Figments of Beauty

V

Mid-September, 2012

"It amazes me how short you are, sometimes."

"Oh, yeah? Why don't you suck my—"

"Anyway," Dazai cleared his throat. "We have work to do."

"Of course we do," Chuuya snapped. "That's why we're here."

They sat at a small cafe table not far from the one Chuuya had been sitting at with Mori weeks ago—nearly a month. Now that he was in a different kind of meeting with a different kind of atmosphere, though, Chuuya found the little Cafe Uzumaki to be very pleasant. It smelled like sugar and coffee, and lots of laughter and good-natured conversations bounced off the walls.

Unfortunately, Dazai's cold stare put a damper on the good mood.

"Now, the first thing to know is that this is a big shoot," he was saying. "It marks the company's fiftieth anniversary, and the public will be expecting great things—I understand that the slug isn't as important as I am, so he may not know these things, but—"

"Fuck off."

"—we need to do something unique, perhaps a bit controversial if it suits. Kouyou gave you the details on the theme, no?"

Chuuya gave him a pointed look and he carried on.

"Since red camellias are symbols of passion and romance, let's—"

Chuuya's head went blank. "What."

Dazai paused. "Are you stumped? We have our work cut out for us."

"I'd rather die than do a romance shoot with you." Blinking, Chuuya gave himself a moment to process all that a shoot like that would entail. Would they have to kiss?

Chuuya nearly choked.

"We can ignore the fucking flowers and do something else," he said decidedly, shaking his head as if that might rid his skull of those thoughts.

"Do you really think Mori would approve of that?" Dazai shot back. "He chose red camellias for a reason and it doesn't matter what we think. That's the shoot." Chuuya didn't say anything and Dazai sighed again, shaking his head. "That's just the business, slug. We don't get to choose."

Chuuya frowned. Something about the way Dazai said that, quiet and bitter, made him pause. He'd never heard that tone in his voice before. It was always irritation or the sing-song cheeriness he used to disguise whatever festered beneath it; Dazai simply wasn't genuine.

"So the theme's red camellias?" Chuuya began slowly. "And we're supposed to do what?"

Dazai sighed. "We're supposed to come up with everything else. The sections of the shoot, the props, the poses, the—"

"Sections? The fuck's that supposed to be?"

He shook his head, eye closed and hands folded. "This shoot is for the company and the public. We have to keep people talking, and the fiftieth anniversary is very important, so PMM will be publishing the shoot on its own. That means we need a lot of pictures, and when you do a shoot this big, you divide it into sections to prevent things from getting boring or looking too similar," he explained, looking at Chuuya like he was already supposed to know all of that.

Chuuya frowned. "Okay, fancy shoot, whatever. How the hell are we supposed to divide this up?"

"However we want to. You do realize that we're in charge of this shoot, right?"

"Fuck you," he snapped. This was a disaster. His very first shoot—his most important one, seeing as it was his professional introduction to the fashion world—and it had to be a romance shoot with the one and only Dazai Osamu.