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The presence of one Miss Iris Sholmes in the Prosecutor’s Office is never merely a casual affair.
Usually, Kazuma enjoys it. She often appears in the afternoon, bringing hot tea and sandwiches and baked goods of some sort or another. Her arrival is the only thing that can smooth van Zieks’ brow, and gives Kazuma an excuse to take a break without guilt. On some days she even brings pen and paper and lays beside his desk to write, feet kicking idly in the air and stopping every so often to pose a question (“What’s a good name for a race horse, Zumie?”) before scribbling down his answer, chewing at her lip. On others she brings Gina with her from the Yard, accompanied with news of a case that Sholmes has entangled himself in. Regardless, there is always some sort of excitement, as long as Iris is involved.
Which is part of the problem today, as he finds the last dregs of his enthusiasm sinking at her entrance. It’s not that he isn’t glad to see her. It hasn’t even been a particularly harrowing day, in terms of investigative work. But his mood has been on a steady decline since morning, when he awoke with a headache and an extra potent surge of existential dread, and if given the choice he would really rather return to his room at 221B Baker Street as quickly and discreetly as possible.
No such luck, it seems. Gina enters behind Iris, arms crossed and brow furrowed. Toby presses against the side of her legs, tongue lolling. From the opposite end of the room, Kazuma can feel van Zieks’ warning glare. Iris herself is standing with her hands clasped in front of her, a small, serene smile on her face.
Kazuma never stood a chance.
“Hi Zumie,” she says.
“Hello Iris,” he replies, setting aside his vague irritability to respond just as lightly. “Lestrade.” He nods in Gina’s direction.
“Inspector to you, ‘Sougi,” Gina huffs. “We’re on a case.”
“Oh, are we? At…” He glances at the clock. “Half past five.”
“This is urgent, Zumie,” Iris cuts in. “It’s about Waggy.”
“Ah.” Urgent to Iris and Gina, then. “What trouble has she got into now?”
“That’s the thing. We can’t find her anywhere!” Iris’ voice pitches in distress; the atmosphere immediately stiffens. Kazuma represses the instinctual urge to drop everything in assistance. Think logically, he reminds himself.
“She’s not at home, is she?”
“Well, if she is, she never responded when we called her. Or when we set out her supper. That’s weird, isn’t it?”
Kazuma supposes so—he hasn’t interacted with the cat much beyond the occasional glimpses of her tucked into corners and stretched atop shelves, or the startling glint of her yellow eyes in the dark of his bedroom at night.
“And this requires the full attention of the Yard’s best? After hours, even?”
“You heard ‘er earlier, didn’t you ‘Sougi? It’s urgent.” Gina’s frown deepens. Across the room, van Zieks’ chilling glare intensifies.
“Alright,” Kazuma concedes, before he’s forced to hear the order from van Zieks’ own mouth. He stands from his desk and dons his cap and jacket. “I’ll see what I can do.”
“Let’s split up,” Iris suggests, as they spill out onto the street. “Daddy and I can search near Baker Street, in case she hasn’t gone far. Ginny and Zumie, can you take the rest?”
“As in, the entire city of London?” Kazuma asks, but Iris has already bounded off. He takes a deep breath, pinching the bridge of his nose in an effort to squeeze the headache from his eyes. “One cat. In the entire city of London.”
“Don’t be daft, ‘Sougi. We’ve got the Chief Inspector on our side.” Gina turns to Toby, her expression abruptly shifting into a smile she reserves only for him and Iris. “Isn’t that right, Chief?”
Toby barks and wags his tail. Kazuma tries not to remember the time Toby had led them on a grand tour of London’s finest dumpster bins, only to discover that Sholmes had found the evidence they had been searching for at a pawnshop down the block.
“Oi. Stuff it, ‘Sougi,” Gina says, shooting him a glare.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“I knew you was thinkin’ it. That was only once, awright?”
“It was five hours. Of bin diving.”
“An’ he ‘ad a cold!”
“Alright, alright,” he says. “Where to then, Inspector Toby?”
“Chief Inspector,” Gina grumbles.
She hands Toby what appears to be a sock, and he sniffs it enthusiastically.
“Waggy likes to hide ‘em,” she explains at his doubtful look. Kazuma has never seen Wagahai steal a sock, but then again he’s not well-versed on the nature of cats.
Toby leads them down the street, zagging up and down alleyways and across bustling boulevards. He stops every so often to sniff a tree, but quickly dismisses it and hurries along the invisible route charted by his nose.
