03:59:59
03:59:58
03:59:57
The numbers on the silver key were counting down fast.
Pierre looked at his hand.
No—more precisely, he was looking at the key that had been in his hand only moments ago.
The key was now embedded in the chest of the woman in the white dress.
And she was smiling.
The Mona Lisa's smile, loved by the world for five hundred years.
But Pierre could no longer think of that smile as beautiful.
The moment he looked at it, scenes that could have been from the future—or the past—came flooding into his mind.
A collapsing city.
Streets engulfed in flames.
A plane slicing across the sky.
And himself, young again.
"I... came out of the painting?"
Pierre muttered.
Jean shook his head.
"Don't believe her. She's trying to deceive us."
But Leonardo said nothing.
That silence only made Pierre more uneasy.
Pierre approached Leonardo.
"Answer me."
Leonardo looked away.
"You said you remembered me, right?"
"Yes."
"Since when did you know?"
"A little while ago."
"Liar."
Pierre grabbed him by the collar.
"You knew my name from the very beginning!"
Jean stared at the two of them in shock.
Leonardo did not resist.
"Why did you know my name?"
"That name... I was the one who gave it to you."
The strength drained from Pierre's hand.
"What did you say?"
"The name Pierre."
Leonardo spoke slowly.
"I gave you that name five hundred years ago."
Pierre took a step back.
"That's impossible."
"You looked about ten years old back then."
"Looked?"
"Because I didn't know your exact age."
"What about my parents?"
Leonardo did not answer.
"I asked who my parents were!"
At that moment, the woman in the white dress laughed.
"You don't remember that either?"
Pierre glared at her.
"You know?"
"Of course."
"Then tell me."
The woman shook her head.
"It would be meaningless if I told you."
"What do you mean?"
"You have to remember it yourself."
Pierre was furious, but he did not press her further.
There was no time.
The numbers on the silver key continued to fall.
03:56:21
He looked at Leonardo.
"Where is your tomb?"
Leonardo answered.
"Amboise."
"So not Paris."
"No."
"How long will it take to get there?"
Jean checked his phone.
"Nearly three hours by car."
Pierre stared at the numbers.
Three hours.
They had less than four hours remaining.
"We have to leave now."
Leonardo shook his head.
"You must not go there."
Pierre let out an incredulous laugh.
"Here we go again."
"There is something in my tomb that I hid all my life."
"The last painting?"
Leonardo did not answer.
The woman in the white dress spoke instead.
"That's not all that's there."
Leonardo's expression hardened.
"Be quiet."
"Are you still planning to keep it hidden?"
"The only thing you want is that painting."
The woman's smile disappeared.
"That's right."
"Why?"
"Because my face is in it."
Pierre looked between the two of them.
"Your face is already in countless paintings."
The woman shook her head.
"No."
"What does that mean?"
"Everything you've seen until now has been a fake face."
Pierre swallowed hard.
"Then where is your real face?"
The woman said,
"It's in the last painting."
"Why did you hide it?"
This time, Leonardo answered.
"Because no one must see that face."
"Why not?"
"The moment you see it, you'll remember."
"Remember what?"
Leonardo's eyes wavered.
"What humanity was meant to forget."
Silence briefly filled the room.
Jean shook his head.
"I don't understand a word of this."
Pierre felt the same.
But one thing was clear.
The answer lay in Da Vinci's tomb.
"Let's go."
Pierre said it firmly.
"To the tomb."
The three men left the building.
But the woman in the white dress did not follow.
Pierre looked back.
She stood at a third-floor window, looking down at them.
"You're not coming?"
The woman did not answer.
Instead, she pulled the silver key from her chest.
Then she threw it out the window.
The key fell through the darkness, gleaming.
Pierre reached out.
Clack.
It landed perfectly in his palm.
The numbers appeared again.
03:43:18
The woman said,
"I'll see you at the tomb."
Then the window closed.
A strange uneasiness came over Pierre.
"Why isn't she coming with us?"
Leonardo said,
"She can't go there."
"Why not?"
"I sealed my tomb so she could never enter it."
"Then how can she say she'll see us there?"
Leonardo did not answer.
The area around the Louvre was already a madhouse.
Police cars and fire trucks filled the roads.
The people who had come out of the paintings sat wrapped in protective blankets.
Some cried as they stared at cars. Others looked up at the towering buildings and prayed.
