Chapter 21

21 "Morning, you two."

Because I was afraid of Moriarty, and attendance counted toward his course grade, being required to see him put me under a lot of stress.

I would rather help Sherlock with his experiments and deal with the maggots he had recently started raising than go to school.

But I soon heard some good news. After Miss Molly told me that attendance was counted in the tutorials, not the lectures, I felt much less pressure.

Starting in the second week, I skipped Moriarty's lectures.

No one knew how I felt attending Professor Moriarty's lecture on the first day. As I watched his mouth open and close, my head was full of Moriarty's arrogant, conceited lines from Sherlock.

"What are those funny little brains of yours like? It must be so boring."

Right afterward, I imagined him waving his hand.

A row of submachine guns with terrifying muzzles suddenly burst through the whiteboard and opened fire at the wall. Before anyone could react, bullets came flying toward us.

Meanwhile, Moriarty stood to one side, calm and composed, looking down on us as he casually calculated the arc of the droplets' trajectories, even taking into account factors such as gravity, air resistance, interactions between droplets, and the viscoelasticity of blood.

Worst of all, I was sitting in the front row, and I was also entangled with Moriarty and the others. The hail of bullets turned me into a showerhead dripping blood.

Moriarty generously told me, as I lay there dead with my eyes still open, that because we were "friends," I deserved the most special treatment.

My death was so miserable.

What's more, I could even write a second chapter set after my death: Sherlock hearing that I had met with an accident. He immediately came to check on me and, finding that the bullets had not damaged my brain, relaxed. "Good, your head's fine."

"..."

Thinking about it, I really was miserable.

That first time, I failed to pay attention throughout the entire lecture.

Once I realized this man was affecting my mood and mental state in class, I knew for certain that I couldn't keep attending his lectures. But he taught a compulsory first-year course. Without taking it, I wouldn't be allowed to take the key related courses in my major that followed. Granted, another, older professor also taught the course, but his class was next year.

To put it plainly, if I chose not to take the course for now, many of my classes next year would have to be pushed back too. Even if I wanted to take a few extra courses in one year, it wouldn't change the fact that my graduation would be delayed. I knew that graduating late wasn't a serious problem abroad; many people even took a break halfway through their studies to experience the meaning of life. But I was a rather old-fashioned, rigid, and traditional university student, and I couldn't possibly do something so out of step.

So what Miss Molly said in the lab really saved me.

In the second week, I skipped Professor Moriarty's lecture.

I was still nervous that day. After all, Professor Moriarty and I had exchanged phone numbers.

While I was skipping class, I even wondered if he might quickly notice I wasn't there.

There were actually two possibilities behind this:

First, Moriarty knew "who" I was. By that, I meant that they thought I had witnessed them set off the explosion, so he had deliberately approached me to probe me for information.

Second, he didn't actually know "who" I was and just saw me as an ordinary student.

Of course, neither possibility would change my decision to skip the lectures.

I waited until ten at night, when I was almost ready for bed, but Professor Moriarty still gave no indication of anything.

Worth mentioning, I didn't hear anything from Moriarty all week.

Only then did it suddenly dawn on me that I was far too self-conscious.

Exchanging phone numbers at the salon that day had just been part of going through the motions of socializing.

There was no rule saying that exchanging contact information meant you had to move on to a closer social relationship.

Professor Moriarty might well have deleted my number already.

If he really meant to harm me, he wouldn't come after me aggressively and press me at every turn just because I missed a lecture.

That would make his villainous traits far too obvious. Wouldn't that make people wary of him?

Besides, there were hundreds of people packed into the lecture. How would Moriarty pick me out among them? I wasn't saying he lacked the ability, only that he had no reason to pay special attention to an ordinary person like me.

I thought it over from every angle and decided that thinking "Professor Moriarty will pay special attention to me because I skipped class" was taking myself far too seriously.

After all, the bullet comments were just everyone talking big; I couldn't take them seriously.

