Chapter 68
I’m translating the chapter and converting the in-universe screen text into styled HTML blocks while keeping the prose natural and consistent with the glossary.CHAPTER_TITLE: The Imperial Egg in California
At Crosier Fine Art’s headquarters in Manhattan, New York, James Miller, the chief appraiser, took a sip of coffee while gazing out at the green sweep of Central Park below his window.
The warm scent of the coffee rose to his nose.
This is happiness.
Was this not the life of a successful man?
This ease, felt from a private office overlooking Central Park.
A smile touched James’s lips.
This Munch case was one of the finest achievements of his career.
Some people might say all he had done was carry out the first round of verification as an appraiser, or connect the line to the Munch Museum.
But even that was no small thing.
When he thought of the shock that Munch’s early sketch had caused, even a minor role would leave a small mark on the art world.
Still.
The reunion with Helena had been unexpected.
Calling an old lover he had cut ties with after graduate school at Yale had not been easy.
His finger had hesitated over the call button more than once.
But in front of Munch’s sketch, private feelings meant nothing.
Fortunately, Helena had felt the same way.
For the moment they examined the sketch together in the museum vault, the awkwardness of the past and the faint feelings they had once held for each other had all vanished.
Only the unspoken understanding between two professionals standing before a work of art remained.
A good ending.
James let out a quiet laugh and set down his coffee cup.
Everything had wrapped up neatly.
Now he could handle the backlog and return to ordinary life.
He was spending that peaceful afternoon when his smartphone rang.
The name on the screen was Shin A-young (Eterna Gallery).
Without thinking much of it, James answered. He assumed she was only calling to offer her thanks.
"Hello, Representative Shin."
"Chief Miller, hello. I’m sorry to trouble you when you’re so busy."
Shin A-young’s voice was careful, but tinged with a strange excitement.
"Haha. Not at all. Busy? I’ve been bored out of my mind lately. So what can I do for you?"
"It’s about Appraiser Kim Si-woo. He’s in California right now."
"California?"
His hand, which had been bringing the coffee cup back to his lips, froze at the unexpected words.
"Yes. He found something there and said he needed Crosier Fine Art’s help."
James rose from his chair and began pacing the office.
"What kind of object is it?"
The short silence on the other end felt long.
He could hear Shin A-young draw a breath.
"It’s a Fabergé Imperial Egg."
Crash.
The coffee cup slipped from his hand and shattered on the floor.
He didn’t care about that at all.
James Miller’s face, reflected in the building’s window, had gone stone-still.
"...What did you say? Please say that again!"
"He says it’s one of the seven thought to have disappeared after the Russian Revolution. The Angel and Chariot Egg."
Fabergé Imperial Egg!
The moment he heard the name, the memory came back at once.
Back in graduate school, when he had written a paper on Fabergé Eggs in his art history class.
What his professor had said while speaking of the seven lost eggs.
These are the Holy Grail of the art world. If someone were to find one, it would mean rewriting history.
That had not been exaggeration.
A Fabergé Egg was not merely an expensive ornament.
It was an artifact that symbolized both the glittering height and the tragic fall of Imperial Russia’s Romanov dynasty.
A jeweled Easter egg given by the emperor to the empress every year from 1885 to 1917.
Every one of them concentrated the finest jewelry craftsmanship of its age.
When the flames of the 1917 Revolution swallowed Russia.
The Bolsheviks looted the eggs stored in the Kremlin Armory.
Some were sold off to the West to earn foreign currency.
Some vanished without a trace amid the chaos.
Finding the seven missing eggs would mean restoring a lost piece of history.
For decades, collectors and dealers around the world had hunted them with feverish obsession.
In 2014.
An old gold-colored egg bought at a flea market in the American Midwest for about fourteen thousand dollars by a scrap dealer who thought it was worth little more than its weight in gold.
When it was revealed to be one of the missing Imperial Eggs, the so-called Third Imperial Egg.
The appraised value was thirty-three million dollars.
About 3.3 billion won.
In today’s market, its value would be incomparably higher.
That incident shook the entire world and dominated every news headline.
The art world called it the greatest discovery of the century.
But such a miracle never happened again.
After that, rumors of people finding Fabergé Eggs surfaced from time to time.
And the result was always the same.
A meticulous imitation.
A fake that didn’t match the period.
Or outright fraud.
Under normal circumstances, he would have snorted.
They found a Fabergé Egg?
He heard claims like that more than ten times a year.
Every time, excited dealers requested an appraisal, and every time the result was disappointment.
But.
"Did you say the person who found it was Appraiser Kim Si-woo?"
James’s voice had dropped to a whisper, as if afraid someone might overhear.
"Yes. He confirmed it himself and even completed the purchase."
Kim Si-woo.
The appraiser who had turned a porcelain umbrella stand listed on eBay into a 80 billion won Qianlong vase.
The man who had found Edvard Munch’s early sketch of The Scream.
The one drawing the world’s attention right now through Nutflix’s documentary Singing Bird.
