Morning lectures ended in the usual, soul-sucking boredom.
Charlotte hadn't listened once. None of what the professor taught was necessary to her.
Mary hadn't listened either. For her, "listening" was just a formality—she spent the entire class talking to Charlotte.
Russell hadn't listened at all, either. He'd been asleep—and yet somehow he'd gained the most.
Who understands the salvation of waking up to find an extra two hundred malice points in your wallet?
When class ended, the three of them stood up under everyone's stares and moved to an empty classroom to hang out.
"How does it feel?" Russell asked Charlotte. "Your first day at university."
"A waste of time," Charlotte said succinctly.
"As far as the class experience goes, it was unbearably dull. At least now I understand why you sleep through every lecture."
"Long live understanding." Russell sipped his coffee.
"I'd really prefer you didn't sleep through lectures," Mary said, unable to resist. "Try taking notes sometime?"
"Spare me." Russell shrugged.
Just then, Charlotte seemed to remember something.
"Speaking of the Professor…"
Before she could finish, Mary stiffened slightly, a faint crease forming between her brows.
Why are you so obsessed with your damn Professor?
"The Professor?" Mary asked, curiosity calibrated to perfection.
"I was thinking," Charlotte said, "whether he might have some connection to Moriarty."
The moment the words landed, the room went dead silent.
Both "involved parties" were startled into stillness, their hands pausing mid-motion.
In the end, Russell broke the silence.
"Why?" he asked. "What connection could there be?"
"Yeah," Mary added quickly, "and didn't Moriarty hijack the Professor's plan at Lloyd's Bank?"
"But what if that was part of the Professor's plan too?" Charlotte said.
"Maybe from the beginning, the ones who attacked the bank were always disposable pawns."
She paced as she spoke.
"They existed to draw fire—stage dressing for Moriarty's entrance."
"If Moriarty acted alone, even if he succeeded, he'd still attract massive attention. But if you recruit a batch of cannon fodder and package Moriarty as a Zorro figure, the nature of it changes, doesn't it?"
She turned back toward them.
"Is… is that so?" Russell looked at Mary.
"Why are you asking me?" Mary shot back. "I'm not the Professor."
Then she looked at Charlotte.
"Still—if we assume your hypothesis is true, it explains why both Moriarty and the Professor chose Lloyd's Bank."
"And right now, Scotland Yard's attention is focused on the Professor," Charlotte continued. "But that identity itself has an extremely high level of concealment—same as Moriarty."
"Not only that," she added, "there's a key factor."
"What?" Russell asked.
"Time," Charlotte said.
"The time the Professor disappeared—and the time Moriarty appeared."
"I know when Moriarty appeared. A year ago," Russell said. "But the Professor?"
"More precisely, Moriarty appeared one year and three months ago," Charlotte corrected.
"And the Professor—according to what those men said, plus what I've learned—aside from the Lloyd's Bank operation, his last appearance was one year and four months ago."
"One disappears. One appears. There's exactly one month in between."
"That's a little too neat to be coincidence."
Oh, it's not coincidence at all, Russell thought.
That was when I'd just come of age—when my cheat ability showed up with the beloved transmigration gift package.
You have a cheat and you're not using it?
"Maybe it really is coincidence," Mary said.
"One coincidence can be coincidence," Charlotte replied. "Two coincidences can still be coincidence. But three—or more—stacked together? That stops being coincidence."
"When you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains—no matter how unlikely or hard to accept—must be the truth."
"But we're still missing the last coincidence," Mary said. "Lloyd's Bank. The Professor's disappearance. Moriarty's appearance. Where's the third?"
"The third…" Charlotte fell silent.
She ran through everything she'd extracted from the criminals—the few scraps about the Professor's past.
What irritated her was that those men had all heard of the Professor, but Lloyd's Bank was the first time they'd had any real contact.
Everything else was secondhand—stories through colleagues, superiors, rumors that had already been warped by repetition.
"Not yet," Charlotte admitted, shaking her head. "I tried to get them to name earlier cases the Professor was involved in, but they couldn't.
"Or rather, what they described was all hearsay—too many versions removed to be useful."
"Doesn't Scotland Yard have files?" Russell asked.
"If you planned a perfect crime, would you leave your name at the scene?" Charlotte countered.
"Besides, those cases are a year or more old. I don't even know which ones the Professor orchestrated. How am I supposed to search the records?
"And 'perfect crime' doesn't necessarily mean no one was arrested. For the Professor, achieving his goal without exposing himself is success."
She paused, then continued.
"Still—based on their description, Bilson seemed to know more about the Professor."
"Maybe Bilson studied the Professor's other feats. Maybe he even participated in one."
"So we're back to square one," Russell said, raising a brow. "Catch Bilson, and we can infer more about the Professor's identity."
"At least in terms of outcome, yes," Charlotte nodded.
"Then where is Bilson now?" Mary asked. "Has Inspector Lestrade found him?"
"At least in terms of outcome," Russell shrugged, "not yet."
"But there's still something that doesn't add up," Mary said.
"What?" Charlotte looked at her.
"If Moriarty and the Professor really are connected," Mary said slowly, eyes fixed on Charlotte, "then why would Mycroft cover for Moriarty?"
....
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