Mary Morstan had told many lies in her life. Some she told in order to survive. Some she told for profit. Some she told simply to please the man sitting in the study.
She had stood in front of the mirror countless times, practising the exact curve of a smile, polishing every word she would speak in society until each one carried the proper warmth. She dyed her hair, hid her true self behind blue contact lenses. She never truly liked it, yet she continued to play the role with absolute fidelity—so faithfully that, at times, she almost believed the woman named Mary Morstan was her real self.
Until she met Russell.
There had been no connection between them. At least, not until she learned that the man who had broken into her safe the night before was a thief.
For Mary, his appearance had been far too sudden.
The first time she saw him was at the opening ceremony of Imperial College London. He was late.
If he had not been late, she might never have noticed him.
But he was late, and he slipped in quietly through the back door.
Mary stood on the stage as the representative of the new students, reading aloud the perfect yet false speech she had revised over and over again to the hundreds of teachers and students below. The hall was packed; from a distance it looked like a mountain of rubbish, impossible to tell one person from another.
In her eyes, the latecomer was like a cat sneaking into a rubbish dump.
When walking down the street one may not pay much attention to the pedestrians around, yet a small animal often catches the eye.
She did the same. Instinctively, unconsciously, she looked at the cat.
And the cat looked back at her.
Interestingly, the moment their eyes met, she seemed to sense a flicker of surprise and guilt in his gaze. At the time the girl interpreted it merely as the embarrassment of being caught daydreaming, and thought no deeper. Only much later did she realise that the man had actually been considering escape.
She laughed when she heard it.
The man who had even contemplated skipping the opening ceremony later became the least likely person in London to run away.
After the ceremony she approached him of her own accord—not out of curiosity.
Rather, while she was delivering her speech she had clearly seen another face that was far more familiar to her.
Charlotte Holmes.
She did not know her, but she had heard the name.
The younger sister of the man who was said to be the British government itself, Charlotte Holmes—a detective of eccentric temperament.
Mary had not expected Charlotte to be a student of Imperial College London either, yet she remembered that Charlotte had appeared at the school only three times before the end of the first term: once at the opening ceremony, once at the welcome party, and once when she lost a bet with Russell and had to keep her promise.
Only three times in total.
When she approached Russell, she had actually been aiming at Charlotte.
While he stood on the stage she had clearly witnessed him speaking with Charlotte about something. The man's expression changed faster than a magician shuffling cards. Out of a professor's instinct she felt both wariness and curiosity toward this girl who might influence her future direction.
After the ceremony Mary approached Russell, intending to extract information about Charlotte Holmes. What she did not know was that the gears of fate were already beginning to turn.
That man stirred a special feeling in her that no one else ever had.
He was pure and upright—on the surface the complete opposite of a phantom thief.
But that was all.
Mary Morstan was not the sort of girl who fell in love with someone merely because "he feels different."
She had seen countless people. The young men who surrounded her—some fawning, some clumsy, some self-important, some too lazy even to put on airs. When they looked at her, their eyes were fixed either on the wealth of the Morstan family, or on her face, or on both. She was used to it. Therefore, when she first approached Russell, her purpose was clear: to draw out information about Charlotte Holmes.
She had prepared three plans in advance and seven or eight questions that appeared random but were in fact meticulously calculated.
She intended to mould this man into a pawn over one or two weeks and build an information network that led to Charlotte.
The first conversation backfired.
He answered the test she had set with complete sincerity.
Regarding the eccentric detective who had become his neighbour, the first thought that came to him was that life on Baker Street would no longer be boring.
Even when she pointed out that the woman suffered from a severe antisocial personality disorder, he paid it no mind at all.
"I do not like to lump people together under a single label."
Moreover, throughout the earlier conversation she had received not the slightest impression that he needed to keep his distance from her.
Those were his exact words at the time.
Mary was momentarily stunned.
Not because the words carried any particularly profound meaning, but because no one had ever said such a thing to her before.
