With a heavy heart in her chest and a heavy load in her arms, Hina made it back to the foot of Youkai Mountain. She had spent a disappointing day in the Human Village, having failed to sell even one item from her stock of recycled nagashi-bina dolls, and now headed back home with a full bag of unwanted stock.
"Maybe I should put some of my own misfortune into one of these, and set it down the river…" Hina then wondered if she could collect her own misfortune from it, and then laughed at the redundancy of her own idea. "Well, maybe I'll have better luck next week."
As she travelled the path on her way home, however, Hina slowed down as she suddenly felt the distinct sense that she was being watched. She was just about to dismiss it since there was always a youkai somewhere lurking out of sight in the mountain, but then she heard an artificial shutter sound from above.
"Huh?" Hina stopped in place and craned her neck, staring upwards into the sky and spotting the unmistakable silhouette of a crow tengu, pointing her unique phone-shaped camera down at the misfortune goddess.
Hatate recognised the familiar person right away as Himekaidou Hatate, who in turn noticed Hina staring back up at her. Upon being spotted, the tengu's face was overcome with shame over what she just did. In a flash, she descended to the ground near Hina.
"Miss Hatate? What are-" Hina started to ask, before Hatate marched right up to her.
"I'm sooooo sorry! It's not what you think!" Hatate hastily offered an apology and a defense for herself. "I swear I'm not some voyuer who usually takes others' photos without permission! Not like some other lousy tengu reporter! I just happened to see you, and, well… my reflex took over, and I snapped a photo... before I even thought about it..."
Hatate's words tapered off as she realised how weak her excuse sounded, but Hina, if anything, just looked flattered by the gesture. "It's okay! I'm not upset or anything. Did I, um… look really nice from up there, or…?"
"Oh, well… Yeah, totally." Hatate nodded, then cleared her throat. "But there was more to it than that. You see, I've been trying to write this article about the state of the mountain and the youkai living on it. It's kinda boring stuff, but I've been trying to collect photos of youkai in their natural habitat."
"I don't know if what I'm doing now counts as 'natural' in any sense." Hina laughed as she looked down at her bag from her recently failed business venture. "But wait, don't you usually use spirit photography? That thing that lets you obtain photos just by thinking about it?"
"That's not quite how it works but yes, I could do that… But there's a reason I'm not using my thoughtography." There was a resolute look in Hatate's eyes as she spoke. "My thoughtography might be amazing, but I've wanted to increase the quality of the photos themselves. I want the kind of pictures that really bring the absolute best out of the subjects! But the only way I can figure out how to do that is through field experience. Do you get what I'm saying?"
"Photos that bring out the best…?" Hina tapped her cheek, wondering where she heard something like that before. "...Oh! Isn't that how some of the other tengu describe the photos from the Bunbun-"
"Please." Hatate uttered through gritted teeth. "I implore you not to finish that sentence."
"O-okay… But I'm sure your photos are already all lovely!" Hina said with a reassuring smile.
"That's nice of you to say, but I'm not so sure…" Hatate looked to her camera, pushing a few buttons to bring up her recently captured shots, and started cycling through them while showing Hina the screen. "I've been going all over the mountain, going back and forth between using my brain or my gut to pick out the best time to capture a shot."
"These all look quite nice to me." Looking through the various photos of different youkai with backdrops of different scenery filled Hina with a sense of peace.
"I'm afraid that's because you don't have an eye for photography." Hatate offhandedly said, ignoring the pout Hina directed towards her. "Any crow tengu would look at these and say they're amateur work!"
Hina wanted to tell Hatate she was overthinking it, but she admittedly wasn't familiar with the standards of tengu society anyway. "So what are you going to do?"
"All I can do is keep practicing, I guess. But it's sort of up to luck on whether I can find subjects to practice on…" Hatate narrowed her eyes with an unsatisfactory look as she cycled through her photos. Her eyes soon drifted to Hina though, and a thought slowly came to form in her head, before exploding into one sudden realisation. "...Ah! That's it!"
"What is it?!" Hina flinched at the sudden outburst.
"You are! I mean…" Hatate flipped her camera close before regarding Hina with an excited glint in her eyes. "I have a big, big, biiiiig favour to ask of you! You're like an archetypical youkai of the mountain, like a part of the landscape and nature itself, so I think it'd really help me if I focused on photographing you today."
"Me? As in only me?" Hina asked, confused, and she wasn't sure what to think of being compared to 'landscape'.
"That's right! If I can practice by bringing out the best of you in my photos, it would go a long way in developing my skills. What do you say? I could pay you, and-"
"Just wait a minute, please!" Hina tried to calm the eager Hatate down, and then tried to calm her own nervous self down. "This is very sudden, and also a bit strange. I don't need to be paid, but if I understand this right, you're saying you want to take photos of me while I'm just… being myself?"
