Click.
The silver key turned.
At that moment, Pierre realized what he had done.
"Pierre! Wait!"
Jean grabbed his wrist, but it was already too late.
Rumble—
The enormous stone door that had been asleep for 500 years began to move with a low groan.
Ancient dust poured from the ceiling.
Pierre and Jean both took several steps back.
"Close the door!"
Jean shouted.
Pierre hurriedly turned the key in the opposite direction.
But it wouldn't move.
"It won't turn!"
"Pull it out!"
"It won't come out!"
The key wouldn't budge, as if it had become part of the stone door.
Rumble.
A black gap appeared between the stone doors.
At first, it was only wide enough for a finger.
But it slowly widened.
Cold air blew through the gap.
It wasn't merely the cold air of an underground passage.
It was ice-cold, laced with a strange smell.
Wet earth.
Old wood.
And……
A faint scent of roses.
Jean covered his nose.
"What is that smell?"
Pierre didn't answer.
He knew that scent.
The Mona Lisa Gallery he had passed through every day for seventeen years.
It was the exact same smell he had occasionally sensed near the painting.
All this time, he had thought it was a visitor's perfume.
But now he was certain.
That smell was rising from this place.
The stone door opened wide enough for one person to pass through.
The two of them shone their flashlights inside.
A long passage appeared.
Old candleholders had been placed at regular intervals along both walls.
Naturally, none of them were lit.
But the moment Pierre took his first step,
Whoosh!
The first candleholder burst into flame.
Jean swallowed hard.
The second.
The third.
The fourth.
Without anyone touching them, the candles began lighting one by one.
As if someone were guiding the two of them inside.
"I'm done here."
Jean said.
"Let's call the support team."
Pierre was about to agree.
Then a woman's voice came from deep within the passage.
"Pierre……."
Pierre's face went rigid.
Jean looked at him.
"She just called your name, right?"
"Yeah."
"Who in there knows your name?"
He couldn't answer.
Pierre wanted to know that himself.
The voice came again.
"There's…… no time."
It was the Mona Lisa's voice.
Pierre tightened his grip on the flashlight.
"I have to go."
"Are you crazy?"
"She knows my name."
"That's exactly why you can't go any farther!"
Jean grabbed Pierre's arm.
At that moment, a thunderous boom sounded behind them.
Bang!
The stone door slammed shut.
They both turned around.
"Damn it!"
Jean pushed against the stone door.
It didn't move.
Pierre added his strength, but it was useless.
The silver key had vanished too.
"We're trapped."
Jean said.
Then one of the candles in the passage went out.
And then another.
Starting from behind them, the candles were going out one after another.
Pierre looked ahead.
The flames farther ahead were still burning.
They had only one choice.
"Let's go."
The two of them walked into the passage.
How long had they been walking?
The appearance of the walls began to change.
At first, there had been nothing but rough stone walls, but farther in, murals began to appear.
Pierre stopped.
"Jean, look at this."
The first mural showed a young man painting.
A long beard.
Sharp eyes.
A brush in his hand.
There was no mistaking him. It was Leonardo da Vinci.
A woman sat before him.
The Mona Lisa.
But something was wrong.
The Mona Lisa in the painting wasn't smiling.
She looked terrified instead.
In the second mural, da Vinci was fastening something around the woman's wrist.
It looked like a bracelet.
The third mural showed a gathering of people.
Seven figures dressed in black.
They stood in a circle, with the Mona Lisa lying in the center.
Jean spoke in a low voice.
"This isn't a scene of someone painting a portrait."
Pierre stared at the fourth mural.
Da Vinci had placed his hand over the Mona Lisa's chest.
And light was shining from his hand.
The light was leaving the woman's body and entering a painting standing beside her.
Jean couldn't say a word.
Beneath the final mural was an inscription in an old language.
Pierre used the translation app on his phone.
A sentence appeared on the screen.
'The body dies, but memory does not.'
Beneath it was a second sentence.
'If memory is placed in a painting, a human being can exist beyond time.'
Jean looked at Pierre.
"Don't tell me that means da Vinci put a person's memories into a painting."
