When Beyond Birthday committed his third murder, he attempted an experiment. Namely, to see if it were possible for a human being to die of internal hemorrhaging without rupturing any organs.
Specifically, he drugged his victim so they fell unconscious; tied them up, and proceeded to beat their left arm thoroughly, being careful not to break the skin. He was hoping to bring about enough hemorrhaging to cause death from loss of blood, but this attempt ended, sadly, in failure. Blood congested in the arm and it turned purplish red beneath the skin, but the victim did not die. They simply shook, convulsed, and remained alive. He had been convinced the blood loss incurred by this would be enough to kill someone, hut apparently he had underestimated the matter. As far as Beyond Birthday was concerned, the actual method of murder rated fairly low on the amusement scale, and it was never more than an interesting experiment. It did not particularly matter to him whether it succeeded or not.
Beyond Birthday simply shrugged, and took out a knife...
No, no, no, no, no.
Not this style, not this narrative voice—I'll never manage to keep up this arch tone all the way through.
The harder I try, the more bored I'll get and the lazier the writing will be. To put it in terms Holden Caulfield (one of history's most famous literary bullshitters) might use, detailing what Beyond Birthday did and thought does not suit my purposes (even if, in my position, I have a great deal of sympathy for him). Explaining the entirety of his murders in carefully phrased sentences does not in any way increase the value of these notes. This is not a report, nor is it a novel. Even if it happens to turn into one of those, I will not be happy. I hate to use such a hackneyed line, but I imagine that by the time anyone lays eyes on these words I will no longer be alive.
I hardly need to remind the reader about the epic battle between the century's greatest detective, L, and that grotesque murderer, Kira. The instrument of death was a little bit more fantastic than a guillotine (for example), but all Kira accomplished was another reign of terror and a pathetically infantile way of thinking. Looking back, I can only surmise that the gods of victory smiled on Kira for their own vain amusement. Perhaps these gods actually wanted a blood-soaked world of betrayal and false accusation.
Perhaps the entire episode exists as a lesson to teach us the difference between the Almighty and the shinigami. Who knows? I, for one, have no intention of wasting any more time thinking about this most negative series of events.
To hell with Kira.
What matters to me is L.
L.
The century's greatest detective. In light of his staggering mental abilities, L died an unjust and untimely death. In the public record alone he solved over 3,500 difficult crimes, and sent three times that number of degenerates to prison. He wielded incredible power, was able to mobilize every investigative bureau in the entire world, and was applauded generously for his efforts. And during it all, he never showed his face. I want to record his words as accurately as possible. And I want to leave them for someone to find. As someone who was given the chance to follow in his footsteps. Well, I may not have been able to succeed him, but I want to leave this behind.
So what you're reading now are my notes about L. It's a dying message, not from me, and not directed at the world. The person who will most likely read this first will probably be that big headed twit Near.
But if that's the case, I will not tell him to shred or burn these pages. If it causes him pain to discover that I knew things about L that he did not, then that's fine. There's also a chance that Kira might read this… and I hope he does. If these notes tell the murderer, who only got by with the help of a supernatural killing notebook and an idiot of a shinigami, that he was, under any other circumstances, not even worth the dirt beneath L's shoes, then they have served their purpose.
I am one of the few people who ever met L as L. When and how I met him.. .this is the single most valuable memory I have, and I will not write it here, but on that occasion L related to me three stories of his exploits, and the episode involving Beyond Birthday was one of these. If I drop the pretense and simply refer to it as the Los Angeles BB Murder Cases, then I imagine many of you will have heard of them. Obviously, it never came to light that L and more importantly, Wammy's House, which raised me until I was fifteen— was deeply connected to the matter, but in fact, they were. L, on principle, never got involved in a case unless there were more than ten victims or a million dollars at stake, and this is the real reason why he belatedly, but aggressively, involved himself in this little case, which only ever had three or four victims. I will explain further in the pages that follow, but for this reason, the case of the Los Angeles BB murders are a watershed event for L, for me, and even for Kira. It was a monumental event for all of us.
Why?
Because this case is where L first introduced himself as Ryuzaki.
So let us skip past all tedious descriptions of what Beyond Birthday thought, of how he went about killing his third victim, since I have in interest in that at all, and while we're at it, let's skip the second and first victims, make no effort to look back at the earlier murders, mod adjust the clock's hands to the morning of the day after, the glittering moment when the century's greatest detective, L, first began to investigate the case. Oh, I almost forgot. In the event that anyone besides big-headed Near or the deluded murderer is reading these notes, then I should at least perform the basic courtesy of introducing myself, here at the end of the prologue. I am your narrator, your navigator, your storyteller. For anyone else but those two, my identity may be of no interest, but I am the old world's runner-up, the best dresser that died like a dog, Mihael Keehl. I once called myself Mello and was addressed by that name, but that was a long time ago.
Good memories and nightmares.