One young boy grabbed the hem of Pierre's clothes.
"Mister."
Pierre stopped.
The boy's clothes appeared to be from around the seventeenth century.
"Please find my mother."
"Where is your mother?"
The boy pointed at the Louvre.
"She's inside a painting."
Pierre's chest felt heavy.
"How did you get out?"
"The woman opened the door for me."
"What woman?"
The boy placed a finger against his lips.
Then he formed a tiny smile.
The Mona Lisa's smile.
Pierre's face hardened.
"What did she say to you?"
"She told me to go home."
"Was that all?"
The boy shook his head.
"She also said you had to make a choice before sunrise."
Pierre was startled.
"Do you know me?"
"No."
"Then how..."
The boy pointed at the key in his hand.
"She said you're the one who has the key."
Before Pierre could ask anything else, a police officer led the boy away.
Jean spoke in a low voice.
"That woman knows everything we're doing."
Leonardo said,
"She has from the very beginning."
The three of them used one of the museum's vehicles to leave Paris.
Jean took the wheel.
Pierre sat in the passenger seat, while Leonardo stared out the window from the back seat.
Once they entered the highway, Pierre watched him in the rearview mirror.
Even though he was a man from five hundred years ago riding in a car for the first time, Leonardo did not seem surprised.
If anything, he was listening closely to the sound of the engine.
"Isn't it fascinating?"
Pierre asked.
"What is?"
"The car."
Leonardo looked out the window.
"It's louder than I imagined."
Jean gave a hollow laugh.
"That's all you've got?"
"I more or less understand how it works."
"In just a few minutes?"
"The only difference is the way the force that moves the wheels is generated."
Jean shook his head.
"Of course. Leonardo da Vinci."
But Pierre did not smile.
"Where did you find me in 1499?"
Leonardo's face hardened.
"Do we have to talk about that now?"
"Yes, we do."
Pierre's voice was firm.
"I can't go to your tomb without knowing who I am."
Silence stretched on for a while.
At last, Leonardo spoke.
"A small monastery near Florence."
"Was I there?"
"No."
"Then where?"
"You were in a painting."
Pierre's hand went rigid.
"What painting?"
"A work by an unknown painter."
"What was in it?"
"A city on fire."
The scene from the future he'd seen moments ago flashed through Pierre's mind.
"A child was standing inside it."
Leonardo continued.
"Everyone else was a figure in the painting, but you were different."
"How?"
"You were moving."
Jean glanced at them in the rearview mirror as he drove.
"That was the first time you'd ever seen someone move inside a painting?"
Leonardo nodded.
"You looked at me and said..."
Pierre's heart pounded.
"What did I say?"
Leonardo answered slowly.
"Get me out."
Pierre's face went pale.
It was the same thing the Mona Lisa had said to him on the first night.
"So you got me out?"
"Yes."
"How?"
"With the silver key."
Pierre looked down at the key in his hand.
"So this key existed back then too."
"You had it inside the painting."
"Then where did the key come from?"
"I don't know."
"What about the painting?"
"I burned it."
"Why?"
Pierre shouted.
Leonardo said quietly,
"The moment I pulled you out of the painting, the city inside it began to move as well."
"The city?"
"People started screaming, and the flames began spilling out of the frame."
Fear flickered across Leonardo's face.
"I pulled you out and burned the painting."
Pierre clutched his head.
"What happened to me after that?"
"You lost your memory."
"And then?"
"I protected you."
"For how long?"
"Three months."
Pierre looked at Leonardo.
"What happened after that?"
Leonardo took a while to answer.
"You disappeared."
"Where did you go?"
"Into a painting."
"What painting?"
Leonardo said,
"One I painted."
Pierre could not say a word.
"I hid you in another painting to protect you."
"Why?"
"Because the guardians had started looking for you."
"Because of the key?"
"Yes."
"Then are you saying I was inside a painting for five hundred years?"
"It's possible."
"But I remember being born and raised like an ordinary person."
Leonardo spoke quietly.
"Have you ever considered whether those memories are really yours?"
The color drained from Pierre's face.
His mother.
His father.
School.
His first job.
Marriage.
Seventeen years at the Louvre.
Every memory was vivid.
And yet, strangely, some scenes from his childhood had blurry faces.
Especially the memories from before he was ten.
Almost none of them came back clearly.
At that moment, the silver key grew hot.
Pierre opened his palm.
