Page 111 of Yumi and the Nightmare Painter

“By painting.”

“When you make art,” she whispered, “it’s easy to forget.”

“Until you don’t have anyone to show it to.”

“I never had that problem,” she said. “But my audience was never human. I often wished that after it was all done for the day, someone would be there to tell me I’d done a good job.”

“Hey,” he said.

She glanced at him.

“Good job.”

“I didn’t mean rightnow,” she said (lowly).

He grinned at her anyway. And eventually she grinned back. Then she idly picked up a few pebbles and broken cobbles from the ground. Unsurprisingly, she began stacking them.

“We’re missing today’s episode ofSeasons of Regret,” she said. “I didn’t even remember. Considering all the…”

“Insanity?”

“Yeah,” she said, balancing another pebble.

“Ask Izzy,” he said. “She’ll know what happened. And will explain. In detail.”

“I almost…” she said, balancing a fourth pebble, “would rather not. I’d rather imagine it for myself. So I can pretend it turned out happy in the end.”

Painter glanced to the side. This wasn’t the best place for a conversation. At the very least, they risked running into Akane and Tojin, who wouldneverlet Yumi…

He frowned, then stood up.

The shroud waschanging. Rippling. He almost shouted for Yumi to run, thinking a nightmare was coming out. But then the shroud drewback.Away from them.

Like darkness before light. Like water evaporating before a terrible heat. The shroud retreated in a kind of curve, bowing inward. He glanced at Yumi, who stacked another pebble.

The shroud pulled back farther.

“Yumi!” he hissed, then pointed.

She followed his gaze, then gasped softly. “What is happening?”

“The stacking,” he said. “The shroud is responding to the stacking.”

To test this, she placed another—and the shroud pulled back more. It was responding only in a small region, maybe ten feet across. But Painter found the behavior bizarre—until he realized there was an obvious correlation.

“That’s how it responds to hion lines,” he said, looking toward Yumi. “It’s how we survive; hion pushes back the shroud. We build new settlements by extending the lines into the dark.”

Yumi selected another handful of pebbles from around the area, then settled herself with a determined expression, stacking one after another, working faster than he’d have dared. Not a single one of her miniature towers toppled. Behind them, he noticed Design approaching, still wearing her apron. It was an odd sight, and he realized he had basically considered her to be a fixture of the restaurant—seeing her was like seeing the bar itself rip up and come sauntering out onto the street.

Design wordlessly joined them, watching the shroud. The darknesslurched with each pebble, but then started to churn and bubble, like water boiling.

“Yumi…” Painter said at this new behavior. “Maybe…”

She increased her speed, building with both hands, growing her towers higher, higher, making the shroud churn and froth and agitate and ripple, thensplit. Right down the center, revealing a human hand, then shoulders and a face—a woman, dressed in the bright tobok of a yoki-hijo—reaching out to them with a voiceless scream. The shroud surged forward again, swallowing her, then bulged out toward the three of them.

Painter yelled and leaped back. Yumi scattered rocks in her haste to get away. Even Design—who had long claimed to be some kind of immortal unaffected by common fears—scuttled away until all three of them pressed their backs to the nearest wall: Painter’s whitewashed but unpainted one.

“What (lowly) wasthat?” Painter demanded.

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