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This article is about a character in Higanbana no Saku Yoru ni. |
| Overview |
Nafumi Shintani (新谷 ナフミ Shintani Nafumi) is an art teacher who loves little boys and likes to have them model for drawings. She appears in The Boys' Portrait.
Contents
Profile
| Teacher and advisor of the art club. A bewitching sort of pheromone hangs about her and allures men of all ages. She finds pleasure in making young boys model for her and drawing pictures of them.
She had a lot of changes to make passes at men, but because her preferences are so specific she doesn't have a boyfriend. She's a prime example of a perverted teacher. Normally she's very kind, but behind closed doors she's rather violent. Right now she's running a never-ending marathon through Escher's 'Ascending and Descending.' She's very happy when she's at her target body weight. |
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(Translation by Spider Lily Translations)
Appearance
Shintani has long, curled blonde hair, a red headband and amber eyes. She wears a light purple buttoned shirt with white sleeves, a dark purple skirt and black shoes.
Personality
Shintani tries to present herself as an acceptable woman despite her smoking habits. She has a pedophilic obsession towards little boys and likes to draw nude drawings of them, also having a sadistic side as she defiled Yuuki Noda's body using a palette knife and cigarette burns. Shintani's art room is full of classic yet horrific paintings like Francisco Goya's Saturn Devouring His Son and William Hogarth's The Four Stages of Cruelty.
Background
Shintani was an aspiring artist who instead became an art teacher. Unable to repress her desires, she groomed Yuuki Noda into becoming her model and attempted to undress him one day when he suddenly rejected her. Shintani accidentally killed the boy when he ran away and she pushed him, causing a plaster bust to fall on him. Shintani tried to cover up Yuuki's death, but not before drawing his naked, abused corpse.
Relationships
- Yuuki Noda (student, victim)
- Renoir (enemy)
Story
Second Night
The Boys' Portrait
Shintani is introduced when the teacher Imata asks her out, but she rejects him. They talk about the rumor that Yuuki was killed because of "Renoir of the Art Room", with Shintani wishing she could've prevented it. Shintani goes to the art room that evening and finds a young boy waiting for her there. She's never seen this boy before, but she becomes entranced by his prettiness. Shintani asks the boy to stay a while as they talk about art.
Shintani asks the boy to be a model for her painting. The boy is worried about other people seeing the painting, but Shintani assures him it's for her eyes only. As Shintani draws, her desire for the boy grows. The boy asks why that accident had to happen to Yuuki, and Shintani says she doesn't really know. The boy then asks what she thinks about the rumor of Renoir of the Art Room, and Shintani remembers that one of Renoir's rules is that you can't lie when he asks a question. She answers that she thinks the rumor of Renoir killing Yuuki is false.
Shintani's lust grows even more. Unable to control herself, she knocks the boy unconscious by giving him tea laced with a sedative. Shintani ogles the boy sleeping on the art room sofa and moves to undress him when Renoir suddenly appears and asks what she's doing. Shintani thinks Renoir is a human student and claims the boy is just sick and resting. Renoir looks at Shintani's sketchbook and asks to be a model in the boy's place. Shintani begrudgingly agrees.
Renoir asks Shintani what she thinks of the rumor that Yuuki was killed by Renoir of the Art Room. Shintani repeats that it's nonsense, and Renoir mentions that Yuuki's corpse looked like he was abused, with signs of a knife being pressed to his skin and cigarette burn marks on him. Shintani discreetly hides said knife, which is lying on a nearby desk, but Renoir notices she has a lighter in her pocket. Shintani says nothing and breaks her pencil in anger. Renoir offers a replacement pencil to her but Shintani refuses, confused since Renoir couldn't have brought that pencil with him.
Renoir mentions that the police saw that Yuuki's clothes buttons were mixed up, implying he was naked when he died. Shintani becomes shocked since Renoir, who she thinks is just a human girl, shouldn't know anything about what happened in the art room. Renoir finally asks if she does nude drawings, and the teacher understands his true identity.
Shintani admits she does, saying it's good practice for drawing the human body. Renoir asks if she's ever drawn one in this room, but Shintani stays silent. Renoir reveals himself as a youkai, and Shintani mocks him since she's followed all of Renoir's rules up to this point. Renoir says he can still claim Shintani if she fails to name all of the paintings and their artists in the room, and Shintani accepts the challenge.
Shintani successfully names the artists of every painting Renoir points towards, noticing that he's getting less confident the more she answers. Renoir goes back to the earlier question of if Shintani ever did nude drawings in this room, but Shintani still doesn't answer and claims it doesn't matter. Renoir then asks where she was when Yuuki died. Shintani is forced to recall the memory of accidentally killing Yuuki, and Renoir summons copies of Shintani's many immoral drawings of Yuuki and rhetorically asks who drew them. Shintani admits that she drew them all, and Renoir shatters into pieces.
Higanbana appears in place of Renoir, having disguised as him the entire time, and is surprised that Shintani answered so honestly. Shintani declares that she is the queen bee of the art room and that Yuuki was simply one of her drones. The boy from earlier then wakes up and asks if she really isn't going to apologize to Yuuki. Shintani realizes that the boy is the real Renoir, recognizing him as the spitting image of the subject of the "Child With a Whip" painting. Renoir judges Shintani for taking advantage of Yuuki's affection for her and disgracing him with her lustful drawings. Shintani insists that Yuuki's death was just an accident and she didn't mean for it to happen.
Shintani believes she's won since she now knows Renoir's identity and has already proven her knowledge of every painting in the room, but Renoir says it's the other way around. During the modeling session, he asked Shintani why the accident happened to Yuuki, and she replied she didn't know; she accidentally lied. Shintani realizes she's done for and worries over what horrible painting she'll be trapped inside and runs away. She ends up running into Ascending and Descending by M. C. Escher, being made to run its non-Euclidean stairways for eternity.
Even with Shintani's apparent disappearance, nobody notices the extra woman that now exists inside the Escher painting.
After School
In this dream world, Shintani and Kanamori plan to out-perv each other.
References
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