Chapter 98: Click, Click, Click, Can You Do It or Not?!

No matter how beautiful or handsome a supporting role may be, it is still only an embellishment. It is like a green leaf: however vivid and fresh it may be, once it is placed beside a flower, people naturally see it as nothing more than decoration, there to bring out the fragrance and brilliance of the bloom.

After all, a leaf is still a leaf, however bright and lovely it may appear.

Unfortunately for Lin Yang, as the supporting figure beside Dong Yingying, he was destined to be overlooked.

“Hey, Vice President Lin, could you please stop looking so miserable?”

“Your body, your body, can you bend it a little more? You’re blocking Miss Yingying.”

“Right, move back a bit. You’re covering Miss Yingying’s pretty face.”

“Smile. Yes, smile. Lift the corners of your mouth a little. Look, Miss Yingying’s smile is so captivating.”

“Ah, it’s a smile, not a lecherous grin. Could you stop looking so sleazy?”

“And your hand, gently wrap it around Miss Yingying’s waist. Don’t press so close. Be elegant. Be tender.”

“Not that. Not winking. It should be a soft gaze. Tenderness, yes, even more tenderness.”

“Oh my, Vice President Lin, where are your hands going? Not there, at the waist. Yes, just behind the lower abdomen.”

“Your feet, move them back a little. Yes, oh, not like that. Just a slight angle will do.”

“Please don’t throw up a scissor hand. That’s old-fashioned already. Just relax your hands.”

“..................”

The bearded photographer, camera in hand, kept harping at Lin Yang, this decorative extra, while taking pictures of the pair. It would have been tolerable enough if he had only been bossy and full of gestures, but once he got serious about shooting, he seemed to forget even his own status. Not only that, he ran his mouth without restraint and let his personal feelings spill out, constantly launching personal attacks on Lin Yang: his body was as stiff as an iron plank, his smile was that of a lecher, his nose-picking looked like a baboon, his ear-scratching looked like a monkey, and so on.

If Bai Jing had not been standing nearby, smiling and trying to soothe things over, Lin Yang feared he might have marched right up and given this self-important photographer, with his high-end license and his airs of superiority, a thorough lesson in humility. Yes, he absolutely would have trampled that ugly face beneath his feet. The man kept staring at the woman’s full, rounded chest and then had the nerve to accuse Lin Yang of sneaking a glance.

It was bad enough that he dragged out the advertisement shoot with all this fuss, but he also put on airs and barked orders at him. There are limits to patience, and Lin Yang had long since reached them. Still, a beautiful woman’s face had to be spared embarrassment, so he endured it. Again and again, he endured.

Though he felt deeply uncomfortable, and though he was almost at the point of wanting to beat the man into a pig’s face, he kept on bearing it.

Click.

The bearded photographer, who thought highly of his own skill, finally could not hold back and called for a stop, his face dark with displeasure. Clearly, he was dissatisfied with Lin Yang to an extreme degree.

Fortunately, he had enough sense to stop there. Otherwise Lin Yang might have had to tell him a simple truth: arrogance was fine, putting on airs was fine, and yes, wagging a finger at me was fine too. As long as you don’t mind pain later, anything goes. In a little while, I’ll make you understand why the flowers are so red.

“No, no, we can’t go on like this.” The bearded photographer grumbled in irritation.

Pointing at Lin Yang, who looked utterly innocent, he said, “He—Vice President Lin—keeps mixing in all kinds of bad habits: scratching his ears, picking his nose, rubbing his eyes, sticking out his tongue, and yes, rolling his eyes too. This is photography, not a glamour shoot. It can’t be this unfunny, and besides, all of that is taboo in photography. We finally restrained those things just now, but—why on earth did you have to fart at the end?”

The bearded photographer was truly at a loss. As a well-known photographer in Golden Harbor City, he would never have stayed if not for repeated invitations from Miss Bai Jing of the Bai family, offered with an unusually generous fee. Yet here he was, painstakingly explaining things to this young man who thought himself lofty, knew nothing about photography, and was impossible to deal with.

In his heart, Lin Yang was nothing more than a somewhat handsome pretty boy, the sort who lived off women. Still, he could not refuse the face of Bai Jing, the lovely young miss of the Bai family. So even though his mouth stayed relatively restrained, there was no telling how he might have described Lin Yang otherwise—likely as a social parasite, a scoundrel, and worse.

Fart? Lin Yang was speechless. What did farting have to do with photography? Why was he not even allowed to let one go when he could not hold it in? What kind of rule was that?

Still, he said the polite words of apology and the like, because Bai Jing’s face had to be honored.

“Master Chang, calm down. Xiao Yang is used to doing things freely and never likes to be bound by rules. Please just bear with him. After all, he’s only here to complement our beautiful Yingying.” Bai Jing shot Lin Yang a sharp look, then turned to the bearded photographer, Chang Xiaoyuan, and coaxed him with a smile.

“No, that won’t do. How can you do it like this? Even if he’s only a supporting figure, if it isn’t handled properly it will affect the overall visual harmony of the shot. That is absolutely not acceptable.” Chang Xiaoyuan grumbled with all the righteousness and professionalism he could muster. “If I were to shoot something haphazardly, wouldn’t that insult my own standards as a photographer? How could I ever stand in the photography world afterward? Those people would laugh at me, that much is certain.”

But by the end of that speech, his face had turned somewhat dark.

