The End of the Misunderstanding
“...Master Raffaello, I believe you said?”
“Such formality, all of a sudden...?”
“Well, one can hardly speak carelessly to a grandmaster of the arts—and one's senior in the field, no less.”
Raffaello had plenty he wanted to say, but his seasoned judgment and years of experience warned him to keep his mouth shut. He resolved to chalk up her mad fit of laughter from moments ago to a young painter struck by sudden enlightenment.
Well, after all, hadn't he himself committed any number of eccentric acts in his youth, all in the name of finding inspiration? Looked at that way, it wasn't such a strange thing at all... It probably wasn't. Probably.
With a small cough, Raffaello turned to Rin, who still wore that faint smile.
“In any case, it is time we returned to the villa.”
“Master Raffaello, there is something I wish to ask you.”
“And... what might that be?”
“I believe that deceiving others with disguises and the like is... a rather outrageous thing to do.”
“That is...”
That was true enough—but saying such a thing directly to Raffaello, who had deceived Rin with a disguise mere minutes ago, left him in a genuinely impossible position to answer.
Of course, what Rin spoke of had nothing to do with Raffaello at all. From where he stood, however, there was no way to interpret her words except as aimed squarely at him.
Raffaello hurriedly pressed on with an excuse that wasn't much of an excuse.
“Still—surely there was a reason. Some perfectly good reason for it?”
“A reason...?”
“Not out of any vicious intent to deceive, mind you. Perhaps one was asked to by someone, or... perhaps the disguise simply made it easier to approach... In short, I speak of reasons rooted in consideration for the other party. Ahem.”
True, he had approached her disguised as a beggarly old man—but had he come as his actual self, she might never have been able to speak to him with such perfect courtesy as she did now. It wasn't deception, you see. It was consideration.
Though even by his own reckoning, it was a rather shabby excuse for a grandmaster to make.
Rin quietly turned the words over in her mind.
“Consideration... for my sake...”
“Er... you there?”
“...Let us return.”
“Hm?”
“There is someone I must meet.”
Someone she must meet, hm? As it happened, Raffaello, too, had someone he needed to meet—someone he wished to meet and interrogate.
And to meet them most emphatically, at that.
Rin came back together with Raffaello.
Call it the authority of the art world's grandmaster, I suppose. He seemed to have talked the visibly sulking Rin into coming along after all.
Sending Raffaello instead of going myself had been the right call.
We had returned early from the banquet in the first place to lift Rin's sudden funk, and shipping off Raffaello—who had wedged himself into the outing anyway—had proven the right move.
I had no idea what exactly had plunged Rin into the doldrums, but knowing her temperament, the likeliest culprit was her art—and for a painter with Rin's fierce professional pride, an encounter with the greatest master of the age would have been diversion enough.
All the more so for a Rin who prized refinement and a connoisseur's eye; the two of them would have gotten along swimmingly.
“Thank you for granting my request, Master Raffaello.”
“...I find myself marveling at you anew, my boy.”
“Pardon?”
“How is it that every artist you take under your patronage is...”
Ah—how every artist I sponsor turns out to be a gem of genuine talent, was it?
Rin and Iris, after all. Enough to draw that kind of awe even from Raffaello.
“I'd say I have a discerning eye of my own.”
“So I see... yes, it does look that way.”
“Thank you.”
“I have someone to meet briefly, so I shall take my leave.”
So Raffaello was finally leaving the villa, then. I was grateful to him for talking with Rin, but having a grandmaster of his stature go into salesman mode to get me to buy his own paintings had been genuinely crushing. The prices were nothing short of brutal, after all.
The moment Raffaello left the room with a shake of his head, Rin opened the door and stepped in, as though relieving him of his post.
Whatever he'd said to her had plainly done her a world of good—her expression was far lighter than before.
“Your expression's looking better.”
“...To my eyes it is the very same blank face. Can you truly tell the difference, young master?”
“Can't you? One look and it's obvious.”
“I cannot.”
Claire shook her head as though scandalized, and at that same moment Rin took the seat across from me. How could she not tell? One glance, and surely anyone could see the mood had lifted.
I smiled and spoke to Rin right away.
“Miss Rin, feeling a bit better?”
“I apologize for causing you trouble.”
“It's fine. A patron worrying over his artist is only natural—so don't let it weigh on you.”
“Understood.”
“……”
“………”
Mm. This silence.
It had been awkward at first, but by now it was simply an accepted fixture of conversation with Rin. Normally I would carry the dialogue onward from here, and only on the rare days when her mood was good would she speak first.
Meeting Raffaello had brightened her, but perhaps a trace of gloom still lingered. Just as I moved to ask about it—
“My patron, there is something I must tell you.”
“To me?”
“Yes. The truth is... there was a man who offered me his patronage before you did.”
“Before me?”
“Strictly speaking, it came after you sent your letter—but I took yours for one of those form letters sent out to a dozen painters at once. So to me, that man's offer was the 'real' first proposal of patronage I ever received.”
“……”
“And I have given that man a great deal of thought, but in the end—”
“Hold on one moment, Miss Rin.”
“Yes?”
“Before that, there's something I need to show you. Claire?”
“...Young master, do you mean that in earnest?”
“Yep. I'm counting on you.”
Come to think of it, this little farce had been allowed to drag on far too long. And the reason was that watching the misconceptions and misunderstandings unfold had simply seemed fun—which, admittedly, was rather excessive of me.
Part of it, too, was that I had assumed Rin felt nothing particularly close toward the Golden Sun, the man who had first offered her patronage. Her response to the Golden Sun's advances had been quite cold, after all.
