The Grandmaster's Disciple
"I-Iris? Could you perhaps reconsider?"
"I-I'm sorry."
"Your talent is the real deal! Give me the chance to make it bloom!"
"No, thank you…… Besides, if it's a talent for paintings like that, I'd rather it never bloomed at all……"
"But you painted so readily when I asked you to earlier!"
"Th-that's only because I figured it would be difficult, and you were offering money……"
Watching Raffaello do his utmost to win her over while Iris politely parried his every advance, my chest swelled with something like awe. It was truly a battle between the Spear of Furry and the Shield of Furry.
Granted, one might find it absurd that Iris, who had painted the thing herself, would refuse Raffaello on the grounds that she didn't like furry art. But I understood her circumstances all too well.
To Iris, furry paintings weren't pictures she wanted to paint. They were pictures she'd had no choice but to paint.
She had only done it because Raffaello offered money — so being praised for it, being told she had talent for it, could hardly have brought her any joy.
Sure enough, even as she held the line against Raffaello's recruitment offensive, Iris kept darting glances my way, as if begging for help. It was that desperate look that made me open my mouth.
"Raffaello, what can you do if she herself says no? Please don't press Iris so hard."
"But why, in heaven's name! Among all my disciples, I've never seen talent like hers……! You mean to tell me I should let a gem like this slip away before my very eyes!?"
"The gem is refusing, isn't it? Besides, this is all very sudden. No matter how great a master you are, she couldn't possibly know anything about your teaching methods, so—"
"You're right!"
"Raffaello?"
"You've made me see it. I was being arrogant, simply because I'm a painter of some renown. Miss Iris — even if you won't accept a place as my disciple outright, might you at least come observe my atelier?"
"Observe…… it?"
"Miss Iris — no, in fact, I hereby invite everyone here to my atelier!"
……Oh?
"First, allow me to apologize. He's stubborn as an iron cable, so I imagine he was quite a burden on you. I'm truly sorry."
"Not at all."
"No, no. If anything, I'm grateful you humored Raffaello's nonsense with such gracious patience."
"Ahem, Elma. Was it really necessary to put it that way?"
"Be quiet, Raffaello. How many times has this happened now? You went to the Duke of Eufrencia's banquet and stayed out all night without a word — and worse, you dragged the heir of House Medici along with you!"
"Well, that's……"
"If it were only you who suffered the consequences, that would be the end of it — but how many times have I told you to think of the people who have to clean up after you!?"
"……I'm sorry."
"Goodness. I've lost count of how many times we've had this exact conversation."
"Ah, if it isn't rude to ask — what exactly is the relationship between you two……?"
"His wife."
"That damned husband of hers."
Inside the carriage Raffaello had called for.
Even with six people aboard — me, Claire, Rin, Iris, and those two — the luxurious carriage crossed the capital's streets with room to spare. While the four of us sat in a single row, Raffaello and the woman who had been riding with him took the seats across from us.
Though her age showed, the woman in glasses and formal attire still looked young enough to be mistaken for her early-to-mid thirties.
That woman is Raffaello's wife? Then does that mean……
"W-what is it? Stop looking at me as though I'm a piece of trash. Whatever this may look like, my wife and I are the same age."
"Raffaello, I'm afraid even a grandmaster's word doesn't make me believe such an obvious lie."
"It's true, I tell you, true. You see, my wife and I were childhood friends who lived right next door to each other."
"I'd say 'bitter rivals' is a more accurate term than 'childhood friends.' It remains so to this day."
"What — you confessed to me first, and yet you always act so cold at times like the— urgk!"
"Be quiet, Raffaello."
While Raffaello groaned from a completely unannounced elbow strike, his wife bowed her head to us once more and let out a sigh.
And it was no ordinary sigh. It was a heavy one, the kind that seemed to condense years upon years of accumulated fury and frustration.
"In any case, Raffaello has promised you a viewing of his atelier, so we shall show it to you as promised. However, a few areas are off-limits, so I would ask for your understanding on that point……"
"No…… no, Elma. It's fine to open the whole thing up."
