Pierre was holding a silver brush.
The fate of the world rested on that one brush.
The eastern sky was gradually brightening. Light pushing back the dawn seeped through the windows of an old chapel in Amboise.
Far away in Paris, people's faces were beginning to blur again.
The countless memories that had escaped the painting had not completely disappeared yet.
And standing before Pierre was the woman who had been called the Mona Lisa until now.
She had an unfamiliar face now.
The face of an ordinary middle-aged woman.
It was neither beautiful nor mysterious.
But she was crying as she cupped that face in both hands.
"My face……"
The woman kept murmuring.
"This was my face."
Pierre looked at her.
"Do you remember?"
The woman slowly raised her head.
"A little."
"Your name, too?"
She opened her mouth, then stopped.
And shook her head.
"Not yet."
Pierre looked at the brush in his hand.
The final sentences remained on its surface.
Complete the last smile.
Then all memories will return to their original places.
And the most frightening sentence of all.
The memory of the one who completes the painting will disappear as well.
Maria grabbed Pierre's arm.
"Big brother."
Pierre looked at his sister.
His sister, who had been trapped inside the painting for five hundred years.
They had only just been reunited.
But if he lost all his memories now, he would forget Maria all over again.
"There has to be another way."
Maria said it.
"There has to be."
Leonardo shook his head.
"There isn't."
Maria glared at him.
"You always said there wasn't."
"Maria."
"You said that five hundred years ago, too."
Leonardo said nothing.
Tears welled up in Maria's eyes.
"You said there was no other way when you hid my brother inside the painting, and you said there was no other way when you left me behind."
"Back then……"
"In the end, you chose it, didn't you?"
Leonardo's face darkened.
Pierre stepped between them.
"Enough."
"Big brother."
"We don't have time to fight."
He looked out the window.
Screams had begun to rise from the village below the chapel.
More and more people were losing their faces.
Jean was staring at his cell phone, too.
Breaking news kept appearing on the screen.
Paris.
London.
Rome.
Madrid.
New York.
The same phenomenon was occurring all over the world.
On the distorted broadcast screens, people's faces were blurring one by one.
Jean spoke.
"We really don't have any time left."
Pierre closed his eyes.
Countless memories surfaced in his mind.
Seventeen years spent at the Louvre.
The coffee he drank every morning.
Paris on rainy days.
The jokes he had shared with Jean.
Faint memories from his childhood.
And the memories from five hundred years ago that he had only just recovered.
Maria.
Isabella.
Leonardo.
The silver brush.
All of it would disappear.
"If I complete the painting, will everything really return?"
Pierre asked.
Leonardo answered.
"It will."
"It will?"
Pierre gave a bitter smile.
"You still aren't sure."
Leonardo lowered his head.
"I didn't make this brush."
"Then who did?"
Leonardo looked at the middle-aged woman.
"She did."
The woman pointed at herself, startled.
"I did?"
"Probably."
"I don't remember."
"That's what makes it even more dangerous."
Pierre asked,
"What do you mean?"
Leonardo said,
"She's not merely a figure inside a painting."
"I already know that."
"No."
Leonardo slowly shook his head.
"I only remembered it now."
"Remembered what?"
His voice dropped.
"Where I first saw her."
Pierre didn't move.
"Wasn't it Isabella's studio in 1499?"
"No."
Leonardo raised his head.
"It was much earlier than that."
"When?"
"1482."
It was far earlier than the period when Isabella had supposedly painted the original Mona Lisa.
"Where did you meet her?"
Leonardo spoke as if reaching deep into a distant memory.
"On the road to Milan."
"Did she have that face back then, too?"
"No."
"Then what did she look like?"
"She was a little girl."
The middle-aged woman's expression trembled.
Leonardo continued.
"She was crying alone by the roadside. Her clothes weren't from any region I knew."
"So you took her with you?"
"No. I tried to approach her, but the girl spoke first."
"What did she say?"
Leonardo looked at Pierre.
"You'll paint me someday."
Silence filled the room.
Jean slowly asked,
"Are you saying she knew the future?"
"Yes."
"That girl was this woman?"
Leonardo nodded.
"I didn't believe her then."
The middle-aged woman clutched her temple.
"Wait……"
Pierre approached her.
"Do you remember something?"
"A road……"
The woman closed her eyes.
"A dirt road."
Her breathing quickened.
"A man on horseback……"
Leonardo's face hardened.
"Was it me?"
The woman opened her eyes.
"You."
Leonardo took a step forward.
"What happened after that?"
The woman grabbed her head.
"I don't know."
