Kpop: In Monochrome (Yixing/Kai, NC-17) [2/6]

[maayacolabackup]

#



Black and white are the colors of photography. To me they symbolize the alternatives of hope and despair to which mankind is forever subjected. – Robert Frank



#



“You hold it like this,” his grandmother says patiently, wrapping his fingers around the camera and resting his index finger on the shutter.

“My hands are too small,” Yixing says, biting down on his lips. “Just like with piano.” Yixing had tentatively stroked the ivory keys of his grandmother’s piano, but his short, thin fingers hadn’t quite reached.

“No they aren’t,” his grandmother had said, smacking him lightly on the head. “You’re perfectly capable of doing anything you’d like. You wanted to take pictures, so let me teach you how.”

“I’m listening,” Yixing had said, and he’d stretched his pinky around the thick body of the old camera; his grandfather’s from years ago, and his index finger, just barely, reached the shutter.

“Good,” his grandmother had praised. “Now look through that bit of glass there.”

“And take the picture?” Yixing had asked, finger already starting to press down.

“Heavens no,” she’d said. “What are you taking a picture of?”

“The ground?” Yixing had said, and she had laughed.

“Why?”

“Because… it’s there?”

“When you take a picture,” his grandmother had said, “look for a story. Look for something the world is trying to say. Even on just our street—“ and she gestured around, “I bet you could find a hundred tiny stories, just waiting to be told.”



TIP 03



Be patient, and observe. Good photographs lurk in everything.

Yixing has found stories waiting for the bus and picking up instant noodles for dinner and taking out the trash. He’s found stories while running late for a doctor’s appointment, or while juggling a camera in one hand and his mobile in the other, listening to Lu Han prattle on about his ongoing efforts to befriend Minseok, who remains staunchly uninterested in Lu Han’s general touchy-feely behavior.

Yixing finds stories in between breaths, and there are too many to be able to tell them all, but he records as many as he can on rolls of film. Sometimes he has to wait for the exact second to click the shutter, but when he waits, it always comes out better than when he rushes in, in a hurry to keep an ephemeral tale from slipping through his fingers.

That’s why Yixing always takes a minute to watch, before he clicks the shutter.



#



"So I hear Kris pulled one of his impossible tricks yesterday," Jongdae says, and Yixing sighs, stirring his soup.

"This is too sweet." Yixing takes another bite anyway, and Jongdae laughs. "You're a terrible cook."

"I hear you're making a photo book for a Korean idol in a boy band."

"He's not always in a boy band," Yixing says, before he remembers that isn't the point of this conversation at all. "I don't know. Stop talking to Lu Han."

"I'm kind of relieved, actually." Yixing looks up from the soup, and the way little flakes of something unidentifiable cling to the handle of the spoon as he stirs, to meet Jongdae's eyes. "You said 'I'm not going to take pictures of people anymore,' and everyone thought that would last, like, two months. Only it's been five years."

"There are plenty of other things to take pictures of."

"Sure there are," and Jongdae sits down across from him at his kitchen table with the frozen dumplings that have finally boiled. Yixing grabs one and shoves it in his mouth, and squeals as it burns his tongue. "You're a human garbage disposal."

"I get a lot of exercise," Yixing says defensively, and Jongdae pulls the dumplings out of his reach when he reaches for another one.

"Wait until they cool." Then he clears his throat. "Anyway, it'd be fine if you'd chosen not to take pictures of people out of some carefully considered artistic reasoning, but that's not why you don't take pictures of people, is it, Zhang?"

"You know why-" Yixing licks his lips, and lunges for a dumpling, snagging one as Jongdae swears and tries to fend him off with his own chopsticks. "Better than your soup," Yixing adds around the bite. The dumpling’s not as hot as before, or maybe the interior of Yixing's mouth is already burned, so it's not so bad. "What does it matter what I take pictures of? I thought, for a while, I was going to become a salary man or something. At least I’m taking pictures. And making enough money to live off of it, too."

