i would very much like to stay in our world of riddles and mystery towns, of coins in funny places and hotels on quaint streets. i would like to watch your eyes light up as simple things like streetlamps remind you of a puzzle, and read letters from old friends of yours, and study the art of good tea brewing, and learn to be a gentleman: perhaps, someday, i'll even be half as good of one as you are.

i confess i am not anything special, though i make myself out to be. all that makes me special is you; you make me better, make me more. so thank you. for putting up with outbursts of childish rage and silly assumptions, thank you, and for gearing this mind toward logic, ingenuity, thank you; for teaching me how to catch a girl when she falls to the ground from six stories up—thank you.

i thank you for music and mystery. for shiny new conundrums. for impossible discoveries that leave me spellbound and breathless.

thank you for showing me the world.

it is very beautiful.

now, i am not you and i never will be. but i am something—good—because of this, because of us. i am not as humble as you are and i do not hesitate to say that there are those who find me impressive, but at the same time, all i want to do is tell them: there is someone out there who is twenty times more marvelous in every possible way.

so i still sometimes introduce myself as layton's apprentice, because i am intrinsically defined by you, by everything you have done, by everything you have been.

i hardly mind.

i'd stay longer if i could; i'd do anything to keep you. you are more interesting than much of what lies ahead. but even you are not more interesting than all of it; the world still has its wonders, and oh, i wish you could join me—but even the most beautiful violin solos have to end eventually, and i should like to end on a good note, so i suppose this is where we say adieu, and bid our parting.