'Is this the best they can do.'
Established to counter the bizarre incidents occurring all over the world, London's largest detective-training institution: Auguste Detective Academy.
'I thought this place would at least be different.'
Jane, the new professor who was holding a class for freshmen who had just enrolled there, couldn't help a faint, derisive laugh as she looked at the incident unfolding before her eyes.
"The method of the crime must be poisoning."
"Right. He's looked unwell for a while, so they probably used a slow-acting toxin."
A male student had just stood up to answer the professor's question when he suddenly coughed blood and collapsed.
A calamity—a "murder"—had occurred at Auguste Academy, the so-called holy land of detectives.
In the face of such a major incident, it was only natural that every detective hopeful in the class jumped in.
"Motive… a love affair, after all?"
"Well, he's the biggest hooligan and a piece of trash in London. There must be a line of people who want him dead."
The male student lay collapsed with no vital signs. The aspiring detectives gathered around him, spinning deductions, wore suitably serious expressions.
But the professor, watching them with a blank face, quietly withdrew her gaze and muttered inwardly.
'To think they can't even find the culprit right in front of them.'
Yes. The culprit in this case was none other than the professor herself.
'There are this many detectives, and yet how can not a single one catch on?'
London, where this academy stands. Even across all of Europe, there is likely no place as teeming with detectives as this.
That was why she firmly believed that here, someone would notice and expose her crimes.
Even failing that, she thought she would at least meet a detective who showed the potential to do so.
At least one person.
But as she neared the end of her first year at the academy—where she had arrived brimming with expectations—she cast aside the last hope she had held.
Hoping that at least one person would suspect her, she killed a freshman by a bold, blunt method unlike her usual, in the very center of where detectives stayed.
Yet the self-styled detective aspirants, forgetting that she herself had been the last to make contact with the victim, displayed nothing but substandard reasoning.
For someone already sufficiently disillusioned with detectives over the past year, that sight served as the final blow.
'I should hand in my resignation today.'
Now that she had realized that students of this caliber were the very detectives meant to shoulder the future, she had no more business here.
Quietly taking her eyes off the scene of her own crime and beginning to gather her papers, the professor arranged her thoughts at the same time.
It seemed there was no one here who could quench her thirst.
Perhaps nowhere in the world.
.
.
.
.
.
"Mm…"
"W-what?"
"Y-you scared me!"
It was at that very moment—just as the professor was about to leave—that an anomaly occurred right before her.
"…My head hurts."
For some reason, the male student she had targeted was calmly getting up and wiping the blood from his lips.
".....?"
Then, amid the stunned students, the male student began to stare at the professor with a hazy look.
The professor's long-quiet composure began to ripple, slowly.
The blond male student had certainly died before her eyes. She herself had checked; there could be no mistake.
Yet somehow, as if waking from sleep not long after, he had risen again and was now breathing just fine before her.
She couldn't begin to guess when he had sensed the danger she posed, or what trick he had used to survive.
For the professor, this was a first.
From childhood until now—petty crimes or serious—no crime she committed had ever once failed.
No one had slipped from the professor's grasp, and no one had uncovered her crimes.
That was the inescapable curse upon her.
But the curse she had deemed unbreakable shattered here, today, for the first time—
by the blond male student before her who, by some means, had perfectly evaded her crime, the first person in her life she could not predict.
"If you were feeling ill, you should've said so."
Feeling her heart begin to beat quietly, the professor asked him in a level tone,
"Shall we have you go to the infirmary, perhaps?"
Her expression, as always, was impassive, but the eyes that had usually been lifeless now gleamed, clear as those of a snake that has fixed on its prey.
"..."
But for some reason, the boy's condition was not normal.
His eyes wouldn't focus; he simply stared blankly ahead.
'…Did something happen to his head?'
The professor frowned slightly and sank into thought.
For the first time, she wanted to speak a little more with someone who had slipped from her grasp. If some aftereffect had left his head damaged, that would be quite a problem.
"Student, who is the person written here?"
So, to check his state, the professor tapped the name she had written on the blackboard for her self-introduction and posed the question.
"Uh, um… Moriarty, ma'am?"
At that, irritation suddenly began to frost over the eyes of the male student, who still wore a dazed expression.
"If you don't even know that, what are we supposed to do."
And moments later, still hazy, yet with a voice somehow laced with annoyance, the male student began to explain.
"…James Moriarty is the most famous nemesis—the arch-enemy—of the great detective Sherlock Holmes."
As his voice rang through the classroom—
"A genius who, at twenty-one, published a paper on the binomial theorem and set all of Europe abuzz. But thanks to the criminal blood flowing in his veins, he also became the most dangerous figure in London."
the classroom's confused atmosphere began to freeze solid.
"Nicknamed the Napoleon of Crime, and behind half the crimes in London and most attempted offenses—you'll find him."
Even so, wearing a look that said he was sick of it all, the male student doggedly continued his explanation.
"But even that perfect man in the end meets his fate at Reichenbach Falls… Ugh, let's just drop it."
Then he abruptly cut himself off, let out a deep sigh, and began to raise his voice.
"I told you over and over to do your own research. Do you think game development is a joke? If you don't even do basic character research and keep asking me for everything, what am I supposed to—"
Then, as if suddenly coming to his senses, he stopped talking and slowly looked around.
"…Huh?"
Seeing every gaze fixed on him, he let out a vacant sound, while the professor's lips slowly curled upward.
"What is this place."
It seemed she could delay submitting her resignation for a bit.
"You seem to be under some misunderstanding, student."
For the very existence she had searched so hard for—the one to slake her thirst—had appeared before her like fate.
.
.
.
.
.
As the haze in my head lifted, the person who had questioned me came into sharp focus.
A tall frame, a lean build, neatly kept gray-tinged hair, and an impeccably tidy outfit.
At a glance she looked quite young, and yet she still carried a professorial air.
Perhaps from burying herself in research, her pale face bore heavy dark circles, and yet her beauty was not concealed.
"I don't know every detective, but at the very least there is no 'Sherlock' Holmes in this London."
Staring blankly at that awkward yet familiar figure, thinking, No way, I watched as she slowly began to speak.
"And my name isn't 'James' Moriarty, but 'Jane' Moriarty. Not 'he,' but 'she.'"
Saying so, she gently tapped the name written on the blackboard and fixed her gaze on me.
"The paper on the binomial theorem you mentioned hasn't even been published yet. In fact, it's scheduled for tomorrow. Naturally, no one but me knows that."
Unable even to think of avoiding that gaze, I met it, and cold sweat began to trickle down.
"I'll let slide the ridiculous nickname 'Napoleon of Crime,' and the rest of those malicious smears."
Looking at me with eyes full of curiosity, she tilted her head side to side like a young lizard and asked,
"But what is this talk of Reichenbach Falls?"
To someone who didn't know her, the sight might have seemed briefly cute. But right at that moment, I couldn't help but realize—
"What is it that I'm supposed to suffer there?"
The person before me, cocking her head exactly as the original described Professor Moriarty's habit, looking at me—
"Uh, well…"
was none other than Jane Moriarty, the implausible final boss of our company's game, the one I had been savaging in the meeting room just moments ago.
"Come to my office after class, student."
My first meeting with her took place in the worst possible form.