༺ Gia Lestrade (2) ༻
“Why all of a sudden…?”
“… Have you gone insane, Lestrade?”
Isaac Adler and Charlotte Holmes simultaneously asked Gia Lestrade, astonishment clearly evident in their voice.
“I am sane and well.”
Saying so in a chilly tone, she expressionlessly lifted the coffee cup in front of her.
“If you’re sane, then why…”
– Chomp…
While Adler looked at Lestrade with a puzzled expression, Charlotte Holmes, who had been quietly biting her nails, soon spoke up.
“… This man is trash, Lestrade.”
“Miss Holmes?”
“Many women have been ruined because of this man. You probably will be too.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
Even after that, Lestrade responded while gazing at Isaac Adler with an expressionless gaze.
“From today onwards, I will be dating Isaac Adler.”
Charlotte’s eyes began to darken at those words.
“This is the most logical solution I’ve come to after careful deliberation.”
Thanks to that, the atmosphere turned slightly chilly and Lestrade began speaking as she took a sip of her coffee.
“Mr. Isaac Adler.”
“… Yes.”
“As Miss Holmes said, you are utter trash.”
Hearing her cold and unfeeling voice, Adler, donning a blank gaze, flinched ever so slightly.
“Many women cried, suffered, and ultimately were tragically devastated because of you.”
“That’s…”
“Yet, there’s no way I can legally punish you for it.”
“………”
“Instead, the women whose lives were ruined by you ended up in prison for trying to harm you”
Lestrade’s gaze was as cold as chilling frost when she looked at Adler.
“I’ve been trailing you for the past month, hoping to catch even a hint of your illegal actions, but it was fruitless.”
“… That is, of course, an obvious outcome.”
“Therefore, I’ve come to one conclusion.”
Ignoring Adler’s muttering, she put her coffee cup on the desk and spoke.
“I will like you.”
And then, a chilling silence began to spread between them.
“And I will date you.”
“”……….””
“So, don’t touch other women from now on.”
Lestrade’s voice echoed quietly in that chilling silence.
“I will be your only lover, so I ask you to be satisfied with only me”
“Uh, um…”
“No matter how much you think about it, this is the only way to break the constant vicious cycle you create with your inhumane actions.”
Adler, who was blinking with a lost expression on his face, suddenly caught the expression of Charlotte sitting across from him in the corner of his eyes.
“Miss Lestrade, I understand what you’re saying. What can I say? It’s a decision that is very like you, I suppose…?”
Upon hearing her statements, Charlotte, already guessing what she really meant by those words, hastily opened her mouth,
“But, are you really okay with this?”
“……..?”
“How can you tell someone that you like them when you don’t even have feelings for them? How can you hold their hands and have skinship with them in that case? How is something like that possible to sustain?”
Lestrade stared intently at Charlotte for a moment and then replied in her usual expressionless gaze.
“Public interest and achieving justice are more important than my personal feelings or emotions.”
“But…”
“So, from now on, I will look only at Issac Adler and express my love for him. This decision will not change.”
Cold sweat began to run down Charlotte’s forehead after hearing her response.
“… What if someone else could take on that role?”
“Who could do it besides me?”
“Well, for example…”
She then mumbled while watching intently at Adler’s reactions.
“Maybe me….”
“I can’t have you bear that burden.”
“N, no. Now that I think about it, I’m more…”
“Does Miss Charlotte Holmes like Isaac Adler?”
But Charlotte froze at Lestrade’s piercing question.
“… Uh, ah, um.”
She tried to forcefully open her mouth, but her face became bright red and her lips refused to open.
“Look at that. You’re overdoing it.”
“No, it’s not that…”
“I love you, Mr. Isaac Adler.”
“………”
“One should be able to say at least that much to be able to date him, right?”
In the end, when Charlotte Holmes finally closed her mouth with an astonished look, Isaac Adler gazed at her with a puzzled expression before quietly standing up from his seat.
“Can you take responsibility for what you have just said?”
“… Yes.”
With his signature lopsided smirk, he titled his head toward Lestrade.
“If you truly love me, you should naturally accept this much skinship, right?”
Soon after, he gently stroked Lestrade’s silver-grey hair. She looked at him with a cold, icy gaze in return.
