The Painter and the Patron
"Still, I must say. That surprised me."
"What did?"
"Judging by your temperament, Young Master, I hardly expected you to take a fancy to a patronage non-virgin."
"...A patronage non-virgin? What kind of deranged vocabulary is that supposed to be?"
"Well, hasn't that painter Iris already had her patronage maidenhood broken in by other patrons? She would have giggled her way through painting exactly what those patrons wanted, drunk on the pleasure of their money, her brush flying every which way."
"Hence 'patronage non-virgin.'"
"At the very least, from a young master who craves the genuine reactions of the artists he sponsors, I never expected you to pick a painter liable to come back with something like, 'My... that's smaller than my old patron's...'"
"What on earth do you spend your days imagining...?"
Listening to Claire's nonsense—which seemed even more deranged than usual today—I made my way down the street. We were on the road back from Rin's studio, so I hadn't bothered with a disguise.
Strolling the main thoroughfares like this would have stirred up quite a commotion, but experience had long since taught me that slipping home through the back alleys worked just fine.
It wasn't that nobody recognized me around here; the frequency was simply low, and those who did recognize me tended to panic and hide before anything came of it. With Claire at my side, security was flawless besides.
And so, deep in contemplation over the profound question of whether Claire's mind worked this way because of the wine she guzzled like water, or whether she had simply been born that way—
Claire's face suddenly twisted.
"Claire? What's wrong?"
"Ahead of us. Those thugs from the other day."
"From the other... Ah."
Standing where Claire pointed was a burly man with a distinctly familiar face. The thug boss we'd met outside Rin's studio had apparently spotted us in turn, and came sidling over with a snicker.
Oh? That reaction was a novel change of pace.
"Hey there, young master? You really shouldn't go wandering into places like this. Just this once, I'll teach you a cheap lesson about how the world really works—"
"Claire, go easy on him and bring him over."
"Understood."
"...Huh? W-wait, hold on—?"
Perhaps some flicker of déjà vu reached him through our casual tones, because the thug boss backpedaled in a hurry. Claire's fist was faster.
It didn't take long for the boss and his gang, beaten to a pulp, to be kneeling before me.
"D-damn it... Twice now. Beaten by a woman, twice..."
"What was that?"
"I have learned a lesson from strong women, twice now! Though, now that I think of it, the pain felt about the same both times...?"
"Young Master, may I knock this one out?"
"I-I'm sorry! I don't know for what, but I'm sorry!"
"I was only passing through. Pick a fight with me first, and this is what happens."
"It's all our fault! We'll be leaving now!"
"B-boss? Then what about the place we were collecting from...?"
"Go collect it yourself, you mongrel! H-hehe. As for me, I shall be excusing myself!"
"Boss!"
Having offered up one of his underlings as a sacrifice, the thug boss bolted. The sacrificed underling, after a quick glance at me and Claire, soon sprinted off like his life depended on it too.
The knights did patrol and keep the peace, but this was one of the great cities of the East, and gaps in that security were inevitable—especially in back alleys like these, which sprawled across the city like spiderwebs.
Unless blood was actually spilled, the knights tended to let minor trouble slide here. Less out of laziness than plain arithmetic: there simply weren't enough hands to reach this deep.
I'd meant to head straight home after running the thugs off, but my eye caught on the weathered shack they'd had surrounded.
It was in a sorry state—the thugs must have kicked at it and hammered the walls while making their threats.
I could have walked away and left it at that, and no one would have said a word.
"Claire."
"Understood."
At my call, Claire drew a pouch of gold coins from her belt and passed it over. I walked up to the shack and knocked on a door that looked one blow from collapse.
I could sense several people stirring inside.
"You're in there, aren't you?"
"..."
"The thugs who came to collect their money are gone. They had the nerve to pick a fight with me, then ran off like dogs with their tails alight. So what does that make the man still standing here? A fellow not even worth one punch to thugs like them."
"..."
"Now, it just so happens my legs are aching. I could use somewhere to rest a while... Wouldn't someone care to lend me a chair, for a modest fee?"
"...Are they really gone?"
"Yep."
"Th-then..."
"Hey! Are you insane? Sis said not to open that door until she's back, no matter what!"
"B-but he says the thugs left... and he's even offering money..."
"It's obviously a trick! Hey! Get lost!"
"B-but if he's strong enough to chase off those thugs, maybe we shouldn't curse at him...?"
"...Get lost, please."
"Tacking 'please' on doesn't make it polite. Look, I'm happy to just walk away, but that door of yours looks about ready to fall over. Will it hold? I happen to be carrying exactly enough to fix it."
"P-please come in."
"Hey!"
"I-if it bothers you that much, then go earn the money to fix the door yourself... You can't even do that, so..."
When the shack door opened, what came tumbling out were two young children. I'd suspected as much from the voices—seven or eight years old, if that.
One girl who stammered, and one boy hunching his shoulders up as high as they'd go in a bid to look threatening.
With a smile at the pair of them, I stepped inside.
"Thanks for opening up. Now I can rest a while."
"S-so, about the payment..."
"Naturally, I'll pay. But shouldn't I pay once I've actually rested? If I handed it over up front, you two—the landlords, after all—could simply kick me out."
"Deal! We take the money first and then kick him out!"
"Y-you really have nothing between your ears..."
"What!?"
