Work Text:
0. Sumire Morihara’s wanderings.
The gallery was nothing like Sumire expected it to be, when she had agreed to a date with Reiko.
It was small, tucked away inside a street in dire needs of repairs.
Sumire almost wondered if it was a joke, or if Reiko had changed her mind half-way and decided to send Sumire elsewhere, as a subtitle way of telling her she regretted the invitation.
But Reiko was far too kind for that, and her peculiar attitude didn’t really match that sort of things.
She was way more likely to simply say that she no longer wanted to go, possibly while also roping Sumire into serving as the not so unwilling assistant to her latest obsession.
No, in truth, Sumire was probably just making too much of nothing, and Reiko had simply sent the wrong place.
Breathing out, Sumire typed a text she hoped conveyed none of her worries and would leave Reiko thinking that the other girl was smooth, cool and composed.
It was a pipe dream, but a comforting one.
Waiting for the answer, Sumire shivered in the damp autumnal air, taking a look at the gallery.
There was nothing here that advertised any sorts of photography exhibit, but Sumire didn’t know nearly enough about photos to truly think of it as weird.
Maybe photography exhibits were meant to only be open to a handful of persons, and then her status as a fraud would absolutely be noticed, maybe it would be extended to Reiko, even though Reiko was nothing but dedicated to her craft, although she could be a bit strange and very pass-
This was going nowhere.
Briefly, Sumire listened to the thought that suggested blowing the building up, but it wasn’t something she really wanted.
Just a stray thought that stuck around for far too long once in a while, and who Reiko would surely be afraid of if she saw it.
Reiko who still hadn’t answered.
Sumire shivered some more and decided to enter the building.
It was open and she preferred the humiliation of being in a place she wasn’t wanted in than the one of standing around freezing while everybody who passed by could surely tell that she was worried.
The inside was far better, lighted in a warm way, warm enough to melt the cold off of Sumire’s shoulders.
She opened two of her coat’s buttons and slowly relaxed her shoulders.
The vivid pictures of the gallery in rumbles still stuck like a sore thumb in her mind, but she no longer felt that alone nor strange, the people already inside largely ignoring her in favor of discussing the work of whichever of the four photographers featured they liked best.
She heard bribes of it, not long enough to count as eavesdropping, praising “Ichimonji-sensei’s eye for portraits”, the way he “espoused every irregularities” and her mind wandered towards the burn scar near Reiko’s left eyebrow, even as she realized that she had no ideas how she was even meant to go around appreciating the artists’ work.
Cold sweat ran down her neck.
This time, when she checked her message, Reiko had answered:
[Sorry!! Train stopped for a bit, maybe it’s a cow? If so I’ll show you a picture! Did you know cows are good at swimming? I’m not, though, so I guess I’d lose against a cow in the Olympics? Or maybe it’s the newest Rider protecting us? Anyway, I’ll be there soon! If you’re bored you should start looking at the pictures! But please wait for me, okay? I really want to see it with you!]
Reiko wanted her here, and Reiko was coming, and Reiko would tell her how she was supposed to even look at pictures so she wouldn’t be such a fraud, and the building was dropping off with a loud clang that was wrong because it was burning down.
Without really thinking that much, instead repeating to herself that cows were good swimmers, she made her way to the first room.
Sumire’s checked the inscriptions written on the path that led to the road, feeling just a little bit like an automaton.
Reading about the artist was not only polite but what normal people did, and there was always a chance that Reiko would ask her fun facts or trivia.
It would be nice, because Reiko was always so spontaneous and bright when she got into her own pace, if frustrating that she never waited for anybody else’s opinion, but it would also feel terrible if Reiko was the only one talking.
So, Sumire looked at the wall, the information paragraph towering over her.
The biography section was strangely bare, and the artist had apparently taken a huge break in production during the seventies all the way to the eighties, only come back in the late nineties.
The wall boasted of Ichimonji Hayato’s thoughtful vision and his talent in capturing the feelings of others as well as his “daring decision” to take pictures of faces not generally considered for photography.
