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[Professor Layton] An Unsolved Enigma
_{Title: An Unsolved Enigma
Rating: PG-12; schoolboy discussion of girls
Fandom: Professor Layton
Characters/Pairings: Luke, Layton, Flora. No pairings.
Word Count: 1,394
Disclaimer: I don't own Professor Layton. Level-5 does, and they do a much better job of it.
Summary: Written for the Fic Exchange at professorlayton, for linjeec's prompt of 'Layton clears the subject of women up for a perplexed Luke.'}

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A/N: YES THIS IS VERY LATE orz. All my time got swallowed up in This One Other Fic, and it's in between bouts of writer's block for That One Other Fic that I finally got this done. I'm so sorry! I hope it's at least slightly enjoyable ^^;
Also SECOND TIME I'VE USED LUKE'S RANDOM CLASSMATE, hurray.

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Luke knew that he was clever. Clever, not in that he was a good student – before he’d started following the Professor around, he had a reputation as being rambunctious and loudmouthed – but in that he was good at working things out. He excelled in maths and science and word problems.

So really, it came as a surprise when he wasn’t able to apply the same processes to everyday life. There was one problem in particular that flummoxed him every time.

That problem was girls.

Luke went to a boys’ orphanage and a boys’ primary school. He knew what girls were, of course, because he saw them in picture books and in the grocery market. They were very like boys, with a different chest and longer hair. Jonathan Rigby from the year above had confided in Luke that girls were even more different ‘down there’.

“Different?” Luke had been intruiged.

“If you kick ‘em there,” Jonathan had said, “it doesn’t hurt ‘em. They’re made of plastic, and when they’re gonna have a baby it opens like a hatch.”

He’d thought about asking the Professor about that hypothesis, but for some reason it didn’t feel quite right. The Professor was well-knowledged on all aspects of critical thinking, but Luke had a sneaking suspicion that he didn’t know very much about girls at all.
Not that it mattered. It wasn’t as if girls were a big, important part of life. Luke was going to grow up and study archaeology and be a Professor, just like Professor Hershel Layton, and girls had nothing to do with that at all.

So when Flora had moved in with the Professor, things had gotten a little uncomfortable. It seemed a bit strange to barge in uninvited if Flora was sat at the table, and even stranger if he passed her on the street on the way to the building. She was almost always surrounded by a crowd of other girls, laughing at their jokes and talking about things.

Sometimes she’d notice him walking past and wave. If he waved back, the other girls in the group would giggle. If he just stared at her instead, she would flush bright pink and look annoyed, and the other girls would chorus ‘oooooh!’ with their hands clasped together.

He disliked the giggling and he disliked the ‘ooooh’s, but more than anything he disliked not understanding why they did these things. If he ever saw Layton on the street (which he did, a lot) and waved to him (which he did, and very enthusiastically) then Layton would smile and wave back, and any other surrounding men would nod at him in acknowledgement, and that would be the end of it.
That behaviour was logical. That behaviour made sense.

After a few weeks of this puzzling treatment he decided to ask the Professor about it. Flora was out at a cookery class, and so Layton was alone when Luke opened the door to his study.

“Professor?”

“Luke, it’s good manners to knock.” Layton was reading a newspaper and looking utterly unpreturbed by the fact a schoolboy had wandered into his study without any assistance.

“Sorry.” Luke swallowed. “I…um. I wanted to ask you something, Professor.”

Layton folded up the newspaper and turned towards him, his eyebrows raised. “Is there a problem, dear boy?”

You could say that.

“Well..” Luke sat himself down at the table and rested his feet on his school satchel. “It’s about…girls.”

The newspaper lowered a few inches, so that Layton’s eyes could fix upon Luke’s over the top. They were bright, alert and…slightly alarmed.
Luke swallowed and searched for a little while to find the words for his question.

