“Adler, it’s time to wake up.”
Desperately, Adler pretended to pass out as he closed his eyes shut. But Professor Moriarty’s emotionless voice echoed in his ears, signalling him out.
“I just saw you open your eyes, Adler.”
“……….”
“Get up.”
Even though Adler’s whole forehead was dotted with beads of sweat, he tried his utmost to ignore her.
“Hmm…”
Observing him, the Professor narrowed her eyes and leaned closer to whisper in Adler’s ear.
“If you don’t get up within five seconds, everyone in this hospital room might just pounce on you.”
“… Eek!”That did the trick, as Adler bolted up the next moment, eyes snapped open in fright.
“”………..””
A brief silence passed over the room after that event.
“Um, hello…?”
After some time, Adler spoke up in a whispery voice, noticing the women observing him from all directions.
“Where am I?”
“”……?””
“Is this… a hospital room?”
As he queried with an innocent look, puzzled expressions washed over the faces of the women gathered in the room.
“If you don’t mind me asking, who are you all?”
Adler muttered, scratching his head as he observed their confused looks.
“Why am I lying in a hospital bed?”
“”………””
“Ugh, suddenly my head…”
As he clutched his head in agony, the women in the room subtly exchanged nces without speaking.
“Where the hell does he pull all this bullshit from…”
“Just, wait a moment.”
Amidst the ensuing silence, Watson, unable to contain her anger, reached into her pocket for her handy pistol. However, Gia Lestrade quickly stepped forward to stop her from doing anything dangerous.
“Hey, do you not recognise me?”
“… Huh? Who are you?”
As Adler stared nkly at her for an answer, she hesitated for a moment before responding with reddened cheeks.
“I-I am… your w-w-wife.”
The moment those words leaked out of her lips, the temperature in the room plummeted to dangerous levels.
“Uh…”
In that suffocating atmosphere, Adler spoke up with a bewildered look on his face.
“You mean someone as beautiful as you is my wife?”
In the next moment,
“Master, that’s a lie. I’m actually your…”
“… I am your daughter.”
“I-I was your lover…”
Isaac Adler’s confidants lost control of their restraints and interjected.
“I’m sorry I don’t remember anything at all. W-Was I aplete trash?”
“… Yes, that’s right. And you guys, if any of youys even a finger on Adler, I’ll shoot immediately…!”
“Did I lose my memory…?”
While they were panicking, Gia Lestrade tried to intervene, horror marring her face. On the other hand, Rachel Watson looked on at the bickering crowd with a nk for some time, before her eyes narrowed and she pondered out loud.
“… Could Adler and Neville, having lost their memories, essentially be the same?”
As she reached such a conclusion,
“Why don’t you and this big sis here go somewhere nice and quiet together, hm..?”
Taking advantage of the confusion and the chaos, Jill the Ripper approached Adler with silent steps, whispering in a chilling voice with a knife hidden behind her back.
“Are you, are you really my big sister?”
“It will only take a short moment…”
“Hmm.”
Behind them, Lupin plotted an escape route in silence while intently watching Adler.
“… Grrr.”
“Who brought a dog into the hospital…”
“……?”
“Huh? It was a girl…? She looked like a dog just a moment ago…?”
Just then, a nurse’s flustered voice came from the outside as she allegedly witnessed a dog with eyes glowing in an eerie blue hue standing guard outside.
<em>- Swoosh…</em>
In that total chaos, only Adler maintained his bright expression. However, for a fleeting moment of transience, he sent a distress signal to the two reliable women with his eyes.
“”……….””
Charlotte Holmes and Professor Moriarty, until then, had been watching Adler with emotionless gazes, already aware of his antics.
“… Sigh.”
An unknown amount of time passed by in between.
“Everyone, listen to me…”
While Moriarty was grinning from ear to ear, Charlotte, ncing at her with a murderous look for a moment, finally spoke out while radiating her murderous aura in the surroundings.
“How about we call a truce for now…?”
“”………””
“Going berserk here won’t do us any good…”
Upon those words, all eyes converged on her.
“… At least, until Isaac Adler’s memory returns, let’s not fight among ourselves.”
“Is that something a detective should say?”
“As I’ve said before… I’m not a detective, I’m a consulting investigator, Inspector Lestrade.”
As Lestrade – unable to contain herself – raised her voice, Charlotte fired back a reply in a yful tone.
“A consultant whose life priorities have shifted away from investigative work, in fact…”
“Calm down, please.”
“… How can I calm down when someone who knows the significance of the rtionship between Mr Adler and me acts as if a single piece of bloody paper changes everything?”
