Chapter 36

36. "Ding—The Comic Has Updated"

As the major exams approached, I spent far more time at school than at the apartment.

We generally only saw one another at breakfast, and it was hard for all four of us to meet at other times.

Sherlock didn't make things difficult for me during that time by insisting I help him, either.

Because I always kept my phone on silent, I didn't notice the comic had updated right away. By the time I did, Sherlock and Watson had solved the A Study in Scarlet case during the month I'd spent preparing for my exams.

I felt as though I'd missed out on a hundred million.

I could have watched Sherlock's first famous case unfold up close, and instead I'd been taking exams.

If only I'd known...

I'd still have had to finish my exams first. Maybe next time.

Luckily, Watson was willing to tell me the whole story. He happened to be writing his blog, so I sat beside him and listened while answering his questions. I was quite surprised as I listened. His questions covered a wide range of topics: besides details like the names and appearances of some Scotland Yard officers, he also checked forensic details with me.

"There are some things we can't go into too much detail about."

After all, Watson's article was going on a public platform. It was best not to provide overly detailed or highly workable methods for committing crimes. The focus should be on the detective's process of solving the mystery; collecting clues and developing deductions would be more appropriate.

"It wouldn't be good if someone used them for improper purposes."

Watson had graduated as a doctor of medicine, after all. He was intelligent and perceptive, and he wrote quickly and well, with very concise descriptive passages. I learned a lot about phrasing from his article, which helped me immensely later when I wrote difficult mathematics papers. I hadn't realized that yet, though.

Back to life after the exams.

The autumn term holiday started in mid-December, and classes resumed in early January.

I had more than half a month to rest.

It was the first day of my holiday.

But I got up late on my very first day.

In fact, my body clock had woken me at six that morning, but Sherlock had told me the night before to get up later, without saying why. Still, I knew that even if I didn't understand why, I only had to do as Sherlock said.

So I stayed in bed that morning, rereading the A Study in Scarlet comic.

By my reckoning, a new comic preview should be coming out in the next few days.

It was already the middle of the fourth month. The fourth case should be appearing.

The third episode had followed the first episode of the first season. Watson had his moment to shine at the end, shooting the culprit who had forced Sherlock to take poison.

6666!

It wasn't until the scene where the Scotland Yard officers came to investigate the apartment that I remembered I'd been home that day, too.

I'd been doing exercises downstairs at the time. It had been noisy upstairs, and Mrs. Hudson had even gone out of her way to ask them to keep it down for me. I hadn't imagined that seven or eight police officers were crammed in upstairs.

My only impression of the case was that, when the two of them came home that night, bringing the chill in with them and smiling, they found me hungry and rummaging through the fridge.

Watson asked if I wanted takeaway. They were

hungry too.

So we ordered Domino's pizza that night and got a small combo. Besides cola, it came with a chocolate lava cake dusted with snowy white icing sugar. It was warm and not too sweet, with just the right flavor. The three of us shared it with forks and finished it.

I ordered that chocolate lava cake on its own afterward. I didn't know whether it was all in my head, the chef's fault, or because the one we'd had that day had just come out of the oven, but it wasn't as good as the one we'd shared, and it was a little sweet. I never ordered it again after that.

Another interesting thing was that I noticed Watson's reactions.

Around me, Watson had always been a gentle, sensitive older-brother figure. When I wasn't there, though, his emotions were much more varied than I'd imagined, closer to the John Watson everyone knew from Sherlock—he could be impatient, and he was occasionally displeased with Sherlock.

I thought it was amazing that I'd seen this side of him in the comic.

Perhaps because a new character profile from Moriarty the Patriot had also appeared, Sherlock only knew at the end that someone dangerous was manipulating the course of crime in London; he didn't know Moriarty existed.

After rereading it several times, I went back to Professor Moriarty's part in the second episode.

The comic preview had mentioned that "time waits for no one." It turned out that referred to Lily Schneider, who was gravely ill and had little time left, which was why he made a desperate last stand. The comic told a lot about him. I hadn't paid him much attention the first time I read the story, but reading it now, I couldn't help feeling sad for him.

As for Moriarty—

Moriarty the professor was indeed an approachable scholar, but Professor Moriarty the crime consultant was terrifying, too.

When he appeared as a crime consultant, what made him frightening was how unfathomable he was. His eyes revealed a cold insight, as though he could see through your innermost thoughts. Everything he said and did conveyed control over how events unfolded and decisiveness. When he made use of Schneider's death, the Professor Moriarty in the comic showed none of the compassion I'd seen at Scotland Yard. Instead, he gave off an intense sense of pressure, as though this were merely one step in what he wanted to accomplish.

I even wondered whether what I'd seen at Scotland Yard had been an illusion, a part of his humanity I'd wanted to see, and whether I'd consequently misunderstood Professor Moriarty of my own accord.

This was because I still didn't understand the Moriarty the Patriot character profile. I knew Sherlock. Whatever choices he made, I could understand them. But the sensitivity Professor Moriarty had shown made the direction of everything uncertain.

Still, I probably wouldn't have much to do with him after this.

I'd previously heard some students who liked him asking what he would teach next.

Professor Moriarty had said he'd completed the teaching hours required by the university and planned to focus on academic research for the time being. I thought he probably intended to finish his book, Asteroid Mechanics, first, or do something else important.

