On the night A decided to take his life – a Saturday –, the church's bell ringers were practicing as L was working on his personal computer in his room. He thought that they were being louder than usual, because they kept interrupting his train of thought, which rarely happened. He tried to close the blinds to smoothen the noise, but they were still audible. He got annoyed, and left the room, taking what he could and needed, thinking that moving to another part of the orphanage would have helped – maybe, Watari's office.
On his way there, he passed by A. It was nineteen or so, and L found it odd that A was heading to his room at that time, since dinner was usually served then, and hardly anyone skipped it, expect him. Even those who didn't eat would remain with the others, and L thought that 'he had B to stay with'.
A didn't look at L. He didn't seem to notice him at all. He just entered his room and closed the door behind him, while L stood in the corridor, pondering on what to do.
A week or two earlier, A had attempted to escape. He had left the Wammy's House without anyone noticing but had warned L not to search for him in a somewhat threatening tone. However, B and a group of other kids found him and brough him back.
So, at that moment, L thought that maybe he should talk to A about that and his role as L's successor. They hadn't discussed it before because A seemed to have had a change of heart. He was training all day, studying what he believed he needed to in order to be a good L, and even asked L to provide him with some closed cases he could practice on.
But the band started to play again, and L got shaken out of his thoughts.
'Tomorrow, maybe.'
And he left, but for A, that tomorrow never came.
A overdosed that night. He went to his room earlier, so that he could do it before B came to bed. He had told him he felt kind of sick and tired and had also refused that B came along with him, when he offered. Usually, that would've made B insist, but in that instance, after what happened – him trying to escape – things were a bit awkward.
B couldn't understand what made A want to leave and why he wasn't enough of a reason to stay. Honestly, he was mad that the promises they had made to each other didn't mean anything to A. They had talked for years about their plans after Wammy's House – where they should go, what they should visit – but apparently, none of that was important to A and B started to think that maybe A never wanted him in the first place.
They weren't really arguing, but there was definitely a wound.
Did B think A was acting weird? A little, but not enough to make him question his best friend's true intentions. He just thought that A got caught lying about their friendship, so he must have felt embarrassed and didn't really know how to explain himself.
B went to bed, thinking that A was simply asleep.
The next morning at ten, while L was having breakfast, the bell rang, signalling the end of the usual Sunday service. Shortly after, as if the bell was a premonition for the tragedy, B's agonizing scream for help was heard throughout the orphanage. Time froze, and utter silence fell for a few seconds.
L did not go upstairs. L did not put on his detective mask and investigate the problem. L did not see how B was holding the lifeless body of A in his arms, trying to wake him up, because L knew, and he was mentally paralysed.
His mind could do nothing but hear the band of the day before, drowning out any thought he might have processed. His head was a mess – a building in flames from which everyone was trying to escape, failing miserably and getting consumed by the fire. He couldn't even see what was in front of his eyes. His hands were working on autopilot, bringing food to his mouth to help him distance himself from his surroundings.
He continued to eat, and from an external point of view, it seemed like nothing was going on upstairs, like Watari and Roger weren't rushing to B's room, like the other kids were not terrified to find out what had happened in the same place they lived.
He didn't even look around and didn't pay any attention to the people that were staring at him, weirded out by his attitude.
Years down the line, he would've asked himself if that had been the moment or the reason they started to marginalize him, labelling him as emotionless. He couldn't be sure of it, but not saying or doing anything, even when B, after the paramedics came and took A's corpse, was screaming at him, didn't help the consideration that they had of him.
Everything felt so unreal, yet the pain was more than vivid.
So, that day – the day he was going to die –, L woke up hearing that band practicing again, even though he didn't think of that at first – that it was them specifically – but something else. Maybe if he had done it, he would've known that those were his last moments alive.
Throughout the day, they grew increasingly closer, and L couldn't figure out why – why he was the only one who seemed to hear them and why then.
With the years passing, he never made peace with how things unfolded, but accepted that A was dead, that what he did was done, and there was no way to bring him back. He still felt guilty that he hadn't talked to him that night, and multiple times thought that if he had acted differently, none of that would've happened.
He forgot what made him turn away. He only remembered that A wasn't where he was supposed to be, and that he found it strange.
Maybe his mind tried to protect him by gradually suppressing that detail. After he left Wammy's and moved to a big American metropolis in which no church bells could be heard again, the band followed him, but only for a short while – a year or two – before leaving him and appearing just to say 'hi' whenever he thought of his life at Wammy's House. However, they were related to the band practices and nothing else.
Woking as L definitely helped him get his mind away from that episode, but he still needed a successor. He reformed both the program and the orphanage, making sure there would be no other A by painting a less godly figure of himself. No longer a saviour anymore or an unreachable genius. He was just a flawed human being, capable of solving cases only through cheating. He was dishonest, and most importantly, he was a bad person, who didn't care about others' suffering – at least not enough to react to the injustice he had caused.
Anyone could be him, because they didn't have to be extraordinarily superior, but themselves, in their worst form.
He couldn't think that day, couldn't work at all. The bell kept interrupting his train of thought every time, and he was getting tired. He wanted to go somewhere quiet, and they lured him to the rooftop, since there was no backyard.
Light went after him, and found him standing under the rain, soaking wet.
L was looking at the sky. He felt helpless because he couldn't find an answer to the origin of that noise. They wouldn't leave him alone. It wasn't a simple band practice anymore, but a very loud warning signal he couldn't really grasp. They weren't simply ringing. They were screaming.
Thinking that his still primary suspect could be of any use, he asked Light if he heard them too. He wanted to stop feeling like he was going insane and that he was starting to have auditory hallucinations, but Light seemed more confused than he was.
"Maybe a wedding, or perhaps a—"
Funeral.
That word never left L's lips, but surely his mind thought of it, and as if awakened from a long-lasting sleep, that detail hit him – harder than he thought he could ever be hit.
Since he was considered responsible, L did not attend the funeral, even if Watari insisted that he should go, but he still refused. Not only because B didn't want him there, but L himself didn't think it was the right choice. He didn't want to make everything awkward or be the centre of attention, diverting people's focus from paying tribute to A.
To be fair, he did attend it in his own way: from afar and alone, standing in the middle of the garden and looking towards the church's tower. He followed the funeral using the bell ringing as a guide, but it was difficult for him because he could still hear that band in the distance – a haunting symphony that caused him to walk away when A needed someone to stop him, and then lured him to the backyard in the middle of the night multiple times.
Watari found him there every night during his days at Wammy's House, turned towards the tower, and when he asked him what he was doing, L would mutter some unintelligible words that Watari could not understand at all. Watari would insist and ask more questions, but L would always end the conversation with the same ten words.
"I'm sorry. Nothing I say makes any sense anyway."