Patronage 101
I had anticipated it from the very start, though I never dreamed it would turn out to be the correct answer after all.
Faced with a truly dubious painting of a fox beastman, I let out an awkward laugh.
"Young master? This painting...?"
"Look at it, Claire. What do you feel?"
"Well, it's... a fox beastman? It has the face of a fox, but it walks on two legs... and it's wearing clothes... hm?"
"What is it?"
"Then why does this fox—no, this beastman—have... breasts...? Foxes aren't supposed to come with chests this—"
"They're not."
The sketch was genuinely strange. It preserved all the distinctive orange fur and sleek grace of a fox, and yet the creature walked upright like a human and wore a dress that left quite a lot of skin on display.
Set beside the sketches the other participants had produced, the difference was stark. They, too, had painted beasts walking on two legs, but nearly all of them had rendered carnivores as burly warriors. A fox could hardly be called a herbivore, true—but almost no painter had chosen a small animal like a fox or a rabbit.
The reason was simple. Even a passing thought made it plain: the size gap between a rabbit and a person was simply too great. That was why they painted carnivores—creatures roughly a person's size that could still strike a powerful impression.
Which meant that if someone had chosen a small animal like a fox instead, and painted it seductively down to and including the chest, the conclusion wrote itself.
So this world has them too... furries.
Was that really so surprising, come to think of it? Beastmen had gone extinct three hundred years ago and no longer existed anywhere, and no amount of magic or superhuman power was going to change what people were attracted to.
Granted, furries sat a little outside the mainstream of taste, but all the same.
"Y-young master, do you know what this kind of painting is?"
"It's called... a furry. Drawing an animal like a human."
"Th-this seems to go somewhat beyond simply 'drawing it like a human.'"
"Somewhat? It goes quite a lot beyond."
If it had merely stuck rabbit ears or a fox tail onto an otherwise human figure, I might have understood. But this creature was luxuriously furred and hung in that truly ambiguous middle ground between person and beast, which made it all the stranger to look at.
And when I finished my lecture on furries, Claire fixed me with a look of sheer horror and quietly took a single step away from my side.
"It's not like that."
"Young master. Don't tell me."
"I told you it's not."
"Then how is it you happen to know so much about—"
"No. I just heard about it somewhere. That's all."
I had known this misunderstanding was coming, so it hardly startled me. I answered in earnest all the same, because if she believed it for real, my standing in Claire's estimation stood to fall by a catastrophic margin.
Not that, judging by her usual tone of voice, my standing had anything left to fall from in the first place.
"Patron? What on earth have you been staring at all this time?"
"Ah, Miss Rin. Here, look at this."
"What is th... hm?"
"Like I said, this is a furry, which is when you—Miss Rin?"
"............"
Hm. Rin had stopped breathing.
The instant she laid eyes on the fox furry, she petrified like an ordinary scholar who had just cracked open the Necronomicon. She even dropped the brush she'd been holding for judging the entries.
While Rin remained confined to the psych ward for a while, Claire—recovering from her shock at least—spoke up.
"Wh-why on earth would anyone paint something like this?"
"Because there's demand for it, obviously? Though for all I know, the painter who made this doesn't actually share that taste."
"No, this is... I can't even..."
Claire seemed to have run out of strength to be appalled; unable to finish, she simply turned her eyes away from the furry painting.
Meanwhile Rin, newly discharged from the psych ward, quietly rose from her seat and picked something up off the table.
It was one of the small knives used for eating dessert.
"W-wait a moment? Miss Rin?"
"That thing... that thing is not art...!!"
"Miss Rin? The world holds all manner of tastes, so surely we can respect one another's—"
"Don't tell me... is that the reason you passed that fox painting, Patron...?"
"Well, it did have a certain furry air about it, so I picked it just in case—"
"I knew it! How stupid of me to think otherwise, even for the briefest moment! Step aside! That thing must be torn to shreds at once!"
"Just calm down for a second! Weren't you the one preaching respect for a painter's creativity and reinterpretation earlier?!"
"I said step aside!!"
Perhaps the fox furry was simply too far ahead of its time for a painter of Rin's classical stripe.
Only after I had barely talked Rin down from her fury—she had been ready to shred the painting then and there—did she ask, genuinely unable to comprehend:
"Then, Patron... did you pass that scribbler's piece because you were hoping for paintings like this?"
For good measure, the title she granted the painter of this sketch had been demoted from painter to plain scribbler.
"Young master, I don't understand either. If this truly isn't your taste, then why on earth did you pass it?"
"Answer us, Patron."
"Because it's interesting?"
"............"
"........."
"Come on, you two, go easy on me. I'm the one footing the bill here, aren't I? And I told you from the start this wasn't a selection based on skill."
"I... I simply cannot comprehend it. This... this so-called painting..."
Apparently she couldn't bring herself to acknowledge the fox furry as a painting at all.
After stumbling over her words a while longer, Rin finally let the matter end with a long, deep sigh.
"...Do as you please, Patron."
"I intend to."
I nodded along, since that had been my plan from the very beginning. Rin was my first artist, and cherishing her was only right—but letting her stand between me and my patronage dopamine would have been putting the cart before the horse.
Besides, I had now confirmed that a painter of furry art genuinely existed.
I'm looking forward to this.
Who was the artist behind this piece? And what kind of reaction would they show when we met?
I truly could not wait.
The audition, stretched across two days and one night, was run with real severity. The instant one assignment ended, the next was handed out; time limits were enforced to the letter; and at every stage, nearly half the field was cut without mercy.
And yet the mood among the rejected was not particularly bleak.
"Rejected. Rejected, of all things... damn it all."
