Yumi and the Nightmare Painter(105)

“I…” He winced at the implausibility of it all. “Yeah, all right. But I would bet you the biggest bowl of noodles you can eat that if we overlap Masaka’s map with a map of your lands, we’re going to find a correlation.”

Masaka had watched all of this with interest, but didn’t seem to find a woman talking to herself to be all that odd. When Design returned with a paper, Masaka knelt down with a fine brush and sketched out a large circle near one edge of it.

“Kilahito,” she said, pointing to the circle. “Where we are now.” She drew another circle of similar size across the page. “The largest of the impassable zones.” Then she drew out several other smaller circles, about a dozen. Yes…those could be the size of towns. “The other ones.”

“How accurate,” Yumi said, “are these distances you’ve drawn?”

“Hordes have incredible spatial awareness,” Design said. “Comes from having bodies that can spread out to the size of a nation. Her guess will be more accurate than most people’s instrument-measured surveys.”

“Here is a scale,” Masaka said, drawing a line at the bottom with some numbers on it. “It is exact.”

Painter knelt and studied the painting in detail, then measured the distances using his palm and fingers, something he’d taught Yumi to do for measuring parts of a painting.

“You ready to sleep?” he asked her.

“I’d prefer to eat first,” she said. “I never did get dinner.”

He nodded. “I’m going to memorize this drawing. See if I can reproduce it exactly. Shouldn’t take me too long. After that we can get back to your land and fix this once and for all.”

Yumi nodded in return and wandered out to the main room, taking advantage of the longer leash. Design, having put off her customers too long, came out and took charge of the restaurant. So Yumi sat at the counter, watching Masaka join the rest of the painters. They noticed Yumi and waved.

Fix this once and for all.

It might be…the last time she saw these people. Her last chance to be a normal person rather than the collected hopes and needs of an entire people. And so she let herself leave the bar, then trail across the room to the others.

“Yumi, Yumi,” Tojin said. “Look at this.” He flexed, stretching his…neck muscles? She hadn’t ever even thought about the fact that people had muscles in their necks. “What do you think?”

“Your head,” she said, “looks small by comparison.” She blushed immediately, as that felt rude.

Tojin, however, grinned widely. “Thanks!”

Akane sat nearby, gazing at the ceiling as Izzy kept talking. About dramas, of course. “So it turns out,” she was saying, “he didn’t leave. He thought he had to because he was being threatened by his evil brother.”

Yumi’s breath caught.

“His brother,” Akane said, “that you just told me was dead.”

“He is dead!” Izzy said. “He set it all up before he died! Using people who hate the honor of ronin.”

“So…” Yumi whispered, “Sir Ashinata came back?”

“There was an extra episode,” Izzy said, “that they didn’t tell us about.” She raised a finger. “This proves my theory of the importance of dramas. I’m writing a book on their relevance for improving mental health.”

Tojin frowned. “What about…drama-horoscope-figgldygrak—whatsit?”

“Old news,” Izzy said. “I’m going to be a viewer critic instead. It’s going to make me famous.”

Nearby, Masaka had settled into her seat. And though she didn’t say much, Yumi could see her contentment. She understood that. Being an outsider, then finding a place. Being alone, then finding friends.

“I wish,” Yumi said, trying to hold back the tears, “that I’d been able to meet you all sooner.”

“It’s your brother’s fault,” Tojin said. “He could have invited you at any point. Only did it when he wanted someone to try doing his work for him.”

Yumi felt a sudden, burning anger.

“I’m surprised,” Akane said, “that he didn’t try to recruit her to go to his classes for him in school. Considering that all he wanted to do was take time off. He—”

Yumi leaped to her feet, cutting her off. “You,” she said (lowly), “do not know Nikaro!”

“We…know what he did to us,” Izzy said.

Tojin nodded.

“I know he hurt you,” Yumi said. “I know it was hard. But did you think about how hard it was for him?”

“Hard for him?” Akane asked. “He was quite literally sitting around doing nothing.”

“Wanting to fix things,” Yumi said, “and not knowing how to do so is the most excruciating experience I’ve ever had. You don’t know him, Akane. You really don’t. Do you know what it’s like to feel the pressure of needing to succeed, not for yourself but because everyone else depends on you? Do you know what it does to someone to realize that your value is wrapped up—almost exclusively—in what you can do for people? To know that if you fail, you become nothing to the ones you most love?”

They shied away from her. All but Akane, who leaned forward. “We never thought he was nothing, Yumi,” she said softly. “He wasn’t our friend just because of what we thought he could do for us.”