At that moment, the silver brush began to tremble violently.
Pierre nearly dropped it.
Black ink dripped from the tip.
Plop.
The instant it struck the floor, the ink spread into a circle.
A scene appeared inside it.
Like a tiny mirror.
Everyone stared into it.
1482.
An unfamiliar road.
A young Leonardo was riding a horse.
And a little girl stood by the roadside.
Leonardo dismounted.
"Are you lost?"
The girl didn't answer.
Instead, she held a small wooden box in her hands.
Young Leonardo looked at the box.
"What's that?"
The girl said,
"Faces."
Leonardo laughed in the scene.
"Faces?"
The girl opened the box.
The scene wavered.
Inside were dozens of small pieces of paper.
Each one showed a different person's face.
A king.
An old man.
A child.
A woman.
A man.
And one of them—
The face of the Mona Lisa.
A painting that did not yet exist in the world.
The Leonardo of the present swallowed hard.
"I saw this……"
Pierre asked,
"Why don't you remember it?"
Before Leonardo could answer, the little girl in the scene raised her head.
And said something strange.
"Soon, you'll forget me."
Young Leonardo laughed.
"Why?"
"When people look at my face for too long, they forget something important."
The scene vanished.
Everyone fell silent.
Pierre looked at the middle-aged woman.
"You had that kind of power?"
The woman shook her head.
"I don't know."
"She said people would lose their memories when they looked at your face."
"If that girl really was me……"
Her lips trembled.
"Then maybe that's why I lost my face."
Maria asked,
"What do you mean?"
The woman spoke slowly.
"Maybe as I took people's memories, my own memories disappeared, too."
Pierre suddenly realized.
"That's why you kept using other people's faces."
Lisa.
Isabella.
Pierre.
Countless others.
A being who had lost her own face had survived by borrowing the faces of others.
Leonardo said,
"That was probably where it began."
"The beginning of what?"
"The Mona Lisa's smile."
Pierre looked at him.
"The smile wasn't meant to draw people in."
Leonardo said,
"It was a device for holding on to memories."
"So when people looked at the Mona Lisa for too long……"
"They gradually left their emotions behind in the painting."
Jean rubbed his arms as if he had goosebumps.
"Millions of people have looked at it over five hundred years."
Leonardo nodded.
"That's why the painting grew stronger."
Pierre swallowed hard.
The reason the Mona Lisa had become the most famous painting in the world.
The reason people couldn't forget that smile.
The reason the longer they looked, the more they wanted to see it again.
What if all of it had been the painting's power?
"Then how many memories are inside the painting right now?"
Leonardo answered.
"More than you can imagine."
At that exact moment, the entire chapel shook violently.
Bang!
Stone dust fell from the ceiling.
And once again, thousands of voices rose from underground.
"Give us your face."
"Give us your memories."
"Draw us."
Jean looked toward the stairs behind them.
"The door's opening again!"
Black figures began climbing up from underground.
Leonardo shouted,
"Pierre! Now!"
Pierre gripped the silver brush.
"What do I draw?"
"The Mona Lisa's last smile."
"Where?"
Leonardo pointed at the middle-aged woman.
"On her."
The woman took a step back.
"No."
"Why?"
"I don't know. But no."
Pierre looked at her.
"Could you disappear?"
The woman didn't answer.
Maria said quietly,
"Big brother."
Pierre turned around.
Maria pulled a small light from her chest.
The golden fragment that had been half of the key.
"Use this."
"Why?"
"It might be able to protect your memories."
Leonardo looked shocked.
"Maria, then you'll—"
"I know."
"No."
This time, Pierre spoke.
"What will happen?"
Maria smiled.
"It's nothing."
"Maria."
"Really."
"Don't lie to me."
Pierre looked into his sister's eyes.
"You'll disappear, won't you?"
Maria's gaze wavered.
That was all the answer he needed.
Pierre shook his head.
"I'm not doing it."
"Big brother."
"I already lost you once in five hundred years."
"But all the people in the world—"
"I still can't sacrifice you."
Maria shouted angrily,
"Then you'll forget everything!"
"That's okay."
"I don't want that!"
For the first time, Maria screamed.
Tears streamed down her face.
"We just found each other again, and you're going to forget me again?"
Pierre couldn't say anything.
"I remembered you for five hundred years."
Maria sobbed.
"Every day."
She wiped away her tears with her hand.
"Time is strange inside the painting. Sometimes a day feels like a year, and sometimes a hundred years feel like a day."
Tears gathered in Pierre's eyes, too.
"But I kept waiting."
"Maria……"
"Believing you'd come back someday."
