1. Patronage Should Go to the Underdog
"You call this thing a painting!?"
"It is a painting, of course."
"Spare me the wordplay!"
The baron hauled his bloated bulk up from his seat with a roar of outrage. His fury was utterly genuine; he kicked back from the table as he rose, hard enough to send his expensive chair toppling over behind him.
Yet even as the chair clattered to the floor, the baron was far from finished—he flew into a fresh frenzy, quivering with agitation.
"I commissioned you because they told me you were reliable, and you bring me back this? After making me wait a whole month, no less!?"
"Paintings take about a month, as a rule."
"The painters of the capital are famed far and wide for turning out work like this—no, far better than this—in a single week! I came to you out of sheer urgency, and this is what I get...!!"
Rin remained unmoved by the baron's fury. To be precise, the whole scene felt hazy to her, as though she were watching it from somewhere far away.
Ever since that regular customer had left—her drinking companion, her wonderful conversationalist—she had felt as if she were drifting. If only I had met him sooner. If only I had been the one to ask first. The thought kept rising and rising, no matter how many times she pushed it down.
She had left home and lived by her brush on the streets, so she knew better than anyone: meeting someone so cultured, and yet so willing to meet her where she stood, had been nothing short of a miracle.
And yet, out of that wretched pride of hers, over that wretched matter of patronage, she had given him nothing but the cold shoulder. Honestly, if their positions were reversed, even Rin suspected she'd have hated talking to an annoying, prickly woman like herself.
And I never even... learned his name.
Out of nowhere, she remembered the day, two weeks ago, when she'd first met him. When the man asked if her name was Rin, she'd snapped at him—wasn't that obvious, with a signboard reading Rin's Painting Workshop hanging right outside?
To have said that, and then never once asked for his name in return. She truly was something else.
Her old wounds were her old wounds, and that man was simply that man—yet she had insisted on treating him through the lens of those scars alone.
Rin—
"Are you even listening to me!?"
"...I am listening."
"Then take that eyesore of a painting and go! No—redo it, right now! Damn it all, the Young Master is coming, and it would be a disgrace to have not a single painting in the villa!"
"Redo it, you say?"
"Yes! And what in the world is with those limbs? Do you even paint with your eyes open? A botched failure like that isn't fit to hang in my villa! In any case, get to retouching—and quickly!"
"Painting takes longer than you imagine, my lord. Even if you ordered me to retouch it on the spot."
"If I say do it, you do it! Why must you argue so much!"
The baron's voice buried Rin's words. Under any other circumstances, she would have walked out then and there, head held high, throwing back that he knew nothing about painting and should stop bullying her.
But she couldn't—not because the baron frightened her, nor because she feared losing her fee.
Rather, it was because every time she looked at the baron, so abysmally ignorant of art—
That man was different.
—she remembered just how precious a bond, how rare an opportunity, he had been: the man who grasped that painting's specialness, the painter's intent, the very instant he laid eyes on it.
He could have become a regular at her studio. A fine drinking companion. A friend and fellow spirit to trade talk of art with on idle days.
In a life where Rin had chosen loneliness, he might have become the first and last person she ever opened her heart to—and she had kicked that chance away with her own two feet.
The thought was so pathetic, so profoundly stupid, that Rin could not bring herself to answer the baron. It was not the baron she saw before her eyes, but that man.
How many people, in the life I have ahead of me, will ever come that close—so freely, so unreservedly?
And of those, how many would be versed in literature and the arts, thoughtful of others, generous with fine wine, and gifted with an eye that saw straight through to a painter's intent?
A bond already slipped past—one she had, in effect, cast aside with her own hands. So she ought to forget it. Ought to rationalize it, at the very least, telling herself it simply could not be helped.
But she could not bring herself to do any of it.
"Head Butler! Lock this woman in the cellar at once! Whatever it takes, see that she produces something worth hanging before the Young Master arrives!"
"My lord, perhaps it would be wiser to simply purchase another painting..."
"There is no time for that! Have her retouch anything remotely passable, as much as it takes! If the central wall of the banquet hall sits as bare as that, what will become of my dignity!"
"Well, what will become of it?"
"Who dares answer me back—...huh?"
"...Huh?"
In that instant.
Rin lifted her bowed head. A voice so much like that man's had just rung through the room.
Plausibility could go hang. She simply wished he were standing there. Wished he could gather up her mistake and make it right.
But the man who appeared before her and the baron was someone else entirely. No golden hair, no sun-bronzed skin. The only thing the two men shared was the woman bodyguard trailing at their backs.
The face was new to Rin, but the baron—master of this very villa—straightened up at once the moment he laid eyes on the young man.
"Y-Young Master! You've arrived already?"
"I decided that arriving too late would be its own discourtesy. What would be the point of coming all this way to a baron's villa, only to show up late?"
"Oh my, to think the Young Master holds this unworthy vassal in such regard—it is an honor beyond words! Although, ah, the banquet preparations are not quite finished... if you would grant us just a little more time..."
"Of course. I was only passing by and heard the baron's voice, so I stepped in. And truly, there's no need to be so jittery. I'm no family head—I'm just the second son, with no real power or anything of the sort."
"How could you diminish yourself so, Young Master? Every vassal in your service knows that the Lord of the house and the young heir both cherish you dearly."