It also mentioned that the portraits selection had mostly been chosen by friends of the artist and included them in, as well, although they had refused to identify themselves.
The last paragraph, left on the wayside, mentioned that Ichimonji-sensei had apparently been the originator of the retrospective, having met the other artists and been stuck by “their similar emotional journey”.
That must have been nice, Sumire thought, to find somebody, even somebody far younger than you, who can understand what you go trough.
A wave of jealousy carried her into the room before she could bring herself to hate Ichimonji-sensei.
I. Eyes that nonetheless stay open.
The wall hadn’t lied about the variety of faces Ichimonji-sensei had captured over the years, nor about his lengthy career.
Even Sumire, who knew next to nothing about photography, could tell that the cameras used had been changed, if less so than she expected.
The room was a circular one, covered entirely by portraits, only a few of whom were facing the cameras.
Children with scarred faces and bright toothy smiles sat next to an old man, dressed in a distinctly seventies fashion, a fond expression clear on his face, as he held a wrench. Women leaning against what looked like a bike laughed loudly trough the frame and a friendly man with a wild air and a visible fang was mouthing something excitedly to another man in a jean jacket.
Three salary men rushed off, their expressions blurred, two beautiful women ran their hands trough the disheveled hair of a lean and awkward seeming man.
A middle aged man, with a floating hope attached to him, resting his head on a taller, all dressed in black, man, as they listened to what looked like a street fortune teller with striking kind eyes.
A man in a garden, catching the sun in his smile, brighter than anybody should be.
A woman in an eighties jacket talking to a man dressed all in white and another one who’s outfit matched hers, all of them holding hands.
The lean and awkward man of before, far older, in a doctor’s coat, next to two other men, one eating donuts with a thoughtful look, the other with a peaceful expression.
A young woman leaning on another, so obviously happy together.
The backs of the heads of three men, facing mountains.
And a lot of people who, somehow, felt more like strangers than the other ones.
A multitude of faces, some recent, some old, some intimate, some guarded, surrounded Sumire, but she found that they never left her overwhelmed.
Most of the portraits were taken from waist-up, a few were crowd shots, hanged around the room, existing around Sumire, even as she watched the next sets of pictures.
It was oddly comforting, although most of those pictures, the one she liked less, seemed covered in a veneer of longing.
As if whoever had taken them had been the outsiders looking in, which sounded stupid, said aloud.
Of course Ichimonji-sensei had been outside of those people’s lives, capturing a moment of their existences. But that longing was different, more akin to her own.
Was Ichimonji-sensei a lonely person? He seemed kind and even joyful, trough the gaze he laid on others, so many of his subjects clearly caught in spontaneous laughter than Sumire just knew he had provoked, and yet… There was a distance to most of those, a watchfulness even, and Sumire felt a surge of protectiveness rose up.
Those faces were safe, in the frame, nothing could disturb their emotions, the joy, the anger, the rare instance of subdued sadness.
Did Reiko like those pictures? Was it the sort of pictures she wanted to take?
Sumire wasn’t sure if she liked them all, or understand them all, but she liked Ichimonji-sensei, she decided, liked him more than most of the artists she had actually seen interviews of.
She looked over the next wall, and her thoughts cut off immediately.
Ichimonji-sensei wasn’t that lonely, then.
The next wall only had one photograph on it, one of a face that ignored the camera entirely, a photo Sumire just knew, even more than she knew her own age, had been taken without warning to its subject.
The man in it had a strong face, bushy eyebrows and a kind and determined look. He seemed a bit shy, maybe, or coy, in the way his fond smile was barely concealed, but still held back.
The red scarf tied around his neck broke the monochrome of his black and white jacket.
She had already seen that man.
He had been on one of the pictures of a group, resting his hand on the shoulder of a gorgeous person that dressed a little bit like a biker cowboy, the first man all gentle strength.
That man was very clearly loved, in some way.
Sumire felt a thin layer of envy coat her skin, like sweat you couldn’t remove and remained far too aware of.
She wanted to be seen the way this man was seen by Ichimonji-sensei.
She didn’t know how to word the way this man was seen.
