3. The Painter and the Patron
"So... the picture I'm best at drawing, you said."
"It really is this one, after all."
Technically, she wasn't wrong. Iris seemed to earn a steady stream of commissions through her furry art, which meant she really was good at it. Frankly, when I compared her other paintings against her furry drawings, the furries were leagues ahead in sheer polish.
She could draw them well, no question about it... 'So I was wrong after all.'
Claire had been oddly hopeful too, which had me wondering if something different might happen, but apparently not. Claire, seemingly just as shell-shocked by the furry drawings, wore an expression of pure disbelief.
And even if Iris's reaction to being sponsored for furry art might have been delicious, it wouldn't have mattered—judging by her response a week ago, she clearly didn't enjoy drawing them in the slightest.
At the end of the day, these were pictures she forced herself to paint for money, for survival. Sponsoring those was never going to produce a satisfying reaction.
'Well, nothing to be done about it.'
I'd simply have to look for another artist besides Iris—
"And! Here's another furry drawing! This one's a rabbit!"
"...Huh?"
"And this is a bear! This one's a wolf!"
Before I could get a word in, Iris kept pulling out furry drawing after furry drawing and lining them up in front of Claire and me. A whole menagerie of them, every shape and size, spread out across the table.
At first I thought she meant to overwhelm us with sheer volume, but the drawings did share one thing in common beyond their subjects all being furry.
"They're all... sketches?"
"Yes. Due to some, ah, small circumstances, coloring them was out of the question."
"Small circumstances?"
"Exactly what I said—small circumstances, my lord. These are all drawings I made in the past two days."
For some reason, Iris seemed to glance toward Claire as she said it, but Claire had long since gone glassy-eyed, dazed by the endless parade of furry drawings.
Fine, I understood that circumstances had forced her to bring sketches instead of finished pieces. Even these were proper drawings rendered in black and white, merely left uncolored.
'More importantly—two days?'
She was telling me she'd produced over twenty furry sketches by the look of them, in a mere two days?
I couldn't fathom her intent in showing me these sketches, but one thing was certain: her skill at furry art was the real deal. This truly was what she drew best.
"If you were thinking one of these might happen to suit my taste—"
"No, that's not it. I know this isn't the sort of art you like, my lord."
"Then why...?"
"For me—"
Hold on. Iris steadied her breath, eyes still trembling, then carried on in a calm, level voice.
"For me, right now, these are the pictures I draw best. I'm embarrassed to paint them. Ashamed of them. I hate them. But looked at objectively, they are what I do best."
"Well, sure, but..."
"And it took me three months to reach this level with furry art."
Three months.
Even someone as hopelessly ignorant about art as I was knew that was a short time. At the very least, for digging into a single niche like furries and producing this level of finish, it was absurdly short.
Paint every single day, and you still wouldn't rack up a hundred canvases in that span. In an art world where practice and effort are absolute, a mere hundred works doesn't even register on the scale of effort.
But Iris had done it. And not simply because she was some prodigy.
"Until then, I thought about nothing but furries, asleep or awake. I went into the forest to observe how the beasts moved. I imitated the beasts myself. I studied existing furry art and kept grinding away at it. Honestly, it was effort I despised—but I figured that much effort was simply what it took to earn a living from painting."
"...So?"
"After three months of that effort, I ended up far better at furry drawings than the landscapes I'd always painted. So what if someone like me... put in that same effort to learn to paint something else entirely?"
"Something else being what?"
"For instance, whatever picture you desire would be just fine, my lord. I've heard you have a wonderful eye."
Someone around Iris had praised my eye? Who on earth?
The question could wait. Watching Iris speak, her voice no longer trembling, I focused on her words.
What she wanted to say had nothing to do with furry drawings.
Rather...
"Honestly, I don't know what the picture I want to paint even is. Even the landscapes I started with were only what I happened to choose first. I wanted to paint landscapes because they were better than furries."
"..."
"But I could never lose myself in searching for the picture I truly wanted. Day-to-day survival came first. Reality is far too cold for chasing dreams."
Iris's eyes turned resolute.
As though she had agonized over whether this was right, and finally reached her conclusion.
She took a single step forward and met my gaze.
"So I have a brazen request to make of you, my lord."
"...And that is?"
"..."
"So that I can find my dream, break free of this cold reality, and become an artist in the truest sense of the word."
Iris never denied the furry pictures she had painted.
To her, they stood for the reality that smothered her dreams—but they were also the pillar that had held up her and her siblings all this time.
And in the end, she never turned her back on that pillar. She acknowledged everything she had drawn until now, and instead of casting it aside, made it the foundation for something new.
"Please."
Iris bowed her head. Having said all she had to say, she waited for my verdict like a prisoner awaiting the court's judgment.
