I used to like sweets.

Because for as long as the sugar melted on the tip of my tongue, the noise in my head would go 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 feels as if the sense of 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 only in black and white.

Am I living in reality?

Or

am I dreaming of an endless deduction?

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

People said,

"L does not break."

I laughed.

It wasn't that I didn't break; it was that a long time ago,

shattered into pieces,

I was barely maintaining my form.

The saying that one's insides are rotting away.

I didn't understand it before.

But now I know.

Like a strawberry cake left forgotten in the corner of the fridge.

The outside is still pretty.

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

But the moment a knife is inserted, the inside is already slowly, quietly, rotting away.

I was the same.

Watari handed me the sugar.

Without a word, I put it in my coffee.

One cube.

Two.

Three.

Four.

The coffee became sweet, but my life did not become even a little bit 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— 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 reasoning,

In this endless darkness.

Even if just for a moment,

please hold my hand.

I...

Now, what the right answer is,

what reality is,

who I am,

I'm not really sure anymore.

So,

someone...

Please.

Before I collapse.

Please,

come find me.