Makeshift

Wiretaps and hidden cameras let the team listen as the Yotsuba directors trade targets with chilling ease, and they learn that Hatori has already been disposed of. Noticing how the deaths cluster on weekends, the executives plan to scatter their killings across ordinary employees to muddy the pattern. L refuses to warn the marked names, arguing the trap only holds once the predictions come true.

Light improvises a counter, telephoning Namikawa while posing as L, exposing the bugged room, and offering blanket pardons in return for delaying the deaths. Namikawa sells the group on a one-month pause tied to unmasking L, after which their schedule can resume. The maneuver buys time while the investigators consider turning Namikawa into an inside source.

L praises Light's handling of the call, then startles him by proposing that Light inherit the L title should he die. Light reads the offer as a snare, since either answer can be twisted into proof of guilt, and when he declines, L only counters that the refusal proves nothing. The standoff nearly erupts into blows before Matsuda separates them, and L again states plainly that he has always counted Light as the original Kira.

Refusing Soichiro's wish to arrest the board outright, L warns that doing so would simply trigger Kira to kill any captured bystanders. He then visits Misa, draws from her that she would pick Light over Kira, and enlists her: a planted rumor that she is the second Kira will make Yotsuba crave her as a route to L, letting her burrow into the company. Misa accepts even after Light protests the danger.

Two notebook rules surface in this chapter. The first holds that if a single name is entered in more than one notebook within roughly six hundredths of a second, the entries cancel and the person survives. The second states that a god of death must always retain at least one notebook, one that no human may ever borrow or write in.