It was the 18th of June when I started my self-imposed deadline for completing the palace. Ten days left—the 28th being the last day when I could send the calling card and feel good about myself.

  Finding the shack wasn't hard. From what I understood Madarame is a pretty popular figure. I assume that most of you know what I'm talking about. Looking up his name comes up with artist profiles. They all make a mention of his living situation: poor, humble, the shack, always the shack. He's a great artist in a minor situation. Every critic made it a point to mention when commentating on an art piece. My poor ears had to be exposed to the pretentious sods weeping about the 'dichotomy of color' when I'm looking at the silhouette of a woman undressing past a paper wall. Listening to those prepared me to a place that looked on its last legs for the past decade. Breathing near it made me afraid that it'd topple inwards.

  I pressed down on the button. 'Beginning navigation' read and the world changed.

  Describing the Metaverse is always a challenge. What made this one challenging is how subtle it actually was. If you recall Kamoshida's palace, then you'd remember that I specifically said that it was otherworldly not just because of the 'feel', but of the surroundings. Same thing with Mementos. There's a bunch of tiny things that add up into the whole area feeling unreal. If I had to rank them from the most distorted to least, then it'd be Mementos, Kamoshida's palace, then Madarame's. There's just no comparison! Entering the museum felt like I'd walked into an air conditioned room on a hot day. Something brushed over my face before night fell, a dreary blueness near enough to the actual night sky's color that I initially missed it spreading like spilled milk above. Soon the area was bathed in night, not dark from the thousands of lamps and spotlights that illuminated every corner of the museum that I'd been dragged into.

  Behind me was a deceptively normal skyline. It wasn't a perfect match with the real world. Instead every building looked as if dragged from the finest skyscrapers of Tokyo, Dubai, the cities of the world, placed patchwork next to each other without much care for intelligibility. I could see the streets in the alleyway behind me slam into a three-way as if the place was made by a child's understanding of how urban planning worked. I mean, there's three-ways out where I lived. I don't think that any city would ever have them though. Despite the lights that were on in some of the windows, none of it leaked outside. Every star gleamed. I couldn't see the details on any of the buildings except the museum, even the one I stood next to. It was like the city itself was just an accessory made to create a pretty silhouette for the grand attraction.

  As for the museum itself, it was 'gaudy' like the castle yet I couldn't help but be entranced. Uneven rectangular spires made up the wall that surrounded the gigantic blocks of gold that laid behind. Windows glowing blue were interspersed through the walls decorated by swirls of lighter yellow. Each building got its fair share of spotlight, with the whole place being lit as if Madarame didn't want even an ounce of his soul to be hidden away. The mundane street in front seemed almost insulting. This totemic art piece still hid away behind a combination of trees and walls in a courtyard that must've been around the size of the Diet—conversely covering as much of the facility as possible. It was a contradictory desire. He really didn't want an ounce of the building to be indistinct, yet he didn't want a common passerby to get too good of a look.

  After getting my bearings, my attention drew towards the whispers. From the only hole in the wall was a crowd that leaked out onto the street, going so far as to disappear into one of the alleyways on the opposite sidewalk. Looking at how far the line went was futile. Looking too closely towards the entrance or too far away made the figures start congealing. Blobs standing in the general shape of people stood past the shoulders of a couple. Seeing a faceless man in a suit made me turn away towards the entrance that was blocked by a crowd.

  Being so near also made me able to make out that the whispers were generally nonsensical. Syllables that could've been words slung around me. At the time I thought that it either could've meant that Madarame knew foreign languages or that the Metaverse wasn't exact with this stuff. Now I think that it's another sign of his arrogance where he believes that everyone around the world wants to see his art, creating fake languages meant to imply people from Mongolia or whatever were there.

  Choosing a person for reconnaissance was as simple as finding an intelligible conversation because of this. The woman was a bombshell with a form-fitting red dress while the man looked two decades older than her.

  "Excuse me," I broached.

  They looked at me with disgust, the man's graying mustache twitching. "What do you want? I doubt that street trash like you has any business being around Madarame's body of art."

  "Thought you'd have something more clever with how smart you look." I shook my head, trying to lose the annoyance. "So this is Madarame's? Why is there such a big line?"

  Can I call the woman's voice hot and have everybody know what I'm talking about? Even the condescending tone she took was a little exciting. "Madarame is world-renowned, fool. Even his lesser paintings can go into the hundred thousands if he wanted them to. Just being able to glimpse them is an opportunity that many will never have. We've had reservations for months for the opportunity to gain a spot in this line!"

