Chapter 222: Living Portraits

The Gallery of Living Portraits stood at the end of a marble avenue, its golden doors framed by floating silver lights.

Inside, hundreds of illuminated frames covered the walls. Their paintings moved like windows into another world. Knights charged across burning battlefields. Couples danced beneath falling cherry blossoms. A little girl chased a flock of glowing butterflies through a garden that seemed to stretch forever.

Every few seconds, the scenes changed.

Lily pressed both hands against the nearest frame. "I want one."

"You haven’t even looked at the entrance fee," Reinhard said.

"I don’t need to. I can feel that it’s expensive."

"That doesn’t mean we should buy it."

Emily laughed and slipped her arm through his. "Try enjoying something before calculating its resale value."

"I enjoy many things."

"Like discounts?"

"Those are among life’s greatest pleasures."

Their attendant smiled as if he had heard this conversation many times before. "Welcome to the Gallery. Each portrait is reconstructed from a visitor’s memories. It doesn’t simply reproduce what happened. It shows how the people involved remember it."

"So, a painting can be wrong?" Maki asked.

"Not exactly. Memories are personal. Two people can experience the same moment and remember entirely different details. The Gallery gives those memories a living form."

Lily immediately pointed at Reinhard. "Then yours will be a dragon sitting on a mountain of gold."

"Why would I be a dragon?"

"Because you’re greedy."

"Dragons hoard gold without calculating its market value. That’s terribly inefficient."

The attendant cleared his throat, apparently deciding not to participate in that discussion.

Their first portraits were ready.

Reinhard’s appeared in a flash of golden light.

He stood behind a massive wooden counter, dressed in a merchant’s embroidered coat. A chest overflowed with gold behind him, while one hand rested protectively on a ledger. Above his head hung a sign.

FINAL PRICE — NO DISCOUNTS.

The portrait’s version of Reinhard glared at an imaginary customer with the intensity of a man prepared to defend his fortune to the death.

Lily doubled over laughing.

"It’s perfect! Look at your face!"

"That’s a serious misrepresentation of my character."

"You look like the final boss of a shopping district," Emily said.

"I’m not that unreasonable."

Maki examined the portrait. "It has depicted you with a chest of gold, three ledgers, and a lock on the cash drawer."

"Security is important."

"There’s another lock on the lock."

"Security is very important."

Emily squeezed his arm, still smiling. "Should we have the portrait made permanent?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"Because I refuse to pay for slander."

The attendant politely explained that the portrait could be purchased as a permanent display.

Reinhard asked about the price, maintenance costs, and whether the Gallery offered a discount for purchasing several portraits together.

The attendant’s smile became noticeably more cautious.

Emily patted Reinhard’s shoulder. "Merchant King, please let the next person have a turn."

Their next portrait belonged to Emily.

It showed her standing on a high balcony overlooking a vast city. Silver light flowed around her like a royal mantle, and distant figures looked up at her with awe. She appeared untouchable, a powerful woman who had risen above every obstacle in her path.

For a moment, the group fell quiet.

Then Reinhard tilted his head.

"It’s missing something."

Emily looked at him. "What’s that?"

"Me, standing beside you."

Her smile softened. "You would complain about being left out of a painting?"

"Of course. I have an excellent profile."

"Your modesty is astonishing."

"It’s one of my best qualities."

She leaned against him, amused. "Then I’ll commission another portrait with you in it."

"Only if the price is reasonable."

The moment passed in laughter, and the Gallery brought Lily’s portrait to life.

Lily stood atop a hill, wearing a flowing cape and raising a shining sword toward the heavens. Behind her stretched an army of warriors. Monsters crowded the horizon, and lightning split the clouds.

It was a glorious scene.

Until the army began marching.

Straight toward a bakery.

Lily stared at it.

"Why are they going there?"

The attendant consulted the portrait’s description. "Your memory included a particularly vivid recollection of purchasing pastries during the Tideglass Discovery Walk."

"That was a tactical resupply!"

"Of course," Maki said.

"And the bakery was strategically important!"

"Undoubtedly."

Lily pointed at Reinhard. "Buy it. I want this displayed in the villa."

"No."

"Why?"

"Because I don’t want an army of pastry enthusiasts hanging over the dining table."

"Then I’ll pay for it myself!"

"Excellent. You’ve discovered the purpose of money."

Lily looked personally betrayed by his support.

Maki’s portrait appeared next. It showed her surrounded by floating research notes, intricate Mana diagrams, and glowing equations. She stood with a notebook in one hand, looking perfectly composed.

Maki studied the display for several seconds.

"The third diagram violates Mana conservation."

The attendant blinked. "I’m sorry?"

"And that equation has two incompatible variables."

"You’re criticizing your own portrait?" Lily asked.

"I’m criticizing its mistakes."

"Your portrait is smiling," Emily observed.

Maki immediately looked away. "The artist made an error."

Nobody believed her.

Finally, Yuna’s portrait appeared.

It showed the five of them walking together along a sunlit street. Emily and Reinhard occupied the center, talking to each other. Lily was ahead of everyone, waving excitedly at something beyond the frame. Maki walked nearby with her notebook open.

Yuna was behind them, carrying several shopping bags while reaching forward to straighten Lily’s crooked collar.