“… In that case, can you also kiss me?”
Before she realized it, Adler’s head was close enough to touch her nose, locking eyes with her cold and unfeeling eyes.
“Can you put your tongue into my mouth while holding my hands with yours?”
“……….”
“In that state, can you remain still if I hold your head and hug your body in my arms?”
As Adler said those words, he brushed the hair he had been stroking till now, and her previously ice-cold expression started to slowly distort.
“Love is no joke, Miss Lestrade.”
Seeing her expression, Adler whispered with a smug smirk on his face.
“If you understand, then let’s forget what you have just said and…”
“… I’ll intertwine…”
“Pardon?”
However, Lestrade, who was looking at him with a cold gaze, spoke in an undaunted voice.
“I’ll intertwine my tongue with yours and kiss you.”
“……..”
“Not only that, I’ll oblige to most of your requests.”
Feeling her breath on him, Adler started rolling his eyes, at a complete loss for words.
“Since I have said that I like you, there’s no helping it, right?”
“Wait, wait a moment…”
Charlotte, who hastily separated him away from Lestrade, intervened in their conversation once again.
“Mr. Adler, what about you?”
Then Charlotte stared intently at Isaac Adler this time around.
“Do you like Miss Lestrade?”
She asked with a chilly voice, stretching her foot carefully towards Adler’s leg.
“… Hmm.”
At the same time, Adler bowed his head with a slightly trembling expression on his face.
“This would be an ideal condition for you, Mr. Adler.”
Lestrade, who had been watching him intently, began explaining with a cold sigh.
“If we date and hang out together, the time we spend together will naturally increase. This means you’ll be a lot safer than you are now.”
“……….”
“You’ve been threatened not just by Jill the Ripper, but also by numerous people, haven’t you? From that perspective, I believe it’s a condition you should accept.”
However, Adler, who quietly twitched in his seat, did not reply to her words.
“Not just that, it seems that you are in a bit of trouble due to the recent scandal for frolicking with Silver Blaze, who is everyone’s idol, right?”
Upon hearing those words, Lestrade began to glare quietly at Adler with a chilling glow in her eyes.
“By publicly declaring that we’re in a relationship, you can cover up that scandal as well.”
“……….”
“… Do you still hate this idea?”
At that very moment, came a voice from her mouth that seemed to imply that she wouldn’t wait any longer for his reply…
A sudden message appeared In front of Adler’s eyes.
“If you really dislike it, then there’s nothing I can do. I also…”
“Let’s date.”
Isaac Adler, who had been staring at the message in front of him with a pitiful look for quite some time, soon opened his mouth with a relieved smile on his face.
“… I like you too, Miss Lestrade.”
With that, a cold atmosphere began to permeate the coffee shop.
“I knew you would say that.”
Lestrade, murmuring with pursed lips, reached out her hand to him.
“Haha…”
Noticing Charlotte, who now looked expressionless just like Lestrade, Adler made a show of intertwining his fingers with hers.
“You don’t need to intertwine fingers. You can just casually, no?”
“Ah, that’s…”
“… It’s fine.”
The moment Adler’s hand interlocked with hers, Lestrade’s expression momentarily distorted, but she soon closed her eyes and murmured with in a low voice.
“Because I like you now… So, it’s fine…”
At that moment, her fingers gently enveloped the back of Adler’s hand, which was rigidly clasped in hers.
– Swish…
Right then, as Lestrade swiftly lowered the curtain cord by the window, Adler’s gaze inadvertently followed suit and soon, his eyes were clouded with utter shock and astonishment.
“That’s why I called the reporters in advance.”
Outside the coffee shop, journalists swarmed like a cloud of bees, forming a cordon, their cameras pointed toward them.
– Click, click!!
Shortly after, the sound of camera shutters loudly echoed in the street.
The convincing image of Lestrade and Adler, hand in hand, was captured by the journalists’ cameras.
“Let’s go to the press conference, Mr. Adler.”
In that state, Lestrade took another sip from her drink and soon hooked her arms with Adler’s and rose from her seat.
“… Gulp.”
It was the moment when Isaac Adler got his first official girlfriend in this twisted world.
.
