The Unfamiliar Case of the Missing Child

"Actually, when I visited China, I had Chinese food at the highest level of official hospitality. It included three-delicacy dumplings made by a top chef, and the taste-" "Enough nonsense. Sit down and make dumplings!"

Mrs. Holmes had no patience for her eldest son's endless rambling. She pushed him into a chair, put gloves on him, and shoved a wrapper into his hands. She didn't care if he was the British government-even the king himself would have to sit there and make dumplings.

"So, how do I make them?" Mycroft first watched how everyone else did it and found that each person's method was different, and each made ugly dumplings in their own way.

"Beg me, and I'll teach you." Sherlock gave a wicked smile. He loved nothing more than seeing Mycroft at a loss.

"I'll teach you. Your brother's dumplings are hideous too, and he was laughing at John's just now," Mrs. Holmes said haughtily. Mr. Holmes chuckled under his breath, sounding as though he wholeheartedly agreed with his wife.

The smile vanished from Sherlock's face and appeared on Watson's and Sitangna's instead. They laughed until their stomachs hurt.

His own mother's disdain was just that cutting.

The early dinner was a warm affair, with smiling faces all around as everyone ate and drank. Watson and Sitangna took turns sharing entertaining stories about their investigations with Mr. and Mrs. Holmes, the two of them talking nonstop.

Sherlock laughed along beside them, occasionally sneaking the ugly dumplings onto Watson's plate and giving the pretty ones to Sitangna.

Even Mycroft's expression grew considerably warmer. After dinner, he took an old newspaper out of his briefcase and handed it to Sherlock. Since his younger brother was determined to investigate, he might as well start with what Mycroft could give him.

"There are things I never wanted you to remember, but now that it's come to this, perhaps remembering them would be for the best."

"What do you mean? What have I forgotten?" Sherlock stared at him intently, thoroughly puzzled.

Mycroft didn't answer. He turned and walked outside.

A deafening roar sounded outside. A helicopter had come to pick him up. After just one meal, he had to leave again, saying he had an important person to meet that evening. Mr. and Mrs. Holmes hugged him reluctantly; their eldest son had grown even thinner than before.

"The early 1990s? That was more than twenty years ago." Watson leaned over curiously to look at the yellowed newspaper.

"Missing child sought in the British countryside. Disappeared near Musgrave Manor on X/X, wearing a red plaid jacket. Whereabouts unknown."

"Isn't that my family's manor?" Sherlock searched the internet for related information, but found nothing.

It was the Redbeard incident.

Sitangna held her breath, afraid the others would notice something was wrong with her, and hurried off to the bathroom for an excuse to get away.

"Candy, according to the plot, shouldn't we only be around season two right now? How did we run into the Redbeard incident so much earlier?"

Sitangna hurriedly checked the plot prediction panel. Since Candy had returned from her upgrade, the panel's data had been improved considerably, with some more detailed functions added.

[Now you finally remember me? Hmph. I've been back for ages, and you've been so happy spending every day with them that you've forgotten all about me. Why don't you go spend the rest of your life with your Sherlock?]

Candy manifested an avatar. Since her upgrade, she had grown little hands. Though they were only tiny little things, they showed that her functions were gradually becoming more complete.

"Oh, come on, haven't I been working hard on the mission? Be good and help me check how the plot is developing."

[Ten points per use. And a reminder: plot projection may affect the real world. Are you sure you want to use it?]

The function was actually much like fortune-telling. No matter how accurate a living immortal was, if they predicted great fortune or disaster for you, but you learned about it in advance and deliberately tried to avoid it, you might get past that hurdle, only for the next one to be impossible to predict.

"Do it, do it. Don't you think things are moving too fast now? Besides, the moment I left the hospital a few days ago, I felt uneasy, and I couldn't check for any anomalies while you were away."

On top of that, this matter had somehow become connected to the ultimate figure, so it was only natural for her to be afraid.

"I knew the name Victor sounded familiar. I thought it was just someone with the same name, but I didn't expect it to really be him." She had arrived here before finishing her rewatch of Sherlock, so naturally she couldn't remember Redbeard's full name.

His name really was Victor Trevor, exactly the same name. Judging from the evidence, the person in the well was most likely the real Victor.

[The plot projection will take two hours. Come back and check later.] Candy withdrew her energy and went back to rest. The projection would use an enormous amount of data stored in her database to make its calculations.

When Sitangna returned to the living room, Sherlock and Watson were already drawing up a search route. They planned to set out early the next morning and look around the manor for traces left from twenty years ago.

Though the chances were slim, Mycroft certainly wouldn't have given him anything useless.

"He disappeared near my home. Was he my neighbor? The manor doesn't seem to have any adjoining properties. I have no memory of this incident or this person at all."

Mr. and Mrs. Holmes were already asleep. If Sherlock hadn't been afraid of his mother's temper, he would certainly have woken them to ask them about it.

"Maybe he was just visiting. The newspaper didn't mention the missing child's background, so can we find the contact information from this missing-person notice online?"

Since Brother Mycroft had decided to guide Sherlock toward recovering his memories, they might as well make that day come sooner.

"I found it just now, but the number was disconnected. They've canceled it, so there's no way to reach them."

"I've already called Lestrade and asked him to get the information from the police database. He said he'd have to wait until the people in the data oversight office came in tomorrow before he could check for me."

Sherlock had always acted swiftly and decisively. An investigation hampered at every turn like this one was giving him quite a headache.

"You look worried about me. Why?" Sherlock was as sharp as ever; no matter how she tried to hide it, he saw through her at a glance.

"It's nothing. I'm just a little hungry. I'll go see if there are any dumplings left." Afraid of revealing the plot, Sitangna ran off again.

"They're long gone. Mycroft took the last bowl in an insulated container. He acted so disdainful, but he ate them here and took some away too." Sherlock pursed his lips, thoroughly contemptuous of the way his older brother said one thing and did another.

"All right, then. Good thing there are still the little biscuits Mrs. Holmes baked." Sitangna opened the biscuit tin. Why was it empty?

"Mycroft packed those up and took them too. In the past, if I didn't eat them straight away, he'd eat every last one." Sherlock went to the snack cupboard in the kitchen and got her a packet of cookies.

"He loves sweets, so he was incredibly fat as a child, like a little lump of meat. Whenever I hit him, he never hit back, because he couldn't catch me at all."

"Hahahahaha, how fat was he? I can't imagine it at all." Watson took a packet too. They'd eaten dinner so early that he was hungry again.

There was a photo album in Sherlock's room, a thick volume documenting his and Mycroft's childhood.