"You'd die if you had to wear a suit everyday," Jongdae says, and Yixing lifts his brows. "Besides, you can't help but take photos. You've probably taken six photos in your head as we've been eating, and it's only your gluttony that's kept you from grabbing your camera."

"Why are we friends?" Yixing takes another sip of the soup. It's still too salty.

"Because you probably keep forgetting we shouldn't be." Jongdae cringes as he tastes the soup. "Wow, I've outdone myself; this is terrible."

"Told you," Yixing says. He looks down and little flecks of egg rise to the top of the bowl. It looks like the planet, tiny egg continents on a broth sea. Yixing wants to photograph it. He pulls out his pocket digital camera and snaps a photo. He probably won't save it, but he feels satisfied.

"You don't take pictures of people because you're terrified," Jongdae says. "That's not healthy. To be terrified to take pictures of people just because--"

"Stop," Yixing says, and then he smiles, softly, at his friend. "I'm doing this photo book, aren't I?' His muscles feel tight, like he wants to run; maybe run right out of his own skin. Yixing wonders if other people ever feel like that, or if it's just him.

"You are," Jongdae says. "I don't know what made you change your mind, but…"

"I don't either," Yixing says vaguely, because he thinks explaining to Jongdae about how the shadows cling to the veins in Jongin's neck and how he can see the ocean in his eyes might come across a little differently than he means it, and Jongdae would never let him live it down.

"I'm glad though," Jongdae says, and he drags the now cooler dumplings back into the center of the table. "I hope it helps. I think Kris was hoping it would help, too."

"I guess." Yixing swallows, and the taste of salt clings to the back of his tongue.

"Now eat your soup," Jongdae says. "Heaven knows I don't want leftovers."



#



Every tree is different. Yixing can no longer remember how many trees he's photographed, but he can tell you, with certainty, that they are all different. The shred of the bark or the shape of the roots or the length of the branches.

Every train station is different too. Even in Beijing, where many of them were made according to a master plan, each train station feels different. Maybe there’s a different wear pattern on the floors or a different ‘out of service’ ticketing machine or the guard at one help desk is taller than the guard at another, and then there’s the way light peeks down from the stairway to the surface.

Smiles are like that too. Maybe smiles are the most different. Yixing has a picture of a man sitting on a bench that he took when he was thirteen and he’s still never seen a smile quite like that. The thing that makes smiles special is that the same person’s smile is different every single time, which means there will always be new smiles to photograph.

It would be smiles that Yixing misses taking pictures of the most, if he were to admit to missing anything at all.



#



Yixing finds himself in an airport at noon on a Tuesday with a suitcase full of clothes and a duffle full of cameras, hands juggling his backpack and water bottle as he looks up at the gate departure times. He forgets he's in line to check his suitcase until the woman behind the counter clears her throat, startling him back to the moment. "Hey," he says, with an apologetic smile, and she blushes and smiles back. She's pretty, he thinks vaguely.

"Passport, sir?"

"Right here," he says, pulling his beige backpack to the side so he can grab his passport out of the front pocket. She takes them with a smile, and slides his passport out of the case to get a better look at his name and face. "And I'm headed to Tokyo."

"Okay, here you are,” she says, pulling him up on her computer. “I'll print your ticket, and in the meantime, let's check your luggage." He picks up the bag and tosses it onto the scale. It's way underweight, because Yixing's mostly filled it with one spare pair of jeans and ten T-shirts; he's also got one suit in there just in case but he's hoping there's no need for that. And his film. Security measures keep him from carrying film canisters on planes. "Are you checking that bag, sir?"

"No," Yixing says. "It's my equipment." She hands him a special tag for it, and he puts it on quickly while she reassembles his passport and slides the ticket and his luggage claim tag into the front cover.

"Have a nice trip to Tokyo, sir," she says, and Yixing smiles back.

"I'll do my best," he says.

If someone had asked Yixing two weeks ago what he’d be doing now, flying to Tokyo to photograph a Korean idol would probably not even have come up as a possibility. He should have known Kris has been saving up all his favors so he could dump this massive project on Yixing all at once.