Apart from the real Mary Morstan she had sealed deep in her heart.
Everyone tried to label her.
The heiress of the Morstan family, the most brilliant flower of London high society, the outstanding student of Imperial College London, Arthur Morstan's perfect daughter.
She herself sometimes labelled herself: substitute, tool, commodity waiting to be sold.
But this person said he did not like labelling people in bulk.
And almost incomprehensibly, she began to take an interest in him.
It was not out of a professor's instinct, but something she herself could not properly explain.
And it was not love either.
At least not at that time.
At the time Mary even thought the man a little foolish.
In the survival rules of Chongqing, excessive sincerity is often the most fatal weakness.
Yet the very purity she had once mocked became, in the years that followed, the one thing she could not let go of.
She noticed that he truly slept during class. He was not pretending to sleep or trying to attract attention—he was simply asleep.
She noticed that when he received his meal in the cafeteria he said "thank you" to the cafeteria lady. It was not formal, distant politeness; it came from genuine gratitude.
She noticed that when he looked at people his gaze was straight ahead.
She felt extremely uncomfortable.
Not because he had done anything excessive. On the contrary—he had done nothing at all.
He lived an ordinary life, interacted with people ordinarily, and simply went about his own business.
In Mary's eyes this "ordinary" situation was, rather, abnormal.
Because in the more than ten years she had lived in the Morstan household, no one had ever lived like that.
Everyone acted, everyone pretended, everyone schemed.
She had thought that was the way of the world.
Then Russell appeared.
He was certainly acting, but the acting was solely for the purpose of hiding his identity as a phantom thief. It had no further meaning.
This acting was different from other people's acting.
At first Mary had intended to sit beside him for only a day or two and then move to another seat.
After all, she did not particularly like the situation of sitting alone with him in the back row and becoming the centre of attention.
Yet somehow that intention vanished without her noticing.
By the time she regained awareness, the place beside him had completely become his.
And she began, helplessly, to pay attention to him.
At first she could always find any number of plausible excuses to approach him.
Chance encounters, exploratory probes, or seemingly casual academic exchanges.
But no matter how many lies she told, she could never deceive her own heart.
She found it increasingly difficult to concentrate on Charlotte Holmes.
Or rather, Charlotte Holmes herself was no longer important.
In her own eyes, his importance was growing.
Thanks to this person's sudden appearance, a vivid colour had been added to what had originally been a black-and-white world.
A deep azure blue.
The reason it was a vivid blue was… because when she looked at him, she realised that he was also looking at her.
He saw none of those things—the wealth of the Morstan family, her pride, anything else. He saw only her eyes.
Those clear blue eyes of that time.
Mary later recalled that period and always felt that fate had played a cruel joke on her.
She had spent more than ten years transforming herself into a perfect work of art framed in gold, hung on a wall, waiting to be appraised and bought and sold.
She had believed that was her value, and that everyone saw her that way.
The way he looked at her was different from the way he looked at anyone else.
It was not admiration, not envy… this was an examination.
When he looked at her it was as though he were gazing at something… she did not know how to express it.
It was not looking at a commodity, a tool, or something sold at a price.
It was looking at a person.
Looking at a living human being who ought to be taken seriously.
This sensation was completely unfamiliar.
It was so unknown an experience that the first time she felt it she was completely paralysed.
She did not know how to respond to that gaze, because no one had ever looked at her that way before.
In the orphanage the adults had looked at her as though she were a mouth that needed to be filled.
In the Morstan house Arthur had looked at her as though she were a blank mass that needed polishing.
In society the men had looked at her as though she were a collectible with a price tag.
No one had ever simply looked at her.
Not at her status or appearance or usefulness.
Simply wanting to see her.
Look at Mary. Or rather, look at that girl who hides behind blue lenses, dyes her hair silver, bears the surname Morstan, and does not even have a name of her own.
Those blue eyes had originally been her final trump card in using the false name Mary Morstan.