That wasn't something I could concern myself with.

I dawdled until ten in the morning, feeling that I really had gotten up terribly late, and I was starving on top of that.

So, still in my pajamas, I went to the little kitchen on the first floor to make myself a packet of instant noodles.

I liked instant noodles that hadn't been

deep-fried—the raw kind. After a "ding" in the microwave, the noodles turned translucent. I liked them best that way: soft but not mushy, and very springy. When I wanted something a little better, I'd crack an egg into the noodles.

Eggs were fairly likely to explode when put straight in the microwave.

Before eating, I usually broke the egg up a little; generally, poking a vent hole was enough. Once, the egg bound the cabbage and carrots from the vegetable packet together and took on the flavor of the noodle broth. It tasted very much like steamed egg.

I liked eating it that way.

Whenever I ate instant noodles, the egg was the first thing I finished.

I planned to add an egg this time too, but I discovered that a human head had been placed where the eggs usually went in the first-floor fridge. The first-floor fridge had previously been used for ingredients; it was the last clean haven of food hygiene and safety in all of 221B Baker Street.

Now it had been occupied by a stranger's head too.

I felt awful. Even though I'd spent a whole term as his assistant, seen a pile of severed limbs in the second-floor fridge, and grown used to living with corpses—

Sherlock was really too careless.

Keeping it in the refrigerator compartment would only slow the decay; it could still get maggots.

It should have gone in the freezer.

I opened the freezer and found it stuffed full of Mrs. Hudson's frozen vegetables and meat. There really wasn't much room, but I still didn't think keeping the head in the refrigerator compartment would do. I didn't want to open the fridge one day and find it teeming with white maggots. So I put aside my desire to eat for the moment and decided to put it in a food storage bag first.

The food storage bags on the first floor were all small, so I carried the head, its eyes still open, upstairs. The door to the second-floor sitting room was still closed, and I figured a client might have come by. So I went in through the door on the other side of the kitchen and looked toward the sitting room as I did.

The sitting room was very quiet. Across from Sherlock sat a brown-skinned, middle-aged man dressed in West Asian clothing. Before I could see what the two were doing, Sherlock looked my way first and casually said, "Lanny, what are you doing?"

"I'm looking for a food storage bag." I was afraid the guest would be frightened if he saw the head, so I tucked it farther out of sight.

Sherlock's words made the guest look my way too, but before long, the two of them began talking in a language I couldn't understand, their voices calm and low. I started putting the head in a bag, but halfway through, I realized it hadn't been cleaned at all.

Its hair and face were both filthy.

I glanced over and, after making sure Sherlock and the guest wouldn't be disturbed by what I was doing, put it in the sink to give it a wash. But I was too careless and ended up closing his eyes.

A dead person's skin has no elasticity, and no matter what I tried, I couldn't pry his eyes open.

It felt terrible.

It was as if I'd spilled milk and could never put it back.

Just as I was wondering what to do, the middle-aged man in the sitting room suddenly shouted, pulled a long blade from somewhere, and slashed at Sherlock. Sherlock threw a book at him, then blocked with a cushion, fleeing all the way into the kitchen. I was still trying to pry the head's eyes open and couldn't react at all.

The man raised his blade high and charged at the three heads facing him—us and the severed head—like a gorilla spreading its arms, holding that pose toward us for more than three seconds. Then, without either of us saying anything, he let the blade fall from his hand with a clang and begged us for mercy in heavily accented English.

I instinctively looked at the uncrowned king—the head.

Then I saw that, because the head had gotten wet, the dried blood on it had somehow run all the way from the counter to the floor. I hurriedly wiped at the bloody water with my hand.

I discovered that the man opposite us had wet himself...

Before letting him leave, I made him clean the floor for me.

Sherlock, meanwhile, was pleased with himself, completely unaware of the trouble he'd caused.

How could I not know Sherlock might have orchestrated this? Knowing I couldn't possibly leave the head uncleaned, he'd deliberately put it in my downstairs fridge, then waited for me to take it upstairs at just the right time to deal with it and frighten someone in the process.

He really was awful.

I planned to tell Watson about this nasty deed when he came back.

I wasn't willing to keep dealing with the head, either.

After tossing the head to Sherlock, I found my eggs in the second-floor fridge, just as I'd expected. I went back downstairs to eat, and while I was waiting for the microwave timer to finish counting down, the doorbell rang again.

For some reason, I felt as though everything lively had discovered I was on holiday, immediately seized the opportunity, and decided to show up before me all at once.

A postman was at the door.

He took off his hat to me politely, then handed me a letter with my name on it. The contents of the envelope felt like stiff paper, making me think it might be an invitation. I also signed for a heavy Styrofoam box addressed to Sherlock.

I immediately tossed the invitation downstairs and carried the box to Sherlock.

My instincts told me Mycroft had probably sent Sherlock something delicious again.

I thought it might contain a big crab, a large lobster, or some delicious sea fish. But when Sherlock opened it, there was a pile of plump French snails inside, and they were crawling all over the walls of the box...

Oh no.

"I don't want to eat this."

As soon as I said that, my phone went "ding—" in my pocket.

That was the sound I'd set for new notifications from the comic forum!