“Why can’t he come to China,” Yixing had said, and Kris had laughed.

“You’ll probably travel a lot of the places he does,” Kris had said. “Tokyo’s a great city. Also you travel all the time.”

“I know that,” Yixing had said. “But it’s just all very sudden.”

“Just go with the flow,” Kris had replied. “You’ve survived much more unfamiliar locales.”

“This was a terrible idea; I quit.”

Kris had leaned forward on his desk and looked Yixing straight in the eyes. “Are you upset about going to Tokyo, or that this is no longer abstract, and you actually have a start date on photographing him?”

“I hate you,” Yixing had said, and then he’d called a travel agent to book a flight.

It's a relatively uneventful trip. There are no crying babies, no overly chatty seat mates, and he’s got the window. He thinks they leave late, just a little, but they land on time, pulling into Narita airport in mid-afternoon and debarking into a swirl of people rushing to and fro.

Already he can see that the fashion is different. The skirts are a little shorter; Yixing can't say he minds. Lu Han had told him to take mobile phone pictures of hot girls but Yixing had informed him bluntly that he 'doesn't take mobile phone pictures' and Minseok had given him a glance that asked why that was his only qualm with Lu Han’s request.

Park Chanyeol picks him up from the airport, ushering him into a taxi and babbling the whole while. He switches between Mandarin and Korean at whim, so Yixing feels like he’s doing mental gymnastics trying to keep up with him. Yixing thinks he’d have trouble keeping up with him even if he stuck to one language, though, and his constant perkiness is almost traumatic after a flight.

"We're in Tokyo for a special concert," he says. "Kai, Tao, and Sehun are all performing together for the first time this year, actually, so fans are really hyped up."

"Isn't he going to be busy, then?" Yixing wets his lips and shifts in the seat. Chanyeol is bouncing around next to him, watching traffic pass by through the taxi window. “I could always do this later…”

"We've got an extra two days in Kai's schedule," Chanyeol says. "Tao is headed back to Beijing to film for his show and Sehun has drama pre-shoots. But Kai has two free days to wander around Tokyo. Hopefully you’ll get at least a few good shots for the book."

"Does he know he's going to spend those two free days getting photographed?" Yixing sighs and leans back against the seat. He's got a tiny cramp in his back from the flight that's only been exacerbated by the long taxi ride.

"Well, I don't think he'll mind." Chanyeol waves his hand dismissively. "At least not if it's you."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Kai either likes people or he hates them. He doesn't have neutral feelings about much of anything. He hates most of the photographers he's worked with, despite how much he's into photography." Chanyeol coughs, and turns to look at Yixing. One of his eyes is narrowed while the other remains big and round. He looks like an alien. "But he liked you."

"Hmm," Yixing says, and thinks about the way Jongin had looked out on the terrace, his shirt undone and the moonlight curling around the curve of his jaw. “I liked him too.”

“Kris was hoping you would,” Chanyeol says, and Yixing looks at him out of the corner of his eye. There’s no guile in his face, and no hidden meaning behind the words; just a kind of steadfast earnestness. Yixing guesses he’s not so bad.

“I know,” Yixing replies, and he closes his eyes.



TIP 04



Sometimes taking a photo is just like painting. When Yixing starts photographing skyscrapers for his second book, he learns to paint the sky and the horizon and the upward slant of steel with the tilt of his camera lens.

Painting is all about the push and pull, dragging the observers eyes to where you want them to look; pulling some things forward and pushing some things back.

Photography is like that too. Yixing wants the people who look at his photos to see the power of these tall buildings, and the way they withstand so much. He wants viewers to see the way skyscrapers don’t sway in the wind and represent the kind of strength man wishes it had.

Yixing wants your eyes to follow straight lines and skyward movement.

Push and pull. Foreground and background.

Yixing always pays attention to things like that.