Yet when Russell gazed into those eyes she felt a helplessness she had never experienced before.
It was as though a thief long accustomed to moving cautiously in the dark had suddenly been dragged out into the sunlight.
The person who pulled her out asked nothing; he merely stretched out his hand.
Exactly the same as what the nun in the orphanage had once said to her.
[Little James, stop always staying in the corner. Go outside and take a sunbath.]
It was far too casual.
Mary blamed him for it in her heart many times.
How could he interfere so lightly in another person's life?
Could this person truly not even maintain a little social distance?
Ironically, this very rudeness and insult became the only source of uncontrollable joy in her monotonous days.
Mary had even spent a long time trying to suppress these emotions with reason.
It took her a long time to convince herself.
She told herself that Russell Watson was an ordinary student of Imperial College—sincere, yet a naïve fool.
He was merely an interesting person, someone worth making friends with, someone to talk to and while away the boredom of campus life.
The moments when her heart pounded, the smiles she could not suppress, the images that floated into her mind when she tossed and turned sleepless at night—those were all merely hallucinations.
She even made a list.
On the left side she wrote "Reasons why I should stay away from him"; on the right side "Reasons why it is all right to keep approaching him."
The left side was very long and occupied almost an entire page.
He does not belong to her world. He is an alien existence. He might learn her secret. He is far too pure. Because he is too pure, people will want to soil him.
On the right side there was only one sentence: "He will watch over himself."
That single sentence completely overwhelmed every rational, calm, and carefully considered argument of the left side.
The more she understood him, the more she felt this hidden gem growing brighter.
At the same time an unprecedented sense of gain and loss began to sprout in Mary's heart.
She had seen the most expensive jewels in the world and possessed the most exclusive connections in London high society.
From childhood to adulthood she had been able to obtain anything she wanted—or rather, anything the man sitting in the study needed her to have—with ease.
Yet when she faced Russell she hesitated.
A pure treasure like this ought to be handled with care.
Did she, whose hands were stained with lies and schemes, truly have the qualification to touch it?
This question reached its peak when Charlotte Holmes began to appear frequently around Russell.
How could that eccentric detective, who possessed almost no emotional intelligence, so brazenly occupy most of Russell's time?
How could she think she could spend every morning and every night with him in that messy living room at 221B Baker Street?
Mary was jealous.
It was an unfamiliar emotion for her, yet it was far too intense to ignore.
If that detective could give him orders so naturally, why could she not do the same?
She wanted to snatch him away from her, yet she had no legitimate reason for doing so.
This was an accurate reflection of Mary's situation at the time.
Unlike Charlotte, she could not use cases as an excuse to keep Russell by her side.
Moreover she bore the heavy responsibilities of the Morstan family and had to confront Arthur Morstan, who manipulated everything from the shadows.
She was like a canary locked in a luxurious cage, able only to watch the free birds flying in the distance.
Until the night of the launch party.
She almost forced him to dance with her at the party; his only reply was "I'll try my best."
Yet she was still extremely happy.
Leaving the future aside, at least for the present she had obtained a memory she could cherish for a lifetime.
She waited a long time at the edge of the dance floor, watching people arrive one after another, yet never once catching sight of the person she wanted to see.
Charlotte told her that Russell had gone to visit the orphanage where he had grown up.
The news surprised her. She had not expected him to be an orphan as well.
Sharing a common background yet having followed completely different paths in life only deepened her interest in him.
At the party she wore an expensive evening gown and maintained a perfect smile while receiving invitations and being probed by men with ulterior motives.
Magnificent chandeliers swayed overhead; the orchestra was tuning for the opening dance that was about to begin.
Crowds of people surrounded her, each scheming to take the hand of the head of the Morstan family and declare some worldly victory.
During the anxious wait the girl gradually became distracted and finally began to doubt him.
Just as she reached out her hand intending to leave, he appeared.
There were countless reasons to be angry, yet the moment he appeared none of them mattered any longer.