It felt like they knew each other on a level nobody else could, knew each other to the point where Ichimonji-sensei must have known exactly what the man had thought when he took that picture of him, to the point where seeing that man made her feel like she could see Ichimonji-sensei layered over him.
It was unfair, that they had met each other, when they were young by the look of that man, and understood each other so profoundly.
It was unfair of them to show it to the world, uncaring that so many others didn’t have that.
She still liked Ichimonji-sensei, but she also hated him so much for that.
He didn’t even knew her, and yet he had let her know an overwhelming amount of himself.
In front of those pictures, she felt the weirdest loneliness.
She was far too surrounded, connected to too many people, most of whom would never really get her.
She stood, there, looking at the pictures, spinning on herself, ignoring the thought of tearing them apart, trying to commit each face to memory and somehow always landing on the man Ichimonji-sensei clearly loved best.
It hurt.
And Reiko wasn’t there to hold her hand.
The sound of a group shuffling inside pulled her out of her thought, and she realized with a start that she couldn’t stand to have more people to look at, not when she was at the center of a storm like that.
She stumbled into the next part of the exhibit, suddenly out of breath.
II. A blurry imperfect world.
The next artist had only three sentences to his biography, which mainly said he was a man in his thirties, that he was living “around”, whatever that was supposed to mean, and that he was someones who’s vision was “experimental”.
He seemed pretty ill-defined, newt to Ichimonji-sensei’s, which considering the gap in the older man’s biography, was saying something.
Another paragraph stood next to a magenta-colored signature.
It plainly stated that Tsukasa K-sensei had met with Ichimonji-sensei somewhere around 2014 and that they had struck a friendship years later, when they met again, over their love of photography.
It stated that Ichimonji-sensei vouched for the talent of K-sensei but that the man himself was not a professional photograph, but rather took it up as a hobby.
A single line of commentary from Ichimonji-sensei stated that those pictures were taken from the heart and one from the third participant of the exposition read that they would be lost on those who felt from the eyes.
A mounting feeling of dread overtook the previous panic Sumire had struggled to dispel when entering the room.
She was an impostor here, somebody who knew nothing about even the basics, and while Ichimonji-sensei’s photographs had proven easy to “feel”, she couldn’t really trust it would happen a second time, especially if the photos were of the stranger sort.
At that moment Sumire would have sworn she was suffering from delayed drowning, her total lack of experience finally catching up to her to show to the world, to Reiko, how much of an imbecile she was, how terrible she was, how much of a faker.
She tore herself off the wall only by reminding herself that there was a group behind her, and that she couldn’t let them see her.
So, she walked into the room, dragging her feet in, barely holding onto her composure.
She would be alright.
The first thing that struck her was that the room was pretty dark, when compared to Ichimonji-sensei’s well lit exhibit.
The pictures were also far tinier, and almost all seemed taken by the same camera.
The room was also arranged more conventionally, from Sumire limited experience, a square full of half-walls with the pictures arranged on them. Just like Ichimonji-sensei’s they weren’t titled.
Unlike him, however, they were also so blurry that Sumire wasn’t entirely sure they had a subject.
Maybe it was a specific technique? A filter put over the camera?
She really didn’t get it at all.
Yet, at the same time, she didn’t want to admit defeat and simply leave, even as it would be the easiest solution.
Plus, if she dragged her feet enough, Reiko would catch up sooner. (The other group too, but she could hide somewhere and wait them out.)
So, instead, she looked at the pictures again, squinted as hard as she could.
To never give up on understanding others. That was a lesson she recall vividly from her childhood, when she first saw the lone figure of a Kamen Rider reach out to help out somebody, on the news. That person had been interviewed, later on, and related with an amazed softness the words the hero had told them.
And Sumire had heard those words and felt like all of a sudden, she had woken up to a word she had never known before.
There, there was a person who had taken pictures she couldn’t understand. There was somebody she shouldn’t give up on getting. Somebody who had the courage of showing their passion to passing trough strangers.
It’d be rude to ignore the work and love poured into those pictures.
So, she looked closer and closer to the blurry pictures of K-sensei.
