Still, it was fortunate that the two of them worked in different fields. Coupled with the precedent set by the Doma siblings—a pair so absurd that one could not even muster the desire to compete with them—Utaha Kasumigaoka merely twitched the corner of her mouth and sighed inwardly.
"Utaha..." Unfortunately, although her emotions came and went quickly—so quickly they could be called fleeting—Mashiro still noticed that momentary expression. Then again, that was hardly surprising. As a world-class painter, Mashiro's eyes could not merely be compared to cameras; rather, most cameras were not necessarily as effective as Mashiro's eyes.
After all, most cameras could only capture still images, whereas Mashiro's eyes could record every scene that interested her. So although Utaha Kasumigaoka had only twitched the corner of her mouth, Mashiro had indeed seen it, and she asked in confusion, "Is something wrong?"
"Huh?"
"Because I noticed Utaha's expression just now was strange..."
"..." Ah, this.
"Before..." Before Utaha Kasumigaoka could speak, Mashiro Shiina continued, "Utaha only made that kind of expression when she was talking to Sogo..."
Sogo Doma: "???"
What kind of expression?
Utaha Kasumigaoka: "..."
The expression of being provoked...
"But..." Mashiro Shiina continued, "Utaha made that same expression when I was talking just now..."
Sogo Doma: "Um..."
So what kind of expression was it, exactly?
"Ahem..." Seeing that Mashiro seemed about to pique someone's curiosity, Utaha Kasumigaoka quickly coughed twice and asked, "I was just wondering, Mashiro, have you really never encountered a bottleneck in painting? Could it be that you misunderstood what Sogo meant by a bottleneck?"
"Misunderstood what Sogo meant by a bottleneck?"
"That's right. Mashiro, do you think your painting skills have been steadily improving? That even now, you're improving at roughly the same rate as when you first started learning to paint?"
"..."