When he appeared, everything around her seemed to lose its colour.
He walked through the crowd that looked completely transparent in her eyes, came straight to her, made a light bow, and held out his hand.
The music began at that exact moment.
The instant Mary gently placed her velvet-gloved hand in his palm, the surrounding noise and probing gestures seemed to fall silent with a click.
They slid naturally onto the dance floor.
As the melody of the waltz played, the distance between them gradually narrowed.
When they danced in the centre of the floor and Russell's arm firmly circled her waist, Mary suddenly felt a sense of relief.
She had suspected many times that this man might be the insolent phantom thief she had previously encountered.
Although she could not reach a conclusion for lack of evidence and other reasons, she had always remained sceptical. Yet the moment they began to dance, his real name no longer mattered.
Whether he was the London thief Moriarty or Russell Watson, the slightly unkempt ordinary student attending Imperial College—either was fine.
These worldly labels and names had lost any meaning worth exploring for the present Mary Morstan.
She did not care how many secrets he was hiding or what dangerous role he might be playing in the dark.
All she knew was that this man who had appeared in her life like an alien object had filled every emptiness in her world and become the only existence she desired.
Even though he was always walking the most dangerous cliff edge, even though he might vanish without a trace at any moment like an ungraspable snowflake.
That was not a problem.
If one day he was destined to disappear into the fog, she would spend money to buy a gigantic lid to cover all the fog inside.
That night she lay on the bed staring at the ceiling when suddenly a single sentence floated into her mind.
Some people wait a lifetime for a person who never appears, while others search for the person who will appear tomorrow.
She did not know which category she belonged to.
All she knew was that if tomorrow there was a chance to approach him, she would certainly do so.
The day after tomorrow would also be fine.
Any day after that would also be fine.
She only wanted the present.
Afterwards, in the carriage on the way home, she covered her face with both hands and laughed for a long time.
She laughed so hard that the coachman thought she had gone mad.
Of course she had not gone mad.
She had suddenly realised something—this was what it meant to be seen.
In the end there was no need to make herself look expensive, no need to force herself into a pretty frame, no need to be fitted into a particular mould.
If she simply stood there quietly and remained herself, someone would push through the crowd, come to her, and stretch out a hand.
Once, all her joy and sorrow had been based on Arthur Morstan's evaluation system.
Success in investments and acquisitions, dinner parties that deepened ties with the powerful and wealthy, or an impeccably elegant curtsy that no woman could find fault with.
These achievements that the world praised had once been the very air she breathed in order to live.
Yet ever since Russell entered her world, those things had suddenly become tasteless.
He had robbed her of all her happiness—especially after she learned he was a phantom thief.
The joy was beyond words.
This sensation was completely unfamiliar.
It was so strange that it took her an entire night to become certain it was not a dream.
From then on she gradually became a different person.
Or rather, she began to reveal another side she had kept hidden inside herself.
During class she watched him not with the gaze of a professor observing a target, but secretly.
Just as she had done as a child in the orphanage, she always rose first on winter mornings and leaned against the windowsill waiting for the sunrise.
She was not afraid that the sun would not rise. She simply enjoyed the process of waiting.
The light gradually brightened, the frost on the windowsill slowly melted, and the world changed from grey to gold.
Looking at him always made her feel the same way.
When he yawned, when he turned a page, when he fell asleep on the desk.
Sunlight from the window fell on his hair and made it shine gold.
She sat beside him, pretending to read a book, yet not reading a single character on the page.
She was simply waiting. Waiting for him to wake, raise his head dazedly, and speak the first words to her.
Sometimes "Has class ended?", sometimes "What time is it?", sometimes merely a vague "Uh."
Whatever he said she would have been happy.
She wondered whether she might be ill.
This illness had no medicine, and no one could cure it.
Because the cause of the illness was the person himself, and the antidote was also in his hands.
If he did not give it to her, she could only remain ill.
Afterwards she simply gave up on treatment.
