Episode 23 – Share the photos you have taken!?

Source

https://ncode.syosetu.com/n4533ij/23/

After school, I called out to Ageha. Ageha, who was cleaning up to go to the tea ceremony club, stopped what she was doing and looked up at me.

“How can I help you?”

“I was just on my way to the tea ceremony club room, and I was wondering if I could talk to you while I’m with you.”

“Yes, that’s fine.

When she casually responded, the classroom became noisy for some reason. Otori felt the gaze on her, and when she looked back at her remaining classmates in a strange manner, some of her classmates in the classroom turned away and ran out of the classroom in a panic.

Since both Hanaten and Yuisa-san left the classroom early, there was unlikely to be an opportunity to ask the reason for the classmates’ reactions.

“Is something wrong?”

“Well? Shall we go anyway?”

“Yes!”

I brought my camera and bag to go to the photography club, and Ageha brought her bag to leave as soon as the tea ceremony club’s activities were over.

Walking alongside Ageha in the corridor, even if I wanted to talk to her about it, I would attract attention. Ageha is used to such stares, and she smiled at me gently. After some spineless banter, I finally move on to my main topic when the people leave.

“I’m sorry for bothering you today.”

“? You didn’t have anything to worry about.”

“Even if Ageha said that, I’m sorry about it. I’m going to follow Ageha’s example and write it down in my notebook.”

“That would be nice. It may be too early for a high school student, but I have always followed my father around a lot, so I’ve been writing in my schedule book every year since he gave it to me once.”

“I think that’s very good. I would have written it in the notes app on my phone.”

“Yes, but I think you could write it in the calendar app on your phone, right?”

“No, I don’t think I can do that on my phone. I’m afraid I’ll end up missing it like I did today.”

“But at first, since you are not in the habit of opening your notebook, you must not overlook it in order to make it a habit to check your daily schedule, right?”

“Yes, I think I’ll start by getting into the habit of opening it with Ageha.”

“I-I !?”

“If it is weekdays, I always see Ageha in the mornings when I come to school.”

“I-I see! We will be together every morning! B-But what about your days off? I-I don’t have a chance to see you in the morning!”

She is right. If I make it a habit to open my notebook when I see Ageha, I will have no opportunity to see her on my days off.

I was a little worried,

“Let’s just get a schedule book for now and then we’ll think about it.”

“That’s also a good idea! I’ll have to go to a big store that carries stationery and look for one myself.”

“On Saturday after or before my part-time job, if it’s convenient for you, would you be willing to search together with me while listening to Ageha’s opinion?”

“Hyoee!?”

Ageha’s strange voice echoed uncomfortably loudly in the hallway, and a second-year girl walking a little ahead of us, who had not noticed us, turned around and spotted Ageha.

“Oh my!”

The girls spotted Ageha, looked at me next to them, and then raised their voices even louder as they scuttled through the door of the tea ceremony club room. Ageha didn’t seem to notice.

“I-iiii-is it tommorow?”

“Either Saturday or Sunday, if you can make it.”

“I-I’ll check my schedule and make sure! I-I’ll call you this evening, as I always do!”

“Okay, thanks. We’ll check each other’s schedules for Saturday and Sunday.”

“Nn-nothing like that. I’ll see you in the evening.”

Ageha replied to me and then walked quickly to the tea ceremony club. I turned my back to go to the photography club room. As I turned away, Ageha opened the door and the noisy yellow voices of various people came out, mingling with Ageha’s shouts of “What’s going on?”　

The photography club room was filled with tranquility today, with the owner of the room sitting on her couch. The curtains were open, and through the open window, the distant echoes of the athletic team’s shouts could be heard, accompanied by the long tones of the brass band dancing in the distance.

Her bangs, which are always pinned up when she is in the clubroom, are down like a closed curtain today.

“Hello.”

“Hi.”

“Do you mind if I use your computer today?”

“No problem, go ahead.”

Her voice seemed hard, but the greeting was the same as usual, and she was on the sofa facing her phone today. She takes the laptop and starts it up.

I take my usual seat, which is across the table but in a position where I can naturally see her straight ahead when I look up. Is she reading something? Her finger moves occasionally.

