Operation Red Book

"Joshua! Joshua!"

Thomas's childish voice brought a ray of warm sunshine to Joshua's dark workstation.

Joshua moved at the sound and raised his head from the pile of documents.

He looked haggard, with messy hair, and two purple dark circles under his straight, dull eyes.

“Ah—ah—”

Thomas was frightened by Joshua's haggard appearance and stepped back repeatedly, raising the little white cat in his hand to cover his face.

"Wow, Joshua was sucked dry by the ghost nun!"

The little white cat meowed in confusion but cutely, and Joshua finally woke up.

"Oh, it's you, Thomas, good afternoon..."

Joshua responded listlessly, his arm taking the little white cat a little stiff and trembling.

The little white cat turned over in Joshua's arms, making a comfortable "purring" sound.

"Joshua...Joshua is worried about his girlfriend."

Luna was munching on ice cream, with a sleepy kitten in each pocket.

She rode on Alexander's neck, her tiny body a stark contrast to his massive build.

"Classmate Ivy is not my girlfriend..." Joshua supported his forehead and responded perfunctorily.

She must have said this no less than five hundred times, but Luna just wouldn't change her words.

Joshua wanted Ivy to correct her, but he tried several times, but Luna just wouldn't say those words in front of Ivy.

This little girl is so cunning and she did it on purpose... Joshua was sure of this thought in his heart.

"He's been like this for days. I asked him to go to Scotland Yard but he wouldn't go. Mrs. Hudson asked him to go get breakfast but he wouldn't go. Hilda asked him to go to training but he wouldn't go. He just sits here and moans all day."

Holmes appeared beside Joshua at some point, his tone full of complaints and disdain.

He was wearing a plaid vest and his black hair was neatly combed and tied into a small braid at the back of his head.

"Isn't Ivy just going to a party? Can't we just treat her as going to work as usual?"

Holmes said this without looking up from the newspaper in his hand.

"Mr. Holmes, you have experienced something big before. That day at Mrs. Emerson's ball..."

"McMillan Manor is very safe. There's nothing to worry about, except that evil... ahem, bad boy named Dorian."

At the mention of the name Dorian, Holmes could not help rolling his eyes again.

"I don't hate Dorian, I hate Mrs. Emerson," Joshua said, his voice tired.

He yawned, and the little white cat scurried out of his hands.

"why?"

"why?"

"what!"

Joshua's casual remark seemed to cause dissatisfaction among the crowd.

"Mrs. Emerson is often in the newspapers. She is a famous philanthropist!"

"Mrs. Emerson protected her children. Mrs. Emerson is good, and Joshua is bad."

"Meow--"

"Mrs. Emerson is a poor person. Her daughter is gone and she has been missing her child. Mom is the best!"

"Mrs. Emerson set up an animal rescue center. She also touched the kittens. The kittens were good, but Joshua was bad."

"Meow--"

The two children stood in front of Joshua and denounced him along with the kitten in their arms.

Even the taciturn Alexander nodded and said, "The Duchess of Emerson is the spokesperson for the nobility. The royal family's vision cannot be wrong."

An overwhelming barrage of questions came, drowning Joshua in an instant.

He couldn't handle all the chatter, so he just frowned and buried himself in the pile of documents.

"I agree with you. Mrs. Emerson does have the hypocrisy and affectation of the aristocracy, but as a duchess, she has her own difficulties, which I can understand."

' said Holmes in a low voice, without taking his eyes off the newspaper, as he continued to mutter to himself.

"Look at this news - 'The Duchess of Emerson has decided to fund the reconstruction of the Florence Welfare Home'. It is much better than that morally empty civil servant, McCoff."

“I just hate her.” Joshua said sullenly, reaching out and pulling out the red book from the pile of documents. “This is what it says!”

The new page of the Red Book was pushed to Holmes' face, and the elegant handwriting appeared clearly on the paper:

Joshua, I remember Mrs. Emerson's birthday party clearly. It is the memory I am most reluctant to discard in my life, and it is also the memory I least want to have.

I must tell you that Mrs. Emerson pushed me into the abyss of society. From then on, I bid farewell to my innocent self and stepped into eternal damnation.

But I beg you not to interfere with my memories, because this is destiny, the most critical link in my growth process. I don’t want to be absent, and I don’t want to give up. Otherwise, there will be no future for me.

Johns's newspaper office was still noisy, and he raised his head from the shadows, and the bright light illuminated his jewel-like eyes.

He squinted his eyes and looked out the window. The sunlight outside was just right, a sunny day that London had not seen for a long time.

This couldn't last long, he knew.