The Vault Keeper’s words became a key, unlocking the firmly shut bolt in my heart.
Old memories surfaced.
The cheers and songs of the crowd pounding my eardrums.
The dusty air of the field filling my lungs.
That heavy sensation in my hands the moment I squarely hit the center of the ball.
There was a time when those things made me feel alive.
There was a time when I thought I would be born and die here.
But all of that sank into darkness in an instant.
“No response? Did I go too far?”
“…It’s fine. It’s all in the past now.”
I had no time to dwell on the afterimages of the past. I had already stepped into the batter’s box, and the pitcher had thrown the ball. Those who get lost in thought and miss the moment to swing have no right to stand on the field.
“As you said, I’m a retired athlete. I may be washed up now, but I made quite a bit of money before retirement. I came to deposit my treasure, but do you still not intend to treat me as a proper customer?”
I raised an eyebrow, showing my displeasure. As if I would turn back if things went even slightly wrong. It would be stranger if I didn’t show at least this much anger.
“No, of course not! Come in.”
– creak
The door swung wide open.
‘You should have done that from the start.’
I followed the black shadow’s guidance into the depths of the vault. Unexpectedly, there were far more people moving around inside than I had thought.
‘I never saw this door open, so how did everyone else get in?’
The black shadow noticed my confusion and spoke.
“First-time customers must enter through the main gate, which I guard, but afterward they can use the side door. If you give your name and a pre-set password to the guard there, they will let you through.”
So, passing through the main gate was essentially a kind of registration. It was a very annoying and unpleasant procedure, but once you went through it, you could come and go freely by just giving your ID and password without any hassle.
“I’ve heard of vaults that require first-time customers to bring a recommendation letter from another customer, but I prefer to see and verify things with my own eyes rather than rely on some worthless letter.”
I’d do the same. A recommendation letter can be forged, but it wouldn’t be easy to fool those keen eyes of yours.
“Since you brought it up, how exactly do you do it?”
“Hmm?”
“I mean, guessing someone’s occupation just by looking at their face. Rumor has it that it’s because your mother was a shaman from Oswan. Is that true?”
“Haha! No way!”
The black shadow burst into loud laughter.
“My mother wasn’t a shaman. She was just an ordinary housewife. Well, she was from Oswan, that’s true.”
So it was completely false rumor.
“I do have an uncanny ability to read faces, but it’s not as impressive as people think. It’s just a side effect of my disability.”
“A… side effect of a disability?”
“Yes. You see, I can’t recognize faces at all.”
The black shadow, having readily confessed, pointed to the lobby staff.
“Do you see our employees’ uniforms over there?”
I looked where the black shadow was pointing. Three employees were kindly attending to customers. They all wore identical uniforms, as if custom-made, but there was one peculiarity. Each had a different color bow tie around their neck. Red, orange, yellow. They were primary colors so vivid they seemed out of place.
“Without those bow ties, I can’t tell the employees apart. Some of them have worked with me for over ten years.”
So, it’s a facial recognition disorder?
“You asked me how I can tell a person’s occupation and past just by looking at their face? I should ask you the same. How can normal people like you identify someone just by looking at their face? After all, faces are always changing.”
The black shadow’s next words were something I had never considered before.
“People always change. Even in just a few seconds, their facial features move arbitrarily with their expressions. Lips, philtrum, nostrils, eyes, eyebrows, skin wrinkles. Not a single thing stays in place. They shift positions randomly, even squish or stretch! The shape changes completely!”
I had never heard someone describe facial expressions in such a grotesque way.
“And that’s not all? Skin color is also completely capricious. It darkens with a little sun and brightens without. The color subtly changes depending on the day’s condition. Of course, the same goes for lip color. The state differs between dry and moist, flushing appears and fades, and things like moles, dead skin, and pimples come and go as they please. Weight can be gained or lost, and even eyelashes and eyebrow hairs fall out and grow back on their own! I’ve never seen anything as fickle and bothersome as the human face! Even a single person’s face changes thousands of times a day, so how can you tell that the person you see today is the same one you saw yesterday? It would be easier to ask someone to find one specific coin among thousands mixed together.”
I still hadn’t heard how he could see through a person’s past just from their face. But even without hearing it, I think I roughly understood.
‘This person sees a different world from ordinary people.’
The vault keeper cannot perceive a face as a single whole. Instead, he separates every element and examines them in detail. To put it analogously, it’s like looking at a photo magnified 100 times. He could see what others couldn’t, but he couldn’t see what others saw.
‘It’s similar to my ability.’
After all, I too can only see the vault keeper in front of me as a black mass. I ended up feeling a one-sided affinity for this black mass, whose face I couldn’t even see.
“May I ask your name?”
But the black shadow was cold.
“Just call me Vault Keeper. I won’t remember your name anyway, so you need not remember mine.”
“Understood. If that’s more comfortable for you.”
“Then, shall we move on from the small talk? Let me show you the security level of our vault.”
“Very well.”
I followed the Vault Keeper down a long hallway. After walking for about five minutes, a lattice-patterned iron gate appeared ahead. It was a bleak design you’d expect to see in a prison.
“Wait a moment.”
The Vault Keeper took a jangling keyring from his waist and unlocked the iron gate. Once I passed through safely, he locked the gate again, of course.
‘I’ll need that keyring for sure.’
It seemed that the employees attending other customers also carried similar keyrings.
‘I could steal one easily enough.’
I may still be far from being the phantom thief Lure, but I have my own experience. I should be able to swipe one somehow.
But that confidence wavered the moment I turned a corner in the hallway.
