"Bring me the Mona Lisa."
The man's voice inside the glass coffin echoed through the basement.
Pierre couldn't move.
Leonardo da Vinci, who was believed to have died five hundred years ago, was lying right before his eyes. That alone was hard enough to believe, but the man's chest was slowly rising and falling.
He was breathing.
Jean grabbed Pierre's arm.
"That's not human."
"I know."
"No, you don't."
Jean's voice trembled.
"A five-hundred-year-old corpse just spoke. We need to get out of here right now."
At that moment, Leonardo's fingers moved again inside the glass coffin.
Screeeeech—
The lid began opening on its own.
Pierre backed away.
"Jean, run!"
The instant they turned around, screams erupted from the hundreds of paintings hanging around the room.
"No!"
"He's waking up!"
"Hide the key!"
Hundreds of voices tangled together.
Pierre looked down at the silver key in his hand.
The key was glowing red.
Lisa in the painting shouted.
"Pierre! Don't put the key down!"
"Why?"
"The key chose you!"
"A key can choose a person?"
"There's no time to explain. Run!"
Just then, a hand rose from the glass coffin.
It was pale and emaciated.
The fingertips clutched the edge of the coffin.
Leonardo slowly lifted himself up.
Pierre swallowed hard.
The man's face looked exactly like the one in the paintings, but his skin was as pale as a corpse's.
And yet his eyes were alive.
Far too clear.
Leonardo looked down at his own hands.
He slowly flexed his fingers.
It was as though he were checking the sensation of a body he had forgotten for a very long time.
"Five hundred years..."
He muttered.
"Longer than I expected."
Pierre asked in disbelief,
"Are you really Leonardo da Vinci?"
Leonardo looked at him.
"Do people still call me that?"
"You're dead."
"Yes."
Leonardo gave him a faint smile.
"Once."
A chill ran down Pierre's spine.
"Once?"
But Leonardo offered no further explanation.
His gaze remained fixed on the key in Pierre's hand.
"Give it to me."
Pierre hid the key behind his back.
"No."
Leonardo's expression hardened.
"It was mine to begin with."
"Lisa told me not to give it to you."
Leonardo's eyes changed.
He looked at Lisa's painting hanging on the wall.
"Lisa."
His voice was low and cold.
"Even after five hundred years, you still interfere with me."
Lisa said,
"You have to finish what you started."
"I am not the one who needs to finish it."
"Hundreds of people are trapped in paintings because of you!"
Pierre looked around at the paintings.
Only then did he realize something strange.
All the figures in the paintings were dressed differently.
They weren't all from the fifteenth century.
A nobleman from the sixteenth century.
A soldier from the seventeenth century.
A woman from the eighteenth century.
There were even people wearing clothes that looked like they were from the early twentieth century.
Pierre asked,
"Who are these people?"
Lisa answered,
"People who were used in the experiments."
"Whose experiments?"
Lisa's gaze turned toward Leonardo.
Leonardo said nothing.
"Did you do this?" Pierre asked.
At that moment, Leonardo slowly stepped one foot out of the glass coffin.
Boom.
The floor reverberated.
Jean whispered into Pierre's ear,
"This isn't the time to ask more questions."
He was right.
The two of them edged toward the door.
Leonardo said,
"Pierre."
Pierre stopped.
"How do you know my name?"
"I've known you since before you were born."
Pierre's face stiffened.
"What does that mean?"
Leonardo smiled.
"It wasn't an accident that you came to possess that key."
At that moment, an old memory surfaced in Pierre's mind.
A worn necklace his grandmother had shown him as a child.
It had a silver key-shaped pendant.
When she showed it to him, his grandmother had said something strange.
‘The men in our family were told never to go near the paintings in Paris.’
At the time, he had thought it was a joke.
But why was he remembering those words now?
"Do you know my family?"
Just as Leonardo was about to answer—
BANG!
The door behind them shook.
BANG!
Someone was trying to break it down from outside.
Pierre remembered the seven masked people.
"They're here."
Jean spoke.
BANG!
A crack split the door.
Leonardo turned his head.
"We're out of time."
Then he held out his hand to Pierre.
"Give me the key."
"No."