“Are you…” It was Layton’s turn to swallow now. Luke hadn’t noticed initially, but the elder man was looking uncharacteristically flustered; his hair looked a little tousled, and he was tugging agitatedly on the brim of his hat. “I mean, that is to say, dear boy, have you been experiencing…ah-feelings? Around the ladyfolk?”

Feelings? Luke blinked rapidly. Well, that all depended on whether you classed ‘confusion’ as a feeling. By its most simple definition, it probably was. “Well, I guess…”

Layton murmured something under his breath that sounded very much like ‘Good lord’. He tucked away the newspaper onto a nearby table, and placed his elbows on the table infront of him – threading his fingers together to create a little rest for his chin. He faced Luke with a look that seemed a lot more serious than a little conversation about women should require.

“You are very young,” Layton started. Luke noticed his voice was shaking. “Your parents should be…Should have been…the ones to tell you this, but I suppose…”

Luke was getting intruiged now. Perhaps there was a deeper motivation behind the giggling and the ‘ooooh’s, something diabolical that you had to be told about.

“As boys become older, they begin to…change,” Layton was saying. That didn’t make much sense in the context of the conversation; it was Flora and all the other girls that were acting so bizarrely, not Luke himself. “They begin to notice women around them. No matter how logical the mind, no matter the will to concern the self with nothing but riddles and scientific endeavors…Women, Luke, they become…apparent.”

Luke thought about this. Well, they were awfully apparent when they were giggling at him. He nodded, smiling, though he was starting to wonder why the Professor was looking so bothered by it all.

“In times like this, it’s easy to become…swayed, by these feelings about women and their…well, their…bodies. But I must remind you Luke, that goading women into fulfilling these…” A sharp intake of breath. “..urges, is the very pinnacle of ungentlemanly behaviour. You must exercise restraint, my boy.”

“I don’t understand,” Luke said, because he didn’t.

Layton groaned and slumped a little further.

“I mean, is this why they’re always giggling at me? And if I wave they giggle more, but if I don’t they get annoyed? Professor?”

There was a momentary silence as Layton lifted his head to look Luke in the eyes. “Do you mean to say that your question is about the illogical behaviour of women?”

“Well…yes.”

“Of…of course.” Layton seemed on the verge of dying from sheer relief. “Still too young…Of course, my boy…I mean…Yes. Women. Their behaviour. Well, my boy, that’s quite a fascinating puzzle in itself, perhaps even one without any one true answer-”

“Hang on a minute.” Luke tended to hold himself in check when talking with the Professor – he was the only adult he revered to a god-like degree, and interrupting him was normally out of the question – but his curiosity had been piqued. “What were you talking about?”

“Why, women, my dear boy.” Layton smiled, but Luke noticed how strained the man’s eyes were.

Suddenly, Luke realised. Of course!

“Is this about the hatch?”

Layton reacted as if Luke had uttered something about crucifiying his mother and bathing himself in her blood. He made an urgent move to stand up, then thought better of it and ended up banging his shins against the table. He fell back into his seat, spluttering, “Hatch?!”

So maybe that wasn’t a good idea. Jonathan Rigby clearly had no idea what he was talking about.

“That is…Luke, I…Where did you…” Layton paused for a moment, then got himself under control. “That is incredibly vulgar terminology, Luke. I think we’ve talked enough about girls for today, my boy.”

“But you haven’t told me why they giggle so much,” Luke protested, but weakly. He could tell the Professor was growing near to a breakdown, for whatever reason. He grasped for another topic – anything - “And I had another question.”

“Yes?”

“I wanted to work out how many weekends my birthday will fall on in the next ten years.” Sometimes, Luke was glad that he was good at working things out. What conversational topic was most likely to dissuade the Professor, for example. Just as he predicted, Layton’s face broke into a grateful smile and he nodded.

“Well, Luke, that really is just a matter of simple math – you see, the dates follow a set pattern every year, although of course we have to factor in the presence of leap years…”

Luke decided that logic puzzles were a lot more fun than girls. Who'd care if he didn't understand them?
It wasn’t like you got picarats for decoding women, or anything.

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