What the Cloud Painters Do, and Their Examination

"Hm? What is it? Go on."

"Why did you seniors… leave the Cloud Painters, which you had entered by passing that hard examination, for the Escort Division…?"

The Cloud Painters' work was split into a night watch and a daytime watch, but an angel had to serve at least five shifts in one of the two.

The shifts could come in runs, and depending on the case an angel might be pulled off a break and sent out as a relief hand.

As they had said themselves, it was certainly hard labor—but transfers of post in under a year were forbidden, and if they had been scouted, then they must have served a year or more as Cloud Painters before they applied to move.

And to become a Cloud Painter, one had to pass an examination: to paint a specified quantity of cloud into a fixed space, within a fixed time.

Judging the mixing of white and black paint, and the depth of the color, and painting exactly the quantity specified—it was said to be a task of the greatest difficulty, and sometimes the instructions included how the Ladder of Angels that the Escort Division used was to be laid into the sky.

Anyone who did not love to paint would never even think of sitting that examination.

"Well… it's true I do like the work of a Cloud Painter. But it's hard labor, and hard to get rest—and then there's the thing with the Planning Division—"

*—and the friction wore us out.*

It seemed they had all been Cloud Painters; all six angels present said it in chorus.

"If it weren't for that, I might have stayed a bit longer."

"Me, I would have stayed. Even now, when I cross the Angel Road and see a sky, I want to paint it…"

"I'd have come over here even without it. I became a Cloud Painter from the start meaning to end up here."

"Same for me, same for me. I heard the Escort Division selects, from among all the divisions, the ones who look suited to the work—so I thought, if I want to understand the Angel Road, the best way is to be a Cloud Painter who makes it."

Everyone had his own reasons—but Vihal understood that they had never been on good terms with the Planning Division, and had been so for a long time.

"I made a great failure today… I may have widened that friction again…"

When he said it, downcast, the six angels paused a moment, and then burst out laughing.

"Hah hah hah hah hah!"

"Hah hah hah! So you still didn't know?"

"Edwin, you should have told him!"

Eh? What? Why? Vihal looked round at their faces, and then at Edwin…

"I can't say anything about it myself. I don't think it's true."

And with that, he speared the last strawberry on his plate with his fork.

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