Chapter 26

"Thank you for giving me this opportunity"

Watson didn't return to the flat until after ten that night.

I wasn't particularly anxious as I waited. Emotions were short-lived to begin with. To me, they were like the foam on a beer: give them a little time, and they would disappear on their own.

The main reason I kept waiting was that I wanted to talk to Watson about school.

I read through the latest comic update over and over.

I wasn't sure when Moriarty intended to resolve the "case."

While I waited, would I suffer another unexpected attack?

What was the best way to act? Could I resolve the problem and get Professor Moriarty to let down his guard around me?

I thought it over again and again.

Suddenly, the crisp jingle of keys came from outside the door.

Before I could get to my feet, I met Watson's eyes. He looked slightly surprised to see me sitting on the steps by the entrance. Although surprise showed on his face, his smile didn't diminish in the slightest.

"Lanny."

Watson had been humming a little tune on his way home, though I didn't know what it was. When he called my name, even his voice carried the rhythm of the music. I couldn't help feeling happy along with him.

"You're in a good mood today, Mr. Watson!"

He must have had a productive day; he couldn't hide the smile on his face. Even though he was startled and puzzled when he came in, the corners of his mouth never dropped. Watson didn't say why he was happy or ask why I was sitting at the foot of the stairs. Instead, he quickly pulled something from his pocket. "Lanny, look what I brought you."

Watson opened his hand to reveal a little after-dinner treat from a Chinese restaurant—a fortune cookie, also called a divination cookie.

"The owner said you all love these little cookies."

They really were interesting things.

Apparently, billions of these little cookies were eaten every year, and they were primarily produced and sold in the United States.

I'd heard of them before, but I'd never eaten one.

It wasn't a matter of regional differences. China simply didn't have this kind of snack. Americans had invented the little cookies specifically for sale to Chinese restaurants, based on the practice at Japanese shrines of putting fortunes inside cookies. I'd seen them in plenty of British and American films and television shows too. Whenever a Chinese restaurant came up, these little cookies were bound to appear.

They looked rather like semicircles formed by two overlapping hyperbola-shaped wings. The fold in the middle was the point where pressure was applied. Snap one open, and the fortune hidden inside would pop right out.

It topped the Daily Mail's list of Chinese foods that baffled Chinese people most. To foreigners, it was the most Chinese of foods, yet it had nothing to do with Chinese culture itself.

Either Watson had misunderstood or someone had misled him, but it was as though my habit of splitting hairs had been cured. When Watson urged me, more excitedly than I was, "Do you want to see what it says inside now?" I readily played along.

"Okay."

I obediently unwrapped it and broke open the fortune cookie. I handed half to Watson first, and after he took it, I stuffed the rest into my mouth.

The cookie, baked with butter and vanilla, didn't taste too bad.

The texture reminded me of egg rolls, crisp but a little thicker, so it didn't crumble all over the floor when I ate it. It was thinner than luozai biscuits, though—the ones we usually called cat-ear biscuits.

As I ate, I unfolded the slip of paper. It was a very small slip.

"'The best way to predict the future is to create it.'"

I froze. The coincidence was so striking that, as if under the influence of the Barnum effect, I felt the words were perfectly apt, exactly right.

When Watson leaned over for a look at the words himself, I handed him the slip.

We walked up the stairs as we talked rather than staying in one place. It was already past ten, after all, and everyone was getting tired. Standing around just talking was a waste of time.

Our footsteps went tap-tap as we walked. Watson nodded and said, "That's pretty good. It feels very fitting."

I felt the same way.

Still, fortune cookies generally didn't contain unlucky messages.

Watson went on with a smile, "We went to a Chinese restaurant today, and seeing this snack reminded me of you. I thought I had to bring one back for you."

As soon as he said that, I was so touched that I wondered if I should just change majors, study medicine with Watson, and work alongside him in the future. My grades were good enough, anyway, and I could transfer from my current major to another.

In fact, I hadn't chosen mathematics because I loved it so much that I was absorbed in it and couldn't do without it. I had too many options, so I simply followed whatever other people recommended. I thought many Chinese students were much like me: what they did might not be what they liked best, and they might even hate it, but even so, they would still want to do their best.

