[A Miss Sherlock Fanfic; Sara Shelly Futaba/Wato Tachibana; G-Rated; One Shot; AU: Different First Meeting; Collage; Japanese Detective Fiction Easter Eggs.] (ao3)
When Wato Tachibana arrives, the lecture theater is already full of students. Only the last three rows are still empty.
Not a surprise, Prof. Higashino's Criminal Psychology is a high-rated class. Luckily, she isn't here for the lecture.
She chooses the last row, sits down and takes out a pen and a stack of squared paper.
Today she'll kill the victim. She has sorted out all those scenes.
Once she finishes a page, she puts it in the upper right corner and continues to fill up the next one. She pours out the world in her head, focused. The lecture fading into the background, the only main tune in her ears is the friction between the tip of her pen and the paper.
So, when a voice arises beside her, she jumps.
She turns her head to the right and finds a girl sitting close. A bit too close, in fact, Tachibana falls right into those eyes, deep like wells, dark black like crow's feathers.
"Your story, it's interesting," those eyes smile into two beautiful curves, "and I asked you what comes later."
Her ears turn hot, "I won't tell you. You have to read it to know."
"Okay," the girl puts her hands under the chin, palms facing each other with only fingertips touching, like a praying gesture, "The elder brother didn't do it, though, that's obvious."
She then retreats into her thinking and doesn't say a word in the rest of the class.
Tachibana tries to shrug it off and get back to work, but her mind keeps wandering.
That girl pays no attention to the lecture. She sits there like an outsider, wearing a trench coat.
There's faint wintergreen scent in the air, a mix of sweet and fresh. A smell always makes Tachibana feel both cold and warm. Cold as when the snow just starts to melt and warm as sunlight casts on her shoulder when she walks on the snowed ground.
Of course the elder brother didn't do it. Which kind of writer reveals the real killer right after the death scene?
The next week, same class, same seat, Tachibana immerses in the world she created. Her detective just got a call and is heading to the police station for newly-found evidence.
A figure comes near and then sits beside her. It's the same girl from last week. She smirks at her, taking off her earphones, and then peeks over the stack of paper Tachibana just produced.
"Ah, you rewrote the scene."
Tachibana suddenly thinks of some elusive creature, with pointed ears, long limbs, and narrow eyes. If she looks at them from a particular angle, it'll look like they're smiling, like they know what'll happen and are happy to be right.
She has to go back to the story.
Forty words later, her detective gets distracted by a cat in the street. It takes another fifty words to bring her back to the police station.
Tachibana picks up her usual writing pace. Once she finishes a page, she puts it in the upper right corner. The girl picks out the page in the bottom, and once she read through it, she puts it in another stack beside the original one.
The only sounds in her ears are the tip of her pen touching paper, and page flipping.
Soon, the girl catches up and finishes the whole stack. She doesn't rush her. She puts her hands under the chin again, humming some unknown tune.
"Did you take the class?" Tachibana asks.
"Nah. Psychology isn't as magical as how it sounds."
"People lie, sometimes to themselves, too, so how can we say we know people," the girl explains, "but how they act and clues left on the way never lie."
She's doing that smile again. Tachibana stares back.
"But people look, never observe."
"If you didn't take the class, why are you even here?"
"Bored?" she offers, for a second she even looks shy, Tachibana swears. "Why," her eyes twinkle, as if that second never happened, "a medical student came to the class, but instead of taking notes she writes her story?"
Tachibanaās eyes widen.
"Maybe I'll tell you the next time, Tachibana."
Is it her imagination or her tone really has a hint of showing off? "Not surprised anymore."
That's not a lie, she tells herself. And because the more surprising part, in fact, is she called her by the first name. They only met twice and exchanged less than 5 minutes' talk altogether. They don't know each other.
"This one isn't hard," the girl smiles apologetically, "You wrote it on the top of your first page. I saw it last week."
"It's a beautiful name. I'm Sara, by the way."
Sara comes and sits beside her again the next week. She smiles at her as greetings, eyes curving. She reads her story and then sinks back into her thoughts.
Tachibana finds herself getting used to the pattern.
Sara is always alone. She comes to the class and then leaves. Tachibana never sees her with anyone. Out of curiosity, she asks her after the next class they sit together.
"Do you like katsudon?" Sara asks, totally out of the blue, "I love katsudon. Let's go. Iāll buy you lunch."
"For what?" Tachibana already follows Sara out of the lecture theater before asking.
"Thanking you for the story?"
During their lunch, Sara tells her she was born in England and only came to Kyoto University for a semester's exchange. Her father has some stuff to deal with back in Japan. It's an about four months' stay, and since she already studied in advance there, she was allowed to sit in any class she wanted. 'Take it like a vacation,' her mentor said, 'make friends.'
