Memories of Murder:
Chapter 17:
It was almost Christmastime in Japan. Sebastian found the differences in the way different countries celebrated it fascinating. He was still attending school although it was only a few days before Christmas.
His mother had mentioned at breakfast that she was going to buy a Christmas tree in the morning and he arrived home to find her unpacking boxes of decorations standing next to very tall tree in the corner of the living room.
"Haven't you left it too late?" he asked and picked up one of the boxes to find that it was full of glass baubles.
"When I was young it went up on Christmas Eve," she protested. "This is early."
Sebastian eyed the stack of boxes. She had gone overboard like usual with buying decorations. They never brought any decorations with them so every time it was Christmas in a different country, she always bought more.
"I will leave you to it," he said hastily in case she roped him into helping out with the decorating.
He was too late. She glared at him and he turned back.
"I'm not tall enough to reach the top of the tree so I need your help," she said and passed him some silver tinsel. "Get on with it."
Sebastian sighed and started winding it around the tree. He was going to be there for at least an hour.
"What do you want for Christmas?" she asked suddenly. "I've been trying to find you a present for ages. All you seem to like is cats and there are so many cat themed items you can get without it being obsessive."
"I don't know," Sebastian said as he picked up a delicate glass bauble. "I don't really need anything."
What his mother said next was the most unexpected thing she had ever said.
"I suppose your best present would be a visit from Ciel Phantomhive. I did find him adorable when he stayed here."
The glass bauble he had been holding slipped through his fingers and all he could do was stare at his mother in shock.
He should have been the only one that was able to see Ciel. She had never said a thing whilst Ciel had stayed in the flat for that fortnight before the funeral.
His mother smiled sadly.
"You never thought to question how you could see him? I could see him as well. I didn't think he was a threat to you and I knew you liked him so I never said anything."
Strangely enough Sebastian had lots of questions for his mother and a part of him was also embarrassed. She had known that he as keeping a ghost in his room and had known that Ciel had been joining them at mealtimes. She had also noticed that he had liked Ciel.
"Is it a family trait?" was his first question. It was the safest question.
"My mother could see ghosts too. It does appear to be a family trait."
That was a lot to take in for Sebastian.
"Why did you never say that you could see him?"
She looked amused. "How does a mother tell her teenage son that she knows he is keeping a ghost of a teenage boy in his room and getting him to help him with homework and keep him company at the dinner table?"
Sebastian was silent. Now that she had phrased it like that he was glad that she had only just mentioned it. It would have been mortifying and would have hindered the case as well.
"You did a good job helping him to pass on," she said gently. "It didn't sound like it was easy to find his murderer."
"Ciel did a lot of the work," he admitted. "The mystery club think that I am some sort of mystery solving genius."
She picked up the glass bauble that he had dropped and returned it to him. Fortunately he hadn't broken it.
"I think you underestimate your abilities. Ciel told me that he thought you were good."
The glass bauble smashed this time.
"Mum! When did you speak to him? He never mentioned a thing."
"When you were asleep," she said plainly. "He promised to not tell you that he was talking to me. This was after you had found his body and before the funeral. I haven't seen him since."
Sebastian sighed. "Is there anything else I should know regarding Ciel?"
The next day at school he was roped into decorating their club room. In reward for uncovering the corrupted history of the school, the new head teacher had designated them a club room so they didn't have to use a regular classroom.
He stayed away from decorating the tree and instead strung up the fairy lights and tinsel on the walls.
"Sebastian, that piece of tinsel is positioned 5cm lower than the rest," Will observed critically.
Sebastian rolled his eyes and adjusted the tinsel. His relationship with Will hadn't changed that much after coming back from the funeral, but he was slightly less critical of his mystery solving abilities.
Mey-Rin handed him another piece of tinsel and directed him to place it around the window frame. She had made herself in charge of decorating.
"Bardroy!" she screamed suddenly. "Don't do that to the lights! It's a fire hazard!"
The idiot trio had not changed much either. He was friendly with them now, but sometimes he wondered how Bardroy had never burned down the school.