#



The first time Yixing sees Jongin again is from a front row seat in the audience of EXO’s Tokyo concert. Jongin's onstage with the other two members of his band, in a shimmering shirt that rides up his belly and wriggles with tassels in gold and blue. His hair is slicked back from his face and he's almost nothing like the quiet man Yixing had conversed with at the memorial gala. Yixing feels like he's going to go deaf from the screaming girls behind him and on either side of him, and it's so hot in the auditorium he can feel the sweat pealing up on his arms.

"Pretty impressive, right?" Chanyeol shouts into his ear, and Yixing nods. "Is this your first time at this kind of thing?"

Yixing nods, and he wants to respond that he's more into acoustic stuff than this heavily auto-tuned dance music; sweet guitar ballads not pulsing backbeats. But an auditorium full of roaring teenage girls screaming 'Kai' or 'Sehun' or 'Tao' isn't quite the place to have a conversation.

But then he sees that peek of a smile, just like the one Jongin had slipped him when Yixing had waved goodbye from across the ballroom, tie ends hanging loose about his neck and eyes flashing molten sepia that had sunken down through Yixing’s skin… Yixing had been dazed by the image, and yes, it's the same man.

Jongin is... amazing. The passion Yixing had seen glimmering in Jongin's eyes before, at the gala, has exploded into every limb of his body, spreading like a wildfire until it seems to infect the audience. Yixing is not one to move at concerts, but he finds himself falling into the rhythm of music he doesn't even like, caught up in Jongin's enthusiasm.

Yixing's throat is dry. The bright lights flashing on and off hurt his eyes but he can't close them, because Jongin is so enthralling. Jongin’s thumb wipes across his lips, and it throws his face into three quarters shadow for just a moment, and that would have been the shot, Yixing thinks, if he'd had his camera with him. That brief, intense instant where Jongin had been suspended in perfect relief against the backdrop of neon lights, a band mate on either side of him under the flux of stage lights shifting from blue to green... That's when Yixing would have clicked the shutter.

After the show, Yixing feels numb. "What did you think?" Chanyeol asks, as he leads Yixing backstage. Yixing fingers his pass, along with another badge that Chanyeol’s given him that’s permanent for the duration of the project, of staff credentials or something that mean he doesn’t get prevented from seeing Jongin when he’s working. His eyes still hurt from the lights, and from trying to keep up with Jongin’s every move.

"That this is going to be a bigger challenge than I thought," Yixing says, and his voice cracks.

"What do you mean?"

"How am I supposed to capture someone so full of movement in a still frame?" Yixing says, thinking about the way Jongin's skin had barely contained him; the fierce rolls of his hips that had never really seemed to stop and start, instead just flowing into one another continuously, leaving Yixing unsure where one movement ended and another began. "Everything about him is so..."

"Yeah," Chanyeol says, hair flopping as he nods. "Kai is something else, right? That's why he's a star."

Stars, Yixing thinks, are something Yixing's used to photographing. He spent a lot of hours on the roof of his university's physics building taking pictures of those. They'd seemed so still from his vantage point, lying on his back with his camera pointed upward and the concrete roof under his back.

Jongin is nothing like that.

Jongin is motion incarnate, and Yixing feels a stone in the pit of his stomach that's half excitement and half trepidation.

"Why get your feet wet if you can jump into the pool?" Yixing mutters, and Chanyeol looks behind him curiously, before turning back around and leading Yixing through a series of hallways. "Where are we going?"

"To see Kai, of course." Chanyeol laughs, bangs falling into his eyes, and he shakes his head to get them out of his eyes. "We're going to surprise him."

"He knows I'm coming, right?" Yixing asks, not liking Chanyeol's word choice. It reminds him of earlier, in the taxi, when Chanyeol had implied Jongin was unaware that he'd be spending his two schedule-free days taking photographs with Yixing in Tokyo.

"He knows his photographer is coming." Chanyeol taps his lips and stops in front of a door. "He doesn't, however, know it's you."

Chanyeol knocks on the door to the room; a dressing room, Yixing assumes, and a gruff 'come in' is yelled in an unfamiliar voice.