“That’s a bit harsh, isn’t it?”
Lestrade being Lestrade, she, of course, did not back down after seeing Charlotte’s expression that could make one unnerved, to say the least. However, even for her, she could not stop the beads of cold sweat from forming on her forehead.
“If you don’t ept my proposal, I can be much worse, no matter who it is…”
Her powers had grown enough to push even Professor Moriarty, if only for a moment. That’s why, her attitude not only unnerved the brave inspector, but everyone else present in the scene.
“I agree.”
In the now quiet atmosphere, the professor opened her mouth with a chuckling voice.
“I feel sorry for Adler, everyone is so eager to tear each other and him apart…”
“””……….”””
“So, how about we give our dear Adler a little rest?”
Her words sounded did sound reasonable,
Had she not brutally raped Adler just a few hours ago, some might have even nodded in agreement with her, but that was out of the question now.
“… Hmm, this is troublesome.”
Of course, the professor knew all too well how to assert her opinion among those who disagreed.
“My words don’t seem to make much sense, do they?”
<em>- Goooooooooo…</em>
As the professor subtly dominated the room with her presence and aura, the atmosphere inside started growing progressively heavier by the second.
“Pointing a weapon at me now is not advisable.”
“””……….”””
“You should have attacked when I was injured earlier. I’ve already recovered.”
Of course, the individuals in the room were not easily subdued, formidable in their own right.
For instance, Gia Lestrade and Celestia Moran were strong enough that, given a few more years, they might have even gained the power to confront the professor head-on and not lose in a few seconds.
“Put down your weapons…”
“Has my friend not spoken… lower your weapons…”
“Moriarty, you keep your mouth shut…”
“Haha, ha…”
However, it was true that, at the moment, they were inferior to even Charlotte, much less Moriarty. Charlotte had already stepped into the realm of the apex predators of this world, while the professor could effortlessly face everyone in the room with not a hint of trouble.
“Kulluk, Kulllu…”
Then, when the room momentarily calmed,
“Ah, it hurts…”
Suddenly bowing his head to cough, Adler gasped with teary eyes.
“””………..”””
The reason those ready for war dispersed and gave up the fight was more because of that single utterance than the threats from Professor Moriarty and Charlotte.
“… Argh!! Let me go!! I don’t care if he loses his memory or not, as long as I can chop him up in pieces and kill…”
“I’ll take her.”
Of course, not everyone’s thoughts were the same. However, it seemed that the situation had somehow been defused thanks to Lupin’s adept handling skills. She had already formted a n to capture Adler in her mind and this confrontation was not ideal for her to execute it.
“Wait!! You lowly subject dare to…”
“See you next time, yeah?”
<em>- Poof…!</em>
.
.
.
.
.
<em>- Flutter, flutter…</em>
“……..”
As Jill the Ripper, who had been desperately trying to plunge a knife into my heart, and Phantom Thief Lupin, who winked at me, simultaneously vanished from the hospital room, a card fluttered onto myp.
If you don''t want to be caught and squeezed by them for a lifetime, how about willingly getting kidnapped when Ie to the window next time?
A sigh escaped me automatically as I read the in message written on the card.
“That’s just the way it is…”
You’re normally so dull, but get surprisingly sharp when ites to survival.
I turned to the side, sheepishly trying to avoid the system window that tried to berate me as usual. Soon, Charlotte Holmes and Professor Jane Moriarty came into view.
“Uh, hey…”
“”………””
“Thanks… for that…?”
Having given up on deceiving them from the start, I cautiously uttered those words. The two women who only stared eerily at me in response, stood up simultaneously.
“… Let’s have a word.”
“I always wee conversations with friends.”
“If you ever address me that way again, I’ll fucking tear you apart…”
Eventually, without responding to my words, the two women conversed and exited the hospital room.
“Excuse me, everyone…”
“Just lie there. If you disappear somewhere again, we’ll track you down to the ends and pounce at you together, just so you know…”
“… I kind of agree.”
Feeling uneasy, I forced myself to sit up and call out to them, but only received bone-chilling threats in response.
<em>- Click…</em>
“Ha ha…”
Thus, as if by magic, I stared nkly at the door that locked itself immediately after closing.
“How did I end up like this…”
I soon stopped talking and bowed my head deeply in resignation.
“… Kulluk, Kulluukk!”
The truth was, my copse had not been my usual acting in ce.
“Ugh…”
That’s right, the end is drawing ever closer.
The blood smeared all over the hand covering my mouth and the exceedingly heavy body painfully etched that fact into my brain.
<em>… This shouldn’t be happening.</em>
My time in this world was seemingly running out.