Chapter 1: Appearance

Kasumi Yamamoto was an orphan. She'd been an orphan for as long as she could remember. From what she'd heard, her parents had died in a fire.

She didn't believe that.

She didn't even think that anybody knew who her parents were.

All she was sure they knew was that she was born in America. She was sure, because she could speak fluent English. She also somehow had a plane ticket from New York.

Somehow, she had ended up in an airplane flying to Japan. She didn't know how, didn't know why, just knew that she ended up in Japan and grew up there. She barely remembered her hometown, New York City, barely remembered anybody she had known there. She didn't remember anything related to the plane flight.

Kasumi just knew that she got kicked into Tokyo with barely a possession except for her mother's wedding ring. She didn't remember anything about that, either.

After wandering around for a week, she decided that she needed to find a place to stay. It didn't matter where, just a place.

She found that place under an out-of-the-way alley. If there was anything she enjoyed doing, it was inventing. She invented a way to dig under the street without damaging anything, and formed that hole into a home. She found a mattress in a dumpster, probably dumped out by a rich, spoiled kid. It was old, hard, and springy, but it was a mattress.

Eventually, her hideout flourished. She dragged bits and pieces of everything in, building things, selling things.

If there was anything she liked more than inventing, it was mysteries.

She scavenged the streets, picking up books, mainly mystery books. By listening to people, she quickly picked up on Japanese, learning to speak and write it as if she was born there. She didn't dare get close to anybody, fearing that a friendship with her was no more than a curse.

Every day her silent footsteps could be heard as she sold her creations, her drawings, her paintings. Every day her life stayed the same: wake up, change into other set of clothes, take the clothes she wore yesterday and wash them, and drag all of her inventions and possessions out for sale.

Things stayed the same, stayed boring, until, after six years of the same things, she decided to take a walk during the night.

Her feet this time wrapped up in boots she had found, the ten-year-old Kasumi accidentally walked farther from her home than she intended. She froze when she saw a group of older men standing in front of her, obviously drunk.

"Heh heh… look at the cute lil' guuuurl~" one of them slurred, stumbling towards her.

She calmly took a step back, keeping her hands in her tattered coat's pockets.

"C'mere," another one said with a grin. "We won't do… much to you."

Her crystal blue eyes took one look at their glazed, lust-filled ones, and she turned and ran, her dirty blonde hair flying out behind her.

"Hey, get back!" the third man called. "After 'er," one grunted. And the three men trudged at a surprisingly quick pace after her.

She darted around corners, too terrified to even think where she was going. "My god… where am I? Where's home? Why me? God, why me?"

Finally she paused, panting, in a street. Her eyes darted all around as she said to herself, "Okay, this is a dream. All a dream. Close your eyes, take a deep breath, and hit your head against something, and you'll wake up."

A few seconds later, she was reeling around the alley, holding her throbbing head.

"There's a 100% chance that this isn't a dream."

Kasumi blinked, turning her frightened blue eyes to a teenage boy who seemed around 17 standing a few feet away. His hands were shoved into a pair of baggy jean's pockets, and his eyes had deep shadows under them. He was hunched over, wearing a plain white shirt, and his hair was extremely messy. Bare feet poked out of under his jeans. "Wh-who're you…?" Kasumi asked hesitantly, taking her hands away from her head.

"L. And you're the girl that smashed her head off of a wall."

Embarrassed, she bit the inside of her lip for a moment before responding, "L isn't your real name."

"What? Maybe it is."

"It isn't." She looked confidently up at him, one of her hands gripping the other hand's thumb. "It's an alias."

L frowned, his panda-like eyes looking at the alley behind her, from where shouts were coming. "Believe what you want. And who're you?"

Kasumi jumped at a man's voice yelling, "She has to be in there!" "I'm not telling you until you tell me your real name, but we need to get out of here NOW," she growled, darting forward and taking his hand, tugging him after her.

L looked surprised as she ran forward, oblivious to the stinging cold. Her long, straight, layered blonde hair occasionally whipped him in the face until they got to a wall. "Hold on a sec." She disappeared, leaving the boy standing alone.

L sighed, leaning back against the wall and staring up at the sky. In no time, she was back, dragging something along with her. She threw a rope over the wall. That was quickly followed by a dragging sound. "C'mon. Climb over." She offered him her warmest smile, tossing the other end of the rope to him.

The boy caught it uneasily. "Are you sure?"

"100% sure."

He sighed. "Fine." He tightly gripped the rope and was about to pull himself up it when something on the other side flung him across. He landed, wide-eyed, on the other side, safe and sound.

A voice called across the wall, "Now could you fling the rope over to me? That'd be helpful."

L stared at the contraption for a moment, then heard Kasumi scream and the laughter of the men. He quickly tossed the rope over, and she came sailing across, although she wrenched the contraption from the wall as she flew, breaking it. She tumbled to earth, about to break herself against it, but L ran forward and caught her.

