Yumi and the Nightmare Painter

Back in Painter’s world, Yumi and Painter speak with Design, and she tells them that time travel is impossible. She then pulls out a device designed to read an individual’s “spiritweb” (a network of people, places, and objects they are connected to). Design sees that Yumi is remarkably Invested (meaning she has a large amount of potential magical energy) and says she might be able to scare away nightmares. Design goes on to explain that nightmares are made of Investiture, which makes them highly responsive to thoughts. This is why painters could trap them; the act of visualizing them as a different object causes them to become the object. As Design looks at Yumi’s spiritweb, she also discovers a gap in Yumi’s memory. Design then confirms they are on the same planet as one another and that Yumi is connected only to the other yoki-hijo, though Design cannot locate them.

Yumi runs toward the shroud in frustration, followed by Painter, and later, Design. To calm herself, she stacks pebbles, and Painter notices that this pushes the shroud outward. He urges her to continue, and soon, the shroud is pushed back far enough to reveal a woman in the garb of the yoki-hijo, screaming silently. In her fright, Yumi jumps back, knocking over the stacks and allowing the shroud to reform. Design thinks that this could have been a nightmare.

Yumi insists that they destroy the stone-stacking machine but first wants to know more about the planet. Design tells her that she knows someone who has traveled extensively.

Design leads Yumi and Painter to a back room in the Noodle Pupil. She brings in Masaka, who explains that she is not human—she is a Sleepless, a sapient race whose bodies are composed of a swarm of creatures called hordelings. Masaka says that she loves seeming human and begs them not to reveal her secret. She then gives them information that she discovered about the planet through her hordelings. In the shroud, they had discovered impenetrable, circular barriers, and Painter thinks these must be the towns of Yumi’s world. Painter has Masaka draw a map of these areas and sets himself to memorizing it while Yumi leaves the back room.

She approaches Izzy, Tojin, and Akane’s table and hears Izzy talking about the surprise extra episode of the show Seasons of Regret, which gave the characters a happy ending. Yumi goes up to them and thanks them for their kindness, but when Tojin makes an insulting comment about Painter, she begins to criticize them. She says that none of them thought about how hard the Dreamwatch rejection was on Painter and tells them that he felt they only cared about him because of the opportunities his skill could bring them. When Akane tries to say that this was not what they thought, Yumi asks if they ever told Painter that. She then says that with the rejection from Dreamwatch, Painter lost his purpose, his passion, and, worst of all, his friends. Yumi ends by thanking them again for being welcoming to her, and then she leaves, taking Painter with her as he comes out of the backroom.

In the shrine in Torio, Painter gets a map of Torio from Liyun and thanks her for her service, which brings tears to Liyun’s eyes. Painter overlays this map with Masaka’s, which he memorized, and he and Yumi see that they align.

They decide that it is time to destroy the machine. Yumi, having realized the cultural power that the yoki-hijo has, decides to use this. She has Painter approach Liyun, explaining that the spirits have commanded them to destroy the machine. Within half an hour, they have gathered a group of men with sledgehammers.

When they reach the scholars’ tent, Painter demands that the scholars step aside. The scholars are unsurprised, and one makes a comment revealing he knows who Painter is, beyond Yumi’s body. He asks what Painter thinks is happening and is amused by his guess of overlapping dimensions. Painter tries to ignore their taunts but realizes that everyone around him has frozen. Then, they fade into nightmares. Liyun turns into the familiar form of the stable nightmare that has been hunting them. The scholars also begin to transform into nightmares as their surroundings disintegrate into the shroud. Painter tries to move to protect Yumi, but he sees that she, too, is fading, though slower than the others. Yumi, panicking, asks Painter what is happening.

The scholars comment that linking a yoki-hijo to the outside to stop her memories being altered is a good attempt by the spirits, but now the machine is working and the rogue spirit has been captured. The scholars turn on their machine, and Painter is flung back into his own body, which painfully reverts to his own appearance.

Yumi wakes up in her wagon. She has no memories of Painter, and she is once again hoping to visit the Festival of Reveals. During her ritual bath, she has a strange feeling that someone else should be there.

Back in Painter’s world, he rushes to the shroud and tries to make it recede by stacking stones, but this does nothing. Akane arrives and sees that Painter has been crying. She asks him what happened to Yumi, so Painter flees.

After Yumi’s bath, she sees the trees near the shrine and feels that she had once made a memory there, but she does not know what it was. Liyun then arrives and seems confused about several things. She tells Yumi that she has a task that evening, though she does not know what it is. Once Liyun leaves, Yumi remembers that she did not ask about the Festival of Reveals but finds that this is not important to her.

