Italian Sculptor (2)

An Italian’s chivalry is an anger-filled fit, a German’s chivalry is a moment of intoxication, and a Spaniard’s chivalry is the expression of pride.
-Stendhal (a Frenchman), <De L’Amour: L’Amour Est Une Guerre, Sword Debate of Romance ~the life-and-death romance duel of Heavenly Kung-Fu Body~>-

Once I made up my mind, my body heated up, and I couldn’t stand it.

While Watson calmed her excitement, I did not want to sit still and simply wait.

The time was still eight in the evening.

/<I’ve stepped out for a moment.>

I wrote a short memo and left it on the sitting room desk, then left the house.

Before leaving the boarding house, I did not forget to drink the gruel Mrs. Hudson had prepared in the kitchen and fill my hunger.

I set out with the Heavenly Demon Cane in my left hand, and the Unicorn Salamander’s Horn wrapped in cloth in my right.

I hailed a carriage on Baker Street and headed for Stepney in the East End.

Jane Watson had been shut in her room for a full hour, practicing wall-gazing. No, she was simply banging her head against the wall.

“Get out of my head!! Uaaaaah!!!”

While her housemate, Sherlock Holmes, truly searched for a way to lock away the wicked intent sealed in his head even more firmly, Watson as well was making a desperate effort to erase the afterimage that had sunk its roots deep into her brain.

Of all things, she had memorized an entire secret tied to the Vatican’s main source of income.

She could not understand why her cursed memory only exploded with latent potential at times like this.

Her head was already a mess after hearing that the manuscript she had written with all her might had been returned by the magazine for a bizarre reason, and that Holmes was an Demonic Kung-Fu practitioner.

And now even a secret manual that might get her cut down by an assassin sent by the Vatican if she spoke of it had joined in, so the headache would not stop.

“Ah, I’ll be killed by the Inquisitors. They’ll pile the firewood high and set it alight like a medieval witch hunt…….”

Curiosity kills more than cats.

Why did she, a mere retired soldier, have to endure such unbearable trials?

“O God, can you not make me a fool for just today. No, you could even knock me out until tomorrow morning.”

Watson closed her eyes and prayed earnestly.

She didn’t know whether the Heavenly Father would favor the Vatican Zion Clan’s Lily Swordsmen, devout Catholics, or favor her own hand, not exactly that of an exemplary Anglican, and the uncertainty made her anxious, so she spent three seconds considering whether she should reduce the money she poured into gambling and use it for relief of the poor.

But only for a moment.

“Damn it! Isn’t all of this your fault, Holmes!”

Watson’s anger turned straight toward her housemate.

It stung that Holmes did not tell her important facts, yet when he did tell her secrets so enormous, it was a burden.

This was all because Holmes had turned the Zion Clan into an enemy.

No matter that it was for Her Majesty the Queen and for Britain, to provoke the Zion Clan was not sane.

If, by chance, they hired the Unorthodox forces in Italy proper and targeted 221B Baker Street, what did he plan to do then?

Of course, Her Majesty cherished Holmes and would send people to guarantee the safety of the three living here, but one never knows how matters will turn.

Watson had already crossed the line of death several times on the battlefield, and she was not the type to shy from blood-boiling adventure, but that didn’t mean she was the sort of Kung-Fuist who welcomed an assassin pressing a blade to her neck while she slept.

“If only Holmes had at least taken gold from Her Majesty Queen Victoria…….”

It was all the more infuriating that after all that suffering, they had gained no real benefit.

Holmes seemed to have something in mind, and to be hoping that his standing in London Murim would rise, and that was something Watson fervently wanted as well.

But separately from that, Watson inwardly wished that Holmes would gain sufficient financial compensation.

In the end, what remains in hand is Kung-Fu and money.

The Home Secretary had given a gift of money a few times, but in Watson’s view, it was only a paltry amount compared to her housemate’s achievements.

Holmes had to receive a higher evaluation.

She could not understand why the lofty ones priced London’s one and only genius Kung-Fu consulting detective so low.

“It’s not as if Holmes takes commissions indiscriminately, grabbing anything that comes…….”

From what she had observed these past months, Holmes seemed to take fairly expensive fees from the wealthy, but for the poor he worked for only a few coins.

If someone who knew nothing heard this story, they would think Little Heavenly Demon Sherlock Holmes had the proper bearing of a gentleman, but the truth was a bit different.

After hearing the client’s story, if he judged the case itself uninteresting, Holmes was the sort to refuse flatly regardless of the amount the client offered.

A Kung-Fuist who lived purely for his own intellectual and Kung-Fu enjoyment (with a touch of duty added).

That was the identity of the man named Sherlock Holmes as seen through Jane Watson’s eyes.

“Come to think of it, he seems indifferent to honor as well…….”

Holmes had never cared what newspaper reporters babbled about him.

He reacted to humiliating labels like “amateur detective” written in articles, but otherwise he seemed to have no particular thoughts.

“……In the end, do I have no choice but to look after him from his side.”

Watson thought of the typewriter on the sitting room desk.

That the work to make Holmes’s true worth known to London’s citizens had been wrecked from the start was certainly disappointing, but she couldn’t give up like this.

Watson closed her eyes for a moment, calmed herself, then came back out to the sitting room.

“I’m a bit better now. Holmes, there is something urgent I must say to you—”

In the sitting room, and in the bedroom.
Holmes was nowhere to be seen.

On the note left on the desk, a single short line said he would be back shortly.

It seemed he had left quietly without even making footsteps.

