He quietly removed an old painting from the easel.
Weiss took a knife in hand and, with care—though a certain haste—began scraping away the surface of the painting.
The landscape once depicted scattered like dust, vanishing silently.

"...Now it's finally empty."

With a faint exhale, Weiss turned toward the paint shelf.
There, bottles of pigment lined up in silence—deep blue, burnt brown, pale green—
Among them was a bottle of deep crimson. The label read "Cinnabar (辰砂, shinsya)"—a kind of vermilion.

A memory stirred of using that pigment once before.
It had been the most vivid, yet the quietest voice in the painting.
Weiss gently took the bottle in his hand and held it up to the light.

"...What a beautiful red."

That was all it was. Simply beautiful.
Cinnabar was costly and troublesome to obtain. That alone was reason enough not to use it hastily.

"...I'll keep this in reserve. Until the right moment comes again."

Muttering to himself, Weiss carefully returned the cinnabar to the shelf.

Just then, a voice called from behind.

"What are you doing?"

He turned to see Clarisse standing with a coffee cup in hand.

"You've been scraping all morning. What's the rush?"

Weiss gave a sheepish smile and wiped his hands with a towel.

"To paint what I really want, I have to clear away the unnecessary first."

"I don't mind you doing what you love... but don't mix it up with your forgery tools."

Clarisse sighed in mild exasperation—but her smile showed quiet relief.

Late morning in London.
Rosen walked quickly through the streets.
He headed toward the familiar red-brick building. Inside, nothing had changed since his last visit.
At the center work desk, the silver-haired man peered into a microscope.

"There you are. I was just looking at it."

Humble handed Rosen the painting in question.
On the back were neatly arranged labels of exhibitions and collections.

"What is this?"

"Looks convincing at first glance. But every piece of paper is the same quality, cut with the same quirks. Even the ink's aging was replicated."

Rosen frowned.

"...Too much consistency. In other words, a fabricated provenance."

Humble nodded and continued speaking while peering into the microscope.

"The real issue is here."

He brought up a magnified cross-section of the painting on the monitor.
Layers upon layers of pigment.
At the very bottom, a white band clearly stood out.

"Analysis shows this white is... titanium white."

Rosen gasped.

"...Impossible for a painting from before the 1920s."

"Exactly. This is scientific proof it's not authentic."

Rosen rubbed his chin in thought.

"But someone might claim it was added later, during restoration."

"That's been ruled out."

Humble held up another slide.

"Cross-sectional analysis shows the titanium white comes from the lowest layer. In other words, it was applied first—not during restoration."

He pointed at a fragment of old canvas.

"The forger failed to fully remove the original pigment. Tiny remnants of titanium white remained.
He must have painted over it without realizing."

Rosen narrowed his eyes.

"So—he tried to be careful, but somewhere inside, he rushed it..."

Humble gave a small nod.

"The truth speaks not through intent, but through residue."

At the Düsseldorf police headquarters, in a small office—
Rosen's superior, Director Gräbe, called out to a young officer.

"Hey, hasn't Rosen been unusually quiet lately?"

The younger man hesitated a moment.

"...No, not especially..."

"You know something, don't you?"

Under Gräbe's sharp gaze, the younger officer looked away.

"...He's in London."

"London?"

Meanwhile—

"The final clue was this pigment."

"What is it?"

"This reddish-orange part... its composition is cinnabar."

Rosen raised an eyebrow.

"Cinnabar...?"

"A natural mercury sulfide. It was used in ancient China, but in European painting, it's extremely rare.
Expensive and difficult to handle. Normally, artists used 'vermilion.'"

Humble opened an old document and pointed to a passage.

"Here. It mistakenly equates vermilion with cinnabar. I suspect the forger took that at face value."

Rosen exhaled softly.

"...So he trusted books more than lines."

Humble shrugged and gave a faint smile.

"Ironic, isn't it? Instead of forgery aesthetics, he followed a misprint."

At the mansion in Bergisch Gladbach, Weiss had just finished arranging his pigments.

"I'm going to the bathroom," he called out, heading upstairs.

Left alone, Clarisse gazed quietly around the atelier.

Her eyes landed on a particular bottle.

—Cinnabar.

A deep, striking red.
Its presence drew her in.
Without thinking, her hand reached out.

"...So beautiful..."

The particles shimmered faintly in the light, mesmerizing her.

—Red...

Suddenly, an image from a recent news story came to mind.
A painting attributed to Campendonk, sold at auction for 400 million yen—"The Red Painting with a Horse."

Clarisse's hand trembled slightly.

—That red.

In the stillness, something heavy settled in her chest.

—No... just coincidence.

But just then, her eyes fell on a rough-scraped palette on the table.

—Weiss would have prepared more carefully than this.

She slowly looked around the room again.

—Maybe... the time is almost up.