Even if it was an illness, what of it? It did not hurt, after all.
Sometimes her chest tightened—especially when he looked away.
For example, when he was looking at Charlotte.
She knew that Charlotte was his neighbour, his partner, the most important person in his world on Baker Street.
She knew that between them there existed an unspoken understanding she could not comprehend, an ability to understand each other without exchanging words.
She knew all of this. She knew everything.
Yet she was still jealous.
While he was brewing coffee late at night, the light in Charlotte's room next door was still on.
While he was preparing breakfast in the kitchen, Charlotte sat at the table waiting.
The dawns and dusks they spent together, the silences, the moments when everything was understood without explanation—she envied them.
The reason a shooting star is precious is precisely because it is uncontrollable.
What did she have?
The only times she could spend with him were the moments she sat beside him during class, the short periods they were alone in the empty classroom during the lunch break, and the brief intervals of rest and afternoon.
Like a thief.
Stolen time, stolen intimacy, stolen warmth. None of it had ever truly belonged to her.
She did not have the courage to think about the future.
The future was far too distant; she could not see it.
Arthur Morstan would never allow her to marry a poor man with no connections. Her status did not permit wilfulness, and the laws of this world did not allow her to live as she wished.
She knew these things better than anyone.
Therefore she could not think of the future. She could not think of tomorrow. She could not think of what might happen next week.
She could only think of the present.
Yet precisely in this moment he had given her something new, something she could look forward to.
Every Thursday.
And so she casually abandoned the false world that Mary Morstan had built.
She gradually realised that she had nothing whatsoever to do with the outdated customs and conventions of high society or with those glittering social circles.
Even the vast empire Arthur Morstan had left behind, the intricately entangled network of interests, and the enormous wealth that others coveted began to look faded in her eyes.
They were like withered leaves that had lost their last moisture, gradually stripping away her vitality and rapidly losing the colours that had once been attractive.
In the stiflingly grey London, while everything else withered, only the vivid blue in his eyes remained the sole living colour in her field of vision.
Therefore she began actively searching for him—or rather, actively approaching him.
She arrived at the classroom thirty minutes early, wiped the chair beside him clean, and waited for him to slip in quietly through the back door on time.
After class she deliberately packed her schoolbag slowly, waiting for him to finish packing, then the two of them naturally left the school gate together.
Even if I told you these things, probably no one would believe me.
Mary Morstan, who was extremely skilful in social situations, became terribly awkward the moment she faced the man.
Yet she no longer cared.
What about the face of the Morstan family, what about the rules of high society, what about every regulation Arthur Morstan had laid down…
None of it mattered any longer.
She had the courage to speak these words only in her heart.
Just imagining the scene made her want to laugh.
If she said that, the man sitting in the study would surely fly into a rage and try to stand up from his wheelchair.
She began avoiding attendance at boring salons, refusing invitations with ulterior motives, and spending the time she ought to have used for networking in the sparsely populated classrooms of Imperial College.
Like a meticulous housekeeper she carefully calculated every minute and second and spent it all on a single person.
She sat on the chair, sometimes perched on the desk swinging her legs, watching Russell nap on the table, listening to him talk endlessly about trivial matters on Baker Street, and occasionally laughing out loud at his unfunny jokes.
Afterwards she began looking forward to going to school every day.
The first thing that floated into her mind when she woke in the morning was not the tasks of the day, but the fact that she would see him today.
While brushing her teeth she wondered what clothes he would be wearing today. While changing she wondered whether he would notice that she had changed her hair clip. When leaving the house she wondered whether he was already in the classroom.
These thoughts multiplied furiously like weeds and filled every corner of the once orderly life she had led.
She began to grow accustomed to many things.
She grew accustomed to him sitting on her left, to the smell of laundry detergent that drifted from him, to him sleeping on the desk during class.
When the professor called her name she would touch the back of his hand with her little finger; on the way home from school she deliberately walked half a step more slowly; when they parted at the school gate she waited for him to say "See you tomorrow" first.