That had to do with the idea of "enduring hardship" in Chinese educational philosophy.

Since ancient times, China had held that studying was not itself an activity for pursuing one's interests or finding happiness. The idea was that only by enduring the greatest hardships could one rise above others. In a sense, results were valued above all else.

Still, it was only a passing thought.

If I really did it, Watson would surely think I was strange.

It wasn't worth it.

"Thank you, Mr. Watson."

Watson really did bring me different things to eat every time he went out.

For example, early in the school term, when I was angry because Sherlock kept thinking I wasn't going to class, he had given me a chocolate wafer.

To be honest, I didn't like wafers. I thought they were brittle and crumbly, but before he handed it to me, I hadn't noticed that it was one.

Even now, I remembered that it was a German Knoppers chocolate wafer.

It had a nice weight to it in my hand and gave me the impression of a whole-grain biscuit. I'd always thought wafers were very light, but this one felt a little more substantial. The chocolate filling was sweet and rich, the hazelnut flavor strong and fragrant, and the texture crisp. It was the best wafer I'd ever eaten.

It healed me for the whole day.

Hearing me say that, Watson held the staircase and laughed. "There's no need to be so polite."

"But other than thank you, I don't know what to say." I thought for a moment and offered an idea. "Then next time I'll help you

wash the dishes."

Everyone in the flat took turns doing housework with Mrs. Hudson, except for Mr. Sherlock, the main tenant, who never lifted a finger. Mrs. Hudson said helping with the housework could earn us a modest reduction in rent, so I was very diligent about it.

Watson was immediately amused.

"If you could recommend some authentic Chinese restaurants, I'd be very grateful." He paused, then said, "Sarah likes Chinese food."

I had a vivid impression of Watson's first date in Sherlock.

That episode's background had to do with Chinese culture, and Watson had gone with her to watch the thrilling acrobatics of a Chinese circus. During the performance, Sarah was frightened and instinctively grabbed Watson, and the two quickly grew closer. But afterward, they became caught up in a struggle with the circus. The suspension bridge effect that arose from being forced into a life-or-death ordeal then scared her away outright afterward.

I quickly agreed.

Seeing that he was about to go back and rest, I hurriedly asked, "Mr. Watson, there's something I wanted to ask you about. May I come back to your room with you?"

Watson agreed without hesitation.

By then, we were already at the door to the second-floor sitting room. Inside, Sherlock was playing the violin with complete concentration. Sometimes he thought by playing. He was so skilled that even I, someone who didn't enjoy instrumental music, could appreciate the beauty of classical music. Sometimes, though, he played as if he were sawing through a tree, completely unaware of it.

To deal with that, I'd bought three pairs of earplugs, one for myself and the others for Watson and Mrs. Hudson. Mrs. Hudson said she didn't need hers, though, because her ex-husband, whom Sherlock had helped send to prison, snored even more loudly when he slept at night. She felt Sherlock's playing didn't bother her at all.

Thinking about it, that made sense.

If she really couldn't stand it, Mrs. Hudson would either have moved out or thrown Sherlock out. She wouldn't still be living with him.

Watson and I hadn't yet reached that level of enlightenment, however, and still needed earplugs.

To get back to Watson's room, we had to pass through the sitting room where Sherlock was.

We entered the sitting room together. I noticed Sherlock's gaze follow our path for a few steps. His hands didn't stop, though, as if his body and the music had become one.

I could tell from the music that Sherlock was in a pretty good mood. Watson was in a good mood too, and greeted him first. "Good evening, Sherlock."

Only then did Sherlock raise his bow and put the violin aside. Without any transition, as if they had been talking all along and had now casually started another topic, he said, "I prepared dinner for you too."

Watson's eyes widened at once. "Sherlock, I thought I said I wasn't eating at home."

Sherlock didn't rush to explain. He went on, "Lanny threw your portion away." Afterward, he raised his chin slightly in my direction, rather as if he were making me ask myself, "Look at the stupid thing you did."

