Thief!

Midoriko checked the time on her phone. It was already a quarter past nine. The drinking party, which had been going on since six, didn’t seem to be easing up anytime soon. After the museum closed for the day, Midoriko’s colleagues had used the opening of her special exhibit as an excuse to celebrate.

“Excellent work today, Miss Suwa!” How many times had Dr. Tanaka said that this evening? Shouldn’t a mentor keep you humble? “Have another beer!”

She started pouring more beer into Midoriko’s glass before she could even decline. All of her colleagues had been ensuring her glass never remained empty. While she did her best to drink slowly, Midoriko was starting to feel a bit tipsy.

Other than the incident with the suspicious man, the opening had gone extremely well. But the experience had left her disconcerted, and she had found it hard to relax for the rest of the day.

She had the kīla on her mind. And that man.

The kīla was surely the issue–it was actually cursed after all. Even after relentlessly studying it for months, Midoriko still didn’t know the nature of its power. She only knew that it had to be removed from the exhibit.

At the end of the day, she had made an internal decision to pull it from the exhibit. But with the impromptu drinking party, Midoriko didn’t have a chance to do it before she left the museum. Even with the alcohol giving her a light, happy buzz, it was just relentlessly eating her up inside.

She had to go back. She was not going to be able to rest until that thing was safely hidden away from the public. She reassured herself that the exhibit would be fine without it–only the box was really needed to tell the story anyway. Midoriko excused herself from the table and slipped out of the restaurant without telling anyone. It would be better to beg for forgiveness later.

Thankfully, the museum wasn’t far, so she could hurry over there on foot.

***

Entering onto the property alone, at this time of night, made Midoriko feel like she was doing something she wasn’t supposed to. Thinking it would be better to inform the security guards of her presence than to sneak around like a thief, Midoriko entered the museum through the security station.

“Hello? Excuse me…?” she called out to the empty room. She squinted as she looked around the dark room that was lit only by computer monitors.

Normally, there should be someone monitoring the cameras, right? But the chair in front of the screens, shifting between all the CCTV cameras, was vacant.

Midoriko glanced at one of the monitors to see a guard making the rounds. Perhaps the person looking at the cameras thought it would be okay to take a bathroom break or even a cigarette break while someone else was actively patrolling.

Still, it had to be done as soon as possible. A pit in Midoriko’s stomach, telling her that something bad would happen if she didn’t, was growing larger and larger. If she ran into a security guard while she was inside the museum, she would just show her identification and explain what she was doing. Midoriko rehearsed this in her mind.

As she left the security station, what Midoriko failed to notice was that the guard walking through the museum on the camera feed was stuck in a loop.

***

“Stop right there!” the man wearing the security uniform commanded, holding out his hand.

Shouldn’t I be the one saying that?! Midoriko thought. If the walk from the restaurant hadn’t sobered her up, walking into this situation certainly had.

He was standing right in front of the case displaying the kīla. Midoriko watched as his other hand reached through the glass as if it were nonexistent. She rubbed her eyes, unable to believe what she was seeing.

The man grasped the kīla and began to lift it off its acrylic stand. Midoriko felt her body move on its own as she rushed toward him.

“Don’t move! Stay there!” the man urgently commanded, pointing at Midoriko with one hand while the other pulled the kīla out of the display case. As she came closer, his commands grew more desperate. “Stop! Turn around! Leave!”

Midoriko tackled him, knocking him to the ground. His grip on the kīla remained firm as she tried to wrestle it from his grasp.

“Let go! Get up!” he said through gritted teeth as the two played tug-of-war with the kīla. “Why..won’t you…obey?!”

The man thrashed around as Midoriko straddled him in an attempt to knock her off. His free hand was futilely trying to pry her hands off the kīla. As he pushed up with his legs, Midoriko fell forward, forcing her to let go of the kīla to catch herself.

Her glasses felt like they were about to fall off her face from the angle, but face-to-face with the man, Midoriko could still get a good look at him. Black, shaggy hair. Smooth, unblemished skin save for two moles under the right eye and one on the chin. And that strong cologne from before–something reminiscent of temple incense, but also woody and citrusy.

“You…!” Her mouth twisted into a crazed smile. She had never felt so vindicated before in her life. Midoriko let out a sharp laugh. “Ha…!”

Taking advantage of the moment, the man pushed Midoriko off of himself and rolled to his feet. There was still time for him to make a clean break. No witness was always the goal, but even one witness was preferable to many. While the curator of all people was the last person he expected to run into, this woman would at least be easy to subdue.

“You rotten bastard!” Midoriko shouted, adjusting her glasses. She pushed herself to her feet. “First, you mock me pretending to not know Japanese, and now you try to steal from me?!”

Or not…

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, reaching to pull a nonexistent hat over his eyes.

“Don’t play dumb! You must have been working with that security guard today, trying to gaslight me into thinking you were an old foreigner!”

“What…?” His blood ran cold. She actually recognized him? He slowly inched away from her, trying to find an opening to run. “What…What do I look like to you right now?”

“You look like the same piece of shit I met earlier today, now disguising himself as a security guard,” she snapped. “You suck at this, by the way! At least change your hair or do something about your moles–that’s a distinguishing feature, idiot.”

He stopped moving and swallowed hard. The situation was fucked. This was supposed to be a normal, easy in-and-out job. He had gotten wind of this artifact with enough time to plan carefully ahead, from scouting out the museum and confirming the target to infiltrating the building as a security guard.

But he never factored in the remote possibility of someone being able to see through his glamour. Before he could even begin to figure out what to do next, Midoriko threw herself at him again.

The two of them crashed into the velvet ropes, just barely missing the samurai armor on display. Before they had even hit the floor, the alarm screeched. Midoriko clapped her hands over her ears.

The man, who had somehow managed to maintain his grip on the kīla through their scuffles, set it down gently next to Midoriko before standing up. She snatched it up and examined it.

Thank God it’s not broken, Midoriko thought as she ran her fingers over the delicate carvings. The eerie and beautiful halo even remained unchanged. She stashed it in her purse before he could snatch it back.

The man rubbed his back for a moment, wincing in pain, then looked at Midoriko and sighed. She couldn’t help but smile triumphantly at the fact that she’d caught this bastard.

It could be a matter of minutes before other security or even the police arrived. Now, she could even use this incident as an excuse to pull the kīla from public display!

Midoriko leaned back on her elbows, leisurely watching the man fumble through his pockets. He pulled out a piece of chalk. Midoriko raised an eyebrow and sat back up. What the hell is he going to do with chalk?

She watched him very quickly draw a rectangle around her with the chalk. While she was still trying to parse out what was happening, he sat down behind her and pulled her close with one arm around her waist. Midoriko’s body instantly tensed up.

“Eek!” She thrashed around trying to move away, but he just held on tighter–even tangling his legs around hers to further pin Midoriko down. “Let me go!”

“Sorry, but I can’t let you go now,” he murmured into Midoriko’s ear, sending shivers down her spine. With his free hand, he drew a circle within the rectangle. “You’ve seen my real face.”

The man knocked on the floor twice, then Midoriko felt her body fall backwards.

They were gone without a trace by the time the authorities rushed into the gallery.