"I see," was all L said, when Jubilee told him that evening what she had instructed Wedy to do. The line over his head and cloud of colors around him stayed steady and calm, giving no indication of whether he approved or disapproved of her actions.

She swallowed, her nerves stretched taut with anxiety. Beside her Hellenos was shimmering in and out of view.

"So..." she began nervously, "I think we can stop investigating Takada and focus solely on Mikami now. Even if she is Kira's mouthpiece, he's the one with the notebook and who's doing the killing—and we know where and when he does it now."

L stuck a thumb into the corner of his mouth, mulling over her words. At last he said simply, "I disagree."

The statement was an unexpected blow to Jubilee's ego. Next to her, Hellenos flickered out.

"Why?" she demanded, with equal parts indignation at his bluntness and fear of potential reproach. "Are you saying that I shouldn't have told Wedy to replace the pages in Mikami's notebook?" Panic suddenly replaced her indignation. "Was that a bad idea? We can call her now and tell her to stop—she's probably in the middle of it right no—"

L held up a hand to cut her off. "I'm not saying that it was a bad idea. Merely that I don't agree we should completely pull surveillance from Takada." With that, he swiveled in his seat towards his monitor and proceeded to pull up grainy public surveillance footage, projecting it onto the main monitor. Jubilee looked up to see. The screen showed Kiyomi Takada walking out of Sakura TV station earlier that day.

L pointed a finger at the woman onscreen and turned to look expectantly at Jubilee. "What do you see?" he asked.

"The same thing I've been seeing," said Jubilee, annoyed. "She's just a normal woman with some issues. I mean, she's a Kira supporter, but it's probably just circumstances in her life that pushed her in that direction, and then she got unexpectedly caught up in it all because she happens to go to school with Light."

L hmmed and then switched the footage to something else. This time, Kiyomi was at a pay phone and it was nighttime. A few yards away stood five of her security guards underneath the light of a street lamp. Jubilee instantly recognized the fair-haired one as Aiber. So, the con man must have alerted Mello of this incident. Jubilee had instructed Aiber to start reporting in to the teen instead of her, now that she was focusing on Mikami and Mello was focusing on Takada. The fact that Mello had then alerted L of this incident, and that L was now relaying it to her, meant that it must have some significance. But Jubilee couldn't see what that could be, since nothing in the air around the woman looked any different. She squinted hard at the screen. In the bottom right hand corner, the timestamp read 7:25pm...only a couple of hours ago.

"What do you see now?" inquired the detective again.

"Same thing," huffed Jubilee, before tilting her head curiously at the monitor. "What's she doing?"

"Making a call," deadpanned L.

She rolled her eyes. "Your gift for deduction is staggering. No wonder they call you a genius."

L didn't laugh, but the air around him rang softly with a sound that was like gentle bell chimes. Onscreen, Kiyomi hung up the phone and exited the glass booth. Her bodyguards flanked her as she proceeded to walk down the street.

Jubilee watched her for a moment longer, but there was still no visible change that she could see. She turned to L. "Who was she talking to?" she asked.

He swiveled to face her. "Now that is the question, isn't it?"

There was a second of silence as they both just stared at each other. Jubilee waited for L to give some kind of insightful deduction.

But instead, he said, "Report on Teru Mikami's activity this evening, please."

"Uh—?" She gave him a confused look. "That was basically what I started with."

"Just an overall summary once more, if you don't mind."

She arched an eyebrow but acquiesced. "Well, he got off work at 5:30, arrived at the gym at 6, worked out for an hour and then wrote down a page of names in his Death Note which was in his locker. Then he left, and got home a little after 7:30 for din—" Her voice died in her throat and her eyes went wide. "Wait a second..."

Small cogs turned in the air over L's head, lighting up with revelation; but he said nothing, letting her finish.

"He always gets home right at 7:30. He's never late." She stared down at the detective where he sat crouched in his chair. "Could his train have been delayed?"

"Nope," said L without pause. "I checked already."

Jubilee finally registered the meaning of the light display over his head. "You knew already!" she accused.

"Knew what?" said the detective innocently.

"That something was off about Mikami's schedule today!"

"Yes, well," conceded the detective, "I didn't know what it was that delayed him. I was hoping you could enlighten me on that one."

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

Jubilee's shoulders sagged. "I don't know. Wedy didn't tail him home this evening because I have her working on the notebook instead." The ever familiar feeling of guilt hit her again, and she babbled on anxiously, "I didn't think—I mean, he had always kept up the same schedule before so I didn't think that it would change, and I thought that the notebook was the priority—"

L held up a hand. "No matter. We will just a do a cross reference search of his facial image on the city's public surveillance network."

He spun back around to his computer, quickly clicking and scrolling. A few minutes later, footage of Mikami from earlier that evening started to play across the monitor ahead. The timestamp in the bottom corner of the screen read 7:24pm.

He was entering a phone booth. Closing the door behind himself, he turned to the phone and fished out his own cell phone, then proceeded to do nothing but stand there and browse his phone for about thirty seconds. Finally he looked up, grabbed the receiver and began speaking into it. After about three minutes of talking, he hung up and exited the booth, turning back onto the street that took him to his apartment.

Jubilee simply stared, stunned.

"Well," said L. "Looks like we have our answer."

She spun to him. "Was he talking to Takada? But...but how? They were both on pay phones! They couldn't know how to contact each other from two different public pay phones...could they?"

