"Hello."
".....?"
The queen, who had been waiting for Holmes and Watson with an anxious expression, tilts her head and turns toward the voice beside her.
"You, you are...!"
And then her pupils widen.
"Should I say it's been a while?"
When the nurse before her takes off her uniform and sweeps back her hair, a figure far too terrifying to her appears before her eyes.
"Ah, Isaac."
Isaac Adler. A boy who, though dismissed as childhood mischief, had left far too deep a mark on the queen now stood before her.
"H-how did you get here..."
"I've shaken off Holmes and her assistant. I wanted to talk with you alone."
Adler, who had been touching his ear as if something were caught in it, soon settles into the seat across from the queen.
"...What?"
"You thought I wouldn't know?"
Adler's icy gaze bores into the queen.
"In the end, Your Majesty has disappointed me until the very last."
At those words, the queen looks at Adler with a terrified expression.
"Why, why are you doing this?"
Then she asks, her two hands trembling.
"Why must you put me through such tribulations?"
Her usual overwhelming dignity and majesty were nowhere to be seen.
"To inflict such unbearable pain..."
There was only a young noblewoman in her early twenties, who knew nothing of the world, caught in the trap meticulously laid by the man before her.
"...It's simple."
Had Adler shown even the slightest ridicule or coercion there, the Kingdom of Bohemia would likely have lost its queen.
"I did it because I was jealous."
But for some reason, unlike his usual wicked demeanor, such an absurd remark slips from the lips of the boy who had been glancing out the window with an indifferent face.
"...What?"
At that, the queen tilts her head with teary eyes welling up.
"I did it because I wanted to stop Your Majesty's marriage."
"What do you mean..."
"As Your Majesty knows, I have been with countless women."
Adler begins to speak, gazing fixedly at the queen.
"But the one I truly loved was only you, Your Majesty."
"Lies!"
"It is not a lie, Your Majesty."
Then Isaac takes something from inside his coat.
"That is why, when I heard the news that Your Majesty would marry the second son of the King of Scandinavia, I could not help but grieve."
"......."
"Thinking of what would happen if you married that old man thirty years your senior, I wanted to do something—anything."
"F-for the national interest. What would you know..."
Muttering thus, the queen absentmindedly receives and skims through the documents Adler hands her, then soon freezes stiff.
"What is all this?"
"Evidence I obtained with great difficulty, documenting the misdeeds of the Scandinavian prince."
The queen examines the documents with an incredulous expression.
"According to these documents, the prince uses drugs in bed."
"F-forgery. As if I would be swayed by such fabricated evidence..."
"He has been divorced three times, and the reason—his spouse's drug addiction—was already reported in the newspapers."
Her eyes, which had been fixed thus, slowly begin to waver.
"If you call it forgery, I have nothing more to say. But did you even want to marry that old man thirty years your senior in the first place?"
"For the national interest..."
"I'm not talking about national interest. I'm asking if it's what Your Majesty wants."
When the queen cannot respond for some time upon hearing those words, Adler lets out a deep sigh.
"Well, it seems my role ends here."
"......."
"And it seems the blackmail ends here as well."
"...What?"
Then suddenly, Adler takes out a familiar photograph from inside his coat and places it on the table.
"Urk."
As the photograph of herself naked and crawling like a dog enters her vision, the queen hurriedly snatches it up and clutches it to her chest.
"Now that I've handed over the evidence, no more blackmail is necessary."
"You....."
"Do as you please with the engagement, but please take a look at this."
Adler, who had spoken while quietly holding back a smile at the sight, takes something out from inside his coat once more.
"That is..."
A slave contract, written in her own hand years ago when she was still immature, giggling in Adler's embrace, rises onto the table.
"Your Majesty, if it is alright, would you please sign this contract?"
"Y-you call that a request?"
"It is my last wish in life, Your Majesty."
The queen was putting on a stern expression at his words, but upon hearing that, she makes a bewildered face.
"As you know, in trying to protect Your Majesty, I overexerted myself gathering evidence and now have countless enemies after my life."
