The Worst Meeting with Miss Holmes (3)
“Holmes…… Sherlock Holmes…… What a splendid name, little one.”
Moriarty rolled the girl’s name around in his mouth like a piece of candy, repeating it several times before letting out a sigh of genuine admiration at the end.
No one dislikes praise, but the girl who had introduced herself as Sherlock raised an eyebrow as if finding the compliment strangely off-putting and opened her mouth.
“Splendid? People don’t usually say that. It’s not something a child should say about her own family, but our father is a bit…… unusual, so all three of us siblings have odd names. You really are a strange one, aren’t you, Mr. Moriarty?”
“You’re the one who barged in and asked if I was a villain.”
“……That was just a minor mistake! It’s your fault for looking suspicious in the first place!”
The girl bristled at Moriarty’s retort, raising her voice. She furrowed her brows, trying her best to deny it and get angry, but it only came across as childish behavior. The girl who had seemed sharper than dull-witted adults just moments ago was now acting her age, and Moriarty couldn’t help but burst into rare laughter.
The more he did, the more frustrated Miss Holmes’s expression became, but objectively speaking, her face was the picture of adorable childishness—no threat at all.
“Alright, it might be my fault, little miss. Want a candy? It’s lemon.”
“……You really are suspicious, Mr. Moriarty. Trying to bribe me won’t work. I’ll be watching you from now on.”
“Here, slip it into your pocket on the sly. Your mother doesn’t like snacks, does she? Be careful not to choke—wouldn’t want it getting stuck.”
Moriarty casually pressed a few lemon candies from the desk into Miss Holmes’s hand. Mathematics demanded a lot of sugar, so he often carried sweets or snacks. Our Sherlock Holmes might act like an adult, but she was still very much an eight-year-old girl. Moriarty caught her eyes sparkling as she glanced at the lemon candy now clutched in her hand.
As if worried he might snatch it back, she quickly popped one into her mouth, her eyes lighting up like she hadn’t tasted sugar in ages. It all happened so reflexively that Sherlock only realized her childish slip a beat too late. Of course, she was still a child, but a clever one who always mimicked adults. Naturally, she cleared her throat and tried to make excuses to Mr. Moriarty.
“Ahem…… It’s delicious! Ahem…… But no poison, it seems, so I’ll graciously accept. It’s a bribe, but I wasn’t planning to grant you any favors anyway! London candy? Wait, how did you know about my mother?”
The girl had often seen foolish adults gape and ask her to repeat herself after she said something clever, and sometimes she even enjoyed their reactions. But now that she’d reacted just like those adults without realizing it, her cheeks flushed slightly. More importantly, though, was the man before her—this young adult who stood out from the dim-witted crowd based on his words and actions so far. How had he noticed?
Unfortunately, Moriarty didn’t give her the answer she wanted. He just shrugged, teasing her like one would a child.
“I told you, little one. Hone your instincts. Sometimes you just see things at a glance. That’s intuition for you.”
“……Tell me. How did you figure it out?”
The girl, who had been immersed in playing the boy hero from an adventure novel just moments ago, now stared at Moriarty with wide eyes like any curious child, full of questions. Moriarty thought to himself that every single reaction was so vivid and entertaining to watch. It wasn’t just because of her name. There was something undeniably special about this girl.
Unaware—or perhaps more curious about what reasoning Moriarty had used to deduce her mother’s situation—Miss Holmes persisted childishly, begging for answers.
Unfortunately for Sherlock Holmes, that time was short-lived. Sally, the young maid who handled nearly all the household chores, had realized the mischievous youngest miss was bothering the guest again and came rushing to fetch her.
“You’ll tell me, right? Promise, Mr. Moriarty!”
“Miss, it’s rude to the tutor for Master Mycroft. Hurry back before Madam finds out!”
Moriarty simply waved as Sherlock Holmes was dragged away by the maid’s hand, ending their first meeting without a proper reply.
“The real Sherlock Holmes?”
Alone again, the room fell quiet. He already missed the lively atmosphere the girl had brought, without even realizing it. Moriarty sat back down and murmured the question unconsciously.
