The End of the Misunderstanding
The Medici family's villa stood in the capital.
Every family of standing, from east to west and north to south, kept a villa in the capital, the Medici included. The Medici villa, however, was one step smaller in scale than those of the other powerful noble houses.
That wasn't because the Medici ranked beneath them—it was simply that they had so little reason to come to the capital that they'd never bothered buying anything grander. Indeed, it took an occasion like this one, when every influential noble of the east gathered in a single place, to bring them here at all. That should say it all: it isn't as though I've been staying away from the capital for no reason.
And so, on the evening after the sun had set, at the long table spread within that very villa—
A bewitching woman with black hair cascading to her waist sat with her legs crossed, glaring at me with icy eyes.
"It's been a while, and you haven't changed one bit."
"What is it this time?"
"Still incompetent, still lazy, still spineless. I can't believe someone like you shares my blood."
"Well, I can't quite believe you're my sister either."
"Vanish from my sight at once. Merely laying eyes on a thing like you is a waste of time."
"Phew………"
She reacted exactly as I'd expected, so I let out a sigh. This was precisely why I'd gone to the trouble of disguising myself rather than risk running into her on the street.
Still, humoring this sort of 'game' was an older brother's duty, if it was one.
"What's the act this time? A domineering queen?"
"To be precise, a queen who tramples her incompetent vassals underfoot, despises them, and dispenses rewards while she's at it."
"How is that a reward?"
"That's because you wouldn't understand, big brother. Far more people than you'd think count being trampled beneath a beauty's feet and receiving her contemptuous gaze as a reward in itself. Business has been quite profitable, thanks to that."
"So this time it's not an academy festival play but a moneymaking scheme?"
"I only happened to play the queen in the drama club's production at first, but the response was better than I expected? So I started right up. I've already saved a full term's tuition, you know."
"The academy's future truly is bleak."
"Honestly, I agree. Even allowing for exam season, I get rather more customers than seems healthy."
As the conversation flowed on, the black-haired beauty—my goddamn sister—let her domineering posture and frozen expression melt away and broke into a giggle. What a thoroughly tiresome woman.
My sister delighted in this kind of performance. Her immersion in a role was considerable, and since acting was her dream for the future, you might call her a shining case of talent and ambition aligned… The problem was that I had become her favorite lab rat.
She found it hard to perform this way before Father, and our eldest brother was less reactive than she'd like, which took the fun out of it. So I did my best not to react either—but perhaps because I was the only target she had left, her role and her immersion both only deepened, and ignoring her grew harder by the day.
Had we met on the street, no doubt she wouldn't have dropped the act as she just had; it would have carried on and on. Actors live off the attention of others, so she knows no shame. In which case I'd have spent the whole day playing subject to a reward-granting queen in the middle of the capital's busiest thoroughfare.
As I quietly released one of my countless sighs, my sister propped her chin on her hand in a needlessly seductive pose and gazed at me. From where I sat, of course, the pose was anything but seductive—it made me want to retch.
"Ugh."
"Don't dry-heave. I'm not handing out rewards to you, big brother."
"Ugh."
"If any of the academy students who'd kill to be trampled underfoot by me—or fawned over by me—saw this, they'd die of envy, you know? Anyway, big brother, I take it something unpleasant happened?"
"Where did that come from all of a sudden?"
"Well, when you're in a bad mood, the lashes over your right eye droop just a little."
"…Seriously?"
"Nope? Kidding. Though I'd say it's safe to assume you're in a foul mood regardless?"
First Claire, and now my sister too. The shock of being caught out by the same trick twice wrenched a hollow smile from me. And the two of them even shared the distinction of being thoroughly tiresome women.
Consulting my sister about my worries would have been a meaningless, pointless exercise, so I'd simply kept my mouth shut—but as if she'd anticipated exactly that, she smirked and changed targets.
"Claire, tell me what happened."
"The young master was rejected."
"Hey."
"Rejected? Him? Don't tell me he actually confessed to someone!? Who was it?"
"An elderly painter, apparently a beggar or a vagrant."
"…Huh? Big brother?"
At Claire's answer, bewilderment bled into my sister's eyes. It had been a while since I'd seen her react like that—gratifying, in a way—but the content of the news was the problem.
Worse still, strictly speaking it wasn't even a lie.
"I wasn't rejected in that sense. A rejection, yes—but not like that."
"Big brother. A taste for men is one thing, but men that much older? Even I couldn't play along with that one…"
"Spare me the nonsense. And it wasn't a confession—it was an offer of patronage."
"Lifelong patronage? The 'stay by my side forever' kind?"
"Quit reading romance novels. I mean artist patronage."
"Oh, that thing?"
My sister was in her second year at the academy and had already been living in the capital on her own for a year, which perhaps explained why she seemed so well versed in the practice of artist patronage. Claire had said as much, after all—it was all the fashion in the capital.
My sister fixed me with a look of sheer disbelief.
"But big brother, why on earth patronage? What wind blew in out of nowhere?"
"I was bored."
"I beg your pardon?"