In his apartment, Painter remembers that nightmares often revisit places, so he goes to the playground where he fought the stable nightmare. Liyun’s nightmare form soon approaches, and he asks her about the scholars’ plan. He realizes that the towns were fakes that were meant to keep Yumi confused. Painter then continues to refer to Liyun as a person and stacks stones, seeming to jog a memory in her. She tells him that Yumi’s memory is erased every day, and once he appeals to her duties toward the yoki-hijo, she agrees to take Yumi’s carnival painting to her.

Before Liyun leaves, she says she wants to be human again, having been a nightmare for 1,700 years. She also warns that the machine will not allow Painter to live. It will send an army of 100 stable nightmares to finish him off. When the spirits contacted a person in another world 30 years before, they had done the same.

Yumi hears the voices of the scholars in her dreams, and they are discussing what to do with her memories. She then wakes up in her wagon, and her day repeats again; but this time, her attendants do not arrive. Instead, Liyun comes and explains that Yumi must stay inside because of a sickness in town. Yumi asks whether she can go to the Festival of Reveals and is shocked when Liyun agrees. Liyun then prepares to leave but stops and asks what her duty is. When a confused Yumi responds that Liyun’s duty is to serve the yoki-hijo, she agrees and drops a piece of paper on the ground before walking away. Yumi picks it up and sees her carnival painting, which prompts her to remember everything.

Painter runs to the temporary headquarters of Dreamwatch in Kilahito to ask for help. After a companion shows him inside, he sees that Dreamwatch is taking no action to find the stable nightmare. When he explains that more nightmares are coming, they don’t take him seriously. Instead, they try to send him away with the false hope that he might be able to join them. 

Here, Hoid comments on the saying that advises people to never meet their heroes. He defends the idea of a hero, saying that stories are less about the truth and more about the impact they have on their audience. However, in this case, as a companion reveals to Painter, Dreamwatch is an organization solely based on nepotism and connections. Painter could never have gotten in. Before he can think further about this, he realizes that he now needs to fight the nightmares alone.

Yumi searches through the town but finds no one there. She decides to smash the machine, knowing it is real because it did something to her and Painter. While searching for it, she realizes she can go through the building walls, which are just an illusion made of the shroud. Eventually, she finds the machine in the bailiff’s house and hits it with a stone until it shuts down.

For a moment, she thinks that she has won, but the scholars emerge and tell her that there is another, larger machine in Torio City. They explain that this “father machine” was powered on 1,763 years ago. It was meant to create a reliable source of energy from the spirits for the Torish people, but instead, it drew power from the Torish people themselves, turning them into nightmares. The only ones it was not able to hold were the yoki-hijo, whom it trapped in illusions. Yumi asks for the scholars’ help to stop it, but they refuse, saying that the machine is their art. They transform into nightmares and approach her.

Hoid decides to explain, in case his listeners are confused. At a festival 1,700 years ago, the father machine was activated. It was meant to stack stones and use the spirits as a power source, but the scholars didn’t realize that it would see all souls as a viable power source. It first consumed the souls of the Torish people, causing the shroud and the nightmares as byproducts. The machine then moved to spirits, eventually collecting all of them and producing hion buds, from which Painter’s civilization was built.

In Kilahito, Painter stands alone at the western edge of the shroud and thinks about how quickly he will be overwhelmed. He then considers what Yumi would do in such a situation.

Hoid returns to his explanation, saying that he had been seeing events through Liyun’s eyes. She, like all nightmares, was manipulated by the machine while the yoki-hijo were awake to keep up their fake lives. At night, she would revert into a nightmare. However, the machine did not consider that Yumi would subconsciously develop her skills over time—that was when this story began. That day, her stacks were so excellent that they drew a spirit away from the machine. The spirit knew it would be captured soon, so it contacted Yumi and then followed Liyun into the city, where it saw Painter decide to help the family when he didn’t need to. Because of this, it linked Painter and Yumi. Liyun continued to visit Kilahito in the next few weeks because of her connection to Yumi.

In Torio, Yumi flees from the scholars. She begins to stack stones to fend them off, but then she thinks about what Painter might do. She decides to climb a tree and unchain it, flying upward on it.

Painter finds Akane and her friends at the Noodle Pupil. He apologizes for his previous mistakes and explains that an attack is coming and he needs their help. After a tense silence, Tojin agrees to join him, and soon, the others do, too. They also decide to call in favors to gather as many painters as possible. Tojin explains to Painter that he thought he saw him during the stable nightmare attack and has since taken inspiration from his dedication to the role.

