Becoming Professor Moriarty's Probability

Chapter 11: Declaration of War

"How did you get here, Miss Holmes?"

I threw out that question while trying hard to suppress my flustered emotions. Holmes, glancing around the room till now, walked forward and opened her mouth after hearing my words.

"I am planning to enroll in this academy."

"...Are you serious?"

"Since the puzzles that need to be solved aren't appearing elsewhere, it only seems right for me to come here."

Holmes' grey eyes fixed on me. There was an inexplicable feeling that her gaze was able to pierce through everything in existence. While I was staring back without avoiding that gaze, she suddenly shifted her eyes toward Professor Moriarty.

"Do you have a fondness for sugar?"

With that, she flashed a subtle smile while asking that question.

"It's almost obsessive, how frequently and cleanly you tidy up the room, but there's a lot of sugar powder scattered around the room."

At that remark, Moriarty wore an intrigued expression and opened her mouth.

"Not all people who enjoy cleaning have an OCD, student."

"That's true. But it's too perfect to be just a hobby."

Holmes, who had swept her finger across the sofa where the dean had collapsed with a hole in his head a few days before, tilted her head and mumbled.

"Considering the cleaning was done so immaculately that no evidence would be found even if someone had died here, I must have been mistaken about something."

Then, she looked at me and Professor Moriarty, a playful smile dancing in the depth of her eyes.

"I can understand. A mild case of dissociative identity disorder and delusions are among the initial symptoms of a patient afflicted with mana addiction."

"It's also a chronic issue for detectives. Aren't you reacting too aggressively to a light joke?"

With her hand resting on her chin and tilting her head forward, Moriarty began to whisper in a low voice to Holmes.

"Judging by your fingernails and the area around your eyes, it seems you enjoy experiments involving Mana Stones. Mana Stones are an energy source remarkable enough to shake human history, but continuous contact with them can induce symptoms of mana addiction."

"There's really no need for your advice. It's something I constantly hear from my roommate."

"I'm just saying this because it seems you're already halfway there into the realm of a severely addicted patient. If you don't take care of your health and continue these experiments, even those brilliant eyes of yours might become dizzy and dull pretty soon."

Seemingly out of nowhere, Moriarty pulled a sugar cube from the pocket of her shirt and handed it to Holmes with a gentle smile on her face.

"If you have nothing to do in your free time, why not indulge in sugar like I do?"

"I will have to decline for the advancement of investigative studies."

"Not quite as much as my assistant, but you are quite an interesting individual as well, student."

However, after gracefully being refused, Moriarity popped the sugar cube into her own mouth as if she had been waiting for this very moment and spoke while savoring the taste of the sugary delight.

"Have you no plans to become a graduate student, like Mr. Adler?"

"I have no intention of participating in a slave system that is being legally implemented in the 19th century,"