I used to like sweets.

For as long as the sugar melted on the tip of my tongue, the noise in my head would grow quiet for just a moment.

But sugar couldn't make a rotten heart sweet.

I swallowed the medicine.

Like candy.

Colorful hues.

A bitter aftertaste.

At some point, I began swallowing desserts and medicine with the same expression.

Neither

made me live,

nor made me die.

They simply made me endure today a little longer.

I took a bite of the cake.

It should be sweet.

Why can't I taste anything?

My sense of taste remains, but it's as if the sense that feels happiness

has been carved out by someone.

Case files continued to pile up.

White paper.

Black ink.

Black coffee.

White sugar cubes.

My world was always just black and white.

Am I living in reality?

Or

am I dreaming of a never-ending deduction?

Even when I opened my eyes, reality felt like a dream, and when I closed them, the dream felt like reality.

People said,

"L does not break."

I laughed.

It's not that I don't break; it's that a long time ago,

having been shattered into pieces,

I was barely maintaining my form.

The saying that one's inside is rotting away.

I didn't understand it before.

But now I know.

Like a strawberry shortcake left forgotten in the corner of a refrigerator.

The outside is still pretty.

The pure white whipped cream and the red strawberries are just as they were.

But the moment a knife enters, the inside is already slowly, silently, rotting.

I was the same.

Watari handed me the sugar.

Without a word, I put it in my coffee.

One.

Two.

Three.

Four.

The coffee became sweet, but my life did not become even slightly sweeter.

I solved the case.

But the case that is myself remained unsolved to the end.

I always believed I had to solve things alone.

Cases.

Mistakes.

Pain.

How to lean on someone else— I never learned that.

But...

This time, I don't know.

I really don't know.

Please.

Anyone will do.

In this endless noise,

In this endless inference,

In this endless darkness.

Even if just for a moment,

please hold my hand.

I...

now no longer know what the right answer is,

what reality is,

or what I am.

So,

someone...

please.

Before I collapse.

Please,

come find me.