Chapter 10
‘Is this… a dressing room?’
Despite being a place that should be heavily guarded, there wasn’t a soul in sight.
‘It can’t be a trap, can it?’
Even if it was, I had no choice but to go in. As long as the target was in there, I had to take a step inside.
Whether someone jumped out or a net suddenly dropped on me—knowing what the trap was would be the only way to escape it.
‘Inventory.’
I stood by the dressing room window ledge and pulled something out of my inventory.
It was the Rose Caliber.
An invincible kitchen knife, destined to become a legend decades from now, with a magnificent rose design etched onto the blade.
‘Even reinforced glass, slice-slice!’
With a single motion, I carved out a hole large enough for me to slip through. Carefully, I laid the cut glass down on the dressing room floor and stepped inside.
“……”
The sound of wind should have rushed in through the gaping glass window, but nothing leapt out to attack me.
‘Really strange.’
There’s no way the police would just leave this room empty.
‘Should I turn on the lights?’
The room was pitch dark, the only illumination was the green marker visible to my eyes alone.
I was just about to pull a flashlight from my inventory—turning on the ceiling light would give me away—when a beam of searchlight swept across the room. I froze.
“You’re late.”
A husky woman’s voice rang out, accompanied by the click of a switch. Instantly, the room lit up.
The lamp on a desk beneath a wall-mounted safe flicked on. Sitting in the armchair beside it was an elderly woman.
It was none other than Mrs. Doris Hunt, her face familiar from newspapers and magazines.
“Old people ought to turn in early, you know. Next time, I’d appreciate it if you came a little sooner.”
She had been waiting for me.
“Where would you like me to sign?”
I asked as I pulled out a red lipstick—the one I used to write my calling cards—from my inventory.
For reasons I still didn’t understand, I had a fan club.
“Beautiful Thief, please return the heart you’ve stolen ♡”
They placed fan letters in newspaper ads, they went on pilgrimages to my crime scenes as if they were holy sites.
Sometimes, the very owners of the treasures I was targeting turned out to be fans, sitting by their safes waiting for me, just like this.
‘Looks like this granny might be a fan too.’
…Or so I thought.
“Autograph?”
The old woman let out a short laugh.
“There are rumors going around that I’ve gone senile, but do I really strike you as that kind of lunatic?”
“Well, I’m glad you’re not that kind of lunatic, at least.”
I covered my awkwardness with a haughty air, snapping the lipstick shut and tucking it back into my pocket.
“Then what exactly did you want with me, Mrs. Hunt, that you waited here for me?”
Instead of answering, the old woman opened the safe and took out a large black velvet case.
The moment the box opened, I felt disappointed.
Inside lay an expensive necklace: several large emeralds, each encircled with diamonds, hanging beneath a platinum diamond band.
Even as the green marker blinked, clearly telling me this was the jewel I was supposed to steal tonight, I asked anyway:
“Don’t you have another emerald necklace? Not a real emerald—just one jewel, round in shape….”
Mrs. Hunt shook her head.
‘Right. A magnate like her wouldn’t possibly own such a modest fake emerald necklace.’
She looked at me, puzzled by my disappointment, and asked:
“Weren’t you here to steal this?”
“That’s right.”
It was indeed what the system demanded of me. Just not the ruby necklace I had been searching for.
“Then why are you showing it to me yourself?”
That necklace was genuine.
Sometimes people tried to hand me finely crafted imitations, acting in desperation, begging me to spare their lives.
But such tricks never worked on me—I had a skill for distinguishing the genuine from the fake.
‘So if it isn’t that… Why show me the real thing?’
As I eyed her suspiciously, the old woman pushed the box toward me.
“Take it….”
I immediately stepped back and waved my hand.
“I can’t accept it if it’s given.”
I had to obtain things illegally—accepting a gift would make it legal.
Mrs. Hunt arched her brow, as if she’d just heard the most absurd thing, then set the jewel box down on the table beside her.
“Very well. Then steal it if you must—I won’t stop you. But in return, listen to the story behind this necklace.”
‘…What kind of trap is this supposed to be?’
Catching the suspicion written across my face, Mrs. Hunt’s lips curled into a smile.
“Humans grow more talkative with age. For those who’ve lived long enough, the only pleasure left is to hold onto the young and chatter about the years gone by.”
“No matter how wealthy you are, you wouldn’t pay hundreds of thousands of dollars just to buy someone’s ear for a story.”
“My little crow thief, not everything that glitters is a diamond. To someone, it may only be a stone.”
She deliberately echoed Gemma’s famous line: ‘If it shines, it’s mine.’
“To be honest, this necklace is a cursed object to me. But I can’t simply get rid of it. So if someone were to steal it, I’d only be grateful.”
What kind of story could make her call it cursed?
But indulging that curiosity was a luxury. Footsteps were faintly audible outside, in the bedroom connected to the dressing room.
“Don’t worry.”
Sensing exactly what I was concerned about, the old woman lifted a crystal decanter full of golden liquid from the table.
“I loathe the police. I’d never let them into my bedroom—you can trust me on that.”
She poured brandy into a crystal glass, took a sip, then asked:
“Don’t you want to know why I loathe the police so much?”
I began to suspect this woman could read minds.
“You’ll understand once you hear my story.”
“Alright. Please, go ahead.”
If it turned out to be a trap, I could just snatch the necklace and make my escape.
Only after emptying her glass did the lady begin.
“This necklace is an heirloom of the Hunt family, passed down to the eldest son’s wife.”
Her earlier words—a cursed necklace—had prepared me for some gruesome tale. Instead, what came from her lips was a heartbreaking one.
“So, when my son married, I passed it on to my daughter-in-law. From that moment, it left my hands.”
Mrs. Hunt spoke proudly of the other “Mrs. Hunt”—how wise, thoughtful, and beautiful she was. How happy her son and his wife had looked together.
Though her lips smiled as she reminisced, her eyes, curved with laughter, carried unmistakable sorrow.
“But not long after, it returned to my hands. The child died young—along with my son.”
Her mouth twisted downward, trembling for a moment before she forced her lips back into the tight smile she’d worn before.
“You know how it happened, so I won’t say it myself.”
She claimed it would be a waste of time to repeat what everyone already knew, but it was clear the real reason was that speaking the truth hurt too much.
I had read the story as a magazine feature after the possession case — the tragic tale of the young Hunts. Mrs. Hunt’s son, James Hunt II, had been a promising prosecutor. A bold young man who led the charge in Eden City’s war on crime, dismantling gang after gang like vermin. People across the city—and the whole country—pinned their hopes on him.
But that very zeal set his fate in motion. When he successfully prosecuted a gang boss and secured a death sentence, the syndicate retaliated: they riddled the car carrying him and his family with gunfire. The husband and wife died on the spot, and the three-year-old boy who had been with them vanished without a trace.
“A few days after the incident, a letter arrived at the police station from the perpetrators.”
The letter said the child was alive. Release the boss and the boy would be returned.
“Of course the government wouldn’t free their man just because of a letter, and I didn’t want that either.”
“Why not?”
“Because that would have rendered my son’s last efforts meaningless.”
“I see…”
“So we agreed—reluctantly—to offer money.”
She wasn’t going to hand over criminal funding willingly; nor did she expect the kidnappers to simply give the child back. The ransom was a pretext: they planned to use it to trace the culprits and rescue the boy. But…
“Because of the police’s stupid mistake, only the ransom was taken—and the child was never returned.”
