Professor Moriarty Wants to Retire.

Professor Moriarty doesn’t clearly remember when he met that being. The only thing certain is that it was very recent.

He doesn’t remember where they met either. Was it in the mansion or outside? No, was that space even real to begin with?
Is it reality? A dream? Is the thing I faced a real entity? Or is it merely a delusion?

If there’s anything certain, it’s that the being had a clear form, but its appearance was an unfamiliar face that the professor had never seen before.
It clearly had the appearance of a human, specifically a white male.
He was quite tall and looked to be in his fifties. Intelligence could be felt in his eyes, and his graying mustache was particularly impressive.
A typical middle-aged English gentleman. The man’s common and unique appearance left a deep impression on the professor.

The man, sitting at a desk writing something, blinked once when he saw the professor, then immediately stood up with a shocked expression.

‘James Moriarty… how can Moriarty…!?’ The man acted as if he knew him.

Of course, as the title of professor suggests, James Moriarty was publicly known as an eminent scholar and celebrity, so it might not have been strange for this seemingly English man to know Professor Moriarty.
But there was something odd about the man’s attitude. There was no one who knew who James Moriarty was and didn’t use honorifics like professor or sir in front of him.

Professor Moriarty asked, ‘Who are you?’

The man replied, ‘Just someone who knows how to wield a pen a little.’

The man.

Throughout listening to his kind and polite explanations, Professor Moriarty felt a myriad of emotions crossing his mind.
At first, he didn’t believe the man’s words. In the middle, he had to struggle to suppress the rising urge to strangle him immediately. In the end, even the murderous intent subsided, and he begged the man to stop talking.

The professor wanted to deny the man’s words, dismissing them as an irrational event and a madman’s delusion.
But for some reason, his wise and intellectual brain accepted and acknowledged everything the man said as fact, despite his not wanting to.

Professor Moriarty realized what that ordinary-looking gentleman was and what he himself was.

The author.
In other words, God, or the Creator.

From the tip of his pen, the story of Sherlock Holmes was born, and from the tip of his pen, James Moriarty was born.
The Napoleon of Crime was merely a phantom on the printed page.

Looking back, there were quite a few blank spaces in Moriarty’s memories.
He doesn’t remember much about his childhood, teenage years, or anything else.
What were his parents’ names? Does he have any relatives? Family? Is he single?

Everything was blurry.

“…”

Standing alone on the deck, sipping a cocktail, Professor Moriarty silently gazed at the horizon beyond the vast sea.
A wide-open view that couldn’t be seen in London, full of smoke and densely packed buildings.

But even while looking at such a breathtaking view, Professor Moriarty’s feelings were only bleak.

What will happen from now on? What should he do from now on?
Where will the train that has left its predetermined rails head?

“Ah…”

“…Hm?”

At that moment, something collided with the professor’s waist.

“I-I’m sorry…!!”

When the professor lowered his gaze, he saw a black girl profusely apologizing to him, sweating heavily.
Professor Moriarty isn’t someone who holds racial views that white people are superior to other races or somehow different.
Considering the times, this could be considered extremely progressive. Still, if asked whether he treated black people, especially compared to other white people, that wasn’t the case either.

To him, they were all the same humans, whether white or black or even the yellow race from far Asia. Equally… worthless beings.
After all, the only human he truly considered valuable was just one person, Sherlock Holmes.

“….A maid?”

However, regardless of his racial views, it was an era of severe discrimination against people of color. Even in America, where the president himself declared that all races are born equal, racial discrimination was rampant, let alone in Europe, which was expanding its colonies under the banner of imperialism.

The black people Professor Moriarty knew often worked in low positions, receiving unfair treatment, and he naturally thought that black people couldn’t receive proper treatment in Europe.

“O, Oh no, your clothes… your clothes…”

“…Hm? Ah.”

Only after seeing the girl’s face trembling with fear did the professor realize she had spilled wine on his coat.

