After Theo left, Yang Myeong-hyun took hold of the closed door and tried to open it.
He pulled hard at the old wooden door, but it didn't budge in the slightest.
"It is completely locked."
At his words, I let out a sigh.
It seemed the quest proper had begun.
I recalled the last words Theo had left behind as he went.
'Probably.... It should be a letter sent roughly a hundred years ago. Be sure to write back. You can just throw it under the door.'
"A hundred years ago? From van Gogh's point of view, that means someone already dead sent it."
I asked in puzzlement, but Yang Myeong-hyun only shook his head, as though nothing came to him either.
The room Theo had left was no different from before.
It still matched the composition inside Vincent van Gogh's painting 'The Bedroom in Arles' exactly.
"Mr. Yang Myeong-hyun. Did you happen to search around before I woke up?"
"No. As I said, I too was asleep, like Brother Ji-san. Leaning against the chair."
'His way of talking really is peculiar.'
That blunt, stiff speech, so unlike kids these days, stayed strange no matter how much I heard it.
Dressed in a suit with his hair neatly swept back, his appearance didn't look like someone in his early twenties either.
A security guard? Or a model?
'First things first, I need to find the letter.'
"Anyway, there's a letter someone sent to van Gogh somewhere in this room. Let's search all over."
"Fortunately, there does not seem to be a time limit. I was worried the room might slowly shrink."
CREEEAK.
"?!!"
The instant Yang Myeong-hyun finished speaking, the room began to shrink with a noisy racket.
As the walls moved, the desk and chair screeched and gathered toward the center.
It wasn't stifling yet, but compared to before, the room's floor space had clearly shrunk.
'If we keep dragging our feet, the room will get even narrower.'
This wasn't some comedy sketch. I glared at Yang Myeong-hyun with resentful eyes.
Looking sheepish, Yang Myeong-hyun turned his head toward the empty air.
"......."
"Was it not Brother who set it off?"
"No way. Damn it, let's hurry and find the letter!"
Taking my shout as the signal, the two of us began combing through the room.
From the desk to the picture frames to under the bed.
'Here they are!'
When I stretched my arm under the bed and groped around, a pile of letters swept out along with the dust.
"A lot came out from here!"
"I found some as well."
After that we lay flat on the floor until our clothes went black, checking every possible place.
Once we'd gathered them all, the number of letters hidden away in the room was greater than expected.
"I think we've found all the letters there are to find."
Yang Myeong-hyun and I dumped the letters in our hands onto the desk in a heap.
A good twenty-odd letters.
How were we supposed to find the sender Theo had spoken of among these?
-Theo van Gogh
'Ah.'
The younger brother Theo's name was written on several of the envelopes.
Theo had said it wasn't a letter he'd sent, so there was no need to even look at these.
"For now, let's exclude every letter marked Theo."
"Yes, Brother Ji-san. Ah.... Apart from Theo van Gogh's letters, none of the envelopes have names written on them. We will have to open them and look at the names and dates."
To think the most important thing, the name, wasn't written on the envelopes.
The museum had clearly played a petty trick to burn through our time on purpose.
When we threw all of Theo's letters onto the floor, only eleven letters remained on the desk.
"All right. It'll take some time, but let's check the contents."
"But it is a problem that we do not know what year it is now."
I didn't remember exactly when van Gogh had come to Arles either.
I'd read a lot about van Gogh in books long ago, so it might come up if I checked with Docent.
'...Should I use the Docent ability in front of Yang Myeong-hyun?'
No, not yet.
I tore open one of Theo's envelopes I'd thrown on the floor and checked the letter.
"Going by Theo's letters, it looks like roughly the 1870s to the 1880s."
"Then we need only find a letter from the 1770s to the 1780s."
Yang Myeong-hyun nodded at my words and immediately picked up a letter from the desk and tore it open.
Without a word, we quickly opened the envelopes we'd sorted out.
RIIIP— In the flowing silence, only the sound of paper envelopes tearing echoed through the room.