  I looked at the line. They were about in the center, though that wasn't saying much when they still would be run over by a car if it ever came.

  "...months, huh? Must be pretty good."

  "It's only those who have a chance to see the original works that understand there's a clear disconnect between the artist's vision and copies. Most people see his secondary work at second rate art galleries! It's only the most refined who are allowed to see his real work like us." The man made sure to ruffle up his suit when he said that. "Though I've heard rumors that he has an even deeper area of the museum which only true patrons are allowed glimpses of."

  "We could meet him ourselves! He'd surely see our good taste if we had a conversation with him."

  "I've heard that The Sayuri…"

  They descended into whispers again, forgetting about me. I didn't really expect to get an easy entrance but now was unsure about what to do. Leaping over the crowd probably would get shadows on me. Just when I was starting to think of alternative solutions (ramming through the crowd with a hijacked semi truck was ethical because it was a fake crowd, right?), I realized that exploring Mementos for so long had made me forget about the whole deal with Metaverse shenanigans. It took a few tries, but I was able to jump on the wall by grabbing onto the lowest ledge. The crowd didn't look over as I bounded into the courtyard.

  The inside was much darker. It was the whole cognition thing. The palace itself was the object of attention while the pretty courtyard around it was left with tiny lamps lining the brick pathway. It could be assumed that the walkway lined the perimeter of the museum, though the paths which laid nearer to the museum itself had shadows prowling about. These ones looked like bulky police officers. Still had the Dorito shape, if you were curious. Tall bushes hid me as I crept around looking for another entrance.

  Conveniently sized statues, some sort of inverted pyramids, let me hop on them straight onto the roof of the most squat part of the museum. Being closer made the blue accents on the gold much more visible. The panes on the skylight itself were gold and blue, the one that was slightly ajar being gold. Taking out my favorite Phantom Thief tool relived my greatest moment all over again: the rush, the fall, the perfect kick! My pickaxe struck for gold. Tugging didn't pull it loose. I descended into the museum with the rope remaining there as my exit.

  Describing the inside of the museum itself is going to be hard because there's just so much going on. When I talked about Kamoshida's castle, I simply called it a castle, more or less. You know what a Romanian castle looks like. I know what a Romanian castle looks like. There's no issues. But modern art? I'm not sure how to differentiate between splashes of paint on a canvas even in my own head. How am I supposed to describe it to another person? Very blackish, sir, and with a gigantic 'M' like Shadow Mario came in and swished his paintbrush around. With polygonal and questionable-gonal surfaces mushed together on something that looked like a giant lip.

  So let me be as frank as I can about the whole place's aesthetic. The inside wasn't exactly how I imagined a museum would be. They were supposed to have blank white walls, red rope around the paintings, and a fake wooden floor where your heels would make tapping noises. I've never been so this is my guess. Instead there were lots of blue carpets. Blue and gold checkerboard tiles too. Anywhere with paint used wasn't static. What I mean is that the paint seemed to constantly be flaking like dandelion seeds floating in the breeze, or the backgrounds of paintings swaying around like a shore, or gently pulsating, or occasionally trying to break out of its confines by sending spikes of paint outwards before settling down again. Looking too closely at the paintings gave me chills so I didn't do it often. Banners hung everywhere that constantly reiterated that I was inside Madarame's museum. Just in case I forgot.

  Most telling were the painting's subject. If I wasn't convinced that there was something shady going on in that guy's life, then the portraits being the only attraction would've been the tell. Immediately upon entering I was surrounded by look-a-likes hanging from every wall. Yui, Sho, Deng, Hanasaki (who didn't look like my own, though I had to admit that my heart dropped when seeing the nameplate at first), Jenna, Yosuke. Those were the names. Even now I remember. Each one was engraved onto the plaques below them.

  Doors were blocked off by shutters. Old habits die hard, and I futilely started sketching out a map of the place on my notepad; it didn't take long before I had a brochure which had already detailed the front rooms of the palace. Some people were wandering around who were carefully guided by guards hovering over their shoulders. Because of their obnoxiously loud praises with each painting that they saw, I easily could track their positions and keep out of their line of sight.

  I was funneled into an obnoxiously golden room. Walkways running alongside the circular room's walls ascended up to a double door at the other end. Trees painted like in those traditional paintings ran along the room like fingers on a glass, black flecks floating into the fluttering banners above. They boldly repeated many times that I was inside of the museum. The centerpiece of the room was a golden spiral that rose to the ceiling, made of golden mannequins caught in various positions of horror as they were sucked down to the bottom.

