Potted Plant



Potted Plant (鉢植え, Hachiue) is the sixth chapter of Volume six and 49th chapter overall.

Plot
If the Kira killings stop then the team can conclude that Higuchi is Kira. However, L and Light realize that without Higuchi showing how he kills as Kira then arresting him will be meaningless. Nevertheless, Light tries to persuade L to detain Higuchi now because otherwise he will pressure Misa into committing murder in order to prove that she is the Second Kira and kill her when she fails to do so (Light and L are unaware that Misa has already deceived Higuchi with Rem's help).

L calls Wedy and tells her to focus her spying solely on Higuchi. He's recently reinforced security in parts of his house which will make it difficult to obtain footage from bugs and hidden cameras, but Wedy agrees to install them in all of Higuchi’s cars.

L again raises his suspicion that Light was Kira but passed his powers on to someone else and then forgot all about being Kira. He then asks Light to consider if the transfer was made by his own free will or via a third party. Thinking carefully, Light concludes that it would have been done by his own free will. If a third party was in control they would not have waited until after Light's imprisonment before passing the power on. To know of his imprisonment, short of being a member of the Kira Investigation Team, the third party would have been watching events from the heavens and would have killed L ages ago. (At this stage neither Light nor L are aware of the existence of the Shinigami.)

L says that their task now is to find a way to make Higuchi show them how he kills, but without transferring his powers to someone else. He figures out a plan in which Matsuda will go on Sakura TV and threaten to reveal the identity of Kira. Higuchi will remember him as Matsui, the nosy manager of Misa Amane who might have overheard the conversation inside the Yotsuba meeting room. Higuchi will try to kill Matsui but then realize that it is a false name. Higuchi will call Misa whose cellphone will be turned off and thus not be pressured into killing Matsui whose real name she will quite likely know. He will also try and contact her current "manager" Mogi who will claim to be away from Tokyo. Then, he will try to call Yoshida productions where the manager will tell him that Matsui's CV, which is in the Yoshida productions office, contains his real name. Since it is late in the evening and the staff are away, Higuchi will have to go to the office himself, get the key from the potted plant next to the entrance and, once he has the CV, show his method of killing, which will be caught on cameras set up by Wedy.

If there is a single flaw in the plan then Matsuda will die. L says that they will wait to see if the Kira killings really stop and give Matsuda time to think it over. However, Matsuda announces that he is prepared to go along with the plan.

Conception
Ohba said the chapter's title "Potted Plant" was used to "mess with the fans." It quite likely relates to when Misa, who knows the Yoshida productions offices, points out that there is no potted plant outside in which to place a key. Ohba wondered why his editor approved the title, simply saying that he liked it.