Once I'd thought it through, I felt instead that I'd been too wary of Moriarty, as though I were matching wits and courage with thin air.

After putting the Moriarty matter behind me, I thought that was the end of the class-skipping affair.

However, on the evening of the first day I skipped class, Watson came to see me with some candy and asked with concern why I hadn't gone to class that day.

I immediately felt sorry.

I hadn't been very good at keeping my emotions in check over the past few days, and Watson had asked me what was wrong. I hadn't really responded. Now that he'd heard I had skipped class, he must have been very worried about my mental state.

Mental health was taken very seriously abroad.

The slightest sign could bring to mind all sorts of mental health problems: depression, bipolar disorder, and so on.

I wasn't very good at lying, so most of the time when I had to hide something, I either downplayed it, avoided the subject, or stayed silent.

"I'll make sure to attend class tomorrow," I promised. "I only missed today's class."

Watson looked into my eyes intently.

I met his gaze just as intently, to show that I was serious and sincere.

"Tomorrow, the day after, and the day after that, I'll study hard."

We silently exchanged looks, and after two or three seconds, Watson spoke. "If you feel you're not in the right mental state to attend class, you could consider taking a break and starting your studies again next year. Universities aren't that strict about when you enroll."

"No, no, no, I'm fine."

"Are you sure?"

I nodded like a chicken pecking at grain to show him I was doing great.

Watson suddenly laughed. "That's good, then."

Seeing Watson smile really moved me.

He then handed me the candy he had brought: a strip of gummies from the same brand as the gummy bears. I could eat a whole big bag in one sitting, so after Watson saw that, he switched them to small packets for me, with no more than three a day.

What he was giving me now was extra for today.

The strip was made up of twenty button-shaped gummies in different flavors, and cherry was my favorite. This strip had the most cherry-flavored gummies, so it was clear Watson had taken care in choosing it.

"Sherlock said your adolescent hormones were out of balance and asked me to bring you some medicine. Do you think this will work?"

I burst out laughing.

I wasn't laughing at the first part. Sherlock was always saying odd things, and they were surprisingly scientific and accurate. Hormonal imbalances during adolescence really could cause mood swings.

I laughed because Watson was giving me candy as medicine.

Something I had dreamed of as a child had actually come true in this way.

"It's super effective."

Watson's expression relaxed. Seeing that my desk was covered in books on various subjects and that several windows were open on my computer, with papers stacked on top of one another, he couldn't help saying, "Didn't you only just start university? Is there that much work? Are you trying to finish a paper?"

At universities abroad, lectures generally threw out one big concept over two or three hours for students to digest, and tutorials provided direction for the additional knowledge they needed to learn. At most, four or five hours of classes a week were provided to guide students. In the second week, the class moved on to new material at its usual pace.

That certainly required students to be able to study on their own.

"I'm just used to reading like this. I like to spread the books out and read them together."

"Doesn't that make it too scattered?" Watson asked as he counted the books on my desk and bed. "Eight textbooks?"

Watson meant that it would be inefficient.

I spent quite a lot of time alone and had always read this way. I had thought other people read this way too, only to find out they didn't. Everyone was used to reading just one book at a time. I had also been criticized for leaving books scattered everywhere and told to put them away.

But I still liked reading this way.

So when I was alone, I liked to do it.

I didn't think other people would necessarily understand if I explained it, but Watson definitely would.

I said, "To me, reading is like listening to a symphony, looking at a landscape painting, or tasting good food. It's only when many things come together that you get a real symphony, a complete painting, or food with carefully balanced flavors."

I explained clockwise, going from the bed to one side of the desk, then the computer, and finally the other side of the desk. "If I were looking at a painting right now, take Hobbema's 'The Avenue at Middelharnis,' for example, these would be the bushes, the small trees, the towering alders, the cottage, the fields, and the other trees. Above this space is the sky. I think it only looks complete this way. To me, reading just one book can certainly give me an understanding of the painting, but it's only one part of it. If I only look at that part, it's like staring at the alder trees in the painting. Even if I might understand the heart of the painting, I'd still feel it wasn't enough."

