Although Song Mianfeng was quite concerned about Lu Yin Zhen, his work kept him busy to the point of feeling overwhelmed during busy periods and idle to the point of feeling stale during quiet times.

When he was busy, he had no time to bother Lu Yin Zhen.

Only occasionally did they chat on WeChat.

One afternoon, he had just finished taking a series of photos for a magazine and was retouching them when the phone lying next to him suddenly rang.

Song Mianfeng glanced at it, loosening his grip on the mouse, causing a small area of the face on Photoshop to slim down strangely.

Liu Chengyin, sitting at the computer next to him, was also retouching photos. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed the distorted part of the photo on Song Mianfeng’s computer screen and couldn’t help but glance at Song Mianfeng with disbelief.

Song Mianfeng answered the phone with a “Hello.”

“Is this Mianfeng?” The voice on the other end of the line sounded hesitant. “Are you busy?”

With his eyes wide open, Song Mianfeng lied, “No.” He chuckled softly and asked, “What’s up?”

“I’m going to M Country at the end of the month and need to apply for a visa, so I wanted to ask,” the man paused before continuing, “Can I take passport photos at your place?”

“Passport photos?” Song Mianfeng lowered his gaze and chuckled softly. “Yes.”

Song Mianfeng asked, “When are you coming over?”

“In a while, around five o’clock.”

“Okay, I’ll send you the address.”

After hanging up the phone, Song Mianfeng noticed Liu Chengyin looking at him with an incredulous expression. “Ge, what did you just say? Passport photos? Are you going to take passport photos? Did I hear that correctly?”

“You didn’t hear wrong.” Song Mianfeng glanced at him with a hint of disdain and opened Baidu.

After searching for the requirements for visa photos, he tore a piece of sticky note from the pen holder, noted down the size and background color, and stuck it on the corner of his desk before continuing to retouch the photos.

…

The wall clock ticked away towards five o’clock. Chen Yu, who was responsible for the front desk work, stretched lazily and then continued scrolling through the comments under the studio’s Weibo post.

A new email arrived on the computer, and Chen Yu opened the studio’s email account, intending to record the appointment in the appointment book. Just then, she heard footsteps approaching.

She looked up and was stunned for a few seconds before putting on a polite professional smile. “Sir, do you have an appointment?”

Was there an appointment this afternoon?

The man wore a simple white shirt with the top button undone. Standing under the light, his fair complexion was highlighted, his sideburns sharp, and his features well-defined.

Suppressing the urge to scream in her heart, Chen Yu tried to control the brightness of her smile on her face. “Do you have an appointment?”

“Just about.” The man smiled at her and then took out his phone to make a call.

Still feeling dazed, Chen Yu heard him smilingly say to the person on the other end of the line, “I’ve arrived. At the door.” Just as she regained her senses, she saw her boss coming out to greet the guest personally, and for a moment, she felt like her brain was muddled and couldn’t react properly.

Song Mianfeng waved his hand in front of Chen Yu. “Are you back?”

Chen Yu snapped back to reality, her eyes wandering between the two men. “…Boss, this… this guest.”

Song Mianfeng smiled. “I’ll take care of it. You can go about your business.”

With that, Song Mianfeng gestured to Lu Yin Zhen, “Sorry for the wait.”

Following him inside, Lu Yin Zhen smiled from the corners of his lips. “Boss Song?”

Song Mianfeng chuckled. “How dare I be called ‘Boss’ by you.”

Walking into the lobby, there was a large reception area, a tea room, a separate area for visitors, some tables and chairs, magazine shelves, and potted plants.

The wall was adorned with many photos, mostly landscapes, arranged in a scattered but orderly manner. Lu Yin Zhen couldn’t help but slow down and stop in front of a photo of a desert sunset. “Did you take all these… photos?”

Song Mianfeng replied with a nostalgic tone in his eyes, “When I was young, I traveled with a camera on my back, taking pictures of everything, from mountains and lakes to deserts and wilderness.”

Lu Yin Zhen exclaimed, “You’ve been to so many places.”

Song Mianfeng smiled wryly. “That’s why my parents hoped I would settle down, get married, and stabilize early.”

Lu Yin Zhen looked at the photos for a while. Song Mianfeng then led him further inside. Passing through several rooms, Song Mianfeng introduced, “These three rooms are photography studios, this one is the printing room, and this one is the lounge and makeup room.”

The room at the end of the corridor had a sign that read “Do Not Disturb When Working.” Song Mianfeng opened the door and walked in. “This is the office.”

“There are also two rooms inside, one is my lounge, and the other is the darkroom.”

The office was not particularly large but was arranged very comfortably, with everything neatly arranged. Whether it was because the owner of the office had OCD was unclear.

In the center was a large rectangular table with six computers and a printer placed between every two computers. There were pen holders and small storage boxes on the table, all neatly arranged. The wall shelves were filled with books and albums, and on the long desk against the wall were various DSLR cameras and lenses of different sizes, like cabbages waiting to be chosen.

As another living person in the office, Liu Chengyin’s presence was strong.

Song Mianfeng introduced, “Liu Chengyin, half a photographer.”

Liu Chengyin raised an eyebrow and stared at Lu Yin Zhen, asking Song Mianfeng, ” Song ge, who is this?”