That man had found a Fabergé Egg.
James looked at the papers stacked on his desk.
The ordinary work he had been about to tidy up suddenly seemed trivial.
"Representative Shin."
"Yes."
"I’ll go to California myself."
"Personally? We can contact the California branch—"
"No. I need to see this with my own eyes."
James had already opened his computer and was searching for flights.
"If what Appraiser Kim says is true, then this is something Crosier Fine Art must throw its full weight behind."
A moment later, after ending the call, James sprang to his feet.
He grabbed his jacket and quickened his pace down the corridor.
His heart was pounding.
It was possible that an artifact carrying the last breath of the Romanov dynasty was waking again in the California sunlight.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
At Crosier Fine Art’s California branch.
A vast, fortress-like building near Inglewood, protected by layers of security.
In the basement second floor was a space where access by the general public was strictly forbidden.
The conservation science laboratory.
A vibration-free environment with strict temperature and humidity control.
Fluorescent X-ray analyzers, high-resolution micro-CT scanners, infrared reflectography equipment...
The line of instruments would not have been out of place in any major museum in the world.
James Miller had not slept a minute during the flight.
He had spent the entire trip reviewing papers and records on Fabergé Eggs without pause.
But there was no time to rest.
The Angel and Chariot Egg.
Made in 1888.
An Easter egg presented by Alexander III to Empress Maria Feodorovna.
The only surviving record was a single line in a 1922 inventory of Soviet government property, along with one black-and-white photograph.
After that, the Angel and Chariot Egg disappeared completely from history.
The moment he got off the plane, he was driven straight to the branch.
When he arrived at the entrance to the second-floor lab.
Appraiser Kim Si-woo, Nutflix’s Yang Dong-seok, and director Choi Min-ho were already there.
"Chief Miller."
He shook hands with Kim Si-woo.
James met Si-woo’s eyes.
There was certainty in them.
The eyes of someone who knows exactly what he has found.
"I saw the photos you sent from the plane."
James said.
"I’ll be honest. I can’t make a final judgment from the photos alone. But."
He paused briefly.
"That means I’m reserving judgment until I see it in person, not denying the possibility."
Kim Si-woo gave a slight nod.
"That’s why I asked Crosier Fine Art for help. Science has to prove what my appraisal suggests."
James’s mouth curved at that.
He was on a different level from the others who got excited and insisted something was authentic.
"Then let’s verify it right away."
The laboratory door opened.
At the center of the worktable.
Under a special light, an ornament came into view.
An angel pulling a chariot.
Atop the chariot sat an egg carved with vertical grooves.
The entire surface was covered in a dark brown crust.
Layers of old grease and dust had clung together so thickly it looked like nothing more than a corroded brass lump.
Who would look at this and think of a lost imperial treasure?
James put on white cotton gloves and approached the ornament carefully.
Lisa Chen, the California branch’s chief conservation scientist, stood at his side.
"Lisa. Inintroductions later. Let’s get started."
"Yes, Chief."
Lisa moved to the equipment.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
The next morning.
The first-floor conference room at Crosier Fine Art’s California branch.
Kim Si-woo arrived with Yang Dong-seok and director Choi Min-ho.
As always, Choi Min-ho had a GoPro in his hand.
Everyone had gathered to share the results of the first round of analysis James had run through the night.
The conference room darkened.
James opened his laptop and brought up the images.
"I’ve organized the preliminary findings from overnight."
As he opened the laptop, images appeared on the projector screen.
"First, look at the contamination layer."
A microscope enlargement.
The cross-section of the ornament’s surface.
"When people make fakes, they often apply artificial grime to make them look old. They soak them in chemicals or rub dirt into them. In those cases, the contamination layer tends to be uniform in thickness. Wherever you sample it, it’s about the same."
James pointed to the screen.
"But this object is different."
The image changed.
A side-by-side comparison of the upper and lower sides of the angel’s wings.
"The upper surface was directly exposed to air, so the contamination accumulated more heavily there. The lower surface, the shaded part that couldn’t be easily touched, is comparatively thinner. Inside the chariot wheel’s crevices, fine sediment has gathered in layered deposits over time."
James looked at Kim Si-woo.
"This is the kind of natural deposit pattern you only get from an object left in one place for decades. The contamination has accumulated differently from section to section according to gravity, humidity, and airflow. It’s difficult to recreate that artificially."
Kim Si-woo listened in silence.
"Next, the place where the gemstones were removed."
The screen changed again.
An enlarged image of the upper section where the egg was set.
"The remaining marks are not machine-made. You can see clear traces of hand carving and polishing, done one piece at a time with cutting tools. It’s a bezel setting."
"What about the shape of the stone grooves?" Si-woo asked.
"In the late 19th century, there wasn’t the mathematically precise brilliant cut we have today. Back then, the dominant style was the rose cut, where only the top of the gemstone was flattened. So the grooves that hold the stones are shallow and slightly irregular."
James enlarged one particular spot.
