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Mikotoba had read all about the customs surrounding the observance of religious holidays in England when he was still in Japan preparing for his overseas studies. But nothing in his books could have prepared him for the spectacle that was Christmas time in London.
Christianity and its open practice was only just returning to Japan when its practice was decriminalized under the new Meiji regime. And now in his fourth year of living through England’s winters, Mikotoba was still in awe of the lights, greenery, and holly decorating every lamppost, doorway and railing. Men and women in fur lined cloaks happily stood on street corners singing about the birth of the Christ Child. Shop windows were aglow and filled with seasonal food stuffs or colorful toys where children from the shoeless urchin to the gentry’s heirs crowded around the displays.
For Mikotoba’s first year in London, Holmes had insisted on having his foreign friend experience the most traditional English Christmas as he could create (although it was Mikotoba’s understanding that many of these traditions were only decades old). An evergreen tree was erected in their sitting room and decorated with tinsel, shiny baubles, and small candles. Green garlands with red bows were draped over the mantelpiece, suffusing the air with a heavy pine scent that made Mikotoba sneeze.
The presence and explanation of a ball of green leaves with white berries caused quite a bit of blushing that first year (but was eagerly embraced by Christmases since). Holmes had even bullied his older brother in joining them for the festivities, arguing that a proper Christmas was about family, and didn’t Mikotoba deserve to see a proper Christmas at least once?
After an engorging meal of roast goose and sticky pudding, Holmes insisted on subjecting his fellow lodger and his brother to a violin solo medley of Christmas carols. Mycroft had fallen asleep partway through it, but Mikotoba had been enchanted by the movements of Holmes’ lithe fingers, the serenity of his expression as he played, and the candles of the tree behind him made him look like a sparkling faerie out of children’s tales. Though, that may have been all due to the mulled wine Mikotoba consumed with his dinner.
On this particular mid-December day Mikotoba had some time after his work was finished to do some Christmas shopping of his own. The only person he really felt obligated to buy a gift for was Holmes. However, he gathered smaller tokens of appreciation for his colleagues at St. Synner’s as well as for Asogi and Jigoku when they met later for Oshogatsu.
It was also the ideal time to find a new toy to send home to Susato. It gave her a taste of where her father was and for her to know he was thinking of her. Wooden dolls dressed in the latest English fashions delighted his little girl according to the letters from her grandmother. This year he wanted something different, something reflective of the changing times and technologies. He purchased a model carousel made of metal. With the turn of a key it would spin, brightly painted horses dipping up and down as it turned, and a tinkling music box tune played.
With his stack of packages, he entered the rooms of 221B Baker Street. A mound of cushions, pillows, and blankets all confiscated from every piece of furniture in the sitting room, lay in front of the roaring fireplace. The pile shifted, coughed then croaked, “Where have you been?”
“Can’t you deduce?” Mikotoba asked, removing his winter trappings.
“I can barely form a single thought in my aching, wool-stuffed head,” the pile whined before succumbing to a coughing fit.
Mikotoba lowered himself to the floor, sitting cross-legged in front of the hearth. “I would love to tell Inspector Gregson that you have admitted to being wooly-headed.”
A tuft of blond hair and a reddened green eye appeared from a slit in the blanket. “It is well that your expertise lies with the dead. Your bedside manner leaves much to be desired.”
It had been Holmes’ idea. “A bracing walk in the cold winter air is just the thing to invigorate the mind and body!” And so they strolled arm in arm through Hyde Park, taking in the beauty of frosted trees sparkling in the winter sun. That was until Holmes slipped on a patch of ice and ended up splashing into the Serpentine.
Thankfully, with the aid of a pair of uniformed soldiers also out for a stroll, Holmes was quickly rescued. Unfortunately he was still soaked through. Mikotoba hastily removed his greatcoat and replaced Holmes’ sodden one with it. He hailed a cab, bundled the shivering Holmes into it and promised the driver a king’s ransom to get them to Baker Street with all haste.
He stripped off their gloves and took Holmes’ slim hands between his own and rubbed them together, all while knowing full well that it was hardly going to do the trick to stave off the hypothermia he was fearing.
Once in front of 221B, Mikotba gave the driver everything in his wallet and hastened his friend inside. “Clothes off.” Mikotba demanded moving to the fireplace and lighting the logs. He turned to find Holmes still standing inside the door, staring dumbly at his shaking hands.
Mikotoba dragged him over by the fire and started peeling the cold wet clothes from Holmes’ body himself. Holmes tried to make some sort of lewd comment about the process, but was having trouble completing the thought through chattering teeth. It was a minor blessing as Mikotoba was in no mood for his usual flippancy (even if in this case it could have been confusion caused by his symptoms). Clothes off, Mikotoba quickly grabbed a blanket from the settee and wrapped Holmes tightly in it. He spun the unusually plient detective to face the fireplace and forced him to sit. “Stay here.”