  Another plaque was at the base of the statue.

  "A conglomerate work of art that the great director Madarame created with his own funds. These individuals must offer the rest of their ideas to the director for the rest of their lives. Those who cannot do so have no worth living."

  If anybody is still confused then this is pretty much spelling out why the palace was created. Though it's hard to put into words since I never really reacted to it, the whole place disgusted me on a level that's hard to describe. Let me skip ahead as a way to explain: every painting is a pupil. Those people who were in the area I dropped into. Those galleries that I snuck past. Deeper inside it was decorated to proudly display how many people were abused. Imagine that. A murderer who kept souvenirs around his house as a proud reminder of his kills. The news would be clamoring to describe how horrible it was or collectively decide to never cover it since describing it would be too horrible. Locked areas that I never got to explore had paintings past them. Unused pieces were gathered up like trash on carts. A single man knowingly, personally ruined hundreds of people's lives.

  Let me not give Kamoshida an easy apology. The whole suicide thing was bad. And the sexual harassment stuff still makes me kind of go 'blegh'. But an unknown number of people that I could never count being used to their probable death? Most likely the majority were fine. Who knew how many weren't? I didn't get their full names. Exploring further made the pit in my stomach grow, indigestion making my stomach do flips with every room that had dozens of portraits hanging.

  I looked at the statue for a long time before continuing on.

  The place was way more vertical. With so many doors being shuttered, I was forced to constantly look around for alternate paths. Leaping worked well enough, letting me jump from the scant furniture into vents and low-lying walls. Not many guards were around either. I assumed that because Madarame didn't know that somebody was onto him left me with free reign, which vastly increased my pace in exploring the interior. There was a problem with its layout that I had already guessed when I was waiting though. With only the stupid pony walls so more portraits could be hung, a single group could force me to lean around these corners waiting for them to turn away. The castle was different in having an abundance of treasures and niches and novelties scattered around the hallways, gaudy in the way that old things were, while the art museum had that stupid modern thing where they removed details as much as possible to leave behind empty white walls. Avoiding fights would be nearly impossible if there were more guards, I knew.

  The second area of the museum had yellow squares randomly printed around the white walls. Random buttons were around the place that lifted the shutters which seemed like a horrible security measure considering that they didn't need any ID. Eventually I found a staircase that went to the second floor which had…more portraits. Immediately there was an office with a locked door. Past that was a much more open room where fancy paper dividing walls and paintings sat behind gigantic glass walls.

  At the very center was a conspicuous golden vase sitting on a pedestal. Well, let me tell you something. Going past the previous art pieces was easy because they were big. The vases were also not gleaming and golden. Even if it wasn't real gold, I could imagine pawning it off for its pretty value.

  The problem was that I was in the Metaverse. Traps had already been in the castle with the medieval barbarity that came from the 'smart athlete' who read Plato. This was another guy who probably had to worry about actual art thieves. It wasn't as if I were unobservant; the little black things at the entrances of some rooms looked exactly like laser pointers like in spy movies. Paper and paintings being cut off from the regular visitors while the golden vase was allowed to be freely grabbed just didn't make sense. Already my dictionary of media tropes was leaping forward with a platter of suggestions: invisible-r lasers, pressure plates, eight cameras with guns attached to them from different angles, miniguns ready to descend and splatter me with holes! My clammy hands hovered over the surface in anticipation.

  Reigning in my desire didn't come first. I slowly clenched my fingers shut as a reminder that death was constantly near. Remember the reaper, remember the reaper. Sweat worked past my lips as I forcibly turned myself away.

  The rest of the spelunking wasn't too interesting. There were bathrooms that formed for some reason. One room had me leaping around to find a bunch of treasure. Three more groups were easily avoided. One of them implied that he didn't like a painting, got intimidated by the guard, and started talking about how he was mistaken. Eventually I came to a pure gold room which had a pool of water in the center. An entire wall was made of yellow and blue glass. Whatever connotation that particular color combination had, I wasn't sure.

  I must've made it to the center of the palace as my map stopped recording what was past there. Hedges lined the only path that led forwards. A lonely shoji disconnected from any building had some extremely stylized view of a mountain with bamboo, partially blocking the path. Approaching made it automatically open, revealing that there were multiple which also opened sequentially. The image was really cool. Yet the unreality stuffed itself down my throat.