They were intending to have a Christmas party today and had brought a variety of refreshments. Finny had attempted to make mince pieces, but had squashed them in the process. William had provided tea, Sebastian had made a Christmas cake and Mey-Rin had brought Christmas crackers. Bardroy had mentioned cooking a turkey which had made everyone nervous so he had brought candles with him instead.
Finny burst in excitedly. "I brought Christmas snacks from the convenience store around the corner. Some of them are a bit strange though."
"You can get Christmas toilet bleach in England," William pointed out. "Nothing can be stranger than that."
They all joined Finny around the table to have a look. Sebastian felt that he had seen stranger and made a cup of tea instead whilst the other decided what to have. Ironically the strangest thing was the tea that he was tea he was drinking. He looked at the tin to find out what tea Will had actually brought with him and found that it was proclaiming to be Christmas flavoured.
Once the decorating was finished they all sat around the table and passed out the Christmas crackers. Bardroy looked mystified until they explained the tradition to him.
"Shall we have Will's Christmas tea and Sebastian's cake?" Mey-Rin suggested.
"It is going to have to be an improvement on the joke in my cracker no matter how bad it is," Will answered snidely, the insult having less effect due to the paper crown on his head.
Sebastian was in the act of serving tea when Finny asked a surprising question.
"Sebastian, can you see ghosts?"
If his mother hadn't asked him the same question the day before he would have probably dropped the teacup. Instead he calmly continued serving tea.
"What makes you ask that?"
He checked to see if Will was working his way to an insult about Finny's intelligence and was surprised to see that he wasn't. He looked amused instead.
"Before you became a member of the club, the idiots here stalked you for a bit and noticed that you acted strangely at times like you were seeing someone invisible," Will explained. "I am going to guess that the ghost in question was Ciel Phantomhive. Your motivations in solving the case make more sense if you were seeing his ghost."
William was annoying, but he was also intelligent. He was never going to be able to deny it with that evidence against him.
"I remembered that you asked me if I could see someone on your first day and everything all started to come together," Finny added.
"It's fine to admit it, we aren't going to outcast you and tell the whole school," Mey-Rin reassured him.
"We think it's pretty cool," Bardroy said.
Sebastian thought back to his previous schools. He had never made any friends because he had always known that he was never going to be there very long. He also hadn't wanted friends either. He had never felt like he could trust anyone.
He thought about the other members of the mystery club and how they had helped out with solving the Seven Mysteries case and how supportive they had been after the funeral although they hadn't known the significance of burying Ciel.
"I was able to see Ciel Phantomhive's ghost. He was present at all of the meetings we had and the visits to the old school building," he admitted.
"Everything makes sense now," Will said. "Thank you for being truthful with us."
That was the second most kindest thing Will had ever done for him. The first being giving him some of the information he had needed to solve the case.
"We got you a Christmas present," Finny informed him. "It's a thank you for everything you have done for the club so far. Without you we would have never got this club room."
He produced neatly wrapped present from under the table and handed it to him. It was a small and flat present and Sebastian used his powers of deduction to work out that it was a book.
He unwrapped it to find that he was right about it being a book. It was a book full of mysteries to solve. It made him think of Ciel. He would have loved a book like this.
"We were all reading it in the bookshop before we bought it and we got stuck on the one of page 362. We were wondering if you could solve it," Finny said.
Sebastian turned to the relevant page and read the scenario for the case and the list of clues and suspects. It was a case set in the Victorian era and involved a locked room murder. Initially he felt out of depth until he followed advice that Ciel had previously given him and came to a conclusion that he felt was right.
"The butler did it," he announced.
The four of them looked impressed with him and Sebastian allowed himself to feel that he really could solve mysteries without Ciel backing him up.
"We had to look at the answers to find out," Bardroy muttered darkly. "How did he get it in five minutes?"
Sebastian overheard him and gave an answer.
"Where would we be if I couldn't solve mysteries?"
The end
A/N: I hope everyone has a good Christmas this year. This will be the last original content posted on this account.