-1872
-1885
-1888
-1883
Most of the letters matched the period van Gogh had lived in.
They were mainly letters sent by artists who lived far away from van Gogh.
"It feels like we are on some sort of treasure hunt."
"You can say that ag—aagh...!"
CREEEAK.
The room's size began to shrink again as before.
The floor space narrowed until the chair and the bed, which had started out far apart, were pressed together.
For a moment my body, shoved by the moving wall, wobbled precariously.
"Brother Ji-san, are you all right?"
"Yes. Well, this much is nothing. But at this rate it'll get dangerous soon. We need to find the letter fast—"
Just then Yang Myeong-hyun's eyes flashed and he shoved a letter right up under my nose.
The year the letter was written was noted at the bottom of the paper.
-1801
"If it is eighty years ago, can that be counted as roughly a hundred?"
"I think it could be. Let's look at the contents first."
All the other letters had been sent during van Gogh's own time, so this one, sent eighty years earlier, was the most plausible of them.
The handwriting, seemingly scrawled quickly in ink, registered to our eyes as Korean, as expected.
=================
-To the arrogant Vincent van Gogh
People think me a spiteful and cantankerous man, but could I be worse than you?
I resent you for casting away without hesitation the 'it' that is precious and priceless to me.
And my own 'it' has vanished completely now.
Even so, because I know your solitude, sorrow, and despair, I will not curse you.
I hope my art and love are with you as well.
You must not lose the art that held us up; you must hold on to it.
If there is art you want from me, send me a letter.
There is no correct answer. Only, depending on your reply, the road will differ.
-From ......, a colleague of the past you can never meet
=================
"The ink has smeared, so the name is not visible."
"Terrible handwriting."
Bad handwriting. A certain figure was already flickering through my mind.
'A colleague of the past he can never meet. It's only because this is a system the Tower built that a letter can be sent from eighty years ago; in reality, they're figures who never met each other.'
There was supposedly no correct answer, but that didn't mean it was an unconditional free pass.
This Tower wasn't that easy.
CREEEAK.
"Get up higher!"
The room had narrowed until there was hardly a gap left to stand in on the floor. We had to move before our legs got caught between the furniture.
Yang Myeong-hyun hurried up onto the bed, and I stood on the chair.
"...Damn it, I want to write the letter before the desk gets crushed."
"Are you saying Brother Ji-san will write the letter?"
"If Vincent van Gogh doesn't open that door and walk in right now, I think we'll have to write the letter pretending to be him."
'And van Gogh probably won't come in.'
If van Gogh came, we wouldn't have to labor over deducing who was behind the letter.
He could just write the whole thing himself.
As I'd thought earlier, this Tower wasn't that easy.
'Ah! I could just use Soul Rental!'
I'd forgotten about the supplementary Perk 'Soul Rental' for a moment.
After experiencing possession by van Gogh's soul, I'd come to hold his soul.
If I used Soul Rental now and had van Gogh write the letter in my place, the quest would be an immediate success.
'Soul Rental, activate. Vincent Willem van Gogh.'
...Strangely, nothing happened even though I'd called out the Perk activation.
I squeezed my eyes shut again and called out the Perk in my mind.
'Soul Rental, activate!'
[Oh dear. My explanation was insufficient.]
'?!'
It was the Curator.
As during the Byeoljubujeon, it was whispering into my ear alone so no one else could hear.
'Curator. Tell me why Soul Rental isn't working.'
[During the Byeoljubujeon quest, Visitor Kim Ji-san was in an extremely urgent situation.]
'So why isn't Soul Rental working?'
[There is a quest restriction element, so it seemed you ought to make your choice carefully.]
Fwish-
=================
[Supplementary Perk: Soul Rental]
-Rental of and possession by the soul of a 'real historical figure' connected to the museum (met in person and communicated with).
-The soul's range of action is based on [Perk: Docent] knowledge.
-This Perk may be used once per floor.
-Upon casting Soul Rental, a currently held soul is deleted (1).
