“Never mind that,” he said to her, standing up. “Just practice what I’ve shown you. Draw a thousand of them until you can do it by rote.”
She nodded and began, though her fledgling efforts were pathetically out of proportion. How had he made it seem so easy?
Well, she could absolutely do this a thousand times. That sounded like the perfect way to learn. She took the role of a dutiful student, proud of her example. She kept going, not saying a word, until her wrist ached and her knees hurt from kneeling. She didn’t speak, didn’t ask for a break. She would wait for him to offer one.
He didn’t. He sat on his altar, expression distant, the entire time. He…did know he was supposed to be supervising her, right?
Finally she was interrupted by another knock on the door. Painter shook out of his trance, then looked toward her, finding that she was surrounded by dozens of papers.
“Yumi,” he said （lowly）， “are you still going?”
“You said to do a thousand,” she said. “I am at three hundred and sixty-three.”
He put a hand to his head as if befuddled. The knock came again, and he gestured toward her. She took that as permission to pause her work, so she rose to go to the door. She only cracked it open so whoever was there wouldn’t see what she’d been doing, just in case.
“Hey!” Akane said. “Dinner?”
“Oh,” Yumi said. Her stomach growled. But she would survive on rice cakes and dry noodles today. Painter had shown her where he kept more. “No thank you.”
“Yumi,” Akane said, folding her arms and leaning forward. “Have you spent all day in here?”
“Uh…” Yumi said.
“You can’t come to Kilahito and hide yourself away!” Akane said. “I won’t allow it.”
Painter groaned. “She does this,” he said softly from behind. “Adopts people. Um…quick, tell her that you’ve got to study.”
“Study?” Yumi asked.
“Oh,” Akane said. “You haven’t placed in upper school yet? How much younger than Nikaro are you?”
“Say three years. But you just missed the cutoff.”
“Three years,” she said, though surely she didn’t look that young, did she? “But I just missed the cutoff.”
“So you have entrance tests in a few months,” Akane said. “Well, those are not as important as everyone makes them out to be.” She fidgeted. “I’ll bring you some noodles. But don’t work yourself too hard, all right?”
Yumi nodded, then bowed deeply, glad as Akane finally retreated.
“What lie,” Yumi said, closing the door, “did I just tell?”
“When you finish lower school at age sixteen or seventeen,” Painter explained, “you take tests to place in upper school for professional training. It’s kind of a big deal around here. The last few months before the tests, people spend most hours of the day studying. It will give us a good excuse for why you aren’t letting her adopt you.”
Yumi nodded, grateful at least that Akane might bring her something to eat other than rice cakes. She knelt to return to her training.
“Yumi,” he said, “don’t you want a break or something?”
“Only if you offer it, Master Teacher,” she said, touching her forehead to the ground.
He snorted. “Master? Do I look like a master of anything?”
“You fill the role nonetheless,” she said, still bowed.
“So, wait,” he said. “You’d have simply kept going? Until what? Until you collapsed?”
“If it is required for my instruction.”
“And…you’d do whatever I asked?”
“If it aids in my learning.”
“I just remembered,” he said, “that it’s essential to the painting process that you learn to do it while standing on your head.” She glanced up and saw him settle back on his altar. “With one finger up your left nostril. We should practice that now. Go ahead.”
She almost did it. Almost tried standing on her head, while wearing a skirt, to test whether he actually wanted her to waste her time flailing around and likely hurting herself. It would have served him right.
But she wasn’t about to establish a precedent by playing games. She instead rose to a kneeling position and met his gaze, feeling a frustration that she should have been able to control. “You,” she said, “are not treating your position with its due respect.”
“My world,” he said lightly. “My rules.”
“Your world,” she said, “is （lowly） stupid. I’m taking a break.”
She walked to the window, which she fiddled with and managed to open. Cold or not, she wanted some fresh air. Why did he get under her skin? She had legendary patience—Liyun had trained her to that end. Now she was snapping at a boy after he tossed a few half-witted jibes in her direction?
She breathed in the outside air, cool in contrast with the room, which had now heated up considerably. There was a strange scent to the air, crisp and inviting. Like the smell of freshly washed clothing. And the street below…was wet. She looked to the sky as wind blew water into her face. Rain. Rain that lingered on the ground rather than hissing away the moment it hit. How utterly bizarre. Why didn’t the city drown in a flood of water?
That scent…was that what rain smelled like when it pooled? As much as she disliked the cold, there was something intriguing to scents and sights like these. Exotic and mesmerizing. Water that covered the ground…rain you could smell…and a street lit violet and blue.
She looked up and down the street, watching the people pass, carrying bright umbrellas and wearing clothing so varied it made her wonder how they ever decided upon anything. Perhaps that was why some women wore those indecent skirts that cut off mid-thigh, despite the cold air. Too many options overwhelmed the brain. It wasn’t immorality; it was decision paralysis.
As she watched, her eyes were drawn to an alley across from the apartment building. She couldn’t say why. Something about the pooling darkness, though there wasn’t anything to see. Indeed, there was literally nothing to see. Just shadows.
The cold of the night air assaulted her right then. The cut of the wind, which seemed to have found a sharpening stone. The bite of the rain, suddenly hungry. She closed the window and returned to her practice—six hundred and thirty-seven more bamboo paintings to go.
If she had looked closer, or if she’d called to Painter, perhaps they would have noticed a living darkness in the alley—one that brushed the bricks with its too-real substance and left clinging wisps of smoke trailing upward in the rain, as if from a candle recently snuffed.
Yumi made Painter wait a week—eleven whole days—before she let him move to the next step of his training.
Eleven. Days.
He spent each and every one just sitting there. Picking up rocks and trying to judge their weight, their balance. Studying them, trying to “understand” them. Ad nauseam.
This was a new kind of boredom for Painter. It wasn’t the indecisive boredom of someone with a hundred things to do, none of them particularly appetizing. It was old-school, despotic boredom—the kind forced upon you by a society lacking choices. A place where “free time” was a sin and “leisure” was a word used only in conjunction with the rich.