"That can't be."
Pierre said it, but he couldn't be sure himself.
The Mona Lisa in the painting had spoken to him moments ago.
She had shed a tear.
And she had even handed him a real key.
This situation was already beyond anything common sense could explain.
They started walking again.
At the end of the passage, a small room appeared.
A stone coffin sat in the center of the room.
A name was engraved on its lid.
LISA GHERARDINI
The moment Pierre read the name, goose bumps rose all over his body.
"Lisa Gherardini."
Jean asked,
"Who is she?"
"The woman believed to have been the Mona Lisa's model."
The two of them slowly approached the stone coffin.
The lid was carved with the figure of a woman.
Her face looked astonishingly similar to the Mona Lisa's.
But one side of the coffin was slightly open.
Jean said,
"Don't open it."
Pierre had no intention of doing so either.
Then a sound came from inside the coffin.
Tap.
Tap.
Tap.
The two men froze.
Someone was tapping on the coffin from inside with a finger.
"Help…… me."
It was a woman's voice.
Pierre moved closer to the coffin.
"Are you Lisa?"
Silence.
Then an answer came.
"Yes."
Jean shook his head.
"There's no way someone could still be alive in a 500-year-old coffin."
The woman said,
"I didn't die."
"Then why are you in there?"
Pierre asked.
"Leonardo locked me away."
Pierre's expression wavered.
"Why?"
A sob came from inside the coffin.
"Because that day…… I saw something I wasn't supposed to see."
"What did you see?"
"What he created."
"What did da Vinci create?"
The woman's voice grew quieter.
"A way to…… bring the dead back."
Jean looked at Pierre.
"Now we really need to get out of here."
Then Pierre remembered what the Mona Lisa had said in Episode 1.
They're coming.
"Who are they?"
Pierre asked.
The woman inside the coffin suddenly fell silent.
"Tell me. Who are the 'they' you mentioned?"
After a moment, the woman whispered,
"Seven people."
The mural flashed through Pierre's mind.
The seven people in black standing around the Mona Lisa.
"Who are they?"
"They were the people who protected Leonardo's secret."
"They're all dead by now, right? They lived 500 years ago."
The woman in the coffin answered.
"No."
Pierre's expression hardened.
"They're still alive."
At that exact moment,
Footsteps echoed from far down the passage.
Click.
Click.
Click.
Jean raised his flashlight.
"Someone's coming."
It wasn't one person.
Pierre counted the footsteps.
One.
Two.
Three.
Seven.
There were exactly seven people.
The woman in the coffin spoke urgently.
"Hide!"
Pierre and Jean looked around the room.
There was almost nowhere to hide.
A small stone pillar stood to one side.
The two men slipped behind it.
The candles went out one by one.
Then people dressed in black entered the room.
They were all wearing white masks.
Seven of them.
The man standing in the center said,
"The door has opened."
Someone else answered,
"The one chosen by the key has entered."
"Who is it?"
"A guard from the Louvre."
Pierre held his breath.
They knew about him.
The man in the center approached the coffin.
"Lisa."
There was no answer from inside.
The man spoke again.
"Even after 500 years, you still haven't given up."
The woman inside the coffin said coldly,
"You will all die eventually."
All seven people laughed at once.
Then the man in the center removed his mask.
Pierre was stunned when he saw his face from behind the pillar.
The man looked young.
Forty at most.
But there was a strange tattoo on his neck.
1479
Jean whispered in Pierre's ear,
"That number…… it isn't his birth year, is it?"
Pierre didn't answer.
The man said,
"Lisa, I know you handed the key to the guard through the painting."
"He doesn't know anything."
"That makes him even more dangerous."
The man raised a hand.
"Find him."
The other six spread out across the room.
Pierre's heart pounded like crazy.
Jean grabbed his arm.
There was nowhere to run.
At that moment, something in Pierre's pocket grew hot.
He reached inside.
It was the silver key.
The key that had definitely vanished from the stone door was back in his pocket.
But words were appearing across its surface.
Find the third door.
Pierre scanned his surroundings.
