Last night.
The Royal Society lecture hall.
Charlotte sat in the second row, on the aisle.
It satisfied the Holmes family's minimum requirement for "attendance," while also giving her the shortest possible escape route.
Onstage, Mycroft droned on about policy in a voice that could anesthetize a horse. By the seventeenth minute, Charlotte had already deduced the professions, marital statuses, and most recent cheating partners of everyone in the first three rows.
Boring.
Unbearably boring.
The girl began replaying Baring Bank in her head.
That fox had chosen tonight to move, threading the needle perfectly into the three-hour window where she was trapped here. That meant that after last time's failure, he had elevated her to his highest-priority threat variable—though if it hadn't been for the bet, she would never have cared about some narcissist who carved smiley faces onto gemstones.
Thirty-four minutes in.
Boredom swallowed Charlotte again.
Without thinking, her hand slipped into the inner pocket of her trench coat and touched a stack of rough, coarse paper.
The manuscript the goldfish had left on her desk.
She'd stuffed it into her pocket before leaving—not because she wanted to read it, but because the desk needed clearing.
Charlotte drew out the pages and, under the dim wall lamps of the lecture hall, opened to the first page.
Just killing time.
"When I was still a student wasting away in the literature department, I used to think the world was driven by emotion—until that night, when I met Charlotte Holmes—"
Trite.
She flipped to the second page.
The metaphors were like moldy cheese; the adjectives were piled up like cheap baubles on a Christmas tree; the whole structure was as loose as a cardboard box left out in the rain.
She flipped to page seven.
"Her deductions were as precise as a surgeon's scalpel."
That metaphor had appeared 14,300 times in London publications this year alone. If clichés had a cemetery, that one should've been buried long ago.
She flipped to page twelve.
"Like a lazy cat licking the bones of its prey."
Cats don't lick bones. Basic zoology: nonexistent. No wonder he only wrote for third-rate magazines.
She flipped to page twenty.
"Her trench coat flared like a flag that refused to surrender."
Information density: zero. Pure word-padding. A waste of her time—and a waste of innocent trees cut down to become pulp.
At this point she should have closed the manuscript, concluded "trash," and stuffed it back into her pocket forever.
But page twenty-three made her stop.
The goldfish was writing about the scene in the carriage after the Craig case—about the moment she'd said, "Empathy can't help me solve a case."
"When Miss Holmes said that, the index finger of her left hand curled slightly inside her coat pocket. It was an unconscious gesture she only made when thinking about a question logic couldn't answer—as if she were silently plucking a string that didn't exist."
Charlotte's page-turning hand froze.
That habit did exist.
Left index finger curling—an unconscious mimicry of plucking a violin string—triggered only when an emotional variable interfered with a logical chain.
She had only realized it herself three years ago, standing before a mirror with a violin in hand.
And that goldfish—after seeing her three times—had written it down.
Onstage, Mycroft's voice faded into distant white noise.
Charlotte read that page again.
Then again.
Sometimes observation has nothing to do with intelligence. It's about attention.
A person who could quietly record her micro-expressions while being publicly insulted as a "goldfish" didn't feel like a goldfish.
More like a catfish.
Of course, a catfish was still a fish.
Just… slightly less boring.
Slightly.
…
Now.
The medical school corridor.
"Goldfish."
Charlotte marched straight toward Lucian, walking so fast it was almost aggressive. She yanked the wrinkled manuscript from her inner pocket and slapped it against his chest.
"Page seven, paragraph three—scalpel, fourteen thousand three hundred times. Page twelve—cats don't lick bones. Page twenty—flag, zero information density."
All in one breath, without pausing.
Lucian, by reflex, had already pulled out his notebook and started scribbling like his life depended on it.
Mary stood to the side, emerald eyes moving calmly between the two of them.
"But page twenty-three," Charlotte said, shoving a fresh lollipop into her mouth. Her words came out slightly muffled. "Don't change that one."
Then she turned and walked away.
[Watson Card Activated · Points Gained: +1 per hour]
One point per hour?
Lucian blanked for half a second, then shot Mary an apologetic look.
"Miss Morstan, excuse me—"
Mary smiled and made a polite "after you" gesture.
Lucian spun and chased after Charlotte.
Behind them, Mary watched his retreating back. The curve of her smile cooled by a fraction.
The corgi had gone after its owner.
That little "test" just now had been deliberate. The difference in blink frequency between a person's two eyes would require high-speed photography to measure—no one could truly see it with the naked eye. As for why Mary tested him at all: simple.
Teasing a corgi was fun.
And if she could tease a secret out of him, even better.
…
At the other end of the colonnade, Charlotte walked as if she were fleeing something.
Lucian kept exactly two meters behind her—an empirically tested safe threshold. One and a half meters earned an elbow strike. Two and a half meant losing her.
"Miss Holmes, I'll revise the cat metaphor to—"
"Stop following me."
"—'like a chemist obsessed with carbohydrates conducting an oral experiment'?"
"Your quota is used up."
"It's a new week!"
"Rule change. One sentence per week."
Charlotte stopped abruptly at the stairwell. Lucian nearly crashed into her—his nose three centimeters from the back of her neck.
The silver-haired girl turned around.
Less than thirty centimeters apart. At this distance, those ice-blue eyes carried a terrifying pressure.
"In your manuscript—left index finger curling, imitating plucking a string. I only noticed that habit three years ago. You saw me three times and wrote it down."
It wasn't a question. It was a statement.
Lucian's brain instantly ran route assessment.
Admitting his observational ability would trigger deeper suspicion.
Denying it wouldn't be believed.
"Because I'm a writer." Lucian pushed up his glasses. "Not because I'm smart. It's an occupational disease. I can write three hundred words about how Jekyll pinches a coffee cup handle."
Charlotte stared at him for nearly ten seconds—the same cold appraisal as before.
"Your prose is still garbage."
"I know."
"Use another cat metaphor and I'll feed your manuscript to a real cat."
She turned and went downstairs.
Her pace finally slowed—just a little.
Lucian didn't immediately follow. He glanced at his system panel.
[For each completed biographical manuscript: Sync Rate +0.5%]
[Current Sync Rate: 5%]
[Remaining near a genius: +1 point/hour]
Passive income.
No stealing jewels.
No leaping from a five-story tower.
No being hunted by the entire Scotland Yard.
Just stay near Charlotte—get cursed at, ignored, treated like extra oxygen—and earn one point per hour.
Eight hours a day: eight points.
A month: two hundred forty points.
Writing also increases sync rate.
Too perfect.
Lucian closed the panel and hurried down the stairs after her.
"Miss Holmes! Wait! I just thought of a new metaphor—"
From below came a single icy word.
"Get lost."
"Understood! Does that 'get lost' count as this week's quota?"
Silence.
Then—accelerating footsteps.
Lucian smiled and sped up too.
With Charlotte's grasp of architecture, if she truly wanted to shake someone off, she could make them doubt their own existence within ten seconds.
But she didn't.
Charlotte simply walked very fast.
And this goldfish—just happened to swim pretty fast as well.
.....
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