The door opens, and it's Tao, sweat shining on his neck and chest and hair plastered to his forehead and cheeks. He looks like an athlete straight out of a James Natchway portrait, and Yixing runs his tongue over his teeth as he takes in the angles. "Oh, Chanyeol," he says, and then he looks down to Yixing curiously. "And..." He pauses, like he isn't sure what language to use.

"Zhang Yixing," he introduces himself, a beat too late to hide the fact that his attention had strayed.

"Ah," Tao says. "Yixing." There's a snicker from behind Tao, and Tao wriggles his eyebrows. "What brings you to Tokyo?"

"I'm Kai's photographer." Yixing tucks his hands into his pockets, not quite sure what's so funny, but they don't seem hostile so Yixing's not going to worry about it. "It's Tao, right?"

"Huang Zitao." He starts to reach a hand out, but a rivulet of sweat snakes down his arm and across the back of his hand and he grimaces, and then he shrugs sheepishly. "No handshake this time, but nice to meet you."

"I'm Oh Sehun," says a softer voice, in Korean. He doesn’t stand, but he does wave nonchalantly. "Nice to meet the infamous Zhang Yixing."

"Infamous?" That’s not a word Yixing’s ever had applied to his name. ‘Famous’, sometimes. ‘Over-rated’, many more times than that.

The door in the back of the room, that appears to lead to a restroom, slams open, and Jongin walks through the door, face scrubbed partially free of makeup, smudged eyeliner still thick around his eyes and weeping down his left cheek where he'd clearly splashed his face. "Baekhyun’s going to kill me, guys,” he says, the round sounds of Korean making his voice sound even smoother. “I think I tore this shirt-- Yixing?"

"Hey, Jongin," Yixing says, swallowing around sudden nervousness. He doesn't really have any reason to be nervous. He's talked with Jongin before, and they’d gotten along fine, and he doesn't have his camera, and there are no photos he needs to take right now. "It was a good show?"

"You watched?" Jongin asks. "It didn't... I don't know. You look more like a ballad sort of guy." Yixing things his eyes must still be reeling from the flashing lights on stage, because there are hints or purple in Jongin’s tiny pleased smile and flecks of blue in the tilt of his head.

"I am," Yixing admits easily. "But it was still a good show."

"Is that why you're here?" Jongin's shirt slips down his shoulder, revealing a stretch of sun kissed skin that's pretty even under the horrible florescent lighting of the dressing room. “To see the show? I thought-“ Jongin bites his lip, hard, and Yixing almost winces in sympathy.

Chanyeol clears his throat. "I’d told you that you'd meet your photographer today." Jongin, who'd turned his head to look at Chanyeol, suddenly snaps his gaze back toward Yixing, eyes going slightly wide as Yixing avoids meeting it, instead taking in the clothes in piles around the room, and the way Sehun's legs are crossed delicately at the ankle, and the way Zitao leans against the door frame looking very amused.

"Yixing is-"

"I hope you don't mind," Yixing says quickly, licking his lips. "I thought they would have told you when I agreed to do it two weeks ago."

"Two weeks ago?" Jongin narrows his eyes at Chanyeol, who chuckles.

"I thought it'd be a nice surprise?"

Yixing sighs. "Did Kris tell you not to mention it in case I backed out?" Everyone turns to look at Yixing, and Yixing, while not uncomfortable under the weight of it, really would rather everyone looked somewhere else.

"That too," Chanyeol says, and Jongin's mouth twitches with what Yixing thinks might be the beginnings of a smile. Yixing squints, a little, but there's still too much light to really get every detail of that grin exactly the way he wants it.

Yixing doesn't have his camera, but Yixing can't turn his photography-brain off, anyway.

"But here you are," Jongin says, and Sehun makes a strangled noise from behind him, and Jongin doesn't even turn around to kick at him, eliciting a fierce yelp from his band mate. "I wasn't expecting you."

"Well, here I am," Yixing echoes.

"Maybe this won't be so bad." Jongin's skin glows with a mix of water and perspiration, and it's almost as if he's still dancing in Yixing's vision, like a flickering candle flame.

