The Painter Who Couldn't Paint
“At the banquet?”
She nodded carefully, then went on with her explanation in a calm voice.
“That day, I saw him arguing with the Duke.”
“Tell me more.”
“Gale — or rather, he kept pressing the Duke about something. It sounded like it had to do with money, though I couldn't catch the details. In any case, the Duke flew into a terrible rage.”
“Camille lost his temper?”
A dazed sensation washed over me, as if someone had struck the back of my head.
Camille had been a man who had never once gotten angry at me, no matter the circumstance. No wonder everyone called him the Angel of Ortega. If he of all people had raised his voice, it couldn't have been an ordinary matter.
Camille, who had been listening quietly, asked without a moment's hesitation, “Do you suppose that Pistachio fellow did something with a rotten stink behind it?”
“Hard to say.”
“Or maybe he borrowed money and never paid it back? I mean, my past self was apparently a walking sucker.”
“……”
At the casual swipe at Camille, I glanced at him sideways — but I couldn't quite bring myself to argue.
After all, the Camille of my past life had been the man who kept such people by his side until the very end, believing them to be his friends.
“Well, whatever. As a first scapegoat, he's not a bad choice.”
Scapegoat.
He had a bad habit of choosing ominous words.
Camille snapped the newspaper shut with a rustle, rose from his seat, and stretched.
“Now then, shall we get down to business? Oh — before that, Aub.”
“Yes?”
“I'd like you to paint me something. A gift.”
“……Pardon?”
He'd asked so easily that I felt like I was being shaken down for hidden money.
I threw the bomb at him, wearing a look of perfect innocence. “I can't paint.”
A strange silence fell.
Camille echoed the question back, uncharacteristically flustered. “……You're a painter.”
“I'm not.”
“What?”
“I beg your pardon?”
Question-mark-laden stares crossed back and forth between us.
Amid a mood like a third-rate comedy skit, in a silence settling clumsily over the room, Camille pressed a hand to his forehead as though dizzy.
“Aub, you're joking, aren't you? Because I'm genuinely confused right now……”
That was my line.
I had been an art student. Or to be precise, a prospective college student holding nothing but an acceptance letter to an art school — I'd never even attended the entrance ceremony, let alone taken a single major class.
Setting that aside, I had never properly held a brush in my life. I'd visited more than my share of free art exhibitions, but the closest thing I'd ever produced to art was the doodles I'd scratched into the margins of my textbooks with a mechanical pencil.
“Then how on earth did I paint that?”
“That would be……”
A miracle.
There was no other way to explain it.
“……Impossible.”
Muttering that single phrase, Camille began pacing the room in a frantic circle. Anyone could see he was badly rattled.
After circling for a long while, he finally stopped, propped his chin on his hand, and heaved a great sigh.
“I hate to say this after promising I'd solve everything, but the truth is, I'm bound to your paintings. I can't move as I please.”
“Same reason you can't leave the canvas, I suppose?”
“Exactly. So in order to meet anyone, I need a medium, and……”
His explanation was vague enough that I couldn't grasp it all, but one thing was clear: if he wanted to use his powers, my paintings were indispensable.
After some thought, I managed to come up with a solution.
“Should we try drinking?”
“What?”
“I painted that picture after drinking wine, you know. A couple of bottles' worth.”
After all, plenty of famous artists claimed the muse only arrived after a drink.
Maybe I was one of them?
But his reaction caught me off guard.
“Absolutely not.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Alcohol is bad for you. You're skin and bones already — what do you think liquor would do?”
Camille went on as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.
“If you must drink, do it when I'm with you. And only during the day.”
“……”
“Those are the rules. You mustn't break them. Understood?”
He added something more after that, but none of it reached my ears.
Because a scene from the past had suddenly risen up and blocked my view.
“Now, now — you can't. Alcohol is bad for you.”
“But unlike you, I'm an adult. I'm hardly a lightweight when it comes to drinking, and—”
“Still no. Better yet, have a drink with me later instead. Preferably…… during the day.”
The memory surfaced hazily, and the Camille within it said exactly the same words as the one before me now.
“They're rules. You mustn't break them.”
“……One year younger than me, and look at him.”
“Madam, what did you just say?”
“Nothing at all.”
……Why was this man saying the exact same things he'd said back then?
Struck by an odd sense of déjà vu, I stared at Camille with bewildered eyes. But he, oblivious to my gaze, was murmuring to himself.
“Come to think of it, that little box you drew earlier was awfully cute……”
His gaze, which had been wavering like something caught in the wind, finally stilled only when Camille, having finished his deliberations, spoke again.
“Then let's start with practice.”
“……Ah — sorry, what?”
“Where were you drifting off just now? Hmm? While I'm standing right here.”
He gave my cheek a playful poke and flashed a grin. The skin where his fingertip had touched burned disproportionately hot.
Watching me squirm with embarrassment, he spoke again.
“Let's begin by practicing drawing straight lines. Take all the time you need. Understood?”
“……”
He coached me with the tender patience of a man handling a child.
“……I want to tear it all to shreds.”
Facing a painting so disastrous it amounted to an assault on my optic nerves, my head throbbed of its own accord.
And to think I'd thrown myself into it with bone-grinding dedication, not skipping a single day……
And this is the result.
Then again, to be fair, it had been a foretold massacre from the moment I'd lunged straight at a finished portrait while skipping fundamentals as basic as drawing a line.
Yet my stomach still churned and burned — because I had, once before, miraculously completed a painting.
How on earth did I paint that thing, honestly.
Staring blankly at the portrait of Camille — a canvas as cluttered yet strangely static as something painted by Monet or Pissarro in their impressionist haze, so unlike anything I could believe my own hand had made — my thoughts grew tangled.
Maybe it's a matter of resolve?
Right. Truth be told, I still wasn't certain.
If Guile Pistachio wasn't the culprit, then I'd be driving an innocent man to his death.
“Haa……”
But I couldn't afford to let go. I seized the brush again.
It was on one of those days — desperately grinding away at my paintings in hopes of getting better — that the news found me.
“Madam, you have a visitor!”
“A visitor?”
“Yes! Baron Claudel is waiting for you in the drawing room.”
An unexpected piece of news had come calling.
“My father is here……?”
My brow furrowed reflexively, deep.
Why would that man come?
My father seeking me out was hardly ever good news.
And I suspected it was no better news for him, either.
“Father.”
Sure enough, the moment my father saw me in the drawing room, his brow creased.
And then,
“Hmph.”
Tap. Tap. Tap.
The sound of fingers drumming the table at steady intervals filled the drawing room.
Regular, and maddening — a rhythm practically engineered to induce neurosis.
“……”
It was my father's habit.
The signal he gave when he had plenty to say but felt it would be beneath his dignity to speak first — when he was waiting for the other party to open the conversation.
I decided to indulge the petty sulk, pretending to be unable to resist it.
“……I was actually about to send word to you. I hadn't imagined you would come in person.”
And I lowered myself with practiced ease.
“I've been in no state to pay my respects until now. I apologize for the delay.”
“Enough. You never did have any charm about you.”
As though he'd expected something from me after all this time, my father let out a sigh tinged with disappointment.
“I'm sure this past year has been a whirlwind for you. Who could have guessed such an ugly affair would come to pass in a mere twelve months?”