Chapter 4
[All that sparkles is mine.]
A jewel thief who resembled Ruby…
[I’m way crazier than you think!]
And a character like me—“the crazy cat granny”—existed among the Followers of Evil.
I hesitated, my finger hovering over the portrait of an old woman with tangled gray hair, a black cat perched on her head instead of a hat.
‘If I clear the first mission, I’ll get gems, right?’
I’d seen gameplay clips of the jewel thief plenty of times, but never of the crazy cat granny. Which meant I had no confidence I could clear the mission with her.
[All that sparkles is mine.]
In the end, I chose the jewel thief—Gemma Steel. The screen shifted to show her full body.
Gemma Steel had three known bad endings:
- Driven insane, locked in an asylum.
- Thrown in prison.
- Death.
Come to think of it, I’d never seen a good ending for her. The gaming channel I followed hadn’t uploaded a single walkthrough showing one—probably telling in itself.
‘Well, a game’s supposed to be hard.’
Not that I cared. I wasn’t planning to play that far anyway.
‘The first mission should be a piece of cake.”
[You won’t regret choosing me.]
Muah.
Gemma blew a seductive kiss. In truth, aside from her emerald eyes and blonde hair the color of cheese, she didn’t look much like Ruby.
She wore a tight black dress, like an old film heroine having breakfast in front of a jewelry store. A wide-brimmed black hat, silk gloves, and a long cigarette holder completed her look—elegant and sensual.
Her appearance and lines alone hinted at it: This character was proud, confident, clever, and very popular.
The exact opposite of me—timid, withdrawn, and unnoticed wherever I went.
“I wish I could be like Gemma, too…”
The moment I whispered it, something strange happened. A flash of green light burst from my neck, and then everything went dark.
“Huh? What the—? Power outage?”
In the pitch black, white letters appeared in huge print:
Steal the treasure forbidden to villains!
When the world brightened again—I was Gemma Steel.
But there was one odd thing. My appearance, my clothes, everything had changed… except for the necklace around my neck. Ruby’s necklace.
Now that I thought about it, the necklace had glowed when I possessed her body.
‘Could this be Ruby’s gift?’
I believed it—believed Ruby had granted my wish to become like Gemma. Ridiculous, sure, but then again, so was possession in the first place.
‘But where is Ruby’s necklace now, in the real world?’
That night, I toyed with the empty hollow at my throat, gazing out at the city where Ruby, and maybe her necklace, might still exist somewhere.
It was my tenth year living as Gemma Steel.
***
The next morning, I went to work.
A thief going to work sounds strange, but even thieves have to pay rent and taxes.
Not at some shady pizza restaurant that’s really a mafia front for laundering money—no, mine was truly, completely, perfectly ordinary.
‘Too ordinary and too normal a workplace for a master thief, really.’
I stepped into the dull gray building, and my already-arrived coworkers greeted me with sleepy faces.
“Morning, Claire.”
“Good morning.”
“Hello, Miss Kent.”
“Hey.”
Here, my name was Claire Kent.
An alias was essential for a double life. The name had just popped into my head, though it did feel strangely familiar.
Where had I seen it before?
Anyway,
Round-rimmed glasses.
A tacky patterned sweater.
Frizzy hair sticking out in every direction, uncombed.
No one would ever guess I had hundreds of priceless jewels on me.
So, with confidence, I walked into the office—when that deep baritone I’d heard last night called my name.
“Miss Kent.”
I turned—and there was the same face from last night. No, tidier now, since not a single strand of hair was out of place.
The face of my nemesis, Raven Hunt.
I smiled smoothly at my enemy.
“Chief.”
By day, my other job as a thief was… office assistant.
My workplace? Eden City Police Department, Special Investigations Unit.
The very task force hunting me.
The man chasing me was also my boss.
“Good morning.”
I greeted him with a bright smile, but Hunt’s expression was lethal. With that signature, soul-drying glare of his, I felt like I’d be parched and ground into dust on the spot.
‘Don’t tell me he’s figured me out?’
If I’d still been my old self, I wouldn’t have lasted a second under that stare…
‘Yes, sir! I’m the woman who kicked you in the face last night. Please have mercy!’
—I probably would have confessed right then and there.
But in moments like this, I was grateful for Gemma’s personality.
It was only thanks to her boldness that I’d even dared to do something as reckless as working in the very unit tasked with catching me.
And because of that, in this tense moment, my mind wandered somewhere completely irrelevant.
White shirt and black tie.
Inspector’s insignia gleaming on his epaulets, golden badge shining on his chest. A navy jacket and trousers, pressed to perfection, not a speck of dust or wrinkle in sight.
Unlike yesterday, when Raven Hunt wore a three-piece suit, today he was dressed in his police uniform.
‘Is that really the same uniform?’
The other inspectors in this department were pot-bellied, and when they wore it, it never looked anything like this.
The leather belt strapped over his jacket was clearly meant to carry a holster or weapon— but on him, it looked like nothing more than a sleek fashion accessory accentuating his waistline.
It only made his already broad chest and shoulders stand out more, muscles pressing against the uniform as if demanding to be seen.
And on top of that, he was so tall I had to tilt my head back even in high heels just to meet his eyes.
‘Perfect.’
I couldn’t help resenting the designers who’d dared to make my nemesis such a flawless specimen of a man.
‘Would I resent him less if it were just the body?’
His devastatingly handsome face had already worn out the word “handsome” itself—yet every time I saw him, another sigh slipped out.
‘He’s my enemy, but that face…’
I was in the middle of sighing again when—
“…Do you, by any chance…”
Narrowing his eyes, he studied me for a long moment before finishing his question.
Or was it an interrogation?
“…keep a cat?”
What? That was it? I’d gotten tense for nothing.
“No, sir. I don’t.”
“Hm.”
His deep blue eyes dipped downward—to my sweater, covered in tufts of multicolored fur.
“Oh, that. I must’ve gotten it this morning feeding the neighborhood cats.”
But why was he even asking me this?
I’d been working here for almost two years, and Hunt had never once asked me anything personal.
“Thief Raven.”
Hic!
And he’d never called me that, either.
“Why are you startled?”
“Well, it’s just… so sudden…”
What kind of subordinate wouldn’t be startled if her boss suddenly called her a thief? Even Gemma would be caught off guard.
“Thief Raven.”
That was Gemma Steel’s moniker.
No one knew her real name, so the press and the police had settled on that. Ravens, after all, had a habit of stealing shiny things—just like Gemma.
“I swallowed wrong—it went down the wrong pipe, cough, cough—”
I hacked and coughed until Hunt frowned and stepped back a pace.
‘It worked. Heh heh heh.’
Crisis averted, I asked casually,
“Sorry, what was it you just said?”
“Inspector Smith mentioned he asked you to type up the eyewitness notes from the day Thief Raven left her calling card at the museum.”
Oh. So he wasn’t calling me. My heart had jumped for nothing.
“Yes, sir. I typed up the copies and left them with the originals in a file folder on Inspector Smith’s desk before I went home yesterday.”
From behind his back, Hunt produced the very folder I’d described.
“Three pages are missing from the originals.”
“But I definitely put in all seven pages.”
“There were ten.”
“Gasp—were there?”
I opened my mouth wide, making myself look as clueless as possible.
“But Inspector Smith had already left them on his desk before I got there…”
I let my eyebrows droop, eyes shimmering as if tears were about to fall—doing my best to look wronged.
“But I’m certain when I counted them, there were…”
Ten.