But with Rin still dwelling on the Golden Sun even now, I had been wrong—and Claire, who had voiced her concerns, had been right. Apparently I was rather hopeless when it came to the emotions tangled up in human relationships like these.
And so the only move left to a clumsy, oblivious fool was to lay the truth bare, without a single twist or turn.
Not that “Golden Sun” was the most dignified of aliases, in hindsight.
Whoosh!
“……”
“Sorry for deceiving you all this time, Miss Rin. The truth is, the man you met was... me.”
If the Golden Sun and I were one and the same, every problem would be solved.
I spritzed on the magic perfume Claire had handed me, and my appearance shifted into that of a blond man with bronzed, sun-tanned skin. With a sigh, Claire sprayed herself down as well, becoming the very 'insolent escort' Rin had spoken of.
The twist of the century: the man who had proposed patronage first, and the man who had proposed it second, were one and the same.
Watching Rin go speechless, I steeled myself to take a blow for it, but—
“...Hmhm.”
“Hm?”
Why, though?
Rin smiled—faintly, ever so faintly.
It was a truly beautiful smile, and yet, beauty aside, it was one I could not begin to comprehend.
“My patron... thank you for your consideration of me.”
“E-er, Miss Rin? Rin? I'm telling you, that man is me?”
“Yes. Let us say that it is so.”
“It's not a joke—it's the truth!”
“You truly do look just like him. I shall believe you.”
“I don't just look like him—I am him!?”
Rin nodded along with the most soulless reply imaginable. No matter how I looked at it, she was clearly not buying a word of it.
Don't tell me—does she think I'm so jealous of that man that I'm pretending to be him? For real?
“Miss Rin, we drank wine together, remember? I brought it myself!”
“That did happen. You do have a splendid palate for wine, my patron.”
“No—at first I couldn't drink it at all! Back when I was disguised as that man!”
“Yes, yes. Of course it was.”
“I praised your painting too! You know—the one that looks different depending on the angle!”
“Ah, the matter at the baron's villa. I remember it well.”
“Not that one! When we first met!”
“Yes—and was our first meeting not at the baron's villa?”
“No!”
However many times I sprayed the perfume and traded appearances amid my endless explanations, Rin's attitude never budged an inch.
For the moment I ignored the odd look Claire was giving me and kept straining to hammer the truth into Rin, but we made no headway at all.
“Please do not worry, my patron. In my heart, at this moment, there is only you—not a trace of that man.”
“That's what I keep telling you—it's me!”
“Yes. From now on, I shall regard it so.”
With those words, Rin smiled.
As if to say that this time, the trickster's role was mine—a smile like a mischievous imp's, one you would never see on the Rin of everyday.
The following day.
As ever, Claire rose before anyone else. She finished her morning training and was on her way to rouse the young master when, quite suddenly, her brow creased.
At her glaringly undisguised look, the woman who appeared from across the hall—Rin—answered without a flicker of expression.
“You seem awfully put out.”
“It is merely personal antipathy.”
“Fair enough. I feel the same. Where are you headed?”
“To wake the young master from his sweet slumber—the slumber of a young master who endured so much yesterday on a certain someone's account.”
“Is that so? And who, I wonder, put the patron through all that?”
“……”
Claire fixed Rin with a stare. It was a quiet gaze, yet threaded with a subtle, unspoken pressure.
But Rin, letting that light pressure slide right off her with the aid of the mana in her body, simply folded her arms.
“From the look of it, you knew all along as well. Surely you don't intend to scuttle my perfectly legitimate revenge?”
“...And how long do you intend to keep this up?”
“Who can say? As long as the patron toyed with me, perhaps? This is more fun than I expected—fun enough that I finally understand why he kept it a secret that he'd deceived me with a disguise.”
“The young master was in the wrong first, so I will not tell you to stop outright. But keep it measured, and know when to end it. He did come clean to you first, after all.”
“I would do that whether you said it or not. This is, in the end, a matter between a patron and his artist. An escort has no reason to meddle.”
Their gazes brushed past each other, light as a blade's graze. The two had never been on good terms, not even from their very first meeting. Only someone standing between them had ever kept them in the same room—left to their own devices, they had never once held a proper conversation.
The ill-mannered painter. The insolent escort. The two women, each having judged the other thus, were just about to end their 'loathing among one's own kind'—diagnosed so by a certain young master and patron—and turn away, when—
“...Master Raffaello?”
“Did you not depart yesterday? And what might you be holding...?”
“Er... hrm.”
Raffaello, standing in an excruciatingly awkward posture, had quietly drawn near to the second son's bedchamber.
They had both believed him gone home yesterday, and his appearance left them briefly flustered—but soon their eyes converged on a single point.
The painting of a rabbit and a wolf, in unmistakable furry style, that Raffaello was holding.
“……”
“……”
There were so many things wrapped up in that look—after all, they had never managed a proper conversation with him yesterday—but Rin, who knew exactly what manner of grandmaster Raffaello was, fixed him with a stare of flat, utter disbelief.
Just as Raffaello, weathering the ferocious stares of the two women, seemed to weigh something and opened his mouth—
“This painting depicts animals as human beings, and its imagination and expressiveness in critiquing reality—”
“Oh, Master Raffaello! I've finished that rabbit-and-fox furry sketch you asked for! Just as you emphasized, I paid special attention to the figure and the pose... Master Raffaello?”
“……”
“……”
“...Respect one another's tastes. It is the first law of art.”
If Raffaello, one of the greatest masters of the age, declared it so, then it was beyond doubt a law of art. A law that every artist must uphold.
In which case, Rin resolved, she would retire from being an artist, effective immediately.
Because no matter how she looked at it, there was no respecting that...