“W-What is it?”

“I’m sorry, it’s nothing. Are you sure you don’t want to go out and shoot today?”

“Oh, I wasn’t at all motivated when I was alone, but thanks to the juniors who attend club activities every day, I had no choice but to take care of business from the teachers and the student council.”

“I’m glad to hear that.”

I manipulate my laptop computer to save the photos I took with my camera. She must have somehow understood what I was doing as I was manipulating the laptop and my camera in my hand.

Her eyes were hidden by her bangs, but she sounded panicked.

“H-hey.”

“What’s wrong?”

“W-What are you doing?”

“I’m sharing the pictures I’ve been taking for the past week.”

“S-Sharing?”

“Eh, I’ll put the photos of the club’s activities in a shared folder, and the manager can look at them whenever she feels like it, right?”

“Ah, yeah! Yes, that’s right. So far you are the only one who is that disciplined.”

“But there are a lot of pictures on the photo club’s Instagram, aren’t there? Cherry blossoms, trains, and so on.”

“Yes, I upload the photos that other members put in the shared folder when I feel like it. They only send me the ones they like, and they don’t complain. If they stay in the club room, I can talk to them about it, but they don’t stay in the club room very long and we chat a lot, so I can’t do a good job of talking to them. …… I’m trying my best to talk to them and get to know them.”

She calmly fiddled with her phone, looking a little sad about that, a change from the flustered look she had just given me. She showed me her Insta account on her own phone.

The Instagram account she showed me existed when she introduced me to the club, and I was actually taught to follow it when I first joined the club.

Even though I was following her, I never paid much attention to it because it was updated when the director was working on it at the same time I was also participating in the club activities.

“But there aren’t many pictures of you in the club.”

“M-my picture?”

“Yes, I don’t see many pictures of you on Instagram, not just the ones requested by the student council.”

“Eh, how do you know if they are mine or not?”

“I know some of your pictures.”

“I-iiis that so?”

As she twirled her hair with her fingertips, only her mouth, which was not hidden by her hair, was grinning. Her photos are relatively easy to recognize. If the photos she puts up on her Instagram are ones she’s not into, they are often a little low and angled looking up about the grass and trees due to her short stature. It does not mean that she is not serious. She wanted photos of people, and the kind of photos she was really into were the kind of photos she wanted to take of people.

The photographs she shared with me over the course of our week together, but the ones she showed me during our many hours together, were the many moments she freely and selfishly, sometimes earnestly, captured of students after school and at school events during our two years at the high school. The photos of those people will never be uploaded to Instagram by her.

“The Morning.”

I wasn’t sure how to answer the words she muttered in a fading voice without looking up from her phone. I was wondering what to say to her, but the manager seemed to realize that I was lost for an answer, so she fiddled with her phone and sent me a message.

[Are you mad at me?]

“No, I’m not angry. I was just a little upset.”

[You’re mad at me.]

“What do you think is the best content to send to each other on the line? I guess it’s a morning photo after all.”

“……, me and Orikawa-kun aren’t the kind of people who send each other messages in the first place.”

“You don’t have to send it, but it’s okay if you do.”

“……I may not reply to it you know.”

I think that’s fine. In fact, my communication with Rinen on the message is almost always in the form of me sending one-sided messages. The first time I reduced the number of messages I sent because I thought she didn’t like it, but she told me she was looking at it, so I understand that’s the way it’s supposed to be.

My phone makes a notification sound. She looks at her phone and asks me again, are you mad at me? and sends me a stamp. What is it that she sends it to me when we are in the same club room, even though we are not the kind of people who send them to each other? I laugh a little,

“I’m not mad, so then please feel free to send me something”

“Eeeh?! Why!?”

“No, it’s because you think too much. You get used to it. Whether they react or not, if they ask you to send something and you send it every day, you’ve gotten used to it.”

“…… Eh? You are doing such a strange thing, Orikawa-kun. You don’t send messages to your friends for no reason, do you? We see each other at school, remember?”

“Manager, you’re taking it too seriously.”

“Is that so?”

“If they don’t like it, they won’t see it anyway.”

