Yumi and the Nightmare Painter

Content Warning: This section discusses emotional abuse.

Yumi is one of the two co-protagonists of Yumi and the Nightmare Painter. She is a 19-year-old from the land of Torio, and she acts as one of its 14 yoki-hijo with the power to command the land’s primal spirits. Physically, she has waist-length dark hair and light skin. Her life is defined by her role of yoki-hijo.

At the beginning of the novel, Yumi is unhappy in her role. She yearns for freedom from her responsibilities while simultaneously feeling guilty about this wish. When she wishes to take a brief break from her duties to attend a festival, her attendant, Liyun, admonishes her harshly. As a result, Yumi throws herself into her duties as yoki-hijo with renewed vigor, even fainting from fatigue as she stacks stones for hours to invoke the spirits. The novel notes that Yumi is also a highly Invested being, which is Cosmere lingo for a person with high magical potential. Due to her dedication and her powers, she stacks stones and produces incredible works of art that can pull spirits away from the father machine, and this leads to her swapping bodies with Painter.

As a central figure in the plot, Yumi embodies all the novel’s major themes.