They pass by rows of houses with apples and turnips and orange pumpkins sitting upon the steps. Some have orange garlands wrapped around wrought iron fencing, or twig wreaths hung on the doors. It takes a few more blocks for the implications to strike him, and when they do it settles sharp and sour in his stomach.
That’s right, Kazuma thinks. Only a week until All Hallow’s Eve. He had almost succeeded at forgetting what that meant. But the mind is far too adept at finding meaning by association, and so here he is: fall decor signifies the approach of All Hallow’s Eve, which was the day he boarded the SS Grouse to Dunkirk, which just so happens to be one week after his birthday. Not that his birthday had ever meant much before the association. His celebrations have always been simple—just him and the Mikotobas, with a nice dinner at home. He didn’t even have a celebration last year, because last year he had just recovered his memory, and was busy with his apprenticeship, and then had been preoccupied with—
“Gina,” he begins. “I—”
“Don’t,” she says. She blows a stray bang out of her face, then tosses her head with a huff. “Wotever bullshit you’re about to spout off, don’t. Focus on the case, got it?”
He blinks, taken aback, and then tugs the brim of his cap. The case. As if it’s another murder they’re dealing with, and not just the whims of some capricious cat. He laughs under his breath. “Alright then.”
Toby barks at them; he’s a block ahead, staring excitedly at the entrance to Hyde Park.
“Is she in there? Is that where she is, Chief Inspector?” Gina says, and Toby dances on his large paws. He spins in a circle and takes off again, bounding into the trees.
“Well. We’ve still got quite a bit of ground to cover,” says Kazuma.
“Best get to it then, Prosecutor ‘Sougi,” Gina retorts with a smirk.
There’s nothing for it but to continue following where Toby leads. Kazuma scans the tree canopy, seeing if he can spot the signature shades of Wagahai’s fur, but the afternoon light makes everything appear dappled. They come across a few stray cats here and there, all of which Toby promptly chases away. At least someone’s having a good time, Kazuma thinks, watching him crash out of a bush and prance back to Gina’s side.
Eventually, Gina frowns and checks her pocketwatch.
“It’s getting dark,” Kazuma notes.
“Mmhm.”
Iris isn’t going to be happy about this. He sighs. “Are you sure that Toby’s been on the right track?”
“Oh, the Chief Inspector’s been doin’ a great job. Haven’t ya, boy?” She kneels down and offers him a treat from her pocket, ruffling his ears.
“In case you haven’t noticed, Lestrade, we never managed to find Wagahai.”
She doesn’t respond, still preoccupied with cooing at Toby. No comment about the lack of “Inspector”, even, he thinks with a twinge of irritation.
“I wouldn’t count that as a success,” he adds, a little more testily. Gina stands up and dusts off her trousers, appearing entirely unconcerned.
“One more time, Chief Inspector,” she says, holding out a ratty mouse toy for Toby to sniff. His eyes brighten; he howls and then tears back through the park.
“You heard the Chief, ‘Sougi,” Gina says, nudging him with an elbow as she runs past. “After ‘im!”
Kazuma chases them back through the park and down the boulevard. They aren’t headed in quite the same direction as the Prosecutor's Office, dodging left where they would have gone right, but the streets are steadily becoming more and more familiar. It’s only when Toby slows to a trot, turning onto Baker Street, that Kazuma realizes he’s led them on the run-around again.
“Here?” he says.
Gina shrugs. “The nose don’t lie, ‘Sougi.”
It only takes a few tries to work, Kazuma thinks, but knows better than to voice it.
Wagahai is sitting at the top of the steps, tail flicking over her paws. She meows at Toby, who is keeping a respectful distance, and then licks at a spot on her chest.
“So you were here the whole time, were you?” Kazuma scolds. He scoops Wagahai into his arms, ignoring her indignant mewling, and opens the door. “Guess who we just happened to run into, Iris—”
There’s a pop and a shower of confetti falling around his shoulders. Iris and Sholmes are standing in the center of the room, Iris’ wide-barrelled smoke guns in their hands.
“Surprise!” they shout. Sholmes shoots off another canister for good measure.
“I—” Kazuma reaches up and pulls a piece of confetti from his hair. He glances accusingly at Gina. “You—”
Gina only grins and pushes him through the door. Even Wagahai gives a cheeky meow and wriggles out of his arms, slinking between his legs before disappearing into the mess of Sholmes’ shelves.
“Sorry Zumie,” Iris says. “Dinner wasn’t quite ready for you, and Daddy had some trouble with the streamers.”
