Focal Point | woosahi

iii.

It's the first day of the school year's school fair, and the photography club was chosen to take photos of the event. Few of the members volunteered to capture most of the happenings on stage, since they wanted to watch the performances at the same time. It left Asahi and the remaining ones tasked to document the booths, the stores, and even some of the students in the said evening.

He already took photos of the food stalls, even bumping into two of his club members along the way. They were designed creatively with lights now unlike they were at daytime to stand out among the others. Asahi would occasionally look at the photos after capturing a specific place or two, smiling proudly at the good shots he took.

He noticed that the fairgoers were increasing as the band performances started. He wasn't a fan of the local bands who were invited to perform, so he didn't mind standing farther away from the crowd.

Still, he positioned his camera facing the current band in front and their audience to at least have a few pictures of them. He took multiple shots, staring at each for almost a minute before deciding to delete them all.

He guessed that taking pictures of people was different if they weren't that certain schoolmate who became his camera's favorite.

The guy has been running on his mind since this morning. Asahi still hadn't seen him all day, and he has been roaming around the campus for hours. He finished convincing himself that he would see him, but something inside him knew he was in the same place. Asahi was no psychic, but the possibilities of his schoolmate liking the guest performers or preferring to attend at night than day were strong enough to give him hope.

He continued his club duties, snapping pictures here and there. He was running out of appealing spots to capture. He thought that he already made great shots for tonight, and it made his standard for his next captures higher.

Asahi was taking a break on finding things to photograph, walking alone with his sling bag and camera as his only companions. He wasn't even thinking of him anymore, but he found him there. He was standing next to his friends near the exit with a drink on his hand. There wasn't much lights as they were on the stage and Asahi wondered if he just stayed there all this time.

Asahi impulsively raised his camera on his eye level, right eye on the viewfinder once more. The second he found a better angle of the guy's side profile was the same moment he felt his heart dropping inside his body.

He spotted Asahi meters away from him. Their eyes met through the viewfinder, and regardless of the sudden chills all over his body, Asahi still chose to press the shutter button twice.

When he distanced the gadget away from his face, the eyes of the person his eyes were often glued to were still looking at him. Asahi's chest tightened, and the first action that he could think about was to immediately walk away in panic to the opposite direction. He walked and walked fastly until he could blend in with the band's audience.

Asahi's whole body, especially his ears, was warm from embarrassment. Being glanced at was one thing, but being stared at for seconds was something—and Asahi knew that that something won't do anything good to him.