Ch.200Chapter 200 – Five Orange Pips (6)

Charlotte, who had been staring at Adler in front of her with surprised eyes for a while, eventually asks in a low voice.

“…Mr. Adler, what brings you here?”

“What brings me here?”

Adler responds with a subtle smile and a soft voice.

“Because I love you.”

“…….”

“I came because I missed you.”

At that rather brazen response, Charlotte’s eyes narrow slightly for a moment.

“How did you find me when I was in disguise and had even erased my presence?”

“…Miss Holmes, are you really asking me that?”

Ignoring her question, he sticks close to her side with a grin, then answers with a look of sudden realization.

“A person who tracks others is always exposed to the risk of being tracked in return. It’s the blind spot of surveillance.”

“……..”

“As long as you and I maintain our contractual relationship, I can find your location anytime, even with my eyes closed.”

At his proud answer, Holmes’s eyes narrow even further.

“So, you came to find me in the middle of the night just because you love me?”

“Yes.”

“Hmm…”

Despite Adler maintaining his position, Charlotte begins to look slightly uncertain.

“…Really?”

Her expression softens as she quietly avoids his gaze while asking.

“It’s romantic, isn’t it? A dawn date.”

“…I agree, but I don’t think I can feel any romance in this particular place.”

Charlotte sighs quietly at Adler’s response and says:

“Actually, this is where Silver Blaze was attacked.”

“…What?”

As soon as he hears this, Adler’s expression turns cold.

“You knew that and still came here in the middle of the night?”

“But that’s my job, isn’t it?”

“……..”

“Why are you being so sensitive today?”

After looking at him quietly for a moment, Charlotte reaches out her hand.

“…Come to think of it, now isn’t the time for you to be worried about me.”

*Rustle…*

“Have your injuries healed? How can you be walking around like this when it wasn’t that long ago that you were caught in that terrible explosion that was plastered across most British newspapers and magazines?”

Her expression darkens as she naturally slips her hand inside Adler’s clothes and feels around.

“…You’re still wearing bandages.”

“…….”

“Your body hasn’t fully recovered, has it? That’s it, isn’t it?”

“Ah, ouch. Ow ow ow ow.”

“Shouldn’t you be the one lying in bed? Did Watson just let you go, telling you to go die somewhere?”

As she grips the bandaged area, Adler lets out a low groan and makes a slightly troubled expression under her sharp questioning.

“This won’t do. I should call Watson right now and tell her to take you back…”

*Kiss…*

“…Huh?”

As he quietly sighs to himself and kisses Charlotte on the cheek, she, who had been muttering in a stern voice, suddenly looks dazed.

“Haup.”

“…Mmph.”

Not missing the moment, Adler quietly bites her lips this time and slips his tongue in.

“………”

After some time passes like this.

After separating their lips, Charlotte, who has become noticeably quieter, finds Adler naturally linking arms with her.

“Why are you talking so much? I just want to take a night walk with you.”

“……..”

“…Did you understand what I said?”

Lowering his voice slightly differently than usual, Adler whispers in her ear.

“I… understand.”

Charlotte, who had been quietly rubbing her lips with her hand, eventually nods with a reddened face and begins to match his pace.

“…If you could do this all along, why didn’t you try it at the hotel that day?”

“Because someone pickled me with drugs before I could make up my mind.”

“…Actually, I never used any. The story about putting drugs in the bathtub was a lie; you just desired me excessively in your excitement.”

“Don’t lie.”

“…Well, it’s in the past, so think what you like.”

And so, Charlotte and Adler begin to leave the back alley, arm in arm.

*Rustle…*

Something that had been following them disappears quietly into the darkness as soon as Charlotte and Adler exit the back alley.

“Sigh…”

Charlotte quietly exhales.

“Thanks to you, finding the culprit is now impossible.”

“…So you were aware of it after all? That something has been following us.”

Adler, walking beside her, asks in a cold voice while looking at her.

“Criminals always return to the scene of the crime.”

“…….”

“Actually, rather than returning, it would be more accurate to say it’s been following me for several days now.”

Unlike Adler, Charlotte answers with a composed expression.

“It’s certainly not an ordinary person. They were able to see through my hiding and disguise, and they don’t register properly on my detection.”

“And yet you were walking down the street seemingly defenseless?”

“No. On the contrary, I was waiting for them to attack me.”

She begins to mutter while looking at Adler beside her with slightly irritated eyes.

“Even if it’s an entity whose form I can’t grasp and who only keeps watching… I could clearly sense malice. So if I appeared defenseless, they would certainly have attacked me.”

“…….”

“I was planning to wait for that moment and capture them instead. No matter how formless they might be, they would have to manifest some physical form at the moment of attack.”

Adler’s expression becomes increasingly grim.

“But thanks to a certain devil from who-knows-where, my plan has been completely ruined.”

Charlotte continues speaking to him, undeterred.

