3 – Meeting with Miss Holmes was the worst (3)
“Holmes……. Sherlock Holmes……. What a great name, kiddo.”
Just like rolling a piece of candy around in his mouth, Moriarty repeated the girl’s name several times, and at the end came out a pure admiration.
Nobody dislikes compliments, but the girl who introduced herself as Sherlock rather lifted her eyebrows as if she found such praise strange.
“It’s cool, ordinary people don’t usually say that. It may not be right to say this as a child, but our father is a quite unique person, so my siblings and I all have strange names. Really, isn’t Mr. Moriarty also a strange person?”
“Are you the only one who would dare to ask directly if I’m a villain?”
“….That was a small mistake! It’s wrong to begin with to find Moriarty suspicious!”
The girl raised her voice in response to Moriarty’s pointed comment. She tried to deny it and get angry, squinting her eyes, but it only seemed like a childlike behavior. Moriarty couldn’t help but laugh as the girl who seemed smarter than the silly adults suddenly behaved her age.
The angrier Holmes’ expression got, the more twisted it seemed, but objectively, Holmes’ expression was not threatening at all, but rather a cute childlike one.
“Alright, it could be my fault too, little miss. Want some candy? It’s lemon.”
“……You really are suspicious, Mr. Moriarty. Even if you try to bribe me with sweets, there’s no use, I’m going to keep an eye on you.”
“Here, put this in your pocket secretly. You can’t eat snacks because your mother doesn’t like it, right? Be careful not to swallow it, it could get stuck in your throat.”
Moriarty casually placed a few lemon candies on the table into Holmes’ hand. Mathematics always required loads of glucose, so he would regularly carry snacks or sweets with him.
Our Sherlock Holmes, although she pretended to be an adult, was indeed an eight-year-old girl. Moriarty was able to see the girl, whose eyes sparkled at the sight of the lemon candy in her hand.
Concerned that Moriarty might take it away again, the girl swiftly popped a candy into her mouth and her eyes sparkled as they tasted the sweetness.
The realization that she had acted childlike came to Sherlock a little too late.
Of course, although the girl was still a child, she was intelligent, always pretending to be an adult. Naturally, she intended to make an excuse to Mr. Moriarty by clearing her throat.
“Hmm hmm… it’s delicious! Ah, well… but it doesn’t seem to be poisoned. So I’ll graciously accept it. Even though it’s a bribe, I have no intention of complying with any of Mr. Moriarty’s requests! Is this candy sold in London? Wait a minute, how did you know about my mother’s business?”
The girl often enjoyed seeing the surprised reactions of the silly adults to her remarks.
But she couldn’t help blushing a bit as she unwittingly mirrored the reactions of those adults.
More importantly, the problem was how this man, clearly different from the foolish adults in his words and behavior, could have noticed such things.
Unfortunately, Moriarty did not give the answer the girl wanted. He simply shrugged his shoulders as if teasing the child.
“I told you, kiddo. Practice your intuition. Sometimes, when you just look, you see something, that’s called intuition.”
“….Tell me, how did you find out?”
The girl, who had been absorbed in the mimicry of the young protagonist catching the villain in the novel, now stared at Moriarty with wide eyes like a curious child.
Moriarty thought the girl was fun to watch, because each and every one of her reactions was so colorful. It was probably not just because of her name.
At least she certainly had something special about her.
Whether she knew his inner thoughts or not, or perhaps she was more curious about how Moriarty figured out about her mother, Holmes was stubbornly insisting like a child.
Unfortunately, such time couldn’t last long for Sherlock Holmes. A young maid named Sally, who took on almost all the house chores, came to take away the girl once she realized that the youngest troublemaker of the house was bothering the guest.
“Promise to tell me, alright? It’s a promise, Mr. Moriarty!”
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“Miss, you’re impolite to your brother Mycroft’s tutor, go back before your mother finds out!”
Without replying to Sherlock Holmes, who was being led away by the maid’s hand, Moriarty simply waved his hand and ended his first meeting with Sherlock Holmes.
“Is she the real Sherlock Holmes?”
Once he was alone again, silence filled the room. He seemed to already miss the lively atmosphere in the room due to the girl’s presence, even without realizing it.
Moriarty unintentionally voiced his question as he sat down.
It was a foolish thought. But considering what he had experienced, it wasn’t entirely absurd.
James Moriarty had memories of his past life. Not vast memories. He just had a slight awareness that he was reborn and had few fragmented memories.
What kind of person he was in his past life, or what kind of life he led, was also faint.