“Eh, no, I don’t want to do that because it’s usually hurtful. You can’t bear to have your whole body of work left unread, so why keep sending it even though it’s unread? It’s painful…”

“If it’s unread, you don’t have to send it. Then, let’s start sending each other tonight, please.”

“I’m not going to do it!?”

“I’ll send it.”

“Eeh.”

She pats the floor with her jacket. She’s petite looking, so that kind of behavior takes her away from high school students and intensifies her childishness. She looked at her phone, sighed with a huff, and eventually expressed neither approval nor refusal.

I finish saving the data, and the manager, who spotted it with wide eyes, mouthed the words “confiscation~” and took the laptop into her own hands.

“It’s time for the shared photo check!”

“Please.”

“Yes, yes, do you have any you’d like to insta-share?”

“I’ll leave it up to manager”

“Really?”

Then I was curious about the manager who was happily going through the photos, so I quickly moved my chair closer to her and sat down. When I tried to look into the laptop with her from her side, she stopped me with her hand. Her slender fingers swing to my face and deliberately hold me back, though I don’t put any effort into it.

“You’re so close. It’s forbidden.”

“I’m curious to know what you’re looking at.”

“It’s a crime to peek into a girl’s secret.”

“That kind of language makes it sound criminal, so please quit it. Why is it considered a secret to check the pictures I took?”

“When I check other people’s productions, I need to be free and not be disturbed by anyone. The other members of the club haven’t interfered with my checking because they haven’t been in the clubroom long. Come on, come on, get away.”

In the end, all I could do was return to my original position and look over the table at the department head peering into the screen. Her hair swayed in the spring breeze. Flexible fingers in small hands moved the mouse, occasionally clicking the right mouse button. The speed of the mouse clicks vary, making me wonder which picture he was looking at more carefully.

The Manager noticed my gaze and looked up.

“I don’t like it when you stare at me so passionately,”

“…Tomorrow, Saturday and Sunday, I’ll be working part-time for the first time. Will the manager be there?”

“Why all of a sudden? I’ll be there tomorrow. I’m going to teach tomorrow. On Sunday, you’ll work with my mother and Namazue san. I have something to do.”

“Oh, is that so?”

“I can’t devote enough time to my part-time job to be able to spend every Saturday and Sunday helping out, as expected. I’m sure you’ll be working from pre-opening preparations to the evening on both Saturday and Sunday, aside from the evenings. To tell you the truth, I’d be grateful for your help, since that’s when I’m busy preparing.”

“Really? As for me, it’s helpful because they let me get in there. I’d like to go on a shooting trip during the next Golden Week if I can, so I’d like to save up some of my war chest.”

She turned her gaze back to the computer screen again.

“Golden Week, huh? Have you decided where you’re going?”

“I wonder how much I can save.

“You should have found a place to stay by now, or there won’t be any available.”

“I’m not planning on going to any of those fancy tourist spots,”

“You are right, if there are people there, you won’t be able to take pictures so casually. Then where are you going?”

“Well, let’s see.”

I told her where I was planning to go, and she nodded her head in agreement, then told me it would be nice to go there too. I made a note of it. I was going to go to the mountain area, but she suggested that since the ocean is crowded in the summer, I might as well go to the ocean at this time of year.

I’m looking at reservations online now, and the prices have not gone up with other Golden Week prices. I’ll bookmark that place.

It’s better to plan, prepare, and enjoy your photo trip by thinking about where and how you will shoot, and as a portrait rather than a snapshot.

I continued to use the map function and search for place names, gathering information on the Internet until the end of the club time. The manager, like me, finished using her notebook computer after club hours.

I wanted to take a picture of these casual moments, but I couldn’t say it out loud. This was to protect what she had said yesterday. I kept trying to restrain myself from saying, “Can I take pictures?”

On the way home, I walked with the manager to the fork in the road, pushing my bicycle as we had done yesterday. She laughs from time to time as she answers my questions with an easygoing smile. As we reached the fork in the road, she stopped and waved at me shyly.

“See you tomorrow. At part-time job. I’ll be there before open.”

“Yes, see you tomorrow”

She cycled away and I hurried home after her back was out of sight. The spring air at night made me feel more comfortable than in the morning.

(TL/N : getting bored, might drop this..)

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