  Sucking in my breath prevented me from coughing in the middle of enemy territory. I felt confident saying this must've been the heart of the place because the unrealness seemed to rush straight into my heart. The floor became slippery. The air tingled in my throat. Colors became like neon. What had once felt like a normal museum with little oddities was replaced with pure unreality. It made some sense, to the me of then. Kamoshida was sloppy. His victims were visible, and a single confession would've had his empire collapse. Madarame couldn't claim the same. I imagined that dozens of people had given accounts of his abuse only to be piled over.

  There were too many differences: money, respectability, being internationally known instead of a washed up has-been in a backwater. That's how he hid the worst of his gaudy vision behind a mask of normalcy.

  The building looked like a piece of quartz which was painted over with the motif of the building behind me. Those windows now sent out beams of blue which stood out as a glowing aurora against the darker blue sky. Golden trees grew to about half the height of it, the trunks gold with black veins, the leaves gone from those crooked branches and fluttering by in an invisible breeze. It was way too similar to Kamoshida's throne room for me to be comfortable. The glowing gold leaves seemed to be infinite. Each one stood out in the sky, standing next to the stars in equal brilliance, before blinking out into nonexistence. Ahead was a strange door that looked like a design of a peacock's feathers. Clouds moved in the background, despite the door seemingly made out of paint.

  Looking too long at the branches above was making me dizzy. There seemed to be golden energy—I didn't know what else to call it—flowing down the branches of the tree like blood through veins. The small courtyard past the series of doors had glowing red beams slicing apart the path. Lasers, and deadly ones if the lightning arcing off them said anything. They completely blocked the walkway. However, I wasn't crazy. The hedges that surrounded me weren't walls and I had the athletic ability that Uchimura Kōhei could only dream of. Jumping carried me over a laser, each one more elaborate than the last. Every time I did this felt awesome. A twirl! A flip with a somersault! With one last final roll into a bow, I was in front of the door.

  My hands landed on the door. I pushed. It didn't budge.

  Double-checking the area around didn't reveal anywhere where I could reasonably jump into. No secret entrance was hidden amongst the bushes. It's only when working my way back to the start of the lasers that I realized there was a plaque saying that the only way to open it was from the inside.

  It was late. Walking back from the inner heart brought me back to semi-normalcy, a deep breath enjoying the feeling of air that didn't scrape off my innards' top cell layer. After stealing one of the random vases that were in the hallway, I exited the palace and went to the same alleyway.

  Okay. I'm not an idiot. I knew the vase had some sort of value in being an art piece. Existing in Madarame's palace meant that it had some kind of artistic value I think. Coming back to the real world made this a bit more complicated though. Real world people didn't waddle away from Madarame's house with an obviously professional sculpture and have real world people think kind things about them. Any method in making myself less conspicuous, like throwing a rag over it, somehow seemed to be worse. Running would be suspicious. Throwing arguments back and forth in my head eventually came to a conclusion: like earlier that day, I was getting antsy. They couldn't prove that I'd stolen the vase when nobody was missing one. Doing legally dubious things was making me imagine the worst case scenario.

  I came back to the real world. Instead of a kid with an expensive-looking art piece waddling through the streets, I was a kid with an expensive-looking art piece waddling through alleyways. Legal or not, it was weird, somehow worse that nobody would be able to confirm that they'd owned it before me. A cop wouldn't be convinced by any half-assed explanation about where I got my cool and awesome art. Strange looks came from all angles as I darted from the furthest alleyway to the nearest, awkwardly leapfrogging my way down entire streets that separated me from Leblanc. This process took a little over an hour.

  A complete pain, obviously, but it was worth it when my personal safehouse welcomed me with open arms. The door jingled as I came to an empty shop. Readjusting the statue let my beleaguered hands take a break. There was a clear red line where they'd been forced to grapple. Staying still for a moment to find another grip would've made me a sitting duck for a curious passerby, so I never did it.

  I really hoped that our awkward relationship would've made him keep his mouth shut.

  "Kurusu." He didn't even have the words. A jittering of his head and throwing his hands up were the only context clues that I'd gotten. "What the hell."

  Poking my head around the metal vase gave me precious seconds to readjust into a sheepish smile. "Hey. I saw this when coming home and it was so cheap that I thought about reselling it."

  "You-You what?"

  "This was for super cheap at a place next to Rafflesia, so I bought it and was thinking about reselling it. It looks pretty nice, right?" I gave him a few different angles by shuffling around. "It took a while bringing it back here."

  Obviously too much had been dropped on his lap as he was fishing for words. A few false starts came out from his moving lips until he decided on, "why don't you just get another job?"

