4. The End of a Misunderstanding
Rrrip.
"…………."
The canvas tore. By its nature, canvas was made thicker and tougher than ordinary paper, meant as it was to soak up paint and oil — and yet even so, if a painter misjudged her brush pressure, it would occasionally puncture or rip clean through.
But pressure control was the most basic of basics for any painter. Ruin a nearly finished piece by fumbling it, and you wouldn't even rate as a laughingstock.
Naturally, Rin — whose skill she took proper pride in — had never once made such a fundamental mistake.
Until moments ago, that is.
"Again……."
It tore.
Rin stared at the torn canvas without a flicker of feeling, then set it on the floor and mounted a fresh one. Thanks to the patron sponsoring her, she no longer had to spare a single thought for expenses like this.
And yet the torn canvases piling up at her feet had already passed five.
Rin seemed to sketch for a little while, but soon enough she was gazing up at empty air, letting her pencil wander wherever it pleased.
Rrrip!
Without properly looking at the canvas, without caring one whit about pressure control, she simply scrawled away, wild and heedless. Force crept steadily into her increasingly fevered strokes, until at last the pencil tore through the canvas, just as before.
And on that canvas, ripped apart mid-stroke —
"………Ha."
— was half of the face of that man: the one she needed to find, the one who had vanished without so much as a word.
And the tear ran precisely down the middle of his face, splitting it in two.
"What am I even doing……."
Rin murmured to herself, her pencil abandoned where it lay. An unusually bright moon and a soft breeze — utterly at odds with her mood — wrapped around her.
She had started painting in the studio inside the villa, but her chest had grown so stifling that she'd climbed the hill behind it instead. Working herself into a state like this was nothing but a waste of good canvas.
It was definitely him. I'm certain of it.
That man she had seen at midday in the capital's commercial district.
He had bought a robe partway through and wrapped himself in it, but she had seen, plain as day, the blond hair and the tanned brown skin. And that insolent escort of his had been the same as ever.
Had he come all the way from the East to the capital in the meantime? Well — if he ran a merchant house wealthy enough to operate ships, a visit to the capital was hardly strange.
Thinking so, she had hurried after him —
He was…… offering patronage.
Shoving through the crowd, she had finally picked him out once more, standing before some old beggar's stall and studying the painting there. The very moment she moved to approach, he spoke to the old beggar.
At those words, Rin had been unable to do anything but stop dead on the spot — dropping, of all things, the pouch of gold coins she carried, the one her patron had given her.
Truthfully, there had been no reason for the remark to shock her. The notion of a patron sponsoring exactly one artist and no other was absurd to begin with, and he might well have said it out of pity for the old beggar's lot.
If he had the means, sponsoring however many he pleased was his own affair. Rin had no standing to carp about it.
And yet she could not bring herself to say a single word.
I was…… fooling myself.
Rin had met clients before, and drinking companions, and cultured people, and people with a discerning eye. But he had been the first to be all of those things at once.
What was more, he had offered his patronage and kept at it without losing heart even under Rin's cold shoulder, and she had opened the door of her heart to him little by little.
And then that man had disappeared. No word, no warning.
She had rushed to the harbor and made inquiries, but the only answer she got was that he had already left the city.
……She had hoped there was a reason. That something truly unavoidable had come up — that he hadn't been disappointed in her, but had simply departed for a while, promising better days to come. To put it precisely, she could not have endured it without imagining so.
Because she refused to admit that she had let slip the one bond that might have been singular in her life, through her own foolishness and her own arrogant temper.
So she had set out to find him — and along the way, without meaning to, she had assumed that he, too, would go on remembering her. That just as she thought of that man as someone special, he must think of her as someone special in return.
What a fool's delusion.
I really am a joke.
From his side of things, surely it would all seem baffling. He had passed through a city, found a capable painter, tried to sponsor her, been refused, and moved on. That was all — and now, of all things, that painter was out hunting for him.
Small wonder, then, that Rin's spirits, newly aware of her own pitifulness, had plunged straight to the bottom.
Jingle.
"…………."
Something bumped against the foot of Rin, who had been shuttling between self-mockery and despair. It was a pouch of gold coins — heavy, and jingling.
A gift from the second son of the Medici family, her patron — and also the very thing that had slipped from her hand today at the sight of that man.
Because that one thoughtless act had laid bare, more nakedly than any confession, which of the two she truly treasured more.
On his patronage she had placed a commission with the information guild; she could tear through canvas after canvas without ever worrying about the cost; she had refitted her studio with brand-new equipment and tools —
— and she had accepted his kindness as though it were owed to her, all on the supremely lazy presumption that she could repay the debt someday.
Rin───
"Painting up here, are we? With the mana lamps lit and everything."
"……Who's there? I've never heard that voice before."
"Oh, just a painter of no particular note. A beggar, in point of fact."
"………!!"
Rin turned toward the unfamiliar voice that had come out of nowhere — and there stood a face she could never have forgotten if she tried.
The very old beggar she had seen that afternoon — the one that man had offered his patronage to.
Wrapped in his tattered blanket, he was walking toward her.
"Wh-what……?"
"I was passing nearby when I noticed the hilltop glowing unusually bright, so I climbed up for a look — never dreaming I'd meet a colleague of the trade. What a truly remarkable coincidence."
As it happened, Rin could wholeheartedly agree that it was a remarkable coincidence — though it left her breathless in a rather different sense.
"Call it fate, then — might we exchange a few words?"
"……I have no business with you. I'll be heading down."
"Mm. You see, I'm hoping to receive patronage of my own, and this old man isn't quite used to such matters."
