[Even as Mikotoba speaks, Sholmes is assessing the options in his mind, knowing that they are left with very little. Prospects become less prospective as the days pass; hopes of bringing Iris to Japan under the man's care start to wane under the weight of legal rules and regulations, and the precarious exercise of balancing optics, else international diplomacy implode under its own laborious (yet easily-incensed) weight.
How insipid politics are, he thinks to himself, taking a particularly long drag of his pipe. Crafting so delicate a situation that no one benefits from its baleful complexities, that a child may be without a proper caretaker, lost in the shuffle of conspiracy. Should he consider it overlong—as he has already done; long nights with his Stradivarius in hand, wailing aggravated notes—he should find himself in a dour mood.
Yet there are alternatives. The child has options still remaining, those henceforth unspoken, and he thinks to give them a voice — until Mikotoba's question has him huffing the collection of smoke his lungs had plied away, caught somewhere between disbelieving and offended.]
Another flatmate? And why would I want something like that?
[Logically, of course, he should want something like that so he could rub two pennies together; able to pay the rent with more monthly certainty, rather than scrambling to make ends meet at the last moment like he had before he met Yujin. Reasonably, he should want to seek similar accommodations again.
Yet for Sholmes, this does not fall into those manageable bounds of reason. He cannot imagine another man in place of Mikotoba, someone else who would understand him half as well, someone who he could trust half as much. He is the only one in the world he can call a true friend, and to replace him as though he were just a mannequin made of plaster is a terrible, inconceivable thought.
Having a stranger in their flat—for that is all it would amount to, a stranger here, an intrusion of their space—would throw into stark contrast all he would miss about Mikotoba, all his little mannerisms and remarks, and jokes and scoldings, and he cannot bear to even consider it. The man's not even left the premises yet.]
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How insipid politics are, he thinks to himself, taking a particularly long drag of his pipe. Crafting so delicate a situation that no one benefits from its baleful complexities, that a child may be without a proper caretaker, lost in the shuffle of conspiracy. Should he consider it overlong—as he has already done; long nights with his Stradivarius in hand, wailing aggravated notes—he should find himself in a dour mood.
Yet there are alternatives. The child has options still remaining, those henceforth unspoken, and he thinks to give them a voice — until Mikotoba's question has him huffing the collection of smoke his lungs had plied away, caught somewhere between disbelieving and offended.]
Another flatmate? And why would I want something like that?
[Logically, of course, he should want something like that so he could rub two pennies together; able to pay the rent with more monthly certainty, rather than scrambling to make ends meet at the last moment like he had before he met Yujin. Reasonably, he should want to seek similar accommodations again.
Yet for Sholmes, this does not fall into those manageable bounds of reason. He cannot imagine another man in place of Mikotoba, someone else who would understand him half as well, someone who he could trust half as much. He is the only one in the world he can call a true friend, and to replace him as though he were just a mannequin made of plaster is a terrible, inconceivable thought.
Having a stranger in their flat—for that is all it would amount to, a stranger here, an intrusion of their space—would throw into stark contrast all he would miss about Mikotoba, all his little mannerisms and remarks, and jokes and scoldings, and he cannot bear to even consider it. The man's not even left the premises yet.]