left Jury there, sobbing and weakly begging for help.
Mrs. Westbrook shattered the tableau by shoving her way through the crowd to Jury's side. "What's going on here? What happened?"
"I guess he tripped and fell," answered Mello with a cold, malicious smile.
Mrs. Westbrook looked at him as she helped Jury sit up, disbelief written all over her features. She turned to Jury. "Did you fall?"
It was very quiet. Mello could just make out the older boy's faint words. "I…tripped."
Mrs. Westbrook turned her attention to the surrounding students. "Did he really fall?" she demanded incredulously.
There were fifteen witnesses. Every single one of them nodded mutely.
Jury had a broken leg. He was at the hospital for three days. When he came back, he had made the decision to graduate early. He left Wammy's House a week later.
It was a complete victory. It should have left Mello overjoyed. But his triumph was marred by Near, no matter how much he tried not to let that happen. Near was just as indifferent to him as he had always been. He just played with his toys, looking anywhere that Mello wasn't. It seemed like their rooftop battle hadn't even made an impression on him. The only way Mello could get any reaction at all out of him was to get right up in his face and start screaming; then Near would huddle in on himself fearfully. But he still corrected Mello publicly, still called him a loser and a fool, still accused him of being irrational in front of other students and staff. It was infuriating. Near didn't seem to understand that he had already lost.
To Mello's dismay, neither did a lot of their peers. They toed the line when he was present, but they would start praising Near the moment his back was turned. They still thought that it mattered that Near could beat him by a point or two on exams. They were too stupid to understand what that leap from the roof had been all about.
It was enough to make him scream in frustration. He had won, he had won, he knew without a doubt that he was better than Near! But it was starting to seem like the rest of the world might never figure that out. And just knowing it in his mind wasn't enough; he needed everyone to know. It felt like the prize was receding farther and farther away from him, picking up speed twice as fast as he could. Sometimes he despaired that there would ever be a time when he was acknowledged by all as Near's superior.