"…………."
"I had thought to ask for a little advice."
Rin, who had been folding her easel and rising from her seat, stopped dead at those words. The word patronage on his lips rang out with terrible clarity.
"It would be best if it came from a painter already under patronage, I should think."
"……And how would you know whether I'm sponsored or not?"
"Why, it's plain as day. On a moonlit night like this, you climb a hill, light expensive mana lamps, and tear up five sheets of what looks to be rather fine canvas? Such extravagance is a privilege reserved for sponsored painters."
"………Fine. I'll indulge you for a moment."
"Much obliged."
The old beggar stepped up beside her. Strange, though he was clearly dressed in a filthy tattered blanket, that not the faintest stench rose from him.
His eyes went over the sketches on the canvases she had torn up, one by one.
"All portraits, I see. Might this be your patron's face?"
"……No."
"Hm, is that so? Then you might consider painting your patron a portrait all the same. From the look of things, you have a patron who cares for you dearly — I dare say it would move them deeply."
"Cares for…… me? How could you possibly know that?"
"Well, there are the forms of support I mentioned — and he has brought his painter along with him, all the way from the East to the capital."
"What?"
"Your accent is pure East Country, miss. The difference is subtle, but experience teaches one to hear it. In other words — a young lady painter from the East, no daughter of the capital, is standing on a hill here in the capital. And not just any hill, but this fashionable one where the villas of powerful nobles cluster. I'd wager a powerful noble — your patron, no doubt — came to the capital and brought you along. Am I wrong?"
"……No."
"To most patrons, a painter is a convenient tool and a means of burnishing one's name, nothing more. Well — if all you do is paint, contribute nothing else productive, and live off another's bread, then even such treatment is something to be grateful for. But now and then, very rarely, there comes a patron with a good eye and a good heart. Just like yours."
At those words, so steeped in the wisdom and experience of a long life, Rin found herself thinking of her patron despite herself.
The second son of the Medici family.
"Has your patron ever slighted you?"
"No."
He had addressed her, unfailingly, as "Teacher," with respect. He had never once forced her to paint what he wanted.
"Has your patron ever disparaged your work?"
"……Never."
He caught every intention and every hidden meaning in her paintings and showered them with praise. His compliments were never the flat, hollow things Rin was used to hearing from others — they brimmed with sincerity.
"Is your patron stingy with his money?"
"………No."
Just that very day, he had pressed a pouch of gold coins into her hands — meaning for her to see the capital's art and every kind of supply, and explore to her heart's content without a care for money.
"A fine patron indeed. You've had good fortune, miss."
"But……"
"Hm?"
"I know he's a good person…… and yet."
Every time the second son of the Medici family praised her work — kindly, respectfully, with his superb eye and effortless refinement —
her patron and that man kept blurring together before her eyes.
"It would be better if I just gave up one of them entirely."
That man — the first person ever to reach out to her in her life — and her patron, who might perhaps become her second bond.
Because there she stood, flailing between the two, unable to choose either one.
At first she had figured she could simply take her patron's help, repay the debt, and then go to that man — but the more praise and support she accepted from her patron, the heavier the guilt and the shame she felt toward him grew. There she was, truly pathetic and hopelessly indecisive.
And so Rin came to feel revulsion toward herself.
I really am a tiresome, bothersome woman.
"So I'm hardly fit to advise anyone about patronage. Besides, you…… don't look like you need advice in the first place."
"Is that so? Patrons can be a trickier lot than one expects — every so often they act in ways you'd never predict. That, at least, is where I could use some advice."
"Then I know even less than you do."
"For instance — say a patron went about in disguise. Like that young gentleman you crossed paths with this afternoon."
"………What?"
In disguise?
"Well, I've no room to talk on that score. I could feel you glaring daggers at me this afternoon, you see, so I came up to you just as I am — in this disguise."
"Huh?"
"Allow me to introduce myself once more."
Vwoom!
The old beggar's body was swallowed in blue light, and in the next moment his ragged blanket and grimy face reshaped themselves into something else entirely.
And so the beggar became a dignified old gentleman in magnificent clothes.
"A painter — Raffaello, at your service. My apologies for the deception. You will have heard the name, I should think—"
"In disguise."
"……Hm?"
"What do you mean? That man was in disguise!?"
"Well — yes, I suppose he was. With my Eye of Insight, a disguise built on magical perfume is something I can pierce without so much as blinking."
In disguise.
The truth was, that man's real face was something else entirely. He had come to her with his true self hidden away. The man she knew was not the man he really was.
Then who in the world was he───
"Ahem! Well then, let's head back for now."
"Back…… where?"
"The truth is, your patron asked me to bring you back to him. I must confess I was curious myself as to why he would go about the capital in disguise on purpose."
"Ah."
"……Miss?"
In disguise. Patron. That man. He had wandered the capital disguised.
Every last piece clicked together inside Rin's head.
And she —
"Ha, hahahahaha!!"
Rin laughed like a madwoman. She couldn't help herself.
Whether by coincidence or by someone's design, every question and every doubt that had been tormenting her dissolved, all at once, in this very moment. And so laugh she must.
Of course —
"………."
The second son — who, having been told that a certain painter was in low spirits, had concluded that a meeting with the grandmaster himself would set her right, and had begged Raffaello to help comfort her — and Raffaello, who had dutifully gone to fetch the painter and escort her back —
could only recoil in alarm at the sight of Rin: a woman who had looked as miserable as could be mere moments ago and was now suddenly cackling at the sky.
Grandmaster and grizzled veteran be damned — right now, Rin was genuinely terrifying……