"Raffaello? Has dementia finally set in? That place is off-limits to anyone who isn't me, you, or your disciples—"
"That's precisely why it's fine. The pink-haired Miss Iris there will look at it and decide whether or not she accepts a place as my disciple."
"……Did I hear you correctly? It won't be you deciding, but that girl?"
"I offered her a place as my disciple and was refused. At this rate, I'll have no choice but to resort to every means available and beg on my knees, won't I?"
Still crumpled in the corner of the carriage thanks to the earlier elbow attack, Raffaello said it with a smile — and turned his gaze squarely toward Iris.
Just as his wife Elma had said, it seemed Raffaello was the sort of man who could not rest until he possessed whatever had caught his eye. An iron-cable stubbornness, you might call it.
The grandmaster's greed had turned toward the artist I had marked for myself — which was, strangely, both gratifying and worrying at once. Suddenly, something Claire had once said came to mind.
'The patron of virgins…… forget the patrons of the past, and a new patron in the capital……'
"My lord? Why are you looking at me like that?"
"……It's nothing."
Had I been staring at Claire without realizing it? I simply turned my head away, and there sat Iris, fidgeting as though the luxurious carriage itself were too much for her, and beside her, Rin, arms crossed, eyes quietly closed.
Come to think of it, this was an opportunity for Rin too. Right now Raffaello's attention was fixed entirely on Iris, but honestly speaking, as far as the paintings themselves went, I thought Rin's work was better than Iris's.
If Rin became Raffaello's disciple as well, that would get rather inconvenient for me…… but if that's what Rin wanted, then so be it.
As I looked at her thinking along those lines, Rin must have sensed my gaze — she cracked one eye open and looked my way.
"My patron. Are you, by any chance, entertaining the thought that I too might become Raffaello's disciple?"
"Huh? What — how did you know?"
"You simply have exactly that kind of look. But do not worry yourself. Fortunately, Raffaello seems to take little interest in me."
"……Fortunately?"
"After all, I have no intention of leaving the side of a patron who goes so far as to dress up as another man out of sheer jealousy."
"No, how many times do I have to tell you that's not what happened!"
"I understand you're embarrassed, but a man ought to own up to certain things, you know."
"Own up to what? I am that man, that's the whole point!"
"My patron? Miss Rin? What in the world are you two talking about……?"
"You're better off not knowing. It's a private matter between me and my patron."
"………"
And so some unknown stretch of time passed inside the carriage.
The carriage, which had been tearing through the capital at speed, soon came to a halt in a plaza lined with several extraordinarily luxurious mansions.
"This place is……"
"My atelier."
Furry or no furry, he was still the greatest grandmaster in the kingdom, I supposed. The mansion Raffaello pointed to was even larger and grander than the Medici family's villa. It fell short of our family's main estate, certainly — but for a private individual, an artist unaffiliated with any house, it was a ridiculous size.
Then again, considering a single painting of his sold for the price of an entire castle, you could even call that estate modest.
"A magnificent estate."
"And over there, and there, and all the way over in that direction."
"……Pardon?"
"Furthermore, this central plaza, along with the hill you see behind it — all of it belongs to me."
Hold on. What?
So let me get this straight — several of those mansions I could see, the elegantly designed plaza with its fountains, and even the hill behind it.
All of it was Raffaello's property, and all of it his atelier?
"It wasn't always this large, you see. But as I kept painting, all manner of troublesome things began happening."
"Troublesome things, you say……?"
"People would swarm around shouting that they wanted to buy my paintings, and it even became difficult to leave the estate — so I simply bought up the entire surrounding area. Each of those mansions is decorated differently on the inside, so I can paint in whatever mood suits me that day. Ah, and if you become my disciple, you'll be allowed to stay in one of those mansions. I only have two disciples at the moment, so one of them is still vacant."
"……Huh."
Iris wavered. Free ownership of an entire mansion just for becoming his disciple — her brain, which until recently had been going hungry in a slum hovel, seemed to be overloading.
Could he really be planning to demolish Iris's impregnable defenses with overwhelming financial bombardment? A truly terrifying strategy.
That said, the way Elma pressed a hand to her forehead and sighed at Raffaello's estate declaration suggested that simply handing over a mansion was not, in fact, part of any agreed plan. Even with Raffaello's income, a mansion like that in the capital couldn't have been easy to acquire.
