His knowledge base contained the complete framework of Criminal Psychology, the rules of the Death Note, a clause-by-clause interpretation of international criminal law, and a profiling model of L's behavioral patterns.
But not a single entry told him what to do when a girl asked if she could kiss him.
The evolution of his brain had granted him absolute control over every muscle in his body.
He could fabricate any microexpression in a tenth of a second and set his heart rate to any precise value.
Yet now, without receiving any command, his heart rate had risen on its own to eighty-five beats per minute.
This was beyond his control.
Kannazuki stared into Jiang Shiyu's eyes.
Her eyelashes trembled slightly.
"I..."
Kannazuki opened his mouth. Then closed it.
He realized he didn't know what to say.
The feeling was utterly unfamiliar.
Ever since the day he obtained the Death Note, every word, every expression, every silence had been meticulously calculated and planned.
He always knew what to do in the next second.
But now, his mind was blank.
It wasn't a computational overload. It wasn't a lack of information.
He simply had no experience in this area to draw upon.
Twenty-five years.
No one had ever asked him something like this.
He had never held a girl's hand-before today.
He had never sat beside someone beneath a streetlight, gazing at a moon that wasn't there.
He had never been asked by a girl with a trembling voice if she could kiss him.
His first kiss.
When those words surfaced from the depths of his memory, Kannazuki even felt an absurd, exceedingly faint nervousness.
It wasn't the high-pressure battle of wits he faced with L.
It wasn't the cold resolve he felt when writing a name in the notebook.
It was