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About two months after the long-awaited conclusion of The Professor Case, I received a letter via post from one Mr Herlock Sholmes. In it, he detailed his plans for a highly anticipated sojourn to Japan; in the near future, no less. I remembered the promise he’d made to me just before I’d left all those years ago. We were both stood on the port of Dover and he looked at me, teal eyes blazing with a fiery ambition that I knew only him to possess — he’d sworn that once everything was back under control, he would come and visit me in my homeland.
And I believed him – of course I believed him. Sholmes never made empty promises.
But there was no world in which I imagined it would take this long. Days turned into months. Months turned into years and years. At one point, I stopped counting, afraid and unwilling to reconcile with the painful reality of it. There was no time. We had too much responsibility. Not a day went by where I didn't loathe a higher entity — the one that decided we ought to be careened in such different directions.
And yet here he was, with a bright, young Iris in tow, exactly fifty days after I’d received that letter and more than a decade after he’d made that promise. Fifty agonising days of waiting, in some ways worse than those droning, shapeless years without him, because now I knew that he would arrive.
Morning frost bit into the window of my bedroom and gentle sunlight filtered in through the blinds, spilling onto the tatami mat below. My skin prickled with goosebumps and I staved off the chill, cocooning myself more tightly in the surrounding blankets. The spot next to me on the futon was still warm from when Sholmes had been sleeping earlier. I pressed myself into it. Distantly, I could hear him humming tunelessly in the bathroom.
Closing my eyes, I tried for a few more minutes of rest.
…
…
"Mikotoba! You must come and see this— quickly!" Sholmes' tense voice called from the bathroom.
I sighed wearily, but very quickly resigned myself to the fact I would not be getting any more sleep.
Sluggishly, I pulled myself out from the blankets, padding across the floor to cautiously poke my head into the en-suite doorway.
It was there that I found him — one hand grappled at his hair, the other clutched the edge of the sink in a white-knuckled grip. His eyes were wide and manic, and he was hunched forward in what seemed like an attempt to phase through the bathroom mirror.
He did not turn his head towards me. Instead, his eyes bored into the reflection in front of him.
" Sholmes? " I asked, panicked at the look of sheer terror that had wholly consumed his features. Before I knew it, I was already rushing towards him.
Once I got close enough, he spun around, one hand still in his hair, the other moving from the sink to envelop my wrist in an iron-tight grip. "Do you see it?" He asked cryptically, gesturing towards the crown of his head with my captured arm.
I squinted.
"I.. I don't see anything?" From what I could observe, there was absolutely nothing out of the ordinary.
"Observe more closely, Doctor!" Sholmes urged, desperate.
Frowning, I looked again — really looked. Amongst the vast expanse of pale blonde hair, there was a small glimmer. Upon closer inspection, I saw a strand of silver, short and stout, sticking up stubbornly, being made all the more visible by the morning light. It was somewhat difficult to discern from his natural hair colour, but there was no doubt about what it was:
A grey hair.
I muffled a sharp chuckle into my sleeve, disguising it as a cough.
"A very dire situation." I shook my head gravely, shaking slightly with the weight of my concealed laughter. "As for my diagnosis, I am afraid to say that ageing is a terminal condition."
"Mikotoba."
"You have a mere few decades left to live, but only if you put an end to that excessive smoking habit—"
"Mikotoba!" Sholmes huffed. "This is a serious matter. Tell me, when it grows out, who at the yard will take me seriously? —Who in our family will take me seriously? I will be branded as a geriatric and Iris will have me packed up and sent off to a nursing home in a matter of weeks — days, even — No doctor, you must save me." And then he collapsed forward, sulking dejectedly into my jinbei.
"My dear Sholmes, please – there is nothing to save..!" Good god, anyone would think the man was currently meeting his maker. "It will not look so awful—"
"It will look silly." Sholmes cut in. "Hideous. Abominable. I would sooner dye my hair that horrendous shade of scarlet again."
"Ye-esss," I drawled, glancing sideways at my reflection. My own salt and pepper hair stared right back, cruel and unforgiving with the passage of time. "Because this is a fate much worse, I'm sure."
Even from his place buried in my shoulder, Sholmes seemed to sense where I was looking. "Ah, but it is different, Mikotoba." Came the miserable, muffled voice. "Your white hair makes you look stern and dignified. Attractive. My own will do nothing but succeed in making me look old."
At that last statement, he sank impossibly further into me and I took pity on him.
"Because you are growing older, Sholmes." I kissed his temple and gently stroked his hair, where the offending strand sat. "There's no shame to be had in it."
"And you won't mourn the loss of my youthful visage?"
Pulling away, I tilted his face in both hands to better observe his features. Once, in our youth, I had thought him immortal; with a body that never seemed to age and hair that failed to grey, unlike my own. After ten years apart, I was content to see that wasn’t the case. I could see the faint beginnings of crow's feet around his eyes as well as the impression of smile lines around his mouth. I noted that both his jawline and nose had become less sharp with time. One by one, I ran my hands over them, and his cheeks flushed a pretty shade of rouge under my attentions.
It was strange looking at him; it felt as though I was looking at a memory, one that I wasn't remembering quite right. It had been so long. It had been too long. And now he looked very different, yet in many ways the exact same.
“I will miss it,” I admitted. “But there was a time and place for it - for the Herlock Sholmes of 10 years ago.” Gingerly, I brushed a lock of hair away from his forehead. It was much longer than it was back then. “As for the Herlock Sholmes of the present, I think this new look is quite becoming on him, and I’ve no doubt that in the future he will continue to look just as alluring, no matter what shape or form he takes.”
Sholmes’ mouth opened as if to say something and then shut. I smiled as I watched his blush grow impossibly redder.
The corners of his mouth twitched upwards and then he laughed, eyes crinkling in a mixture of relief and mirth. “My skills of flattery hold no candle to your own, my dear man!” Sholmes beamed, mollified. “You certainly know how to make a man feel infinitely better about himself, Yujin.”
“Yes, well… I was always more inclined to sentimentality and the like than you ever were.” I grinned. “Strange. I seem to recall some rather scathing remarks about it when we were younger.”
Limber arms moved up to loop around my shoulders, tugging me closer. “Oh, your tendency towards romance was always excessive,” Sholmes tutted. “But perhaps I ought to appreciate it more.” He leaned forward to slot his lips against my own.
I hummed into the kiss. “Perhaps.”
Over time, I've learned to hate the gods slightly less for our different turns of fate; he will always have his responsibilities in London, just as I will always have mine here in Japan.
But perhaps now with everything out of the way, with our daughters getting older and with the newer generations coming in to take the wheel, maybe we can afford to selfishly hoard a little time for ourselves. Perhaps we could visit each other enough that I don't recognise the changes in his appearance. His hair could be speckled with white, his wrinkles could grow more pronounced and his eyes could grow softer, warmer, and I wouldn't notice any of it until it was pointed out to me.
But that was probably wishful thinking.