Cheng Xiaoshi’s earliest memories were of the click and flash of a camera.
Growing up in a photo studio meant cameras were everywhere. He had spent years gazing up at the shine of their lenses, staring longingly at the closed door of the darkroom, admiring the way his parents and their customers could take the real world and turn it into images that hung upon their walls.
He remembered sitting in his father’s lap and tugging the camera down to his eyes. Cheng Xiaoshi’s father had laughed and let him guide the camera around the room until Cheng Xiaoshi had said, “Now!” He hadn’t pressed the buttons—his father’s fingers had covered them—but his off-center picture of his mother smiling from the front desk had hung on the wall of his room for years.
His parents had given him a simple Polaroid camera after that. They provided him with a limited amount of film each month—“To teach you restraint,” his mother had said, laughing; his father had ruffled his hair and said, “To remind you that each moment is special”—and Cheng Xiaoshi had hoarded those shots.
Even with all his careful planning, the photos never quite came out how he planned. It frustrated him, but his parents said that was just part of learning how to make the camera see what he did. So Cheng Xiaoshi took a deep breath, accepted another roll of film, and kept trying until he could make something almost right.
Those photos were in an album Cheng Xiaoshi couldn’t bear to look at anymore. He’d shown them to Lu Guang once, and Lu Guang had silently turned the pages. Blurry photos of flowers, out of focus pictures of his friends, still-life images of the studio from long ago. Lu Guang hadn’t said anything, even when Cheng Xiaoshi had started to cry, but he’d wrapped an arm around Cheng Xiaoshi’s shoulders.
He’d understood.
Cheng Xiaoshi quickly discovered that Lu Guang was better than he was at repairing and cleaning the finicky parts of mechanical cameras.
At first, he’d thought that would bother him, but it hadn’t taken long for Cheng Xiaoshi to see the benefit to having a friend he could shove misaligned lenses at and go “Fix it.” Lu Guang might sigh at him, but he was incapable of leaving a problem alone. His delicate touch meant that once Lu Guang understood any given piece of equipment, Cheng Xiaoshi rarely had to ask a professional for help.
It made life a lot easier—and, to Qiao Ling’s pleasure, cheaper.
Plus, it meant that Cheng Xiaoshi knew Lu Guang’s steady presence was in every photo he took, even if Lu Guang himself wasn’t there. Cheng Xiaoshi liked that quiet knowledge that, in this way, he’d never be alone.
After his parents left, Cheng Xiaoshi had taught himself how to use their cameras.
The aunties and uncles who had been his parent’s best customers had helped. So had Qiao Ling’s parents. They’d sat with him on the stoop and explained the difference between micro and macro lenses, how to change the depth of focus, and why shutter speed mattered. Cheng Xiaoshi remembered those hands on his, helping him hold the camera steady before he’d grown strong enough on his own.
Cheng Xiaoshi loved how he could make the most ordinary parts of life turn into art by changing the camera’s focus, adjusting the white balance, and framing everything just right. Practice made perfect, and he spent as much time as he could practicing.
The only part that hurt was how, if he took film photos, he had to go to another studio to develop them. He hated it, but his parents hadn’t yet shown him how to use the darkroom.
Cheng Xiaoshi understood why—too many chemicals and delicate operations, not enough light or space—but it still rankled. That little grain of frustration turned into a pearl of determination soon enough: By the time he was a teenager, Cheng Xiaoshi had begged his way into a darkroom. He was only allowed to develop his own photos, but that suited him fine; he didn’t need to do much. He just wanted to learn what his parents had done in that secret room.
The quiet of a darkroom suited him, anyway. Nothing could touch him here save what he brought with him. The dim red light, the scent of chemicals, the weight of fluids and care with which he needed to take the photos from each basin and place them in the next—
Patience wasn’t a word most of Cheng Xiaoshi’s friends associated with him.
Yet, in this private world, he had it in spades.
“You never let us in there.” Lu Guang leaned against the desk he’d just helped clean and re-paint. “Are you sure you don’t want help?”
Cheng Xiaoshi paused at the darkroom’s door, holding a new bulb for the safelight. “It’s okay,” he said, smiling even though his chest was tight. “This is something I need to do myself.”