He was openly playing the victim and making the first accusation.

After he said that, Watson looked at me in confusion. I met his gaze and said frankly, "Mr. Holmes was going to feed you kangaroo meat. It really didn't taste very good."

Afraid he might think it was a waste of food, I added, "But I ate all the vegetables on the plate."

From those few words, Watson quickly understood what had happened. "Thank you, Lanny. You did well."

See!

As soon as I got his answer, I glanced over at Sherlock.

Sherlock happened to be looking at me. His expression was noncommittal as he raised the violin to the hollow of his neck again and resumed playing where he had left off, as though nothing had just happened, aloof and unruffled.

"..."

Before I could feel much else, Watson reminded Sherlock, "Sherlock, don't feed Lanny strange things. What if he gets an upset stomach?"

Exactly.

"He doesn't have the money to go to the hospital."

"..."

Did Watson already understand my poverty that thoroughly?

It was true that I still had hardly any savings. I'd also tried calling China several times. After all, I thought, since I'd managed to enroll and study here without trouble, perhaps my family had also been incorporated into this world. But I still hadn't received an answer. After trying several times, I had accepted that this was the world I'd come to after death.

Now every day I lived was a bonus.

Sherlock didn't reply, continuing to play the violin in an orderly manner. Just when we both thought he wasn't going to explain and the conversation was over, Sherlock spoke. "It wouldn't come to that."

Sherlock Holmes could go to extremes whether he chose to speak or not.

Sometimes he talked at length like a born orator.

At other times, he was so sparing with words that no one knew what he was thinking.

In any case, his reply showed that he had been listening to Watson, so Watson didn't ask for more and invited me to his room to talk.

Only after I entered Watson's room did I recognize the piece as "Swerve Lightly." The music flowed beautifully, like a lovely prose poem. It surrounded us as Watson and I talked, somehow giving me the feeling that Sherlock was everywhere, while conveying his detachment as he remained alone in his own world.

I had to admit, Sherlock really was an extraordinary person.

Watson's room.

My favorite thing in Watson's room was the bookcase, which was packed full of professional books.

Every time I came into his room, the bookcase drew my attention first. I was especially fond of those books, thick as bricks. Whenever I sat in an environment like that, I felt the joy of enjoying life and peace alone in an igloo built from blocks of snow.

It was a unique sense of peace and contentment.

Watson looked at me and asked with a smile if there was anything he could help me with.

Since I'd said I wanted to talk in his room, he naturally understood it to be a subject for the two of us alone, so he closed the door as well.

His thoughtfulness in knowing where to draw the line and his well-judged quick-wittedness were aspects of him that could sometimes be hard to perceive in the original work or the detective drama. After all, Sherlock shone so brightly that Watson seemed ordinary by comparison.

In fact, Watson's résumé was full of "King's..." experience, and the skills he had mastered were enough to get him an offer from any clinic or hospital.

Before Watson came back, I had already decided what to ask.

I said, "A classmate told me today that there used to be a rumor in the mathematics department, but talking about it is forbidden at school. I was wondering whether you'd heard a similar story, Mr. Watson."

That was a lie I'd made up.

I wasn't afraid this kind of lie would be exposed, so I was quite at ease.

What had given me the idea was the scene in the comic preview where Moriarty "hallucinated" a student gunning down other students.

I thought that, since he wasn't the instigator behind that inhumane, indiscriminate attack, something like it had very likely happened in that space before. The comic had therefore used the cinematic technique of montage to let readers understand the profound and painful story behind the case in a short time, without disrupting the pace of the present story.

I had also done some research online, but found no information about a similar incident. Searching for related keywords did turn up plenty of school legends about hauntings and forbidden places, though, such as a particular classroom, a staircase in the library, or a storeroom in the medical school that you must never visit.

"The mathematics department?"

As an older student from the same school, he was sure to know more than I did.

Watson thought for a moment, then said pensively, "It's not that I can't tell you."

That immediately piqued my curiosity. I had a feeling I was about to learn more about the tragedy.

