5. The Grandmaster's Disciple
All right. Time to take stock of the situation.
1. Last night, I exhausted myself trying to convince Rin and went to bed early.
2. As always, Claire woke me up — and my bedroom was full of people.
3. Among them stood Raffaello, who had left the villa yesterday.
4. And Raffaello was holding a furry painting??
What the hell. I couldn't process this. Wasn't there a massive disconnect between points three and four?
At the very least, if Raffaello disapproved of furry art the way Rin did, I could understand that.
He's... petting it. Like it's something terribly precious. Worse, the painting had been mounted in an ornate frame trimmed with gold. Where had he even gotten that thing? Don't tell me he'd brought it back with him when he left the villa yesterday?
"Um... Lord Raffaello?"
"Speak freely."
"Forgive my presumption, my lord, but didn't you leave the villa yesterday?"
"Ah, right — you'd gone to bed early, so of course you wouldn't know. As I told you, I only stepped out to see a friend and came straight back. Afterward, while you slept, I met with the head of House Medici and the young heir as well. And your sister, too."
Well, by that hour Father and my brother would have returned from the duke's banquet, so naturally they'd have crossed paths with him. I could only imagine the looks on the two of them, discovering Raffaello camped out in the villa past midnight. A sight I'd have paid good money to see.
My sister, though... no telling. You'd have to have caught her genuinely surprised at least once for that. She performed so much, so constantly, that her acting and her everyday self had long since blurred beyond telling apart.
Huh? Wait — then that meant...
"Then I should go see Father right away..."
"No need. Your family is remarkably considerate, you know. So that you and I could talk in comfort, they all set out from the villa early this morning."
Yes. Just as I'd expected. A family that never betrays your trust — in every possible sense.
That settled it, then. Don't expect any mercy from me in this round of pillow fights. If wooden blocks weren't enough, I'd stuff a rock or two in there. Not that my brother and sister — neither of them a magicless no-talent like me — would so much as flinch at that level.
Still, it was equally true that getting hit hurt, so I did find myself pondering what sort of special-issue pillow would earn the family's highest praise — but no. First things first: the problem standing right in front of me.
Namely, doing something about Raffaello, whose audacity proved every bit the match for his experience and reputation. The man still hadn't gone home, and it was morning.
"Let me say this once more. The matter of buying the painting..."
"Ah, that's all settled. It isn't a newly painted work, but sold is sold."
"It is?"
What? So Father had gone and bought it after all? That Father — agreed to pay the price of an entire castle?
My brother and sister had no particular love for paintings, and by Father's own doctrine the family already possessed more artwork than it needed. So why buy?
Father was the head of the house, so I wasn't about to object. Price aside, a painting by Raffaello did elevate the family's prestige — that much was simply true.
It did nag at me that he kept watching me with a rather knowing smile, but anyway.
"Lord Raffaello."
"Hm?"
"Then why haven't you gone home yet?"
You'd sold your painting, hadn't you? Your business was a success. So wasn't it time to head back? He surely wasn't plotting to sell yet another one — so why on earth wouldn't he leave?
At my rather blunt delivery of all that subtext, Raffaello gave a quiet chuckle.
"Didn't I tell you just now? Your family has arranged things so that you and I may have a conversation."
"A conversation about...?"
"That's separate from the painting I painted, but either way, this is also a talk about paintings. Have a look at this."
What Raffaello held out was, of course... a furry painting.
And not just any. It depicted a rabbit furry and a fox furry, their figures and poses given very generous emphasis. Both apparently female — chests thrust out, hips on proud display — with one crouched catlike in a stretching pose that pushed her rear skyward... let's stop there.
In any case, it was a thoroughly brazen piece. Honestly, even I felt my face scrunch up on its own.
"Looking at this with your eye, what thoughts arise?"
"May I be honest?"
"By all means."
"To me, my lord, it looks as though you are proudly flaunting a deviant appetite you could never confess to another living soul."
"What? N-no! It's nothing of the sort! Just this painting! I'm asking what thoughts the painting alone provokes in you!"
His easy smile a thing of the past, a badly rattled Raffaello hurried on. Not just me — Claire, Rin, even Iris, the artist who had painted the thing, all leveled slightly complicated looks at him, but the grandmaster, true to form, swept every one of them aside without a flicker.
Raffaello spoke calmly, and with certainty.
"The painting. Tell me — you feel nothing when you look at it?"
"...The poses are rather... seductive?"
"Precisely. And that is exactly the element I specially commissioned from this painter."
"...I'm sorry, what?"
"Draw animals as human beings — describe them as human beings — and a work takes on the power to satirize and indict reality. Consider the natures of the rabbit and the fox. The rabbit is prey; the fox, a predator. Yet here, the rabbit pushes her hindquarters toward the fox as if begging to be devoured. Through such an image, one can capture the contradiction and the irony of our world — the prey of reality, the lower classes, living out their lives without ever realizing they are being exploited by its predators, the upper crust. Do you follow?"
"..."
For all that his image had taken damage in my eyes from every conceivable direction, Raffaello was undeniably one of the greatest grandmasters this kingdom had ever produced. And when a man of that stature held forth with such eloquence, even I began, little by little, to see the furry art as satire of reality rather than the mere expression of a deviant appetite.
