Despite what he said, I couldn’t not be conscious of it, nor could I relax. Click. Click. The sound of the shutter clicked continuously from above my head, and Noona was still at my feet, changing the direction of the mat’s wrinkles this way and that, searching for the shape she wanted.
“Seo Yeehyeon-ssi.”
The voice that called me was no different from usual. I thought he had something to say, and the moment I lifted my head to look up at him, the aperture in front of my eyes closed and opened once more.
“Put your hands behind you and lean your upper body back slightly.”
Even when taking photos, he was clear about what he wanted. He never bothered with unnecessary pleasantries or hesitated.
“Chin up. Gaze down.”
The requests came one after another, leaving no room to hesitate, and for someone like me who was uncomfortable with the camera, his method was actually better. Because he didn’t ask for a dreamy expression, or one that looked like I was reminiscing about something.
“Keep your chin as it is and slowly lift just your eyes, will you? As slowly as you can.”
I slowly raised my gaze. The lens was only about 50 centimeters away. His large body, which had stepped up to my knees, was right before my nose. The moment I became aware of it, my earlobes grew hot. It was a difficult pose for an ordinary person like me, unaccustomed to this kind of work. In reality, he hadn’t laid a single hand on my body, but I felt as constricted as if I were bound.
“Uh oh… you’re not supposed to turn your head.”
I must have averted my gaze without realizing it. From behind the lens, he clicked his tongue softly. He sounded like a dentist dealing with a patient who kept turning their head and disrupting the treatment. This doesn’t hurt much, even little kids can handle it. Like a doctor coaxing and soothing you with such words.
But I was the type who rarely got cavities, and I was very good at enduring pain. If you told me to get dental work, I could do that for a whole week, but this, I felt I could never do again.
Stepping back and moving outside my feet, he now stepped onto a nearby rock and moved away from me. But my body was just as constrained as when he was aiming the lens at my face from right in front of me.
What version of me was he seeing from behind that lens, and how was he judging it? I wanted to erase such thoughts, but I had no choice but to repeatedly bite and release my lips, which were drying out from the tension.
“Yesterday.”
Before I could be flustered by the sudden change of topic, he came down from the rock and moved back up past my legs. This time, past my knees and up to my thighs.
Noona and Hyung had focused on the clothes from farther away, so the lens had never pushed in this close before. It was a distance that made it hard to breathe comfortably.
“You worked hard.”
“It was nothing.”
“And, I was sorry.”
“……”
Sorry. An explanation for why he said something that seemed like it would never come out of his mouth didn’t follow, but there was only one thing that came to mind.
「Could you step aside for a moment? He’s very shy, so he gets uncomfortable if there’s someone he doesn’t know well.」
Heat rushed to my face again, as if I had heard an insult rather than an apology.
Despite my still-young age, I was the type whose emotions didn’t show easily on my face, and that wasn’t because I had a mature handle on my feelings, but because I had a less sensitive disposition than others. Since I didn’t feel emotions strongly, my expressions were naturally bland.
But the distance was too close, and the situation was unfamiliar. In reality, I was wearing clothes and shooting for clothes, but in my embarrassment, which was close to the shame of revealing my bare skin in front of them, my reactions were easily kindled even by trivial stimuli. I could only hope that the fake freckles painted on my cheeks could hide even a little of my heat.
He tilted the camera for a moment to check the results. Still standing with his feet on either side of my thighs. Once the lens was moved away, I felt even more anxious, not knowing where to put my eyes.
Hm. After a groan that suggested something wasn’t to his liking, he asked, his gaze still fixed on the camera’s LCD screen.
“Is there someone you like?”
“……”
“Or, even someone you used to like.”
“……”
The moment his eyes, which glanced down at me, narrowed slightly and he smiled a little mischievously, I strangely recalled the moments I had acted out of character, wanting to shock him, but that wasn’t the answer to his question of whether I had someone I liked.
Bending down again and aiming the lens at me, he added.
“Imagine that person is confessing to you.”
At the unexpected remark, my gaze turned to the lens without my realizing it, and while I felt pressured by the anxiety that things normally unseen would be completely exposed beyond the lens, I couldn’t look away.
The lens, which came right up to my nose and moved back and forth to focus, seemed to be a substitute not for his eyes, but for his lips.
He had told me to imagine a confession from a person I liked who didn’t even exist, but hearing those words, I felt like I knew it was a situation that would never happen, which actually made me laugh.