  If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  "Hm?"

  "If you want money, why don't you get another job instead of doing," again he threw his hands up as if this were the greatest offense that I'd done so far.

  Now, that's a great point. Thing is that I had a second job that I couldn't tell him about or put on my taxes. Air sucked between my teeth. I wasn't expecting that angle. A few other excuses were ready in my holster and he'd riposted straight into my heart.

  I already knew that it was going to sound lame.

  "I don't wanna."

  I went upstairs and fell asleep. The next day was a Sunday, giving me the time to hop between alleyways again to get nearer towards the center parts of the city. 'Poor' neighborhoods were kind of relative, but there were definitely places that browsing the net warned against staying overnight. Without having an intimate knowledge about the area or a friend, I didn't have a map of seedy Yakuza fronts. Therefore it was assumed that going nearer to the poorer areas would get me more don't-ask-questions places. Sure enough, I found a place that had windows plastered with 'BUY GOLD BUY GOLD' and assumed that was my place. Putting in on the counter didn't get a question and neither a reaction. He looked to me impassively, then towards the statue. It's when he was obviously observing the thing that I became nervous.

  My fingers nervously played on the counter as the man used the little eyeglass thing that jeweler's had. The pawn shop that I'd gone to was out of the way and looked crappy, which were the best indicators for a place being shady. Never think that there's some sort of secret hand signs or whatever. Your eyes are your best part of the body, and just because there's much more important shady people doing backroom deals in mahogany backrooms doesn't mean that the person turning my stolen art piece around had never dipped his toes into strange purchases.

  The eyeglass was gently placed against the glass counter. Underneath were all kinds of watches. How many of those were stolen probably wasn't known by the guy. His graying beard was a little more full than I was used to seeing, spreading from ear to ear and being trimmed down like a fresh lawn.

  "Where'd you get this?"

  Inane questions could come from any corner of your life. Besides the weirdo who visited the flower shop, I've never known a person my age who knew a single work that Michelangelo had done. I knew that there was a great wave of some type but never remembered the artist's name. Kita-something.

  I came with some kind of preparation. Spending half the day sneaking with a statue balanced against my chest was insanely boring and let me think of excuses. My fingers rapped against the counter faster. Almost at the speed of my typing, they clicked against the glass.

  "I came over to Tokyo for schooling. Staying with a friend of the family. My parents sent me over with everything that was inside my room, and I mean everything."

  He looked at the criss-cross of metal put onto a pedestal. "You like art?"

  "I let my parents decide what's in my room. They put a bunch of statues in for some reason. I'm still mad about them taking my blocks." I gestured over to the piece. "This is just one of them that we got at a garage sale."

  "You have multiple?"

  "Two others that look around the same."

  He once again looked over the statue before shoving it towards me. Carrying it around wasn't heavy, just awkward. It pressed uncomfortably against my chest as I let out little grunts of exertion. Putting it back onto the ground, I patted the top of it.

  "So is that a no?"

  The phone came out like a weapon. I tried not reacting, but his stubby fingers plonking down onto the dialpad made me flinch with each friendly sound that came out of it. Finally his eyebrow rose as he rapidly looked between my statue and the phone.

  "Interesting," he said, actually sounding interested. Whenever somebody says 'interesting' in my experience, they're just saying words to fill a conversation.

  "Is there a problem?" I asked.

  He gestured for it to come back up, forcing me to let out little grunts in an embarrassing attempt to lift it. The glass holding up the monstrosity was insane.

  He tapped the edge of the statue with a small smile. "This is the best replica of On Hope that I've ever seen. Plagiarism isn't uncommon but I don't think I've ever seen one which could fool me. I had to double check that On Hope was still on display. It is! I'm going to assume that you haven't stolen it and ran over half the country to sell it. How'd you do it?"

  "How'd I do it?" I pressed my fists against my chest. "I haven't done anything! Unless my parents knew that this was a forgery, then you're barking up the wrong tree!"

  The last few weeks had done nothing to make me feel as if I had a career in acting. For a few moments, nothing. Brown eyes attempted to pierce through me above his glasses. Letting up seemingly out of nowhere, he waved towards the art piece.

  "Well it had to come from somewhere. Are you sure that it was a garage sale? What even is that?"

