"What you did helped me a great deal. I'll remember it. If you ever need help, let me know."
L stared at him for three seconds.
Then he pulled the stem off his strawberry and dropped it beside the plate.
"All right."
Beside them, Jiang Shiyu tilted her head, looking from one to the other.
"Why do you two sound like you're signing a contract?"
"Habit," they said in unison.
Jiang Shiyu shuddered.
"So weird. You're both so weird."
L crouched on his chair, touched his thumb to his lips, and looked toward Kannazuki.
He was thinking-
Light Yagami had voluntarily admitted that he owed a favor,
and promised to repay it in the future.
This was a textbook return on a social investment.
Extremely rational. Extremely precise.
When a friend helped them out, normal people would say, "Thanks, buddy," or, "Drinks are on me next time."
Light Yagami had said, "If you ever need help, let me know."
That was the logic of settling a debt.
Interesting.
He worked a strawberry seed out from between his teeth with his tongue and swallowed it.
The probability that Light Yagami was Kira rose half a notch from five percent.
But he was in no hurry.
Berlin.
December 8. Two in the morning.
Hans had not gone to sleep.
He sat at his desk with three things spread out before him: high-resolution scans of two loose pages, Humboldt University's materials analysis report, and a timeline he had drawn himself.
The dates and times of seventeen people's deaths were marked on the timeline.
He went over it six times.
Then he opened his laptop and searched for a set of keywords: sudden cardiac arrest clusters worldwide 2023.
A slew of news articles appeared in the search results.
Neon Country, the United States,