A faux fur rug was covered with books on venomous animals, forensics, physics textbooks and biology encyclopedias.

In the center of the book fortress sat Kataoka Aki, balancing a book about cardiology on her knees. Sheaves of lecture notes, integral equations, and post-its formed the turrets of her little castle, the flag of which was made from a large blanket dangling off the sofa. She leaned against the base of the couch, instead of sitting on it, like a normal person would, as she chewed over the information from the paragraphs in front of her, processing the logic like a computer receiving a command.

The tissue of the heart consists of involuntarily contracting cardiac muscle. The internal structure of this organ consists of the septum, the two atriums and two ventricles. The major blood vessels leading to the heart are -

She flipped a page without finishing the sentence, then decided to close the book in favor of a folder full of forensics case studies. Terms were circled everywhere, stained with highlighter ink and marked with kanji in columns. Aki leafed through her notes, reading the latest case study and scrawling answers in her files. The laboratory practicals she had performed in the past week had shown her new toxins to deconstruct, and from that she had learned more animals to be wary of, more forces to calculate, new equations...not that the last two were strictly required for her postgraduate course. She was just a science nerd. But everything she could use to supplement the vast inventory of information in her mind was for the greater good. If she wanted to make an impact on her chosen field, if she wanted to be of use if another Kira came up, if she could somehow help L if that happened -

She needed to eat.

Aki closed her books and folders suddenly, at the twinge of her nerves that reminded her that she was hungry and needed nourishment. Her brain issued its command, with some input from her tastes requesting that she make spicy noodles. Thankfully she had a packet in her cupboard somewhere, but she still needed to go out to get groceries regardless.

Gotta keep healthy if I want to be helpful, she chastised, although as she pulled her last pack of instant noodles from her cupboard and read the nutrition label (as per her habit) she grimaced at the amount of sodium in one serving. So much for 'health consciousness'.

At least they taste nice, even if they won't make me taller.

It was true. Aki was at her tallest, at seventeen; no matter how much milk she'd made an effort to drink, her bones did not grow, and her growth hormones refused to reactivate. It was very mildly disappointing, but 5'4'' was pretty good by the usual Asian standards.

Ah, well. At least she could reach the top shelf of her pantry.

She filled a kettle with tap water and began to boil it as she opened the packet of noodles. They rattled into a pot with a quiet clinking -

And then the window behind her shattered with the sound of nails being ground in a concrete pestle.

Thin fragments of deadly, ice-like glass exploded inwards as someone kicked it in, raising the decibel level of the normally tranquil house to a sharp 70. Aki was startled, reflexively covering her ears and wincing -

"Stay quiet or I'll cut you."

Aki's eyes widened in fear as someone climbed through the shattered window, grasping her face hard with a roughly gloved hand. The assailant was male, she could tell, as she was crushed against his neck. His other hand raised quickly - a rag smelling of chloroform was quickly slapped against her nose and mouth as she tried to squirm away. Muffled sounds of terror clawed against the cloth uselessly as the man's left hand moved down to her neck, grasping it tightly so she was forced, against her common sense, to gasp for tainted air. As she tied to resist, the back of her head pushed ineffectively against the man's face, which she felt was covered. A voice synthesizer crackled as he grunted, pushing back against her head with slightly more force than she was capable of dealing. The smell of the drug made her eyes feel like they were being poked out of her eye sockets; her throat hurt from the inside out as the man continued to squeeze her neck. It hurt so much.

I don't want to die.

Her eyes stung, spilling tears. I can't die before I...

  ...help...

She fell unconscious in her assailant's arms, head slumped over his left wrist and dangling limply like a cut marionette. The man allowed her to settle, just to make sure she was truly out, and removed the drugged rag from her mouth.

"For a kid who does post-grad forensics before twenty," he observed, as he kicked her body out of the way, "She was pretty easy to take down." Not that it was a bad thing.

"Pfft, we were careful, and we still are. That had something to do with it."

A second man had dropped into the kitchen and was now crouched on the ground, an unlit cigarette in the corner of his mouth. He chewed the blunt like a piece of licorice as he studied Aki. "So, her daddy's dead, huh?"

  He felt the taste of tobacco stain his tongue; his position on his haunches made him feel a slight thrill of impatience. The kleptomaniac inside him was pointing out several things he could steal within the kitchen alone. Hell, it was tempting to send everything crashing into the bottom of his bag in an instant. All it would take was a jolt, and he'd be high on the feeling of taking. He licked his lips, somehow managing not to swallow his blunt. He tasted excitement in the paper.