It was a foolish thought. But considering what he had been through, he couldn’t dismiss it as mere stupidity.
James Moriarty had memories of his past life. Not detailed ones—just a faint awareness that he had been reborn, along with some hazy, fragmented recollections. He didn’t even know who he had been or what specific life he’d lived before. But compared to those past-life memories, this reborn 19th-century England didn’t quite match up in several ways.
Surprisingly, reincarnation wasn’t some wild fantasy here. There were even people believed to have been reborn. Not just con artists’ tales. It was a strange world where wizards and witches existed, albeit rarely, and stray werewolves in London’s back alleys occasionally committed murders and got caught. But most such people claimed to have lived in the past before.
After coming to Oxford and gaining more knowledge, Moriarty learned there were no cases of people like him—those who claimed to have lived in the future and been reborn into the past.
It hadn’t been much of an issue in life. He was smart enough not to mention it from childhood. Besides, he didn’t have particularly helpful memories or knowledge. Life here was dull, but he wasn’t suicidal, so he lived on as James Moriarty, born in 1841 in Ireland.
But that was it. Life was unbearably boring. The silver lining was that before drowning in that boredom, he’d had to struggle just to survive.
His family were minor Irish landowners. But during that horrific famine, while they avoided starving like so many, they couldn’t escape ruin. With help from relatives, they moved to Dublin, but poverty lingered.
His brains earned him sponsorships, but he had to focus on mathematics. Moriarty didn’t particularly like math, though he had talent. He studied it to survive. But every day, he felt solving problems wasn’t a hobby.
And there wasn’t much else he could do. Life was so terribly dull, and dull.
Accepting the tutoring job for the Holmes family’s second son was a desperate bid to escape that tedium. Money was the main goal, but the name Holmes piqued his curiosity too. The moment he heard it, he thought it oddly suited his own name—thanks to a faint past-life memory.
Professor Moriarty is Holmes’s archenemy, right? What about Lupin? Does he show up separately?
Like many, he’d never read the Sherlock Holmes novels themselves—only seen adaptations in films or dramas. Still, he recalled that the famous detective’s nemesis was called Professor Moriarty.
There were hundreds of Moriartys in Ireland, so he’d never linked it to Holmes before. Even while tutoring Mycroft Holmes, he’d dismissed it as silly.
But now, in this moment, it was different. There really was a Sherlock Holmes. Unlike his memories, she was a girl—tiny, truly a child—but she existed.
It might be madness. But his intuition told him she was that Sherlock Holmes. He’d teased her about it, but it was one of the instincts he’d honed through mathematics. Intuition had always been a useful tool, delivering answers without evidence. He couldn’t explain why, or even prove it. But he was certain. That girl was Holmes.
Then was he that Professor Moriarty? Moriarty couldn’t give a firm answer. Truthfully, he shrank from it.
Of course, he’d become a professor soon. Professor Dodgson valued his talent highly, and the school half-expected his appointment as the new mathematics professor. Normally, one stayed on after graduation, but they’d made an exception for him. In the next year, he’d finish a paper—likely on the binomial theorem—present it at a conference, and return to Oxford’s Christ Church College to teach clueless freshmen.
So yes, he was destined to become Professor Moriarty.
But not a criminal.
Miss Holmes, lost in adventure novels, mistook the stranger for a villain, but sadly, her future held no criminal Professor Moriarty as a foe. He might despise and feel no love for others, but he’d lived a model student’s life, far from crime. Besides, thinking of London’s urchins, beggars, murderers, and drunks, being a criminal seemed truly stupid—and dull. Unless someone led them.
London’s—and England’s—criminals now were just a den of idiots going their separate ways. So his connection to Miss Holmes would end as her brother’s childhood tutor.
Still, Moriarty was confident this year would be entertaining. And instinctively, a thought flitted through his mind—one his rational self would never entertain.
“You want to take on tutoring…… that child, Sherlock, as well, Mr. Moriarty?”
“Yes, she’s an exceptional child. I have little to do while I’m here anyway—I’d like to teach her a few things. No tuition fee, of course, Madam.”