Shinki

Let me take your picture?

Had I refused her that day, perhaps things would've turned out differently.

I couldn't feel my hands. After all those times of doing it, the aftermath never changed. Plip. Plip. Plip. Viscous, crimson liquid formed a puddle beneath my feet. The sun had set. It's always good to not see things not supposed to be.

“Hey,” she called from behind. She's always where I couldn't see her.

I pivoted my upper body to look at her. “You got the shot?”

A big grin and a V-sign. The small bag slung over her shoulder wasn't opened.

I sighed.

Looks like another bust.

The starry sky illuminated the dark forest we went after. My weary arms and legs were dragged through sheer force of will to see ‘this’ through.

Meanwhile, she's looking through a rectangle formed using her index and thumbs, like the thing photographers do when framing the perfect shot. It's annoying how she's doing that behind my back despite never taking an actual picture.

‘Photographs are special,’ she said when I bothered asking her why she wouldn't do it when she's the one who asked in the first place. ‘They can only be taken once.’

The tip of her tongue poked slightly out from the corner of her lips as her concentration peaked. It's impossible to get anything across her when she's like this.

As if she finally caught that she sought but was too afraid to grab the camera and risk losing it.

I hate it.

I hate those captivated eyes of hers.

I hate… but…

Like this body beneath my feet, there were thoughts better left buried deep into the ground, never to be unearthed again.

“How many?” she asked.

“Six including this.”

I tried not to splash her with soil but the way she's squatted so close to the burial site made it impossible. She winced when some got in her eye.

“Ah, here it comes,” she said.

“Sprinkling dust in your eye to force yourself to cry is stupid at best. And disrespectful.”

“The things we’d do for art. Besides, aren't you guilty of disrespect yourself?”

The stone I saw poking out of the ground sent shivers down my spine. For a second, I thought it's bone… or worse. White.

Light.

I slammed the shovel down and confirmed it was indeed my imagination.

“… sniffle… ah, I think my eye's starting to hurt… these are real tears now.”

She spent the next hour crying for conflicting reasons. On the other hand, I already grew tired for various reasons myself.

Art, she said, but I never considered myself an artist even after stealing corpses and ‘killing’ them again. In the shorter version, I mutilate them. The longer one involved another simple reason. I mutilate the newly deceased because I wanted to know more about love and death—two inseparable complex concepts.

Getting jumpscared by the stone stirred my memory. It looked like the ray of light that'd poke out from time to time of the pitch-black room my father loved throwing me in. I hate it. It burned my retinas. Its absence was way better. I'd never know what was it I'm putting in my mouth nor the things I committed secluded in darkness.

Death was necessary in the name of love. Dad always shouted he'd ‘kill me’ or ‘I shouldn't have been born’ because he loved me. It's because of love I was time and again on the verge of death.

I wanted to return to that time.

“Let me take your picture?”

One day, she appeared while I was on my—ah, I begun counting after she arrived.

“The hell do you want?” I growled, readying the scalpel in hand.

She simply caressed the black bag beside her. “Your photo. The best there is.”

I scoffed. “Pervert.”

She grinned and made two finger guns, one of which loaded with a scalpel. “Right back at ya!”

For whatever reason, we both ended up laughing our hearts out that night, not minding the putrid smell of human juices and excrement. As if we've been waiting for that moment to come, we formed a bond far stronger than any existing relationship.

With her nearby, the days passed quickly. I continued going after carcasses like a drug addict trying to replicate that one hazy acid trip.

Worthless.

Stupid.

Irrational.

The things we’d do for…

Heh.

“You've become a scavenger now,” she said, a hand on her cheek. She grew bored and never showed that captivating face of inspiration ever since my cadaver supply ran into a problem.

“It's actually a miracle I got this far. All those years made this a routine that's hard to change.”

“Don't you mean addiction?”

“Nope,” I looked at my small, pathetic specimen. The mouse had its white teeth smashed by a hammer so it wouldn't jut out there like that damned light. “There's no impulse nor craving… I'm just curious. Still curious.”

“After all those years? You mean, even before we met you've never changed?”

“You're the only one who's changed.”

“It's because of being in a ‘routine’.”

“Just like the old days, right?”

“Waking up, going to work, going home drained only to repeat the same come tomorrow… how different is that from what you're doing now? I don't even see the spark in your eyes whenever you did ‘that’. It's not about knowing anymore; it's about doing for the sake of doing it.”

I dropped the bloody operating tools and faced her. Now that I looked, she appeared way different. Her hair that used to be vibrant had streaks of silver and her youthful face now showed slight creases here and there.

I didn't notice. So much time had passed. Before, every day was a memory; it's like when someone asked me what I did on a particular date, I could vividly narrate every tiny detail. When did it became this muddled?

I…

I…

“I… don't think I could take it,” she lamented. “The best photo. It'd be a waste of film, and I only have one shot.”

She met my gaze. My heart stopped for a full second. We've never traded gazes before. For all those times her eyes brimmed with happiness, the moment she chose to was when monotony dried up any signs of life.

Her fingers traced the flap of her bag.

Click! The sound of it opening sent my heart sinking. I've never dreamed of witnessing this moment.

Not like this.

On her hands was an old, analog camera. The brown rectangular item looked new most probably due to it being kept inside the bag throughout the years.

With a pained smile, she raised the camera and peeked behind the lens.

If this is what you wanted to show me, so be it, her actions spoke her true feelings.

It's the crucial moment.

After she twitched that finger resting atop the shutter, it'd be over.

However—

This wasn't it. This wasn't how it's supposed to be.

I—

“I-I'll give it.”

All of a sudden, I spoke… out of desperation to eke out something—anything to prevent her from doing something we'd… I'd regret.

“F-Four days from now, you'll take it. The best there is. That's a promise!”

I wrote down a location and bolted out of our hideout, my heart squeezed I could barely breathe from excitement.

***

April 15. The sun gave way to the impending night.

The time had come.

“This is your answer?”

Her voice and hands showed no traces of fear despite clinging to my arm for dear life.

Wordlessly, I pushed her on the edge of the rooftop of this abandoned apartment—the place of our first encounter.

Her hair fluttered like beautiful black and silver wings as the night wind blew.

I have to admit it. I'll never be able to go back, ever, so perhaps… it's time to break out of this stale cycle.

“Become my first, please,” I muttered. Just as how I asked dad's corpse that night… I asked her to be my ‘first’. My other first.

With a smile different from what she always made, the warmth enveloping my arm vanished.

Atop a building sandwiched by the dark night and the dark ground, I made my first kill. It really felt like forever; like the seconds were actually hours, everything moved slowly.

Flash! My whole world turned excruciatingly white!

“Argh!”

Accursed light…

I refocused my sights at her, and surely enough, I instantly understood what happened.

She had finally pressed the shutter. She captured my best moment.

Her last shot.

Haha, who am I fooling now? I should've known better.

‘Now, Shinki, use that camera. The answer can only be found once you press the shutter.’

I finally got it. My best shot. His parting gift. His love. His death. The moment where love and death intermingle—that which cannot, shouldn't be seen. The things you… I’d do for art.

The greatest photo was finally captured.

For that, I thank you.

Dad.