  I made a show of thinking while digesting all the information. Garage sales are not real. I refuse to believe they are real. I refuse to believe that there were people who hosted old junk out of their garages for neighbors or, worse, random people to come along and buy it at prices that they haggled. For one, what prevented people from taking stuff? I'm not going to get into it but I think that there's a thousand reasons why garage sales aren't real. I just remember reading it online, or maybe it was from a game that I forgot about—could've been an anime even. It's because of its relative obscurity that I felt safe using it as an excuse. Some niche, arcane art that I evoked this piece of art from. Really it's not much different than the magic that actually created it.

  I'd like to hear other people's cover stories. I don't think that any kid my age had the talent nor means to craft any kind of metal statue, and for good reason since I would've just made a gigantic penis out of metal for fun. This something had to come from somewhere and that somewhere needed to be plausible. Better saying that I got it in untraceable, unknowable, unrecognizable nowhere than claiming that I bought it from a random art store. I could've said my parents bought it from an art store which would've made him ask why the hell they bought a full priced statue for their stupid philistine kid. He could've asked me the contours of the piece and I would've had to look up the definition of 'contours'.

  "No, it was definitely a garage sale that we passed by while coming back home. I wasn't paying attention to the purchase, but they got a bunch of statues from it." I snapped my fingers. "It was because the guy in the house died! It was a big one and my parents wanted to visit in case there was something good. The guy had all of these."

  The man looked over the piece again. He was entranced by the crappy thing, brushing over the same details with a finer eye.

  "Like I said, this is a forgery down to the minute imperfections. The person who created this is an artist in a completely different sense. Two others? You said that? You're sure it was from a rich guy's house?"

  "Why do you keep asking?"

  The door opened as the other customer stopped browsing. The man's eyes were tracking the woman until the door shut. He took off his glasses to rub his nose. "20,000 yen a piece. I'm willing to pay that much for each. Look, kid. You dragged this all the way over here? You're lucky that a cop didn't recognize it. This isn't the most famous piece ever, but it's pretty up there just for the infamy alone. I could call the art gallery right now and claim that there's somebody trying to pass off a fake. Heck, this could even be the real one and the one at the art gallery was swapped. It's happened before. 20,000, bring me your other two, and we'll be golden."

  Smudges were left behind on the glass where his fingers tapped. Behind them was a watch that read Seiko. Even I could recognize that the font was wrong.

  "What makes this piece of junk so special anyways?"

  He smiled up at it. It was an art piece of its own. This man wasn't normal, as any person working a dead-end job who appreciated art couldn't be. "The author is a legend in the making at the moment. He wasn't always one—no artist is. His starting series of sculptures were so critically panned that he had withdrawn from the practice for an entire year, allegedly to do some soul-searching over in India. Well, whatever had happened over there hadn't fixed the problem as he came back with mediocre painting skills. He dabbled a bit in sculpting before dropping that for a long while. It's only a little later in his career that he finally struck gold. Who knows? Maybe it was hopping over genres that brought inspiration. The way an artist's mind works is a mystery."

  If I read that right, then the actual story is as follows: Madarame cried himself to sleep because nobody liked his art, he visited India as if that'd inspire him, came back, made some actual art, then somehow got the idea to plagiarise, and now boom! Palace. I'm sure that some could find sympathy in the story. I had already made my opinions on artists known. The only thing worse than an artist was a self-hating artist. This whole thing smacked fake to my tastes. People who wanted to seem cool by buying expensive art pieces shunned an art piece that looked a bit less intentionally ugly than the things they usually bought; the artist themselves has to prostitute themselves for the patrons in the vain hope that their art can make enough to carry them through retirement; and finally comes the students, who want to get 'it' and are willing to get abused for the sake of getting 'it'. What kind of subjective thing could art even be if you can be taught how to get 'it'? The whole thing pissed me off fiercely. My ice pack was the 20,000 yen that got swallowed happily by my pocket. Another 40,000 promised made me fairly credulous. Who cared that the shady guy was paying so much? I was getting money.

  Now came the hard part. I was racking my brain for an answer to my own locked room murder mystery without the murder. A door in a cognition couldn't open except from the inside.

  Answer number one: go through another entrance. There were windows higher up. If I could scale alongside the wall, then I could enter through the roof. Theoretically speaking, how would you get onto the roof of a building that was at least three stories tall when there were no footholds? Those trees—even if I was willing to grab onto the things, which I wasn't—didn't reach up nearly to the rooftop. Then came the shadows who weren't completely blind; if I brought a ladder that tall and slowly scaled to the rooftop, I wasn't completely sure if I could get away scot free. Three story tall ladders didn't exactly come free with the combo deal of my probation too, y'know. The rope and pickaxe? I went into Mementos and tried chucking it like a cartoon character. I'd wind up, spin the head around, before throwing it out. Turns out that the Metaverse has limits of how far you can bend reality and it decided that the pickaxe perfectly latching a few stories up was too unrealistic. Using the tree as a grappling point didn't give me enough flight towards the windows either.