=================
The leaflet on Soul Rental unfurled.
At the bottom of the leaflet was a new line I hadn't seen before.
'What is this? It should have told me sooner.'
[Regrettably, at that time you held no souls, so an explanation was impossible.]
'Ha. So if I rent van Gogh's soul now, that soul disappears?'
[The only soul Visitor Kim Ji-san currently holds is 'Vincent Willem van Gogh.' In that case, his soul would be deleted.]
'...Can I obtain van Gogh's soul again later?'
[No.]
The Curator answered instantly, before my question had even finished.
It seemed I'd have to save van Gogh's soul until I came to hold a new one.
'Unless I fail to solve this quest to the end and my life ends up in danger....'
"Brother Ji-san, is something the matter?"
Yang Myeong-hyun studied my condition with a worried face.
I managed my expression to hide that I'd been conversing with the Curator in my head.
"...No. I have a feeling van Gogh isn't going to come into this room after all."
"True, this Tower, this museum, likes to set cunning quests that are almost wordplay. As it happens, I picked up paper and a pen as well."
Yang Myeong-hyun held up and waved a sheet of paper and a pen for dipping in ink.
I was pretty sure he hadn't been holding them until just a moment ago.
'Since when has he had those?'
"...Where from?"
"When the room shrank, I heard a pen rolling. It seemed to have been pushed out from under the bed, so I snatched it up quickly."
"......."
Had Yang Myeong-hyun done anything like that?
When I'd searched under the bed earlier, I hadn't found anything besides letters.
'...Fine. I probably just didn't reach far enough.'
I turned my gaze back to the mysterious letter sent to van Gogh.
"Just like the Curator's or van Gogh's voices register for us, the letter might not really be in Korean. I don't think we can limit our deduction to Korean artists."
"The one behind the letter would be a painter, surely?"
At Yang Myeong-hyun's question, I shook my head firmly.
"I doubt it. Vincent van Gogh had friends who were other kinds of artists, not just painters, so we can't conclude it was a painter."
"You are a learned man, Brother Ji-san. Impressive."
"...Thank you."
Being praised in what sounded like a stage-play delivery made it all the more embarrassing.
I cleared my throat and pointed at the frame hanging on the wall beside the bed.
A frame hanging on the wall of The Bedroom in Arles. It was a painting van Gogh had made of his acquaintances.
"For instance, the painting in this frame inside The Bedroom in Arles would be a friend too...?"
'Huh? Was a woman like that painted in it? ...No. That can't be right.'
An old-fashioned dress that didn't match van Gogh's era.
On top of that, with its abundant lace and her neatly arranged hair ornament, she didn't look like one of van Gogh's common-born friends.
"Brother Ji-san, is there a problem?"
"No. Not yet. I think I need to sort out my thoughts."
'If there is art you want, write it down. There is no correct answer. But the road will differ.'
In other words, as long as we got the name of the artist who sent the letter right, we could write down whatever work we liked.
But in exchange, the road to Floor 11, or the work on Floor 11, could change according to our choice, so we had to choose carefully.
Yang Myeong-hyun, standing on the soft bedsheets, also looked around, uneasy about the shrinking room.
"We may well be crushed to death at this rate. Since the space on this tenth floor is limited, there is not enough ground to reason from."
"It's still just a hunch, but I think I know who the artist who sent the letter is."
At my words, Yang Myeong-hyun looked at me with startled eyes, as if he hadn't expected it.
For the first time, a change in his emotions showed on his face.
"Truly, Brother Ji-san? How, already...."
As always, I couldn't be completely certain yet, but right now every moment was too urgent to spend only on deliberation.
Before the room shrank all the way and our bodies burst, we had to discuss the most likely figure.
"Both of us think that this time, like every time so far, the quest, that is, the letter, holds the hints."
"That is so."
"If we combine this letter with the hints scattered around the room..., I think that person is the most likely."
"And who is that?"
I nodded at the pressing Yang Myeong-hyun and went straight on.
"The artist who sent the letter to van Gogh is—"