However, compared to such memories of his past life, the 19th-century Britain he was reborn into had several discrepancies with his memories.
Interestingly, the concept of reincarnation was not a delusional fantasy in this world. In fact, there were those who seemed to have been born again.
It was not just the story of frauds. It was a strange world where very rarely, wizards and witches existed, and even wandering werewolves often committed murders in the back alleys of London.
But generally, those people claimed to have lived as characters from their past life. Having come to Oxford University and gained more knowledge, Moriarty saw no examples of reincarnates who claimed to have lived in the future and were reincarnated in the past like him.
That factor had never been a problem in his life. He had a good head on his shoulders, enough to not necessarily tell about it since he was young.
There was no particular memory or knowledge which could be of any help.
Even though life here was boring, she wasn’t suicidal, so she was able to continue her life as James Moriarty, born in Ireland in 1841, without dying.
However, that was it.
Life was terribly boring. Fortunately, she had to struggle to survive before she was consumed by the boredom.
Her family used to own a small land in Ireland. But during the terrible famine, like many Irish people, they could avoid dying of starvation, but couldn’t prevent the family’s downfall.
Barely with the help of her relatives, they migrated to Dublin, and her family remained poor ever since.
She was smart enough to receive sponsorship, but she had to concentrate on mathematics. Moriarty herself didn’t particularly like mathematics, but she clearly had a talent for it, so she kept studying it to survive.
Yet, solving problems was definitely not her hobby, and she could feel it every day. Moreover, there was nothing else she could do.
Life was just too boring.
Accepting the job as a home tutor for the second son of the Holmes family was a desperate attempt to break through such boredom.
The main goal was money, but it is true that the name Holmes aroused her curiosity.
Once she heard the story about Holmes, she thought her name strangely suited it. However, this was thanks to one faint memory from her past life.
‘Professor Moriarty is Holmes’s arch-enemy, right? Then what about Lupin? Does it come separately?’
Like many people, she’d never read the novel featuring Sherlock Holmes herself. She had only encountered it indirectly through movies or television shows.
Nevertheless, she finally remembered that the notorious detective Sherlock Holmes’s enemy is called Professor Moriarty.
Since there were hundreds of people named Moriarty in Ireland, she never felt the need to associate herself with Holmes.
Of course, until she started teaching Mycroft Holmes, Moriarty thought she was being foolish to think such a thing.
However, now, at this moment, things were different.
Sherlock Holmes did indeed exist. Contrary to what she remembered, Holmes was a girl, still so young, but Sherlock Holmes existed.
It might be a crazy idea. But she intuitively knew that the child was Sherlock Holmes.
Although she teased Holmes the same way, it was one of the things she has learned while studying math: intuition had always proven to be a useful tool, giving her answers without a basis.
She couldn’t explain why. In fact, she might not be able to prove it at all. But it was certain. That child was Holmes.
Was she then the very Professor Moriarty?
Moriarty couldn’t provide a definitive answer to this. In fact, to be precise, she was reluctant even to confront it.
Of course, she was about to become a professor. Not only Professor Dodgson, who rated her talent quite highly, but also the school half-expected her to be appointed a new professor of the mathematics department soon.
Normally, she should have stayed after graduation and followed the process to continue working. But they recognized her as an exceptional case.
She was about to spend the next year to complete a small paper, probably a mathematical paper on the binomial theorem, present it at a conference, return to Christ Church College, Oxford, and be destined to teach dumb freshmen.
So, she was definitely going to become Professor Moriarty.
‘But I am not a criminal.’
Ms. Holmes, who was engrossed in adventure novels, mistakenly considered her, a stranger, a villain. Unfortunately, there was no Professor Moriarty, her adversary, in Ms. Holmes’s future.
Although she despised others and did not love them, she led a life as innocent as a child and far removed from crime.
More than anything, when considering London’s vagabonds, beggars, murderers, and drunks, it was clear that being a criminal was really stupid and boring.
Unless someone led them, London’s and England’s criminals were nothing more than a den of fools, each going their separate ways.
Therefore, her relationship with Ms. Holmes would probably end as a home tutor to her older brother during their childhood.
However, Moriarty was confident that she would be able to enjoy this year. At the same time, a particular thought crossed her mind instinctively.
It was a thought that she, being rational, would never have had.
“Do you want to take on the home tutoring job for……that child Sherlock, Mr. Moriarty?”
“Yes, she’s quite a unique child, since I don’t have much to do while I’m here, I want to teach her a few things, and of course, I don’t need any tuition for the lessons, ma’am.”