  Then came the better idea: what if I used climbing equipment? Looking up the results disappointed me. Apparently climbers aren't badasses who jam a pickaxe into solid rock to heft themselves up just a few inches more. Only ice picks existed, and I wasn't about to buy an entire ice pick on the chance that it would work on the golden surface. All the other results were similarly disappointing, leaving me helpless on the ground floor.

  So getting onto the roof was implausible. Many ways which the Metaverse could be manipulated then followed. Going back into the palace gave me a training ground to attempt them. A card between the doors? I tried that on a locked door elsewhere in Madarame's palace without any success.

  Coincidentally when I was sitting behind a wall, trapped in a side room while patrols were stomping about, a conversation played out.

  "Did we find the culprit yet?"

  "Not yet. Haven't found the sculpture either."

  "Damn those visitors! Madarame-sama allows them to glimpse his genius and this is how they repay him!"

  For some reason the security didn't leap up all that much after stealing that statue. Neither during the second one being stolen. It was probably some shenanigans with what the palace saw as a transgression and, yeah. Make your own conclusions. Exploring with a finer toothed comb only found a scary door with a strange skull thing behind it. Carrying that around in my pocket sounded like the worst idea ever so I left it behind. 'Hope that there was a convenient answer hidden somewhere' was defeated, and I went to get another 20,000 yen promising the third statue another day.

  More Metaverse shenanigans were tried in Mementos. Smashing myself 2d by slamming down on my toes, imagining that I was invisible, and many more ideas were tried. Remember the rule: stupid ideas were only stupid if they didn't work. That made me stupid because nothing worked. The twin who was watching laughed uproariously and I left when the embarrassment became too much.

  Brute forcing the door and getting onto the ceiling didn't work. A lot of sketching out, where I committed every individual step of my thought onto paper, was done until I became resigned to the worst option: changing the person's cognition. Since it was based on their view of the world, then maybe I could take it more literally. Maybe that door which blocked me off could actually be found in the real world. Whatever it was had a gigantic influence since it literally blocked off the deeper parts of his heart. An art piece, a paper, an actual door, anything except some metaphorical 'idea' of a door because then I was boned. Again. Getting barred from two palaces in a row would've been embarrassing beyond belief.

  "Kurusu-kun?"

  I looked up from my page. Kawakami had done her typical raised eyebrow.

  "Are you doing classwork?"

  "Nope."

  Somehow I wasn't expelled. Count how many days I'd missed school and wonder how I'm still standing to say all this.

  I decided that assuming the door was a real thing was the best lead until another idea fell on my lap, as otherwise the whole project was bunk. That night my infiltration plan began in earnest, lasting until Friday, on my gigantic piece of paper. I love my gigantic piece of paper. Notes from school were added together to the great line of logic at home.

  So a cognition can be two things: based on reality or based on metaphorical mathingies. If it was the latter then I've already lost. The only way I could figure out what the door was would be talking with the guy or talking with his therapist, and I doubted that 'street trash' like myself could pry a secret deep enough that it guarded his heart from his artisty mitts. Whatever was behind that door in real life must've been important enough that its existence alone would expose the old coot, or so I assumed; if the interior in his head held the treasure, then I expected that the real thing also was protecting something that could've been treasurey.

  I couldn't stalk the guy in real life. That was asking for a permanent trip to the pound where they would've snipped me. From the comfort of my bed I brainstormed places which could have a treasure-lite object inside of it. The first assumption was, as I'm sure it would be for anybody, an art gallery. Specifically, I suspected that it was the backroom of one. The problem came when I looked it up: there were apparently a lot of art galleries. I thought they were supposed to be like a cafe except more scarce, where the rich people talked in front of the Mona Lisa giving them that 'I know what you did' stare. Nope. A bunch of little dots spread across Japan like measles with probably about the same symptoms. Most had only one of his works inside of them. I found the place where the exhibition was being held and watched a bunch of old videos on Youtube to see if there was anything conspicuous. Going through each of the art galleries which had an exhibition in the past was a terribly boring process that ate up a bunch of time since I was scrounging for 3,000 view videos from over a decade ago at times. At least it wasn't reading the dictionary, I thought to myself as I skipped past an old man gushing about the brushwork.

