Episode 18 — The Red Mana League (7)
“…Nngh?”
Adler, who had been lying on the floor, winced and pushed himself up.
“What the…?”
He wiped the dampness at the corner of his mouth with his forearm.
“……!”
A red smear stained his arm.
“…Miss Holmes?”
Realizing the liquid was someone’s blood, he looked startled—then saw Holmes sitting right in front of him.
“What’s that wound?”
“………”
“Don’t tell me—you fed me your blood?”
Only after spotting the cut running down her arm did Adler grasp what had happened.
“Miss Holmes, human blood isn’t brandy.”
“It may as well be now, for you.”
Holmes answered, a shadow over her face.
“Because you became a vampire.”
“…So you noticed.”
He scratched his head and offered an awkward smile.
“In the scuffle subduing Lady Clay, I… got bitten.”
“………”
“But don’t worry. I managed to seal it in here.”
“Why?”
Holmes asked as he raised the red ring on his finger and gave it a shake.
“Why didn’t you wake me?”
“Wake you?”
“Drop the act about not using magic. Dispelling a sleep spell is child’s play for you.”
Her hollow eyes fixed on Adler.
“You could’ve explained later. We could’ve fought together. So why…”
“You really need to ask?”
Pointing at those eyes, he replied as if it were obvious.
“I told you—protecting the detective is the assistant’s job.”
“………”
“And as anyone can see from your gaze, you’re in advanced mana addiction. If you fought an opponent like Lady Clay, you’d overuse mana stones, and then your life would be in danger…”
“So in the end, it’s my fault again.”
“…Again?”
Only then did Adler read her expression; his own turned worried.
“Are you all right, Miss Holmes?”
“Are you the one who’s all right, Mr. Adler.”
She avoided his eyes and asked instead.
“You’re a vampire now. Life will be hard from here.”
“Ah, that’s fine.”
Adler laughed cheerfully.
“My body’s not exactly normal anyway. More corpse than not, really.”
Holmes’s eyes quivered violently at that.
“And my mana’s… unusual. I think it’ll be fine.”
He took her hand and rose, speaking as he did.
“So don’t worry. This much is—”
But his sentence trailed off; his hand began to tremble.
—trickle…
The red blood still running down Holmes’s arm shimmered in Adler’s eyes.
“…If you want to drink, then drink.”
“Pardon?”
Holmes held out her arm, limp.
“All of it, if you want.”
“………”
If it would buy you even a little more time.
Unable to speak the last thought aloud, she lowered her head.
“…Miss Holmes.”
Assailed by an urge that threatened to flip him inside out, Adler clutched her arm, squeezed his eyes shut, and answered:
“That won’t be necessary.”
He staggered and turned away.
“If my life’s to be extended by your blood, I’d rather not have it.”
He glanced back at her, wearing a wan smile.
“And I did say—I’m not going to die.”
Then he set off ahead.
‘…Liar.’
Still linked to him by the cuffs, Holmes followed with weak steps and slipped the hourglass from her bosom.
‘You’re going to die soon.’
The golden hourglass—now half flushed red—was still running out.
‘…Because of me.’
.
.
.
.
.
A little later—
“Miss Holmes, it’s gotten rather late.”
“………”
“How was cross-verification in the company of a suspect?”
On a London street at the break of dawn.
“If you’ve had your fun, would you kindly take these cuffs off now?”
Keeping pace with the still-downcast Charlotte, Adler spoke in an easy tone.
‘…I was wrong.’
But she was too deep in thought to hear him.
‘This happened because of me.’
Isaac Adler had never once seen her as amusement or a toy.
It was Charlotte who had made him her amusement—and misunderstood him as she pleased.
And the price of that arrogant misunderstanding was the few remaining days of a man who had chosen her over the whole world.
“Miss Holmes. What’s gotten into you, all this time?”
The man who’d ended up like this for her sake kept stifling the urge to feed and worrying about her.
“If you’d rather I not hold back, I could just pounce—and I promise I’d drain every last drop without complaint.”
“You do joke well.”
Which only made it worse for Charlotte.
“As I said, better than biting y—”
“Mr. Adler.”
