Source
https://ncode.syosetu.com/n4533ij/19/
I held up the camera and pressed a button. The shutter sounded, and the scene peering into the electronic data was cut out and saved. The process was repeated over and over again, producing pictures with little differences.
The manager looked back, her cheeks slightly upturned, a little worried, and then opened her mouth.
“How can you take a picture of me if you don’t have a subject?”
“If you don’t have a subject, you have to worry about how to take pictures of it.”
“Then bring a private model with you. I am not your model.”
“I don’t like to keep other people tied up in club activities for long periods of time.”
“So you’re going to shoot me? I don’t see the point in photographing me.”
She said this with a pout of her lips and strode away without asking me to erase or confirm the pictures I had taken. The hydrangea in the flower bed she had just pointed her camera at was still small and hard to spot, so few people would recognize it as a hydrangea.
I chase after the managert, who has moved away without telling me his destination. She glanced back at me and then opened her mouth without hesitation.
“The other members of the club don’t even show up on club days, they’re out in the field. The third-year students I met when I first joined the club are also shy, so they basically go out solo. Sometimes I’m invited, but it’s usually to places that are a little far away and might take a while, so I’m often reluctant to go. How about you?”
“I try to go out and shoot alone, but I don’t have anything I want to shoot.”
“I see. Your like portraits, right? Are you satisfied with your portraits?”
“Family portraits are okay. But I don’t know if I would describe them as satisfactory. Well, it is difficult. Recently, I feel that the photos I casually took at a coffee shop were a refreshing change of pace and gave me a sense of fulfillment.”
“I hope you don’t mind me interjecting that it’s a family portrait. Well, that aside, for snapshots and portraits, you can just go out there and grab people or take pictures on your own.”
“You’d have to have permission. It’s voyeurism.”
“Aside from the fact that it’s for the sake of art. It’s better to quit if you’re a potential voyeur. So, please keep your ears open and try your best to find someone that won’t mind.”
“Then, if it’s during a school club activity, even the head of the club who complains but doesn’t refuse is okay.”
The manager turns around and looks up at me. She had a troubled look on her face.
“Taking pictures of me is no fun.”
“It’s what you feel, read, or recall from the …… pictures that counts.”
“Fufu, a romantic way of looking at it. I wouldn’t think that’s the opinion of a weirdo.”
“That’s what I’m looking for in the pictures I leave behind”
The manager then took me to photograph the flowerbeds and small boarded-up trees on the school grounds. I follow her, taking pictures of her and the trees and plants she is photographing, and then leave the same pictures of the trees and plants.
The manager takes each picture without hesitation, but never loses focus and takes each picture seriously. I also hold up my camera. At first, I was taking pictures of the flower beds and plants with a light heart, but then I put my mind firmly into the camera so as not to disturb the manager’s seriousness and not to be rude to her.
The manager and I are different in height. Therefore, the angles would be quite different. I wondered how we would feel if we compared our shots of the same subject.
When it was almost time to leave the school, the maanger and I finally made a round of the grounds. The manager let out a long, exhausted breath.
“In the end, Orikawa-kun didn’t even ask me why I was doing this.”
“Then why were you doing this?”
“It’s too late now. It was requested by the school and the student council.”
“Why?”
“Of course, they’re going to put it on the school website and put it on the parental communication prints and student handouts as a colorful addition to the school’s materials. The photography club also offers its services free of charge.”
“I have a similar angle like you, but I took all the pictures, so if you have any that you can use, please use them.”
“I’ll be grateful for the data, but I think my pictures will suffice! I’m sure if I send them out, they’ll just use all of mine!”
“I don’t mind that, but I’m satisfied that I was able to contribute to the club in some small way.”
“Haha, that’s an auspicious attitude for someone who just joined the photography club. It is a natural movement of the heart to want to be appreciated and recognized by others for what you have photographed, right?”
The photography club’s clubroom is devoid of human warmth, and the empty spring air sits there. The manager turned on the computer, turned on the wifi, and asked, “Well, can you connect and transfer the files with this?” she tells me, and I transfer everything I’ve taken today.
I transfer all the pictures I took today, including of course the serious-looking manager and the slightly nervous and embarrassed “Are you taking pictures of for the first time?” I thought I had taken a lot of pictures of her today, but I didn’t realize how many I had taken of her. I thought that the maanger, who is petite and might be considered cute at first glance, has a well-defined face and shows a different mood when she has a serious expression on her face.
She must have looked at the photo of herself, and her cheeks turned red.
“This is a little embarrassing.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m a photographer and I don’t like to be photographed.”
“Don’t you have any pictures of you as a freshman or sophomore?”
“What do you think you’re going to do with that? Of course, I have been a photographer since I joined the club.”
“I’m sure you were very popular.”
“I don’t want to be photographed by the same club members with such impure feelings. That’s why I’m confiscating these from the shared computer.”
While saying such things, the manager saved the photos I had taken on the SSD I had connected. I thought it was something to delete, so I asked.
“Don’t you have to delete them? I have one on me, too.”
“If you have zero impure feelings, I won’t delete the photos. Because these are memories, aren’t they?”
She smiled kindly as she looked at the photos, and the words she said as she looked at each of my photos scared me. I was scared of what the person in front of me said. However, I took a picture of her smiling face and did not transfer it to the computer.
She looked up at me, glared at me, and raised her voice.
“That was a hint of insolence!”
“No, no, no, I thought manager would talk with a face like that too.”
“Orikawa-kun, hey! I thought you would cooperate a little, but you yourself were arguing against voyeurism!”
“Well, then, I’ll tell the manager that it was the manager who said it was for the sake of art, wasn’t it?”
“Mouu! This junior!”
I flutter away from her as she pounces on me to erase the photo I just took. There is no way she can reach if she raises her hand a little, so it is a confirmed victory play from the beginning until she gives up.
I kept the camera safe and sound until the time to leave school came on the air and I hurriedly got ready to go home.
She glanced at me reproachfully, understood that her time was up, and said, “I’m leaving!” and we staggered off to go home. I kept apologizing to her until we reached the fork in the road.
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