It’s a strange thing. Why, at this moment, does confirming a confession I can’t receive from someone I like draw out self-mockery and resignation from me? It’s a hypothetical person who doesn’t even exist.
Cliiick.
I stared at the lens as it closed and opened more slowly than before. For the first time, it didn’t feel uncomfortable. Riding on the wind blowing toward me from behind his back, suddenly, faintly, his cologne drifted over.
“Got the best shot. Let’s stop and have a beer.”
Lowering the lens and straightening his back, he stepped back and turned away without any lingering attachment.
○
The garden, just as I’d heard, was in a completely untended state, but since it was that time of year, it wasn’t as desolate as I had thought. The various tones of deep and pale greens, which had grown tangled together without an artificial touch, even felt somewhat vibrant.
We laid several mats overlapping at an angle in the garden’s shade, which had expanded as the sun sank lower. Stripes, ethnic patterns, checks, even flashy floral prints. Spreading out the delivered hamburgers, fries, and salads on top of the clashing patterns, and adding the beer the Director had sponsored, it felt like we were on a picnic in a park.
Noona and Hyung were silent until they had devoured their entire share of hamburgers. They had rushed to finish the shoot while there was still natural light, even skipping lunch, so it was no wonder they were famished. Unlike the two of them, who diligently alternated between taking huge bites of their burgers and drinking beer until their cheeks puffed out, the Director and I barely touched our burgers, picking at some fries and drinking beer.
As he had forewarned, he must have drunk too much at the after-party last night. He had seemed uncharacteristically cheerful throughout the event. Perhaps he had no appetite because of the lingering alcohol. Though he was out here hanging out with us, unlike his previous words telling me not to disturb his sleep as he would be passed out drunk.
I let my gaze rest on his tilted profile, which didn’t look much different from usual for someone who had supposedly drunk too much yesterday, and swallowed a couple of sips of the beer, whose taste I was now starting to get to know.
The early summer breeze that passed through the rather tall arborvitae, the garden’s centerpiece, was soft as it tickled the skin, along with the faded late-afternoon sunlight. The juniper, which had grown wild to nearly two meters without being trimmed, also contributed to the garden’s shade.
It seemed that although he didn’t hire a gardener to do any landscaping, he did have it cleaned regularly. It wasn’t a messy garden.
“What is this? Director, did you scan Yeehyeon with your lens? What is this… the photos are practically overflowing with ulterior motives. A little more and this would be a sexy pictorial.”
As soon as her stomach was somewhat full, Yuni Noona grabbed the camera and, while looking through today’s results, shouted, causing me to choke on the beer I was drinking in an unsightly way. The Director, who glanced my way, took a bite of a french fry dipped in ketchup and said nonchalantly.
“You have to shoot with that much obsession for the subject to get a good photo. Should I delete it if you don’t like it?”
“Who said that?”
As if he might snatch the camera and delete the photos, Noona turned her back completely and hugged the camera to her chest. Aroused by the provocative words in Noona’s critique, Juhan Hyung also seemed curious about the photos and scooted over to her.
“This isn’t just scanning, he practically caressed him with the lens. Wow… we’re too pure to take photos like this. Only a corrupt person can take something like this.”
Juhan Hyung muttered, shaking his head. To avoid being provoked by the blush-inducing words, to not lose my composure, all I could do was read the label on the beer bottle in my hand.
“You have a nice body. I never really knew since you always wear long pants. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you not wearing a striped t-shirt, either.”
Leaving the two of them to their heated debate over which photos to use for the update and which to delete, he turned his attention to me. He seemed completely unfazed by the assault of words like ulterior motives, sexy pictorial, and caress.
That would be right. They were talking about his direction for the subject, not his own feelings for me, and as always, Noona and Hyung were just being mischievous with their words; the actual photos were probably just imbued with a slightly languid atmosphere.
As I failed to answer quickly and instead scraped at the beer bottle’s label with my fingernail, Noona reacted first.
“A nice body? Isn’t that sexual harassment?”
“Hm. I tried to say it as mechanically as possible so it wouldn’t seem to have any sexual meaning… but I guess it was impossible for the words ‘nice body’ coming from my mouth not to sound sexual.”
At his nonchalant self-defense, Juhan Hyung held out the mouth of his beer bottle to him, proposing a toast with a laugh.
“Yes, of course. Who could win against you?”
Click. The moment their beers clinked, Noona pressed the shutter. But it seemed I was the only one who paid any mind to the sound.
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