She forced the golden fragment into Pierre's hand.
"So this time, you have to remember me."
Pierre shook his head.
"No."
Maria smiled.
"Just listen to your little sister for once."
At that moment, one black figure climbed onto the stairs.
Then another.
Dozens.
Hundreds.
Jean looked around.
"We're really out of time now!"
Leonardo placed an old wooden chair in the center.
"Sit her down!"
The middle-aged woman didn't move.
"I don't want to."
Pierre said,
"I want to save you, too."
The woman looked at him.
"Why?"
"I don't know."
He thought for a moment, then said,
"You lost your own face and lived without it for five hundred years, too."
The woman's eyes wavered.
"You may be a victim, too."
"I stole the memories of countless people."
"Did you do it on purpose?"
The woman couldn't answer.
"Then you still have a chance."
At that moment, Urbura's voice came from behind them.
"How touching."
Everyone turned around.
A man with black eyes stood at the entrance to the chapel.
Pierre's face hardened.
"How did you get here?"
Urbura smiled.
"The door opened."
"Are you one of them?"
"No."
"Then what are you?"
Urbura looked at the middle-aged woman.
"Her shadow."
The woman froze.
"What does that mean?"
"Don't you remember?"
Urbura said,
"When you created a face, I was born with it."
Pierre looked at the two of them.
A faceless woman.
Her shadow.
Only then did everything connect.
"The reason you didn't have a shadow……"
Urbura pointed at his own chest.
"I'm her shadow."
Tears ran down the woman's face.
"I…… created you?"
"No."
Urbura said,
"He did."
He pointed at Pierre.
Pierre gripped the brush tightly.
"Me again?"
Urbura laughed.
"The young painter drew a face, and a shadow appeared beneath it."
He bowed his head.
"That was me."
Leonardo said,
"That's why the two of them must be erased together."
Urbura's smile vanished.
"Can that be done?"
"What do you mean?"
"If Pierre erases her, I'll disappear, too."
"Then won't it be over?"
Pierre asked.
Urbura nodded.
"Yes."
"Then why are you smiling?"
"Because you still don't know the price."
Pierre's expression hardened.
"What price?"
Urbura pointed at the silver brush.
"To erase something completely with that brush, every memory connected to it must be erased as well."
Pierre looked at the middle-aged woman.
"Every memory connected to her?"
"Yes."
"Even the memories of the people who remember the Mona Lisa?"
"All of them."
The color drained from Pierre's face.
It meant the Mona Lisa would vanish from the memories of billions of people around the world.
Leonardo, too.
Lisa, too.
Isabella, too.
And perhaps all of history itself could change.
"Would that change the history of art, too?"
Urbura smiled.
"Who knows?"
Jean said,
"How can anyone choose something like that?"
Pierre looked down at the brush.
Then the golden fragment melted into his palm.
Warm light traveled up his wrist.
He heard Maria's voice.
"Big brother."
Pierre raised his head.
Maria's body was growing faint.
"Maria!"
"I'm okay."
"You're not okay!"
"I gave you my memories."
"Give them back!"
"I can't."
She smiled.
"Now you won't be able to forget me."
Pierre ran to Maria and embraced her.
But her body was gradually turning into light.
"Why would you do this!"
"Because you're my big brother."
"That's not a reason!"
"It's reason enough."
Maria touched Pierre's face.
"I'll see you again someday."
"Where?"
Maria looked at the silver brush.
"In a painting."
And she became light.
Tiny golden particles entered Pierre's body.
Pierre fell to his knees.
"Maria……"
There wasn't even time to cry.
The black figures began flooding into the chapel.
Urbura shouted,
"Choose, Pierre!"
Leonardo shouted, too.
"Draw now!"
Pierre stood.
He wiped away his tears.
Then he stood before the middle-aged woman.
"Please sit in the chair."
The woman quietly sat down.
"Are you afraid?"
Pierre asked.
The woman nodded.
"Yes."
"I'm afraid, too."
Pierre lifted the silver brush.
"But this time, I won't draw a face chosen by someone else."
The woman looked at him.
"Then what will you draw?"
"The face you want."
Tears ran down the woman's face.
"I don't remember my own face."
Pierre said,
"Then I'll leave the face as it is."
"What will you draw?"
Pierre smiled faintly.
"A smile."
The woman's lips trembled.
"What kind of smile?"
"The smile you make when you truly want to laugh."
"I don't know what that looks like."
Pierre raised the brush.
"Then let's find it now."
He drew the first line through the air.
The black figures stopped.
The second line.
Urbura's body trembled.
The third line.