"Come, let's go inside!"
Regardless of all that, Raffaello, fired up at the prospect of persuading Iris, strode ahead. When we entered the nearest mansion, a number of servants came out to greet us, opening the doors in our place.
"……Wow."
The interior of the mansion was completely different from what I had imagined.
First of all, it was vast. So vast it was almost excessive. Space magic clearly hadn't been cast on the interior — rather, it looked as though every single wall inside the mansion had been demolished, merging everything into one.
Once the walls, corridors, and boundaries between rooms vanished, the mansion transformed into one enormous hall. And the walls of that hall were hung with countless paintings.
Among them were plenty of works so famous I recognized them on sight. Most were Raffaello's own, but I spotted pieces by other grandmasters scattered here and there as well.
Claire was only mildly surprised, like me, but Rin and Iris stopped dead at the sight of the paintings on the walls, holding their breath as they began to study them. Unlike an ordinary layman like myself, to those two painters, Raffaello's works must have looked like something else entirely.
As Raffaello walked toward the center of the hall, Elma stepped up beside me.
"Don't tell me all of these are—"
"Every one of them an original, of course. Raffaello painted them all himself. They also happen to be my private savings."
"……As emergency funds go, that seems like rather a lot of scale."
"Well, to Raffaello, these are merely paintings he dashed off in passing."
"Dashed off?"
"See for yourself."
The moment Elma finished speaking, Raffaello reached the center of the vast hall. And there stood an easel and canvas made of wood through which an extraordinary magical energy visibly flowed, even to a layman's eye.
His painting supplies lay scattered carelessly on the floor around the canvas. Through my patronage of Rin and Iris, I had come to know the expensive premium brands of art supplies fairly well — and everything rolling around carelessly on that floor right now was exactly that top-of-the-line equipment.
Raffaello rested his chin on his hand before the canvas, apparently pondering something for a moment.
Swoosh.
Then, as if something had come to him, he picked up a brush and paint from the floor and began filling the pure white canvas, stroke by stroke.
— What unfolded after that was, in itself, utterly mesmerizing.
Raffaello painted without pause, switching between brush, paint, and pencil. Sometimes delicate, sometimes rough — yet not a single one of those movements ever hesitated or broke stride.
I knew because I had watched Rin and Iris paint many times: what he was doing was nothing short of impossible.
In every stage — establishing the composition, sketching, layering color on top — a painter pauses now and then, falls into thought. A line might go astray by accident, paints might mix wrongly, a desired color might not come out.
Yet Raffaello didn't rest for even a moment, as though he were merely tracing a painting already finished. He blended pigments on the spot, conjuring exactly the color he wanted, and never once made a mistake in line or shading.
As if the completed painting already existed inside his head.
"……Incredible."
Suddenly, I remembered something the portly man had said back when I bought a painting from the old beggar's stall. That remark — that Raffaello's paintings were filled with passion and soul.
I hadn't understood it at the time. Wouldn't any painter pour passion into their work? To speak of passion and soul just from looking at a painting had struck me as arrogance.
But he had been right. Anyone who had witnessed that scene even once could have described it in no other words — Raffaello's paintings were brimming with passion and soul.
So this…… is a grandmaster.
The summit of every painter in the kingdom — a man said to be the finest among all the grandmasters, especially in portraiture.
How long had I been lost in it? I wasn't the only one absorbed in Raffaello's work. Claire, who knew next to nothing about art, and even Rin and Iris were all watching him and his painting as though their souls had left their bodies.
His movements gradually slowed — perhaps the painting was nearing its end — and it was in that moment, as my senses returned to me, that I studied the picture he had painted on the spot and murmured.
"So it's a failure."
"You truly are his master. A magnificent painting once again today."
"……?"
"What?"
And at some point, a blonde girl had appeared at my side, nodding away in apparent admiration.
The instant I delivered an evaluation the exact opposite of hers, the blonde girl's face twisted and she glared daggers at me.
"How dare you belittle my master's painting when you know nothing!!"
No, wait.
More importantly — who even are you……?