“Haaah…”
A few days after Watson and Adler had left the United States,
“Ahem-ahem.”
Watson, her face flushed, emerged from the ship’s toilet dragging a trunk and coughed awkwardly as she moved.
“Did you hear something strange from the washroom, what was that…?”
“Could it be a rat?”
“Do rats make creaking sounds?”
Then, bypassing the murmuring bystanders, she ascended to the deck, where the rising sun brightly illuminated the sky.
“… Why even attempt to escape?”
“…”
“You know that we’ll be charged with smuggling if caught, right, Mr Adler?”
She then bent over the sporadically trembling trunk and began whispering in a low voice.
“If you do this again, shall I just throw you into the sea?”
“That would be… a real crime…”
“What? The luggage is talking?”
A heated voice came from inside the trunk, but it was abruptly cut off by Watson’s chilling mutter.
“Well done.”
“Um…”
“……!”
As Watson stood up with a satisfied expression, a hesitant voice came from behind her.
“… What’s that?”
“Oh, it’s nothing much…”
Watson’s hand twitched towards the handle of her pistol as she turned around, and there stood a lady in elegant attire, her face flushed.
“That… it popped out…”
“… Ah.”
Watson looked at the lady with clear suspicion; however, she soon realized what she meant when she gazed toward the trunk.
- Wiggle…
Flushed to the tip of her ears, she shoved the flopping organ inside the trunk— the very source that was eliciting all those strange noises from her inside the toilet.
“A-hem. Well…”
Meanwhile, the noble lady, hiding her face with a fan, peeked over and then leaned in to whisper in Watson’s ears.
“… Just where were you able to procure something that big?”
“Eh?”
“The, uh… thing that was protruding, I mean… a remedy for nerve relaxation.”
Watson’s eyes flickered.
“Did you buy that in the States? Or in Britain, perhaps? I’ve never seen one in that size before…”
“… It’s homemade.”
“O-Oh, I see…”
As Watson quietly averted her gaze, the lady only reacted with a flushed face.
“Th-Thank you for your answer…”
Barely audible, the lady left a word of thanks and dashed into the cabin, her head low.
“………”
And then there was silence.
“Now you’re seducing women with just your useless cock…”
In the silence, Watson, relieved of tension, sat down on the trunk and muttered in a voice so cold it made one shiver.
“… It’s not my fault.”
“I guess not. You need to be socially isolated, it seems.”
Adler’s timid rebuttal came instantly, but Watson was far beyond any hope of regaining her conscience and sanity now.
“I’m all you need, right? That’s what you said, right?”
“I trusted you…”
“Why is the trunk talking again, I wonder?”
Watson muttered to herself as she gently opened the trunk once more, having already lost the right to be dignified as a Lady.
“Please, stop now a…”
“Shut up before I cut that useless stick off.”
Of course, this was the karma of a trembling vampire inside the trunk, so there was really nothing to be said or done.
.
.
.
.
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That afternoon, in a suburban area just outside London,
- Peak, whoosh…
In front of the mansion registered under my name, I was again scanning the surroundings with a tense expression.
- Creak…
Soon, I stepped into the mansion, doing my best to make as little noise as possible.
… No one’s here, right?
Upon entering, I immediately drew all the curtains of the windows before anything else.
Although I hadn’t faced any direct threats to my life on my way here, there had been a few suspicious occurrences.
For instance, I almost got entangled in a drunken brawl during broad daylight, and a recklessly speeding carriage had barely missed me.
And, while I was momentarily distracted, some beggars in the alley even tried to steal the trunk that confined Adler.
While all these incidents were ambiguous, my instincts as a former soldier screamed that these were not coincidences.
“Phew…”
Thus, even though blocking the view might seem excessive, it was necessary.
Of course, in the fin-de-siècle1 London, where criminals and detectives alike daily engaged in spying on others, such measures might seem futile.
Still, it would at least allow me to avoid the airgun-wielding menace that Adler commanded.
“…….”
After securing all the windows, I felt a bit of relief.
… Is this really the right thing to do?
But at the same time, another set of worries began to flood in.
Could I really escape London without being detected by Professor Moriarty’s criminal organisation and Holmes?
It was almost a miracle I escaped Lupin’s notice in America, and I had no idea how many more times I’d have to repeat such feats to escape everyone’s clutches.
“… Fucking hell, I don’t know anymore.”
My mind kept wavering, and I found myself searching for the world’s most effective remedy for anxiety and nerves, stored in the trunk.
“Where did I put the whiskey…”
As I murmured and searched for the pre-stocked liquor,
“… What?”
I soon came to realize a significant fact.
Where did he go…?
Isaac Adler was missing.
What happened? He had just been silently cropped up inside, handing over his seeds obediently just moments ago…
- Swish…
As I stood there dumbfounded, I began to sense an unknown presence behind me.
“Who…”
Just as I noticed it, I reached for the pistol I had kept ready to draw at any moment, but,
“… I don’t know how many times I’ve said it this year, but keeping a pistol in your coat pocket is not a good habit.”