“It might have been the perfect opportunity to solve the case…”

“Look at me for a second.”

“…Huh?”

Suddenly, Adler roughly grabs Charlotte’s wrist as she mutters.

“What are you—”

*Grip…*

“…Eek!?”

As he forcefully pushes Charlotte against a nearby wall, she makes an uncharacteristically girlish scream with a surprised expression.

“…Hic.”

“……”

“A-Adler?”

After hitting the wall with her back and gasping, Charlotte looks at Adler, who had pushed her like that, with a blank expression.

“What do you think you’re doing?”

“…Shut up.”

“Mmph?”

She frowns slightly and mutters, but Adler begins to pressure her even more by placing his knee between her legs and whispers in a cold voice.

“You think you’re the only one who likes me? Just as you like me, I like you too.”

“…Is this a sudden confession?”

“I’m not playing word games, so listen carefully.”

After muttering “what’s going on?” at his words, Charlotte quietly closes her mouth upon hearing Adler’s growl.

“The reason I’m going through all this trouble, the reason I planned all of this, the reason I’m burning what little life I have left… it’s all because of you.”

“…….”

“If things continue like this, you will definitely die in the end. I’ll do anything to change that absurd outcome.”

Her eyes begin to waver slightly.

“Am I going to die?”

“I just said I’ll do whatever it takes to prevent that outcome. But, but…”

Adler leans in close to Charlotte’s face with a cold expression.

“Why are you throwing yourself into danger?”

“…Are you underestimating me? Despite appearances, I’m now somewhat on par with the professor…”

“I don’t believe you’re stupid enough to call lasting barely a minute ‘being on par.'”

“…….”

“You’re still very lacking, Charlotte. Just now, the probability of you dying was exactly 37.75 percent.”

As he calls her by her first name rather than her surname, Charlotte, who was about to say something, quietly closes her mouth and bites her lip.

“Are you telling me to give up being a detective now?”

“…I’m telling you not to act with your life at stake.”

When she eventually asks in a low voice, Adler looks straight into her eyes and whispers.

“Drop this case. Otherwise, I’ll kill you with my own hands.”

“……..”

“…You’re not the only one who can make threats. Remember that.”

After saying that, he finally releases the pressure, and Charlotte, who had been pressed against the wall, opens her mouth in a small voice.

“You can be serious sometimes, I see.”

Turning his back to her, Adler sighs and speaks.

“…There’s something strange about this case.”

He begins to mutter in a low voice.

“The professor and I should be behind all cases… but who’s behind this one? It’s the first time a case has developed with us completely excluded…”

“…….”

“Moreover, that presence in the darkness until just now felt off. It was too irregular to even be called an anomaly… It doesn’t make sense for mere KKK members to be moving such an entity…”

Then, turning back to look at her, Adler says:

“Anyway, remember what I said, Charlotte.”

He begins to ripple in the darkness and starts to disappear.

“…I can’t live without you, so please.”

With those final words, Adler completely vanishes from before her.

“Liar.”

After standing still for a long time in the ensuing silence, Charlotte eventually begins to mutter in a low voice.

“Your right eye is still clearly tinged gray, and yet you have the nerve…”

Of course, contrary to her prickly voice, her cheeks were redder than ever before.

.

.

.

.

.

How much time had passed like that?

“…Still, he was kind of cool toda—”

“Miss Holmes~!”

“Ahem…”

Charlotte, who had been adding to her soliloquy in a small voice, quietly clears her throat and begins to compose herself as she spots Lestrade running toward her from a distance.

“Huff, huff…”

“You did well as instructed, Officer.”

And then, returning to her usual self, she begins to praise the officer who is catching her breath in front of her for some reason.

“Thanks to you playing the role of the stalker for several days, I was able to completely narrow down the target. It seems the professor and Adler indeed have no connection to the KKK.”

“…Pardon?”

“Then there’s nothing to hold us back now. Although I can’t figure out who’s behind it all, I have an excellent method to root out the KKK in England…”

“M-Miss Holmes. Just a moment.”

But Lestrade interrupts her with a puzzled expression as she is enthusiastically outlining her next plan.

“…Are you not angry?”

“Everything worked out well, so why would I be angry?”

“But… didn’t I just completely ruin the operation?”

“……?”

Charlotte quietly tilts her head at the officer’s out-of-nowhere statement.

“While following you as planned, I ended up getting lost. I thought I knew the back alleys perfectly, but it’s truly strange…”

“…What did you say?”

“I just now managed to find my way back and rushed straight here to where you are, but I was too late, wasn’t I?”

Her complexion begins to turn pale.

“I’m sorry…”

“You’re saying you weren’t the one following me all this time?”

Eventually, Charlotte, rarely seen sweating nervously, turns her gaze to the entrance of the back alley behind her.

“Then, what was behind me all along… what was it?”

But there was nothing there except for the thick fog that had settled.