3. The Painter and the Patron
"Why? Simply because that's what being a professional means?"
"It's less about that, really... I do the work I'm paid for, that's all. It's only natural, isn't it?"
"'Only natural,' is it?"
"Yes. What that person said was right about me. I... paint pictures in order to make money. With no magic and no special talent, the only thing someone like me could do was draw and sell."
...
"So I keep painting so that the money keeps coming. There's nothing strange about that, is there?"
Iris smiled — the same hollow, empty smile as ever.
"They say artists live on dreams rather than bread."
"It wouldn't be a wrong saying. Take that painter from the audition, Rin... you could tell just how hard she's worked."
"How so?"
"She had calluses on her little finger, didn't she? Those come from bracing your finger against the canvas while you paint. If she pressed and pressed until the calluses set in, that means she's painted exactly that much."
As she said it, Iris quietly slipped her hands behind her back. But I had seen it plainly enough — her own little finger carried calluses too.
"Someone like that has to be far greater than the likes of me. I could never become that kind of artist."
"Then what are you?"
"Me? I'm just a laborer. Or maybe a subcontractor? I draw whatever the person paying me asks for, that's all. You mustn't mix in your own thoughts or intentions. Do that and the client rejects the piece — and then you go hungry for days."
...
"My siblings insist they're fine, that they can go days without food and barely feel it... Maybe I could stomach it for myself, but I have no intention of watching those children starve while I sneak in my own interpretations. I'm nothing but a brush, you see. A tool that paints exactly what the client wants."
Not an artist. A tool.
Having rated herself in exactly those terms, Iris let the corners of her mouth curl up slightly, as if it were her honest conviction. But did she realize? That her eyes, right at that moment, had sunk deep, deep down.
"That's how I make it through each day. That's how my siblings don't go hungry. That's how...."
"Is there no picture you want to paint? No dream of becoming a great painter?"
"Ha, haha. My lord, things like that are luxuries for someone like me. I have tonight's dinner to worry about, and siblings going hungry because there's no money. And you ask me about dreams? About a picture I want to paint?"
Swish.
Iris quietly drew a cloth over the other paintings she had made. Then, instead, she brought out the furry pieces that had been draped beneath it and lined them up in a row.
"Those are all just child's play. Paintings are things like these."
"Why?"
"Because a painting that doesn't sell has no meaning. If it can't earn money, then those things are just smears — time I wasted. Smears with no value whatsoever."
"Then why did you paint these smears?"
"...Good question. Living in a room crammed full of meaningless smears, I suppose I found myself wanting to paint one more — without even noticing."
Iris turned her head away, as if deliberately refusing to look at the 'smears' she had just spoken of.
But if those smears bore far more care and devotion than the furry paintings she called art... was that just my imagination?
Whatever I said to her here, it wouldn't mean a thing.
It would be simple enough to say it right here: paint what you want to paint, your heart is what matters, you aren't a tool but an artist. But those would be nothing but simple, hollow words.
After all, dreams may keep a person alive — they do not keep a person fed.
The painter called Iris had seen her dream collapse long ago, ground down beneath the realities of daily bread and the siblings who depended on her. No doubt that was why she had fled the audition without mustering a single rebuttal to the young painter — his words had struck her dead center.
And so, I—
"I've heard your answer."
"Th-then...?"
For an instant, hope flickered in Iris's eyes — and I quietly shook my head. At that, as though she had expected it all along, she bowed her head.
Still, you have to hear a Korean out to the very end.
"I don't know about patronage, but I do think highly of your attitude... Commissioning a painting from you, at least, should be doable."
"A c-commission?"
"For an advance — how's this much?"
"Haaah...!!"
I held out to Iris the very pouch of gold coins Claire had given me, and the instant she registered its weight, she stopped breathing altogether.
Before she could faint on the spot for a second time, I hurried on.
"See the commission through properly, and of course there'll be more where that came from."
"Wh-what, what kind of painting...? F-for, for most any painting, surely that Rin person would paint it for you?"
"Ah, Rin. I doubt she'd paint it for me even if I asked."
"...She takes the money and then won't do the work?"
"Anyway, my commission is simple. Paint me what you're best at."
"...What?"
"You have one week. A week from now, I'll come back to this house. We'll see it then."
"W-wait, just a moment!? You can't leave it that vague—!"
"You said you do the work you're paid for, didn't you? Looking forward to it."
And so, leaving the weighty advance resting in Iris's hands, I stepped out the door.
What kind of painting would she show me a week from now?
I had a feeling I'd rather enjoy the wait.
He was gone. Gone, just like that.
She had crossed paths with the second son of House Medici out of nowhere, and just as abruptly, he had vanished. It was so unreal that she honestly wondered whether she had dreamed the whole encounter.