"I-is that true?"
"I don't think I'll last long even if I go to Auguste Academy. So, before it's too late, I wish to receive one last gift from the only one I ever loved."
The queen's eyes waver once more upon hearing his statement.
"...Signatures can always be forged, so surely you can do at least that much for me."
It was because the burn scars covering Adler's entire body were only now entering the queen's eyes.
"Well, it doesn't matter if you don't."
"........."
"Even without such a thing, the fact that Lilia loved me will remain in this world forever."
But when the queen still hesitates, he rises from his seat with a bitter smile and begins to whisper in a sorrowful voice.
"That is enough for me."
"W-wait..."
"If only there were no difference in our status, I would have wanted to spend my whole life with you."
And then Adler quietly leaves his seat.
"W-wait!"
It was exactly in that moment that the queen's urgent voice echoed through the lobby.
"Wait just a moment, Isaac!"
At that voice, Isaac stops moving for a moment and turns around; the queen opens her mouth, looking at him with eyes filled with guilt.
"I have something to give you."
Then she takes out a pen from inside her coat and begins signing the contract.
"...I shall break the engagement with that prince."
Having engraved her name on the slave contract they had once made in jest, she approaches Adler and whispers as she hands it to him.
"Isaac. If only we were of equal status, how wonderful it would have been."
"........."
"But as the ruler of a nation, this is all I can give you."
As Adler receives the contract, the queen hesitates, then embraces him.
"Isaac. Though it is but a formal document, I..."
The moment she closes her eyes tightly, trying to mutter something.
"Lie down."
Adler whispers a command into her ear in a low voice.
"...Ugh!?"
The moment she hears those words, a chilling sensation spreads through her entire body; staggering, before she knows it, she is lying prostrate at Adler's feet, belly to the floor.
"W-what have you done?"
"It's simple. I cast a spell on the contract."
"What do you mean..."
"Because one never knows when a person's heart may change."
As the cold of the floor seeps into her stomach, the queen shudders; hearing his words, her eyes open wide.
"In this perilous world where even the few mages in Europe are attacked in broad daylight, shouldn't one have at least a reliable means of self-defense?"
The seal of Adler engraved on her lower abdomen glows, illuminating the hospital floor.
"Please forgive my rudeness."
The queen stares blankly at the sight, but when Adler begins stroking her head, she begins to laugh softly.
"Ha, hahat."
Now that it had come to this, there was no point in having escaped him.
Rather, the situation had become more serious than before; she, who should have all of Bohemia beneath her feet, had become Isaac's slave for eternity.
"Hahaha..."
But now, somehow, none of it mattered.
As the guilt of being unable to give him anything but this meaningless contract faded, for some reason a flush rose to her face and her heart began beating rapidly.
'No matter which prince I marry, my child will have blond hair.'
It was the moment the sun of Bohemia completely collapsed.
.
.
.
.
.
[To Miss Charlotte Holmes.]
[From the moment you threw yourself at me in the guise of a young nun to save me, I more or less realized that you were Miss Charlotte Holmes.
No one would have bothered saving a scoundrel like me, the worst in London, and moreover, I had been warned several times by those around me to beware of the genius girl of London.
So when I woke in the hospital at dawn, I decided to confirm the matter with my own two eyes.
Obtaining a nurse's uniform secretly was easy.
Lengthening and shortening my hair was also child's play for me, a mana user.
Disguised as a nurse, when I secretly went down to the hospital lobby at dawn, I saw a girl sitting on a sofa, nodding off with sleepy eyes.
Having confirmed with my own eyes that I was being pursued by the most capable detective in London, I thought there was no longer any hope.
Therefore, from now on I plan to move my residence to the dormitory of Auguste Detective Academy.
No matter how much of a genius girl of London Miss Charlotte Holmes may be, you cannot enter Auguste Academy without mana.
Instead, I will hand over the target photograph to the client before leaving this hospital.
Actually, I intend to use a more certain method than that.
Still, from now on it will be used by mutual agreement, not for blackmail but for self-defense.