“At this hour? Did he go out to wet his throat with a drink……?”

Perhaps he had told Mrs. Hudson his destination.

As she was thinking that, she heard the sound of a carriage moving outside the window.

A knock. And footsteps sounding from the first floor.

It was not Holmes returning, but a visitor arriving.
Mrs. Hudson had gone to receive them, so if they were here for Holmes, she would lead them to the second floor and ask them to wait inside.

Watson quickly used the face-changing technique to change her face and attached a fake mustache.

And then.

“Kyaak!”

-Koong!

“……Ma’am?”

No doubt about it. It was Mrs. Hudson’s scream.

Watson hurriedly grabbed her cane, went down to the first floor, and came face to face with an unexpected person.

“Ah……you were the one who accompanied Her Majesty…….”

A young woman, holding an umbrella in one hand, stood beside the fallen Mrs. Hudson with a stunned expression.

A palace maid they had met at the Debutante Ball.
The woman with the umbrella who had used lightness skill and flown into the sky with Her Majesty Victoria.

Her name was Poppins, was it?

“……Please do not misunderstand. It wasn’t me.”

The palace maid shouted at Watson with a visibly flustered face.

“……Yes. It had better be.”

Judging that a palace maid from Buckingham had no reason to suddenly attack Mrs. Hudson, Watson first approached Mrs. Hudson and checked her pulse.

It was absurd, but at times like this, a Doctor had to remain calm.

“She has fainted. It does not seem life-threatening, so for now she is fine. But how on earth…….”

Mrs. Hudson was healthy. She did not seem to suffer from any chronic illness, so what had happened.

Supporting Mrs. Hudson, Watson stared at the palace maid.

“I do not know. She opened the box Her Majesty sent, and then at once…….”

A box.

Come to think of it, a large box sat at the palace maid’s feet.
From the large carriage visible outside the door, porters could be seen carrying an even larger wooden crate.

It seemed that was the gift Holmes had obtained by winning the Sword Debate Chess match against Her Majesty Queen Victoria.

“What in the world are you saying? I don’t understand.”

Still, Watson couldn’t accept it.

Mrs. Hudson was a bold woman. Unless the gift Her Majesty sent was something like a disgusting venomous insect, there was no reason for her to faint.

“See for yourself.”

At Watson’s question, the palace maid closed the door, and just as she had done for Mrs. Hudson, opened the box and showed Watson what was inside.

And then.

“Ah.”

God answered Watson’s prayer.

“Kkaekkodak.”
“……”

Just as she had prayed earlier, Watson remained unconscious until the next morning.

The contents of the first box the palace maid brought into the boarding house.

It was gold equal to Sherlock Holmes’s body weight.

By the time I reached my destination, the bell tolling nine o’clock was ringing.

“We’re here.”

The coachman’s curt voice.

As I stepped down from the carriage, a gloomy street lined with Georgian buildings, terrace houses, and synagogues came into view.

Most striking was the stench rising from the street.

Stepney was one of the areas where London’s poor and foreign laborers lived, and it continually appeared on the list of London’s worst crime districts selected by the Scotland Yard Chief each year.

“Whenever I come here, it feels as if my nose will go numb…….”

Was it because my minor meridians had opened and my five senses had grown sharp? The East End’s stench was particularly hard to endure today.

Waste piled in vagrants’ bodies, filth visible everywhere, and the rancid smell of rotting foodstuffs mixed together, and as I walked through air that resembled the bottom of hell, my mind grew faint.

It was not only the stench that hindered my concentration.

Most of the noise coming from the back alleys of the dark streets was the sound of fistfights by uneducated, third-rate-or-worse average Johns and Richards.

With ear-grating curses and the slurred pronunciations peculiar to street riffraff soaked in drink, it was no small torment to the ears.

As I was always speaking with the Baker St. Irregulars’ boys, I had no aversion to Cockney accents, but the rhyming slang used by underworld groups still irritated me just to hear.

It was an attempt, in their own way, to communicate in a manner outsiders could not understand, but it was still simple slang whose original meaning could be seen easily just by looking at vowel placement.

The very fact that the culture of such gloomy Unorthodox riffraff was in fashion among London’s working class was so lamentable I could not bear it.

I did not wish for every Englishman to speak in Dragonic Pronunciation, but that didn’t mean crude speech should be allowed to spread like wildfire.

‘For the culture of the underworld to spread among the poor is the same as giving them a chance to step onto the wrong path at any time.’

In the Tai-Qi Yodel recorded by the grandmaster Zhang Sanfeng, it is written like this.
‘Intent is the sovereign, and Essence and flesh and bone are the ministers’.

A community’s culture and history are likewise the same.

To raise a child takes a village, and for a giant tree (grandmaster) that grows taller than all to display its form, there must be a thick forest (Murim).

In human growth, the influence of the environment is absolute and cannot be excluded.

If everything growing children see and learn is only the violent culture of the underworld, and base old tricks hardly fit to be called Kung-fu, how could any good person come out of the East End.

If, sixteen years ago, the Blood Flame General William Booth did not found the Salvation Army here in the East End and begin relief for the poor and the operation of welfare facilities.
And if, fourteen years ago, The Abbess With The Lamp, head of the E-Mei Sisters Order, did not join forces with her fellow and move to improve the medical welfare system of the poverty-relief Kung-Fu hall.

The darkness of East London would have been deeper by a degree incomparable to now.

“……Is it here?”

After walking Stepney’s streets for some time, when the frequency of Italian heard in the darkness began to rise, I finally found my destination.