"More or less. You just do what you always do, and I'll try to capture what makes you, well, you in the purest sense."
"What does make me… me , I wonder?" The more Hina considered it, the more she thought Hatate's suggestion sounded like it could be fun. "Okay! I agree with being your… what, exactly? Your subject? Your muse? Or perhaps your inspiration...?"
"Sure! All of those things, why not?" Hatate was too happy to care about details like that.
"Okay! After I drop off this bag at my house, how about we discuss-" Hina had glanced down at her bag as she spoke, and during that time, she heard another shutter going off. She raised her head to see Hatate pointing her camera at her. Hina blinked in confusion for a second, before hastily and shly shielding her face. "W-w-wait, I wasn't ready!?"
"Being 'ready' is besides the point!" Hatate exclaimed, like she was stating something obvious. "Just don't even think about the camera, the more candid, the better. Like this, I'm sure your essence will be captured."
"I see... It's like that, huh?" Hina nodded as she listened. She had envisioned herself posing for Hatate's camera like a model, but it looked like the arrangement was going to be something considerably more easygoing. "Well… Try to get my good sides, at least!"
For the rest of the afternoon, Hina went through her day like she would any other. First was collecting dolls from the mountain's riverstream and amassing their misfortune, a job that she gets so engrossed in, that there were a few times she even forgot Hatate was watching from above before hearing the shutter of her camera.
After that was scaring some lost humans who wandered a little too close to the foot of the mountain, something Hina did with a heavy heart but was necessary for their safety. When she heard the shutters of Hatate's camera, she hoped she didn't appear too scary in the photos.
At the end of the day, with the sun beginning to set, Hina settled down in her house. She sat at her table, and was currently humming to herself as she worked to restore the cracked doll on her table.
Hatate sat on the chair across the table from Hina, watching her with idle curiosity. "Say, why do you bother fixing those anyway?"
"Ah? Well…" Hina answered, without taking her eyes off her work. "Not all the humans have moved on to using disposable paper dolls yet, and still stick to this old tradition of using extravagant dolls instead. As long as there are people still doing that, I want to try and recycle these kinds of dolls so they don't go to waste. So I fix them up and then sell them in their village."
"No, I get that part. I mean why do you bother when nobody ever seems to take any of your stock?"
"Oh…" A frown appeared on Hina's face, but it slowly settled back to a more easygoing expression as she spoke. "It doesn't hurt me to try, and there's always a chance my fortune could go up when I least expect it."
"I so wish I had your level of optimism." Hatate remarked, thinking how she could never be bothered with something so unrewarding.
After a few more seconds of tinkering, Hina regarded the doll with a satisfied smile before looking at Hatate, who had strangely only been watching for some time now, as opposed to taking photos. "I haven't heard your shutter go off in a while. It's almost like the air is too silent without it."
"Oh, you're right… I haven't taken any photos in a while, huh? I feel like I already took more live photos today than I have all year." Hatate flipped open her camera, cycling through her collected photos so far. "Maybe that's a sign that I'm done for the day."
"If that's the case, then show me!" Hina's eyes were gleaming with expectation.
"Oh, uh…" Hatate's eyes on the other hand, nervously darted back and forth between her camera and at Hina's lively face, and a wave of apprehension washed over her. "T-They're not… I mean, I don't think you'd get anything out of it."
"Come on! You were with me all day, and it would be so unsatisfying if I didn't get to see the results."
"Well… Okay, just let me check on these for a bit." And by 'check', Hatate was cycling through them trying to pick out which should she delete from her camera's memory.
Whether or not Hina knew that was Hatate's intention was unknown to the tengu, but she still reached forward and snatched the camera right out of Hatate's hand with a greedy smile. "I want to check them too!"
"Hey!" Hatate failed to grab Hina's retracting hand, so she got up and walked around to the other side of the table. By the time she made it there, Hina was already staring intently at the collection of photos. "No, no, no! Those ones aren't good! Argh, stop!"
"It's fine! Really!" Hina kept Hatate at bay with one outstretched arm, while her other hand pressed the intuitively labeled buttons that scroll to the next photo. "You said yourself that I don't have an eye for this stuff anyway, right? So I can't criticise you."
"That's not the problem! Aaaaaaah…" Unable to handle her soul being laid bare like this, Hatate turned away and groaned to herself. ...At least for a few seconds, before she slowly peeked to see Hina's reactions. "Sooo… what do you think?"
