#211: Back To Basic — Heavenly Demon Holmes: London's Subjugation

A gentleman is one who possesses Kung-Fu talent, yet always keeps his original intent.
-Jules Renard-

Norbury.

Even if someone who knew nothing heard this name, they would not think of anything beyond a place name.

Norbury is a small village located south of Greater London, where some fifty people live.

There are no notable luminaries living nearby, save Jenny Hill, the finest female comedian known as the ‘Queen of the Stage.’

So Norbury is not the sort of place that stays in people’s memory.

But to John Watson and me, that name held an entirely different meaning.

“A nostalgic name…….”

I recalled an old memory.

A wealthy widow living in Norbury.
And the gentleman who remarried her.

On his commission and searching for the culprit, I experienced for the first time in my life a situation where my deduction went completely astray.

The one I thought was the culprit and pursued was an innocent person with no crime at all.

That’s right. The dreadful crime I had imagined had never happened in the first palce.

Fortunately, the case ended without anyone shedding blood.

And from what happened then, I learned a great lesson.

Norbury was a kind of code we had decided upon.
A maxim to admonish myself by recalling a shameful memory of the past, so that I would not commit an error through arrogance.

‘Watson. If I ever overtrust my own ability, or fail to devote myself fully to solving a case, would you whisper <Norbury> into my ear.’

Watson remembered my request precisely.

Those seven characters written in Watson’s hand atop the copy of the typewritten manuscript were proof.

Believing in the faint possibility that I might have crossed over with memories of the world I originally lived in, Watson submitted the manuscript to The Strand Magazine and made his existence known.

“Indeed, you are exactly as I remember you.”

I forced my agitation down and examined once more the copy of the manuscript, which I presumed Watson had marked.

Then, all at once, a peculiar sense of incongruity seized me.

“……Why is John’s handwriting on a copy of a typewritten manuscript?”

Thinking about it, it made no sense.

What the editorial department attached to their reply should have been a copy, retyped on a typewriter after looking at what John Watson had submitted.

And yet, why would Watson’s handwriting remain on the copy?

“Hm.”

Had Watson watched the editorial office, slipped in, and written something onto the copy.

No. That possibility did not exist.

Considering Watson’s character, the moment he confirmed that someone had submitted a similar manuscript, instead of going through the trouble of slipping a word only we knew into the editorial reply, he would have gone straight to find the owner of the manuscript.

From the very fact that he mentioned Norbury, there was a strong possibility that John clearly remembered the time he spent with me at 221B Baker Street.

Then why had he not come to see me at once.

Whether I carried my memories could have been confirmed with a simple process.

“I cannot understand…….”

I thought for a long while, but with too few clues no answer would come, so I decided to focus again on the manuscript before my eyes.

For now, the priority was to properly examine the clues that existed.

How could Watson’s handwriting have remained on the copy?

“Don’t tell me—”

A thought suddenly brushed past my mind.

Why had I been certain this manuscript was a copy?

Simply because of the prejudice that The Strand Magazine’s editorial office would never attach the original of a valuable manuscript?

“……Was it the editor’s mistake?”

Watson selected one place name in the content of the draft completed on a typewriter and marked it to be revised to Norbury.

The only reason the original bearing his handwriting could reach me was that the editor who wrote the reply had mistakenly kept the original and the copy together and mixed them up.

If my guess was correct, before long a flustered editor would come here, sweating buckets, to retrieve the original.

The fact that they had even attached a copy and written a reply comparing the similarities one by one meant the editor approached his work with a sense of duty and sincerity.

It must have been an eager newcomer who made the mistake.

In any case, even if only a copy had arrived, I would have realized that John carried memories of his previous life, but the original arriving was a stroke of fortune beyond measure.

Because—

“Thanks to this, finding Watson will be far easier.”

From this manuscript alone, I could tell what ink John used, and what model of typewriter he used.

Further, I even succeeded in estimating when it was written, based on the condition of the paper and ink.

“It seems the manuscript reached the editorial office three months ago.”

The fact that the manuscript had not been serialized in the magazine pages in the meantime meant they were still negotiating other conditions with the editorial office, or there was some other story.

Even in the previous world, it took several months before Watson’s submitted manuscripts actually appeared in The Strand Magazine.

At first Watson grumbled that the fee was small, but later I recall him saying it was monstrously burdensome because the editorial office and publisher were offering too much.

Well, thanks to that, he would never have suffered from a lack of money during his married life with Mary Morstan, so it was a full-bellied complaint.

“He chose both a typewriter and ink better than what he used in his previous life. It must mean he has financial leeway.”