Hoid explains that the spirit that connected Yumi and Painter had not planned beyond this link and had not intended for the body swapping. The machine realized something was wrong, so it extended the “narrative” that Yumi lived in, eventually using the scholars to reevaluate and fix the problem.

In the present day, Yumi is flying on a tree, which the machine is trying to turn into smoke. She arrives at the edge of town and then goes through the barrier, seeing the shroud beyond it. The tree continues to unravel until Yumi realizes she can mentally control the shroud and forces the tree into its physical form.

In Kilahito, an hour later, 37 painters are preparing for a nightmare attack, but nothing comes. As time passes, Akane questions if there will be an attack. She also tells Painter that she forgives him. When she is about to dismiss the painters, the army of nightmares emerges.

When Yumi lands outside Torio City, she sees the scholars in their nightmare forms. They try to consume her Investiture, but she is able to exert power over them, forcing them into their human forms and freeing them from the machine’s control. The freed scholars are deeply apologetic and tell her that the machine is acting under the priorities of protecting itself and harvesting energy. Yumi asks how she can destroy the machine, and they say it is impossible since it has a shield of energy around itself. Yumi rejects this idea and uses the shroud to form the dress she bought in Kilahito around herself before moving into Torio City.

Back in Kilahito, the painters defend against the nightmares. However, these nightmares did not dissipate—they only shrank and then formed again. Painter manages to reduce three nightmares with one painting but knows they would not hold for long.

Yumi sees that Torio City is a ruin, except for the exhibit hall where the machine had first been unveiled. Here, she finds the father machine; it is a 30-foot-tall version of the machine in the village, with hundreds of legs eternally stacking and knocking over stones. She also sees that it is held together by smoke made from Investiture. Thousands of spirits and an unpassable barrier surround it.

By this time, several of the painters in Kilahito have been wounded. Painters urges them to fight on, and they take up the cry that they are Dreamwatch. He then recognizes Liyun among the nightmares and gets an idea.

Yumi tries to get through the barrier until she feels a connection to Painter and realizes that he is in danger. Looking at the machine, she considers that it has no emotional appreciation for the art it makes, so she decides to begin stacking her own stones.

Painter paints Liyun’s original form, causing her to turn human again. He then moves on to the others in town, painting each of them in turn. Other nightmare painters help by holding off the creatures or reducing the nightmares between Painter and the person he is painting. Eventually, they manage to turn all the nightmares into people.

Yumi creates hundreds of stacks of innovative designs. Her creativity pulls spirits away from the machine in increasing numbers, until finally, they all leave it. As she works, Yumi realizes that once the machine is destroyed, the shroud and all the souls it has kept captive will disappear, too, including her. But she chooses not to stop, serving the people and the spirits one last time. As the machine falls still and disintegrates, the spirits thank Yumi for freeing them.

In Kilahito, the Torish people also disintegrate, smiling as they are freed. Afterward, the shroud itself fades. Painter makes mental contact with Yumi. She tells him she has broken the machine, but Painter senses her regret. She asks if he remembers what he had said about sad stories being more realistic. Yumi then tells Painter that she lives to serve others and has done this. Painter tries to tell her that she deserves her own life, but Yumi says she must disappear. They confess their love for each other, and Yumi fades away.

Hoid muses on the nature of stories, saying that they relay constants in the human experience and help explain what it means to be human. He apologizes to his audience about the sad ending but says this is simply how some stories are. However, he says that Painter refused to accept this.

Painter begins his capstone painting, creating an image of Yumi sitting on the tree flying through the sky; the image conveys her passion and intent, and Hoid describes this as the foundation of art. As Painter works on this, Yumi forms near him. She initially tells him that this is not right, but he says that they can do anything they want. She finally admits that she deserves love and then appears out of darkness as the shroud vanishes completely.

Hoid emerges from his statue form in the Noodle Pupil and is welcomed by Design. He explains that he had protection protocols that activated once they landed on the planet, and the machine tried to steal his Investiture. They decide to leave the planet by stealing one of the spaceships that are being made. Yumi and Painter pass by the window and kiss.

Design wills her restaurant to Yumi and Painter before she leaves, and Hoid says she still receives updates from Masaka. Design heard that society has adapted to life without the shroud, and some spirits even choose to remain hion lines. The Noodle Pupil, which is now run by Painter and Yumi, is still thriving. The couple never tells anyone about their experiences, as they want a quiet life together. Painter ensures that all credit for rallying the nightmare painters was given to the one woman who died during the attack. Hoid concludes by mentioning that their first kiss was priceless to them.