Artifact Reading Inspector

Chapter 22: Two Paintings (3)

It was a painting of two stonemasons making a hole in a rock. A young stonemason was about to strike with the hammer. He wasn’t wearing a shirt while the other stonemason was old. He was holding a chisel and was focusing.

What a coincidence! The artist who made this painting was Yoon Duseo. Haejin just found an unrecorded painting of Yoon Duseo yesterday, and today he was seeing another painting of Yoon Duseo that was supposed to be in the museum.

“That is why I brought you here. I happened to get this, and it is like the same painting in the museum. So, one of them must be fake… but the problem is that my appraisers gave up.”

Haejin could understand that, but if the appraisers had given up, things were probably complicated.

“They gave up?”

“Yes. They said that unless they appraise the one in the museum, they cannot find out which one is fake with just this painting.”

“Hmm… what if this is real? Will you donate it to the museum?”

Haejin didn’t think that all artifacts should be exhibited in museums. However, this ‘Stonemason’ painting was being exhibited in a museum as a real painting, he couldn’t let another one being sold somewhere else claiming ‘actually this is the real painting!’.

“Of course, I can’t do that! This is a painting that I got legally. If you give up appraising this, then you have never seen this painting. I hope you have your ethics?”

Just as Haejin had thought… the woman’s eyes were filled with greed. Now, Haejin couldn’t just ignore it and leave. It wasn’t because of his ethics, but because he decided to punish this greedy woman.

“Okay, I will appraise it. The fee is 1% of the appraised price, in cash.”

“I know.”

“Then please, step back.”

Sojin took three steps back, crossed her arms and leaned on the glass wall. She glared at Haejin as if implying she would not forgive him if he tried anything suspicious.

“There’s a security guard here, so I think you don’t have to worry so much. Please be quiet, the sound of your breath is irritating.”

“Fine.”

She left the room quite angry. The room was made of glass so she could look inside, and as there was a CCTV camera filming everything, she thought it wouldn’t be a problem.

Now was the important part. Haejin first had to check if the painting was worth using magic to appraise it, and that meant it had to seem real when he examined it with his skills.

Most forgeries imitated paints and the paper, but there were a few things hard to copy. One of them is the line of the artist, even in the smallest parts.

Yoon Duseo was great at clearly showing the situation of the character and nature with just a few brush touches.

For instance, in the case of the man without a shirt who was raising his hammer, you could feel his energy because of his tightly closed lips and the posture of raising one foot to lean forward.

On the other side, the old man with a chisel had knitted eyebrows and his shoulders were thrown backward. It showed he was worried about getting hit by the stone fragments.

The style, realistic and so elaborate, was Yoon Duseo’s specialty, so Haejin couldn’t think the painting was a fake.

He pretended to rest his head on his hand and applied saliva on his finger. Then, he casually muttered.

“Is the paper made of mulberry tree…”

It looked like he was looking closely to check the material but, actually, determining the material of the paper by looking at it was impossible.

Actually, he was faking with a serious expression while drawing the magic pattern. The magic he used was a tracking spell. Haejin would be able to know the location of the painting, no matter where it went. It was quite simple compared to looking at its past.

He used magic, waited five more minutes and stretched his back. Then, Sojin opened the glass door and came in.

“Well? Is it real?”

“I think it is Yoon Duseo’s painting.”

“Then… you mean the painting in the museum is probably fake?”

“Maybe, or maybe not, as Yoon Duseo must have made many sketches when he drew his paintings. Look here. Doesn’t this feel alive as if the man would strike with the hammer at any moment?”

“Yes.”

“He couldn’t tell these stonemasons to stay still to draw this. He must have made countless sketches in a short time while drawing the final piece by reconstructing them. To do that, it is possible that he made two finished paintings to later find out which one is better.”

“You meant to choose the better one?”

“Yes. However, after drawing the two, he might have had trouble choosing one and decided to save both. Of course, there is another hypothesis. It might be a copy of Yoon Duseo’s painting made by Gang Huieon.”

Gang Huieon was an artist of the late Joseon period. He once copied Yoon Duseo’s Stonemason. The two paintings are so alike that if you ask an ordinary person to guess which one is Yoon Duseo’s he or she would get confused.

What was funny was that the imitation was also exhibited at the National Museum. You could see the real and the imitation at the same place.

“No, as far as I know, Gang Huieon never left two imitations of one painting.”

“Oh… then this must be Yoon Duseo’s.”

At first, Haejin was not too convinced, but things were getting better and better.