Little by little, she could discern shapes in them, shapes covered in something like froth.
The colors had held out remarkably, melting together as they were.
In some of them, she could see a hint of cyan, or two golden protrusions. In other, a black blur that looked like hair.
Little by little, she could guess what the forms were. Sorta.
But the commentaries had said to not look at them by feeling with the eyes.
That seemed like an odd things to say, perhaps, but she realized that the pictures had become clearer as she resolved to find an understanding, if not meaning, in their forms.
She barely registered that the group before her had entered, and they left soon enough, laughing in disbelief under their breath.
Another group passed, and left.
She was still starring at a picture that seemed absolutely outside her understanding of the world.
The more groups passed by those pictures, the more she found herself liking them, the more she found beauty in their odd amateurish feel.
In truth, those were pictures for people like her, weren’t they?
People who had no idea what they were doing and simply wandered around.
Pictures for people with no set place.
Ichimonji-sensei’s pictures were meant to be looked at from the center, the rest of the world’s population all around, some of them closer than others.
But K-sensei’s pictures felt like ones to look at when the opportunity was found.
Pictures that could easily vanish from their spot, or maybe it was the one seeing them that would find themselves elsewhere, with only the barest inkling of an idea of where they were.
In a way, they were pictures just as lost as her.
Unwelcoming at first brush, pushing away others, superficially empty and uncaring for what they caught, twisting their appearance, but in truth revealing a deep care beneath, a love for what wouldn’t remain.
Pictures that created their own unstable world a little at the time.
Sumire found herself choking back a laugh and a sob all at once. The urge to punch the photographer too.
What a dick.
What a dick, that K-sensei, leading her to that conclusion without even explaining himself.
She know understood why it took Ichimonji-sensei so many years to actually befriend K-sensei, if he was anything like his photos.
An uncertain person, with only hazy emotions to color them in.
Ah, but that wasn’t quite true anymore.
The pictures at the very end of the room were far more defined.
Still hazy, still full of little smears.
But she could tell that the very last picture was that of three people, a woman and two young men, even if she couldn’t tell much else of their expressions or facial features.
Yet, what matter was that in that picture, the emotion of love had survived the blur, the haze, and came out all more beautiful for it.
With a bitter laugh, Sumire fought back yet another impulse.
She thought of wanting to feel that love torn in her hands, wanting to grind it in the dust, or seeing if, then, the love would remain, if it was something inherent of the picture, if it could survive being pulled apart, or if it had been applied afterward like a perfume.
She was the worst.
For seeing that love and still wanting it gone.
After all, she could never understand other completely. Maybe the Rider back then had been wrong.
A person like her wasn’t truly somebody who deserved to be reached to.
Suddenly, all the joy she had muster trying to pierce together the emotions in the pictures left, a sharp pain in her guts the only sign it had been there.
Maybe she should leave.
Tell Reiko that something had come up, keep up the pretense she wasn’t disgusting a little longer.
Tell Reiko that she had loved the idea of hanging out with her, but that Reiko shouldn’t waste her time again.
Keeping her face as neutral as she could, so she wouldn’t worry anybody, Sumire advanced towards a map of the exhibition.
The nearest exit was just after the next room, the one by “acclaimed recluse Masaki Kenichi”.
She felt a little guilty at the idea that she wouldn’t caught even a glimpse of Shijima Go-sensei’s work, but the idea of sticking around where she didn’t belong was far worse a prospect.
She would simply have to go trough Masaki-sensei’s exhibit, apologies in her head for disrespecting their works and then leave and apologize some more to Shijima-sensei.
Then she would go back to the train station, send a text to Reiko and go home to fade away from the world a bit.
Let the pretense of being a good person wash away, let the thoughts of destroying something stew and make something slightly better of herself the next day.
That was a plan with easy step to follow.
With a deep sigh and the half-feverish though that it would be fun to go trough with it holding her breath, she climbed up the stairs to Masaki Kenichi’s exhibit.