"If they take the key, they'll erase not only Lisa, but everyone trapped here."
Lisa screamed,
"That's a lie!"
Leonardo said,
"You decide whom to trust."
BANG!
The door shattered.
Seven people dressed in black entered.
The man in the center spotted Pierre.
"Hand over the key."
Pierre backed away.
The man raised a hand.
Two of them lunged at Pierre.
Jean blocked their path.
"Don't touch him!"
One of the men shoved Jean.
Jean slammed into the wall and fell.
"Jean!"
Just as Pierre started toward him, someone grabbed Pierre by the wrist.
The silver key fell to the floor.
Clang!
Everyone turned to look at it.
The man in black bent down.
But just before he could grab the key, something incredible happened.
The key rose from the floor.
It floated up to head height.
Then it burst into blinding light.
Whoosh!
Pierre covered his eyes.
A moment later, the light vanished.
The key was back in Pierre's hand.
Leonardo said,
"Just as I thought..."
For the first time, a look of shock appeared on his face.
"What does that mean?" Pierre asked.
Leonardo looked at Pierre and said,
"It means the key has found its true owner."
The masked man shouted,
"Get him!"
At that moment, a powerful light burst from Lisa's painting.
The woman in the painting stretched both hands forward.
Every candle in the basement went out at once.
Complete darkness.
"Pierre!"
Lisa's voice rang out.
"Run to the left!"
Pierre pulled Jean to his feet.
The two of them ran through the darkness along the left wall.
"There's a door ahead!"
Pierre's hand touched a cold iron door.
He inserted the silver key into the lock.
Click.
The door opened.
They went inside.
The door immediately closed behind them.
Jean panted in the darkness.
"How far does this place go?"
Pierre turned on his flashlight.
It was a small study.
Hundreds of books lined the walls.
Old papers and mechanical devices covered the desk.
And in the center of the wall, a large painting was covered by a cloth.
Pierre slowly approached it.
There was a small metal plate beneath the painting.
1503
Pierre knew the date.
It was the period when the Mona Lisa was believed to have been started.
Jean said,
"Don't tell me that's another..."
Pierre grabbed the cloth.
"Don't."
Jean tried to stop him, but Pierre pulled the cloth away.
They were both rendered speechless.
The Mona Lisa was there.
It was almost identical to the painting hanging in the Louvre Museum gallery.
But there was one crucial difference.
The Mona Lisa in this painting wasn't smiling.
Tears pooled in her eyes, and she held a small silver key in her right hand.
Jean said,
"There are two Mona Lisas?"
Pierre examined the bottom of the painting.
There was writing in very small letters.
It was mirror writing.
He flipped the image using his phone screen.
A sentence appeared.
‘The first is a painting for the world.’
Below it:
‘The second is a painting for the truth.’
And the final sentence:
‘The true Lisa is in neither painting.’
Pierre's mind reeled.
"In neither painting?"
Then who was the Lisa who had spoken to him?
Something moved on the desk.
It was a sheet of old paper.
Though there was no wind, the paper slowly drifted to the floor.
Pierre picked it up.
It looked like a record left by da Vinci.
He began reading it with the translation app.
October 24, 1503.
Today I completed Lisa's first portrait.
The next line read:
But the woman I painted is not Lisa.
Pierre's hand froze.
Jean read over his shoulder.
"What does that mean?"
Pierre translated the next sentence.
Lisa died seven days before I began painting.
The two men looked at each other.
"Then who was the model for the Mona Lisa?"
Pierre read the next part.
I wanted to see the dead Lisa again.
So I called forth her memories.
But Lisa was not the only thing that returned.
Black ink had smeared across the lines below.
Only part of the next sentence was legible.
It used her face.
Pierre's hand trembled.
Right at that moment—
The second Mona Lisa hanging on the wall began to smile.
At first, only the corners of her lips lifted slightly.
Then the smile gradually grew.
It was the same smile as the Mona Lisa's at the Louvre.
No.
It was slightly different.
There was no warmth in that smile.
Jean stepped back.
"Pierre... that painting."
The woman in the painting slowly turned her head.
Then she looked at the two men.
"We've finally met."
Pierre asked,
"Are you Lisa?"
