London. Midnight. Kensington. The Morstan residence.
"Click… click…"
The soft ticking of the dial echoed through the silent collection room. A figure crouched before the safe, cheek pressed to the cold steel, one hand turning the combination wheel with practiced patience.
After about five minutes of trial and adjustment, a crisp click sounded.
The safe—publicly advertised as impossible to crack—opened just like that.
"Let's see what kind of treasure you're hiding…"
The thief rubbed his hands together, swung the door wide, and immediately began rummaging through the contents.
"Seriously… why does this family keep horns in a safe? And why is there a coffee cup in here?
What is this silver-cast lady figurine supposed to be? And this broken arrowhead…
Come on—can there be something worthwhile for once? Isn't this supposed to be the wealthy district?"
Russell swore under his breath and tossed the items to the floor. Then he stuck his head farther into the safe.
What kind of garbage safe was this?
Had he wandered into ordinary Kensington by mistake?
If he stole this sort of junk and it got printed in the papers tomorrow, he'd be laughed out of London.
Russell—full name Russell Watson—nineteen years old, a freshman at Imperial College London, and also the gentleman thief who had recently become the talk of Scotland Yard.
Ever since he could remember, Russell had known the world he lived in was a parallel London. And his transmigrator's "cheat"—the sort of blessing people like him were supposed to get—didn't arrive until his eighteenth birthday, fashionably late.
In simple terms, it was a system that let him grow stronger by doing bad things: whenever his actions caused a victim negative emotions, he earned "Malice Points."
Malice Points were straightforward in function—spend them on items, or invest them to raise physical attributes.
Straightforward in function, anything but straightforward in effect.
Broadly, the system had two categories: upgrades and shopping. In practice, the detail was where it got interesting.
Upgrades covered nearly every aspect of the body.
On the grand end: stamina, intelligence, lifespan.
On the granular end: all manner of "life skills."
Lockpicking. Stealth. Eavesdropping. And so on…
As for why those counted as "life skills"—don't ask.
Shopping, meanwhile, was a carnival of oddities:
Glasses that made people unable to recognize you. Mysterious tonics—one bottle to sharpen your mind, two bottles to banish fatigue, three bottles to grant immortality. Smoke bombs that enabled displacement.
In short: if you had the points, the shop could sell you almost anything.
But Russell's most frequent purchase was actually a ten-point blind box—one that randomly produced the full architectural layout of a target residence.
Tonight's draw had been the home of the Duke of Morstan.
And yet somehow, a duke who controlled half the East India trade routes kept a safe full of horns.
It was absurd.
Russell glanced again at the trash scattered on the floor.
No point. He wasn't taking any of it. If he stole it, he'd have to return it later, and the sight of it alone was unpleasant.
Bad luck for his loot drops.
He'd carve a quick "was here" into the wall with the arrowhead and be gone. Tomorrow was the freshman opening ceremony, after all.
He bent to pick up the arrowhead—
—and the lights snapped on.
Someone had flipped the switch.
Russell froze, then lifted his gaze toward the doorway.
A slender figure stood there, a pistol in her hand. The dark muzzle was leveled directly at him, her delicate finger resting on the trigger as if she could fire at any moment.
"Don't make any sudden movements, sir. Put down what you're holding. Then raise both hands and stand up—slowly."
A silver-haired girl spoke in a clear, cool voice, like thin ice cracking across a lake.
Her eyes were a deep, Aegean blue—beautiful, and utterly cold.
She would shoot.
Russell confirmed it the instant their eyes met.
So he did as she ordered: set down the object in his hand, raised both arms, and rose carefully to his feet.
"Easy," he said. "A bright young lady like you would hate to stain the best years of her life with something irreversible over a moment's impulse. Wouldn't that be a shame?"
"I don't think executing a burglar caught trespassing at midnight would stain the best years of my life at all," the girl replied evenly.
"If anything, Scotland Yard might award me a civic medal."
"I'd bet Scotland Yard gives you a verbal commendation and calls it a day," Russell said with a shrug.
"And if they're really feeling generous, they can spend the budget on better tobacco for themselves."
"I won't argue with that," she said—and for the first time, she smiled, as if genuinely amused.
The tension in the room eased, just a fraction.
"Now then," she continued, tilting the gun slightly, "would you mind removing your mask, Mr. Gentleman Thief?"
Russell smiled. "What—are you a fan?"
His hands didn't move.
"That depends," she said. "I need to see your face first. If you're ugly, I might have to shoot you out of consideration for your other admirers."
"So it is an aesthetics committee," Russell sighed. "How heartbreaking, my beautiful lady."
He slowly brought his hands to his face, lifting the mask like a magician revealing the secret at the climax of a trick.
The girl narrowed her eyes, staring without blinking at Russell's uncovered features—
—and entirely failed to notice that something had appeared in the other hand he still held raised high.
[Item: Haze Array — Purchase Successful. Cost: 100 Malice Points.]
[Haze Array: Select a location (maximum 10 meters) and teleport to it upon use.
While moving within the smoke, you produce no footsteps or scent, and your vision is not impaired by the smoke.]
The system's private chime sounded in Russell's ear.
At the exact moment the mask was about to come fully away—
Russell slammed the object in his hand to the floor.
Pff—
Smoke erupted, swallowing the collection room in an instant. Russell's silhouette disappeared completely in the haze.
The girl's relaxed expression snapped into focus, her eyes scanning the smoke in rapid, precise sweeps.
"A smoke bomb…? When did he—?"
By the time the smoke thinned, the room was empty.
Only the opened safe remained, and the scattered horns and figurine pieces on the floor testified that anyone had ever been there.
The girl stood at the threshold, looking over the room.
The only exit was the door behind her.
So where did he go?
And that smoke bomb—how did he produce it? From where?
Her gaze moved slowly across the room, cataloguing details.
Nothing was missing.
Then something white slipped free with her motion and drifted down near her feet.
She glanced at it—a white card.
As she bent to retrieve it, her peripheral vision caught a different absence:
The brooch on her coat was gone.
She had been planning to wear it for tomorrow's opening ceremony.
Stolen?
When?
Frowning, she focused on the card.
In clean black print against the white background, a single name was written with elegant simplicity:
—MORIARTY
The handwriting was neat, refined—almost graceful. As if it belonged naturally to the name itself.
The girl arched a brow, feeling both the absurdity and the intrigue at once.
James Moriarty.
The Napoleon of London's criminal world. A shadowy "consultant" who gave criminals their strategies, yet kept his own hands free of blood.
A name meant to chill a city.
And here it was—used by a petty thief.
Was that provocation?
Or a declaration of war?
"Moriarty…"
The girl's smile deepened, but there was no warmth in her eyes.
Her fingertip traced the printed letters as she murmured the name softly—half to herself, half as if addressing the unseen man behind it:
"If you're Moriarty… then who am I?"
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