III. A long search for Humanity:
Masaki Kenichi’s exhibit had no biography what so ever, and only one panel introducing them by the other artists, mainly devoted to calling them “an emotional photographer” and “humane”, with wordings that felt like soft reassurances. The last line, however, the one Sumire hadn’t even meant to look at, so overwhelmed by the desire to leave she had almost fallen over herself…
The last line simply read “Don’t worry, everyone is doing fine.”
It made Sumire falter in her hurried pace.
Was that supposed to be the name of the exhibit?
Then, were the pictures supposed to be of people? Sumire really didn’t feel like seeing more faces judging her.
Still, she had to go trough the room to be able to leave, and going back would mean facing the works of K-sensei and Ichimonji-sensei.
Thankfully, when she slipped into the exhibit, she only noticed a single man, his back to her.
He looked slightly familiar, or rather the back of his head did, but Sumire would have remembered meeting somebody so tall, and with that much accessories, visible even with only his back exposed.
He didn’t move for the handful of minutes Sumire waited, and seemed perfectly content just starring at the same picture.
Sumire found herself hoping he’d have pleasant day for not making hers worst.
She closed the door behind her and turned, stuck by the entirely natural lightening of the room, only to stop in her tracks.
Oddly green and very blue, with a soft presence of red at its heart.
The red of a beautiful and fragile looking red spider lily, its beauty underlined by the composition.
A deep longing and the stark absence of … Something.
Something unnameable, so clear in everything the picture showed and yet impossible to guess the shape of.
A vague sense of held back violence, something that tasted very familiar to Sumire and chased away all thoughts of acting on her own terrible thoughts.
A held back violence that couldn’t even begin to dirty the sheer reverence towards the world, towards the blue sky growing darker at the seem, the soft green transparency of the grass, the enduring red of the lone flower.
There was something that Sumire would never be able to understand, and yet, she felt perfectly understood as well.
Masaki Kenichi. The Ma had been written as “True” on their introductory presentation.
Sumire didn’t believe there were anything more fitting.
For the person bearing the symbol “True” to show her something so beautifully genuine and honest.
So utterly lacking in any deceit and yet full of a hundred different meanings.
“Beautiful…”
She couldn’t help but whisper, even as she felt so utterly breathless.
Was it really possible?
Was it really possible, that all along she could find something she had needed all her life, with so little fanfare.
She remained entranced, still and eyes as wide as she could make them, for a long long while.
Then, she slowly found herself lulled back to reality, yet it was no longer loud and dreary around her, but filled with a myriad of colors.
Suddenly filled with a restless thrumming in her chest, she walked toward the next picture unsteadily.
It was a simple underpass, but it somehow came alive in the picture, both unabashedly itself, and far greater than it probably was, a great emotion coming from it.
The next picture was of a river, so limpid, and yet dream-like, then a mountain, then a praying mantis, a ring with a heart and spade intertwined.
One picture was a simple rock, the other an eagle in flight, the next one a beetle dominating the wooden boards it walked on.
Everything, although devoid of any humans subjects, felt so very humane, but always an absence like a void would be felt. The constant ghost left behind as a negative zone.
It made those pictures all the more precious.
They also seemed to seek blue, to be drawn to it, and to red, but with a regret imbuing the blue with darker shades.
Sumire wasn’t making any sense, she thought, trying to commit every details to memory.
Sumire wasn’t making any sense and yet the world was finally right.
Because those pictures, too, were seeking to understand it, were slowly leaning into the beauty of it all, a meaningful expression of the photographer’s feelings present in all of them, so personal.
A beauty that lingered on, didn’t impose on other so much as stayed until, be it a second or an hour after, you would find yourself unable to understand how you had lived without it.
Masaki Kenichi was a genius, Sumire was sure of it.
One that seemed to be missing something more than should be bearable.
Watching those pictures, Sumire had the strangest thought that whoever had taken those knew both far less and far more about the world than her.
She blinked once, twice, trying to chase away the tears that had began clouding her vision.
She felt watched, but not in judged.
Sumire turned her head, toward the only other person there.
Sure enough, the tall man was looking at her, a smile so fond it almost embarrassed her on his face.
The only reason it was bearable was that she was convinced that the blunt of the love in his eyes wasn’t directed towards her.