"Chin up. Then again, what else would you expect of House Medici? They paid us a consolation stipend just for failing. Spend it carefully and I can eat comfortably for a week."
"True... at least now I can afford the paint set I've been coveting. Clearly the second son of House Medici wouldn't know talent if it bit him."
"You said it. Being made to paint to suit a patron like that—as an artist, I simply cannot condone it! Hmph!"
"Then perhaps you shouldn't have entered in the first place..."
"...Th-that's because I saw potential there! Ahem!"
The reason for their good humor was that the second son of House Medici, host of the audition, had seen fit to press a consolation stipend into the hands of every rejected contestant. And by any objective measure, it was not a small sum.
Of course there was disappointment. But this was no clean contest of pure skill; it was an audition where the winners were decided by the host's taste alone. Losing here entitled you to curse the host rather than doubt your own ability, and so the defeat proved surprisingly easy to swallow.
In a word: blaming others, plus a generous helping of moral victory. Pathetic as it looked, it was also—unexpectedly—an effective way of keeping one's spirit intact.
And so the audition carried on in that fashion for another day.
In the end, only two participants remained.
"Your final assignment, as you can see, is an interview with me."
"Yes."
"Y-yes!"
"This is a painter under my patronage, as well as the teacher who lent a hand with this audition. Miss Rin?"
"...It's Rin."
"Rin? Never heard the name..."
"You will soon enough. She is, after all, the artist I have chosen to patronize."
Despite my ringing declaration of confidence, Rin wore a strangely troubled expression.
While one of the two finalists—a pink-haired girl—gazed at Rin with undisguised envy, I pressed on.
"There's no need to drag this interview out, so we'll settle it with a single question. If I, your patron, requested it—would you paint absolutely anything? No matter what that something might be?"
"That is..."
"We'll begin with whoever feels confident."
While the other finalist, the young man, hesitated over my question, the pink-haired girl shot her hand into the air.
She was so sure of herself that she was practically bouncing in place.
"Right. Your name?"
"I-Iris!"
"Then answer me, Iris."
"Of course I could paint anything my patron desired! Even if it were a somewhat... difficult subject—as long as my patron is the one paying me, I will do anything! I already have experience, you see; I have worked under other patrons, painting whatever they wished!"
As she said this, Iris blinked at me several times in a row. Apparently the blinking was meant as a 'hint.'
And fair enough—every single piece Iris had submitted had suspicious beasts tucked away somewhere in it, in frankly eye-watering numbers. It was pandering of an almost brazen explicitness.
Before I could answer that confident declaration, the young man raised his hand, his face all but dripping with mirth.
"My lord, forgive my rudeness, but might I speak before her?"
"That's fine by me, but... what is it?"
"A word regarding the scribbler known as Iris."
Scribbler?
It was the very same label Rin had used—practically a slur, really—and at it, Iris's eyes flew wide.
The young man looked her over with a scornful smile. It was an exceedingly petty gaze.
"That scribbler has no qualification to be called a painter. She uses her art as nothing more than a means of earning money!"
"I-I would never—!"
"'I will paint whatever you wish'? And she says it with such confidence—while she's off painting nothing but those repulsive fur-covered beasts."
"......!!"
"I was astounded beyond words to see you climb this far, but as it happens, this worked out for the best. Now I have the chance to warn our future patron, in advance, of just how shameless a face you wear."
"That's—!"
Iris's pleading, desperate eyes turned toward me. From the look of it, she had become thoroughly convinced that I was, in fact, a devotee of the very 'repulsive fur-covered beasts' the young man kept invoking.
But naturally, I did not have a thing for furries.
"You dare style yourself a painter? Hilarious! In the fourth assignment, the forest piece—you painted the woods, and with it one of those repulsive beasts. And yet the result was dreadfully awkward. I wonder why?"
".........."
"Because the forest you set as your backdrop and the beast you chose as your subject were in complete disharmony! And I am not merely saying the subject itself was repulsive. The two sat together with utter unnaturalness—as though you had taken a painting of a forest and a painting of that beast and simply fused them!"
"......!!"
"You never harmonized them at all. You simply painted the beast on top of the forest. A collage—devoid of the painter's own conviction, interpretation, and intent. What meaning could such a stitched-together work possibly hold? And yet you claim you would paint anything asked of you? Oh, I don't doubt it. Of course you would—because you don't even know what you yourself want to paint, you scribbler who does nothing but cobble together pictures you've already painted once before!"
Under that single, merciless tirade, Iris's eyes trembled with nowhere left to flee.
Having realized, apparently, that furries were not my taste after all, she bowed her head deep.
"I'm... sorry."
Without giving anyone a chance to stop her, she flung open the door and bolted. For just an instant, I thought I glimpsed tears in her eyes.
The young man turned to Rin and me wearing the smug look of a man who had simply done what needed doing—
but Rin murmured, her face twisted in genuine contempt:
"Pathetic."
"Wh-what did you say?"
"Your fundamentals are poorer than those of the girl you just declared unfit to be a painter—and yet you have the nerve to lecture anyone? Aren't you even embarrassed? The way I see it, you have no right to call yourself a painter either."
"P-Patron! That insolent woman—!"
"Leave."
"Patron?"
"You called a painter under my patronage an 'insolent woman.' You claim to be a painter, yet here you are flapping your mouth instead of letting your work speak. And above all—I was never going to be your patron in the first place."
"W-wait, just a moment—!"
"Claire. Drag him out."
"As you say, young master."
"Patron! Patron!!"
And so the young man was hauled away by Claire's merciless grip.
Now, no one at all remained in the interview room.
...The audition, plainly and simply, had been a failure.