Prologue

It was April.

Last spring, Holmes had been working at a place called Shokado Garden Art Museum in Yawata City, Kyoto Prefecture, as part of his training. The garden was 1.5 times the size of Koshien Stadium and could be enjoyed all year round, but it was especially beautiful in spring when the cherry blossoms bloomed. In addition to the light pink variety, there were also deep pink weeping cherry trees. I thought back to the time when he—Kiyotaka “Holmes” Yagashira—had been called “a beautiful young man with the grace of a weeping cherry tree” and smiled.

I, Aoi Mashiro, was leisurely walking around Shokado Garden by myself. I had come here with Holmes, but he wanted to discuss something with the assistant director, so I had decided to wander around the garden in the meantime.

“So pretty...” I stopped, awed by the beauty of the flowers. “I’m glad I got to come here. When I visited last year, it was past cherry blossom season.”

I had assumed that no matter how long Holmes’s discussion ran, I wouldn’t get bored here—and I was right. In the outer garden, which had around forty types of bamboo, there were three tearooms called Sho-in, Bai-in, and Chiku-in, as well as a stone washbasin and the historic Ominaeshi Tomb. The camellias reall