Wammy's House is not what you would call a traditional orphanage. It wasn't one of those places in movies where the kids are abused and forced to clean or anything, yet it wasn't a place full of joy and laughter. There was a tension there, like everyone was perpetually holding their breath. The only thing that ever seemed to break that tension was A.

A was the next in line to be L's successor, and I had never seen anyone more brilliant. Despite being the same age as me, it was clear that A was far more intelligent. He easily breezed through work I struggled with. A was kind too. When he smiled it was like the sunshine. He brought light with him everywhere he went. His presence was enough to make me feel better whenever I was stressed, and if I closed my eyes and just let myself forget for a minute, I could actually picture us becoming the best of friends. There was just one problem. Despite his brilliance, A was never going to become L's successor. He was never going to solve any crimes, save any lives, or share his light with the world. You see, the problem was that A would only live to be 15.

Now go ahead and call me selfish. I can't argue with you there. If I had been a better, kinder person, perhaps things would have turned out differently. Perhaps I would have turned out differently. But I wasn't kind. I saw A's future and I ran away from it. Instead of trying to make the last few years of A's life happy, I tried my best to keep him away from me. I didn't want to deal with the pain of losing someone I cared about again, so I simply refused to care. I rejected any kindness A showed me and refused to ever work with him. Everything was a competition between us with him an unwilling participant.

Over the next few years I watched as A's smiles faded. As the pressure on us continued to mount, A desperately reached out to me, begging for a friend. Each time I turned away. As the countdown for A's life dropped from years to weeks and from weeks to days, I grew harsher and harsher with him. I didn't want any part in the sad tale that was his life and I refused to be hurt by his death. Never once during that time did I stop and think about what I was doing to him.

I was not until I saw him hanging there, a crumpled note on the ground below him, that I finally realized what his cause of death was. Everyone blamed it on the pressure and stress. They called him a failed experiment. Everyone acted like it was somehow A's fault he had died. But I knew it wasn't. A was fated to die that day, but there was nothing saying he had to die that way. There was no reason he had to die alone and broken like that. Although it had not been intentional, once again I had killed someone that I cared about. At this point, I was a serial killer.