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A good snapshot stops a moment from running away.
--Eudora Welty
During one of her recorded interviews, Yuu Kashima laughs and admits that she’d taken up modeling because she had wanted to follow the steps of someone she idolized.
Not because she had a flawless face that put the Golden Ratio to shame, or because of her long limbs or to-die-for bone structure. Not even because, when she’d been scouted, the poor guy struck dead in the majesty of her presence (read: Yumeno Productions’ head cameraman, propsman, sometimes makeup artist and all-around mother hen, Masayuki Hori) had gaped for a full seventeen minutes before taking both her hands and loudly announcing that she was the star their modeling agency needed. No. Not even because of money or fame or any of the usual things – but because there was someone she admired who she wanted to live up to, and really, seriously, you can’t just make this up.
“Y’know what,” Masayuki tells her, after, when he’s dabbing off her makeup with the wipes he’d bought for ‘sensitive skin’, “Whoever that person is, they gotta be quaking in their boots right now.”
“What do you mean, senpai?” Despite the fact that she isn’t his junior cameraman or propsman or...junior anything, really, Kashima always calls him senpai, for some reason. Masayuki’s since decided to just roll with it.
“Well, you said you wanted to follow in their footsteps, right?” Masayuki steps back from her, scrutinizing her makeup-free face. Seriously though, her face looks pretty much the same whether or not it has makeup on – the kind of flawlessness Aphrodite herself would level countries for, just in his humble opinion – he doesn’t even know why he bothers with the nonsensical routine. “Whoever that person is, they’ve got a hell of a lot of shit to do before they’d ever think of being three steps ahead of you, now.”
There’s a smile on Kashima’s face that would’ve been correctly termed as fond, if only Masayuki hadn’t already seen her use it each and every time she tries to manhandle him into a slinky cocktail dress (and fail, of course). “If you say so, senpai.”
“You don’t believe me!? Tsch – just look at yourself, Kashima.” Masayuki says, opening his arms wide with a flourish. What the hell, Kashima’s always made him tap back into his dramatic side – the side he thought he’d trained out of himself long ago. “Overseas shoots, collabs with only the brightest of superstars, and let’s not even talk about how Hollywood people are clamoring for your attention even as we speak.”
“That is true,” Kashima concedes, chuckling lightly, but it doesn’t really seem to reach her eyes and what the hell is up with that!? “But I’ve still got a long way to go before I can think of being as good as them. Or even half as good as them, for that matter.”
“I find that hard to believe,” Masayuki deadpans. His back is turned to her as he packs up their stuff, so he doesn’t see the soft-eyed look Kashima gives him. It’s just as well, though – she doesn’t intend him to see her.
He goes about prattling something about deadlines and picture resolution and something about how Kashima better not be skipping out on her moisturizer routine, but Kashima doesn’t really pay attention to any of this – not when she’s too busy secretly taking a glance at her wallet, at the two-page spread she’d diligently (and hesitantly) cut down into wallet-sized proportions.
The edges are a bit dulled by now, what with how much she keeps taking it out, but the picture, for the most part, is still intact – artfully-tousled hair, a sinfully languid posture, eyes that pierce down into the very depths of her soul. Kashima tucks the picture back again, smiles to herself.
I’ll never catch up to you, senpai, she thinks, and isn’t that a good thing?
Ever since that fateful day when Yuu Kashima was fourteen, she’d always been one for buying magazines. In bulk. Three pieces of each, at a bare minimum – one for poring over, another for storage, and a third as an extra.
This was not because she was a big fan of the magazines themselves, even if sometimes they did have really nice articles and really pretty girl models.
Rather, this was because sometimes they’d feature this one guy, the one of the piercing eyes and slicked-back hair, and Yuu is only human, okay, she’s only human and of all things, this is what the universe chooses to make her obsess over.
According to his model profile he’s a single year ahead of her and she can’t believe it, she really can’t, how can a freakin’ fifteen-year-old manage to pull that off? Yuu seriously thought he was older (in her head, this was not meant to sound as offending as Chiyo-chan told her it did), especially around the eyes, which singlehandedly wreaked havoc into her subconscious and followed her into dreams.
It’s ridiculous. It’s embarrassing. But for the life of her, she can’t bring herself to stop.
That’s why she never stops. Not when she grows older and taller and with a smile that apparently knocked out every one from 2 to 102 years old. Not when the model slowly but surely eases out of the limelight, eventually disappearing from the face of the modeling scene.
