Another case under his belt, L was returning home to the orphanage for a while. He'd been travelling around on cases for the past year or so and when you do that enough your body clock gets so messed up it can affect your health. So Watari decided it was best if he made L take a little break back home, attempt to get him a sleep schedule and such.

L didn't mind coming home for a while, he missed Winchester while he was off in other countries. And lately he'd been feeling very burnt out, while he loved solving things it does get tiring when you do it non-stop.

Something had come over him while he was on the plane home, the burn out was hitting him a lot harder this time. He was exhausted, not just physically but mentally too. He'd been using his brain too much... but at the same time... not enough. L craved challenge, that was the curse of being very smart. Things weren't difficult enough to be interesting to him.

Suspects were too obvious, motives were easy to figure out, crime scene readable like a children's book. He was able to do what police did in months in around a week, that's how he became world's greatest detective. He took the hardest cases available and solved them in record times, he'd been doing it since he was 10 and now at 23 he'd been at it for 13 years straight.

No wonder he was burnt out.

He wanted something new, something challenging, something interesting. Of course he'd still take cases that he found easy, since families needed justice and he could do them quickly and driver that justice in no time flat. But he craved something... different.

He'd solved murders, kidnappings, disappearances, drug trafficking rings, assault cases... the only things he refused to do where the crimes involving extreme harm to children, he didn't have the stomach for it. Reminded him too much of himself... Other than that, you name it he's solved it. He'd scroll endlessly through case files looking for something new and interesting, a cold case maybe? Unmasking a spy ring? Something unusual and challenging. Just something different.

The whole plane ride home he'd been thinking about it, the craving for something new, the feeling of being stuck in an endless loop.

Maybe this break would be good for him... he felt himself going insane at this point.

By the time he'd made it back to the orphanage, the kids there had heard L was coming back and while most were too shy to talk to him some did ask about his cases. The kids seemed to view him as some kind of celebrity or something.

Some kids told him that some new boys would be coming soon, which was interesting news since wammys doesn't get new kids that often. L just hoped that they didn't come from horrible places like he did and were just being transferred due to their intelligence or something.

Every time he returned to wammys, it felt like coming back from a long day at work or school. He was glad to see the chandelier above the spiral stair case and hear the old floorboards creak as he walked. Wammys always smelt of sandalwood thanks to the cleaning supplies they used, and there was always a lingering sound of kids chatting in class or playing in the courtyard.

The centre of the building contained the offices of the staff members, and if you took the hall down the right it lead you to the school section of the orphanage. Lined with classrooms, study rooms, the library and computer lab. If you took the left hall it lead to the living areas. Kids rooms lined the halls, playrooms scattered around here and there and storage closets at the end of the halls. Up the spiral staircase onto the second floor was the older library that was for fiction rather than study books. The bathroom blocks, the mess hall and kitchen as well as staff rooms and nurse and psychiatrist offices. And at the very top on the third floor we're staff bedrooms. Some staff only came for the day, but some staff stayed overnight to watch the kids and lived in the premises. So of course they needed rooms.

Out the back doors was the large field where kids would play and do physical education, a garden lined the gates, some benches and playground equipment off in the corners.

And outside the orphanage grounds, on the other side of the large fences was a deep, dense wooded area. Sometimes kids would play in the woods, but weren't allowed to wander too far in or they'd let lost. Kids were too scared to even try that anyway.

That woods was the birthplace of many wammys urban legends of ghosts and cryptids, all things the younger kids would believe and as they grew up come to realise they were just stories.

L had fond memories of wammys, it beat his previous home that's for sure. Most kids had a roommate and shared their rooms, but not him. Thanks to a little... incident that freshly traumatised baby him got into he was given his own room to stay away from the other kids.

Despite being a loner growing up, he didn't mind. He'd often be found in the second floor library reading, or in the computer lab leading to code or looking up unsolved cases to figure out. He was a small, misunderstood but incredibly smart child who worked better alone and was bursting with ideas and questions about the world.

He still had that childlike wonder in him, he liked to ask questions. That's why he liked solving things so much, because he could ask the questions 'who did it? Why did they do it' And find the answers.

But lately he felt like he'd been wasting his time. He'd been asking the same things over and over and getting the same answers over and over.

The whole day he'd been thinking about it. Actually, ever since he wrapped up his most recent case he'd been thinking about it.

13 years of the same thing... was that it? Was that all he'd be doing for the rest of his life? He liked solving crimes sure, but when would he find something new and challenging? Something different? He felt like he was stuck in an endless loop of the same cases over and over and over again.

He knew he wouldn't be able to sleep that night, but he put on his pyjamas and got into his childhood bed anyway. Maybe he'd get lucky, he did need some rest anyway.

He starred up at the ceiling fan, the thought not leaving his mind.

What next? The same few cases again? Repeating the loop again?

He just wanted something new... some kind of adventure.