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.”
“Did you ever tell him that?” Yumi asked. “Did you ever wonder how he felt? Can you tell me, honestly, that you think he lied because he wanted to hurt you? Do you actually think he was enjoying himself? Sitting alone? Staring at the wall? Trying desperately to think of a way to not let you down? To not fail you?”
“He should have told us,” Akane said.
“He should have,” Yumi agreed. “He agrees. I agree. You agree. We all （lowly） agree! But he didn’t tell you. It happened. It’s over. I’m sorry.” She sighed, her rage waning like the last jets of a drowsy steamwell. “You were his friends. He failed you. He ruined your lives. But did you ever think how unfair it was that he was responsible for your lives?”
“I can’t pretend,” Tojin said softly, “that he didn’t hurt me.”
“I know, Tojin,” Yumi said. “But he loves you all still; I can see it in him. He cannot change what he did, but he is a good person, trying very hard. You don’t have to forget what he did. But did you ever think that maybe instead of constant wisecracks and snark you could simply…try to understand? On that day, when he was rejected from the Dreamwatch, Painter lost everything. Every hope, every dream. He lost his love of what he did. But I think losing you as his friends was the worst of all.”
She met each of their eyes in turn, and they glanced away, not contradicting her. Akane, last of all, looked down.
“Thank you,” Yumi said, “for the kindness you’ve shown me these past weeks. I truly appreciate it. But I’m going to be leaving now. So maybe spare some of that kindness for someone who needs it even more.”
She bowed to them, the most formal bow she knew, as if to the spirits themselves. Then she turned away, joining Painter, who had just come out of the kitchen.
“Come on,” she said, walking toward the door.
“But dinner—”
“I’ve lost my appetite,” she said. “You’re right. It’s time to end this.”
“I don’t know why you require this, Chosen,” Liyun said, kneeling bleary-eyed before Painter in the shrine. “I have fetched it, but…it is one of several very unusual actions you’ve been taking lately.”
Painter settled down, listening to the shivering and shaking of the trees, bumping into one another in the wind like a crowd at the carnival. He’d been harsh toward this woman in the past, but…well, he thought he was coming to understand her.
“It’s a hard duty, Liyun,” he said, “being the warden of a yoki-hijo. If something goes wrong, nobody can impugn the girl chosen by the spirits; she is beyond recrimination. But someone must pay. Perhaps the one who guided her poorly.”
Liyun looked up, shocked. Then nodded. “You’ve grown…wise, over the years, Chosen.”
“I appreciate your service,” Painter said, reaching to take the rolled-up piece of paper she’d brought. “If you’re worried about my unusual actions, you can be content that they’ve helped more than you can know. After all, my work yesterday proves that I’m returning to myself.”
“You…still sleep over twelve hours a day, Chosen.”
“What’s better?” he asked. “A yoki-hijo who cannot work at all, or one who is slowly returning to herself?”
Liyun nodded again, her head bowed.
“Know that if your Yumi returns,” he said, “it’s because of what you have done. Your faith in her. Thank you.”
Liyun stood, and he was surprised to see tears in her eyes. He’d thought her as likely to cry as a rock was. She bowed to him again, then withdrew, her clogs sounding on the stone until she vanished down the path between the trees.
“That was sweet of you,” Yumi said, kneeling next to him. “I know how she riles you.”
“I’m thinking that maybe I understand the pressure she’s under,” he said. “She could be less a personification of a crusted-over paintbrush, mind you. But…I can empathize.”
He held up the scroll that Liyun had delivered, then looked to Yumi and took a deep breath. They’d waited to do this until after bathing and their meditations. They’d needed his paints, after all, at the shrine.
With a firm hand he unrolled the scroll, revealing a map of Torio, Yumi’s kingdom. This was the map used by the driver of Yumi’s wagon to get from town to town. He studied its scale and nodded. Then, from memory, he painted a copy of Masaka’s drawing at the same size as the map, using some grid lines as guides.
He laid his copy atop Liyun’s map to find that they overlapped perfectly. The circles Masaka had drawn—each of which represented an impenetrable wall inside the shroud—were directly around some of the larger towns on Liyun’s map. Kilahito wasn’t represented in the map of Yumi’s lands, naturally, but the circle that Masaka had drawn indicating the biggest of the walled-off regions was listed on Liyun’s map as Torio City. The capital, seat of the queen, home to the university.
（If you’re curious about the scale, both nations were relatively small by modern reckoning—less than fifty miles across. There wasn’t a lot of life on the planet. Painter’s people were quietly content with a small and intimate collection of cities. While Yumi’s nation could grow no larger than the steamwells allowed. On these maps, then, Kilahito and the town they were currently in were less than five miles apart.）
Yumi leaned forward as she studied the two maps—his done on thinner paper, so the lines beneath showed through. “Painter,” she said, her wonderful eyes so wide they could have been canvases, “you were right. This time you were right!”
Right. He was right.
Their lands were somehow the same. Cities in Torio existed in the dark space between the cities of his nation. No overlap of actual living spaces, but many of them were shockingly close.
“It seems impossible,” Yumi whispered. “We’re both in the same place. Existing right next to one another.”
“Like we’re overlapping,” he said. “Two peoples. One land…” He sat back, proud of having been able to see this. At the same time…what did it change? There was only one way forward. “I need to destroy that machine.”