Chapter 22

22. "May I come in?"

Once my life as an international student settled into a routine, the days seemed to fly by.

Before I knew it, I received my results for the university's first round of quizzes.

We had taken the tests in the fourth week of term. The results were now available in my student account.

My scores in the four subjects were 98, 97, 99, and 98.

First-year courses might be relatively easy, but a good start was half the battle.

Even when I heard that someone had gotten a perfect score, I still felt my results were a decent showing for all the work I'd put in lately.

Since the start of term, my life had been very full.

I grouped as many of my lectures and smaller classes together on the same days as I could, concentrating my time at university.

I generally made sure to set aside plenty of time to study in the evenings, too.

I spent the rest of my time helping Sherlock, as a way of paying off my debt.

Speaking of which, hadn't I borrowed money from Sherlock for various reasons? I currently owed him five thousand pounds. Sherlock said there was no telling when I'd be able to pay all of it back. He needed an assistant anyway, and he thought I was up to the job, so he offered to pay me for the hours I spent helping him and put the wages toward my debt. The pay was fifteen pounds an hour, above the UK minimum wage of ten pounds, so I could pay back 450 pounds a week, the equivalent of 4,800 yuan.

Sherlock also let me take time off for exams.

If I worked overtime in the evening, he paid me double for each hour.

I thought that although Sherlock didn't have that much income, he was always very generous. Sometimes, even when I worked less than twenty hours in a week, he automatically credited me with 450 pounds.

He said he couldn't be bothered to calculate it.

Sherlock wasn't widely known yet, and most of his work consisted of consulting for the police. He wasn't willing to take every case, though. As a result, he spent most of his time in the laboratory conducting experiments.

The most interesting thing lately was that I had taken part in the experiments on cigarette ash that Sherlock mentioned in the original work—an investigation of 140 different kinds of ash.

It was pretty interesting!

Now Sherlock could identify the variety, origin, and manufacturer of tobacco from the slightest differences between cigarette butts.

But during those few days, my whole body became saturated with the smell of smoke.

After being criticized at length by his landlady, Mrs. Hudson, and Mr. Watson, Sherlock bought me a gas mask as an extra precaution against breathing in too much secondhand smoke.

Really, we were just watching tobacco burn.

Even so, the situation was pretty funny.

The fifth week of term had just ended.

My quiz scores in the four subjects would count for twenty percent of my overall grades.

Honestly, I didn't know how good my scores were, and some people had gotten perfect marks. It was impossible not to worry. After all, I was afraid of losing my scholarship.

It was embarrassing to admit, but other people's scholarships might last for an academic year or longer. Mine had stricter conditions: I was only guaranteed a tuition waiver for the first semester. Whether I got one for the remaining semesters depended on my previous performance. If I did well, my tuition would continue to be waived, but if I fell just short, I'd have to pay the full amount like other international students.

Over twenty thousand pounds a year was a lot of money.

I couldn't keep borrowing from Sherlock forever.

I also knew that mathematics depended heavily on talent. That gap couldn't be bridged just by spending more time studying. I concluded that I still lacked a certain spark for mathematics and needed to broaden my knowledge.

During the fifth week's small-group discussion, we went over the test papers. Our tutor took the opportunity to tell us that, after the first quizzes, the new students had begun to adjust to university life. From then on, the pace of study would get faster and faster, and the time allowed for exams would grow tighter.

· The second round of quizzes would take place in week eight.

· Lectures would end starting in week ten.

Different faculties might have different schedules.

Most would begin independent revision in either week eleven or week twelve, depending on the faculty's schedule.

· After that came exam month. The entire university would enter its examination period, with exams taking place across the different faculties and majors, commonly called exam week or exam month. Once we'd finished all four exams, our holiday would begin.

Come to think of it, I hadn't run into Professor Moriarty since skipping his class in the second week. It was like two nonparallel lines passing through two-dimensional space: from a two-dimensional perspective, they appeared to intersect, but in fact each proceeded in its own direction, never crossing paths.

Although he didn't care about me, that didn't mean I didn't care about him.

I browsed the manga forum on schedule every day and had become familiar with the series' update pattern.

Generally, the manga updated monthly, though there was no fixed release date.

A preview would be posted a couple of days before the official update.

Lately, I'd been waiting to see when the preview would come out.

At the end of the discussion class, a student beside me asked what score I'd gotten.

There were only ten people in our discussion group. After just two weeks together, we could all recognize one another and match names to faces, even if we didn't usually talk.

Apparently, I was the easiest to recognize.

My name was too hard to pronounce, and I hadn't registered an English name. Whenever the teaching assistant called the roll, they would frown and stumble over my name. After a week, the tutor would either call me Lanny or simply meet my eyes and nod to indicate that my name had been called.

The student who had struck up a conversation with me was called Lucian Attwood.

He didn't usually like coming to discussion class.

The last time he'd spoken to me, it was because he'd heard from the others that my notes were very thorough. Before the test, he'd come straight over to borrow them, saying that several of his friends wanted to borrow them too and had sent him as their representative. I didn't think lending them out was a big deal, so I agreed without giving it much thought. He'd returned them properly after the test.