A new sentence appeared.
Memories are easier to forge than paintings.
Pierre stopped breathing.
After nearly three hours on the road, they arrived in Amboise.
The eastern sky was beginning to brighten faintly.
There was little time left.
00:51:14
They parked near the château and hurried on foot.
Leonardo led the way.
"This way."
"Is your tomb really here?"
"I know where I was buried after I died."
Jean asked,
"How do you know that if you died?"
Leonardo stopped walking.
"My memories were separated from my body before it died."
"Then you don't actually know where your body was buried."
Leonardo was silent for a moment.
"That's right."
The moment Pierre heard that, a strange uneasiness came over him.
They had no way to be sure that the tomb they were heading toward was really Leonardo's.
A little while later, a small chapel appeared.
There was no one around at this hour before dawn.
Leonardo went inside.
Then he stood before the tomb engraved with his own name.
He stared at the gravestone for a long time.
His expression was strange.
"How does it feel?"
Pierre asked.
Leonardo gave a bitter smile.
"I wouldn't recommend the experience of looking at your own tomb."
Then the silver key began to glow.
A small symbol appeared beneath the gravestone.
A triangle.
An eye inside it.
"Here."
Pierre brought the key to the symbol.
Click.
The gravestone moved.
A staircase appeared beneath it.
Jean sighed.
"I'm really getting sick of basements."
The three of them descended the stairs.
Leonardo's sketches were carved into the walls.
The human body.
Wings.
Machines.
Constellations.
And on the final wall was the face of a woman.
A woman who was not smiling.
Pierre stopped.
"It's her."
Leonardo's face hardened too.
"I didn't draw this."
"But this is your tomb."
"Which is why it's strange."
A small room appeared at the bottom of the stairs.
A single wooden chest sat in the center.
Pierre approached it.
The word PIERRE was written on top.
Pierre froze.
"My name..."
Jean said,
"Why is your name on a five-hundred-year-old chest?"
Leonardo looked just as shocked.
"I never made this."
Pierre opened the chest with the silver key.
Inside was a single painting.
It was covered with cloth.
He pulled the cloth away.
For a moment, all three of them lost the power of speech.
The Mona Lisa was not in the painting.
There was a young boy.
About ten years old.
He was holding a silver key.
And the boy's face—
Pierre touched his own face.
"That's me..."
The boy in the painting was identical to Pierre as a child.
A date was written beneath the painting.
April 24, 1499.
The day after Isabella died.
And beneath it, a single sentence.
The last guardian.
Jean looked at Pierre.
"You were a guardian?"
Pierre could not answer.
Then the young Pierre in the painting moved.
He slowly raised his head.
And looked at the Pierre of the present.
"You're late."
Pierre stepped backward.
"Who are you?"
The boy answered,
"I'm you."
"What does that mean?"
"The memory you lost."
The boy in the painting raised his hand.
"Hold the key against the painting."
Leonardo shouted,
"Don't!"
But Pierre brought the key closer to the painting.
A powerful light burst from it.
Memories came surging into Pierre's mind.
1499.
A dark studio.
Isabella collapsed on the floor.
Leonardo crying.
And young Pierre standing beside him.
But young Pierre was not alone.
There was another child beside him.
A girl.
The same age as Pierre.
The girl said,
"We have to protect it."
Young Pierre asked,
"Protect what?"
The girl pointed not at Isabella lying on the floor, but at a painting hanging on the wall.
It was a portrait Pierre had never seen before.
It resembled the Mona Lisa, but the face was completely different.
A silver key hung around the woman's neck inside the painting.
"Her."
The girl said,
"When she wakes up, the world will become a painting."
The memory broke off.
Pierre collapsed onto the floor.
"Pierre!"
Jean pulled him up.
"Are you okay?"
Pierre gasped for breath.
"The child..."
"What child?"
"There was someone else besides me."
Leonardo's face hardened.
"A girl?"
Pierre looked up.
"You know about her?"
Leonardo stepped backward.
"That can't be."
"Who was she?"
"That girl..."
At that exact moment, a sound came from the wall opposite them.
Boom.
The wall split apart.
A small space appeared behind it.
And a painting hung on the wall inside.
It was completely covered with cloth.
The numbers on the silver key began counting down rapidly.
00:09:59
00:09:58
00:09:57
"We've only got ten minutes!"
Jean shouted.
Pierre approached the painting.