“……..!”
Chilled by the ominous voice coming from behind, I couldn’t do anything but freeze, unable to even touch the already-loaded pistol.
“A misfire could necessitate a mastectomy. I presume you’d prefer to avoid that, wouldn’t you?”
“Y-You…”
“Is this the first time, by the way? Just the two of us having a conversation? All alone?”
The Queen of the Underworld, the Napoleon of Crime, Professor Moriarty, stood behind me with a chilling smile on her lips. My heart turned cold, and my legs began to tremble. They became so weak that I almost fell to the ground.
“… I’ll be honest with you here. I didn’t care about you at all.”
“…….”
“Of course, I don’t particularly care about anyone, including that young detective you tag along with. You were especially insignificant in terms of danger, however.”
Yet as I stood there trying to maintain a composed expression, Professor Moriarty’s mocking voice echoed in my ears.
“However… it seems I was mistaken.”
The cold aura she exuded with her mere presence kept dizzying my conscience.
“A good, refined woman, a diligent doctor, kidnapping one of London’s finest actors and stuffing him in a trunk for a bizarre cross-continental kidnapping spree.”
“… Uh.”
“It would make quite the headlines if the press got wind of it, wouldn’t it?”
As Professor Moriarty’s threats echoed in my ears, my heart felt like it was about to shatter into pieces.
“… It doesn’t matter.”
Somehow, even though I wasn’t drunk, I managed to convey my words clearly.
“Where is Isaac now?”
“That’s none of your business.”
Not only did I not know where Adler had disappeared, but I also didn’t want to back down in this situation.
“Aren’t you worried about your life?”
“… If I were to be shaken just by your threats, I wouldn’t be a friend of Holmes.”
“So, you’re telling me you’d prioritize your nethers over your life?”
“……..”
Although I felt I was being punched in the gut by her verbal assault, I still glared at the professor with wide eyes.
“Look here, Miss Watson…”
As Professor Moriarty’s patience reached its limit, she began gathering mana in her hand.
“I’ve already put up with this farce long enough.”
Even if I drew a pistol from my coat now, could I even scratch her?
“And, I will not hold back any longer…”
Although my hand, resting atop the pistol, was twitching uncontrollably, my frozen body still didn’t show any signs of moving.
“So, I’ll ask one last time.”
In this critical moment, as I sweated profusely in the silence that seemed to stretch eternally,
“Where did Adler go…?”
“… I don’t know, you ancient lizard.”
At last, I closed my eyes tightly and touched the dragon’s inverse scale with my final words.
- Gooooooo…
Immediately, acrid grey smoke began enveloping my whole existence, but I had no regrets.
“Haaah…”
Well, except for one thing, that is…
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… If I had known I would meet my end like this, I would have just done it without a condom.
“Such an insignificant worm, daring to rise above its station…”
Thus, it seemed Rachel Watson was doomed to become another sacrificial lamb of the professor’s curse, the perfect crime.
“Then, I will end it—ugh.”
“…….?”
As Jane Moriarty’s voice, which had been whispering fiercely in her ear, suddenly became muffled, a look of confusion appeared on Watson’s face whose eyes were already closed shut.
- Thud…
“Huh?”
And in the next moment, for some unknown reason, Moriarty, sweating coldly and clutching her lower abdomen, slumped to the ground.
“What…”
“Professor, you made a promise to me.”
“……!”
Behind her, a teasingly familiar voice rang out.
“Unless I agree, you must refrain from direct murder.”
“……..”
“… It’s a breach of our contract.”
Adler, now dressed in Watson’s clothes, was looking down at the subdued Professor Moriarty with a playful gaze, wagging his devil tail as a heart-shaped mark appeared above the professor’s pelvis.
“Adler… no, Isaac.”
“Yes, Professor.”
“Isn’t this all just a convoluted plan to get together with me anyway?”
Unable to understand him, Moriarty opened her mouth with a trembling voice.
“Then why…”
- Chuu…
“… Huh?”
As she did, Moriarty, seeing Adler kiss Watson’s neck, who was just standing there with a dumbfounded look on her face, widened her eyes in shock.
“I’m sorry, but I’ve come to like Watson more than you, Professor.”
Watching this, Adler hooked his fingers with Watson’s, lifting the corners of his mouth.
“Right, darling?”
“… But I just raped you, didn’t I?”
“……..”
Footnotes
1. Fin de siècle (French: [fɛ̃ də sjɛkl]) is a French term meaning 'end of century', a phrase which typically encompasses both the meaning of the similar English idiom turn of the century and also makes reference to the closing of one era and onset of another. Without context, the term is typically used to refer to the end of the 19th century. This period was widely thought to be a period of social degeneracy, but at the same time a period of hope for a new beginning. The "spirit" of fin de siècle often refers to the cultural hallmarks that were recognized as prominent in the 1880s and 1890s, including ennui, cynicism, pessimism, and "a widespread belief that civilization leads to /genesisforsaken