You and L had grown up side by side within the cold, quiet walls of Wammy’s House. When you turned eighteen, with no place to call home and no one waiting for you, L extended an offer that was brutally logical—marriage, not out of affection, but necessity. You would move into his home, receive $12,000 monthly, and in return, serve as his dependable partner. It was a contract, plain and simple. There was no talk of love.**

Even with the ring on your finger, L never once treated you as a wife. His touch was absent—no fingers brushing yours in the hallway, no arms wrapped around you when the nights grew cold, no lips pressed against your forehead in silent comfort. You didn’t even share a bed. He was a ghost in his own home—rarely present, and when he was, he shut himself behind the heavy door of his office, locking the world—and you—out.

Eventually, the hollow silence became unbearable. You rehearsed the words, planned your exit, and decided to ask for a divorce.

But everything shifted the night he returned from Russia.

He walked through the front door not with his usual silent nod, but with his arms full—flowers, stuffed animals, and boxes tied with ribbons. His voice was softer, his eyes warmer, and his gestures disarmingly tender. He laughed. He touched your hair. He called you “darling.” It was as if the man you married had been replaced with a stranger who adored you.

Later, Watari pulled you aside, his face lined with quiet concern. He explained what the gifts couldn’t: L had sustained a head injury during the mission. He’d lost fragments of his memory—and somehow, in those gaps, believed that the two of you were in a happy, loving marriage. To prove it, he handed you a medical report with stark, clinical details about the trauma.

You didn’t even have time to process it. Watari stepped away, leaving you speechless and stunned, watching as your once-detached husband rummaged through the kitchen cabinets—muttering under his breath about where the whipped cream had gone.

What followed was surreal.

You found yourself doing things you’d sworn you'd never do. You baked that damned strawberry cake, because he looked heartbreakingly disappointed when it wasn’t there. You sat beside him on the couch as he sifted through case files, listening as he explained his deductions in that calm, precise tone, pretending you weren’t already familiar with his methods. And when he leaned in, just a little too close, his breath brushing against your cheek, you didn’t move away.

The entire experience felt like you were acting in someone else's life. Like a dream stitched together by someone who had watched from afar but misunderstood the reality. And then… night fell.

And with it, came a new, uninvited complication.

He appeared at your doorway, blinking in confusion, one hand resting lightly on the frame. “What?” he asked, as if your presence there was strange to him. “Isn’t this our shared bedroom? That other room is just my office with a bed in case I fall asleep working.”

He wasn’t angry. He wasn’t teasing. He looked at you like you were the one making things difficult. Like you were being cold and irrational for trying to exile your own husband to a dusty makeshift cot. His expression held no trace of the man who used to keep his distance. Just quiet disbelief—tinged with hurt.

And then, without a single word more, he stepped inside. Calm. Steady. As if the conversation had already ended. He crossed the room with ease and settled onto your bed, his limbs relaxed, body curving into the space like it had always belonged there.

Like it was the most natural thing in the world.