Gaki Muchuu

A man arrives at the studio of a painter whose talent is the talk of the land—though his temperament is every bit as famous as his brushwork. Sent by his lord to commission a fusuma painting, he expects little more than a routine errand. Instead, he finds himself face to face with an artist in the grip of a singular obsession. Before taking on any new work, the painter insists, he must first master the art of painting a cat. Until he can capture one properly, nothing else matters—not a lord's command, not the passage of time, not the waiting world beyond his door. As the days stretch on and the promised painting remains endlessly, stubbornly unfinished, the man's anxiety deepens into quiet desperation. Bound by duty to his lord yet helpless against the painter's caprice, he can only watch as the commission he was sent to secure slips ever further beyond his reach.