Eventually he might be able to let his friends help, but in this first set of repairs and set-up…
Cheng Xiaoshi ran his hands along the counters. Right now, when there weren’t any photos, he could see everything in full light. It was strange, but he’d make it familiar again soon enough.
“Do you see?” he whispered to the walls, this room he only ever called a shrine in the most private part of his heart. “Mama, Papa, we’re carrying on your legacy. I hope, wherever you are, you can see it develop.”
And if he cried, there was nobody there to see.
“Photography major, chemistry minor?” Cheng Xiaoshi’s academic advisor squinted at him. “Are you certain it shouldn’t be the other way around?”
Cheng Xiaoshi smiled tightly, brittly. “Photography is my family trade.” He didn’t say that he’d added chemistry as a concession to Qiao Ling’s parents, who had insisted that he learn something that could be applicable outside of the photo studio. At least this would be useful within the studio as well. “I understand your concerns. I will not change my mind.”
His advisor sighed. But, after another minute, he marked his acceptance of Cheng Xiaoshi’s university plans.
“Take a picture with me!” Cheng Xiaoshi said, after the first basketball game with Lu Guang. He tried to keep photos of anyone he met and liked; little memories stored away, just in case.
Lu Guang looked at him doubtfully, still holding the basketball in his hands. “Okay?”
Cheng Xiaoshi leaned into Lu Guang’s space and held his camera backwards. “Smile!” he said, before Lu Guang could change his mind, and clicked the shutter.
That picture, soft-focused and not-quite centered, hung in their room. It had captured Cheng Xiaoshi’s wide grin and Lu Guang’s sidelong look of disbelief, the same on that first day as every other.
The darkroom at university was bigger than his parents’, or that of the store where Cheng Xiaoshi had learned how to develop pictures. After the first week’s lab, during which the professor quizzed Cheng Xiaoshi on the theoretical and practical elements of darkroom use, Cheng Xiaoshi had been promoted to a lab assistant.
Teaching his peers was a novelty—usually Cheng Xiaoshi was the one going to tutors for help—but he found he liked helping them. It was satisfying to explain something that had become so thoroughly part of his body.
Being a teaching assistant also meant Cheng Xiaoshi had a key to the darkroom and permission to use it for his own projects, and that had been a balm on the roughest days.
He’d remembered that, later, and learned to keep a handful of film negatives in reserve at all times. After dives which left him unsettled in his body, Cheng Xiaoshi retreated to the darkroom. There, where he could move ritualistically through motions he’d trained into perfect habit, he could remember who he was.
It helped just as much as Qiao Ling’s loving teasing and Lu Guang’s hugs.
When sitting still was too hard, Cheng Xiaoshi picked up one of the film cameras and wandered through the neighbourhood. He enticed some of their ordinary customers that way, by carrying around a modern polaroid camera—simple, yes, but effective—and sharing the delight of watching a black rectangle slowly fill with color.
Magic, Cheng Xiaoshi thought, as he snapped a picture of a flock of pigeons flapping away from a child’s toy ball.
The best kind of magic, too, because it was magic everyone could share.
There was a moment, after Lu Guang showed him that he could dive into photos, when Cheng Xiaoshi wondered, Is this what happens when you love something enough? You develop a gift that allows you to enjoy it even more?
Then he stopped wondering, because he didn’t want to know what Lu Guang had fixated on so deeply that he could gaze into pictures and see the past-future written in that still frame.
Besides, the part of his power Cheng Xiaoshi cared about the most was how it allowed him to understand others’ photos even more intimately. Cheng Xiaoshi wasn’t sure he needed that, but if he could learn from these experiences and make photos come to life for people even a little more—
He wanted that, just as much as he wanted to help people.
So Cheng Xiaoshi looked into Lu Guang’s eyes, held his hand up, and said, “Ready?”
Lu Guang nodded and extended his own hand. “It’s time.”
Their hands came together, and the sound was the same as a camera shutter’s click. The way his vision whited out with his power’s activation was the same as staring into a camera’s flash.
Open your eyes, Lu Guang said inside his head; Cheng Xiaoshi still wasn’t used to that. Let’s begin.
Cheng Xiaoshi took a steadying breath, and did.