The faces of the people blurring all over the world began to reappear.
And finally, Pierre tried to draw the curve of her lips.
That was when the woman spoke.
"Wait."
Pierre stopped.
"Why?"
Tears streamed from the woman's eyes.
"I remembered my name."
Everyone looked at her.
"What is it?"
The woman slowly opened her mouth.
"Elena."
Leonardo's face went rigid.
"Elena……?"
He seemed to know the name.
Pierre asked,
"You know her?"
Leonardo took a step back.
"That can't be."
"Who is she?"
Leonardo's lips trembled.
"It's my mother's name."
The room froze.
Pierre slowly looked at Elena.
Elena looked just as shocked.
"I'm…… your mother?"
Leonardo shook his head.
"No."
But he didn't sound certain.
Urbura burst into laughter.
"You finally remembered!"
Leonardo glared at him.
"Shut up."
"You have to tell them."
Urbura looked at Pierre.
"The true secret of the Mona Lisa."
Pierre asked without lowering the brush,
"What secret?"
Urbura's black eyes gleamed.
"Why Leonardo could never let go of that painting."
"Why?"
Urbura pointed at Elena.
"The face he saw in the Mona Lisa wasn't Lisa's or Isabella's."
Leonardo shouted,
"Stop!"
But Urbura continued with a laugh.
"It was his dead mother's."
Pierre looked at Leonardo.
Leonardo lowered his head.
Everything was beginning to make sense.
His obsession with death.
Why he had tried to preserve memories in paintings.
Why he had kept the Mona Lisa beside him all his life.
He had been seeing his mother inside that painting.
Elena looked at Leonardo.
"My son……?"
Tears spilled from Leonardo's eyes.
"Mother."
At that moment, the brush in Pierre's hand began to shine intensely.
A new sentence appeared on it.
The last smile is not drawn by the painter.
A second sentence appeared beneath it.
The painting is completed the moment someone smiles sincerely.
Pierre looked at Elena.
Only then did he understand.
He didn't need to force himself to draw a smile.
Elena had to smile on her own.
The Mona Lisa's smile, which countless people had interpreted for five hundred years.
The true beginning of that smile had not been a painting.
It had been one person's genuine emotion.
Pierre lowered the brush.
Leonardo looked startled.
"Why did you stop?"
"I shouldn't draw it."
"What?"
Pierre spoke to Elena.
"You have to smile."
With tears in her eyes, Elena looked at Leonardo.
Five hundred years stood between them.
Mother and son.
Two beings who had lived without remembering each other.
Leonardo slowly approached her.
Then he knelt.
"Mother."
Elena's hand trembled.
She touched Leonardo's face.
"You've grown so old."
Jean laughed through his tears.
"It's been five hundred years. I'd say he's holding up pretty well."
Pierre found himself laughing, too.
Leonardo was crying.
"I'm sorry."
Elena asked,
"Why?"
"I hurt too many people trying to bring you back."
Elena stared at her son for a long time.
Then she said,
"I never asked you to come back."
Leonardo lowered his head.
"I know."
"For the dead, being remembered is enough."
At that moment, the corners of Elena's lips lifted ever so slightly.
It wasn't a forced smile.
It was sad, but warm.
A mother's smile as she forgave her son.
Pierre's silver brush moved on its own.
It drew the final curve through the air.
Whoosh!
A powerful light covered the world.
Urbura screamed.
"No!"
His body scattered like black smoke.
The faceless figures disappeared one by one as well.
The people who had emerged from the painting turned into light and began returning to their original paintings.
The streets of Paris.
The museums of London.
The cathedrals of Rome.
Faces that had vanished all over the world returned.
At the Louvre Museum, a woman's form slowly appeared in the empty Mona Lisa painting.
Eyes.
Nose.
Hands.
Background.
And finally—
A faint smile appeared on her lips.
But it was slightly different from the smile before.
Warmer.
Sadder.
And far more human.
In the chapel in Amboise, Elena's body began to glow, too.
Leonardo grabbed her hand.
"Mother?"
Elena smiled.
"It's time to let me go."
"I don't want to."
"Leonardo."
She stroked her son's face.
"You've held on to me long enough."
"Mother……"
"Now live."
Leonardo was crying.
Elena's hand turned into light.
Then she looked at Pierre one last time.
"Thank you."
"I didn't do anything—"
"No."
Elena said,
"You helped me find my face."
She vanished completely into light.
The silver brush fell from Pierre's hand.
When it struck the floor, it turned into an ordinary old brush.
Pierre touched his head.
His memories?
Maria.
He closed his eyes.