“Thank you. I will pay you the fee tomorrow.”

“Okay, then I will wait for the thirty million.”

“What? Thirty million? You are saying this painting is worth three billion?”

She lifted her eyebrows and raised her voice as if it was nonsense.

“I appraise the right price of this painting to be three billion. Are you not admitting to that?”

Haejin was confident. Sojin started to panic since if she didn’t admit it, she would be lying and, as soon as that happened, Haejin could reveal the existence of the painting to others.

“That’s-that’s not it… I meant, isn’t the fee too high? Three billion is too big.”

“So, you cannot give that money to me?”

Sojin sighed and nodded.

“Okay. I will give it to you, so please go upstairs.”

“You made the right decision.”

Although it was expensive, Sojin seemed to think that she wasn’t losing much as Haejin quickly managed to do something that any other appraiser couldn’t.

Haejin went up to the ground floor and watched the people preparing for the next exhibition. About 10 minutes later, Sojin appeared with a white envelope.

“Your thirty million, just as promised.”

“Hmm… I told you I only take cash.”

Sojin didn’t give cash for only one reason. She was implying that if any problems occurred later, she would get that money back.

“Sorry. The amount of money you asked is too big. I didn’t have enough cash, so I brought a check.”

“Well, fine. I’ll allow it only this time.”

Haejin took the envelope and left the gallery. Usually, he had to go home to get some sleep after using magic, but the spell he used this time costed little mana, so he didn’t rest and went straight to Insadong.

He went through the alley and arrived at the address Byeongguk gave him. There was a shabby workshop.

“Oh, hey!”

“What took you so long?”

Byeongguk and Sujeong had been chatting inside. They each had a cup of coffee. They greeted Haejin enthusiastically.

“I can’t tell you here. Let’s go down to the storage and talk.”

“Huh? What is it?”

Secret stories that others don’t know always excite the listeners. Byeongguk and Sujeong led Haejin to the storage with their eyes sparkling with excitement.

There were many ceramics in rows in Byeongguk’s storage but, even with a quick glance, Haejin knew that none of them were worth a lot.

“What, I thought you had found a good piece… you were telling me to pick one among these?”

Byeongguk smiled and shook his hand.

“No, I keep the good ones apart. I will show you later. Anyway, what do you want to tell us?”

“Ms. Eunhae called me this morning. I answered, and she told me Yang Sojin wanted to give me a task.”

“Huh? Yang Sojin? She has more than enough appraisers. Why would she want you?”

“So, I went because I also wanted to know what happened to Momoko, and it seems that she disappeared.”

Byeongguk stood up and slapped his hands together.

“Hey, isn’t this kind of thing we often see in thriller movies? Is she going to emerge as a dead body at some lake later? I heard Mizno Toru is pretty scary.”

“Anyway, that’s what happened so I couldn’t find out more.”

“Yes. However, if she really does appear on the news, Lim Sungjun would also get surprised. He would think that her greed has doomed her.”

“Hmm… anyway, Yang Sojin called me because she wanted me to appraise a painting. She said she will pay the fee, so I agreed, and that was Yoon Duseo’s painting. The Stonemason exhibited at the National Museum. You know that, right?”

Sujeong was also surprised this time.

“Of course I do! Then, she asked you to appraise a painting of the National Museum?”

“How can that happen? Has she stolen it?”

Haejin shook his head.

“I don’t know. Anyway, I examined that painting and, surprisingly, it was real.”

“Real? That painting was really real?”

“Yes. It was real.”

“Then, what’s that painting in the museum?”

“I don’t know. It might be real, it might be fake…”

Although Haejin said that, he was thinking the piece at the museum was also real. If Sojin had really stolen from the museum, she would have no reason to ask him to appraise it.

As the one in the museum and the one in Sojin’s possession were both real, Haejin wasn’t going to mind if she sold it in Korea. But if she sold it abroad, Haejin was going to get it back.

It might not be his business. However, as he knew Sojin was breaking the law, he couldn’t let her get her way.

Retrieving the painting would be easy. Haejin just had to tip off the police that some strange people are stealing artifact when that painting leaves the storage.

As the painting was in the National Museum, once Sojin gets busted, she would have to explain how she got it, and her gallery would be searched.

“What are you going to do? Are you going to tell the Cultural Heritage Administration?”

“No, I am going to forget about it. There’s nothing I can do.”

“Of course. You know Yang Sojin is the queen of this field, right? Don’t even think about doing something. Just pretend you never saw anything.”

What kind of choice would Yang Sojin make?

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