Page 102 of Yumi and the Nightmare Painter

She could only watch as the thing reached Tojin and Akane. These two it could kill. These two weren’t even worth abite. These it would rend, destroy. It raised a claw to strike Tojin, who lay terrified on the ground.

Then Painter arrived.

HerPainter. He stepped over Tojin’s supine form, having rounded the street behind, looking for Yumi. He placed himself directly between the thing and Tojin and thrust his hand to the side, where a large paintbrush burst from his essence and formed as if out of silver light. He wouldn’t remember creating it, and after the fact wouldn’t have been able to tell you how he’d done it.

Akane had dropped her bag, breaking the ink jar, in her haste to get away. She’d tripped and fallen in the alley, and now—remembering Tojin—was trying to crawl to him in a panic. Neither of them could see Painter.

But Yumi could. Her angle was just right to look past the monster, looming on hind legs. To see the terrified Painter clutching his brush, confronting the thing. To see his shape itself begin to warp andfuzz, as it had before, crumbling like a statue whose outer layers were being scraped off by a terrible wind.

That Painter. Shaking. Breaking. Overwhelmed.

That Painter rammed his brush down into the ink spilled from Akane’s bag and began to paint.

A long line on the concrete. Knob on both ends. A sprig of bamboo. The shape of the nightmare twisted for a second, then—eyes going wider, deeper,whiter—it surged forward at him, driving him to take a step backward.

Painter, now inches from the thing, went pale. His figure crumbling. Eyes wide. But then Tojin whimpered from below, and something steeled in Painter. He rammed his brush back down, and—with a look of consummate determination—swept it out in front of him at the monster’s feet. And began to paint.

No, not just paint.

Create.

Sweeping arcs around him and Tojin, staining the ground with phantom ink. He met the monster’s gaze, not even looking down as he drew with his brush.

The nightmare stepped back. And Painteradvanced. One step after another, driving the thing back with each twist of his brush, creating an artistic masterpiece that burned away behind him as he walked. The ink wasn’t real, Yumi thought. The brush should have vanished too, shouldn’t it?

But no. At that moment, Yumi understood. The brush was an extension of Painter. It belonged to him. As natural as his own heart. Lying there—watching him drive the thing back by force of skill, art, and sheerwill—Yumi realized something. She’d been right at the start of all this.

The spiritshadsent her a hero.

The nightmare began to shrink, twisting in a horrific way, enormous claws shortening, skeleton seeming topopas it constricted. Its face narrowed as it was forced to conform to Painter’s vision of it, the one he painted on the concrete. Not a monster at all. Something friendly, with four paws and a wagging tail. The thing recognized this vision for it and let out a howl—fully stable enough to actuallyspeak—then turned and loped away, its terrible form restoring as it broke from Painter’s spell.

Defeated, embarrassed—but not destroyed—it vanished into the night.

Painter fell to his knees, overwhelmed, the paintbrush finally burning away in his fingers. Behind him, Akane reached Tojin, helping him sit up. The two of them stared out after the nightmare, baffled as to what had driven it off.

Painter looked with a wan smile toward Yumi. Then at last he seemed to notice that she wasn’t moving.

“Yumi!” he said, but his voice sounded distant, like she was…was deep underwater…

She tried to reply, but her teeth only chattered together. Her body shivered and spasmed, and her vision was fading—darkness at the sides creeping in further.

“Yumi!” Painter’s anxious face above her. “What’s wrong?”

“So…cold…” she whispered, her breath puffing.

He knelt above her, panicked, holding up his hands.

The darkness closed in.

Painterseizedher in an embrace.

His essence mingled with hers. His self and her self mashed into one. A shocking, intoxicating, sensual concoction.

Heatdetonatedwithin Yumi, a dying fire suddenly given air. It surged through her. His heat.Theirheat. She gasped with the force of a drowning woman and went rigid.

Painter pulled back, his face streaked with sweat. She caught herself before falling to the ground again, then kept breathing in deep gasps, no longer frozen. Together they sat there, trembling, until Akane and Tojin arrived to help her stand.

Perhapsnowthey would believe.

---