The woman didn't answer.
Instead, she smiled.
"I've been waiting five hundred years for you to ask that question."
"Who are you?"
The woman's eyes began turning black.
"Leonardo never gave me a name."
The temperature in the room suddenly dropped.
White breath escaped Pierre's lips.
"Where is Lisa?"
The woman answered,
"She's dead."
"Then who was the woman speaking to me all this time?"
"Lisa's memories."
"And you?"
The woman smiled.
"The entity that came along when her memories were summoned."
Pierre looked at da Vinci's record again.
But Lisa was not the only thing that returned.
Jean said,
"We opened the door for her."
The woman slowly nodded.
"That's right."
Pierre's face hardened.
"Why were you trapped in the Mona Lisa?"
"Because Leonardo was afraid of me."
"What did you do?"
The woman's smile disappeared.
"I showed him what he wanted most."
"What was that?"
"A way not to die."
Suddenly, Pierre felt as if everything had connected.
Leonardo's corpse.
The memories in the paintings.
Seven people alive for five hundred years.
Hundreds of portraits.
"Did you give them immortality?"
The woman laughed.
"Immortality?"
She spoke slowly.
"Humans have always loved that word."
"So you're saying it isn't immortality?"
"Not dying and being alive are entirely different things."
At that moment, footsteps sounded outside.
The seven people were drawing closer.
Pierre clenched the silver key.
The woman in the painting said,
"Give me the key."
Pierre didn't move.
"Why does everyone want this key?"
For the first time, the woman lifted a hand inside the painting.
"Because it can open the last door."
"The last door?"
"Yes."
"What's behind it?"
The woman was silent for a moment.
Then she answered very slowly.
"Lisa's real body."
Pierre's heart sank.
There had been a nameplate bearing Lisa's name on the stone coffin earlier.
But the woman there had said she was alive.
Then...
"What was the coffin we saw earlier?"
"A fake."
"Why make a fake coffin?"
"So no one could find the real Lisa."
"Who?"
The woman's eyes shifted toward Pierre's back.
Pierre slowly turned around.
A small portrait hung on one side of the study wall.
It was a portrait of a young man.
Pierre walked closer.
Then he read the name on the metal plate.
Francesco del Giocondo.
Pierre knew the name.
Lisa's husband.
The man connected to the reason the Mona Lisa was called La Gioconda.
But there was another inscription beneath the painting.
Guardian No. 1.
Jean muttered,
"Guardian?"
At that moment, the man's eyes moved inside the small portrait.
They looked at Pierre and Jean.
Then his lips parted.
"You who possess the key."
Pierre held his breath.
"Never open the last door."
The second Mona Lisa behind them shouted,
"Don't listen to him!"
Francesco's portrait said,
"That woman is not my wife."
"Liar!"
The two paintings shouted at each other.
Pierre felt as if his head were about to split open.
He had no idea whose words were true.
Leonardo.
Lisa's memories.
The second Mona Lisa.
The seven guardians.
And Lisa's husband.
They were all telling different stories.
Then the silver key grew hot again.
Pierre opened his hand.
New letters appeared on the key's surface.
If you want the truth, find the woman who does not smile.
"The woman who doesn't smile..."
Pierre muttered.
Right then, Jean stared at the wall with a strange expression.
"Pierre."
"What?"
"That painting... was it there before?"
In the darkest corner of the study, a small painting hung between two bookshelves.
Pierre shone his flashlight on it.
His heart nearly stopped.
There was another Mona Lisa in the painting.
But this woman wasn't smiling at all.
Her eyes were closed.
Both hands rested over her stomach.
As if...
She were dead.
Pierre approached the painting.
There was a single line beneath it.
LISA — THE ORIGINAL
Lisa.
The original.
"The true Lisa..."
Pierre reached toward the painting.
At that moment—
The woman's eyes flew open.
Pierre froze.
The woman's lips moved.
"Pierre..."
Her voice was different from the one he had heard before.
Weaker. More human.
"You've found me."
"Are you the real Lisa?"
Tears streamed from the woman's eyes.
"Yes."
"Where is your body?"
Just as Lisa was about to answer—
BANG!
