The Fawn | Death Note

23. Protection

* * * May 24 * * *

The moon was high as Bambi sat at the table and worked on her homework with her laptop opened in front of her. Near was sitting beside his partner, sipping on some tea. It had been a few days since the brunette rejected Light, and his behavior has noticeably changed while they were together at school. He was practically glued to her hip – even more than before. He was clearly trying harder to woo her and it was getting borderline annoying at this point.

As she focused on one set of definitions, her laptop glowed with Watari's symbol. "Ryuzaki, another package was sent to Sakura TV. According to the stamp, it was sent last night with rush shipping. I'm streaming the video to you now."

The screen switched to the second Kira's signature symbol as his voice scrambler read out, "I have found Kira. Thank you to everyone at the TV station and the police station."

With the long silence that followed, Bambi realized that L must not have the microphone plugged into his computer.

Near pointed out, "The only possible location is Aoyama."

Bambi frowned. "Light went to all of our classes that day, so he couldn't have been there until later in the day. Since the package was sent at night, it's possible that he is the person the second Kira is referring to."

"It is a possibility," he admitted. "We should look over the Aoyama recordings more closely for clues."

She nodded as Near stood to inform the others. The brunette sighed as she looked down at her homework before pursing her lips and rushing to get it done in time to help the others.

* * * May 29 * * *

Bambi's three colleagues have been hard at work over the past several days, painstakingly going over every second of footage from each of the recordings. Meanwhile, the hacker had been keeping a careful eye on Light. The immediate days after the video arrived he had appeared visibly more stressed, and he seemed even worse following the weekend. Given the lack of any significant events, she wondered what had soured his already awful moods. Still, he remained following the teen around in attempts to get to know more about her.

Bambi was sitting next to Light in their programming lecture, absentmindedly looking down at an empty page in her notebook. No matter what she did, her mind continued to drift to what she had learned the previous day. L had called to inform everyone that if he died soon, Light was certainly Kira. He told her that it would be up to Soichiro to get him to confess and her to arrest him if this were the case.

The teen pouted as she tightened her grip on her pencil. Her nerves were tightly wound as she waited to hear any news about the Aoyama tapes. She would much rather be joining the rest of the Wammy boys in doing that than sitting here with Light. True, if he were Kira, it would be important for her to keep an eye on him, but she couldn't know for sure that that was the case. Even if it were, she felt horribly unproductive just sitting around playing babysitter to a man who was mentally out of her league.

A sudden hand on hers drew her attention out of her thoughts. Bambi turned to face Light, who was smiling comfortingly at her.

"I know that you find this class boring, but you're never this distracted," he whispered. "What's bothering you?"

The brunette frowned as she pulled her hand away. "It's work-related."

He raised an eyebrow. "I didn't know you worked."

She winced as she caught her mistake. "That's the problem. I can't get a job anywhere."

He nodded. "I could help you look."