He strode to the bathroom, shut the door behind him and finally let out a long, shuddering breath. From the moment Holmes’ fingers slipped from the crook of his elbow in Hyde Park, and Mikotoba watched him tip over into the water, Mikotoba's heart had been racing, running on pure adrenaline. Until he had Holmes safely home, warm, and drying out every second that passed before then Mikotoba feared the world losing a brilliant mind, and personally losing yet another person he loved.
Now more collected, Mikotoba opened the tap for warm water with a steady hand and started filling the bath.
Letting it run, he went back to the sitting room. Holmes had followed directions, staying put, wrapped in the blanket, staring into the fire. He looked up as Mikotoba entered. “I’m naked,” he observed, “and you’re not.”
“How are you feeling?” He knelt down next to Holmes and felt his forehead. Holmes sighed and leaned into the touch. His temperature felt normal, maybe a little too warm from Mikotoba’s excess of caution. “How does a nice bath sound?”
“Will you be joining me?”
“In a sense.” In the sense that he would be there to make sure he got in and out of the water safely. He also worried the younger man might fall asleep in the tub and drown that way. Which was founded since Holmes’ eyes continuously drifted shut and was unable to help himself from sliding down the side of the tub as his body thawed and the trauma it faced in the last hour finally sapped him of all energy. Satisfied that he was out of all danger, Mikotoba assisted Holmes from the bath, quickly dried him off with the fluffiest towels he could find and immediately got him into his dressing gown. Holmes’ sleepy pliance at the handling was one part endearing, but also annoying that he offered no assistance to Mikotoba’s ministrations.
For his own continued peace of mind, he led Holmes into Mikotoba’s bedroom and settled him under the duvet before changing into his nightshirt and joining his friend. Holmes, already asleep, instinctively latched himself to Mikotoba’s side and sighed. Mikotoba sighed, too and let his own exhausted nerves settle and drift to sleep.
He was startled awake a few hours later when Holmes started coughing so hard he fell off the bed. Holmes groaned and stayed on the floor as his snuffly voice said,”I think I have a cold.”
And clearly, the floor was where he had decided to spend most of his day.
“By the way, Brother Mycroft sends his seasonal greetings.” Holmes brandished a card from under his blankets. “He wants me to think he’s Germany. But he clearly isn’t.”
The elder Holmes’ exact occupation was a point of argument between the brothers. Sherlock was convinced that Mycroft was an international spy. At their first meeting, Mycroft had rolled his eyes and explained to Mikotoba that his little brother’s overactive imagination had romanticized his modest position in the Foreign Office.
“Which is exactly what a spy would claim,” Holmes had retorted. And apparently there was no changing his mind.
“Have you eaten?” Mikotoba asked, examining the card which had the typical image of Father Christmas and his sack of toys, but with the message “Fröhliche Weihnachten” instead of the more familiar “Merry Christmas.”
“How can I when I am too weak to lift even a kettle for tea and my partner, who claims to care for me, abandons me for hours?’
“If you’ve had nothing since the tea and porridge I made you this morning, then why are there bread crumbs and bits of melted cheese on the hearth?”
A pregnant pause preceded a loud sneeze. “Ah ha. You have passed my test. Glad to see you can apply my methods and deduce I indeed made myself toasted cheese sandwiches over this fire.”
There was an English phrase, “Feed a cold, starve a fever.” Where he did not understand what good adding malnourishment was to someone already suffering from fever, keeping an ailing person well-fed was medically sound. And given Holmes’ appetite when he was in full health, Mikotoba knew more than a secret toasted sandwich was required. “To apologize for my neglect, shall I make soup and tea?”
“It might persuade me to forgive you…”
When Mikotoba exited the kitchen with a tray of two steaming bowls of soup and equally hot cups of tea, Holmes had finally flown from his nest and stood by Mikotoba’s desk, one blanket still wrapped around his thin shoulders. His hair was mussed and matted. His eyes were ringed with pink, his nose an even deeper shade of the color. He was examining the stack of brightly wrapped packages Mikotoba had left on his desktop.
“Books again,” Holmes stated, accurately finding his own gift and giving it a shake.
“You love books.”
Holmes sniffed and grinned. “I do!” He set the box down. “I also love food.”
Mikotoba set the tray down on the floor by the fire so Holmes returned to his blankets and cushions, graciously he gave one up for Mikotoba to sit on. They ate their supper in companionable silence apart from the occasional cough and sneeze from Holmes. All the same, the coughs did not sound so harsh nor frequent as they had been before.
Once their dinner was cleared away, Holmes shifted closer to Mikotoba and put his head on his thigh, tired eyes blinking heavily at the fire. “You know, there’s one Christmas tradition I keep forgetting about.”
“Hmm?” The warmth of the meal and the fireplace was starting to pull even Mikotoba into a languor. His fingers wandered into Holmes’ hair and gently stroked.
“Telling ghost stories.”
Mikotoba frowned. “Like the story about the miserly old man?”
“No, actual scary ones.”
“You tell scary stories for a celebration of a religious figure’s birth?”
“Oh, it probably dates back to our pre-Christian heathenism like most of our traditions. Go on, tell me a ghost story. You have them in Japan, yes?”