Jingle.
"...No. It wasn't."
Because the weighty pouch of gold still resting in her palm assured her, beyond any doubt, that this was reality.
Whether from the pouch's weight or from some other emotion entirely, Iris's hand was trembling as she peeked inside.
W-with this...!
He had called it a mere advance — and yet it dwarfed every payment she had ever received. If she guarded this single pouch and spent nothing else, it would somehow see them through a month.
And he had promised even more than this once the commission was done.
Trembling at the first fortune she had ever held in her life, Iris's eyes flew wide open.
I-I have to paint it. Whatever it is, I have to paint it!
But paint what?
"The painting I'm... best at."
Mulling over the second son's instructions, Iris suddenly barked a hollow laugh. "What I'm best at" was one way to put it — but she had realized that, in practice, the commission could only ever mean one single kind of picture.
The 'paintings' left over once the countless 'smears' were cleared away.
Pictures of beasts wearing human shapes, striking every sort of seductive pose imaginable.
So... it really was like that after all.
She had assumed she'd misjudged him at the audition, but the second son of House Medici was, it turned out, a man with a taste for furries. Naturally — he could hardly announce that in the middle of the audition itself, so he had crept here in secret to place his commission instead.
All that talk — paint what you want, don't you dream of being a great painter — and yet, in the end, he was exactly the same animal as every other man.
Having accepted that truth, Iris quietly took her seat before the easel. It was simple. All she had to do was paint what she had always painted.
What she had always painted.
What she had always truly hated to paint.
Furry art.
Why is it that people who like these fuzzy beasts are always so suspiciously rich?
In the end, it was merely an extension of the work she always did. The only difference was that the pay far outstripped any other commission.
And that alone, somehow, was enough to stoke her motivation back to life.
The reason she painted was—
"Mom! Look — it's a picture of our family!"
"Oh, how pretty. Does our little daughter want to become a painter someday?"
"Yeah! I'm gonna be a painter! And I'll paint lots and lots of pretty things!"
...
No other reason. Nothing at all.
Only so her siblings would not go hungry. Only so this miserable life could drag on one more day.
Iris shoved the memory that had surfaced unbidden firmly back down, and set her brush moving. For the woman she was now, it was a memory with no use at all.
How long did she work like that?
The coin pouch had been handed off to her siblings; to make the one-week deadline, Iris was sleeping as little as her body would allow and clinging to nothing but the painting — until, at last—
"...Done."
Against all odds, she had brought the painting to completion in five days flat. Gazing at the fruit of five days' sweat and labor, her eyes were hollow.
This was a painting. Nothing like those smears that would never sell.
A painting that would keep her and her siblings from starving.
A painting that could carry their hand-to-mouth life in the back-alley shantytown onward, one day at a time.
Something her dreams, her yearnings, her wishes could never hope to rival.
A painting that made money.
"If only he'd commission me again and again..."
If the second son kept coming back, her siblings would never have to starve again. If she saved with care, they might even escape this shanty someday. When the little ones fell ill, she could do more than hold them and stroke their hair — she could buy them medicine.
She could not leave children so young to live in a shack that was half a breath from falling down.
For that, Iris was confident she could take commissions like this over and over — again and again and again, even if it took the rest of her life.
Every fresh commission would turn her dream — already no more than dust — one shade closer to ash. But in exact proportion, reality would grow abundant.
Dream, or reality.
Forced to choose between the two, the answer was, of course, reality.
...Time for a short rest.
She had sprinted like a madwoman, haunted by the thought that she must not, could not miss the deadline — but mercifully, two days still remained.
Not that she could laze about forever. She had to see whether she could pick up other commissions, and there were finishing touches yet to be done on the furry piece.
But this one moment — for this one moment, she could allow herself a sweet, deep sleep.
And so Iris nodded off in her chair, head bobbing — and by the time she woke again—
"...Huh?"
The furry painting she had poured five days of her life into was gone.
Her reality, the money, the medicine, the new home — vanished.
Iris stared blankly at the stripped, empty easel.
"N-no! No!"
With a desperate scream, she whirled around and searched the room. There had to be a trace. There had to be something—
"...!"
Searching like a woman possessed, Iris soon stumbled upon footprints left by an unknown visitor. Their maker, it seemed, had never even bothered to hide them: the trail ran straight across the studio floor and out through its one and only window.
Without a moment's hesitation, Iris clambered over the shanty's windowsill and dropped down.
She ran, following the prints as they wound from the back alley into somewhere filthier and darker still—
and out of the darkness, a figure emerged.
"You're...?"
"Long time no see, scribbler."
The young painter from the audition — the one who had rained condemnation down upon her.
There he stood, wearing that jeering smirk of his.
...Along with the furry painting Iris had made.