“No cardboard cutouts,” Yixing says, and Jongin’s smile grows larger and sweeter, and Yixing longs for his SLR.



#



The night after the Shao Du Memorial Gala, Yixing dreams about Jongin.

In his dream, Yixing is taking photos of trees; winding branches that sway ever so lightly in the breeze and twisted bark winding up the trunk, thick and wizened.

Then the trees branches become arms and the trunk becomes legs and the tree turns into Jongin, with his secretive eyes and show-stopping smile and Yixing is already pressing the shutter and he can’t stop himself in time.

And he can hear the shift of the film and Jongin is smiling at him still, shirt unbuttoned and bowtie hanging untied around his neck and he’s dragging Yixing closer and closer and Yixing is tangled up in invisible ropes that glow with the faintest hint of gold.

He wakes up in a cold sweat.

I’m not doing the project, he writes in a text to Kris.

He wakes up again the next morning and realizes he never sent it.



#



Yixing curls himself up into a ball of resistance when there's a knock on his hotel room door. He blearily grabs for his mobile phone, which still functions as an alarm clock and a watch even if it doesn't make calls over here, and the time reads a little after ten.

A second knock, and Yixing crawls out of his covers and pads over to the door, opening it without even asking who it is.

It's Jongin, and Yixing blinks at him as Jongin's mouth drops open. "Uh... are you sure you should be answering the door like that?"

Yixing looks down. He's wearing his boxers and a tank shirt. He brings a hand up to the back of his head to scratch at his scalp. "I forgot," Yixing says. "Do you want to come in?"

"Is that okay?" Jongin steps forward, and Yixing moves aside to allow him entrance. He takes in Jongin's oversized zip-up sweatshirt, and his jeans, and his baseball cap, which he's wearing sideways. A pair of sunglasses are hooked on the neck of the shirt he's wearing. "I didn't know you'd still be asleep."

"Why would I be awake?" Yixing considers opening the curtains but the room is cast in a soft glow like this so he doesn't. Instead, he wanders back toward his bed and collapses on it. "It's still the time of day people eat breakfast."

"Do you have a vendetta against breakfast, or something?" Jongin is laughing at him, and Yixing peeks one eye open to see Jongin has made himself comfortable in Yixing's armchair, legs up over one leg and spine twisted.

Yixing rolls over onto his side and grabs his camera, toying with the aperture as Jongin looks around his hotel room. "This room can't look that different from yours. Except smaller."

"Yours doesn't have the security," Jongin says, and Yixing rolls back over to look at him as he coughs into his hand. "I came down here because you'd never be able to get up there."

Yixing points at his staff badge sitting on his side table, and Jongin lifts his brow, impressed. Maybe Chanyeol is usually a bit more scatterbrained. Yixing wouldn’t be surprised.

"I thought you didn't want to do a photo book." Yixing can feel himself slowly waking up, and his vision gets a little sharper as Jongin shifts uncomfortably in the chair.

"I thought you didn't take pictures of people."

"I don't." Yixing can feel the thin film on his teeth that always accompanies early mornings, and there's a heaviness on his chest that usually doesn't. "I don't take pictures of people."

"Then why'd you agree to take pictures of me?" Jongin's eyes are confused; a stormy sea in shades of chocolate, and Yixing knows that to catch a look like that will be the challenge of this project.

"I don't know," Yixing replies, and he can hear the frustration in his own voice. "It's Kris's fault."

"Did he harass you into it?" Jongin laughs, but his voice is tight. "Because you don't have to, you know. Only I really have to do this project."

Yixing thinks back to the gala, when Jongin had stood out on the terrace next to him and talked about the ads that looked like a stranger with his face, and Yixing feels a curl of determination clinging to the walls of his abdomen.

Maybe a little bit of the passion he sees in Jongin's eyes is rubbing off on him.

"Kris asked me to meet you after I declined the project." Jongin's head lifts up, abandoning his examination of his bitten down nails, and stares at Yixing. "I'd seen you on billboards in the train stations, and I wasn't interested."