She slowly opened her eyes, looking quietly at him. "… am I dead? I'm too young to die."

"You're not dead." He put her down.

"Oh." She dusted herself off, then smiled at L. "Thanks."

"Will you tell me your name now?"

She stubbornly shook her head, frowning.

L sighed, hesitating before saying, "… I'm Lawliet."

Kasumi grinned. "It's nice to meet you, Lawliet. I'm Kasumi."

"Do you have a last name?"

She frowned. "I do… but I don't."

Lawliet blinked, looking at her. "… you mean you don't know it."

The girl looked startled at his accurate conjecture. "Y-yeah… but I call myself Yamamoto."

"Hm." The teenager looked at her. "You're not from around here, are you?"

"I'm from under an alley in Tokyo," she snapped, her temper flaring up.

"But before that?"

She froze and stopped walking, staring at her worn-out boots. "… America. New York City."

"And I'm from Winchester, Britain."

She blinked, looking at him. "You speak English?" she asked, slipping easily into said language.

He nodded a little.

"I'm out of practice," Kasumi continued with a smile. "I've been here since I was four, y'know. Six years ago."

"You have parents?"

The ten-year-old looked sharply at him. "Everybody HAS parents."

"They alive?"

She blinked before whispering, "I like to believe that they are…" A tear appeared at the corner of her eye, threatening to spill past her long eyelashes.

Suddenly L's arms were wrapped around her. "Don't cry." After he was sure that she wouldn't, he stepped back and awkwardly pressed his thumb to his mouth. "That rope… thing. Did you make it."

She nodded, still sobered by the thought of her parents. "Then how'd you like to meet my guardian?" L asked.

Kasumi blinked. "Guardian?"

Lawliet nodded. "He'd be happy to meet you."

"Your… dad?"

"No."

"Uncle?"

L shook his head.

"Grandfather?"

"Nope."

"… relation?"

Again, L shook his head.

Kasumi blinked before choking out, "You, too?"

A slight nod.

"Oh…" Her gaze returned to her boots. Her left toe was sticking out of it.

He followed her gaze briefly before turning around and walking off. "You coming or not?"

"Oh, yeah! Wait!" She trotted after him.

*****_*****

Later that day, Kasumi met L's guardian, Quillish Wammy. She found him very nice and kind, and immediately latched onto him, despite a previous misunderstanding of her thinking his last name "Grammy." She spent a while with them, before asking to go home.

Quillish looked at her. "And where is this… home?"

"… Tokyo."

"How would you like to come to Winchester with us?"

Her eyes grew wide. "R-really?"

Quillish's face crinkled even more as he smiled. "Yes, really."

Blue eyes lit up as she grinned. "I'd love it!"

"Good." The old man stood up. "L and I are leaving in a day and a half... is there anything we can get for you?"

Kasumi shook her head, showing him her mother's marriage ring. "This is all I really have."

L briefly looked up from where he was sitting in a seat in his hunched-over way, all of his weight concentrated on the balls of his feet. His owl-like eyes stared at the ring for a moment before returning to the sweets in front of him.

"Then is it okay with you if we keep you with us for the next few days before our departure?"

Kasumi turned her attention from L's spiky black hair to Quillish again. "Oh, yes. I haven't a problem with that."

"Good, good." Quillish smiled again. "Would you like us to get you anything before we go...?"

Kasumi bit the inside of her lip, hesitating. She really did want to get something, but she didn't want to impose on their generosity.

"She wants to." Kasumi jumped at Lawliet's voice. He was calmly looking up at his caretaker.

"It's absolutely fine, Kasumi. You are going to be staying with us, so don't be shy if you want to ask us something. Now, I must go take care of some business. I'll be right out." He patted Kasumi on the head as he walked out. "Then I'll take you to buy things."

"Arigatou," Kasumi thanked, in Japanese out of habit. After he left, she turned her attention back to L. "Why do you sit like that?"

Lawliet blinked. "If I sit any other way, my skills drop by 40%."

She giggled, walking over and sitting down on the floor by his chair. "You like percentages, don't you?"

He frowned. "And you like pointing out the obvious. And curling up instead of sitting like other people do."

Kasumi blinked, looking up from where she was curled up by his chair. "… it's comfy like this," she muttered, looking at her feet, a slightly injured look creeping across her face.

L felt a twinge of guilt and reached down to gently pat her head. "Don't make that face."

She looked cross-eyed up at him. "This better?"

A rare smile flitted across L's face, disappearing a second after Quillish walked back in. His caretaker noticed, though, flashing the teenager a knowing glance. "Come on, Kasumi."

"Right!" Kasumi scrambled up, running over to the older man.

"Kasumi, how old are you again?"

"Uhh… ten. Why?"

"No reason." Quillish frowned. "You don't act ten."

Kasumi smiled, contented with that response.