Episode 14 — Commemorative Photo

Inside the booth, some trendy, translucent-sounding pop song was playing. Kanzaki-san looked around with undisguised curiosity, taking everything in — and nothing had even started yet, but the way she moved already seemed somehow happy. On her behalf, I gingerly began working through the screen.

Skin-brightening mode, face-slimming mode — options I couldn’t really distinguish between — and then, mid-operation, a cheerfully relentless woman’s voice suddenly rang out:

“Okay, let’s start taking photos! Look at the camera”!

I flinched at the assault of manufactured brightness. Kanzaki-san calmly moved to stand beside me, and, following the instruction, looked straight ahead. I was fighting desperately not to lose myself in her profile, and copied her.

“Alright, first up — a big energetic peace sign”!

With that instruction, the example photo appeared on screen and the countdown began.

I bent my wrist at an unfamiliar angle. Kanzaki-san made the same gesture, and:

“Yeah!”

She murmured it, barely above a breath. Adorable.

While I was quietly losing my mind over Kanzaki-san’s subdued excitement, the flash fired and the shutter sounded.

Shortly after, the photo appeared on screen. Kanzaki-san posing cleanly — and me, with my wrist bent at a strange angle. Not just that: my eyes had been artificially enlarged to an uncanny degree, which only made my usual sharp expression look more unsettling by comparison. Kanzaki-san, on the other hand, already had large eyes to begin with, and the result was a level of photogenic beauty that put the model printed on the side of the machine to shame.

The technology of the modern age had laid bare a pitiless disparity.

Kanzaki-san looked back and forth between the screen and me. Then murmured:

“You look cuter in real life.”
“I — I’m not cute…”
“You are, though?”

I was stumbling over myself, entirely unequipped for compliments like that, when Kanzaki-san answered as though stating a plain and obvious fact. That alone was enough to send heat flooding into my face.

“No, I mean, compared to you, Kanzaki-san—”

I was still fumbling through that sentence when the voice cut in, relentlessly cheerful as ever:

“Okay, on to the next one”!

And from there, at a brisk pace, we moved through the instructions one by one. Kanzaki-san, executing each prompt without a stumble, continuing to prove her beauty at every turn. Me, managing to be disappointing in each new and different way. I was deep in a visceral appreciation of how thoroughly lookism afflicts the modern high school girl when the voice, which until now had been sending us perfectly ordinary instructions, abruptly bared its teeth.

“And for the last one — give your friend a great big hug”!

For a moment I thought I’d misheard, and stared at the screen — where sure enough, two girls were hugging and smiling exactly as described. Sweat ran in a cold line down my back. I looked to Kanzaki-san beside me for help.

She had both arms open.

As if to say: come here.

“Um—”
“You’re not going to?”

She tilted her head, looking genuinely puzzled.

“I — I am.”

I put my arms around Kanzaki-san, carefully.

In that instant, every positive sensation this world has to offer — softness, sweetness, warmth — arrived all at once.

Kanzaki-san’s body was slender enough that I was afraid of breaking her if I held too tight, and yet soft enough that I felt I could sink into her without end. A sweetness grazed my nose.

And then: the strength with which Kanzaki-san hugged me back was greater than I’d expected. Something almost like clinging. The closeness intensified, and our nearly identical heights worked against me — our faces too close, close enough to stop my breath. Close enough that our heartbeats might reach each other, and as if to drown mine out, the countdown began. Then the shutter fell like a period at the end of a sentence, loud and final.

“That’s all for photos! Please head to the drawing booth”!

With that announcement — displayed on screen was a photo of me and Kanzaki-san, unmistakably hugging. Needless to say I looked how I looked — but Kanzaki-san’s face, too, seemed ever so slightly flushed.

And then, right beside my ear, Kanzaki-san whispered:

“That made my heart beat a little faster.”

Kanzaki-san’s words are always full of space — and into that space you can fit as much convenient imagination as you like. It’s unfair.