.
.
.
.
“Hahaha…”
“Why are you laughing?”
After the press conference, which in reality lasted less than 30 minutes but felt incredibly long to me for some reason…
“Now I might get death threats even from the men…”
“Huh?”
“… It’s nothing.”
Having seen the consequences of meddling with not one but two idols of English men in the message before me, I exited the press conference while murmuring in a detached voice.
Thus, Lestrade and I began walking through the bustling streets of London, heading to the coffee shop where Charlotte Holmes awaited for us.
“I’ve noticed someone’s been following us since earlier.”
“I know…”
While walking, Lestrade whispered to me in a quiet voice, to which I nodded with a vacant gaze.
“Excuse me, could you momentarily step aside?”
“It’s a woman…”
“… Give me some time to settle my business, will you?”
Upon my request, she eventually nodded coldly, then slowly unfolded her crossed arms.
– Rustle…
As she waved to me and headed toward a side street, I blankly watched her disappearing silhouette and soon shifted my gaze backward.
“M, Mr. Adler.”
Then, taking off her deeply pulled-down hat, the stalker revealed her unique Demi-Human ears to my eyes.
“… I… I saw the press conference.”
Silver Blaze, with drooped ears and tail, stood in front of me and was looking down with a dark expression on her face.
“Did you now?”
I was slowly becoming accustomed to such incidents.
.
.
.
.
.
“… Please forgive me.”
“Huh?”
“I know you are faced with a lot of troubles because of me.”
Silver Blaze who was observing Adler’s reaction with dark eyes, began speaking in a trembling voice.
“If it weren’t for me, you wouldn’t have had to go through such terrible pain… I’m well aware that you wouldn’t have had to reveal your secret relationship either.”
“……….”
“Please, can you please give me another punishment?”
With that, she staggered towards Adler.
“Do you expect me to forget you and live as I wish? I won’t be able t…”
“Miss Blaze…”
“Don’t say that now…!”
She unknowingly raised her voice and soon, bowed her head with a frightened expression on her face.
“Mr. Adler…”
And then, silently, tears started streaming from Silver Blaze’s eyes.
“I’ve quit horse racing.”
Upon hearing those words, Adler’s eyes widened in disbelief.
“… Why?”
“It’s to show my loyalty to you.”
In front of him, Silver Blaze staggered and fell to her knees.
“I’ve always wanted freedom for the demi-humans because we have been harshly domesticated by humans for all our lives, but you were different, different from all other humans…”
“……….”
“If it’s you, the one who saved us, I can entrust you with my dreams, my goals, and my very body and soul as well…”
Her delicate hand grasped the sleeves of Adler’s clothes.
“… So, please accept my freedom, that I offer to you…”
With that, tears flowed down Silver Blaze’s cheeks.
“Please don’t abandon me…..”
From a distant alley, Lestrade, who watched the scene with a chilly gaze, silently took out her notebook and murmured to herself,
“Lift and drop. A typical tactic of Adler, mentioned in numerous testimonies.”
Clearly, Adler’s next words would be a devastating, no. A denial of her request.
Would he then mock the poor Demi-Human to his heart’s content?
Even after gaining her freedom, she had become so dependent on Adler that she would willingly offer that freedom back to him.
Then, he might just watch her degrade or darken right before his eyes with an amused expression and then disappear forever from her life.
Thus, the number of victims of Isaac Adler would increase by one more right before her very eyes.
“… This is the worst.”
Seeing clearly what was to come due to her long investigation and observation, Lestrade unknowingly muttered and turned away her gaze.
“To think she loves such a man…”
“All right.”
But at that very moment,
“I won’t abandon you.”
The soft voice of Isaac Adler penetrated her ears and rattled her mind.
“From today, I’ll take care of you, Miss Blaze.”
As he gently embraced Silver Blaze and patted her back, he murmured in a dreamy tone,
“… By the way, you smell lovely today as well.”
“W, waahh…. uwaaa”
Seeing the tearful yet happy expression on Silver Blaze’s face, Lestrade’s gaze turned utterly blank.
‘… What?’
This was the moment her deduction, as always, had missed the mark.
Probability of imprisonment if you don’t RATE this novel: 100%