“…Another iron gate?”
“Yes. There are three in total.”
The Vault Keeper opened the gate again. The keys jangled noisily. It took quite a while to open the gate.
“Why does it take so long?”
“Because the keys on the keyring all look similar. No markings either. I was lucky earlier and picked the right key on the first try, but if I’m unlucky, it can take five minutes.”
The reason for maintaining such an inconvenient system is, of course, security.
– click
Soon the key clicked into place, and the iron gate opened with a loud noise.
‘So I have to pass through three such gates…’
Just these three iron gates alone surpassed the security of the Northern Grand Duke’s mansion. I quietly abandoned the plan to steal the keyring. Sneaking through these gates to the vault was impossible.
“Now, do you see the pride of our vault?”
The black shadow, having reached the end of the long hallway, proudly pointed at a structure. It looked like a giant birdcage at first glance.
“This is…”
“It’s called an elevator. It transports people deep underground. Isn’t it amazing?”
It was amazing indeed. I had no idea such a place had an elevator.
“Now, get in.”
When I stepped into that large, cage-like iron structure, a loud noise rang out.
– rumble
With a rumbling noise, the elevator began its slow descent. At roughly the speed of a person walking down stairs.
“…Is there no other way to go underground besides the elevator?”
“No. I removed all others for thorough security.”
Damn this other world. What if the elevator suddenly breaks down? Emergency stairs at least should be mandatory.
It felt like about ten minutes until the elevator stopped.
‘If a thief used the elevator secretly, by the time it arrived, dozens of guards with clubs would already be waiting in front of it.’
“Now, come this way. The customers’ safes are over here.”
I moved following the black shadow’s gesture and looked around. There were about a dozen guards stationed on the underground floor, and the walls looked like iron plates.
‘Digging a tunnel to enter would be impossible.’
“This is the personal safe assigned to you, sir. Is it satisfactory?”
“Hmm…”
I didn’t answer immediately and examined the safe. A safe taller than me, with a number plate reading [3]. Around it, safes of similar size were lined up in a row.
‘Which one is the Princess’s safe among these?’
If I had been assigned safe number 57, I could have guessed that the Princess’s safe, assigned slightly earlier, would be around number 56 or 55. But having been assigned safe number 3, I lost any leads for deduction.
“Don’t you like the safe?”
“Oh, no. It’s sufficient.”
I took out the jewelry box containing the blue sapphire necklace I had prepared in advance. Compared to the size of the safe, the jewelry box was pitifully small, but it was enough to keep up appearances.
“Do I just put it in like this?”
“Before that, take this key.”
The black shadow handed me a key.
“Our vault uses a specially designed dual-key system.”
“Dual-key system?”
“This safe can only be opened by inserting two keys simultaneously. One key is kept by the customer, and the other is kept inside the vault. Without both keys, the safe door cannot be opened.”
“Then… what if the customer loses the key?”
“Then the safe door will never open. Forever.”
That was a grim story.
‘The Princess is in the palace. How in the world am I supposed to get her key?’
The more I looked around the vault, the more keenly I felt it. The vault was structured in a way that made theft absolutely impossible. Honestly, a bad thought briefly crossed my mind that perhaps a robbery might be possible, but even that fell apart the moment I saw this safe.
“Why are you standing still? Were you impressed by the thorough security of our vault?”
“Yes, well. It’s so impressive I could weep.”
I answered vaguely, placed the necklace inside the safe, and on the way back to the lobby. I racked my brains desperately.
‘Think. There must be some way. A way to get my hands on the item inside that safe.’
Intercept the item on the day the Princess’s subordinates retrieve the safe? That’s relatively realistic, but I don’t know the faces of the Princess’s subordinates. With countless customers coming and going through the side door, how could I tell them apart? Moreover, no one knows when the Princess will retrieve the safe. In the worst case, she might never come for it.
‘No matter how I think, I can’t come up with a plan…’
As always, I quickly admitted my lack of ability.
‘I can’t do it alone. I need someone else’s help.’
Could Posha or Walter come up with a brilliant idea? But those two failed even to get past the vault’s entrance…
“But I can’t ask for cooperation from someone else at this point.”
Even while lost in unsolvable worries, my body moved diligently. I went through the formal membership registration in the lobby and paid the expensive storage fee. (Fortunately, it was money from Walter’s pocket.)
Just as I was about to leave the vault and discuss the situation with my companions, the black shadow grabbed me.
“What is it?”
“I realized I forgot to warn you. Over by the side door, people who came for the security guard interview are waiting. We plan to hire additional guards.”
Now that I think about it, I think he mentioned something like that to Walter.
“I’ve arranged it so they won’t obstruct traffic, but I’m telling you in advance not to be too startled by their rough-looking faces.”
“Understood, thank you.”
I responded to his words without much thought and stepped out of the vault’s door.
‘Those must be the people waiting for the security guard interview.’
Indeed, their appearances were rough enough to make the warning understandable. But among those rough faces, I spotted a familiar one.
‘That’s… the guy who was tracking Walter, isn’t it?’
It wasn’t just one. At least three that I recognized. These men, likely belonging to the Herbert Clan, were sitting here, three of them. They wouldn’t be trying to quit thuggery and pursue honest work now.
‘The Grand Duke has found out this far.’
The Grand Duke has also discovered that the Princess used this vault. So he’s trying to infiltrate his men here. At first, I thought to call the Vault Keeper and have them thrown out. But the next moment, a brilliant idea struck me.
‘…How about using those men to break into this impregnable vault?’
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