A/N: Felt like adding a picture of grown-up Birdie, coming in at 5'10" (at least one of us is tall). There would be some differences: no mole, sky blue eyes, straight hair, and I'd imagine her wearing something like a pink lipstick. And she'd still love wearing her favorite color, haha. (tinyurl . com/ 7dzu5w23).

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I'm sketching in my notebook, half of the picture of the creature I'm drawing now finished. A shinigami. The Shinigami. The one I had Piper describe to me a million times. She says I'm getting closer and closer. One day, I'll capture his very likeness. I've gotten a lot better at drawing over the years, since I spend so much time ignoring my teachers and doodling instead. As I start on the wings, the ink begins to fade, and I can't get any more out of the pen. I scribble on the side of my paper, hoping to get some ink out, but nothing. I search my bag and find another pen, but this one's blue. It won't match the black ink of the pen I'd first used, but I guess it's better than nothing. I take off the cap and put the tip of the pen onto my paper, starting in on the wings again.

"Birdie."

"Hmm?" I look up, a bored expression on my face, and my eyes meet those of my professor, who is standing in the front of the room. I am near the back, but he always has his eye on me. Shirking on the work or doing bad is one thing, but teachers hate it when you don't even bother pretending to be interested in whatever stupid thing they're teaching.

"Since you appear to be taking notes so avidly, perhaps you could give us the answer to this problem?"

I'm not even sure what problem we were doing, and there are a bunch of equations on the wall, some unsolved, some solved. Based on the way he's holding his red marker and the markings on the dry erase board, I can find the most recent equation he has written. Having located the equation, I easily solve it in my head. All this happens within seconds.

"The trace is negative forty-four plus ten plus thirty-seven equals three. The determinate is negative eight."

He frowns at me. "Very good."

I smile at him, pretending to be proud to have gotten the answer correct, but the two of us both know I'm just silently bragging that he has failed to catch me yet again. You'll need to do better than that to catch me off guard, old man. Thank god I'm a scholarship student; otherwise, I'd be wasting so much money.

Class gets out a few minutes later, and I head out the door, followed by my close friend, Mikaila. The two of us had met a while back, and we immediately hit it off despite our five year age gap. I'm actually kind of grateful she's here with me, to be honest. No way I'll ever tell her that, though.

"You know, Birdie, one of these days he's going to catch you," she says with a grin.

"So?" I say. "I'm still passing the class."

"Honestly, why did you even bother attending this school if you knew pretty much all of the material the moment you got here?"

"Right?" I say, having said this to the people at Wammy's so many times before. "Thank god I'm on a full scholarship. It would have been such a waste of money."

Mikaila just blinks. "Full scholar..." she trails off, unable to even finish the word. She shakes her head and refocuses her attention. "Don't avoid the question!"

I shrug. "I'm here for the degree. Yes, I know all the important material, but employers care more about your background so they can be sure that you know what you're doing... even though I could basically teach most of these classes, if not all of them."

"Pass them, but I don't know about teach them," she says with a laugh. "Remember that time I asked you to help me study for one of my exams? You got annoyed real fast."

"It's not my fault you're so slow!"

She rolls her eyes. "We can't all be geniuses, Birdie."

"Too bad." I sigh. "What day is it?"

"Wednesday."

"No, I mean the date."

"You mean the math genius doesn't know?" she jeers.

I playfully glare at her. "I find that keeping track of the date and time makes everything seem to go by slower."

"That must make things difficult."

"That's why I usually just follow you around everywhere."

"March fourth, 2015."

I groan. "Two more months until I can get out of here... and I know what year it is, you idiot!"

She snorts at my comment. "Hey, don't complain. I came here for grad school, and I've been here longer than you have. You're graduating at the age of eighteen."

I shrug. "I would have graduated sooner if it wasn't for those bloody gen-eds. Anyhow, who cares if I'm graduating? I was told I had to go somewhere for university to improve my math skills. I don't even like math! What's the point?"

"Oh, come on, Birdie. You're being over dramatic."

I'm about to make a comeback, but then I hear my cell phone chiming to the tune of one of Misa Amane's songs. The screen reads "Wammy's."

I sigh. "I have to take this, Mikaila."

"I got ya; I need to get to class, anyway."

Mikaila walks away, briefly waving back at me with a smile. Once she's turned the corner, I press the answer button and put the phone to my ear.

"Birdie?" It's Marius's voice.

"Who else?"

Marius is one of the "watchers," as I call them. The watchers are each assigned to look over one or more Wammy's kids. They take notes on our development and how to help shape us into the best person we can possibly be. I'm Marius's only charge, since I'm just so gosh darn special. I've known him since the day I arrived at Wammy's, so he's family; the closest thing to a father I have.