These habits took root in her body like vines, twining around her bones and wrapping around her blood vessels.
She tried to pull them out, tried to pretend she did not care, locked herself in her room on weekends and told herself over and over, "I cannot do this, you will be ruined."
But she was already finished.
From the moment he was late for the opening ceremony, from the moment he slipped in through the back door, from the moment he looked up at her from below the stage.
She was already finished.
She even began to fear holidays.
Weekends were too long. When she could not see him for two days she became restless, paced around the house, took books from the shelves and put them back, stood for long periods by the window gazing at the road that led to Baker Street.
She did not know how long this would continue, when Arthur Morstan would intervene.
It was unclear when Charlotte Holmes would completely dominate his life.
She suddenly realised that she was far more worried about the existence of Charlotte Holmes than about her own identity being exposed.
Especially after seeing those reports—most people in London regarded them as the ideal couple, and even at Imperial College, before the woman had actually appeared, people were already linking their names together in conversation.
Her jealousy had almost reached its peak.
Therefore she began to act more aggressively.
She knew this behaviour might appear abrupt or lacking in dignity in the eyes of others, yet she cared not at all.
She even wished other people to see her approaching him, holding his hand, or embracing him.
Mary long remembered the sunlight that poured into that empty classroom.
Dust danced in the beams of light; chalk marks from the previous lesson remained on the blackboard.
If she were to list a few of the most unforgettable moments of her life, the moment he accepted her confession in the empty classroom would without question be on that list.
From that moment she was granted the right to be jealous, the right to openly stretch out her hand to him, and the right to act spoiled toward him.
At that moment her world shrank until it could contain only that empty classroom and the paved avenues of Imperial College London covered with fallen leaves.
Yet fate seemed not to favour the overly arrogant.
That alien object that suddenly descended carried a danger not of this world.
The man could not bear to see her approach so humbly a poor man with neither status nor background.
He issued her an ultimatum. Then the professor awoke.
She resolved to destroy with her own hands the cage that had confined her for more than ten years.
During the day she remained Miss Mary of Imperial College London—a person of dignity and elegance.
She continued as usual to turn her face away during class and watch Russell sleeping on the desk; in the empty classroom in the afternoon she mischievously tested his clumsy lies.
She savoured these fleeting moments that belonged to the two of them alone as greedily as a traveller crossing the desert seeking the last drop of water.
And when all preparations were complete she took out the two tickets to the Royal Opera House that she had prepared in advance.
In the theatre she confessed everything to him; afterwards the two of them shared a passionate kiss in the box.
She laid bare before him all her weakness, her wretchedness, and the whole of her fate—like a puppet controlled by Arthur Morstan.
At the time she had not asked for much. Sympathy would have been enough.
Yet what he offered was not sympathy, but friendship.
In the darkness he held her hand and accepted every trembling part of her soul.
At that moment Mary believed she had truly won.
On the night the flames leapt high into the sky she watched from afar as the building that symbolised wealth, prison and lies was mercilessly engulfed by fire.
The scorching heat burned her face, yet in her heart she felt an unprecedented sense of relief.
She thought she had finally burned to death the man sitting in the study.
She believed that with the death of Arthur Morstan the false identity of Mary Morstan would also vanish into the flames.
Thereafter family ties, marriages of mutual benefit, the relationship with the professor—everything would disappear.
Only Mary would remain.
If only things could truly go as smoothly as in a fairy tale.
But reality was like the script of a third-rate novelist of the lowest and cruellest kind; it never granted a happy ending at the climax.
Arthur Morstan's hospital life was full of twists and turns and ultimately resulted in lifelong disability.
In truth this was not a bad thing. For that man to die easily would have been far too simple.
Moreover he could neither speak nor move; his life depended entirely on caregivers. He possessed not a shred of dignity.
For a man accustomed to always holding the superior position, what punishment could be crueller?