"When I was still an undergraduate, there was a shocking shooting at the school's L Teaching Building. No fewer than eight or nine students were killed or injured, and among them was a highly respected elderly mathematics professor who had spent more than half his life teaching. He had retired long before, but he loved teaching, so he continued to teach at the school. I heard that the school's president had once been his student too. The shooting became a scar the school was reluctant to reopen. At the time, the school expressly forbade all students from discussing the details of the tragedy and prohibited anyone from using it as a topic of public conversation, hoping to bury it in history."

It all sounded so unbelievable. When the events in the comic overlapped with events in reality, the shock of breaking through dimensions was palpable. The most frightening part was that it had happened so close to me.

Although I'd had a premonition, I couldn't help being affected when I actually heard the news.

Judging by the results, the school had indeed succeeded in suppressing information about the tragedy. At least now, no one brought it up publicly of their own accord, and there was no information about it online.

I could understand the school's decision to suppress the information.

Leaving conspiracies aside and speaking only of practical realities, forbidding discussion of a tragedy was important, because it involved many complicated issues.

After all, too many people had died unjustly. Public discussion of the tragedy would cause the victims additional pain and harm, and some people might also introduce baseless false information or exaggerate the facts when discussing it.

"After the shooting, the school rebuilt the building. By my second year, the original teaching building had already been rebuilt, but since I was in a different department, I didn't make a special detour to see it." Watson looked at me and asked, "Where do you have your classes?"

"In the largest classroom in L. It's about two stories high."

Hearing that, Watson instinctively lifted his head. "A semicircular lecture theater, right?"

"Yes."

The way he asked, I knew that the place I went to every week had once been a murder scene. Thinking about it was really exciting.

"Do you know why it's the only lecture theater and why it was built nearly two stories high?" Watson asked in return.

I was now fully a spectator waiting for gossip, waiting for Watson to continue.

"The mathematics department originally used an old building. The outside had Victorian-era brick walls, but the interior was mainly wooden. During the tragedy, bullets went through the first-floor ceiling, and there was blood splattered on it too. It was horrifying, so the school simply removed the ceiling and turned it into a large lecture theater spanning two floors."

Hearing that, I couldn't contain my curiosity. "Do you know who did it?"

Watson said, "The student who did the killing was arrested by the police at the scene. He also tried to shoot himself during the incident, so there was hardly any need to investigate who the killer was. But as for his motive... different departments have different versions."

For some reason, that last sentence suddenly struck me as funny.

Really, everyone loved gossip.

Since it was a tragedy, though, I quickly composed myself and asked seriously, "What's the most widely circulated version?"

Watson thought for a moment. "First I'd have to tell you about that student."

"That student was actually two years ahead of me. You know how it is: at university, as long as you've taken the prerequisite subject, you can choose second- or third-year courses in your first year. Some people start taking advanced courses in their first year to make their third year easier. Then, by their third year, they take first-year courses instead. And since you only need enough credits to graduate, the order doesn't matter."

As Watson talked more, he began to go into greater detail.

I knew exactly what he meant. I planned to start taking advanced courses next semester.

"One of my seniors was in the same seminar as that student. He was majoring in psychology, while the mathematics student was taking psychology as an elective. Before anything happened, my senior said that most students who chose psychology had something wrong with them, and that it was especially obvious in the mathematics student's case."

"Once, during a seminar, he suddenly stood up, walked over to the corner, and slammed his forehead straight into the wall with a bang. There weren't many people in the seminar, so everyone noticed any movement, let alone someone suddenly banging his head against a wall. Even the teacher couldn't react immediately. He didn't just hit it once; he did it two or three times in a row. The teacher was a psychology instructor, after all, and had experience in clinical psychology, so he immediately directed the students to hold him down. After the student was pinned to the floor, he let out all kinds of roars and began cursing. His body went into spasms, his eyes rolled back, and he convulsed on the floor."

"Epilepsy?"

Watson shook his head. "Other people suspected that at the time too, but tests showed it wasn't, and the student had no history of epilepsy."