It was a simple truth. The love in that person’s eyes, kind but lonely, was meant for somebody else.
Maybe that was the man’s reason for looking at those pictures.
Maybe he, too, was drawn the simple longing in them.
She kept on looking at him, unable to speak, unable to move, thrown off by the weight of those pictures, the humanity in them, and those eyes that were far too kind, far too beautiful, far too lonely.
In the face of all that, Sumire was unreasonably small, and yet, seen.
Seen by something so beautiful, for a brief instant, entirely.
A hand on her shoulder made her jump.
She twirled on her feet, now face to face with Reiko.
Reiko’s burn scar, Reiko’s strong jaw, Reiko’s three moles on her cheek, Reiko’s eyes, Reiko’s smile, Reiko’s mouth speaking to her, Reiko made even more beautiful by all the pictures Sumire had seen.
“– kinda sad I couldn’t tell you what I learned, but you might get bored looking at them again! Maybe I’ll show you the one I took? Turns out it really was an animal slowing down the line, but not a cow. I think a sort of… ferret… thing? Or a really slim mole.”
The air in Sumire’s lungs rushed out, and she laughed, almost uncontrollably.
To think she’d have missed this, without the master pieces of Masaki-sensei.
She turn towards the pictures, Reiko still hanging from her shoulder, and bowed in front of them.
It felt right, that way.
“Oh?! You like those, huh? I admit I don’t always get those. They’re very beautiful, but it seems strange, no?”
“Strange?” Sumire had an idea as to why, but it felt wrong to stop Reiko from talking. Not when it made them both happy.
“Well, it’s like… Like you shouldn’t get that sort of light or colors from what Masaki-sensei’s take. The green is always so green. It’s always a little too vivid, and too beautiful, too imperfect to be real. I’m so envious! I wish my photos would transcribe colors that well!”
“I… I think I get how they do it.”
“Really?”
Reiko’s face popped in front of her, a bright smile’s full intensity directed at Sumire.
A strong wave of affection rolled in Sumire’s guts.
“Hmm… Maybe it’s because they see something you can’t?”
Reiko let out an exaggerated sigh, pouting in that absurdly cute way of hers.
“As expected, none of us can win against Masaki-sensei! I don’t even know how Ichimonji-sensei got in contact with them, they’re such a mystery! Nobody even know where they live!” Her hands began making a circling motion, before abruptly stopping. “But I’m glad you like those. It’s nice to know you had fun.”
It was more than “fun”, Sumire almost said, but Reiko’s eyes were serious, and she realized that the word she used had exactly the correct meaning.
“Yeah. I’m really fond of those. I might have to find their book.”
Reiko made a low hum from the back of her throat.
“I’ll get them for your birthday. Setting that aside!” She went back to smiling. “The only room we’re missing is Shijima-sensei, right? That’s good, it’s the one I wanted to show you!”
“Really? Is there something special about those.”
Reiko’s eyebrows pinched together a little, her nose scrunched up and she turned away in a whiplash motion.
“You’ll see! I just hope you’ll get it. Now let’s go!”
Sumire let herself be pulled out of Masaki-sensei’s exhibit, but not before shooting another glance at the visitor from before.
He was still there, but he was looking at a picture of a bench, a complicated emotion pulling at his eyes, one that left Sumire feeling oddly empty, like she was intruding on something intimate.
Another tug at her wrist chased the questions from her mind.
IV. For you.
Shijima Gou’s biography was both the most complete and the least complicated.
It stated his birth year, that he had taken photography as a hobby, that he had multiple experiences abroad from a young age, that he worked on a lot of different fields and that he had befriended Ichimonji-sensei, K-sensei and Masaki-sensei after meeting them at his sister’s wedding, which Sumire found herself doubting the validity of, especially since said sister was apparently working as a police officer.
She wasn’t exactly sure how that would lead to meeting photographers.
He was also, apparently, the youngest of them all, which Reiko told Sumire made his works an “interesting experience in contrast” before adding that, like Reiko herself, “he only took pictures of things he clearly loved”.
Sumire decided to take Reiko’s expertise as truth.