Yet Scotland Yard insisted on conducting a full investigation.
The moment Lestrade said blood samples would be required for testing, Mary's heart sank into an ice-cold abyss.
Once the tests were finished, everything would be over.
Considering how desperate she had been at the time, it is no exaggeration to say that the excitement she felt the next day when she heard the results from Lestrade and drew her conclusion on the train was even greater.
He knew she was the professor, and even if that man was not her real father, he knew she had committed patricide.
Before her identity was revealed Mary had been terribly worried that Russell would hate her once he learned her true nature.
She would rather have turned to ash in that fire together with Arthur than see Russell look at her with the eyes one uses for a monster.
They would never be able to return to the previous state.
Fortunately, fate always plays cruel jokes on people.
He saw the blood-stained knife in her hand.
Yet he said nothing. He merely reached out and wiped the blood from the handle of her knife.
A distorted sense of relief she had never felt before surged through her blood.
It felt as though she had found something precious she had lost.
Even though he had seen through those unpleasant facts, he chose to conceal them for her sake.
Even though he knew her hidden dark side, he still chose to become her accomplice.
Then what else did she have left to hide?
She no longer needed to maintain a false social distance.
No matter how troublesome and annoying the relatives of the Morstan family might be, to her they were merely distractions in life.
Thanks to these older men, her relationship with Russell deepened further.
In a sense she even had to be grateful to them—including Milverton.
Yes, she had to be grateful to Milverton as well.
If that arrogant, greedy king Milverton had not driven them into a corner, she would probably never have known how far this seemingly carefree man was willing to go for her.
In a blackmail case that targeted the entire elite of London he shouldered every responsibility and danger himself.
He not only admitted it; he used the name that had originally been a criminal code name as the price to open the final path for her and Charlotte.
He left the dark side of the British Empire behind and, like an ordinary traveller covered in snow, pushed open the heavy oak door and returned to the fireplace where she and Charlotte were waiting.
Charlotte Holmes.
When she spoke that name again, the fierce jealousy and resentment she had first felt were no longer in her heart.
The famous detective's arrogant attitude still easily stimulated her competitive spirit, yet as time passed a strange yet unshakable tacit understanding formed between the two of them.
It was not only a matter of the bed.
Like the interaction of light and shadow, the alternation of black and white.
Charlotte symbolised truth and reason, while also representing the undercurrent that lurked beneath.
They were like two vines intertwined on the same great tree; neither could uproot the other from the soil named Russell Watson.
Since they could not monopolise this land, they would put down roots together.
This was not sane, and it completely violated the ethics of this era.
But who cared?
Mary did not care, Charlotte did not care, and Russell did not care.
After Christmas, London was wrapped as usual in thick morning fog.
Yet in Mary's eyes the world had completely changed.
She had formally inherited the vast, enormously wealthy business empire of the family and become its true ruler.
She no longer needed to practise that perfect false smile in front of the mirror.
Elaborate long dresses and hypocritical social dinners were no longer absolute necessities she must wear or attend.
Of course, sometimes she still needed to consider the long-term interests of the Morstan family.
Only now it was no longer for that man, but for herself.
She could navigate with ease among greedy directors and politicians, and at dusk abandon the mountain of account books without the slightest hesitation and board a carriage bound for Baker Street.
Mary Morstan remained a jewel that still shone at Imperial College London, continuing to captivate countless people.
On sunny afternoons she entered the familiar classroom as usual and sat beside the black-haired man as though no one else existed.
Yet this time she no longer needed to carefully and secretly conceal her ulterior motives or purposes.
Even amid Charlotte's cold snorts she could openly touch his hand and exchange kisses.
When Russell occasionally raised his head from a book and looked at her with those deep, clear eyes, Mary still felt her heart pound for no reason.
Even after long years this feeling never faded.
In the end, the girl who had once hidden by the windowsill of the orphanage waiting for the sunrise finally beheld her own sun.
She had finally received the alien object that had belonged to her all along.