“Hmm…” Song Mianfeng hesitated when it came to introducing Lu Yin Zhen. If he said they were friends, it seemed to overstate their relationship, but if he said otherwise, their relationship wasn’t at that level yet.

Lu Yin Zhen seemed to know what he was thinking and reached out his hand to Liu Chengyin. “Hello, I’m Lu Yin Zhen.”

Liu Chengyin shook his hand, smiled, and didn’t inquire further about their relationship. “I’m Liu Chengyin, an intern photographer at the Zhenyue Mianfeng Studio.”

Song Mianfeng glanced at their joined hands, grabbed an 85mm fixed-focus lens and a camera, tore off the note on the table, and said to Lu Yin Zhen, “Let’s go to the studio.”

The photography studio had three rooms. Song Mianfeng took Lu Yin Zhen into the first one, found a stool from the corner, placed it in the middle of the studio’s backdrop, and adjusted the background cloth to white.

Standing aside, Lu Yin Zhen glanced around the room and then looked at Song Mianfeng, unable to help but remark, “This place is a bit different from what I imagined.”

“Hmm?” Song Mianfeng glanced at him and chuckled lightly. “How so?”

He couldn’t possibly say it was like a small photo studio on the side of the road as he had imagined…

Lu Yin Zhen coughed awkwardly and said, “You probably don’t take passport photos here, right?”

With a high-quality lens and the camera settings adjusted, Song Mianfeng gestured for him to sit in the studio. “We do. Why not?”

Song Mianfeng smiled. “It’s part of the job.”

Amused by his remark, Lu Yin Zhen chuckled. Although he didn’t believe it, he didn’t continue the topic.

He made a mental note of this exception.

Standing a few steps away, Song Mianfeng skillfully set up the camera on a tripod, then lowered his head slightly, peering through the viewfinder to look at Lu Yin Zhen’s face.

Cooperating, Lu Yin Zhen looked into the lens. When Song Mianfeng straightened up and walked over to him, Lu Yin Zhen asked, “What’s up?”

His hands on his knees were slightly nervous.

Then he saw Song Mianfeng approach, reach out, and button up his collar, straightening it.

Song Mianfeng’s hands were neatly groomed, his fingers long and slender, like freshly sprouted bamboo shoots after rain, brushing against the edge of his collar.

Accidentally brushing against the skin on his neck, Lu Yin Zhen lowered his gaze, his eyelashes trembling lightly. Song Mianfeng casually withdrew his hand as if nothing happened and smiled, “This looks more formal.”

“Click, click, click.”

Three consecutive shutter clicks sounded, and Song Mianfeng’s voice followed, “Done.”

“…So fast?” Lu Yin Zhen, who had been sitting up straight, relaxed slightly and blinked.

Song Mianfeng looked through the taken photos and gave a slight “Hmm.”

Lu Yin Zhen stood up and walked over, standing beside him, and glanced at the camera screen.

Song Mianfeng asked him, “Do they look good?”

Lu Yin Zhen smiled softly. “You take very good photos.”

Good-looking people take good photos. Holding the camera, Song Mianfeng returned to the office, exported the photos, adjusted the symmetry of the shoulders, and then cropped them.

He asked Lu Yin Zhen, “How many copies do you need?”

“Eight.” Lu Yin Zhen watched him retouching the photos. “When can I get them?”

“Are you in a hurry?” Song Mianfeng adjusted the brightness, copied and arranged four photos vertically and four photos horizontally, saved the photos, and clicked print. “Just a few minutes.”

Lu Yin Zhen’s puzzled “Hmm?” came out, “So fast?”

“Developing film with a traditional camera takes a long time, but with digital photos, we use inkjet printers nowadays.” Song Mianfeng pointed to the inkjet printer in the middle of the computer. “Instant results.”

The printer had already started printing the photos. Lu Yin Zhen looked at it, feeling a bit intrigued. “Last time I went to a photo studio, I had to wait for more than half an hour to get the photos.”

Liu Chengyin chimed in while retouching photos, “That’s because the boss didn’t have time to print them immediately.”

“Taking photos, retouching, adjusting, printing, cropping—all take time. If there are many customers, printing them immediately would exhaust the boss.” Liu Chengyin commented, “That’s why instant photos cost twice as much as those picked up the next day. The difference lies in the cost of time.”

Curious, Lu Yin Zhen asked, “What about photos picked up the next day?”

“Photos picked up the next day are all batch-printed by the photo studio at some point in the day and then sent to the photo printing shop for development, earning a price difference. It’s time-saving and convenient, so most studios are more than happy when customers choose to pick up their photos the next day if they’re not in a hurry.”

As they spoke, the photos had already been printed. Song Mianfeng cropped the photos, put them in a paper bag, and handed them to Lu Yin Zhen. “Here you go.”

Lu Yin Zhen took out his phone and opened WeChat. “Shall I transfer the money to you via WeChat?”

Song Mianfeng glanced at the only pinned chat window on his WeChat page and raised an eyebrow. “Talking about money hurts relationships.”

Lu Yin Zhen didn’t insist and instead glanced at the time, changing his words, “Then are you free? I’d like to treat you to dinner.”