It became pretty clear, by all of Reiko’s comments, that she held a lot of fondness for Shijima-sensei’s work.
Oh, she had spoken about the others, clearly found Ichimonji-sensei’s the most interesting to study, and K-sensei’s “impressively baffling and creatively weird”. But it was also evident that she had been more interested by Sumire’s impression of each artists than in talking about her own feelings on them.
Meanwhile, ever since they had entered the room dedicated to Shijima, Reiko hadn’t stopped talking a storm about the “clear phases” he had apparently gone trough, the “maturity” that had appeared somewhere around his 2015 production, the contrast between the pictures he took of machines, metal pieces and science stuff that flew right past Sumire’s understanding, and his shots of friends and family.
Sumire could see some of it, maybe.
The pictures of metal parts and computers screens felt similar in some respects to K-sensei’s blurry pictures, Ichimonji-sensei’s portraits and Masaki-sensei’s stills of nature and weirdly empty places, she thought.
They all seemed to share a certain sense of loss, of disconnection with a large part of the world around them, but also a great love.
A brand new thought imposed itself to Sumire.
Rather than one of her usual impulses of violence, it was instead a bitter sweet reflection that, maybe, they had found each other by finding the same longing in each other’s eyes, the same odd weight they didn’t seem able to keep from their pictures, and presumably from their interactions with the world.
Had they met by chance? Walked by each other and suddenly knew that they were similar?
Was it like her meeting with Reiko, where the world had crawled to a stop, to make sure they would find out the similarities in each other.
If so, Sumire was happy for them, and happy that they had also other people, at least for most of them.
Nonetheless, what was it that Shijima-sensei was searching?
Reiko had smiled crookedly when Sumire had asked her, only saying in her sing-song tone she sued when she was smug that this particular exhibit was arranged as a continuous chronological line for a reason.
So, Sumire went back to looking, trying to guess at what Shijima-sensei wanted to find and what Reiko wanted her to get.
Between every seeking picture of mechanisms, they were pictures of people going about their lives, pictures of people Shijima-sensei must have known, intimate as they were.
A woman, her back to the camera, clearly breast-feeding a small baby whose small head poked out a bit. The woman was sitting on the ground, and the camera was looking down at her a little, but they was respect and care transparent in the frame. Sumire would have bet that this was Shijima-sensei’s sister, and became even more certain of it when she arrived at the picture of that woman resting her head on the shoulder of a very tall man, smiling gently at the photographer, even as the taller man seemed a bit uncomfortable.
There was also a picture of a middle aged woman in eccentric clothes, one of three people dressed in red, black and green taken from a distance who looked so close as to fuse together, then a photo of Ichimonji-sensei in a small cafe, a blurry magenta shape entering the frame.
A lot of pictures of a woman, too, writing letters, reading some, becoming more and more lively every time she appeared, time clearly kind on her, the first behind prison bars.
An oddly shaped question took root, as Sumire found herself smiling at more and more of those pictures.
Did Reiko take pictures like that?
The other woman had always refused to show Sumire pictures she’d took of other people.
Supposedly, she wasn’t great at portraits, but Sumire couldn’t believe that.
More than anything, Reiko was somebody with an eye for others, always catching their best traits on first meeting.
She was the first one to have understood Sumire’s love for the Riders that protected humanity, understood Sumire’s hope that she could be kind like them, that she could grow out of her violent impulses and into being caring towards other.
And, well, there was an exception to Reiko’s “no showing pictures of people” rule.
The moment Sumire had confessed her admiration of the Riders, she had found herself showered with pictures, both blurry and clear, old and new, of Riders.
One of Sumire favorite pictures Reiko had taken was one of the Fuuto’s Riders, looking so cool as the wind blew on the branches of nearby trees, purple and gold reflections on the green and black of the suit of W.
It had felt like being right there, with them, almost like Sumire could directly thank them for all the hope they had given her.
That was a gift for her, Reiko had said without waiting, and even now she would dutifully find any pictures she could of the Riders and send them to Sumire, never once mocking her.
Sumire could have kissed her right then and there.
