Noon sunlight finally managed to claw its way through London's heavy coal smoke and haze, spilling thinly over the needle-like spires of Gothic rooftops.
But in the cloisters of University College London, the students—whether robed literature scholars or medical youths stinking of disinfectant—were all discussing the same name.
"Moriarty."
Overnight, it had infected the entire campus.
Lucian held a lunch tray featuring only fried fish and some nameless, gelatinous green mush that claimed to be peas. He nudged his plain spectacles higher on his nose and did his best to look like a transparent bookworm—someone born to be overlooked.
"Did you hear? Last night Inspector Lestrade was so furious he nearly swallowed his revolver!"
"More than that! They say Moriarty walked through the air—like Count Dracula!"
"Scotland Yard is a disgrace to taxpayers. Two hundred officers couldn't catch one man. That's the fourth time…"
Lucian kept his head down and lowered his presence as much as possible.
First: I did not walk through the air. That was a glider principle plus visual error.
Second: Lestrade didn't swallow his gun. He just threw his hat into a mud puddle in a rage.
Third: This damned fish could be salt-cured for ten thousand years and still wouldn't deserve to be this salty.
His goal today was simple:
Find a corner, choke down the inedible lunch, drift through the afternoon lectures—
Then go and make Professor Craig's life difficult.
Unfortunately, fate had other plans.
Under the famous old oak in the main courtyard, the crowd hadn't flowed past as usual. Instead, it had formed a strange vacuum ring.
Freshmen packed the perimeter. Even a few lecturers lurked, pretending to "just pass by." Yet no one dared approach the center.
Something that didn't belong to the campus's usual gray palette.
A girl sat casually on the backrest of a bench.
Yes—on the backrest, feet planted on the seat. A posture so barbarically ill-mannered that it should have been a scandal—yet on her it carried the effortless authority of a monarch.
Rare silver short hair shimmered in the light. A vivid red lollipop hung from her mouth. Her blue-green eyes scanned a copy of The Morning Paper with profound boredom.
Charlotte Holmes.
"Too stupid," the girl mumbled around the candy. Her voice wasn't loud, but it cut through the crowd with eerie clarity.
"Does the author of this article have sawdust in his skull? The phantom thief turning into lightning? Hah. That's magnesium powder combusting into high-frequency flash, coupled with the 0.1-second visual persistence blind spot of the human retina. Move two meters into a dead angle during that interval and you create the illusion of disappearance. It's basic physiological deception—an old trick even a goldfish could understand."
A wave of murmurs rolled through the students.
Lucian's chewing slowed—just a fraction.
As an orphaned transmigrator who had arrived in this parallel world as a child, Lucian had once wanted to meet the legendary detective.
But their class gap had been wider than Earth to the moon. Even after the famous detective enrolled at UCL—making her, on paper, his junior—Lucian still had no chance.
She had an exemption and didn't need credits.
Back then, Lucian had been hauling cargo at the docks to scrape together next term's rent.
So why was she here today?
Shouldn't she be at home dissolving coins with acid—or playing the violin?
"But Miss Holmes!" a male student dared to object. "Last night Scotland Yard's encirclement was supposedly airtight! How did the thief—"
"Airtight?" Charlotte bit down with a sharp crunch, shattering the candy. She tossed the paper aside, her expression mixing disgust with irritation.
"Last night, I was the one giving the orders."
Dead silence.
Lucian nearly choked to death on a fishbone.
No wonder the net had been absurdly efficient.
The commanding style that predicted every grappling hook landing point—he'd thought Scotland Yard had finally grown a brain.
If he hadn't clenched his teeth and purchased that S-rank skill at the critical moment, he'd probably be in a cell right now, investigating whether a spoon could dig through a foundation.
But the real question was—
Why would a proud consulting detective like her bother with a mere jewel thief?
Wasn't she only interested in complex murder cases?
It didn't fit what he knew of her.
"Unfortunately," Charlotte continued coldly, "the executors were a pack of primates with single-celled intelligence."
She pulled another candy from her pocket and tore open the wrapper with an impatient flick. Her gaze sharpened.
"I explicitly instructed Lestrade by telegram that the phantom thief is an extremely narcissistic egotist. Before fleeing, he would absolutely—risk or not—perform a curtain-call bow. It's pathetic vanity. All they had to do was shoot him in the leg at that moment."
"And what happened?"
"The idiots stared at him like mesmerized livestock while he bowed."
She sneered.
"By my deductive method, last night's thief is not only a liar—he's also a textbook case of histrionic personality disorder caused by severe maternal deprivation in childhood."
The freshmen held their breath, afraid to miss a word.
Lucian calmly put another piece of fried fish into his mouth.
Maternal deprivation?
He'd grown up in an orphanage. He didn't even know what his mother looked like.
"The evidence is obvious," Charlotte said, hopping down from the bench like a cat patrolling her territory—light steps, yet oppressive.
"Why wear a conspicuous tailcoat? Why use magnesium powder for flamboyant flashes? Logically, those extra actions are inefficient for escape—unless he subconsciously craves to be watched, craves to be affirmed."
Her eyes swept over the crowd, as if searching for an imaginary enemy.
"That kind of pathological vanity usually comes from a harsh, affectionless childhood environment. His mother either died early—or was a cold woman like a gargoyle. As he grew, he had to create trouble again and again just to obtain a pitiful scrap of attention, to prove he exists."
Lucian chewed his fish, expressionless.
Craving affirmation?
He wired money to the orphanage every month under an anonymous name.
"More than that," Charlotte said, voice turning even calmer, "he's also a typical sexual repressant."
The courtyard erupted.
A few girls blushed crimson and covered their mouths.
"His curtain-call bow is too rigid—every joint angle measured like it was set with a ruler. And the fact that he always sends advance notice? That kind of obsessive immersion in 'etiquette' is often a compensation mechanism for extreme insecurity and incompetence."
Then Charlotte delivered her final verdict:
"In real life, he's absolutely a pitiful creature who blushes just ordering food in public. He might not have even held a woman's hand. So he wraps himself in a cloak at night, pretending to be an emperor who controls the world—when in truth, he's nothing but a man-child hiding behind a mask, begging for comfort."
Admiring sighs burst from the crowd. Everyone marveled at the genius, as if they could already see the phantom thief crying in some corner.
At the edge of the crowd, Lucian stood holding his tray, perfectly calm.
Blush ordering food?
He always ordered the cheapest item. No thinking required.
Never held a woman's hand?
He had, once, during "playing house" at the orphanage.
Granted, he'd been eight.
Still—he had to admit:
Being analyzed so seriously by the smartest mind in London, even if it was pure criticism…
Was a strangely twisted sort of honor.
"…However."
Charlotte suddenly stopped. The delicate wings of her nose moved—so subtly it was almost invisible.
"There's something that displeases me."
Without warning—
Those blue-green eyes pierced through layers of onlookers and locked onto Lucian, who hadn't managed to slip away in time.
"Stop."
-------
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