A viewfinder in time
As Ah Yu imported the photos of Qinghai into his computer, the sycamore leaves outside the window were swirling in the autumn wind. The blinds in the studio weren't fully closed, and sunlight streamed in, casting long, thin patches of light on the keyboard, like the frozen moments in his photographs.
"Let me borrow Zhong Hua's computer to transfer some footage," he called into the inner room, but received no response. The coffee machine was humming, probably Zhong Hua was researching new brewing ratios again—that guy always said instant coffee didn't look good in photos and didn't match the light and shadow in his shots.
As Ah Yu stood up, the chair legs scraped softly on the floor. Zhong Hua's desk was always tidy; folders were arranged by color, and a fountain pen sat askew in its ceramic pen holder, the cap still bearing a faint half-circle of ink—a mark Ah Yu had rubbed off when drawing storyboards in college. The computer screen was lit, displaying an engineering report; the time in the lower right corner was five minutes slower than the wall clock—Ah Yu had only discovered this secret last week but hadn't revealed it, simply waiting five minutes longer each morning before adjusting the clock.
He opened the image transfer software, and his gaze paused when he scanned the folder list on the left. At the very bottom was an unnamed folder with the system's default gray icon, seemingly deliberately hidden among a group of folders labeled "Project Data" and "Equipment List".
As the mouse hovered over the image, Ah Yu's fingertips suddenly tightened. He remembered three months ago in Qinghai, when Zhong Hua was squatting by the lake adjusting his tripod. The sunlight cast a long shadow, almost covering his shoes in the puddles. The wind carried the scent of rapeseed flowers, and Zhong Hua turned around and said, "Shrink the aperture by two stops," but his camera was pointed directly at him.
The moment the folder was opened, Ah Yu heard her own breathing sound exceptionally clear in the quiet room.
There was no scenery, no work records, just his face filling the entire screen.
The earliest photo was taken three years ago in spring. He was squatting downstairs at his studio, photographing cherry blossoms, his face buried in the pink sea of flowers, a fallen petal clinging to the tip of his nose. He had just argued with Zhong Hua that day because Zhong Hua had collected all the rolls of film he had ruined, saying, "There's always something that can be fixed." He stormed out, slamming the door, unaware that someone had been standing by the second-floor window with a camera for a long time.
Ah Yu's fingers trembled slightly as he moved the mouse. One photo was taken in the university library; he was dozing off, slumped over a photography theory book. Sunlight streamed in through the high window, gilding the stray hairs on his forehead with gold. A few crumbs of bread clung to the corner of his mouth—it was breakfast Zhong Hua had bought, which he had quickly devoured. In the corner of the photo, one could see an open math notebook with annotations by Zhong Hua, the pen tip having drawn a small camera next to the words "exposure compensation."
There's also a silhouette by Qinghai Lake. He holds his camera up to the sunset, his back bathed in golden-red light. Zhong Hua's shadow falls at his feet, almost overlapping with his. This photo was taken on the day he was lying in bed with a fever. Zhong Hua said he was going to photograph the sunset over the lake, and when he came back, his trouser legs were covered in mud, but he had a roll of film in his pocket that hadn't been wet by the rain.
"What are you looking at?"
Zhong Hua's voice suddenly rang out behind her. Ah Yu turned around abruptly as if she had been burned, and met a pair of smiling eyes. Zhong Hua was holding two cups of coffee. On the milk foam of the cup in his left hand, there was a crooked heart—it was Ah Yu who taught him to make it look better in photos, saying that it would look better this way, although Zhong Hua always managed to make it look like a blurry cloud.
The screen's reflection cast a soft shadow on Zhong Hua's face. His gaze fell on the screen, showing no surprise. He simply placed the coffee next to Ah Yu, the warmth of the cup seeping through her fingertips.
"I just snapped this while taking pictures of the scenery," he said casually, reaching out to close the folder, but Ah Yu grabbed his wrist.
Ah Yu's fingers were still on the mouse, the screen displaying the most recent image. It was from last week in the studio, when he was checking film under the light, his profile softened by the light, his eyelashes casting delicate shadows beneath his eyes. That day he complained that the new lens was too heavy, and when Zhong Hua took the camera, her fingertips brushed against the back of his hand like a feather.
"You casually intercepted three years' worth of footage?" Ah Yu looked up, her eyes brighter than the screen, but deliberately curled her lips into a smirk. "When did Engineer Zhong switch careers to become a stalker?"
Zhong Hua's ear tips turned slightly red. His gaze fell on the milk foam in the coffee cup, and he said in a lower voice, "You're prettier than the scenery when you take pictures of it."
These words were too blunt, like the unfiltered sunlight in Ah Yu's lens, so bright it was hard to open one's eyes. Ah Yu suddenly remembered his university photography class, where the teacher asked them to capture the "most touching moment." He submitted a silhouette of Zhong Hua adjusting equipment in the lab, while Zhong Hua submitted a picture of him lying under the red light in the darkroom, watching the image slowly emerge in the developing solution, the light shining in his eyes.
“These photos,” Ah Yu tapped her fingers on the keyboard, “Why didn’t you tell me?”
Zhong Hua pushed his coffee closer, the rim of the cup brushing against his fingers. "I was afraid you'd accuse me of taking pictures without my consent," he said softly, yet with a barely perceptible seriousness. "You always say I'm too meticulous about everything, even taking pictures..."
"No, that's not it." Ah Yu interrupted him, suddenly turning her swivel chair around so that their shadows overlapped on the wall, like an elongated painting. "Last week when I was shooting backlit wheat fields, who was it that stood there for half an hour holding a reflector, their arms so sore they couldn't lift them?"
Zhong Hua's eyelashes trembled. It was a very windy day. Ah Yu squatted on the edge of the field, trying to find the right angle, while Zhong Hua held up a reflector to shield him from the wind, his trouser legs covered in small thorns from the wheat awns. When Lin Wanqing passed by, she laughed and said, "You two look like you're in a silent film." He didn't say anything, but just looked at the light in Ah Yu's lens, feeling that it was more worthwhile than any scenery.
“And that time in college,” Ah Yu leaned forward, her nose almost touching Zhong Hua’s glasses, “I slipped and fell into a mud puddle by the pond while trying to take pictures of lotus flowers in the rain. Who took off their coat and wrapped it around me, even though they were sneezing from the cold?”
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