The Canvas That Binds Two Worlds
Oh, right—I should mention that Camille was a remarkably good cook.
“I'm in the mood for potatoes.”
“Sure. I was just thinking the same thing.”
“Tonight I'm craving spaghetti.”
“Easy. Give me a minute.”
“Camille, do you know what bungeoppang is?”
Our house wasn't much bigger than a mouse hole—we didn't even have a kitchen—yet no matter what I asked for, Camille would have a beautiful meal on the table within minutes.
“This is it, right? Bungeoppang.”
“……That's right.”
And it was shaped exactly as I'd pictured it in my head.
“How on earth do you know what bungeoppang is?”
I'd named the fish-shaped pastry specifically, but that question had occurred to me far more than once or twice.
Yet every time I asked something similar, Camille always gave the same answer.
“What does it matter?”
And somehow, at some point, I'd started agreeing with him.
Right! He's absolutely right. What matters is that we're alive like this.
I was sitting on a bench beneath the shade of a tree near the house, tearing into the head of a bungeoppang and admiring the peaceful scenery, when Camille appeared beside me without warning and wrapped his arms around me from behind.
“Tastes good?”
The unfamiliar touch made my whole body stiffen for a moment.
“……Where did you go?”
“The lake up ahead.”
It was uncomfortable.
I gently pushed his hands away and changed the subject.
“I was actually thinking of heading to the lake myself…… What's it like?”
I did my best to sound casual, but Camille was too perceptive. He didn't answer—just looked at me, quiet and steady.
The moment I tensed under that gaze, he smiled as though nothing had happened.
“There wasn't much to see. Next to you, though, that lake doesn't compare.”
“……Is that so?”
“Mm. Which reminds me—there's something I want to do with you.”
“What is it?”
Camille's hand crept toward me with alarming speed and caught my chin, tilting it up as if plucking it from the air.
“Like this.”
A cold shiver crawled up my spine like a snake. His face drew closer—and my hand moved before I could think.
Thwack—
“……Ah.”
Only then did I realize, belatedly, what I had just done.
Why—why did I push Camille away?
He was my husband, wasn't he? The man I loved beyond all else, the very reason I existed?
As if I'd committed some grave error, an inexplicable guilt washed over me too late.
Unable to bring myself to look at his face, I spoke.
“You know, you seem to have changed somehow.”
And then, as if making an excuse, I added:
“You never used to be like this……”
A brief silence fell.
It was Camille who broke it.
“Living in a place like this, anyone would change. This world inside the painting, without you…… It was so terribly lonely.”
“…….”
The words seemed carefully calculated to prod at my conscience, and my shoulders hunched in spite of myself.
“Still, the kiss was a bit much.”
“Why?”
“What do you mean, why…… we've never done that before. Not once.”
Wait—why was I explaining myself?
He couldn't possibly not know that I disliked physical contact. That I'd always kept my distance from Camille for that very reason.
A strange, uncanny feeling slid down the length of my spine.
At moments like this, it was as if Camille were an entirely different person.
“……Ah. Was that it?”
Yes. Exactly like now.
Camille rolled his eyes, as if turning something over in his mind.
“Don't tell me, as married as we are…… you've never even consummated the marriage……?”
“What are you muttering about?”
“Mm? Nothing at all.”
His usual expression returned as if it had never left. He gave a small smile and, without a hint of self-consciousness, planted himself right beside me on the bench.
A little later, once my heartbeat had settled back to normal, I spoke to him again.
“Speaking of which—today, I want to hear about you.”
“About me?”
“How long have you been inside this painting?”
As if he hadn't anticipated the question at all, Camille's eyes went wide and round.
But the answer came without a pause.
“At some point, my soul was just drifting, and I began to feel it slowly coming apart. I was searching for somewhere to settle when I caught sight of your painting. The moment I touched it, I lost consciousness.”
“I see……”
“And when I opened my eyes again, I was already in here.”
I hadn't expected him to confess the truth. But nothing he said sounded like a lie.
“Though when I first arrived, there wasn't a flower field this wide.”
Camille continued in an even, matter-of-fact tone.