Mikotoba chuckled. Oh, yes, did they have ghost stories. “Yurei, we call them.”
Holmes’ repeated the word, always happy to expand his vocabulary. His accent was improving, too.
“My grandfather told me this story, which was supposed to have happened to his grandfather.”
“Hmm, then I’m sure it’s one hundred percent accurate.”
He pinched Holmes’ ear. “You asked for a ghost story. Do you believe any of them are real?”
“I have exposed too many people who preyed upon the grief-stricken for profit by claiming they could communicate with or conjure the spirits of the deceased as charlatanes. No, no ghosts need apply. But I can still enjoy a good story.”
“Then be quiet and listen. My ancestor was a secretary to a wealthy man, a scholar. And my ancestor learned much from him. The wealthy scholar had a beautiful wife, but no children. He spent all his days reading and writing, all but ignoring his wife. And so, the lonely woman found companionship elsewhere. So engrossed in his scholarly pursuit, he seemingly had no suspicion of his wife’s infidelity until her body was discovered in her lover’s bedchamber. Her head had been cleaved from her body. Her lover could not be found. It was obvious to the authorities that the lover had killed her and-”
“Ha!” Holmes cried. “The scholar murdered them both and disposed of the man’s body. Obvious.”
Mikitoba tweaked his ear again. “That’s not the point. Don’t interrupt. In the days following her death, my ancestor observed no change in his master. But then, he seemed to care so little for her in life, why would he show emotion for her after her death? Slowly, changes were occuring. The scholar started becoming distracted, irritable. He did not seem to be sleeping well. Even though it was summer, sudden chills would come over the library, like icy needles pricking at their skin.
“One day, my ancestor’s quiet transcribing was harshly interrupted by the sudden screaming of the scholar. He had pulled a set of scrolls from their shelf and falling out from behind them was a bloodied severed arm. The scholar fled the room, his secretary rose to examine the limb, but by the time he crossed the room it had disappeared.
“When my ancestor returned to work the next day, the scholar was not in the library. He sought him out throughout the house. He found his master cowering in a corner, hands over his eyes. ‘It has two faces!’ He cried. ‘Two faces!’ My ancestor tried to calm his master, made him tea and led him to bed. Concerned for his health, my ancestor decided to stay the night should he worsen.
“It was near midnight and that prickling cold ran across my ancestor’s skin once again. This time the smell of death, of blood suffused the air. So thick, so pungent, he nearly choked on it. He then heard voices: a man and woman. The spectre was a man’s body, its limbs hanging loosely, as if held to the torso by the thinnest sinew. But its head. The head had no back. On one side was the face of a handsome young man, the other the scholar’s wife! Their mouths moved and in unison their voices spoke, ‘You never saw me, you see me now. You see me now.’ Struck immobile by the sight of the hideous creature he could only watch as the yurei passed through the wall of the scholar’s room. Only his master’s blood-curdling screams started him to move. He pulled open the door and saw the scholar on the floor, above him was the yurei, the woman’s face was turned to her husband. The spectre’s hands were pressing into his eyes. The scholar screamed and screamed, but my ancestor could do nothing but watch as his master’s eyes were burst within his own skull. All the while, the yurei with two faces wailed, ‘You see me now, you see me now!’ Its task complete, the spectre vanished. My ancestor fled the house and never returned.
Some time later, the dismembered body of the wife’s lover was discovered buried in a nearby forest. The bloodied sword buried with him was traced to the now-blind scholar.”
Mikotoba paused, signalling the end of the tale. “So, how was that for a Christmas ghost story? Holmes? Sherlock…”
A loud snore emanated from the area of Mikotoba’s lap. Holmes had fallen fast asleep, his blocked nasal passages making him sound not unlike the saw rasping through thick wood. He should have realized his partner had fallen asleep, given the lack of interruptions as the story progressed. So much for being an engaging story-teller. Fingers still in Holmes’ hair, Mikotoba closed his eyes and leaned against the settee.
The ear shattering scrape of the violin startled Mikotoba awake. His stiff neck and thighs complained mightily from his awkward sleeping position. Holmes was up, standing tall and tuning his favored instrument.
“You’re feeling better,” Mikotoba observed, straining to his feet.
“Indeed! And I’ve been ruminating over the moral of your little story.”
How exactly could Holmes have extracted the moral without hearing the full story? “You mean how a person should not become so obsessed with their work that they neglect human relationships until it's too late?”
The next passing of the bow was a little less earsplitting. “Was that the moral? I thought it was to be wary of the quiet studious types for they may be violently jealous and vengeful.” He grinned and threw Mikotoba a wink.
A melody was finally worked from the violin, and as “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen” played, Holmes’ restless feet danced along. Mikotoba crossed to the windows, opening the curtains to discover snow had started gently falling overnight, covering the usually dingy streets with sparkling white. Yujin Mikotoba did not believe in magic or ghosts, but he had to admit there was something about the time of year that made it seem like they really could be possible.