2. Patronage 101
"Doesn't seem like she caught on... does it?"
"You watched her face earlier and you still can't tell? There's no way that insolent painter is clever enough to hide her own feelings. She isn't deceiving you knowingly—she genuinely has no idea."
"Tch. That muddies the water a bit."
My stretch of house confinement had finally run its course. Which meant that this time, I'd planned to do things properly—sign the entry ledger like an honest man, dab on the Transformation Perfume I'd brought along, and pay a visit to Rin's studio.
The only wrinkle was that just before that, I'd been sent off to Baron Gilpen's estate on Father's orders. Father called it "putting in the work"—in short, a little demonstration that House Medici took good care of even its vassal families like his.
Naturally, it wasn't weighty enough for Father to stir himself, and Baron Gilpen hardly carried the influence to warrant a visit from my elder brother. An ordinary baron with a modest fief, nothing more—and precisely because he was, I was the ideal man for the errand.
Of course, this was no doubt also part of Father's scheme to wring some use out of a second son who did nothing but laze around the house, but either way, I'd had a wonderful time at Baron Gilpen's banquet. Gatherings like that are awkward by design for the one doing the fawning; if you're the one being fawned over, your only duty is to eat, drink, and make merry until it's time to head home.
And yet, of all people, I had to run into Rin there.
It caught me off guard at first, but I quickly decided the timing was a blessing. After all, I couldn't keep meeting her in disguise with my identity under wraps forever.
Once the real patronage began, my plan was to reveal myself as the second son of House Medici and talk openly from there. So I had intended to come clean on this very occasion.
Bluntly announcing that the blond man was me would only have gotten me laughed at, so I'd meant to let her piece it together—through the way I looked at her painting, and through the stiletto story.
Even granting that a canvas meant to be read from below might pass for coincidence, the intent behind swapping the protagonist's dagger for a stiletto in The Sorrow of Martego was a fact known to exactly two people in the world: Rin, and me—the one she'd explained it to. Drop that hint, and she'd catch on. A perfectly sound plan, I'd thought.
But it had failed.
"Bringing it up now, this late in the game... that'd be a bit much, wouldn't it?"
"If you wished to, you certainly could. We would simply stand before that insolent painter in the very same disguises as before."
"That's true, but..."
"Well then, is there some reason you'd rather not reveal yourself? Or is it this? The heady thrill of a double identity, and the sadistic delight of toying with another human being?"
"Why does your brain go to such vicious places?"
"Then what is the reason, if I may ask?"
"Because it seemed like it'd be more fun that way?"
"......"
"Don't give me that look—just hear me out."
The instant Claire leveled a gaze of pure disgust at me—the way one might regard an actual piece of garbage—I watched her take a step back as if she couldn't bear the proximity, and I hurried to keep talking before she retreated further.
It might have sounded a little trashy. Fine—quite a lot trashy. I was aware.
"Look, at its root, this is also for Rin's sake."
"By all means, spout away."
"Think about it. Right now, Rin is distinguishing between me and... let's just say the blond man. She's treating the two of us as separate entities, no? Like we're entirely different people."
"That is true."
"Ours isn't a long acquaintance, but what sort of person is Rin? Charitably? She's got backbone. Less charitably? An immovable wall of stubbornness. Just look at how she held out refusing my patronage to the bitter end—she's the sort who will never, ever accept a thing she doesn't acknowledge on her own terms."
"How truly insolent of her."
"Exactly. Now—Rin is no fool, you see? Which means she understood every hint I dropped. And yet she still treats me and the blond man as two different people. There has to be a reason for that, no?"
"What reason?"
"Well... say she went looking for traces of the blond man on her own and came across some strange news instead. Honestly, my disguised look is aggressively average, isn't it? It wouldn't be the least bit strange for her to mistake somebody else's news for mine."
Blond hair and a sun-browned tan. Pick any ship in port at random and you'd dredge up two or three sailors matching that description. There were other tells, of course, but by all appearances, the most likely story was that Rin had simply mixed up my news with someone else's.
"The most convincing version: I'd already shipped out and sailed away. She did introduce me as a sailor working the ships, and our city sees constant use as a mid-route port—a sailor leaving on a vessel wouldn't raise an eyebrow."
"So, believing he has departed, she does not suspect that you and your disguised self are one and the same person?"
"Precisely. Now imagine we march in and lay it all bare. Best case, it goes smoothly—wonderful. But what if it only stacks another useless misunderstanding on top? You know Rin. How easy do you think she'd be to talk out of it then?"
"That is......"
"So rather than confessing first, the smarter play is to let her catch on little by little. Say I happen to mention the food or the wine I brought over as patronage—whatever else, the odds of Rin rethinking things go way up. The blond man is me, after all."
"So you mean to leave her trapped in this misunderstanding for the foreseeable future?"
"Come on. I'll keep an eye on things, and if she truly never catches on, then I'll just come out with it. Nothing about this is urgent. All I'm asking is that we give it a little time."
"......"
Claire lapsed into silence. Not so much persuaded by my reasoning as grudgingly conceding that my last point had a certain logic to it.
