POV: painter
Summary
Painter, still in ghost form on the alley below the fire escape, calculates whether there is any way to get Yumi out unseen and concludes there is not. Tojin is already pointing up the steps; Akane is already calling her name. Yumi, the department painter's bag still on her shoulder, steps to the railing looking caught. Akane scrambles up, takes in the bag, sees the elderly woman through the upstairs window, fires off a quick "training exercise, please disregard" to cover the scene, then seizes Yumi by the arm and tows her down past a befuddled Tojin. Painter follows in silence, head pounding for the first time he can remember — apparently a ghost can still get a headache after a nightmare feeds on him.
Out on the street, Akane demands to know what Yumi thinks she is doing. Tojin has already supplied the answer: Nikaro is on "personal leave," obviously goofing off, and his little sister is out trying to cover the shift he is too cowardly to work. *It's like before, Akane*. Yumi looks at the ground; when she finally speaks she only says, softly, that Painter is not a coward and that he did show her a few things. Painter, drifting behind, stifles a groan — that is exactly the wrong thing to say. They will think him reckless on top of lazy. Akane locks arms with Yumi and steers her toward the noodle house more by personality than by strength. Tojin jogs off to ask Ito's team to take their patrol; an intervention is being staged.
Painter trails behind, surprised by how much peace he feels in the inevitable. The truth has been burning him for weeks and now it is finally going to get put out. Yumi, walking, chokes out the story of the nightmare on the fire escape, which means Akane will quietly post a swing-shift watcher on the elderly woman's window. The only one losing anything tonight, he realises, is him. Any hope of reconciling with his old clique is dead. Watching that door close hurts — like acupuncture gone wrong, spiking through every nerve — but there is a freedom in knowing it is finally, completely shut.
Inside the noodle house, Akane sits Yumi down and orders her warm broth. The rest of the clique drifts in: Tojin with bare arms, Izzy in white, Masaka in black, all taking their usual places around her. They know what a first nightmare sighting feels like, which is why they were willing to trade shifts to come talk to her. Painter takes the next table over, watching her ease out of her shell — and thinking, for the first time so plainly, how her reserved smile feels earned in a way the freely-given kind doesn't.
Design emerges from the kitchen and saunters over to his table, mock-huffing that she is *supposed* to be acting jealous of Yumi and isn't, since envy would be unbefitting of a minor god. She slides into the chair next to his. When she gave herself this shape, she tells him, Hoid asked her to watch how humans interact — how they pair off — because her own ideas about how bonds form are wildly, endearingly wrong. *Why do you like her?* Painter tries to deflect; Design sees straight through it. He admits, in a half-whisper, that he can feel heat coming off Yumi like sunlight off her world — that she is intense and rare and one of the only people he has met who knows what it costs to give yourself entirely to an art. *That sounds like a terrible reason for liking someone*, Design says. He smiles and bask in it one last time.
At the next table Akane tightens her arm around Yumi's shoulders. *We need to have a talk about your brother. And the things he's done.* Tojin adds that they don't want to interfere. Izzy declares that she absolutely does, that Yumi has to know — her brother is a liar. Painter stands. The chair does not push back behind him; he passes straight through it. He gives Design a wan smile. It will be liberating, he tells himself, to be done. With his old friends. With Yumi. The honest part of him notes, quietly, that that is a lie — this is ripping him apart — and he wanders off into the night anyway, enjoying the extra leash Design has lengthened for him.