Lily pointed at the portrait. "You even fixed my collar in the memory! You really do take care of me."

"You were about to trip over your own cape," Yuna replied.

"That was part of my heroic entrance."

"It was part of your inability to watch where you were going."

Everyone laughed, including Yuna.

She looked at the portrait a little longer before joining the others at the next display.

...

The Gallery’s central hall contained a different attraction.

Three enormous frames stood side by side, each depicting the Tideglass Discovery Walk they had completed earlier in their vacation. The same coastal path appeared in all three, but the details changed.

Emily’s portrait showed the family strolling beside the sea. Sunlight glittered across the water, and the five of them were talking and laughing.

Lily’s version showed her leading the group like an explorer. A monstrous branch seemed to reach from a nearby tree, forcing her to defend her companions with a heroic sword swing.

"There was no monster," Maki said.

"It attacked us in spirit."

"That’s not how attacks work."

"You weren’t the one protecting everyone!"

"You screamed because a leaf landed on your shoulder."

"That leaf had suspicious intentions!"

The third portrait displayed Maki’s recollection. Instead of emphasizing the people, it focused on the coastal formations, the shifting currents, and the unusual patterns in the stone. Tiny annotations appeared along the edges, recording details she had noticed during their walk.

"Interesting," Maki murmured. "The Gallery preserves the aspects of an event that matter most to each observer."

"Which explains why Lily remembers an imaginary tree trying to kill her," Reinhard said.

"It was a dangerous tree."

Their attendant nodded. "The Gallery doesn’t determine which recollection is objectively correct. It reconstructs what visitors remember. Details that one person considers important may barely register for another."

"So it can create something that never happened?" Emily asked.

"It can reproduce an inaccurate memory, yes. It can also fill gaps with reasonable interpretations. That is why the Gallery is an artistic experience, not a historical record."

Maki stepped closer to the third frame.

"Wait."

Her expression had changed.

At the edge of the portrait, reflected in a polished section of dark stone, stood a garden.

A narrow stone path led toward a wooden bench. A white bird perched on its backrest. Near the path lay a silver ornament shaped like a curling wave, its pale-blue stone catching the light.

Maki leaned closer.

"Reinhard. Yuna. Look at the reflection."

Reinhard’s amusement faded.

He recognized the garden immediately.

It was the same place they had seen inside the Memory Mirror boutique. The path, the bench, the white bird, even the silver wave ornament were identical. The ornament wasn’t merely similar in shape. Its pale-blue stone had the same small, darker mark near one edge as the one Yuna had purchased.

Yuna looked down at the ornament in her hand, then back at the portrait.

"That garden again," she said quietly.

Emily turned toward them. "What garden?"

"The one that appeared in the Memory Mirror," Reinhard replied.

He explained the details without embellishment. The boutique’s mirror had briefly shown the same stone path, the same wooden bench, the same white bird, and the same silver wave ornament. At the time, the shopkeeper had considered it an unusual reconstruction.

Now the same scene had appeared inside a memory of their coastal walk.

Emily studied the reflection. "But none of us remembers seeing that garden."

"Not during the walk," Maki agreed. "And it isn’t part of the landscape shown in the rest of the portrait."

Their attendant examined the frame, then gave a small, reassuring laugh.

"Occasionally, the Gallery generates background details when a memory lacks sufficient information. Reflections can be especially unpredictable. It may be a reconstruction artifact."

"An exact match?" Maki asked.

"An unusual one, certainly. But the Gallery isn’t infallible."

Reinhard kept his eyes on the image.

The explanation was plausible. The Memory Mirror and the Gallery both reconstructed scenes from incomplete information. An error could account for either appearance.

But the same garden had now surfaced twice, with the same distinctive details, in two different attractions.

And Yuna’s ornament had appeared in both.

"Can you preserve this version of the portrait?" Reinhard asked.

"Certainly. We can save the reconstruction before it changes."

"Please do."

The attendant touched the frame, and a thin ring of light formed around the image. The garden remained visible, frozen in the reflection.

Emily looked at Reinhard, noticing that he had become unusually quiet.

"Do you think there’s something wrong?"

"I think we should remember it," he replied. "That’s all."

He didn’t want to turn a pleasant vacation into an investigation based on a single unexplained image. But he wasn’t going to forget it, either.

Maki took one final look at the garden before closing her notebook.

Lily, who had been trying to convince the attendant to sell her heroic portrait at a discount, finally noticed that everyone had gone quiet.

"Did I miss something?"

"Yes," Reinhard said. "Your chance to negotiate a better price."

Lily gasped. "You were negotiating without me?"

"I’m afraid your services are no longer required."

She hurried after the attendant, determined to correct this injustice.

The tension eased, and Emily slipped her hand into Reinhard’s as they followed the others out of the hall.

He had come to the Gallery expecting another pleasant attraction. Instead, he had discovered a mystery that seemed to follow them from one experience to the next.

Still, the afternoon had been worthwhile. He had laughed with his family, watched Emily enjoy herself, and seen Yuna choose something simply because she liked it.

For once, he hadn’t needed to calculate the value of every moment.

A familiar notification appeared before his eyes.

[Investment Objective Completed.]

[C-Grade Investment Successful.]

[Calculating Investment Returns...]

[Reward Calculation Complete.]

[Reward Granted.]