“It’s alright, don’t worry about it. Clothes can be changed, that’s all.”

Greed and Moriarty are inseparable, but his greed tends more towards pursuing power, authority, and fame rather than material things.
Moreover, having abandoned all that now, he had no energy to get angry over something like spilling wine on clothes.

“U-um, by any chance… are you Professor James Moriarty…?”

“Hm?”

But when the girl asked as if she knew him, Professor Moriarty couldn’t help but become interested in her.

“You know me?”

“My, my master… said he really wanted to meet Professor Moriarty. But even after coming to London, you refused to meet him… he was really angry.”

“…I see.”

However, due to the girl’s subsequent explanation, his newly sparked interest quickly faded.

“That pig…”

Not even hiding his true feelings, he remembered the man who had visited his mansion doorstep with a face bloated with fat, filled with that disgusting greed, smiling repulsively.
Claiming to be a businessman from America and saying he wanted to form a good relationship, Professor Moriarty turned him away without even meeting him directly.

“So the reason you didn’t meet my master then… was because of your schedule to go to America…”

“No, I just didn’t want to meet him. Your master, that is.”

Professor Moriarty disliked people without value. There was no value in humans who were incompetent yet greedy, like insects rushing towards flowing honey.
It’s difficult to find talented and loyal personnel like Moran, and it’s even more difficult to meet a genius like Holmes.

“Then why are you going to America, Professor?”

“Well…”

‘Why am I heading to America?’
Unable to come up with an answer to that question, Professor Moriarty hesitated to speak.

‘For what purpose am I going to America? Why America specifically?’

“…Right.”

That’s not important.
Whether it’s America, Canada, or even the far-off Amazon jungle, the location doesn’t matter.

“To escape, my dear.”

What’s important is escaping from the predetermined role.

“From the fate given to me.”

Fleeing from the words carelessly scribbled by an unnamed writer. Seizing a new destiny, not the fate of being Professor James Moriarty, Sherlock Holmes’s arch-nemesis.

“Even if I have to give up everything I have.”

A character created to kill Sherlock Holmes. A foolish old man who couldn’t even accomplish that and died in vain.
Professor Moriarty was prepared to give up anything to shatter that future that invokes a bitter laugh.

“….Oh?”

…Only after answering like this did Professor Moriarty belatedly feel a sense of discomfort.

“I see.”

How could this girl recognize at a glance that the old gentleman before her was Professor James Moriarty?

“That’s quite…”

Unless it’s an exceptionally trusted relationship, a master wouldn’t tell a servant the face of the person they want to meet. Especially if that servant is a young girl of color.

Nevertheless, the girl immediately recognized the old gentleman before her as Professor Moriarty and spoke to him.

How interesting.

As if she knew beforehand.

“…..”

Professor Moriarty pondered. Whether he should draw the gun in his inner pocket.

“Don’t think about turning around. And especially don’t think about shooting that cute weapon in your possession at me.”

“…!!”

With his hand on the Colt SAA he had prepared in case an assassin was sent, Professor Moriarty froze in place.

“I’m saying this for your sake, not mine. I won’t die even if I’m shot by that, but if you turn around and see my form, you’ll go mad. You don’t want to crawl on the floor with cross-eyed vision, wetting yourself at that age, do you?”

A relaxed voice, as if seeing through everything.

But even in the face of an attitude that would normally have made him feel humiliated, Professor Moriarty didn’t even dare to attempt it.

He instinctively knew that the girl behind him, or rather, whatever had been pretending to be a girl until moments ago, was no ordinary being.

“And… if you carelessly turn your head and get your eye injured by fragments from the exploding ship, that would be a big problem.”

“What—”

But at those words, Professor Moriarty was about to turn around.

BOOM—!!!

With the explosion, the body of the old gentleman briefly rose into the air.

Then, with a splash, it fell into the sea.

The news that the RMS Britannia, heading from England to America, had sunk due to an explosion accident reached England four days and four hours later.