The study door exploded into splinters.
Seven people dressed in black entered.
Leonardo stood behind them.
But he looked different from before.
Color had returned to his formerly pale face.
His gaze was much stronger, too.
Leonardo looked at the original Lisa hanging on the wall.
His face hardened.
"You found her after all."
Pierre gripped the silver key.
"Did you kill Lisa?"
Leonardo didn't answer.
"Tell me!"
After a brief silence, Leonardo spoke.
"No."
"Then who killed her?"
Leonardo's gaze slowly shifted.
It moved toward the second Mona Lisa.
"That thing did."
The second Mona Lisa's smile vanished.
"That's a lie."
Leonardo said to Pierre,
"On October 17, 1503, Lisa died in my studio."
"How?"
"There wasn't a single mark on her face."
Leonardo's voice dropped.
"But one thing had disappeared from her."
"What?"
Leonardo answered,
"Her shadow."
Pierre and Jean looked at the floor at the same time.
Candlelight cast everyone's shadows long across the floor.
Pierre's shadow.
Jean's shadow.
The seven men's shadows.
Leonardo's shadow.
But...
There was nothing beneath the second Mona Lisa hanging on the wall.
She had no shadow.
Leonardo said,
"I wasn't trying to bring Lisa back to life."
"Then why did you conduct these experiments?"
Deep regret appeared on Leonardo's face.
"To find out what had killed her."
Pierre looked at the second Mona Lisa.
The woman was no longer smiling.
"What the hell is that thing?"
Leonardo answered,
"I don't know either."
"You said you summoned it."
"Yes."
Leonardo slowly nodded.
"That's why I've regretted it for five hundred years."
At that moment, the second Mona Lisa stepped forward from inside the painting.
One step.
Her hand came out of the painting.
Jean screamed.
The woman's hand.
Her arm.
Her shoulder.
Then her face.
She was coming out of the painting.
Leonardo shouted,
"Pierre! Hide the key!"
But it was too late.
The woman's feet touched the floor.
Standing outside the painting in the complete form of a human for the first time, she slowly looked at Pierre.
Then she smiled.
It was the exact smile the world had loved for five hundred years.
"I'm finally free."
She held out her hand to Pierre.
"Give me the key."
Pierre backed away.
The woman smiled and took a step toward him.
But Pierre noticed something strange.
Beneath her feet.
She truly had no shadow.
The woman whispered,
"All we have to do is open the last door."
"No."
"Then I suppose I'll have to take it myself."
In an instant, the woman's form vanished.
Pierre lost sight of her right in front of him.
"Where did she go?"
Jean shouted.
Then a voice came from directly behind Pierre.
"Right here."
A cold hand wrapped around his neck.
Pierre couldn't breathe.
Just as the silver key began slipping from his hand,
The real Lisa hanging on the wall screamed,
"Pierre!"
The entire room shook.
The wall behind the real Lisa's painting began to split open.
Rumble...
A huge golden door appeared behind the wall.
At its center was a keyhole exactly the same shape as the silver key.
Everyone's eyes turned toward the door.
Leonardo's face went deathly white.
"No..."
The seven guardians dropped to their knees at the same time.
The shadowless woman released Pierre's neck.
And for the first time, a frightened expression appeared on her face.
A sound came from beyond the golden door.
Boom.
Boom.
It sounded like a human heart beating.
Then red liquid began seeping through a small gap beneath the door.
Blood.
Just as Pierre froze, the real Lisa's voice rang out.
"In there..."
She spoke through tears.
"My body is in there."
Pierre stared at the golden door.
But Lisa's next words were even more shocking.
"And beside my body..."
Lisa stopped speaking.
"What is there?" Pierre asked.
Lisa answered in a trembling voice,
"Another Leonardo."
Pierre slowly looked at the Leonardo standing before him.
Then who was the man in front of him now?
The sound of a heartbeat came from inside the golden door again.
Boom.
Boom.
Boom.
And a man's voice came from beyond the door.
"Pierre."
It was exactly the same voice as the Leonardo standing in the room.
"Open the door."
The silver key in Pierre's hand began moving on its own.
Slowly.
Toward the golden door.
— End of Episode 3 —