“Fickle creations. Even worse than snakes,” says Sholmes. “At least snakes have no trouble wrapping around things, despite their dismal lack of limbs.”
Kazuma stares at the streamers—yellow and pink and blue, looping haphazardly around stacks of books and over sets of half-full beakers—and then at Iris’ trunk, which has been fitted with an intricate doily tablecloth and several tiered trays of sweets.
“Wh—But—How did you—”
“We deduced it,” says Gina. Her expression is altogether far too smug for Kazuma’s liking. “From your groanin’ and slouchin’ all day.”
“The real answer is that Susie and Runo told us,” Iris explains. She pulls a few sheets of paper from her back; Gina snatches them and clears her throat.
“You can read that?” Kazuma asks snidely.
His taunting is unsuccessful; she ignores him, loudly announcing, “‘Dear Gina an’ Iris an’ Mr. Sholmes, please make sure that sodden sock isn’t lonely—’”
“Alright, now I know that’s not what they said, Lestrade—”
“‘—an’ give ‘im our very best well-wishes, an’ the best birfday party of ‘is sad little life.’”
“Okay, give me that—”
He dances around Gina for several agonizing moments until she allows him to nab the letter from her hands. It starts with a generic update on their activities from the past few months, and then, in not quite the same words that Gina used, details a request about celebrating Kazuma’s birthday.
“They wanted to give you this, too,” Iris says, handing him a large, leather-bound book. It must have been expensive; he runs his hands along the cover before gingerly flipping it open.
The first thing he sees are the photos—two to a page, one of Ryuunosuke and a strange young man in a Yuumei uniform standing outside the Supreme Court, and the other showcasing the stalls and night sky at a fireworks festival. Beside the first photo is a note from Susato, written in her small, even hand. He recognizes Ryuunosuke’s below hers, next to the second photo, his characters much larger and scrawled at a messy angle.
All of the pages are filled with similar photos and their accompanying notes, written by Susato and Ryuunosuke and Professor Mikotoba. Kazuma flips through them, stunned into silence, as he struggles to grapple with just how much he’s missed them.
“Are you cryin’?” Gina ducks down to peer in his face. “Oi, he’s definitely cryin’. Mr. Sholmes!”
“I am not,” Kazuma argues, a little wetly. He barely notices Gina and Iris slipping beside him. Before he’s able to wipe his face Sholmes has sprung out from behind the settee, a camera flashing and shuttering closed with a loud click.
“Smile, everyone!” he says cheerily.
“You’re supposed to say that before taking the picture, Daddy!” Iris chides.
“Oh, is that how it goes?” The camera miraculously spits out a photo; Sholmes takes it and gives it a few flicks, watching the image develop with amusement. “But then, my dear Iris, however would we capture Mr. Asougi’s splendid candid reactions?”
Iris rushes over to grab it from his hands. “I’ve told you, Daddy, you’re not supposed to shake it!” She rolls her eyes and holds it carefully between her hands. After a few moments, her face breaks into a broad grin.
“Wot is it? Wot’s it look like?”
“You wanna see, Zumie?” Iris asks innocently, and flips it around to show them before he can answer.
Gina hoots with laughter upon a single glance. The colors are still coming into focus, but the general content is clear—Kazuma in the center, clutching the leather photo book to his chest. His cheeks are splotched red and his free arm is blurred, halfway in the process of hiding his face. Beside him, Gina and Iris are grinning wickedly, each with one arm behind his back and the other flung up in the air. It’s messy and embarrassing and entirely unflattering, but even so he can’t stop smiling.
“Thank you,” he says, throat still tight. “This is really—You didn’t have to—”
“Save it, you sappy lout,” Gina says, grabbing his arm. Iris has taken hold of the other, and together they drag him to the couch where Wagahai promptly curls into his lap. Toby, not one to be left out, sets his head on the cushions beside Kazuma’s thigh, likewise demanding pets.
“Enjoy your birthday, Zumie!” Iris says it with a smile, in the undertones of a threat, as she nudges a plate of treacle tart into his hands.
Part of it is because she asked, and because he can’t shy away from a challenge. Gina has joined him on the couch, sitting on the opposite side of Toby, a smile stuck on her face ever since they stepped through the door. Sholmes is splayed across the armchair, casually engaged with his dessert but for a few fond glances he sneaks Kazuma’s way. And there’s his family in Japan, the tangible proof of himself in their thoughts tucked safely at his side.
It’s his birthday, and he’s twenty-five, and he’s survived a full year since one of the worst weeks of his life.
He decides that, maybe once, for today, he can stand to enjoy it, to his very fullest.