As I am being targeted by the greatest detective in London, I must not cross the line any further, must I?
Well then, have a good day, Miss Holmes.]
Holmes, who had read and reread Adler's letter several times, closes her eyes deeply and places it on the table.
"He is truly an amazing man, is he not?"
Then from beside her, the queen chatters on, still with a flush on her face.
"If only our status were the same, I would have kept him by my side somehow..."
"In my opinion as well, Adler seems to be of a completely different class from Your Majesty."
"Is he not? Even you think so, don't you?"
Though Holmes spoke as if mocking, the queen merely agreed all the more.
That sight was exactly like a teenage girl fallen in love.
"What conversation did you have with Adler to end up like this?"
"...Sometimes ignorance is bliss, Watson."
Holmes answers quietly to Watson's murmured question, then bows her head slightly to the queen and speaks.
"I am deeply sorry that I could not resolve the matter you commissioned satisfactorily."
"Not at all. You did your best."
But the queen shakes her head and instead encourages Holmes.
"So, what do you intend to ask as your reward?"
"...Reward? I had not thought myself qualified to receive one."
"Did you not do your utmost for me? And it is also the price for requesting your silence on this matter. Please speak without burden."
When she speaks thus with a kind smile, Holmes falls into quiet thought.
'I cannot understand.'
According to the letter, Isaac Adler had realized her identity from the beginning.
A detective hired by the queen who was constantly targeting his life.
A threatening existence that forced him to move his residence to Auguste Detective Academy.
To him, someone like her must have been quite repulsive—a presence to be eliminated by any means.
'Why did he save me then, instead of abandoning me?'
But why on earth had he risked his life to save someone like her?
According to the servants, the path to her room had been especially treacherous.
The servants who had come to rescue her, lying in her room, had given up and turned back.
But Isaac Adler endured inside the inferno for a full ten minutes to save someone like her.
Excluding the servants who had escaped the mansion under their own power with Isaac's help, he was the very first to do so.
Unless Holmes herself was Adler's most precious possession, it was simply inexplicable.
'I don't know.'
It was the first time in her life.
A puzzle that simply could not be solved had appeared before her—one who had regarded everything that happened in the world as mere trivial diversions.
"If you truly cannot decide, how about this ring I wear? With this ring, so to speak..."
"Your Majesty possesses something far more valuable than that ring."
Holmes, who had been obsessed with that unsolvable problem, deliberating over and over.
"...What is it?"
"The photograph that was our target."
"What?"
Then she suddenly begins requesting the photograph as her reward.
"A-are you in your right mind? Of course I cannot allow this."
"Did Your Majesty not say you could give up half the kingdom?"
"This is mine."
But naturally, the queen refuses vehemently.
"Is it because Your Majesty is in it?"
"O-of course. No matter that it is you, that is a bit..."
"Then this should suffice."
"...Huh?"
Holmes snatches the photograph from the queen's hand and, before she can stop her, tears it in half in an instant.
"This half is unnecessary."
".........."
And Holmes hands back the portion showing the queen crawling on the floor.
"This way there should be no problem."
"D-do you want to keep his photograph? If I may know the reason..."
"Watson's hobby is writing the cases we experience into novels and publishing them, Your Majesty."
"...Ah, I see."
The queen, who had been glaring at her with slightly wary eyes, coughs at Holmes's meaningful words and rises from her seat.
"If that is what you wish..."
"And I have one personal request."
"...A personal request?"
At the same time, Holmes also stands and adds.
"Could you write me a letter of recommendation for Auguste Detective Academy?"
"What do you mean, Holmes?"
Watson, who had been listening quietly from the side, asks Holmes with wide eyes.
"Just months ago you were harshly criticizing them as an unsociable lot one shouldn't associate with, so why are you suddenly trying to go there?"
Holmes, who had kept her gaze fixed on the photograph in her hand until then, answers in a low voice.
"The puzzle I must solve has fled there."
Within her deep gray eyes, the image of Isaac Adler with downcast eyes by the window in the photograph was reflected.