She turned to look at Reiko, who was smiling at a picture of circuits, choking laughter down once in a while.
Her face, made of sharp angles, had softened, eyes gleaming and smile smaller than her usual, but also more genuine in its happiness.
It was impossible not to be fond of Reiko, Sumire was certain, smiling in turn, if only to make sure Reiko had somebody smiling for her, if only to give back a little of the happiness she gave Sumire.
Of course it was love. Of course Sumire loved Reiko.
She turned back to Shijima-sensei’s pictures, finding in them more and more beauty, finding fragments of Reiko’s joy in them and liking it all the better for it.
Soon enough, however, they had approached the end of the hallway, and Sumire still couldn’t tell what Shijima-sensei had been seeking.
“So…” Reiko drawled next to Sumire, warm by her side.
Sumire’s eyes jumped to the next picture.
And there it was.
A man in purple in the middle of a fair, the background faded to leave only him.
A man in purple who didn’t look like he understood how to smile, and Sumire felt a pinch of understanding and compassion, because it truly was hard to smile nicely.
But, even though he didn’t really seem to get what he was doing, he had a very nice face, and the camera’s entire focus was on him, neither judging nor embellishing what was there, but clearly finding the crooked half-raise of lips worth the attention.
The man in purple was posing in a vague imitation of… Something… Something that was--
A Kamen Rider, one of those Sumire knew less, but recognizable nonetheless.
A private joke shared to the world.
What Shijima-sensei had found.
To Sumire’s left, a click rang in the easy-going silence.
Sumire turned so sharply that her hair hit the side of her cheek and briefly dislodged her glasses.
Reiko’s right eye was hidden behind the raised camera.
Her expression was similar to the one she always had when Sumire met up with her, but it now struck Sumire as rarer, something not many people saw it too.
Well, then.
Was that how Ichimonji-sensei had looked when he took that portrait of the gentle man, back when they were young?
Was that how K-sensei looked when rising his camera to capture blurry beauty?
Was that how Masaki-sensei looked, even a little, when they captured places that were missing the essential?
That was certainly how Shijima-sensei looked.
Sumire just knew, the same way she knew she would pulled trough, the same she had known back then, that the Kamen Rider on TV had cared for humanity, the same she had known her feelings for Reiko.
They were certain things that couldn’t be mistaken.
And that Reiko was in love with her too was one of them.
So, Sumire laughed, and thanked all the odd pictures in that small, tucked away gallery.
In a bit, she would speak.
The camera’s shutter went off again.
V. The Riders Photo Club.
“I think it was one of my best ideas, yet.”
“One of our best ideas.”
“As if you helped at all. I’m the one who had to find the venue.”
“I helped convince him, didn’t I.”
“… You did. One of our best ideas, then. Speaking of, I might have another one.”
“Another exhibition? I wouldn’t mind, but I’d have to fix my camera.”
“No, no, no! Not that kind, although, of course we’ll have to keep up our club activities. It’s only normal, especially if we’re to take our rightful place as the better Riders Club.”
“I get the gist of it. It’s true that we can’t let “the Sun” get too prideful.”
“Coming from you –”
“Exactly, I know what I’m talking about.”
“Well, as I was saying, since we are the better club, why not scoop out the competition?”
“At Restaurant AgitΩ, I assume. Tsugami did say he’d give us a reduction for our efforts.”
“Yep. I read on a certain journal that Shouichi-kun debuted a brand new recipe. Themed after Gills, even, if you’d believe it. Plus, we oldsters already ate at the Bistro for our last reunion.”
“Then, I’ll pick them up if you’re the one paying.”
“Of course, I’ll pay. I’m the club leader aren’t I? I have to treat my juniors once in a while.”
“You’re the second oldest one, so should you really be the leader?”
“Why, of course, but I would say that I’m the oldest in terms of soul and Rider experiences. Unless you need more proof?”
“Don’t smirk at me, like that. And, no, it’s not fun when I’m sure to lose.”
“Good to see you’re still as sharp as usual. Well, then. At AgitΩ, next Sunday, usual hour. I’ll call Shouichi-kun.”