That’s why when they meet for the first time, when she’s twenty and he’s twenty-one, and he gushes over her bone structure, offering her his hand and giving her his name, as if it was nothing important, as if he was nothing important, Yuu watches her hands get enclosed in his own, and smiles.
If he thought the world would ever forget just who the hell Masayuki Hori was, he’s got another thing coming, because Yuu, for one, knows that she’ll never forget about him.
“Crud, shit, damn it, damn that bloody wanker all the way back to hell, screw him.” According to Nozaki, Hori-senpai did have some of his fancier photography training at London. This never really comes up, not unless he starts breaking out the cuss words.
Yuu sighs as the makeup artist reapplies her foundation. She can’t help but think that the male model she was supposed to pose with better be locked safely in some reinforced bunker by now, because if Yuu knows anything more than she does herself it’s that if Hori-senpai gets his hands on him, he’ll be dead. ‘Cuz he’d messed with their schedule, and if there’s anything that Hori-senpai hated more than Yuu’s ‘strange gifts’ (hey, in her defense, the hair ribbons totally would’ve brought out the gold in his eyes, okay??), pretentious literature, and homemade chocolate, it’s a messed-up schedule.
Yuu’s messed-up schedule, to be exact. She knows he’s generally in charge of her and making sure her sched is in tip-top shape is his job, but...she still likes to imagine he does it because he cares for her, in any case.
“Now, now, Hori-san, there’s no need to get so...angry...” the other model’s handler says, still not moving completely out of the pose of supplication he’d automatically assumed when he’d admitted that his talent had skipped out on town to elope with his non-showbiz girlfriend. It’s too bad they’d only known of this now – if she’d known earlier Yuu knows she would’ve wished him well and at least sent him flowers, or something. After all, for all she can’t seem to remember his name, the guy was nice to work with, and took the fact that Yuu was a more popular model who didn’t really conform to the gender binary completely in stride.
“There’s no need to–! Okay, okay. You know what needn’t be done? This is what needn’t be done. Your precious talent shouldn’t be off gallivanting on his own, y’know. So he wants to get married, big deal, we do know how to keep these things hush-hush, he should’ve told someone. His paranoia does not excuse him from skipping out on his bloody job at the very last minute – not when we’ve spent ages and ages fixing a date that would fit in nicely with both his sched and Kashima’s! Does he realize how hard it was to decide on today? Mikoshiba had to encode an entirely new algorithm, damn it!”
Mikoshiba was their social media maven and all-around computer guy, and had he been born with even a sliver of Yuu’s own majestic confidence, he would’ve made waves in the modeling scene, himself. As things were he was perfectly content with coding Yuu’s official website and attempting flirtation with their resident graphic artist, Chiyo-chan herself. And yes, he did have to code an entire computer program dedicated to finding gaps within Yuu’s schedule – that’s just how packed it was.
“I know, I know, and I apologize in his behalf, Hori-san.”
“I accept your apology,” Hori-senpai says in the end, scrunching up his eyes and sighing. It’s really not the poor guy’s fault – Yuu knows that the stuff she tries to pull on him only never go this far because he manages to rein in her sillier impulses so goddamned well. “But let’s hope that’s the last time your talent brings you to your knees like that, sir.”
“It’s a shame we already have everyone here, though,” Nozaki says, walking up to them just then. Technically, he’s the boss of this entire operation – Yumeno Prod. is his baby, after all – but everyone knows that, working off the baby analogue, it’s Hori-senpai who did the the bulk of the actual raising here. “We’d have to pay for everyone’s time, at the very least.”
“Yeah, it’s the least we can do, but – damn! The client wanted the shots tomorrow.”
Today’s shoot was kind of a Big Thing. Yuu herself was a rare breed, the kind who could shift from masculine grace to feminine smoulder at the blink of an eye, and the shoot was supposed to showcase that, as well as serve for the jumping point of her male model partner’s foray into modeling for both androgynous and traditionally feminine clothing. Though the guy had a bishonen-pretty face, he did have a rather impressive set of biceps (something one of his co-workers never failed to gush about on occasion), but that wasn’t anything a set of long-sleeved blouses with just the right amount of frill couldn’t hide.
Now that photoshoot’s gone halfway to hell, and Hori-senpai looks like he’s friggin’ Atlas and she won’t stand for this, she’d gone into modeling ‘cuz she wanted to see him in his element, damn it, not with his hand in his hair and looking as if he was on the end of his tether. If only they could figure out some way to carry through with this. A theme switch? Nah, the client was really fixated on the entire theme in the first place, had been ever since they’d recognized her name on board. Maybe she could model for both parts and have Chiyo-chan work her Photoshop wonders – but no, Hori-senpai would never stand for that, he’d say it was cheating. A replacement, then? But who...