“You filled in the blank spaces, one by one.”
“I'm sorry?”
Something about those words snagged strangely against my mind.
“Filled in? Hold on. Does that mean…… don't tell me—”
My mouth hung open as I fumbled through the words.
“Y-you watched me paint? All of it?”
“Mm. You emptied the wine at quite a respectable pace, too.”
“Ah……!”
Good heavens! I wanted to crawl into a hole and vanish on the spot.
The realization that he had witnessed every ugly, sobbing minute of my grieving hit home, and shame surged up so hot it scorched my cheeks.
I spun my back to him and clutched a fistful of my hair.
The moment my emotions—flared up and spent alone—had finally cooled, Camille spoke without warning.
“Ah, since we're on the subject—there's a place I'd like you to come with me.”
“Right now?”
“Yes. There's something only you can help me with.”
His eyes held a quiet, deep light. The look of someone who had never once considered taking no for an answer.
“Aub, it has to be you. No one else will do.”
In that fleeting instant, an unspeakable sense of foreboding wrapped itself around my entire body.
Even so, I couldn't refuse him.
The place he led me to was at the foot of the hill—the very spot where I had first fallen into this world.
There, a single canvas draped in white cloth lay abandoned.
It looked utterly out of place, sitting alone in the middle of a windless field.
……Was that always there?
The instant the question flickered through my mind, Camille swept the cover away, and the landscape on the canvas was laid bare at once.
“This is……”
The atelier in the mansion—the room where I painted.
And standing at its center, wearing an expression of frantic distress, was none other than—
“……Romaine?”
My own maid, from my own house.
A moment later, Romaine's eyes trembled faintly, and the sight of her taking one slow step after another came vividly alive across the canvas.
And at the same time, a voice rang out.
“My lady…… where on earth have you gone?”
“……!”
As if two separate worlds coexisted, divided by nothing more than a single canvas.
“Someone you know?”
“She's my maid. But what on earth is this……”
Unable to finish my sentence, I stepped closer to the canvas.
The brushstrokes were there, the texture of the paint unmistakable.
Just as I was wondering what could possibly explain all this, Camille added, calmly:
“This canvas is the passage connecting this place to the real world. It's the entrance you and I came through.”
“The entrance……?”
“That's right. If you don't believe me, see for yourself.”
I hesitated a moment, then carefully reached out my hand toward the canvas.
The instant my fingertips touched the surface, my entire arm was swallowed into the picture as if sucked into a vacuum.
“Eek!”
I snatched my hand back in fright, and Camille said, offhandedly:
“Careful. Keep that up and you really might get pulled through.”
Looking down at my palm, I found the strange sensation still lingering in my hand.
“D-does it work the same way for you?”
“Me?”
There was a hint of mockery in the way Camille echoed my question—or perhaps I only imagined it.
“For me…… no. It'd be faster to show you.”
Exactly as I had done, Camille placed his hand upon the canvas.
But at that moment—
Clang!
With a sharp ring, his hand was flung backward as though repelled outright.
Startled, I raised my voice without thinking.
“Camille!”
“I'm fine. But…… you saw that, didn't you?”
Camille dusted off his hand as if nothing had happened, then turned his gaze on me.
“Aub. I can't leave this place. I'm trapped inside your painting.”
The moment I swallowed, my heart dropped like a stone.
“What did you say?”
The unexpected words left my mind reeling.
When I had first faced him here, I'd been overwhelmed by nothing more than the joy of seeing him alive again.
I had even wondered whether, just as he'd said, my desperate longing had called him back into this place.
But to think he can't leave my painting at all—
That wasn't…… that wasn't really living, was it?
“Aub. That's why I'm asking you this.”
Then Camille quietly took hold of my shoulder.
“Help me get out of this painting, won't you?”
His voice dropped even lower.
“It's not too late. You—you of all people—can help me.”
In that fleeting instant, raw, naked desire rippled unmistakably through Camille's eyes.
A cold shiver climbed my spine like a serpent, and a tremor I could not suppress pushed its way between my lips.
“How could I possibly……”
“It's easy.”
Camille grinned.
“Just give me your soul, Aub.”