Lucian was somewhat frivolous and easygoing, but he did keep his word.

Before asking about my score, he volunteered his own. "Thanks to your notes, I got 72, eight points above the average."

I'd heard this quiz was quite difficult. The average was 64, and most students had scored below 60. Although I didn't know everyone's exact scores, I could use cross-multiplication to estimate that roughly two percent had scored above 90. So I felt the competition around me was pretty stiff.

"I'm glad they helped."

I didn't think there was any need to compare scores, so I didn't want to answer him.

Besides, it was obvious his question was just an opening

to start a conversation. He surely wanted to borrow my notes for the second quiz, or for another subject. So I was certain he wouldn't be upset if I didn't answer his question.

Sure enough, Lucian didn't press me for my score after hearing my reply. He only said, "I got a high score this time, and everyone else is jealous. They'll definitely want to get their hands on your notes for the next test. If you're still willing to lend them out before then, could you lend them to me first? I'll definitely repay you."

There wasn't anything I wanted in return.

"We'll talk about it next time," I said after a pause.

Lucian wasn't ready to give up so quickly and tried to say more.

I spoke first, cutting him off. "I lent them to you last time because I didn't think it was a big deal."

I paused, then asked him seriously, "Do you understand what I mean?"

If I did think it was a big deal, or if it struck me as inappropriate or made me uncomfortable, I wouldn't be as generous about lending them out as I had been last time.

I didn't know what he thought, but he looked sheepish and said no more. When he saw that I really was leaving without looking back, Lucian cupped his hands around his mouth and called, "See you in the next class."

He's ready to start taking classes seriously, I guess.

That was what I thought.

After leaving the discussion room, I headed to the library.

Usually, when I had classes all day, I would spend a little extra time studying at the library in the evening, digesting what I'd learned before returning to the apartment.

Also, some library books couldn't be borrowed, so I could only read them at university. I'd learned early on how to reserve a private study room at the library.

This time, though, I wasn't going to borrow new books. I was going to watch a recording of Professor Moriarty's lecture.

Of the four subjects, the one Professor Moriarty taught had the highest average score on the quiz.

I'd compared all four papers, and his hadn't been the easiest.

The lecture just before the quiz had only introduced the basics of topology and topological tools, yet the test included a question on the Whitney characteristic class, a classic topic in topology. It was graduate-level material. The homework hadn't introduced it either, yet I found that many people had done very well on that question.

I could only guess that Professor Moriarty had mentioned it off the cuff during the lecture and explained it so well that the students who attended had all remembered it.

I'd never attended his lectures, so I hadn't known about it.

Afraid that merely listening to the recording wouldn't make full use of my study time, I borrowed five books as well.

When I started the recording, I leafed through the books as I listened. But less than ten minutes later, I could feel myself turning the pages more slowly. By the time I came to my senses, I'd closed the book.

Professor Moriarty was that good a teacher?!

He explained difficult, complex, and abstract material in simple, accessible terms, using concrete examples from everyday life. It was very easy to understand and quite interesting.

From the background noise in the recording, I could also tell that Professor Moriarty's lectures were popular. Although the recording only showed his face and the projected material, students could be heard speaking too, and it was clear that there were a lot of them and the class was lively.

It was worth mentioning that although I'd only skipped Professor Moriarty's lectures, I had still attended the others. I knew that since the start of term, the number of students attending lectures had visibly dwindled. Yet the students in Professor Moriarty's class seemed to be growing in number, and there were even people auditing it. ()

I silently reflected that my head really had been full of water the first time I attended his class.

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Listening to Professor Moriarty lecture, it was hard to imagine him as a criminal consultant. His gaze was focused and profound as he explained complex mathematical concepts.

He was a suave gentleman devoted to knowledge, wasn't he?

So this was what Moriarty the Patriot was really like?

As I marveled, I went ahead and clicked on the next recorded lecture.

The video had been playing for less than two minutes.

I felt a gentle, very polite tap on the glass window behind me.

Although I was in a private study room, at least half the walls around such rooms were made of glass, so they weren't completely enclosed and hidden from view. This was to prevent students from doing anything inappropriate inside. Two of my room's walls were glass, so it was easy for others to see what the student inside was doing.

The room was unpopular because it lacked privacy, but that made it easy to reserve, so I liked it a lot.

After all, I had a clear conscience about what I was doing, and I got the use of such a large table for free. I thought it was a great deal.

The sudden sound gave me a start. When I turned around, I met Professor Moriarty's eyes. I felt ten years of my life vanish on the spot.

Worst of all, as I turned, his gaze dropped to the lecture recording on my computer screen.

Almost instantly, I saw a meaningful smile emerge on the immensely popular professor's face.

"..."

I wished the ground would split open and let me crawl straight into the crack.

I felt as though my face was about to catch fire.

Would closing the laptop now only make it more obvious?

My thoughts were in a whirl. Holding back my anxiety, I first pretended nothing was wrong and pressed pause.

Outside the door, Professor Moriarty went on to ask gently, "May I come in?"