There’s a flash going through Nozaki’s eye right then, and Yuu didn’t see this but as it is she hears his next words and is already thinking that Nozaki must be rifling through her head, somehow. “I got it! Why don’t we look for a replacement, then?”
“Just FYI, we’re in the middle of nowhere, Nozaki.” Hori-senpai deadpans, his hair tufted out in adorable angles. Like a cute little puppy, Yuu thinks, but doesn’t say – contrary to popular belief, she really doesn’t have a death wish. “And the nearest models I can think of calling are Kashima’s usual princess-types, anyway. Which was not the point the client wanted to make for this, they were all about subversion, weren’t they?”
“You’ve got to admit that a partner for Kashima is the only thing we’re lacking here, senpai.” It’s a testament to his skill that even their boss calls him senpai, and if he thinks that Yuu gleefully disregards this one persistent clue to his seniority, well, Yuu’s very glad to prove him wrong someday. “We’ve got pretty much everything. The cameras are running, the lights are in place, Mikoshiba and Sakura are on standby, and we’ve got the couturiers and makeup artists in position.”
“Everything, yes. What I’m not seeing here is the model who’s supposed to make prissy faces with Kashima and knock us all out of the water with their chemistry.” Gross oversimplification, yes, but Yuu’s noticed that he tends to do a lot of this lately, pretend he doesn’t know much about modeling with a huffiness that doesn’t quite reach his eyes. Yuu doesn’t know why he bothers, seriously.
Especially not when Nozaki fixes him with a capital-L Look and says, “Senpai, I think I see him. Right now. Standing in front of me.”
If Hori-senpai had been drinking something this would be the part where he does a completely clichéd spit-take, but he isn’t drinking, so he resorts to a somewhat-strangled shaky coughing noise. In the background, someone seems to have dropped a cellphone. Yuu’s bet’s on Mikoshiba.
“What the hell, Nozaki?”
“You can’t hide it forever, senpai. Especially not when I was with you through most of it.” Wait, what? Yuu screams internally, her eyes wide as dinner plates. What does this mean, Nozaki, and if this means you have exclusive pictures of Hori-senpai from his modeling days does this mean you can give me some???? “And you’re too good to make excuses like ‘being out of shape’ or ‘rusty’, so don’t you dare pull that on me.”
“Tsch...Nozaki, back when we started, I told you that this really isn’t in my job description. Not anymore.”
“Yes, I remember that completely. The question is, though: are you really fine with just watching from afar, or are you just holding yourself back?”
It’s something that really hits a nerve with Hori-senpai, and Yuu only realizes this because, when she walks to them, her half-mussed outfit under a fluffy blue robe, he’s still not saying a single word. “What happened here, Nozaki?”
“Oh, Kashima! Perfect timing.” Nozaki says, his face brightening. “As you may have heard, your partner is currently out of the prefecture, so I was thinking to have you work with Hori-senpai instead. I used to work with him, before – he was rather big on the scene, back then. Surely you won’t mind?”
“Of course I don’t mind – it’s Hori-senpai, after all!” Yuu says, and as Hori-senpai looks at her with a furrowed brow and a confused look she realizes that he’s thinking she’s not supposed to react this way. She’s supposed to react like Mikoshiba or Chiyo-chan or Wakamatsu, wide-eyed and disbelieving, or, on the flipside, like Seo, not caring a toss about whether he’s an ex-model of the friggin’ Emperor of Japan. Hori-senpai had probably calculated all the possible ways she’d ever react to his ‘secret’ being out in the open, and not one of those scenarios ended up in a scene where she’d smile like the cat that got the canary, his name falling off her lips with the barest hints of reverence.
“You look awfully...happy with this situation, Kashima,” Nozaki says. If she’d known him any better she’d realize the smug set to his brow right then, the one that makes Hori-senpai look up and want to sock him in the face, but she doesn’t know any better, too lost in the exhilarating scenario of working with the guy who’d gotten her into the industry in the first place, and isn’t that grand?
“Ahaha, I guess I am happy!” Yuu says, sheepish for once, as she keeps stealing glances at Hori-senpai every other second. “It’s not every day that I get to see senpai model, so yeah, I’m really happy.”
The look Hori-senpai’s face must be shooting her right now must truly be something out of the ordinary, because Nozaki takes one good long look at it and excuses himself to ‘exchange notes with Sakura’ or something, whatever that means. But Yuu doesn’t see whatever it was for herself, unless that face was actually the annoyed look she sees when she looks down at him – in which case, it’s something they see everyday, so why was Nozaki so excited about that face?