If he had not said that last part, Lin Yang might even have given him a decent score. But that final remark was another matter entirely. This fellow was the classic kind of man who would rather suffer than lose face, one who valued appearances above everything.

Unable to persuade the photographer, Bai Jing naturally turned her attention to the carefree Lin Yang. She now truly regretted having listened to Dong Yingying’s decision and letting Lin Yang, a man utterly clueless about photography, serve as Yingying’s supporting figure, that crucial male foil.

“Wait a moment. No smiling innocently. No nose-picking. No rubbing your eyes. No... and absolutely no farting.”

Those beautiful, moving eyes fixed firmly on Lin Yang as Bai Jing laid out every one of the photographer’s earlier demands.

Only after Lin Yang nodded repeatedly in promise did Bai Jing finally persuade Master Chang to continue shooting.

From beginning to end, the female lead Dong Yingying had not said a single word. She neither defended Lin Yang nor stepped forward to accuse him of wrongdoing. She simply stood quietly at the edge of the cliff, gazing toward the sea where waves surged and rolled.

It was not until they prepared to shoot again that she slowly turned around and cooperated. A model was a model indeed; no wonder she was used to posing before a camera every day. Once she became serious, she slipped into her role very quickly.

Legs displayed, waist twisted, hand lifted, a flirtatious glance thrown, a look of cuteness, a display of graceful elegance, a mature aura performed on cue—whatever the photographer could think of and call out, she would complete perfectly, and she did it with impeccable devotion.

But Lin Yang, who had only recently stepped into this line of work, suffered far more.

When told to smile, he smiled so awkwardly it looked worse than crying. When the photographer asked for a smile, he forced out a greasy, sleazy grin. When told to gaze at the beauty as though at a lover, he instead revealed a glaring lack of restraint, a fierce possessiveness that was impossible to suppress. This fellow was hopeless, a complete lost cause.

Click.

Click.

Click.

Click...

Chang Xiaoyuan had become utterly numb. He no longer knew how many times he had shouted that word, a word that had grown so irritating to him that he nearly wanted to vomit.

Finally, he angrily tossed the camera to the young assistant behind him, who was holding the reflector screen, and strode up to Lin Yang, practically roaring, “Can you even do this or not? If you can’t, we’ll switch people. Keep wasting time like this and the beautiful scenery will be gone.”

Time waits for no one. That saying had been passed down for ages. From the moment Lin Yang started shooting until now, after Chang the photographer had cried out for retake after retake, an hour and a half had slipped away without notice. And after all that effort, not a single photograph worthy of being kept had been taken. This said all that needed to be said about Lin Yang’s understanding of posing.

In late autumn, night fell early. By around five o’clock, the horizon was already glowing with sunset clouds. The dazzling sunlight had been replaced by a crimson radiance, and the setting sun sinking in the west was indeed magnificent. Yet now the scene had changed: there was none of the brilliant brightness from earlier, only a softer, warmer, more graceful atmosphere, one that drew people closer.

That was also why, after calling for a stop, Chang Xiaoyuan refused to continue shooting. He did not want the sunset scene before him to slip away and be wasted. For that reason, he needed to give Lin Yang an in-depth lesson.

Taking long strides to Lin Yang’s side, he pointed at the red clouds in the sky and asked, “Beautiful?”

Lin Yang, who prided himself on having a strong eye for beauty, nodded vigorously without hesitation. “Beautiful. Very beautiful.”

“Then would you want to keep it forever?” Chang Xiaoyuan’s attitude suddenly changed one hundred and eighty degrees, his voice especially gentle as he asked, while indicating that the sunset clouds and the sea-and-sky scenery below should be framed together.

Lin Yang’s eyes mechanically followed the direction of his finger, drawing that beautiful corner of sea and sky into his vision and engraving it deeply in his heart.

Yes. It would truly be a pity not to preserve such a beautiful scene.

“I do want to keep it, but I just can’t seem to achieve the effect you want,” Lin Yang said, no longer inclined to argue. Since the other man’s attitude had improved so much, he was not so foolish as to be stubborn in reply. But regarding those nearly exacting demands, he really did feel helpless.

He had always seen other people pose for photos so easily: a twist of the hip, a blink of the eye, a pout, a few scissor-hand gestures, a couple of flirtatious poses, the so-called five-shot sequence, and it was done. So why was it so difficult when it came to him?

Could it be that he had been born with a stiff body? Lin Yang could not help thinking this. He was starting to lose confidence in photography.

“Do you have a girlfriend?” Chang Xiaoyuan suddenly asked a very personal question that seemed to come from nowhere.

Lin Yang was puzzled. What did whether he had a girlfriend have to do with taking photos?

Seeing that Lin Yang did not answer, Chang Xiaoyuan raised his brows and glanced over at Bai Jing standing nearby before asking again, “Then you must at least have someone you like, right?”

“Of course. Who wouldn’t have someone they like?” Lin Yang replied, somewhat exasperated, muttering inwardly that even if he was not handsome enough to make women scream and throw themselves into his arms at first sight, he was still decent-looking, all right? Besides, his sexual orientation was normal, and there was nothing wrong with his mind. Naturally he had someone he liked.

“Then imagine that person as the one you like most, and try it. Maybe you’ll be able to find the feeling I’m talking about,” Chang Xiaoyuan said with a somewhat crafty smile, pointing at Dong Yingying, who had once again fixed her gaze on the beautiful sea-and-sky view.