A Special Drink, and Edwin's Confession (Part Two)

"A problem?"

"Yeah. I told you a bit about it today, didn't I? That I'm good at carrying on from a sky someone else painted."

Edwin, who had come to help Vihal today, had moved his brush without a moment's hesitation; and Vihal had thought nothing more than *of course, that's Edwin*—and been moved, simply, thinking *I want to be like that one day.*

Watching the strawberry he was poking at, and wondering what this problem of his had been, Vihal listened quietly with gentle eyes.

"When I went to help… I realized that I'm bad at painting in from nothing. From a blank start."

After that, he said, he threw himself into it—using every break he had to go and help the comrades who looked to be struggling.

"Of course I asked the higher-ups and the man himself first. Some of them take real pride in it, and their goal is to finish a sky alone, start to end."

"…I see… but why did you decide to go and help? If you knew you were bad at painting from scratch, wouldn't it have been better to practice that…?"

"Yeah… maybe you're right…"

At Vihal's words, his eyes wavered a little and he faltered.

"I was afraid, back then—. And I'd lost a good deal of my confidence, too…"

Watching him fall silent, Vihal waited—for Edwin was trying with all his might to tell him about a time he surely did not want to remember.

After a pause that seemed long and was short, that light of hesitation vanished from Edwin's eyes, and he looked at Vihal with a strong will in them.

"I think… I didn't want to lose the feeling of wanting to paint."

It was a word without any hesitation left in it.

"After I joined the Cloud Painters, I struggled and worried the whole way… and then I remembered all the scribbles we did together, you and me, practice in name only, and how much fun they were…

That was when it started. I decided to make my own strong point as clear to myself as I could. And I thought, once I know that, I'll be able to move forward again."

Edwin's face as he said it—helped along by the Angel's Share, perhaps—was faintly flushed and happy.

"Thanks to that, while I was helping others, I found the way to paint a sky through on my own—the way to *begin* one.

And it took me a year for that way to really take root in me.

And even that… was only possible because of everyone who let me help them. It wasn't my own strength alone."

He was the one who had done the striving; he could have held his head high. And yet Edwin did not.

It's thanks to everyone, he said.

Vihal watched him tip two strawberries into his mouth and chew, and murmured, his eyes once again full of admiration.

"…I see…"

And because Edwin thought that way, Vihal wanted to keep chasing after him—he thought so again, from the bottom of his heart.

And then—

"Oh, it's Edwin, isn't it!"

From behind Vihal, an angel he didn't know called out to Edwin.

"I hear you're still a Cloud Painter?"

---