"Most people said the pressure in the mathematics department was too great, and that psychological stress had caused an anxiety attack, triggering convulsions and out-of-control behavior. The student had already been well known at the school when he enrolled. Like you, he was an overseas student, from Europe."

Suddenly being mentioned, I stiffened.

"His grades in his major were excellent, and his English was very good too, but he was a loner who rarely interacted with people and had no friends he got along with. Maybe it was because he was far from home, or maybe something happened to his family. The professors had originally been grooming him as their most promising student, but starting in the second semester of his first year, his grades plummeted and wouldn't come back up. His personality suddenly changed. He thought everyone was out to harm him and accused people of laughing at him behind his back. The people around him became even more reluctant to approach him. After that, throughout his second year, he was even more like a ghost, wandering around the school in the middle of the night. By his third year, his mental state was already showing signs of instability."

Watson answered my original question again: which version had spread the furthest.

"And so, everyone there that day said he had gone mad."

As soon as he said that, I couldn't help shivering. The blood in my veins began to grow cold.

The comic had brought the incident up again, which meant the case was nothing like what the students thought.

Maybe he really had gone mad, but someone had driven him to it.

I remembered something I had once read, though I had forgotten where.

It said that people were all too easy to destroy.

"A person can remain normal only because they live in a normal environment, not because they are normal themselves."

My heart grew heavy as I wondered what information Moriarty had that made him bring this case back into the story.

Watson seemed to notice my mood and tried to put me at ease. "Don't overthink it. That's all in the past."

Yet the unease in my heart only grew stronger. I couldn't stop thinking about Moriarty's goals and plans. But I couldn't voice my suspicions, so I just nodded along.

Watson paused, then his voice sounded beside my ear. "Speaking of which, Lanny, do you have any friends at school?"

After hearing that story, how could I not recognize the concern behind his question?

I didn't even dare tell him now that I had no interest in socializing and hadn't made a single friend in over a month at school.

A bright smile appeared on Watson's face. He seemed to have a good idea.

"Shall we go to that restaurant you wanted to eat at today, tomorrow? Invite whichever friends you want. I'd like to meet them too."

I swallowed instinctively. This put me in a difficult spot.

"Okay?" Watson looked at me eagerly.

Under Watson's expectant gaze, I nodded painfully. "Okay."

Watson immediately broke into a delighted smile. "Lanny, you're so wonderful, I'm sure you have lots of friends. Invite a few more and tell them your senior is treating them to a meal."

"..."

What, I couldn't bring just one?

I had thought Moriarty's affairs would keep me awake, but instead, it was what Watson had said that made it hard to sleep.

The next morning, I immediately went to find Lucian, who had asked me for exam notes yesterday.

He and I shared a classroom for one of our large lectures.

He was the only student I was relatively familiar with at the moment, though I had barely spoken to him. If I abruptly asked him to help me find people to pretend to be my friends, he would probably refuse, and he might even mock me. But I really didn't have the money to hire a few actors as stand-ins.

As soon as class ended, I stopped him and got straight to the point.

"Lucian, I need some people to be my friends. Can you help me out?"

As I spoke, I showed Lucian my scores from the quizzes in my four subjects.

When Lucian saw me pull up my scores, he immediately craned his neck and bent his head, staring intently at my computer screen. I knew he was checking whether the information was correct.

When making a deal, it was best to be as transparent as possible. Only then could I earn the other party's trust and make the deal a success.

I had never done this before, so I didn't know how likely I was to succeed.

I watched him read my score report carefully for a long time without saying a word or offering an opinion, and I grew increasingly uncertain. Even so, I looked at him earnestly, steadied myself, and asked in return, "Do you want to get high scores?"

Suddenly, Lucian's hand visibly trembled. Then, without hesitation, he gripped my hand tightly. His eyes were full of gratitude and determination, as though at that moment he had found a direction to move forward in. "I'm really grateful you're giving me this opportunity! I'll do my best!"

His voice was full of conviction, as though he were making a promise to himself.

I couldn't help feeling puzzled. His reaction seemed a little unexpected.

Had I done something wrong?!