"And then-"

"I went to a gala I had no intention of attending as a favor to him. Then I agreed to do the project."

"Because you met me?" Jongin asks. "What changed your mind?"

"I wanted to photograph you," Yixing says. "I wanted to photograph you right there on the terrace."

"So you're here because..."

"Because I want to be," Yixing says. "I'm only here because I want to be."

"Okay," Jongin says, grabbing the brim of his hat and spinning it straight, so the brim casts a shadow over his eyes. Yixing's stomach growls, and Jongin bites his lip. "Sure about that breakfast vendetta?"

"Let me brush my teeth." Yixing rubs his hand against his stomach, and Jongin's eyes follow the movement. "And choose a camera for today. Then we can go eat."

"You might want some trousers, too." Yixing looks down, where his boxers have ridden up his thighs and sighs.

"That too," he says.

"Take your time," Jongin says. "We've got all day." He gives Yixing an unassuming grin.

Yixing recalls Kris telling him, in his office back in Beijing, that Kai was a little bit arrogant. It could be that Yixing's just better at looking for the story in things, but he doesn't see the arrogance at all.



TIP 05



Yixing’s never been good at panning, but panning is a great technique for catching objects in motion.

It’s almost like cheating, Yixing thinks. The way the rest of the background becomes nothing but a blur as the subject of the photo remains the sole distinguishable object.

It’s a technique Yixing rarely gets right, but when he does, it’s the kind of picture that takes your breath away.

Maybe because it transports the observer to the excitement of the moment, and you can feel yourself being tugged along with the racing car, or the marathon runner, or the dancing idol in the tasseled shirt under the pulsing strobe lights, and for a moment, you’re there.





part iii

Comments

[goldengutgirl.livejournal.com]

Every tree is different. Yixing can no longer remember how many trees he's photographed, but he can tell you, with certainty, that they are all different. The shred of the bark or the shape of the roots or the length of the branches. sigh gpoy

When I read, I read in parts. I skip parts first then read everything in whole. So I saw this:

Stars, Yixing thinks, are something Yixing's used to photographing. He spent a lot of hours on the roof of his university's physics building taking pictures of those. They'd seemed so still from his vantage point, lying on his back with his camera pointed upward and the concrete roof under his back.

and I wanted to throw cupcakes at you. Make me cry why don't you. (edit: i have to explain that in the two years in which i did my thesis, some nights i had to spend in the laboratory alone overnight, with almost no sleep. and some of those nights i would be so depressed i would cry. our laboratory is on the 4th floor and sometimes i would go up to the roof and cry there, or just stare out into the city or the stars, because our building was in a part of the university that wasn't very well lit so you could see the stars. so yeah. did you stalk me or something. ;;;;; ♥ )

This part made me clutch at my chest because sobs. Sobs dreams. Sobs feelings. --> Sometimes taking a photo is just like painting. When Yixing starts photographing skyscrapers for his second book, he learns to paint the sky and the horizon and the upward slant of steel with the tilt of his camera lens.

That whole part made my heart burn. ;___;


“No cardboard cutouts,” Yixing says, and Jongin’s smile grows larger and sweeter, and Yixing longs for his SLR. ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

Okay I think I'll just resort to heart icons because honestly maia, i hate you the way yixing hates kris in this fic.

Yixing considers opening the curtains but the room is cast in a soft glow like this so he doesn't. My favorite time of the day aside from sunrise/pre-dusk ♥ ;__;

It’s a technique Yixing rarely gets right, but when he does, it’s the kind of picture that takes your breath away. I demand to see these photographs. Like if you have to pull them out of your ass, you have to show them to me. They have to exist or I will dream about this forever. Sigh.

[g-odalisque13.livejournal.com]

still reading but i had to drop this here b/c it's so perfect:

His muscles feel tight, like he wants to run; maybe run right out of his own skin. Yixing wonders if other people ever feel like that, or if it's just him.

definitely not just him


off to the next part!