Fortunately, it seemed John was adapting well in this world.

Like me, he had returned from the future to the past, so he must have used that knowledge somehow to secure the funds he needed.

Since the medical system differed from the previous world, it would have been difficult for him to work as a physician.

And because his twin younger sister Jane had taken the identity of the army doctor, enlisting in place of John who ran away as if by fate, he would have had to find some other form of daily work.

‘I do not worship the occult, but it is a well-known story that astrologers and shamans treat twins as the same person…….’

I had crossed to yet another London I did not know, and even to a past before meeting Watson, so to say now that I could not believe in the existence of mysterious phenomena would be idiotic.

In any case, it was good news that Watson was living, well adapted to the European Murim.

However, if there was one thing that bothered me—

‘Jane said John ran away early……. It must be related to having memories of his previous life.’

From the circumstances, Watson too seemed to have gone through a process similar to mine and crossed over to London Murim.

The cause would be the pocket watch James Moriarty possessed.

After Moriarty and I died, in the process of Watson gathering the bodies, the watch that came into his hands must have wrought that strange harmony once again.

The problem was that, unlike me crossing over to London Murim of 1881, there were signs that Watson had gone back at least several more years into the past.

When, exactly, did John come to inhabit his other self in this world?

After he had grown somewhat?

Or from the time he was still in his mother’s womb together with his twin younger sister Jane.

“…….”

Questions followed one after another.

Why did Watson leave the arms of his family?

Was the reason he had to leave related to me?

Either way, if I did not meet John and hear it directly, I would not be able to resolve my questions.

He ought to come looking for me, so why had John still not shown himself?

“Wait.”

Could it be that, before I crossed over, the Sherlock Holmes of this world had already met John Watson?

They met, he confirmed that I did not carry memories of the other world, and left in disappointment.

“No. That cannot be.”

The memories that this world’s me possessed had been assimilated into me in full.

Yet no matter how I traced through those memories, I could not find even a shadow resembling John Watson.

That meant we had not yet encountered each other in this world.

The greatest proof was that Watson had mentioned Norbury directly in the manuscript like this.

But even in this case, I still could not guess why Watson had not come.

“He isn’t……angry, is he?”

I denied it aloud, but in truth this was what I feared the most.

No matter the excuses I had made, the truth didn’t change.

The resolve and actions I held that day were utterly selfish.

Because when I weighed Watson’s heart that waited for me against fate, I chose the latter.

When he faced my corpse, what did John feel?

‘But if you try to hide something from me again next time, then this cane will not sit still.’

Jane, his twin younger sister who carried a soul like his, said this to me when I acted high-handedly.

If it was merely that I had been caught hiding something, he would have laughed it off.

To think John would not have been angry upon learning that I sought mutual destruction with Moriarty was an utterly self-centered notion.

Perhaps John was taking revenge on me.

In the same manner, to me who left for an unreachable afterworld without a word.

“……Then am I being punished?”

Even if Watson truly held such feelings, I couldn’t hate him.

Because it was the price of sin I ought to pay.

The moment my thoughts reached that point.

‘You have never cherished anyone. It is always nothing but empty words.’
‘Following that grand calculation of yours, you have staked your own life as the wager.’
‘You believe everything that makes you up belongs only to yourself.’
‘What a selfish human you are.’

A voice the Papiyas in my head had once whispered, came back to life.

A dark aura leaking from the Memory Palace began to seep slowly into my blood paths.

“Damn…….”

Already worried about having come into contact with Pavlov’s Demonic Qi, last night during Breath Control I had entered my mental image and checked whether the seal on the doctor persona had loosened.

The chess pieces we exchanged one move at a time inside the mental image in Buckingham last time were still holding their positions.

The black book in which the bastard was sealed was not left with its cover open like last time, either.

In the meantime my internal energy had increased and my realm had risen little by little, so I had been able to keep the seal even when facing dense Demonic Qi.

“Was I mistaken?”

I had been arrogant, thinking I could keep suppressing the doctor persona like this, but it seemed I had been thinking wrongly.

I let my guard down.

It was not something that ended with merely keeping the seal.

-Thump!

The Demonic Qi racing along my blood paths began to gnaw into my left arm little by little.

Just like last time, today too my feelings toward John pulled the trigger.

“Damn it, if this keeps up……!”

-Gogogogogo!!!

A dark crimson aura, utterly different in both color and nature from the ashen internal energy I usually handled, wrapped from my left shoulder down.

My left hand, at last slipping free of control.

A fragment of the doctor persona, pried loose through the seal, was handling that alien Demonic Qi with intense Intent.