Then a voice came from behind him.
"Don't pull off the cloth."
It was Leonardo.
His face was rigid with fear.
"Is that the last painting?"
Leonardo did not answer.
"Tell me!"
"Yes."
Pierre grabbed the cloth.
"You must not look!"
But it was already too late.
Pierre pulled the cloth away.
The painting was revealed.
And Pierre stopped breathing.
Two children stood inside it.
One was young Pierre.
And beside him was a girl.
The girl held a small paintbrush.
Behind the two children, a woman sat in a chair.
Her hands were folded neatly in her lap.
A faint smile touched her lips.
It was the Mona Lisa's pose.
But the face belonged neither to Lisa, nor Isabella, nor the woman in the white dress.
It was a completely different woman.
A title was written beneath the painting.
LA PRIMA GIOCONDA
The First Gioconda.
Pierre whispered,
"Is she... the true Mona Lisa?"
Then the girl in the painting moved.
And looked at Pierre.
"Big brother."
Pierre's heart seemed to stop.
"What?"
The girl spoke again.
"Don't you remember me?"
Tears began to fall from Pierre's eyes before he even realized it.
A forgotten name rose from the depths of his mind.
"Maria..."
Leonardo closed his eyes.
Jean asked,
"Who is she?"
Pierre said in a trembling voice,
"My sister."
In that instant, all his memories returned.
The two children who had lived together inside the painting.
Pierre and Maria.
The brother and sister who guarded the silver key.
And one day in 1499, Leonardo had pulled only Pierre out of the painting.
Maria had been left behind.
"Why..."
Pierre turned toward Leonardo.
"Why did you leave my sister behind and take only me out?"
Leonardo opened his mouth, but no answer came.
Maria spoke instead from inside the painting.
"I asked him to."
Pierre looked back at the painting.
"Why?"
"If we both came out, the key's power would be complete."
"What does that mean?"
Maria looked at the Mona Lisa inside the painting.
"We're not human."
Pierre's face hardened.
"What?"
"We're the key."
"But I have the key in my hand."
Maria shook her head.
"That's only half."
"Then where's the other half?"
Maria pointed to her chest.
"Me."
At that moment, the silver key in Pierre's hand split into two pieces.
A small golden fragment appeared inside it.
The same light began shining from Maria's chest inside the painting.
The two lights moved toward each other.
Leonardo shouted,
"No!"
But Maria smiled.
"Big brother."
"Maria!"
"I've been waiting for five hundred years."
She reached her hand out of the painting.
"Now get me out."
Pierre reached toward her.
The moment their fingers touched—
The world stopped.
Even the candle flames froze.
Jean's expression remained locked in place.
Leonardo could not move either.
Only Pierre and Maria could move.
Maria spoke from inside the painting.
"When you get me out, the last door will open."
"What's inside that door?"
Tears flowed from Maria's eyes.
"The one who created us."
Pierre stopped breathing.
"Who created us?"
Maria looked at the true Mona Lisa sitting behind the painting.
Then she spoke slowly.
"That woman."
Pierre looked at the woman in the painting.
At that moment, the woman opened her eyes for the first time.
And smiled.
The time remaining on the silver key changed to 00:00:10.
00:00:09
00:00:08
The true Mona Lisa in the painting opened her mouth.
"At last, the two children have been reunited."
Pierre asked,
"Who are you?"
The woman did not answer.
Instead, she raised her hands and covered her face.
Then she lowered them.
Pierre's entire body went rigid.
The woman's face had changed.
Lisa.
She moved her hands again.
Isabella.
Again.
The woman in the white dress.
And finally—
A face identical to Pierre's.
The woman smiled.
"I have no face."
00:00:05
"Then who is the Mona Lisa?"
00:00:04
The woman answered,
"The Mona Lisa isn't a person."
00:00:03
"Then what is she?"
00:00:02
The woman's smile spread across the entire painting.
"A door."
00:00:01
Pierre grabbed Maria's hand.
And—
00:00:00
The frame holding the Mona Lisa in the Louvre Museum shattered.
At the same time, every face vanished from millions of portraits around the world.
Blank faces.
Blank eyes.
Blank smiles.
And in the underground tomb at Amboise, the last painting slowly began to open.
It was not a painting.
There was a real door behind it.
From beyond the door, thousands of voices whispered in unison.
"Draw us."
—End of Episode 7—