The baron bowed his head again and again with a servility that bordered on shameless, addressing the young man in the most exalted of terms. When a man old enough to be twice the youth's age groveled like that, the other party's identity was obvious.
The second son of House Medici—the noble family that ruled this great metropolis.
Before she left home, she would never even have known of him; for Rin now, nothing more than a nameless street painter, the distance between them went beyond mere unfamiliarity. It was a gulf of class so absolute that even sharing his table would never be permitted.
And yet, as it happened, Rin did know the second son of House Medici.
"So, who is this?"
"Ah, merely a trifling painter. She brought back the piece I commissioned in an unfinished state, and so..."
"The painting is finished."
"A mere painter, daring to—! Do you even know whose presence you shout in!"
"Calm yourself, Baron. So, the painter brought back an unfinished piece?"
"As I said before, the painting is finished."
"This woman, honestly!"
"Let's have a look at it, then. What sort of painting has you so worked up?"
"N-no, Young Master, a piece like this hardly merits..."
The second son of House Medici—the very man who had sent an underling to offer Rin patronage two weeks ago—stepped closer to her.
Did he know her face? Probably not. A noble of his standing would hardly have singled out Rin by name for patronage. More likely he had picked out a scattering of poor street artists at random, as a way to kill boredom.
Not that there was anything wrong with that. But from where Rin stood, she could never accept a patronage that arrived by luck rather than by her paintings. That was the last of her pride—and the self-respect of a painter who lived and died by her brush.
His reaction to the painting would be no different from the baron's anyway. And so, in place of the second son, Rin pictured that man.
If it were him.
He would have understood at a glance.
If it were him—
"Hmm... Baron, hang this on the wall."
"Pardon?"
"Just do it."
"V-very well! Head Butler!"
Thrown into confusion by the second son's abrupt command, the baron called for the head butler, and Rin's painting was hung upon the wall. The Sorrow of Martego—painted with full knowledge of where it would hang—was raised to one side of the banquet hall.
It hung a touch above the ordinary line of sight, high enough that one had to tilt one's head back to see it properly.
And there was something that only revealed itself when you looked up at it that way.
"Wha— the painting...?"
"A painting meant to be seen from below, not head-on."
"...!!"
Behind the baron, frozen in shock—those words the second son had let fall so carelessly.
They were exactly what that man had said, the first time she'd ever seen him.
The second son caught sight of Rin, her eyes flying wide open despite herself, and smirked as he went on.
"Painter. Your name?"
"...It's Rin."
"Rin, then. There's something I'd like to ask."
"If you're asking why I painted it that way—I was informed in advance of where my painting would hang, so—"
"No, not that. It's about the sword the protagonist holds."
"........."
No. It couldn't be.
...Could it?
"In The Sorrow of Martego, the protagonist's blade was a cutlass, was it not? Why did you paint a stiletto?"
"Th-that is..."
"The protagonist of The Sorrow of Martego was a painter, same as you. Could it be that you threw yourself into him so completely... that you swapped the cutlass for a stiletto—a blade that pierces deeper, and sharper? You expressed, through the stiletto, what he felt in the moment he tore his own painting to shreds. Am I close?"
"A-as expected of the Young Master! How could you possibly tell...!"
"You're the one who ought to reflect, Baron. Look again. Does this look like a failure to you now?"
"Ahem!... It seems I owe the painter an apology after all."
Perhaps the baron was no villain at heart; he stole a glance at Rin. He truly hadn't recognized it, it seemed—and now, belatedly, he meant to make amends.
But the baron never even reached Rin's eyes. She looked at the second son alone.
The way she had looked at that man. No—perhaps even more.
A man who recognized her painting, understood it, and read its intent to the bone.
The second son, meeting that gaze of hers, extended his hand.
"What do you say, Rin? For a painter of this caliber to remain on the streets strikes me as a waste to society."
"........."
"Won't you accept my patronage?"
Patronage.
Yes. Patronage.
"...Patronage."
"Money, brushes, pigments—whatever you need, I'll provide it all. How about it?"
The second son held out his hand. This was a chance. Perhaps, for her, a second chance to forge the bond she'd thrown away.
But the only chance in Rin's mind was the first one.
The second son had cultivation and a discerning eye—but he could never be a good drinking companion, and never a friend. Patron and artist stood in an absolute hierarchy, the one above and the one below.
And so Rin—
"Thank you for your gracious offer."
"Which means?"
"I will... gratefully accept your patronage."
"Oh!"
Yes—she would accept. The money, the brushes, the pigments, all of it. She would paint for the second son.
But Rin's purpose lay somewhere else entirely.
He's probably far out at sea by now.
That man had worried about her. Worried whether her studio would last until the next time he came to call.
Which meant he expected a considerable stretch of time to pass before he visited this city again. And voyages, as a rule, run long past any estimate—so it might truly be ages yet.
And so she would not simply wait for him, eyes fixed on the horizon.
Instead, she would be the one to move first.
Take the patronage. Paint. Make my name known.
Rin didn't know that man's name.
But that man knew hers.
So that someday, she could meet that man again.
So that the man who had once heard her name might know Rin—might find her, and meet her once more.
That was what this patronage was for.
"I look forward to working with you."
"And I with you, Rin."
And so Rin bowed her head, her true heart tucked safely out of sight.
Sorry as she was to the second son, the patron in her heart was one, and one only.
And it would stay that way.