The first door was the entrance they had come through.
There was a small door in the wall opposite them.
Then where was the third door?
At that moment, Pierre saw a faint light leaking out from beneath the stone coffin.
He gestured to Jean.
When the guards looked the other way, the two men moved behind the stone coffin.
There was a small keyhole in the floor.
Pierre inserted the silver key.
Click.
The floor opened.
A staircase descended below.
"Now!"
The two men dashed down the stairs.
"There!"
Someone shouted.
A thunderous boom, like a gunshot, rang out.
Bang!
Part of the stone wall shattered.
Pierre and Jean hurried down the stairs in a panic.
The seven people followed close behind.
At the bottom of the stairs stood another door.
Pierre inserted the key.
The door opened.
The two men rushed inside and shut it behind them.
For a moment,
neither of them could say a word.
An impossible sight had unfolded before their eyes.
A vast underground chamber.
Hundreds of paintings covered the walls from floor to ceiling.
But the number of paintings wasn't what shocked Pierre.
It was the people in them.
Kings.
Nobles.
Children.
Soldiers.
Monks.
Countless people whose names were unknown.
The eyes of every one of them were moving.
Hundreds of people were staring at Pierre and Jean at the same time.
Jean stumbled backward.
"What the hell……"
At that moment, a man's voice came from one of the paintings hanging in the very back.
"You finally came."
Pierre shone his flashlight in that direction.
Inside the painting was an old man with long hair and a beard.
Pierre knew that face.
A face he had seen countless times in books.
Leonardo da Vinci.
Pierre's lips trembled.
"Are you…… Leonardo?"
The man in the painting slowly smiled.
"I am."
"You died 500 years ago."
"My body died."
Leonardo's eyes moved.
"But I did not."
Pierre remembered what he had heard from the Mona Lisa.
The body dies, but memory does not.
Leonardo said,
"Pierre."
The moment he heard his name, Pierre froze.
"How do you know my name……"
Leonardo didn't answer.
Instead, he looked at the silver key in Pierre's hand.
"Bring that key to me."
"Why?"
"Because it's the only key that can set Lisa free."
Pierre took a step forward.
But at that moment, a woman's voice came from another painting.
"That's a lie!"
Pierre turned around.
A small portrait hung in the middle of the room.
Inside it was a young woman.
She had the exact same face as the Mona Lisa.
But she wasn't smiling.
She cried out urgently,
"Don't give him the key!"
Leonardo's expression hardened.
"Be quiet, Lisa."
"Pierre!"
Lisa shouted.
"That key won't set me free."
"Then what is it?"
Tears welled up in Lisa's eyes.
"It's the key that will set Leonardo free."
Pierre slowly looked at the old man in the painting.
The gentle smile that had been on Leonardo's face moments earlier was gone.
Then the hundreds of paintings hanging in the room all began whispering at once.
"Don't give him the key."
"Run."
"Don't trust him."
"Don't open the door."
Hundreds of voices filled the underground chamber.
Leonardo said in a low voice,
"You still fear me."
At that moment, a massive mechanical sound came from the wall behind his painting.
Clank.
Clank.
The wall split apart in both directions.
Behind it was another room.
A glass coffin stood in the center.
Pierre shone his flashlight inside.
The body of a man lay inside the glass coffin.
Long hair.
A beard.
Black clothes.
Jean swallowed hard.
"No way……"
The face was identical to the man in the painting.
Leonardo da Vinci.
The body of the man said to have died 500 years ago was right there.
But at that moment,
the finger of the man lying inside the glass coffin moved.
Once.
Twice.
And then……
His two closed eyes slowly opened.
Leonardo in the painting smiled.
"The time has come."
The silver key in Pierre's hand suddenly began glowing red.
The man inside the glass coffin opened his mouth.
And after 500 years, he spoke his first words.
"Bring me the Mona Lisa."
At that moment, Pierre realized it.
What he had opened was not merely the door to an underground chamber.
It was Leonardo's final laboratory, sealed away from the world for 500 years.
And the true secret hidden behind the Mona Lisa's smile had only just begun.
— End of Episode 2 —