"I was bored, so I decided to patronize artists and enjoy their reactions. Is there a problem with that?"
"No? That's a perfectly reasonable reason, actually. And here I was worrying over nothing."
"Worrying?"
"I'd heard there are plenty of bastards who approach pretty artists under the banner of patronage and demand… favors of a carnal sort. I was worried my big brother—single since the day he was born, never once dated a woman—had finally stooped to exactly that sort of path."
"Must you fret over things so utterly pointless?"
"So, anyway—you offered patronage to a beggarly old painter and got shot down? And that's why you're sulking? You truly are a marvel, big brother. An old man. A beggar. Turned down by the one person on this earth who would have accepted patronage on the spot… Well, shall I introduce you to a painter I know?"
"No need. I'm already patronizing two."
"Really, now?"
My sister gave me an 'as if' look, as though daring me to drop the bluff. It was a deeply aggravating look.
"Rin and Iris. Both painters. One of them is genuinely skilled, and the other is skilled too… just only at one particular kind of picture."
"Rin and Iris? Are they both women, by any chance?"
"…They are."
"………"
"Don't give me that look."
"Big brother, truly…"
"I said don't."
My sister's unsubtle stare didn't ease until I'd gone dead serious on her.
As if, of course, even that had been part of the act from the very beginning.
"Just kidding. My big brother, single since birth? He'd never have the gall for that. As his sister, I know better than anyone."
"That stings in its own special way."
"Anyway, big brother—more to the point, what did you see in that beggarly old man that made you decide to patronize him?"
"His painting was good."
"His painting?"
"This one."
At my gesture behind me, Claire stepped one pace to the side, revealing the painting that hung on the banquet hall's wall.
My sister studied the portrait for a moment, then nodded at once.
"It really is beautifully done, I'll give it that? More than that, though—this is a Raffaello, isn't it?"
"Someone called it a forgery."
"Hmm? I'd say less a forgery than… it seems that beggarly old man added something all his own. I'm no art scholar, so I couldn't say for certain."
"What about passion? Soul?"
"Huh? You can tell that just by looking at a painting?"
"…Just asking."
"Well, it's a splendid painting either way. Whether it merits patronage I couldn't say, but that's your call, big brother… Hm?"
"What is it?"
"It's nothing, only—this painting seems abnormally thick for some rea—"
Creeeak.
"So you've both arrived."
"Father."
"Papa!"
"Under ordinary circumstances the youngest would be here as well and we'd all catch up properly, but everyone make yourselves ready. There is somewhere we must go."
"My sister and me as well?"
"Yes. Duke Eufrencia is holding a banquet. You understand what that means, I trust?"
Duke Eufrencia.
The only duke in this kingdom, and at the same time the sovereign of a duchy.
That duchy lay between the eastern and northern territories, not so very far from the Medici city. Indeed, judged purely by scale, both were among the handful of great cities of the east, and their economies were bound tightly together.
It was nothing strange, then, for House Medici to receive an invitation to Duke Eufrencia's banquet, nor for the entire family—including me and my sister—to attend.
Only one thing gnawed at me.
"Claire, you said Rin has been acting strangely?"
"The insolence has drained out of the insolent painter, my lord. She does nothing but stare at the ceiling, and bows her head in silence, I'm told."
"…I'm a little worried. Let's call on her once we've returned from the banquet."
I'd meant to visit her the moment dinner ended, but a duke's banquet would inevitably keep us out late. All I could do was hope Rin's spirits mended a little in the meantime.
Then again, nothing of note would happen at the banquet, so we might return sooner than expected. Duke Eufrencia's interest lay with Father and with my eldest brother, the house's next head—not with me or my sister.
For my part, what mattered was seeing that our precious bottom-tier artist didn't pine away, so I'd planned to drink modestly at the banquet and plead a pleasant buzz as my excuse to slip home early. But—
"You there."
"Yes?"
"I've decided it will be you."
"Good heavens—Raffaello chose that young man as the purchaser of his new work…?"
"I heard that this time even Her Royal Highness the Princess wished to buy it, and the competition reached absurd heights—and yet the person Raffaello chose was neither the Princess nor His Grace the Duke, but that young man? More to the point, who on earth is he?"
"…Judging by the crest, he appears to be of House Medici of the east."
"Medici? A distinguished family, to be sure, but aren't they eastern? Why would Raffaello, who works in the capital, choose a Medici he couldn't possibly have met before?"
The de facto greatest painter in the kingdom. A man who had been offered the post of court painter, and granted a title of nobility by the king—honorary, limited to a single generation, but a title all the same.
The great painter of whom it was said in jest that a single canvas was worth a castle—and even then, buyers lined up, so that one had to wait at least a year.
While Father, my eldest brother, my sister, and even Claire wore expressions of open astonishment, Raffaello himself walked straight up to me and extended his hand along with a smile.
"How about it? Care to try buying my painting?"
"………"
And yet… was it just my imagination?
This was unquestionably our first meeting. So why did his face look like one I'd seen somewhere before…?