Work with Near? Never.
There was only one thing I have ever believed to be certain: I should be the next L. It had been my goal ever since Roger explained the purpose of Wammy's House to me. That was before Near came, of course.
Near took everything from me. He took my title, my dream, my dignity. He was the enemy, and I could never work with him. I had to beat him, to regain everything he had taken from me, to win.
These were my thoughts as I stormed up to my room, ignoring everything that surrounded me, and locked the door behind me.
I gave up. Or at least, that was the first thing that flashed through my mind as I stuffed my pack full of clothing, allowances, chocolate, and whatever the hell else seemed useful from my room. I was giving up by leaving, by turning down my chance at my life's aspiration. But I hadn't given up. I never give up. This was the only option I had left if I was to preserve my dignity. That was one point on which I would never compromise.
In my rage and resignation, I almost forgot to say goodbye to Matt. He didn't even come to mind until I found myself tearing down the photo of us I had taped to the wall. It was the only photo I had actually allowed to remain in this world. I remembered destroying Linda's film once because she had taken one photo where the back of my head was visible. I wasn't sorry, even though it had cost me a month's worth of allowance to replace the film. That bitch sure learned her lesson.
There were only two photos of me in existence that my idiotic fourteen-year-old mind could think of: the one I had just taken down and stuffed into my bag and the other copy hanging in Matt's room. Something in me knew that in this world where Kira could manage to kill off L, I couldn't let anyone have a picture of me, even my best friend.
He wasn't in his room when I got there. I had to admit, I was relieved that I didn't have to face him to say goodbye. He'd bring up all that sentimental shit that I just didn't want to deal with. So instead, I locked myself in there and wrote him a note, and both of the photos were burning in his dustbin ten minutes after I should've been gone from that hellhole.
Roger must've been too busy turning Near into L to try and find me. Fine by me. I got out without anybody even giving me a second glance.
I didn't look back at the house after I left. I refused to have one of those dramatic last looks that you always see in movies when someone leaves a place forever. That would be more of the sentimental shit I was trying to avoid. I just kept walking until I reached the gate, where I found myself stopping involuntarily.
The world is huge. I mean, fucking HUGE. I really felt it when I stood there, looking out at it. I had been outside of Wammy's, of course, but never alone, and always knowing I'd come back. Now I was completely alone, and I was never coming back. It was the first and only time I ever felt like an ant.
It was the first and only time I'd looked back and realized that I had been a fucking idiot.
Twenty minutes. I was in there for twenty fucking minutes without a single person finding me. Nobody had tried to stop me from leaving that entire time. It would have been the perfect opportunity to devise a plan of where I was going to go, what I was going to do, what the hell my life would become after I left Wammy's. And instead of taking advantage of that time that had been handed to me on a silver platter, I wrote a note to Matt.
So much for avoiding sentimental shit.
I didn't have time to formulate a plan once I had realized my lack of planning, though. The fire alarm had been going off for several minutes, and they'd realize I was missing any second now. They'd know it was me.
It's not my fault that Matt's dustbin was large, empty, and metal, and that I just happened to have a large stack of schoolwork and notes I'd wanted to burn. It wasn't like it was the first time I had set a fire inside the house.
I supposed I would have to think on my feet.
As I hurried away, the sound of the fire alarm faded into the distance. It was replaced by the sounds of the city around me. Not like it was much of a city. Winchester is a hick town as far as cities go. I mean, it's still a city, but it's all spaced out and green. That's the way historical cities usually are, I guess. Lame, boring, and full of tourist traps. Not like other cities aren't full of tourist traps, too. London is chock full of them. London, however, would be a great place to go to start life on my own. Nobody would question a fourteen-year-old kid on his own there, and it wouldn't be too hard for me to find work as a dishwasher or something, just until I made bigger and better plans.
It was off to the train station, then.
It didn't take long to get to the nearest bus stop. That was quite the wait, with absolutely nothing to do but consume one of the five chocolate bars I had stuffed into my bag. It helped me clear my head. When I thought about it, I could never have really had a conclusive plan, unless I had planned in advance to leave. My naïve little mind had never conceived the possibility of L dying at the hands of Kira before a successor was decided, so I had not dreamed that I would have reason to leave Wammy's. And yet, here I was, never planning to return. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that even if I had taken those twenty minutes to plan out my future steps, I probably would have come to the same conclusion I had now: I needed to go to London to find a job.
As I boarded the bus, I realized it was a twenty-minute bus ride to a train I would ride for an hour and a half, and it was already late in the afternoon. This whole beating Near to Kira thing was going to be a long and arduous process.