Watson listened thoughtfully and didn't speak right away.

"..."

I instinctively studied Watson's expression.

I didn't really want other people to think I was a weirdo; I would rather say I had just left things lying around. After all, that was easier to understand and accept.

But Watson soon said, "It feels like a mind palace, but also like something else. I just find it very interesting."

"Really?"

I was pretty happy to hear that.

"What you said makes me feel like the way we usually read is like driving on a one-way street, with only one straight road. But yours is a wide avenue where you can go back and forth, and even turn around."

I still didn't think it was quite like that, but it worked.

"Then I won't keep you from studying. If you run into any difficulties, don't push yourself too hard."

"I'm not pushing myself."

Watson gently patted my head and said something Sherlock always liked to say about me. "Who told Lanny to be so fond of doing silly things?"

"Why are you saying that too?"

When I moved in, Sherlock actually didn't make many cutting remarks about me. After we'd spent more time together—not that long, about five or six days—he seemed to become familiar with my patterns of behavior and thought, and was always saying all sorts of things about me to my face.

For example, "Lanny's head must be an unattended warehouse, with chaotic thoughts piling up like scraps of paper blown in by the wind."

Or, "A passing glance at you reveals that your mind is like a book with its page numbers missing, with no continuity to be found between its chapters."

The simplest and most frequently used was "being silly."

Hearing that I was a little dissatisfied, Watson laughed instead.

Before leaving, Watson reminded me, "Remember to get to bed early."

I thought that was the end of it.

Then it was Sherlock's turn to check on me.

He usually didn't like to talk, preferring to express himself in a well-considered manner.

That was because Sherlock said people took in very little of the information conveyed through words. Say too much, and it would automatically be processed as nonsense and blocked out by the brain instead.

It was also because he was very good at taking action and following through.

That morning, there was a sheet of paper at my place at the table.

Sherlock gestured with his eyes for me to open it.

I wondered, Surely there won't be some encouraging words on it? Suddenly, I felt a little afraid.

I closed and opened my eyes, then unfolded it. There, unmistakably, was an application for a five-year work visa to stay in the UK, with "Sherlock Holmes" as the employer.

He had even signed everything already and was only waiting for me to write my name.

"You can stay in the UK as long as you like."

For many international students, the end goal of their studies really was to obtain the right to reside in the country where they studied. They also worried about their student visas expiring, their student status ending, and how difficult it was to obtain a work visa.

However, as soon as he finished speaking, I silently crumpled the paper into a ball.

From the start of term until now, all Sherlock could think about was me not going to school...

Sherlock's expression didn't change. He simply fell silent for a moment too.

Then he got up.

Went to find Watson.

And came back to quietly unfold the newspaper.

I sat to the side, staring at him coldly. "..."

After a while, Watson deftly gave me a biscuit. "Lanny, would you like to try this? It's delicious."

Since they knew how I felt now, I stopped holding it in.

I was so angry right now!

I bit into the biscuit furiously, taking my revenge on it as though it were Sherlock. But after one bite, I realized, "This really is delicious."

Forget it. Sherlock had always been like that.

It would take another ten-odd years for him to develop the high-level emotional intelligence Holmes had in the original stories.

For now, I just had to get used to it.

Watson smiled and greeted us. "Good morning, Sherlock and Lanny."

I felt that Watson from Sherlock had also been trained by the things between Sherlock and me to be attentive to the smallest details and considerate in every way. He was already a professional mediator.

This flat really couldn't do without Watson.

I also began to greet them properly. "Good morning, Mr. Holmes and Mr. Watson."

As if nothing had happened just now, Sherlock responded calmly in the peaceful silence, reading the newspaper as usual.

"Morning, you two."