• Chapter Ten

    Otaku

    “I’ll stay with L,” I announced happily. L nodded solemnly. “There only needs to be 2 people working on this. More would complicate it,” L didn’t give Light time to respond before he opened the door to a meeting room in the empty building, with a long mahogany dining table to seat several people. A chandelier hung low over the table, spreading a warm glow throughout the room. I followed him to a seat, closing the door behind us. L quietly sat down and opened the book to the first page. A pang of fear shot through me. NO!! I couldn’t do this!! I couldn’t read that again, why on EARTH had I agreed to this!?!?! “Because, dummy,” I answered myself. “You would choose L over Light ANY day!! You would choose ADOLF HITLER over Light Yagami!!” I smiled and nodded in agreement with myself. Man, I’m weird sometimes.

    I grit my teeth and pulled up a chair next to his. “Um, do you think, when we get to THAT part, I could, like, turn around or something?” I asked, instantly regretting my lack of intelligent-sounding word choice. L looked over at me, his features masking any emotion perfectly. ‘Wow, he’s cool,” was the first thing I thought. L hesitated a couple seconds, thinking. Then, he nodded. “I suppose. If it would make you more comfortable,” I swallowed and nodded frantically. We then began. Well, L did. I had no clue what to look for, so I was basically making random comments about the characters or the part we were on. So, here’s basically how our conversations went down;

    Me: hehe… Matsuda’s pretty empty-headed!

    L: I suppose you could say that… I personally think he’s much more intelligent than he acts sometimes. But, that’s just his personality, and nothing can change that. Not saying, of course, that he has a bad personality.

    Me: Of course not!! Everybody LOVES Matsuda!!

    L: Hmmm…

    Me:… AARRGG!!! Light is such a baka!!!

    L: *smiles slightly* There comes a point where even Light’s perfect poise is tested to the limit… Oh-oh my. That looks like it really… hurt.

    Me: SEE!!!! You should sue him for assault!!!!

    L:*chuckles slightly* That’s a thought.

    Me: Okay-Okay I am TURNING AROUND!!! I AM N O T READING THAT!!!

    L: It’s really not all that bad. There’s no blood.

    Me: I don’t care about blood. Blood doesn’t bother me. It’s the reeking aura of death and horror that bothers me.

    L: You have quite the vocabulary, Otaku.

    Me: Th-thank you. Wait-I didn’t offend you, did I?

    L: No, no, of course not. In fact, you’re very fun to listen to.

    Me: *claps happily* You really think so? I’m fun to listen to?

    L: Yes.

    Me: YAY!!!

    Ect. Ect. L flipped through the book at least twice, busy, but he never failed to answer me. We were there for an hour, and a couple times I wondered what Hattie, Light, and Misa were doing. And, that reminded me…

    “L-I mean, Ryuuzaki, why has Misa been so quiet lately? I’ve totally forgotten she was there!” L chuckled and as I listened, I could tell; there was a smile in his voice.

    “I had Light make Misa promise to be quiet. And she’s been true to her promise, she didn’t respond too negatively to Lights’ getting slapped,” Another muffled laugh. Then, I made a promise to myself. No matter what, as long as I knew L, I WOULD make him smile and laugh, for real. He hardly smiled, and when he did, you could sense loneness. And when he laughed, it was quiet, muted, like someone had told him not to laugh too loud or too long. I mean, certainly, people have told me to shut up, but that just made me laugh harder in their faces. Literally. I WOULD make him laugh, if I had to do something as detestable as be nice to LIGHT to do it.

    “What did she do that wasn’t too negative?” I asked curiously. This time, I could see L really smiling. “She stamped her foot on the pavement and stuck her tongue out,” I burst into another laughing fit, clutching my sides “Oh…” I whimpered weakly between giggles. “I-I can’t breathe!!” Which made me only laugh harder, of course.

    Suddenly L gasped. “Wh-what?” I cried, calming myself, settling my laughter. L slowly pointed to a word on the page. “It’s misspelled,” he muttered. I blinked. “So?” L glanced over at me. “This is the third misspelled word I’ve found in the first chapter. They’ve been simple words that anyone would know how to spell, but even if they had been spelled incorrectly, no one would notice. This is too big to be a coincidence… it might be a code, or a message…” L closed his eyes. I studied the page, feeling inferior.

    “The letters spell ‘kra’ so far. It is true that you are a good speller, correct? You’re good with words, you can tell if a single letter has been left out. Right?” L glanced over at me expectantly. I blinked, astounded. “Yeah, yeah I guess I am. I haven’t had to practice for a spelling test since kindergarten. (Me; Really, I haven’t!! ^.^) And, I guess I’m pretty good with words, I remember them well,” I admitted, realizing my skill.

    “Help me look for misspelled words you and I might have over looked the first time,” he instructed. I nodded, not one to question the world’s greatest detective. I found 15 new misspelled words. But they were all nonsense words that the missing letters spelled out. I sighed. We had gone through the book and collected every letter, I even grit my teeth and went through chapter 58!! (I know… It’s a miracle. Basically, though, I was just careful to only look at the words, not the pictures, and make sure that the words didn’t make sentences in my head, studying each one carefully.) But, despite the fact that we weren’t really spelling anything, L wrote down every letter I found that had seemed to escape existence on the page. So we had; Kra Tsutu Tahmee Uhna. Yeah. Absolute nonsense. We tried to mix up the letters to make words, but the sentences didn’t make sense either.

    Defeated, dejected, and completely out of ideas, we took the book and L’s ragged paper, which was covered in the nonsense scribbles written a billion different ways, eraser holes, and a couple doodles in the corners I had kept busy drawing while I was thinking, back to the others. Light was pacing across the hall as fast as I’ve ever seen anyone pace in my life, Misa trailing faithfully after him, chatting away in the third person (she had obviously given up on her promise to stay quiet and out of the way). eL was sprawled across a black, three-seat couch face down, sleeping, her quiet snores being drowned out by Light’s cry of excitement once he saw that his 60 minutes of boredom had come to an end.

    “Did you find anything?!” he burst impatiently, racing over to us a top speed and tearing the paper away from L to hold it inches from his face, searching for the miracle answers to all the world’s problems. A confused look crossed his face. “Why are there swirls and curly q’s at the bottom?” “Aw, what cute, random, rather strange doodles!” Misa squealed, leaning over Light’s shoulder. L strode past Light, snatching the paper back from him as he walked by. Holding the book and paper in one hand, he stood over the couch where Hattie lay peacefully asleep.

    “eL? I need you to wake up, you’ll want to see this,” he called, shaking her gently awake. Hattie rolled over and rubbed the grit from her eyes, blinking and yawning. “M’kay,” she responded sleepily, taking the paper from L. I watched her study it for a moment, then she stood, eyes still glued to the page, and walked to the middle of the room. I noticed she was also holding the book. She raised her eyebrows. “Why are there doodles all over it?”

    “Okay, do we ALL have to comment on my art?!”

    “Yeesh, don’t bite my head off! Hey, what’s this?” It was then I knew she had seen the words we had struggled so hard to make sense of. Then, strangely, everyone lunged for the book in her hand as she read the words aloud.

    “Kra Tsutu Tahmee Uhna!!” It was strange. Something I’d never felt before. There was light, blinding white flashes. Then, my eyes still stinging from theuber-light, it was all pitch black.