No matter how I looked at it — absolutely not — and yet when the supreme authority of the art world said so, I couldn't help tilting my head. Well... maybe?
And yet. Why did it sound less like theory and more like a man who'd been struck dead-center in a sore spot, talking faster and faster to paper over it?
Anyway, I nodded along suitably, and an apparently relieved(?) Raffaello pressed on.
"So — do you understand why I've brought all this up so suddenly?"
To smooth things over now that his deviant appetite had been laid bare? Or, with the furry coming-out behind him, to sound out whether I might be one of his own kind?
I could understand the probing, since I sponsored an artist who drew furries — but I'm not one of them, I tell you.
When I shook my head as if to say I truly had no idea, Fur-raello turned a shade more serious.
"I want to take the painter who made this — Iris — as my disciple."
"I beg your pardon?"
"Wh-what?"
It was a declaration so outrageous that even Iris, who had been listening in silence this whole time, blurted out a question before she knew it — enough to draw cries of shock even from Rin and Claire, who knew better than anyone what manner of grandmaster this man was.
"Let me confirm one thing. This Iris you sponsor appears to have left her training half-finished. Am I right?"
"...That's correct."
Iris had studied painting as a child too, but then, for reasons of her own, her family had ended up in a shack in the slums and she'd had to shoulder their livelihood — her education had been cut off there, leaving her to do nothing but churn out furry art ever since.
Having read the whole situation at a glance, Fur-raello nodded.
"It's awkward to say of myself, but becoming my disciple is no small feat. Search the entire capital right now, and you would casually find hundreds of painters desperate to study under me even briefly."
"..."
"And in my judgment, the most important thing in painting is... not passion. Not effort. Talent. That is simply how this industry works. There exists talent that no amount of toil can ever catch up to — and Iris has it."
Fur— no. As Raffaello said, in the arts, talent was absolute. That held true not only in this world but in the one I'd lived in before, too.
It was commonplace for a genius who'd dabbled for a season to outperform someone who had worked themselves half to death since childhood — and even among those geniuses, only a hand-picked few, the ones who paired effort with talent, could ever make a living by it.
Raffaello stood at the very summit of that world. Naturally he was a genius, and that he had poured in effort to match his gift went without saying.
And now that man was certifying Iris's talent and asking to take her as his disciple.
"That is what I wished to discuss with you."
"..."
Why was Raffaello raising this with me — not Iris's parents, not her guardian, but her mere patron? The answer was simple: because we both lived in the great city of the east.
If Iris became his disciple, she would naturally have to remain in the capital. And from that point on, the simple act of meeting her would grow hopelessly out of reach.
We could still correspond, of course — even back in the Medici city, most of our communication had been by letter. But exchanging letters at a distance where you could summon or visit someone any time you pleased was one thing. Having letters as your only thread of contact was another entirely.
Raffaello had probably noticed, from the moment I hauled both Rin and Iris along to the capital, that the interest I poured into these two painters ran deep. Under those circumstances, offering the discipleship to Iris alone could all too easily be read as a slight against House Medici. The offer itself was, naturally, beyond reproach — but House Medici had to be 'respected' first.
It was a matter of pride and friction so delicate that only noble society ran on it. Raffaello seemed comfortable with such things partly because he'd waded deep into aristocratic circles — but also, surely, because he had honored these unspoken lines faithfully from the very start. That was how he'd earned the regard of the duke and the rest of the peerage, and climbed all the way to a grandmaster's seat.
But pride, friction, all of that aside — what mattered to me, in the end, was this:
"Iris."
"...Yes, Patron?"
"What do... you think?"
The choice had to be Iris's own.
I had no intention of coercing the artists I sponsored into living by my will. This wasn't a question of ethics. It was purely for the sake of my dopamine and my patronage reactions.
A small-time artist rejoicing from the bottom of her heart — I had always believed that produced the finest reaction of all. In that sense, the only thing that truly mattered, in the end, was Iris's decision.
"Let me say this first. Even if you become Lord Raffaello's disciple, I won't be ending your patronage."
"...I, um. That is..."
"In exchange, promise me this: once you've learned enough and found the style of your own you spoke of, you come back east. That's my condition."
"Because, you see..."
Look — however you sliced it, if she happily collected the patronage and left without ever showing me a reaction, that would be a problem. A condition like this was necessary.
As I'd promised her before, Iris's goal was to find her own art to replace the furries — the paintings she truly wanted to make. And for that, becoming a grandmaster's disciple was surely worth more than remaining in the east—
"U-um, Patron? May I say something?"
"You've decided?"
"I decided the moment I first heard the offer."
"Oh?"
That was a little surprising. No — from where Iris stood, if she could become the disciple of a grandmaster like Raffaello, obviously there'd be nothing to think twice about.
Still, it was a shame. The villa had grown quite lively with Rin and Iris around. If Iris was staying in the capital, perhaps I ought to scout out some other artist. Raffaello, taking it entirely for granted that Iris would accept, was already wearing a smile.
"I refuse."
"...Huh?"
"What? You — do you mean that?"
"I mean... no matter how great a grandmaster you are, becoming the disciple of a man who looks at furry art and enjoys it is a bit..."
"..."
"..."
For once, even Rin was nodding along in fervent, heartfelt agreement with Iris's words. It was the moment the two painters' opinions aligned as one.
Hold on, though. Iris... didn't you paint this one?