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They leave European waters on a cold December morning.
The sun does not rise before eight around this time of the year, so the deck is still mostly vacant as Yuujin meanders about. Ship hands are busily tending to what needs to be done before the other passengers get up under dim lamplights. The waves below crash against the ship’s hull in a familiar whisper.
There is plenty of noise to go around, yet it is calm all the same.
Susato finds him as the sun begins to creep up on the horizon, its light grey and dreary. Wordlessly, she comes to stand next to him at the railing Yuujin is leant up against, watching the colourless sunrise in pensive silence.
Eventually though, she turns towards him. “Good morning, Father,” she says and dips her head in a shallow bow. “Did you sleep well?”
Yuujin smiles. “I did. Thank you,” he says. “And did you?”
Susato gives him one of her long stares in reply, then turns to look back out at the sea. “We have left Europe now, haven’t we?”
“We have. It is a rather wistful feeling, isn’t it?”
“I would have loved to spend more time in London,” Susato says, quietly. “I was there for only two months, yet I miss it all the same.”
“You could have stayed with Asougi, had you wanted to,” Yuujin reminds her. She would not have, of course, having come into her own as a judicial assistant alongside another young lawyer.
Susato knows that he understands as much, if her meaningful sideways glance is any indication. “Kazuma-sama did not begrudge me for leaving,” she says. She settles a hand on the railing, despite how freezing the metal is, clasping it tightly. “I will miss him, too, of course, but… oh Father, I am just so glad that he isn’t dead.”
She and Naruhodou had been left to mourn him for months; even now, her eyes grow misty as she recalls it. Yuujin begrudges Holmes for it, just a little, though he had been in the know himself and is no better for it.
He places a hand on his daughter’s shoulder, giving it a gentle squeeze. “I trust that he will be all right,” he says. “Perhaps it is better for him, even, to remain in England and sort through his grief.”
“As it was for you?”
There is a frigid undercurrent to Susato’s words. Even the dark December winds lapping at them are not half as cold. Yuujin takes his hand back and grasps the icy railing as well.
“I cannot undo the decisions I made nearly seventeen years ago, now. And by no means did I do right by you, my dear,” he says. His words feel more like a sigh. “But I can’t say what would have become of me had I chosen differently at the time.”
It is as close to confessing his sentiments following his wife’s passing as he has ever gotten. The waves parting around the ship’s bow still look the same as they had when he had left for England nearly two decades ago, though their allure had faded with time.
Susato hesitates and purses her lips before she speaks again. “I have long since come to accept that you left, back then,” she says, taking her freezing hand off the railing to settle it on top of her father’s. “I had Grandmother—Grandfather, too, for a while. I was well taken care of and not lonely at all. I do not love you any less for it now, but…
“When we learnt that it was you who had been the great detective’s partner, I was angry. Not just because of my original misapprehension that you were Iris’s father, for which I am deeply sorry, but because I came to think that you had left Grandmother to care for me while you were off in England going on wild adventures.”
“I can assure you that Iris makes it sound much grander in the stories,” Yuujin replies feebly. Susato’s hand trembles where it still rests upon his. He takes it between his own.
“Holmes all but forced me back into life. He did not care about my grief, did not care at all that I was still in mourning. He was more callous, back in the day, and whenever he needed my assistance, he would drag me along. He kept me so busy that the pain losing your mother had caused me eventually started to abate.
“It was the distance to Japan and his friendship that allowed me to find my footing again. He managed to fill an aching gap in my heart.”
Susato’s eyes are wide as she stares at Yuujin. The first rays of proper sunshine begin to spill over the horizon, painting the world a soft pink. “Father,” Susato says, sounding winded. “Father, do you love Mr. Holmes?”
The question does not come as a shock. Susato is a sharp girl, after all, and Yuujin already feels as though this is a confessional of sorts. He smiles but lets his daughter’s hand go all the same. “Does it bother you?”
“I… don’t know.”
Susato purses her lips, brows furrowed. She buries her hands in the shawl she has draped over her shoulders against the cold. “I have come to know and appreciate Mr. Holmes as a good friend,” she says. “I just never would have thought…. Father, does Mr. Holmes know?”
“He does.”
“Then…?”
Yuujin stares down into the water. The rippling waves are painted halfway pink as well, where they face the rising sun. “Holmes and I have been together for some twelve years now.”
“You have been in Japan for more than ten of those years,” says Susato. She sounds almost angry about it, and Yuujin smiles. “Father, all this time, you haven’t seen each other!”
“There was no opportunity to, my dear,” he says. “But we’ve never stopped exchanging letters. I even subscribed to Randst Magazine, just to humour him.”
Some people clamour onto the deck behind them. They pay them no mind, though Susato turns briefly to observe them. When she turns back from the distraction, her eyes are misty. “I just don’t understand, Father. Doesn’t it hurt?”
The question gives Yuujin pause. He exhales, and his breath trails through the air as a white cloud. “Perhaps, in some ways. Though even having only recently parted from him, the joy of seeing him again outweighs the pain that comes with saying goodbye.
“I had, back then, resigned myself to the fact that the love of my life had turned to ashes long before her time. So what is half a world’s distance, compared to that?”
Susato leans into his side rather suddenly, her head coming to rest on his shoulder. It is more physical comfort than she, in all her propriety, would usually afford him, and Yuujin rests his head atop of hers for a moment.
“If you are happy this way, I could not possibly object to it,” she says. Her voice is thick with held-back tears. “If you truly love Mr. Holmes, then I could never mind that you found someone else after losing mother, or that he is a man. Especially one that I have come to befriend, myself.”
She pauses. “Oh, we really must go visit everyone in England again, soon.”
“I believe we already promised a lovely young lady something along those lines,” Yuujin says with a smile as he rights himself again. Susato takes a step back and smiles as well, a little watery but no less happy for it.
The sun hangs low on the horizon now, a deep orange circle fighting to rise to the skies. They stand in silence as dawn spills over them, listening as the other passengers aboard and the crew begin their day.
Eventually, Naruhodou finds them. He stands with them for a while, out of place and unsure of what to do with himself until Yuujin takes pity on the man and suggests they go take their first breakfast outside of European waters.