That's why she's always alone. Tachibana doesn't think Sara has made any friend. Why does she need that? She's not staying, she's passing by.
Tachibana buys a world map on the routine trip to her favorite bookstore. She hangs the map on the wall behind her bed. She stands on the bed barefoot, finding the location of England. She puts her left hand's index finger on the island, and then put her right hand's index finger on hers on the Pacific ocean.
The distance between these two places is so long.
She has never traveled abroad before. The longest trip she ever took was moving from her granny's house to Kyoto for college. A warmth rises in her chest along with the thought. The old house stores her beloved childhood memory. Sitting around a kotatsu and having tea with her granny after dinner. It's silent after dark, sometimes she could hear the sound of snow falling in the night. When she accompanied her granny to a nearby temple for prayers the next morning, foxes were hiding in the woods. They were quick, smart and beautiful. Those few times when she spotted them - or they spotted her - their eyes curved into lines like they're smiling, like they're proud of knowing everything of the universe.
They always disappeared before Tachibana realized.
Sara doesn't show up the next week.
Tachibana is a little disappointed. Just a bit. It's not like they ever made a deal of it. But she finished the most exciting part of the story. She thought Sara would like it.
She feels silly for that.
She feels even sillier when she can't stop smiling seeing Sara the next week.
Sara blinks at her, doesn't seem to notice her embarrassment. She takes off her earphones and sits with her.
Tachibana stares at her profile while she reads the story.
She was right. She likes it.
More weeks follow. Her detective is getting close to the truth. She and Sara have katsudon three more times. Sara always hums the same song. Tachibana finds out which song it is when she's at the bookstore. A familiar tune is playing and she asks the staff. It's a cello suite. The instrument's sound makes Tachibana think of a stream running. Time flows forward.
She crosses out each day passed on her calendar. The distance between today and the end of the semester is so short.
She turns off the light and goes to bed.
Two weeks before the final exam week, students occupy every library or stay in the dorm, few people walking outside.
Tachibana is doing an errand for her lab, sending a sample to the Chemistry Department. While she is walking up the staircase, a familiar voice calls her from behind her back.
She turns around and sees Sara. Light casts in through the window behind her, framing her silhouette, dust floating in the air like golden fragments echoed from another space.
"I'm going back to England this weekend."
Tachibana doesn't know how to react, too many things scramble in her head. 'Why so fast?' 'I haven't decided the next scene.' 'I'm going to rewrite that part from two weeks ago.' 'You said four months!'
In the end, she manages, "You don't want to know whodunnit?"
It's a fancy word, she found it in a reference book. It makes her seem like an expert writer.
"I know whodunnit," Sara comes near and stands only a few stairs below her. They are so close that those eyes walk right into her, darker than the winter night, she hears the sound of snow falling when she blinks.
"Of course." Tachibana drops her gaze.
"Wato Tachibana," Sara calls gently.
"You study in medicine because you have good grades and you want to help others. But you love stories more than anything. You chose the class because you needed a time slot to write, but didn't want to bump into classmates. You love katsudon," Sara smiles mischievously, "Every Wednesday, you go to the bookstore three blocks away and check out newly-published detective novels, but I think yours is better."
Tachibana knows she must look stupid with her mouth half-opened, but it's Sara, everyone must look stupid around her. This girl will achieve anything she wants to do, and she can go anywhere she wants to go, and-
"Sara Shelly Futaba," she holds out a hand, like an inviting gesture, "I'll be an investigation consultant one day."
"Investigation consultant?" she's confused. Is that a kind of detective?
"The very first one," she's so excited, and proud, because she knows it'll be the truth, "Be my partner then."
āWhen you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.ā
"It'll be fun. And you'll have all the materials you need."
Some pull between certain atoms is stronger than others. Something is meant to happen more than once, in many ways, in many lives, in every universe. The truth happened before and will happen and is happening. Time is irrelevant standing in front of it.
Tachibana will become a surgeon and join a volunteer doctorsā mission in Syria. That's the longest trip she ever takes.
They will meet again and, in fact, work together for a human explosion case in Tokyo.
They will tell the most popular, well-sold and most-adopted detective stories in the human history, ever.
Right now, Tachibana puts her hand into Sara's and happily announces, "Sure. Promise."
If she says so. She believes her.
Their first meeting scenario is definitelyĀ Ā a nod to Ā borrowed from my fave Japanese detective partners aka Himura Hideo & Arisugawa Arisu aka the best criminologist/professor/detective and his writer friend <3
katsudon is a delicious meal, whose photos you shouldn't google when hungry.
kotatsu is a smart invention.
I have no issue regarding to psychology.
Yes, Higashino is that famous detective fiction writer.
My obsession of Takeuchi Yuko's eyes is probably showing. Because I don't make the rule and those are the most beautiful smiling eyes.
If you're curious about the show which will air on April, here is the second trailer.