  The first man knew too well that his associate was a klepto; the subtle sound of his shoes shifting weight onto his toes against linoleum was a sign that he was straining against the unseen irons of their plan, wanting to take everything he possibly could.

  "Yep. Heart attack, Los Angeles, apparently," the first man said, as he walked through the living room, checking various items. Textbooks neatly arranged on the floor and coffee table amidst papers and folders weren't worth taking. He didn't touch them. "Don't take too much of this crap. I don't care how itchy your fingers are."

  The other man was raking through drawers, gleeful, every steal giving him a hit of dopamine as he shoved items into his bag. The girl's wallet, he emptied of its yen; he took the photo of her and her family out of its tiny sleeve and tossed it out to land on her ID card, taking the square itself as his fingers crawled onto another wallet. It had no yen, but he took the pouch anyway, discarding the IDs inside it. He couldn't sell those.

  "Yeah, yeah. Not like Kira'll get me for this," he  smirked as he chewed on his blunt some more, moving on to the next rooms to look for other things to soothe his itching hands. His companion sighed as a third man exited a bedroom, businesslike and efficient, to swap bags with the second thief.

  "For God's sake, stop acting like a weasel on crack," the man scolded, as he hefted the full bag to stash it nearby. "If you don't hurry up, we'll get caught here." His voice distorted through his device with small noises in between that sounded like mumbled complaints, which the second thief ignored in favor of chewing his cigarette.

  The first thief looked inside the girl's bedroom, noting the laptop on her desk. Maybe the files were on it...there was a good chance that the girl inherited her father's laptop, though she'd be smart enough to clean it out and transfer everything to a hard drive. Whatever. The laptop was valuable regardless, so he took it, carefully placing it in his large cross-back satchel. 

  As the third thief walked out, hidden from view by a specific path to a specific car, the klepto came up with an impressive amount of paraphernalia, having taken every single book the girl had laid out so he could set to work selling them; he'd taken her phone, several cords, a pair of earrings - everything that was worth a yen bill or coin - and also several USBs, floppy disks and drives. The probability of them not getting what they needed from all of the girl's tech garbage, he mused, was so small he wasn't bothered to think about it. 

  This was fun.

  Satisfied with the quelled itch in his covered, spider-like fingers, he smiled. The girl was still knocked out on the floor. Maybe she'd appreciate a cigarette when she woke up. After all, she'd just been robbed.

  The man played with his tobacco for a second. 

  Meh. She'd light the thing, not chew it. It'd be a waste of a good roll.

  With a distorted chuckle, he left the house, following his companion on the hidden path.

  The first thief looked at her as she lay curled on the floor, a pot of limp noodles having cooled on the stove.

  Looks like we ruined lunch. Sorry, kid.

* * *

  Raindrops settled quickly on shards of shattered glass, refracting water against sharp edges and showing linoleum unfocused through micro-domes of crystal. A cold hand of stormy wind blew the splinters of glass remaining in the window-frame onto the floor, where they broke into colorless dust. 

  It was a crime scene.

  The girl lay on a bed wrapped in a blanket, a respiratory mask resting over her mouth and nose. Police were standing indoors as the gurney was pushed outside for loading.

  "Please contact us when she feels well enough to cooperate," a young officer said softly, glancing at Aki. Poor kid. He could see blue veins pronounced within her skin.

  "Yes, Matsuda-san," the paramedic loading the foot-end of the wheeled bed said, bowing slightly as the officer offered a hand. "We'll monitor her and get back to you."

  The girl's hair lifted slightly off her face as the breeze blew, and she tensed in her sleep, feeling cold. As the medics lifted the bed into the ambulance, they saw Matsuda's expression through the rectangular windows on the doors.

  Sadness.

  Déjà vu, maybe.

  Rain fell on the glass, on the ground, into the young man's hair as he watched the ambulance leave; one of the paramedics secured the girl's blanket.

  He wished Chief Yagami would say something to ground him.

  Matsuda wondered if the girl would be okay. She looked, or felt, like someone Sayu would be friends with. 

  Chief Yagami would know.

  Then again, it didn't matter.

  The ambulance drove steadily down the road, its lights flashing, Matsuda thought, in a melancholy way - that was probably because the rain was distorting the colors - but he'd wasted enough time being sentimental.

  He should go do something useful.