Shutter ➳ Camren

Chapter Two

All rights go to original author.

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I told them I don't want to do it. Fucking no. But again, no one listened to me on how a complete disaster this would turn out. That's where the good stories come from they say, people doing silly things. This would be a hell of a good story then.

My friends Louis and Harry are getting married. I'm very happy for them of course, after three years of being together they've finally decided to seal the deal. But that's not what I'm protesting about. The problem is they asked me to sing at their fucking wedding. No, scratch that, more like demanded while threatening to fire me from my job if I didn't. Have I told you how I fucking hate injustice?

It all started when I got the job at Examiner. It's a news magazine that goes out fortnightly. I was skeptic on taking on the job at first because my father's already working for them. Old Alejandro's the Editor in Chief. But the Examiner was a decent magazine, they are known for delivering the news in very unconventional ways; marking their spot in the readers' mind. The news staff has a young age group, probably the reason they don't settle on what's in the books, they formulate their own styles; they're adventurous. Almost all of them are in their twenties, with just a few exceptions of the editors.

But Examiner's on crossfire of how the staff is a bunch of young writers given the liberty to write on a posy magazine. Most of their critiques are old school publications so the judgment is actually biased.

Truth be told, Examiner's competitions are actually afraid because it's showing how boring and bland their magazines compares to it. I ended up grabbing the opportunity of working for them because it possesses the things I wanted for a job; liberal, idealistic, non- comformist, universityque. Not like those magazines that run stories only their sponsors wanted to run, therefore defeating the purpose of public service.

Louis happened to be the son of the publisher so technically, he's my boss too and he's got the liberty to fire me if he wanted to. I know he won't do it, but you never know: desperate men do desperate things. Harry's one of the writers like me, he got in four months after I did. That time, people are still doubtful of my competence because my dad's their boss. Harry never took that fact to question my talent on writing. He gave me respect I found lacking from others. We found ourselves always getting coffee together and passing tips to each other. We became the other's best friend, but there's nothing else there.

We have the same principles in life, Harry and I. We both agree that a gender's just a body, but love is love. He's been with a couple of girls before and I have history with them too when I was in university. But all Harry's thoughts of girl romance vanished when he met Louis.

Five weeks after Harry got the job, the publisher's son visited our office. He's probably trying to get a hang of the business because he'll be taking over his father's job soon. Harry and I were sipping coffee over her cubicle when Mr. Tomlinson walked in the office doors. He took one look at Harry and I swear I could hear his little boy heart double in size at the sight of him.

Harry ignored him for a good two weeks before agreeing to go out with him. After that, Harry seemed to be as loved up as Louis does. I miss a bit of him but Louis isn't hard to like. He actually knows his way around the business, not like those people whose only reason they got the job is of family connection.

On Harry's absence, another person crept up on me. Luke's one of the four sports writer of the magazine; he's been a staff a year earlier than I am and he's a good mate of Louis. He likes to stop by my cubicle once in a while constantly making dirty jokes and trying to get me to his bed but once you see past that, he's actually not that bad.