The Secrets of Light and Shadow in an Old Notebook (Continued)

When Ayu found the off-white dress in the closet, she noticed a dried ginkgo leaf stuck to the hem. She suddenly remembered the day she photographed the ginkgo trees last year; Zhong Hua had appeared at the park entrance shortly after hanging up the phone, clutching a cup of hot milk tea, with beads of sweat still on his temples.

"What are you doing here?" She stood up in surprise, her camera almost slipping off her knees.

"Just passing by." He shoved the milk tea into her hand, his gaze sweeping over her camera's menu screen, which was set to ISO 800. "Why did you set it so high? The lighting is good enough."

She felt her secret had been exposed, and she lowered her head to stir her milk tea straw: "The group chat said you need to use high ISO when the light is against your backlight..."

He didn't speak, but simply took the camera and took a test shot of the ginkgo tree. The golden leaves shone brightly in the sunlight, their veins so clear they looked painted on. "Look," he turned the screen towards her, "open the aperture to f/5.6, shutter speed to 1/125, and ISO to 200."

She stared blankly at the parameter bar while he turned to buy roasted sweet potatoes. Later, she learned from his colleague that he had an important meeting that afternoon and had taken leave to come here.

"What are you thinking about?" Zhong Hua's voice rang out from the doorway, carrying a black camera bag.

Ayu put on her dress, and as she turned around, the hem swept across the dressing table, knocking over the ceramic cat figurine. Zhonghua caught it quickly; there was a small note stuck to the base of the figurine, which she had written last year: "My cat is not cooperating with taking pictures today, so it's angry."

He smiled and put the ornament back in its place: "Let's go, the lotus flowers in the botanical garden are probably getting impatient."

As I was going downstairs, I ran into Aunt Zhang from the third floor. Seeing Ayu carrying a camera bag, she joked, "Going to take pictures again? Is Zhonghua acting as your personal driver?"

Zhong Hua scratched his head without saying a word, but his action of opening the unit door for A Yu was unusually natural. Sunlight filtered through the branches of the old locust tree, casting shimmering spots of light on the back of his hand, much like the crooked doodles in a notebook.

The lotus pond in the botanical garden was crowded with people with cameras and tripods. Just as Ayu set up her tripod, she heard an uncle next to her explaining to his wife, "You need a telephoto lens to photograph lotus flowers and darken the background..." She quietly tugged at Zhong Hua's sleeve, "Shouldn't we change our lenses too?"

He opened his camera bag and took out the heavy 70-200mm lens: "I prepared it for you a long time ago."

There was a cartoon sticker on the lens, a kitten pattern that she had insisted on buying at the camera store last year. Ayu suddenly remembered the sentence in her notebook, "Focus on the eyes," and couldn't help but laugh out loud—it turned out he had even thought of the lotus flower's "eyes" for her.

While adjusting the settings, Zhong Hua stood behind her, his breath gently brushing against her ear: "Aperture f4, shutter speed 1/160, ISO 200." His voice was much steadyer than the handwriting on the notebook, carrying a reassuring certainty.

Looking through the viewfinder, Ayu saw pink lotus flowers swaying gently among green leaves, water droplets rolling off the petals and creating tiny rainbows in the sunlight. The moment she pressed the shutter, she suddenly understood what lay behind those parameters—not cold, hard numbers, but the gentle side of the world he wanted her to see.

While resting at the park's cafe at noon, Ayu flipped through the photos she had taken that morning and suddenly pointed to one, asking, "Look at this one, doesn't it look a bit like the sunrise I messed up at Mount Tai back then?"

The lotus flowers in the photo were slightly overexposed due to the backlighting, with a hazy white glow around the edges. Zhong Hua leaned over to take a look and tapped the screen: "They're pretty good, like they're coated in icing sugar."

She remembered the day of the sunrise at Mount Tai, when she angrily threw her camera at Zhong Hua: "You take the picture! Yours will definitely look the same!" In the end, he actually squatted there with the camera for half an hour, and the sun in the final picture did look like a salted egg yolk, but he said: "Your picture is still more unique, like a star falling into a pot."

At the time, I took it as just a perfunctory remark, but now I understand the tenderness hidden in that joke.

When we went to photograph water lilies in the afternoon, the sky suddenly turned overcast. Ayu frowned subconsciously as she looked at the dark image on the camera screen. Zhong Hua pulled a clean cloth from his bag and carefully wiped the moisture off her lens: "Do you remember the rain parameters written in your notebook?"

She paused for a moment, then suddenly realized: "Shutter speed 1/30, ISO 400?"

"Smart." He smiled and took two steps back. "Give it a try."

As Ayu adjusted the settings, the rain began to fall. Looking through the lens, raindrops landed on the water lily leaves, creating ripples that perfectly captured the dotted lines drawn in her notebook. Excitedly, she turned to call Zhong Hua to look, only to find him holding his phone and taking a picture of her. On the screen, she was half-squatting in the rain, her hair blowing wildly in the wind, but a wide smile on her face.

"Why are you taking pictures of me?" She reached out to grab the phone.

He laughed and dodged back, saying, "I'm taking pictures of my wife working hard." His phone's photo album is full of pictures of her: one of her holding a camera and staring blankly at a cat, another of her with her head buried in cherry blossom petals under a cherry tree, and yet another of her smiling so hard her eyes were squinting as she held a milk tea in a ginkgo forest last year.

The parameters of each photo were adjusted to be just right, clearly indicating that they were not taken casually.

On the way home, the rain grew heavier. Ayu leaned against the car window, watching the wipers swish back and forth, and suddenly remembered the unfinished sentence at the end of her notebook. She gently nudged Zhong Hua's hand on the steering wheel: "Did you go to take pictures of the tulips at the botanical garden that year?"

He paused in his steering wheel movement: "I've gone. You were working overtime that day, so I took some pictures to show you."

Ayu suddenly remembered that late night when she wearily pushed open the door and saw a small glass vase on the coffee table in the living room, containing a few pink tulips. At the time, she thought he had just bought it on a whim while passing by a flower shop, but now she realized that it was a vase he had kept in her place at their rendezvous.

The rain stopped just as the car pulled up in front of the apartment building. Zhong Hua unbuckled his seatbelt and pulled a folding stool from the back seat: "You've been squatting for too long today, haven't you? I knew your legs would hurt."

The stool was blue, the same color as the notebook. Ayu suddenly remembered something, and flipped through the photos he had taken that afternoon in her phone's album. The latest one was of her back as she photographed water lilies in the rain, with the settings showing ISO 400, shutter speed 1/30, and aperture f5.6—exactly the settings for rainy days written in the notebook.

She looked up at Zhong Hua, who was bending down to open an umbrella for her, water droplets still dripping from his hair. The setting sun peeked out from behind the clouds, gilding the edge of the umbrella, much like the sunrise he had taken for her on Mount Tai years ago.

“Zhong Hua,” A Yu said softly, “I want to remember your parameters myself from now on.”

He paused for a moment, then smiled, his eyes sparkling: "Okay, I'll teach you."

As she went upstairs, Ayu put the blue notebook into her camera bag. Tucked inside was a fresh ginkgo leaf, which she had picked up that afternoon at the botanical garden. She thought that next year, when the cherry blossoms were in full bloom, she would write down the new parameters he had taught her on the new pages of the notebook, her handwriting as firm and gentle as his eyes were now.

In the side pocket of her camera bag, her phone screen was still lit up, displaying a newly set memo reminder: "Tomorrow I'll learn how to adjust white balance with Zhong Hua. No slacking off."