Naturally, the first resource Mello turned to was the internet. He already knew plenty about the Kira case from having followed along closely back when the chase was still at large, but now then, let's again focus on the specifics.
Kira—Light Yagami—was from Japan. He killed thousands of criminals via complex and still poorly understood means, having spawned hundreds of research studies ranging in fields anywhere from criminology to ethics to sociology to psychology to cardiovascular physiology and neurobiology and even to quantum mechanics and string theory, resulting in an interesting array of suggested methods by which the supposed "Death Notes" may have worked.
After an intricate pursuit lead by the FBI and the Japanese police, he was ultimately captured by the detective known as L, and, after some debate, tried conclusively by the United Nations as an international mass criminal.
Oh, it wasn't pretty, and, what's more, for all the publicity and news coverage, the ultimate verdict was somehow disturbingly vague. What ultimately happened to Kira, Mello wondered, and he may have wondered this for several weeks more if Matt hadn't pointed him to the article that said quite clearly that Kira was executed in May of 2005.
"Oh…" Mello says, taking the journal from his friend slowly, and it seems to Matt that he's practically mourning the loss of a friend. His blue eyes dart left to right across the page with a mixture of astonishment and disappointment, but there it is, right there in print.
After several minutes more, Mello puts the article down, gazing off into space seemingly deep in speculation. So, that's it then. No secret investigation, no further secrets about L's love life, no seeing for himself how much like himself Kira really was or how much like Matt he really looked.
"Come on," Matt says, nudging his friend by the shoulder, "those of us who are still alive have to get some chores done."
"Yeah, okay," Mello replies with a little smirk, tossing the article onto the coffee table and rising off the couch.
Matt smiles. He's cute, dressed in a T-shirt and jeans as he walked into the kitchen and pulled apart the cupboard doors under the sink where they kept the various cleaning products and detergents.
Not unlike most young people who grew up with others cleaning after them, Mello and Matt were not particularly organized or neat guys, and, really their typical idea of 'cleaning' was running the vacuum cleaner between the various piles of clothes and papers on the bedroom floor, or reaching far enough into the space between the wall and the desk to fetch out trash that didn't quite make the trash can, or, in Matt's case, running the tips of his fingers or maybe even a tissue along the dust that had collected on the leaves of his computer fan ("yuck," he would say after inspecting his fingers and then wiping them on the side of his trousers).
There was even once a time when, astonished, Mello found an impressively repulsive, oily contraption glued right there to the underside of the kitchen cabinet, and when, moaning in disgust, he reached with one quick motion to rip it off and throw it away (or burn it, or hurl it out the window), down came Matt's gloved hand on his wrist, and, goggles safely in place, the boy shook his head, "No."
"The hell?" Mello spouted, disturbed and staring.
"That's the thing for killing fruit flies. That I made."
"The hell?" it came again, "we don't have fruit flies." We don't even have fruit!
"That's cause of the thing for killing fruit flies."
Mello grimaced, now starting to become annoyed. "This thing stinks. And it's gross. And it's really sick, Matt, seriously, get rid of it, this, ugh, Matt, it's—evil."
Matt didn't flinch. "You need something evil to catch something else evil."
What followed was a verbal fight that lead to a physical fight that ultimately lead to sex, but, at the end of the day, the thing for killing fruit flies stayed safely glued to the underside of the kitchen cabinet.
Really, though, it's been too long since they've tidied up, and Matt thinks the last time they actually put an honest effort into cleaning anything was at least four months ago, so, lip curled in disgust around the cigarette in his mouth, he pulls out the bucket and bleach container and what looked like it might once have been part of a mop.
"Do we have like…a mop?" he calls out to Mello as he puts the nylon wrap of a rubber glove container to his teeth, and, turning around from behind the narrow end of the vacuum cleaner, Mello replies, "I think we might have had a mop at some point."
It all started in Japan. That's where all the criminals started dying. Almost always of heart attacks. Mello bends to his knees over the bathtub, shaking the bleach powder onto the once-white surface below. Then the FBI came into Japan. But then information started becoming vague. The agents died – but how many were there? Something about what went on in the police – but this information was kept very secret—because nobody really knew how Kira found out information.
He presses his lips together in effort as he kneels over the edge of the tub, gloved hands scrubbing at the white-yellow powder with a wet sponge.
Something about other nations submitting to Kira. Something about the police force dwindling. Something about Kira being more than one person. But no specifics, no numbers, no dates, no names.
"What—was he like?"
"Very sharp. Political. Manipulative. Seductive."
Putting the sponge away at last, Mello begins running the water along the bottom surface of the tub.
He cringes a bit; Mello is a tough guy who can take things, and, certainly, he can take a few bruises and scratches, but now and again when he moves, at times it still does hurt, and, in a way, that's nice, because, in a way, every now and again when he thinks of that day with L, he can still feel himself becoming helplessly aroused.
He stops in place, long hair sliding over his shoulders and the showerhead still running in his hand, and, staring down into the tub, he's suddenly filled with surreal intensity as he thinks back of that day. L touching him, and the way he spoke to Matt, the things that transpired and the long, tight restraining binds, metal and hard leather fully alive and real all around his naked form—and L who turned to him at last, real and coldly genuine as all at once he hit him hard.
I'm sorry, Mello—but that's confidential.
All of a sudden, blue eyes dart frozen to the wall tiles ahead.
No specifics, no numbers, no dates, no names.
They wouldn't give out that sort of information so readily.
Very sharp. Political. Manipulative. Seductive.
A brilliant mind is a terrible thing to waste.
Who else in the world holds such a beautifully strategic position to understand crime—really, who could better answer all those unknowns in criminology, sociology, and psychology—than the criminal mastermind, himself?
You need something evil to catch something else evil.
Oh—Kira isn't dead.
To be continued…