(The painting of this peony...)

(It feels less dark compared to the others.)

(The previous piece had really dark shadows. With paint everywhere and the canvas on the ground... It was like nothing mattered anymore to him...)

(But this one's a little different...)

(A moonbeam is illuminating this peony. As though it's giving it life.)

(But the dark areas around it...)

(It looks quite messy, despite the peony itself being painted carefully.)

<There's something off about this painting...
The flower's really pretty, but everything else is so dark.>

<Yeah, it's interesting in that sense...>

<What do you think was going through your dad's mind when he painted this, Ena...?>

I don't know...

But unlike those other paintings we just saw, this one involves a source of light...

<Light...>

Yeah. It's hard to ignore the shadows and darkness, but he seemed to put a lot of effort into this beam of light...

But if his goal was to paint something about light, I feel that he would've done something different...

(What was going through his mind when he painted this...?)

Shinonome.

Oh...

How are things going?
What do you feel when you see this painting...?

...

Pain of some kind.

Pain?

Yes...

This peony's pretty, but everything else around it feels like it was painted in a frenzy...

No, wait... But...

Yes...?
Just try to say what comes to mind.

O-Okay... Umm...

...

I noticed something after seeing all his paintings up to this period...

For some reason, his works from around this time all seem to evoke pain and suffering...

But he feels that he has to keep drawing.
That's sort of what I got out of them...

And yet...

This painting... In the midst of the pain, there's also...

A sense of hope or something similar... I think that's what it's trying to express...

...

I see. That's what you felt when you saw this?

Huh...?

There was a time when he struggled to overcome a massive creative block.

I still to this day vividly remember the state he was in.

He'd finally begun his journey as a painter, but no one seemed interested in looking at his art, let alone understand it.

He drew and drew as much as he could. He was so desperate.

...!

I even heard that he was struggling to make ends meet. Things got so hard that his wife had to support him and put food on the table...

Then, one day, she gave birth to a baby girl.

What...?

That was when he began asking himself...

“Can I keep going on like this?”
“Should I give up on being an artist?”

He decided to do one last painting.
A piece called “A Peony Blooming in the Night”.

He was ready to quit...?

You're joking, right? I mean...

Yes, but...
As you know, he didn't end up quitting.

I don't fully understand the pain he felt or how he figured out what he needed to do.

However...

I do know that he decided to fully commit himself to his art.

Fully commit...

...

Now then, the exhibit's about to open.
Why don't we end our lesson here?

O-Oh, okay...

Um, Mr. Yukihira...?

Yes?

Would it be okay if I stayed a little while longer...?

I want to take another look at the artwork...

I don't mind.
But I'll be excusing myself here.

Okay.

Thank you very much.