L rewound the footage, replaying the scene from when Mikami first entered the phone booth. The detective leaned forward, watching the man onscreen.

"There." He pointed. "You can see him leaning forward slightly to inspect the pay phone."

"So?" asked Jubilee, puzzled.

"Every public pay phone has a label displaying its number," L explained. "Mikami is checking the number on the phone."

Jubilee thought hard about that for a minute before the dots connected. "So, you're saying..."

L nodded. "He was likely told which pay phone to go to, and at what time. That's why he stood there waiting for the call." He turned back to her. "Looks like Light did anticipate their lines being tapped."

Jubilee sat back heavily in her chair. "Crap."

"Well said," agreed L. "Though I can't say I'm surprised."

She jolted upright again as a dreaded thought hit her. "Do you think he anticipated Mikami's notebook getting tampered with too, then?"

The detective eyed her placidly. "It's possible."

She groaned in despair and buried her face into her hands, hunching over in her chair. "Are you saying that I played right into his hands?!" she moaned.

"I'm not saying anything," answered L, his tone curious. "All I said was that it was possible. Why are you having a nervous breakdown?"

Her fingers curled tighter around her face. "You've got to understand," she said to the floor, her voice coming out muffled, "That deliberating over whether or not to do that nearly gave me a panic attack." She groaned again, this time at herself. Now she just sounded melodramatic. "Okay, so maybe that's a tad exaggerated," she continued wearily, "But the point is, in light of lives being on the line and our time running out, it doesn't make me feel the greatest to know that I may have made the wrong decision...again."

"Ah." L's voice lit up with understanding, like he had just discovered the solution to a puzzle. "I see."

There was the sound of his chair rolling across the floor, and then suddenly she felt a hand firmly grip her shoulder.

Her head shot up. L was still seated on his chair in a crouch, his arm outstretched all the way at an awkward angle to reach her. A deep cerulean interlaced with bright lilac streaks hovered in the air around him, but his face was void of expression and he said nothing. She stared at him. He stared back.

"What are you doing?" she asked finally.

His head tilted. "Offering comfort." He eyed her, his expression still blank. "Is this not how it's done?"

"Uh—" A mixture of surprise as well as butterflies fluttering about in the pit of her stomach made her unable to speak. L looked like he was starting to second guess the position he was in, and she finally found her voice to protest before he could move away. "No!" she blurted out.

"I am sorry, I didn't know." He started to withdraw his hand.

"I mean, yes!" she amended quickly, heat rising to her cheeks. "Yes, that is—this is totally—acceptable, it's...um...very good. Yes."

L lifted an eyebrow but didn't remove his hand. "Are you sure? You don't seem at all comforted. Rather the opposite, in fact."

"It's—ah—it's not...you, it's me," she said lamely. "I'm just dense. You're doing fine."

L looked skeptical, but shrugged and gave her a small pat on the shoulder before withdrawing. "If you say so."

She took a deep breath as her heartbeat slowly returned to normal. "Thanks," she told him. "For the—ah—comfort."

He nodded. "I know it isn't exactly my specialty," he commented, his tone matter-of-fact, as he turned to the drawer and began rummaging through it for their headsets. "But I like to think that I always make progress going forwards, rather than slipping backwards, even when it comes to social aptitude."

Jubilee nodded along with him, a little dazed. Was that a fancy way of saying that he was trying to learn how to interact with people better?

"And I'd also like to think," he continued, fishing out the headsets and handing one to her, "That, now that we are friends, I can learn to hold up my end of the relationship...without simply resorting to psychoanalytical tricks that I would have used in the past to make you feel better."

Jubilee lowered her gaze as she accepted the headset. Was that a fancy way of saying that he was friend-zoning her for now? The line over his head stayed straight, but gave no other hint of what his feelings might be.

"All that being said," he went on, "I should also add that you shouldn't fear the decision you made to have Wedy replace the pages in Mikami's Death Note. I'm actually rather impressed that you took the initiative to do so."

She looked up at that."Really?"

"Yes."

Relief filled her chest. "So, you think Light won't catch on?"

"Well..." He glanced at the ceiling. "He might."

She deflated again.

"The point, J," said L, looking down to catch her eye once more, "Is that I'm aware that it wasn't easy for you to make such a spur-of-the-moment decision. Which makes it all the more impressive that you did."

The line over his head stayed straight, and the cerulean around him lightened to a soft, gentle blue as he held her gaze, with the lilac darkening into a lovely shade of mauve. Jubilee bit her lip, caught between feeling nervous and touched.

"Thanks," she said softly.

"Furthermore," continued the detective, "Even if Light did anticipate this move...it will serve to give him a false sense of security. I have a feeling that this is what needed to happen in order for us to yet surprise him."

She cocked her head at him. "What do you mean?"

He swiveled back to the monitors. "Time will tell. Shall we have the boys join us now?"

Next to her Hellenos glowed, and Jubilee realized that he had been visible again for a while now—and had been grinning this entire time.

How long have you been standing there? she joked.

The angel rolled his eyes. I think you know the answer to that. He directed his attention to the space next to L. This is almost as entertaining as watching that time when Adam first met Eve, don't you think? he called, gesturing down at L and Jubilee. Then he chuckled at whatever it was he heard in response.

Jubilee glanced back at the detective. The air beside him shimmered and seemed to bubble with mirth, making the swirl of gentle colors around the young man look even brighter. Slowly, she smiled.

"Yes," she said to L. "I think we've kept them waiting long enough."