  Then came the slightly more informed idea: his house was tiny. Most art galleries only had a single piece of his art. There must've been a place where they were when not being displayed. Looking it up brought me to art storages. Finding who used these places was impossible as they didn't have public records, and I think that you can guess whether or not there were public tours. Youtube once again saved me, as there were just as many videos giving tours of these places.

  I was willing to believe that his cognition could be stretched; there was a museum sprouted from a horror movie cabin, after all. What I couldn't believe was that the colorful door could be based on the drab grays behind a barbed wire fence. The doors looked like they were a hand-me-down from a prison while the surroundings were kept clean as a fresh palette. It very well could've, but I convinced myself that the door wasn't based on the storages. Once again, I dismissed the idea because if it were true, I'd be out of a job.

  So came the final idea when I was looking through his biography. Though his house was small, why couldn't the door be based on something inside of there? Because of how cognition works, it didn't necessarily even have to be a door. A drawer or USB could've produced the thing. It was in an easier spot too. Not to judge by appearance and all that. Feeling myself onto a realistic (able to be reasonably done by me) trail, my searches started curating around that. Plenty of documentaries and interviews came up. He was the most famous artist of Japan at the moment—allegedly. Breezing through these videos would eventually bring me to a centerpiece, a constant which had to be emphasized at least once a video: the humble shack. Where the ideas came to life. Where his money didn't go. Inside this shack was the modern genius living in poverty alongside his student. I couldn't finish an interview where I recognized the person from a portrait inside the palace.

  Parts of the house were shown in each of the interviews. I was given a tour of his house through patchwork. Bathroom, office, entryway, all that a modern house needed smooshed down into a size that might be criminal even to Tokyoites' sensibilities. My awesome paper was used to sketch out the floor plan.

  By the time that I found a site to pirate one of the documentaries, I was convinced that he was purposely omitting a part of his house. It wasn't as if it was where the magic happened. He clearly stated where the paint brushes were and where he taught his student about the intricacies of the craft. It was a certain corner of the house where the cameras never touched. Come on. If there was a part that he was adamant not showing in a house tour when he was fine showing the bathroom, if there was a gigantic supernatural majiggy based off him being bad, then we have our smoking gun.

  The final day of my investigation brought forth a truth hidden in plain sight. Behind a slightly ajar door was a mess of recognizable colors. There was the door, a literal place inside of his house. He literally painted a conspicuous door that had a dark secret behind it when every single other one was a normal door. I'm still shocked, man. There's something wrong with evil people.

  In class my pencil was bouncing against my paper once again as I felt my brain start to overheat. Breaking it down once again helped. The cognition needed to be changed about the door, which meant that something in real life had to change, which meant that I needed to interact with Madarame in some way.

  That was exactly where I got stuck. Even if I recognized that I had to be proactive, that left the whole world of what being 'proactive' meant. Opening the door meant going into it. Revealing what was inside it meant…going into it. Threatening him with blackmail that I knew what his secret probably didn't work since he was a famous figure who'd made hundreds of broken hearts which required me to get a little more specific which required me to know what was behind the door which meant…going into it. No matter how I sliced it, I needed to interact with the door.

  Thus I had to get inside the house. That's where everything started falling apart. It's not as if I'm socially awkward! I am socially awkward, but about the same as any other teen, I think. Please just ask yourselves how you'd convincingly get yourself into another person's house and open a door which the owner obviously doesn't want to be public. No repercussions must be risked, mind you. Probation, if you forgot. It's not as if I'm old enough to pretend to be a plumber or government inspector. Befriending the pupil so I could get invited was too risky, too stupid to actually work, and hinged on doing this within a reasonable amount of time. No matter the pay off, I wasn't going to start calculating in months, else I'd stick with my boring flower shop job. Every plan that I could feasibly come up with was shot down because people didn't just invite strangers into their houses. So too was everything shot down because I'd have to get near to the door, revealing my identity, around the same time that his heart would be stolen.

  A second palace that I'd have to skip. The thought tormented me, made my fingers cling to my hair.

  Kawakami said something about crime going up at a certain time period. It was modern, but I don't remember the specifics. My memory was specifically oriented towards the dam that had burst when she mentioned that.

  Crime. As old as the law. Getting in legally seemed impossible. That left a gigantic, serious possibility. I kept thinking of other possibilities—no, don't do something so crazy, you're not an actual criminal!—but the same answer kept repeating. Repeating. In my head, drilling, shattering my flimsy answers and guesses.

  If there's no legal way to break in, why not do something illegal?