At any rate, I was a second son with a full twenty-four hours of leisure out of every twenty-four-hour day. Free time was the one resource I had in obscene quantities, and with nothing else on my plate, meeting Rin posed no logistical challenge whatsoever.
Hence my sunny little theory: leave things as they are, and let Rin work it out for herself.
After a moment of visibly chewing something over, Claire opened her mouth.
"What if."
"Hm?"
"What if that painter, Rin, is in torment at this very moment? What if she aches to see your disguised self again, even one day sooner? What if that is why she accepted your patronage at all?"
"So what you're saying is, Rin thinks of me as special?"
"Yes."
"Pfft. What are the odds? We've known each other all of one week."
Falling for someone after a single week is the stuff of fiction. We'd met barely an hour a day, mind you—if that were really all it took, every university group project would have ended with a couple walking out of the room.
Besides, there was no mysterious chemistry, no flutter of something-more between Rin and me. Truly, all we'd ever done was talk about classic literature and paintings.
"...I can't help but wonder."
"Claire?"
"People do miss someone, now and then. All the more so when their personality is that insolent."
"Claire... you being all profound like that? It doesn't suit you."
"Kindly drop dead."
"Is that any way for a bodyguard to speak? And if we're ranking insolent personalities, you're every bit her equal."
"...Which is precisely what I mean."
"Sorry, what?"
"Nothing at all. In any case, I'm relieved you've given the matter some genuine thought. I truly did believe you were hiding it purely for your own amusement."
"Well, that's also a tiny part of it. Honestly, the whole situation—her misunderstanding, the dramatic irony—is entertaining in itself, no?"
"...Trash."
"Hey."
While Claire and I were squabbling as ever, a servant knocked, slipped inside, and handed me a letter.
I didn't exactly keep a lively correspondence with anyone. And yet somehow, I had a feeling I knew exactly who the sender was.
"It's from Rin."
"A letter of thanks for the patronage, I'd wager."
"Think about it. What was the whole point of our mission? Succeeding at patronizing Rin, no? The result came back positive, so that's a win—right?"
"It was your mission, young master. Not ours."
"We're attached at the hip anyway, so same difference. Now then—let's see what she wrote."
The fact that Rin had finally accepted the patronage meant something in her heart had shifted. Thankfully, it didn't seem to be a shift that involved her pride snapping in two. More likely, all those meetings in disguise, all those small favors, had slowly taught her that patronage wasn't such a bitter pill to swallow.
Really, wasn't this the entire reason anyone patronizes an artist in the first place? Nobody donates to internet streamers out of concern for the streamer's grocery money. You do it for the reactions—the pure, unscripted delight on camera.
Rin's reaction wouldn't be the explosive kind—not with her personality—but that had its own flavor going for it. A full week of effort. The first reaction from the proud, penniless painter who oozed confidence...
"...Mm. Mmmm."
"......"
"Uh......"
"You don't care for it? The handwriting is remarkably courteous for such an insolent painter."
"No, the content's fine. Thank-yous, promises to work hard from here on out, all of it... it's just, how do I put this."
Too formulaic. It read like something written off a template—as if she'd deliberately filed off every sharp edge before putting pen to paper.
Granted, from Rin's perspective, the second son of House Medici was a complete stranger—the blond man was the one she actually knew—so of course she'd mind her manners.
The real problem was that not a single drop of Rin's personality had made it into the letter. It was wall-to-wall stiff, formal, by-the-book gratitude.
You know how it goes: you send a streamer a donation, and they mutter a flat "thank you," dip their head an inch, and move on—leaving you, the donor, standing there holding your own generosity like a fool? That was this letter to a T.
A reaction, technically. With absolutely no sincerity behind it.
"No fun at all."
"Frankly, I agree—it is a remarkably stock letter. One would never guess that insolent painter wrote it."
"The handwriting's definitely hers, though."
"Perhaps she is simply still awkward about it? After all, the insolent painter knows only your disguised self."
"Yeah... that has to be it."
Well—this was only the first patronage. I'd keep sponsoring her, keep meeting her, keep dropping little remarks in conversation, and her reactions would thaw in time. I could just talk about paintings the way I had in disguise, couldn't I?
Except, now that things had come to this...
"Claire. We have a problem."
"A problem?"
"I can't receive one of these letters every day, can I?"
"Naturally not. Even writing as often as she could bear, it would be, what, once a week?"
"Then the answer is obvious—I'll simply have to patronize more artists. Seven of them, one letter a week each, and I get a fresh letter every single day."
"What a towering intellectual achievement."
"Anyway. I need to find more artists to patronize."
At my grand pronouncement, Claire pulled a face of such naked exasperation that it was practically a formal complaint.
"Am I to go through the tiresome ordeal of rounding them up myself again, as before?"
"There's a better way. Claire, put up a public notice in the city."
"A public notice?"
"Yep. Announce that the second son of House Medici is recruiting artists for patronage, and anyone confident in their work should come try their luck."
"Is that all?"
"And add that exactly one—just one—will be chosen."
So you want patronage, do you? Dreaming of buying all the expensive paints and tools your heart desires? Of living on your art alone, no honest day's work required?
Then starting this very moment—kill each other.