“Kashima, you knew!?” You weren’t supposed to know! he bites back, knowing full well that saying that would make him sound like such a damned child. Instead, he settles for asking, “How did you know?”
“Senpai,” Yuu says, “Remember how I once said there was this model I looked up to so much that I decided to follow them into modeling?”
“Yeah, I do, I mean, seriously, you just taped that interview yesterday, how could I forget that easily? But that has nothing to do with this.”
“No, senpai, for once, you’re wrong, because that’s got everything to do with this.” Smiling, smiling, she knows it’s grating on his nerves right now but she can’t stop smiling, okay? “That guy I idolized enough to work my entire career around was you, after all! And, believe it or not, I wouldn’t have gone into modeling in the first place – not if you weren’t the one who brought me into it!”
There’s this wide-eyed slack-jawed expression that Hori-senpai’s face arranges into. It’s an expression he tends to assume, subconsciously or not, whenever he’d do test shoots with her. He’s professionalism to a T all the rest of the way, of course, but for this – for these moments when he does that look and Yuu just wants to take a picture and treasure this forever, if only she knows she could shield her poor phone from the javelin throw she knows he’s gonna subject it to after she takes the photo.
“So...what you’re saying is...”
“What I’m saying here, senpai, is that of all the models I’ve ever known and have yet to know, for me, you stand head and shoulders above the rest.” And because she doesn’t want that adorable look to be replaced by his usual rage-against-the-heavens scowl, she doesn’t tack on ‘metaphorically, of course’, even though the urge to do so is rising. “And that’s why I’m really happy to be able to share this with you.”
Hori-senpai’s still a bit wide-eyed when he swallows, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he does so, and murmurs something about getting dressed, rushing away into the vague location of the changing rooms.
He emerges minutes later with his hair all done up and his collar askew – wait, make that his entire shirt askew, all the buttons foregone save for the ones at the very bottom. For all he’d insisted he was ‘out of shape’, just as Nozaki predicted he would, well...clearly, he’s been lying, because he’s definitely been working out. Yuu licks her lips, once, twice, eventually loses count. It’s a good thing Hori-senpai’s busy lecturing Wakamatsu about lighting and exposures, because Yuu can’t take her eyes off him.
“Kashima,” Seo says just then, retouching her makeup for what seems to be the umpteenth time that day, “Please remember that this is the part of the shoot where you’re not supposed to be the one looking like you’re gonna eat him alive, or he might just go off-script and actually bite you.”
The funny thing is, Yuu doesn’t really think she’s minding this at all. Not when that clearly means that he’ll have his lips. And teeth. On her skin. Um. Why, of all times, does that damned stomachache have to pop up right now!? “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Seo-sensei.”
“Honey, if you think I’m gonna fall for your wide-eyed ingénue act, then you’ve clearly got your head all messed up,” Seo cackles, flicking Yuu carefully in the part of her hair that won’t get photographed. “But, whatever. I’m here for you, hun. Listen, I know it’s not really in the code of ethics, but if you wanna throw caution to the wind and jump him after we’re through, just place a sock on the changing room doorknob and I swear I tell them not to disturb ya.”
“S-Seo-sensei!”
“Oh? Why’d we need to put blush on you? You already look hella red as you are right now, Kashima.”
Wakamatsu’s told Yuu, repeatedly, that Yuzuki Seo was prone to innuendo at best and downright nasty at worst. This was not something that really stuck to her, because she and Seo, they always did the jokes together. But right now the joke was on her and it’s not even really a joke ‘cuz it’s all true, god help her, Yuu really just wants everyone to leave right now so she can tell him how good she thinks he looks with his shirt half off and his eyes poring into her soul like that, like she’d always remembered them to be.
“Kashima,” Hori-senpai barks, suddenly, his voice dipping into a deeper register she’d never expected him to go to but should’ve expected he’d be capable of, nonetheless, “Are you gonna come on down here or are you waiting for the apocalypse?”
...right. Stop gaping, Yuu Kashima, you’ve got a job to do, damn it. “Just a sec, senpai!”
“I was serious about the sock thing, Kashima.” Seo says, handing her an old sock and a poker-faced expression that’s quaking around the edges. “I’m rooting for you all the way.”
Yuu grits her teeth, considers the sock, considers the man waiting for her (dear god apparently hauling her off places is the best exercise, would you look at those arms), and eventually relents, grabbing the sock off her friend and stuffing it in the inside pocket of her white prince blazer.
“That’s my girl.”