And when the misery reached its brim—
“Why are you going this far for me?”
“Pardon?”
—the girl raised a white flag.
“Why did you risk your life to save me from the fire?”
A girl who had always counted only the answers she found unaided as life’s sole amusement—
“Why did you risk your life to protect me from a vampire?”
—for the first time, asked for the answer sheet.
“And why—why could you do all that for me, your enemy?”
And the man she called That Man answered—
“For a riddle Miss Holmes can’t solve, the answer is awfully simple.”
As if he had waited only for this moment, he gazed at her and spoke softly:
“Because I like you.”
Silence fell.
On a fog-choked street empty of passersby, a boy’s and a girl’s eyes met.
“That’s impossible.”
At last, Charlotte’s voice broke the hush.
“What part of this simple answer dissatisfies you—that I happened to see you, fell at first sight, and that feeling hasn’t changed to this day?”
“The answer to a riddle I couldn’t solve can’t be something that trivial.”
Her gaze wavered in confusion.
“You can’t have done all that for so little. There must be something you want from me.”
“………”
“You have a curse too, right? Your ultimate goal is to cure it. Or even this very moment is part of some plan of yours—”
“I do have an ultimate goal.”
Adler nodded along.
“See? In the end you—”
“But the reason I pursue it is you.”
“You…”
“Come to think of it, the reason I came here and started doing this insane business without complaint is, in a way, because I liked you too much.”
Holmes was struck speechless. Adler smiled and whispered,
“That’s love, Miss Holmes.”
“………”
“Love isn’t logical. It isn’t rational. It’s woefully short on plausibility.”
The dim moonlight, filtering through the fog, caught and glinted in his eyes.
“You, who are like the incarnation of all those things—of course it’s hard for you to understand.”
When Charlotte still said nothing, Adler watched her and added gently,
“But you don’t have to understand.”
“Why not?”
“Because I didn’t do it to be understood. It’s just my one-sided feeling.”
He raised their cuffed wrists and gave them a little shake.
“It’s my first time confessing; now that I’ve done it, I’d rather crawl into a hole.”
“………”
“So please—would you unlock these?”
Holmes, who had been staring blankly, took the key from her pocket and released the cuffs. Adler rolled his wrist, waved, and turned away.
“Don’t worry too much about our client, Miss Wilson. I have a solution.”
“………”
“Well then—”
“Mr. Adler.”
Watching his back disappear into the fog, she felt it was now or never and blurted,
“Please become my assistant.”
“I refuse.”
The firm rejection reached her ears before she could go on.
“…Why?”
“Miss Holmes.”
The moonlight in his eyes was swallowed by the mist; their shine went out.
“I’m a villain.”
“If it’s because of that professor, I’ll take her on. So—”
“You can’t beat her as you are. And it’s not because of her, as you’ve already guessed.”
At that different tone, Charlotte fell silent again; her eyes shook.
“As you’re suspecting, London will soon be steeped in a deep gray.”
Adler asked softly,
“Can you really stop it?”
A dark silence settled between them.
“…Then I’ll be back soon with the next riddle, Miss Holmes.”
Having said what he needed to say, Adler gave a small bow and walked away.
“Let’s enjoy it together—as far as my strength carries me.”
As the heavy fog slowly swallowed his back, stillness returned to the street.
.
.
.
.
.
Even after she was left alone, Charlotte stood there in silence for a long while.
The anomaly came not long after.
“……….”
The first negative outcome brought on by her own actions. The confession of the man who became its target. And the ominous challenge he left behind.
A tangle of emotions and thoughts spun out in the wake of that—and birthed an unforeseen result.
—whooom…
Black mana, which in the original should not have manifested until the final phase years from now, rose faintly from Charlotte Holmes’s body.
Whether it would become the darkness that swallowed the faraway light of that man’s silhouette, or the shadow swallowed by that light—no one could say.
“…Watson would faint dead away if she saw this.”
“Or tease me with it for life.”
For the greatest anomaly was not that.
From that night on, Charlotte’s gray eyes began slowly to take on the color of someone’s hair—someone who had already vanished, swallowed by the fog.
[Love-Hate Relationship: Chapter 1 Complete]