I grip my camera tightly, excitement bubbling within me as I survey the bustling energy of everyone around me.
Today is a big day.
Graduation ceremony day.
The air is electric with joy and anticipation, students adorned in flowing gowns and mortarboards chatting animatedly with both friends and family. Raising my camera, my fingers dance across the controls before I begin to capture the scene and frame each shot with whatever artistic eye I possess. This is to immortalise the proud smiles of parents, the tearful embraces of loved ones and the triumphant expressions on the faces of each graduate.
When, through the lens, I spot a group of girls rushing over towards me while squealing cheerfully, I slowly lower my camera in fear. The closer they get, the more trepidation I feel. I try to back away from them as tentatively as possible like a prey would from that which tracks its body. Even though I probably wouldn't stand a chance against a predatory animal.
Why are they approaching me with those suspicious smiles? What do they want from me? What do they plan to do to me? I am but a wee photographer. Do they plan on ruining the pictures I took at this graduation ceremony? I really hope they don't do that because if they do, Savannah will never let me live that.
Once they are close enough, they first chuckle at my expression in amusement and then politely ask me to get a couple of pictures of them.
With a relieved smile, I slowly nod in response.
The three of them then huddle up into a group, all doing different poses. I look through the lens and snap a few pictures of them, prompting them to change poses every time.
"Are you going to put those in the school's newspaper?" one of them stays behind to ask when I finish taking pictures of them.
With a repentant look, I lift my shoulders. "Unfortunately, I'm just the photographer. Savannah is the one in charge of that."
"Oh," she frowns in disappointment.
"They will be in the school's yearbook though."
She immediately perks up and her eyes light up. "Really?"
"Mm-hmm. I spoke to the students in charge of the yearbook about delaying the printouts in order for us to add the pictures from our graduation ceremony and luckily they said they would."
"That is so cool," she gushes and she looks like she wants to dance around on the balls of her toes.
It is cool especially because I will be credited for all the photographs. I will have something tangible to send to the University of Oxford to attest to my extracurricular activity.
"Thank you, Seong Jin," she says and then waves at me to hurriedly join her friends.
Detaching the camera from the tripod, I skim through some of the pictures I took during the ceremony. I made sure to get plenty of wide shots to showcase the full stage but I also wanted to get in close, focusing on the expressions of my classmates as they walked across the stage to receive their diplomas. To get a few more shots of what remained after the ceremony before I have to give this camera back to Savannah, I walk around the venue and hold the lens up against my eye.
My nose wrinkles when I notice how disgusting the lighting in some places. I make sure to adjust the settings on the camera.
When a face suddenly pops up in my view, I jump out of my skin and clumsily fumble around with the camera in my hand, almost dropping it on the floor.
"Fleance," I yell scoldingly with my heart still racing with adrenaline. "What are you doing? You nearly made me drop the school's camera."
"Sorry. I thought you saw me."
After calming myself down, I glare at him petulantly.
"So… salutatorian?"
With a prideful grin, I take a bow in front of him as he claps like a posh person watching an operatic performance in their box. "Yes. Thank you, thank you."
"Congratulations, mate. I guess it was inevitable since nobody was beating Christian for the title of valedictorian. It's a shame you both took the same subjects because maybe you could have at least gotten one golden medal."
"If there is anyone I was prepared to lose to, it was Christian," I tell him with an unbothered look, "and honestly he out of everyone in our school deserves valedictorian. He worked really hard for it."
"Do you think Oxford will look at this accomplishment and say, fuck the extracurricular activity? You are capable enough of being in our school?"
"I am not going to take any chances, mate. Besides, I do have an extracurricular activity that I can present to them. Why do you think I'm slaving away at this ceremony?"
"Because you love photography?" he suggests while arching his brow.
"I mean, yes I do but not enough to go out of my way to take pictures of our graduation ceremony. I would rather spend this time hanging out with my friends. This is quite possibly one of the last times we will be able to spend time with each other just the four of us."
"Can I spend time with you guys too?"
"No, you aren't friends with them. You're friends with me."
"You don't have to be jealous, Seong Jin. You can share me with your friends as well."
"I don't want them around your dumbass. They're already a weird bunch as it is. Adding you to the mix is just going to be an entirely different fuck fest and to be quite frank with you, I do not have the patience to deal with that."
"Prick," he mutters under his breath but he makes sure that he's audible enough for me to catch that.
I open my mouth to respond but when I feel a sneeze coming on, I glance up and then bow into my chest to release a loud sneeze, the itch in my nose fortunately disappearing.
"Yarhamuka Allah," he says without thinking and I furrow my brows in confusion, so he quickly explains that it is something which is said to someone when they sneeze.
"Oh. Thank you."
"By the way, you still have not told me what you did with my brother that night because uhm… you do know that if you did do anything with him that would be haram as fuck?"
I roll my eyes skyward at the question he has asked me for the umpteenth time now.
No matter how many times I have clarified that I did not touch tips with his brother all those months ago, he still insists that something had to have happened. It even came to a point where I had to tell his brother that he would not stop pestering me about it. Kai then had to explain to him that we did not do anything which bordered beyond innocent kisses and touches.
"And as I've told you like the previous one hundred times," together we walk out of the school auditorium and I give him an honest look so that he believes my words, "we did not do anything."
His brows furrow suspiciously and he looks at me intensely. I can tell that he is trying to decipher whether I'm lying to him for the hundredth time now. I admit that I can be quite the persistent and annoying little scoundrel when I want to be, but if someone keeps on asking me the same question over and over and over and over again, I would have just yielded and told them the truth in the end just to get rid of them. Except this time, I am telling the truth and I won't tell him anything otherwise just to please his own suspicions.
"I don't believe you," he declares adamantly and I shake my head with a look which hopefully conveys how unsurprising his response is.
"Why is that so hard to believe?"
"You were wearing his clothes."
"Who gives a fuck if I was wearing his clothes?" I ask him with an incredulous look. "You have already conceded previously that you wouldn't be less suspicious of me if I wasn't wearing his clothes."
"Why didn't you sleep in the guest bedroom?" he continues to interrogate me.
"I don't know, Fleance." At this point, I'm getting irritated at his endless enquiries.
"Seong Jin," he starts in a soft tone.
He stops me somewhere in the car park and the people who were walking behind us grumble in annoyance but settle for walking around us instead of voicing their complaints to us. The girl throws a mean glower at me but her friend immediately nudges her scoldingly, urgently whispering something about us being seniors. As if the gowns weren't statement enough. I pinch my earlobe between my short nails when it starts to itch and let my thumb and index finger relieve the discomfort.
As I'm doing this, Fleance puts his hand on my shoulder and after looking down at it, I scrunch up my face perplexed.
"You know you can tell me if you partook in impure acts with Kai?"
"You mean fucked."
"Yes, bumped uglies."
"Fucked."
"Okay, Seong Jin. I was trying to be euphemistic. The picture of you and my brother doing that isn't something I wish to imagine, okay?" he says irritably.
"You say that and yet you are constantly asking me if I fucked your brother. Honestly, if you need pornographic material that badly the internet is an immensely vacuous space. The world is your oyster on there. Look up all the gay porn you need."
He scowls at me, his nose twitching the slightest.
"And for the last time, we did not have sex. Even if we did have sex," I pause and stare at him, before adding with a taunting whisper, "I wouldn't tell you."
"So… that means you did sleep with him."