"If these grooves had been carved with modern precision to fit a brilliant cut perfectly, I would have declared it a fake on the spot. The setting method itself is definitely from the late 19th century."
He brought up the next image.
"This is the decisive part."
James’s voice rose a notch.
The screen displayed XRF analysis data.
"Gold purity: 56 zolotnik. That’s the purity standard used in the Russian Empire. Converted to modern units, it’s equivalent to 14 karat. It was the most common standard used in late 19th-century Russian goldwork."
His tone had remained steady up to that point.
But his finger grew taut as he pointed to the next item.
"What really caught my attention wasn’t the purity. It was the impurity pattern."
The graph on the screen enlarged.
Trace amounts of platinum, iridium, and ruthenium.
"What’s mixed into gold depends on where it was mined. It’s like a fingerprint. Even if two pieces are both 14 karat gold, gold mined in Australia and gold mined in Russia have completely different impurity compositions."
James traced the graph peaks one by one.
"The ratios of platinum, iridium, and ruthenium detected in this object. That combination appears only in gold mined from mines near Russia’s Ural Mountains in the 19th century. Modern refined gold has almost all of those impurities removed. Even if someone tried to add them back, matching this ratio would be impossible."
The conference room fell into a suffocating silence.
Yang Dong-seok swallowed as if his throat had gone dry.
James closed the laptop and said,
"Of course, this is only the preliminary analysis. We still need to examine the internal structure with micro-CT, conduct precision enamel analysis, and run cross-checks with three outside verification agencies. It’ll take at least a month."
James Miller composed his expression and continued.
"Honestly, I’ve been doing this for decades, and it’s rare to get this far without a single sign pointing to a fake."
Yang Dong-seok’s mouth fell open.
"Then this means..."
"Unfortunately, I still can’t say it’s authentic with certainty."
James raised a hand to stop Yang Dong-seok’s words.
"But I can’t deny that the chances of it being genuine are extremely high. If this is real... then it will truly be a historic discovery."
"I’ll wait. However long it takes, until you reach a conclusion."
At Kim Si-woo’s words, James Miller smiled.
"Good. Objects brought by people who know how to wait usually turn out to be real."
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
He returned to Korea.
The appraisal would take at least a month, perhaps longer.
But waiting was not difficult.
He already knew from the status window that it was authentic.
And Crosier Fine Art’s preliminary findings had revealed not a single trace of a fake.
That was enough.
The moment he opened the front door.
"Meow-"
Kkamangi came running to the entrance.
Then it lay down on the floor, exposed its belly, and looked up while its tail swayed gently.
Only one word fit that posture: seductive.
"Kkamangi, you were good, weren’t you?"
Kkamangi sprang up and pressed itself against him.
He picked it up with both hands.
In his arms, Kkamangi seemed pleased and kept flicking its tail.
"Oh? So you don’t even see your mother?"
His mother’s voice came from the living room.
She had been watering the plants, and now she wiped her hands on her apron and came over.
"No, you’re the one who pays more attention to the plants."
"You little brat!"
His mother laughed and lightly swatted his shoulder.
"Did things go well while you were away?"
"Yes. Thanks to Kkamangi, I think I found the object properly."
"Oh my. Is everyone going to make a fuss again?"
"We’ll have to see."
Si-woo smiled and kept his words measured.
Nothing had been confirmed yet.
Then his mother’s expression changed in an instant.
"Oh, right! My friends have been calling like crazy. Your name never stops coming up in the alumni group chat. You do know today’s the broadcast day, right?"
Only then did he remember.
Nutflix’s Singing Bird.
He had forgotten the release date while in the United States.
"Episode 2 is today."
He took out his smartphone and checked.
Time remaining until Singing Bird Episode 2.
One hour.
"Meow."
Kkamangi lifted its head in his arms and stared up at him.
With round eyes, it watched him intently and pressed a paw against his chest.
A request to pet it.
"All right. Wait a minute."
He carried Kkamangi carefully to the sofa and set it on his lap.
When he scratched under its chin, its eyes half-closed.
His mother headed into the kitchen and said,
"I’ll cut some fruit. Let’s watch it together in front of the TV."
"I’ll shower first and come back."
He was curious how Episode 2 had turned out.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
At the same time, in Tokyo, Japan.
In the living room of Yui’s house.
Knock, knock, knock.
When Yui opened the front door, Miako was standing there.
"Huh? Miako, you’re the first one here?"
"...I just happened to have something nearby, so I came early."
Yui glanced at the clock.
Thirty minutes before release.
Then Sakura and Hina arrived carrying pizza boxes.
Hina looked at Miako, who was already seated on the sofa, and snickered.
"Who was it that said, 'Why do I have to watch some Korean documentary anyway?'"
"..."
"And who was it that ended up crying after Episode 1 and was the first to say we should watch next week together too?"
"Shut up."
Miako snapped back irritably.
But two packs of tissues bought from a convenience store were already sitting on her lap.
Nobody asked about them.
They had all cried last time, after all.
Yui picked up the remote and turned on Nutflix.
The countdown kept shrinking.
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