After all, no matter how many pretty words you dressed it in, patronage meant handing my money over to someone else. And for the sake of a field which, to borrow my father's phrase, was 'extremely unproductive.'
"Claire, what do you think?"
"As you will, young master."
"No jab today?"
"Whatever may come, your will is my will, young master, and your decision is my decision."
So saying, Claire closed her eyes. Ordinarily she was less a lady-in-waiting than a bad influence in knight's armor, but just this once she upheld my dignity and took a step back.
Which was exactly why Father and my brother kept her assigned as my escort, fully aware of the barbs she lobbed at me. Not that I'd plucked young Claire from obscurity with my own two hands, anyway.
Right. At the end of the day, the decision was mine. I was the one putting money into Iris's hands.
And my decision had been made long before now.
Jingle.
"Take this for now. Your payment for the commission."
"P-payment?"
"Unfortunately, furry drawings aren't to my taste, so I can't pay what I'd budgeted. This is exactly the advance we agreed on. If it hadn't been furries, it would have been several times more."
"...I'm sorry."
"Don't be. You just have to paint on from here."
"...Sorry?"
"To tell the truth, I don't particularly care for paintings. Call it a lack of interest. I've yet to see one that truly moved me. So I hope the dream you find someday turns out beautiful enough to stir even my heart."
"Oh..."
"Otherwise there'd be no point in my patronage, would there?"
Jingle!
The pouch of gold coins I pressed into Iris's hands, several times heavier than her commission fee.
That was my answer—and the patronage fund I would give her.
"Tell me anytime if it isn't enough. And feel free to visit the estate's annex whenever it suits you."
"Ah—yes."
Leaving Iris struggling for words, I rose from my seat, stepped out of the room, and walked out of the shanty. Claire had followed me the whole time without a word.
Then came the sound of someone's frantic footsteps.
"My lord! No—my patron!"
"..."
"Thank you! Truly... thank you! I will—I absolutely will prove that your choice was not mistaken! I will! I swear it!!"
Her face was a wreck of tears and snot, but...
the smile on Iris's face as she cried out was so bright, so utterly no longer hollow, that...
"I'm counting on you, Iris."
"Yes! Thank you for having me!"
I gave her a light wave and left the shanty behind.
As I led the way on foot, once we'd put some distance between us and the slums, Claire finally opened her mouth.
"So. Are you satisfied?"
"With what?"
"Your reason for patronizing artists was to savor their reactions, was it not? That insolent painter never gave you one, either."
"Well, Rin has her own sort of charm. And I'm looking forward to the moment that misunderstanding of hers comes to light."
"Then how was Iris?"
"How was she? Claire, are you seriously standing there asking me how it was?"
"...Young master, your face."
"It was the best, that's how!"
Because I knew what abuse Iris had endured at the audition. Because I'd seen how she lived. Because I understood the tangle of feelings she carried toward the furry drawings that kept her family fed.
And because I remembered that hollow smile from the very beginning.
Receiving my patronage and smiling that brightly—just that was enough. No, enough didn't cover it. It was overflowing.
Loud, over-the-top reactions aren't the only kind worth having. A reaction with a story behind it, with everything that came before it, can deliver perfect satisfaction with nothing but a smile.
'This. This is what it's all about.'
This pleasure, this delight, this dopamine—none of which I'd ever once tasted in my dull life as a second son.
"Claire, what am I going to do?"
"About what, young master?"
"I don't think I'll ever be able to stop patronizing artists now."
"When have you ever once heard me try to stop you? Do as you please."
A week well worth the wait. Rin, and now Iris. My roster of patronized artists was filling up in the most satisfying way.
"I wonder what sort of paintings Iris will make from here? That has me curious too."
"Perhaps you should worry about something else first?"
"Such as?"
"From what I hear, painters are a rather proud lot. Now that you patronize two of them at once, might relations between the two not turn sour?"
"Oh, come on. Like that'd happen."
Rin and Iris were complete strangers to begin with. They'd laid eyes on each other at the audition, and that was the extent of it.
Rin could be frosty, sure, but she wasn't the type to pick an open fight—and Iris even less so.
'They'll get along well enough.'
There was no reason for the two of them to clash in the first place.
Surely it would be so.
"So... you're Miss Rin, correct? We did meet at the audition."
"That's right. I hear we've come to share the same patron. But first, let's have a word about those fuzzy-beast pictures of yours..."
"Oh? So Miss Rin, who never spares a thought for her patron and paints only whatever she pleases, intends to criticize my work?"
"...What?"
"But tell me, Miss Rin. If the patron asked you for a furry drawing, would you paint one?"
"Where is this suddenly coming from?"
"From where I stand... it looks to me like you'd pocket the patron's money all the same, yet refuse the work for the sake of some useless pride."
"...And aren't you only saying that because you're a shallow little scribbler with no pride of your own?"
"..."
"..."