The smiling face of a young Maria appeared in his mind.
He remembered her.
"Maria……"
Pierre laughed through his tears.
The golden fragment his sister had left behind had protected his memories.
Jean patted Pierre on the shoulder.
"Is it over?"
Pierre was about to answer when Leonardo suddenly staggered.
"Leonardo!"
Pierre caught him.
Leonardo's body was becoming transparent.
"Are you disappearing, too?"
Leonardo smiled.
"Didn't I tell you? I'm nothing more than a memory."
"What about your real body?"
"It ended long ago."
"There might still be a way—"
"Enough."
Leonardo looked at his own hand.
"Five hundred years is long enough."
Then he spoke to Pierre.
"I have one favor to ask."
"What is it?"
"Even if the world remembers me as a genius……"
He smiled faintly.
"Don't let them say I created everything alone."
Pierre thought of Isabella.
The daughter who had vanished from history.
"You mean Isabella?"
Leonardo nodded.
"Without that girl's painting, there would have been no Mona Lisa."
"I'll write it down."
"Thank you."
At that moment, Leonardo's body scattered into light.
His voice alone remained.
"And Pierre."
"Yes?"
"Maria probably hasn't disappeared completely."
Pierre stared at him in surprise.
"What do you mean?"
"That girl loved paintings."
Leonardo's faint laughter echoed.
"She must have left her image somewhere."
And then he disappeared.
Only Pierre and Jean remained in the chapel.
The morning sun was rising in the east.
A few hours later.
Paris.
The Louvre Museum was temporarily closed.
But astonishingly, most people couldn't remember exactly what had happened during the night.
Some said there had been a massive power outage. Others said they felt as though they had dreamed it.
Most of the news footage had been damaged, too.
The scenes of people walking out of paintings were strangely blurred in every recording.
Experts even suggested it had been a mass hallucination.
But the entire world noticed one change.
The Mona Lisa's smile.
"Doesn't it look a little different?"
"Was it always like that?"
"It looks warmer than before."
Experts called it an optical illusion.
They announced that the painting had not changed.
But Pierre knew.
It was definitely different.
That night.
After the museum had grown quiet again, Pierre entered the Mona Lisa Gallery alone.
He stood before the painting.
"Is it really over?"
Naturally, there was no answer.
Pierre smiled.
"From now on, a painting should just be a painting."
He was about to turn away.
Knock.
Pierre stopped.
Tap.
A very small sound came from the frame.
"No way……"
He stepped closer to the painting.
The Mona Lisa hadn't moved.
Not her eyes.
Not her hands.
Not her lips.
It was an ordinary painting.
Pierre let out a relieved breath.
Then a small sheet of paper fell from the bottom of the painting.
Pierre picked it up.
It was a drawing made by a child.
Two people were holding hands.
One was a little boy.
The other was a little girl.
Beneath them, crooked handwriting read:
For Big Brother.
Pierre's hand trembled.
There was another sentence beneath it.
I'm still inside the painting.
"Maria……"
Pierre looked around.
Then he checked the back of the paper.
There were numbers and symbols that looked like an address.
His face hardened.
A triangle.
An eye inside it.
The symbol he had thought was gone for good.
And beneath it was a location.
Firenze.
Below that, the final sentence.
Don't come looking for me.
A moment later, the ink spread on its own.
A new sentence appeared.
She's still alive.
Pierre's heart began to race.
Who was still alive?
Elena?
Isabella?
Or……
Urbura?
At that moment, the Mona Lisa's lips moved ever so slightly.
Then a tiny voice, faint enough for only Pierre to hear, whispered,
"Go to Firenze."
Pierre's face stiffened.
"Why?"
The eyes of the woman in the painting slowly moved.
"Maria is in danger."
Pierre clenched the paper in his fist.
The five-hundred-year secret he had thought was over wasn't over at all.
It had only just begun.
And that night,
in the underground of an old monastery in Firenze, Italy—
A painting hanging in an empty room slowly opened its eyes.
Inside the painting was a young Maria.
She was crying.
And outside the painting,
someone spoke from the darkness.
"You finally found me."
Maria asked in a trembling voice,
"Who are you?"
A man stepped slowly forward from the darkness.
In his hand was a black brush.
The exact opposite of the silver brush.
The man smiled.
"Leonardo erased me from history."
Maria's eyes widened.
"No way……"
The man revealed his face beneath the candlelight.
Then he said,
"I was the one who truly painted the Mona Lisa."
Maria's face went rigid.
The man raised the black brush.
"Now let's complete the final painting."
— End of Episode 9 —