"Birdie, are you alone?"

I raise an eyebrow, wondering where he's going with this. I rarely get calls from Wammy's anymore, and this is certainly not how the few I do get tend to go.

Most people are in class, but there are several still wandering the halls. "No, I'm not."

"Can you go somewhere where you will be by yourself?"

I think. My roommate is in our room, sick. The library always has people in it. So does the cafeteria and just about every other place in the school this time of year. This winter has been ridiculous. Massive heaps of snow are piled up, the roads and streets are covered in ice, making even walking a challenge. No one in their right mind would go out there unless they absolutely had to. I mentally groan when I realize that it's probably the only place I'll be alone.

"This ought to be important," I say as I head out the building, preparing myself for a blast of cold air.

"It is."

The second I step outside, I'm already freezing from head to toe, but I continue to walk until I'm certain that no one can hear me.

"Alright. What is it, Marius?"

"Birdie, I'm beginning to question whether or not you should have even been sent to university in the first place."

"What are you talking about?" I say. "You told me that no one will hire me without a degree."

"Because you wanted to see if you'd be interested in something outside of typical Wammy's fields; that's true."

"But?"

There's silence. Whatever Marius has to say clearly isn't easy for him.

"You're not going to leave Wammy's to get a job, Birdie."

I furrow my eyebrows in frustration and confusion. "What? You mean I'm going back to Wammy's? I'm eighteen now; you can't make me come back."

"I know," he says, "but I don't mean coming back to the orphanage."

"Then what do you mean?"

"Birdie... you're B now."

The anger, frustration, confusion, resentment; it's all gone in the blink of an eye. My eyes widen, but my mouth doesn't move. I'm usually the kind of person who cries out or makes some sort of exclamation when surprised, but now I'm speechless. After a moment, I start laughing. "You can't be serious."

"I am, Birdie. You know this isn't something I'd joke about."

B. One of the twenty-five letters besides L that make up Wammy's House. L is the big shot, but the other letters are also detectives; just not as big as he is. They're more than that, though. They are what Mello and Near had been. M and N. The top twenty-five potential successors of L.

There aren't always twenty-five, though. If there aren't any others particularly notable, then there will just be less than twenty-five letters. Which is the case now. A had cracked under the pressure and killed himself over a decade ago. M had given up his right to be a successor when he left Wammy's. N was now L.

Then there was B. At some point, he just lost it. He became obsessed with not only becoming but surpassing L. He resorted to murder, an infamous serial killing case known as the Los Angeles BB Murder Cases. They had caught him and thrown him in jail, and he had gotten his right to succeed L taken away. In 2009, he died of a heart attack; probably the work of Light Yagami.

B is another one of the missing letters, and there hasn't been another B since the death of the original.

"Why?" I ask. "I just do math."

"You know we don't let just any smart kid into Wammy's, Birdie, and you do so much more than 'just math'," Marius says. He sounds frustrated, as if he wishes I could see whatever potential he seems to think I possess. "You've studied various fields of math out of pure boredom. It ranges to fields like modular arithmetic, for example, giving you technological skills that allow you to hack into programs without leaving a trace. Moreover, your inductive and statistical reasoning skills are extraordinary. I'm also aware that you observed the Kira investigation for nearly a year. The manager agreed on it, Birdie; the three of us agreed that you should be B."

Wait. The manager agreed. With whom?

"The three of you?" I said in confusion.

He chuckles in amusement. "What? Do you think I have the kind of pull to recommend you? You were recommended by a third party."

"By whom?" I scan my brain for anyone I can think of who might have recommended me; especially someone with this kind of pull.

"L."

L... N... Near.

"He recommended me?" I say in disbelief.

"He insisted, actually; apparently, he's taken notice of you. He said you're intelligent, have a way of looking at things from a different perspective, and that you've grown a lot as a person. ...And he's not wrong."

"He said that? That bonehead said that?"

Marius chuckles. "He did."

"What number?"

The letter you are doesn't necessarily represent what number in line you are to succeed L. N had been first the last time around, after all.

"One."

I sit down on the snowy ground, not quite caring that my pants are getting wet from doing so. I barely even feel the cold water touching my skin. I don't know why he picked me, why he had no doubt been watching me over the past five years. I don't know why I'm happy. I'm not happy about being B, but happy about him wanting me to. He's watching me, and he wants me to be the next. First in line as one of his potential successors. It isn't the honor of being L, either. It isn't about L. It's about Near, oddly enough. For some strange reason, knowing that he acknowledges me, that he might even be proud of me... makes me happy.

"Birdie? Birdie, are you there?"

I smile, feeling warm despite the chilly weather. "Yes. Yes, I'm here."

Right where I should be.