"Close siblings, I see. Do you two live here alone?"
"...We have an older sister."
"Our sister's amazing! A guy like you wouldn't be worth one punch to her!"
"B-but this guy's taller than you, sis..."
"...Then two punches!"
"I'm not here to fight anyone, so relax. More importantly..."
I had come in meaning only to press a little extra money into their hands, on top of the cost of the door.
But the interior was far tidier than I'd expected. Even in a shack, someone had patched and maintained it meticulously to keep out the rain and wind. Traces of a household quietly getting by showed everywhere you looked.
And what caught my eye above all—
"What's back there?"
"Not there! That's where Sis earns money!"
"I-it's where Big Sister paints..."
"Your sister paints? She's an artist?"
"Our sister's an amazing artist! She said some really important somebody is sponsoring her!"
"A-and thanks to that, even useless parasites like us only have to go hungry once every three days..."
"I see. I'd like to meet this sister of yours."
A girl at the head of a household, feeding her younger siblings with her paintings, in back alleys like this.
Rin had lived in back alleys too, but Rin had enjoyed a studio far better than a shack like this, and she had never been so destitute as to skip a meal every third day. The thugs hadn't come collecting from her, either.
From here I could see only part of an easel and a sliver of canvas, but even falling short of Rin's work, it was a rather fine painting. I'd wandered into this shack by pure chance, and yet a strange greed stirred in me.
Just who was this pint-sized painter supporting her family? With the audition a few days prior having ended in failure, my yearning for a second artist to sponsor had only grown sharper.
"Kids, I'm ho—...huh?"
"Sis! Kick that guy out already!"
"B-Big Sister. Some easy mark has graced us with his presence..."
"Wh... what?"
The girl who stepped in, both arms laden with wilted vegetables—back from the market, apparently—
Had familiar pink hair.
"...Iris?"
"N-nob, nob—"
"Iris?"
"Nob...le."
Thud.
"Sis! Hey! What did you do to our sister!"
"B-Big Sister!"
"...Claire. Do I look strange or something?"
"In dim lighting, your face does have quite the knockout effect."
"This girl, honestly."
"So. Feeling calmer now?"
"O-o-of course! Yes! Perfectly calm! Truly!"
"Doesn't look that way to me..."
"I'm calm, so please forgive me! Please! As for these children, I'll be sure to give them a thorough talking-to...!!"
"Sis! Why are you bowing your head to a guy like thaaa—!?"
"Be quiet, please...!"
As the freshly revived Iris clamped a rough hand over her little brother's mouth—
The little sister, having apparently deduced my identity all on her own, snapped to attention. She'd been oddly snide since the moment I arrived, but in this one respect she was remarkably pragmatic.
"F-forgive our rudeness, Second Son of House Medici..."
"How did you know I was the second son?"
"B-because our sister went to the audition hosted by the second son some days ago... N-not that she passed..."
Failed, huh.
"I'm truly sorry! Please, forgive my brother and sister...!!"
Watching Iris, one hand still sealing her brother's mouth, bow her head again and again beside her sister—
I quietly rose from my seat and beckoned to her.
"Shall we step inside for a moment?"
"Uh... yes?"
"It won't take long. Claire, you stay here."
"Understood."
Leaving the brother and sister with Claire—who for some reason wore that faintly disgruntled look again—I headed for the back of the shack, Iris cowering and trembling at my side. Calling it "the back" was generous; there was only one place to go.
"So this is your studio?"
"I-it's hardly fit to be called a studio! Just... a corner where I make my worthless little brushstrokes."
"Do you know why I called you back here?"
Taking my time over the various paintings hung about Iris's studio, I settled into its only chair and studied her. Her eyes had been quivering violently, but she soon grasped my meaning—and her face set with resolve.
"I-if you would forgive me with my body... then that would..."
"What are you talking about?"
"Huh?"
"Do that, and Claire will crack my skull open. Besides, I have no particular interest in that sort of thing."
"Y-your skull...? No interest...?"
"Your sister mentioned earlier that you failed the audition."
"..."
Perhaps the memory of that young man's tongue-lashing—condemnation dressed up as critique—came flooding back, for Iris bowed her head deeply once more.
But people's words should always be heard to the very end.
"That arrogant bastard who lectured you this way and that? He's the one who got rejected. Do you understand what that means?"
"Wh-what does that..."
For an instant—
Iris's breath seemed to stop. She stared at me with eyes that refused to believe it, faint hope and yearning welling up within them.
Well, it was a technicality more than anything. If she ran, then of course she'd failed—there was no way it counted as a deferral. If I had truly believed she hadn't been rejected, I'd have gone looking for her ages ago.
But the moment I saw the inside of this studio, my mind had changed.
It wasn't that there were no furry pieces—there were, but every last one had been shoved into the corner, hidden behind a cloth.
The rest of the studio brimmed with entirely different work. Proof that she wasn't drawing that art out of any love for it.
And so I resolved to give her one more chance.
"One more question, Iris."
"...Yes."
"If I, your patron, were to ask—would you paint anything I requested? No matter what it was?"
A question simple, if you wanted it to be, and thorny, if you wanted it that way instead. To it—
Iris...
"...Yes."
"..."
"If it is the painting you wish for... then as many as you like."
And with those words, she smiled.
Truly, it was a hollow smile.