There was an enigmatic smile on Hina's face as she scrolled through the photos. There was one of her, face and posture perfectly serene as she floated in the river not unlike a doll herself, with the framing of the picture also perfectly parallel with the river. There was another shot of her with her arms raised and her best scary expression put forth, the angle of the shot doing its best to make her look intimidating.
Those were soon followed by close-up shots of Hina, all candid but catching her face under a striking ray of sunlight, or with a pretty backdrop of forest scenery. "I don't remember you taking any from so close."
"T-There's an enlarge option. My camera's got lots of tricks, actually…" Hatate tried to put on a casual smile that instead came out looking pained instead. Having your fellow crow tengu talk down on your photography skills was turning out to be nothing, especially compared to the terror of having someone looking at the photos of themselves you put loving care into taking. "...You like them?"
"I do. A lot actually!" Hina's expression was practically radiating with appreciation. "Even if I am a little shy about so many close-ups of my face going into a newspaper."
"Oh, don't worry about that, haha." Hatate let out a resigned sigh before she continued. "I actually don't think I can use… any of these."
"Huh? Why not?" Hina asked, concerned. "Are the photos not good enough?"
"It's not that. l think I'm actually gonna drop the whole article about the state of the mountain. I planned for it to be a cut-and-dry status update of sorts, but all the photos I took lately… Well, I think there's actually too much of a personal touch to them." Despite how her words sounded, Hatate actually had a pleased look on her face as she considered the photos.
Hina meanwhile, could only tilt her head in response to that. "I'm not sure I completely understand."
"It's like this. I started taking pictures of you because you're like, you know, a part of the mountain's nature, as much as any waterfall or tree." Hatate found herself smirking as she continued. "After a while though, I wasn't photographing just a god in its natural habitat. I was photographing, well… you, and all your weird quirks."
"Hey, which part of me is weird? ...Don't actually answer that." Hina's pout was fierce, but lasted only a second. "So, are you just going to get rid of these photos?"
"Eh, well…" Even thinking about deleting them felt like a huge, criminal waste to Hatate. "Maybe I'll save them to a personal album or something. It's actually been a long time since I took photos just for fun, now that I think about it."
"Oh!" Hearing that, a wave of relief and delight simultaneously washed over Hina. "In that case, could I get you to share copies with me as well?"
"No problem!" Hatate was quick to agree, and she might have been hoping to be asked that as well. "It's the least I can offer after making you have to deal with me all day."
"It's not like I did anything other than what I always do. Besides, it was sort of… interesting to have you watching the whole time." It was a bit too embarrassing for Hina to say aloud, but she really hoped that Hatate managed to find whatever she thought was the 'best' parts of her. "...Oh, but there is one more thing I'd like from you."
"Yeah? What?" Hatate asked, but Hina didn't answer right away. Instead, Hina silently passed Hatate's camera back to her, before standing up and moving right beside the tengu, until their shoulders were brushing against each other, to Hatate's utter confusion. "Hey, what are you…?"
"Could you take one more photo? Of us, I mean!" Hina said with an eager grin. "I was thinking that it doesn't seem fair if it's only me."
"Wait, it doesn't seem fair to which of us? ...Ah, whatever!" Hatate opted not to think too hard about what she honestly thought was a wonderful idea from Hina. She outstretched her hand and pointed the camera vaguely at the both of them. "Hold that smile for as long as you can now…!"
It was a bit awkward for Hatate to pull off, holding the camera backwards in her hand, and she made sure to take several different photos, each with slightly different angles just in case. After ten or so shots, Hatate brought the camera closer to both of them so they could see the results.
Both of them couldn't help but laugh at some of the very skewed angles, some of which where one of their faces were half out of view, or how with each progressive photo, they each unknowingly leaned closer to each other… just to make sure they both fitted in the frame, of course.
"I know I'm no expert…" Hina started speaking, her grin only growing wider by the second. "But I think all these photos bring out the best of us."
"I do think you're right." Hatate nodded and returned the grin. "Thanks for accommodating me today. It's been nice. ...Even if I'll have to go find a new topic to write about."
"Hmm…" Hina contemplated that for a few seconds, before hitting upon an idea. "if you're looking for something to write in your newspaper… I might have something."
Hatate was immediately intrigued, and before she could ask for elaboration, Hina was already heading to one of her drawers. From there, she pulled out what looked like a white envelope with a heart-shaped stamp on it, before returning to Hatate.
"What I have here is a strange little artifact." Hina explained, presenting the letter to Hatate. "It's like a small carrier for a curse, but the most specific and innocuous kind I've ever seen."
"That sounds scary. How does it work…?" Hatate stared at the envelope, and just hearing what Hina had to say about it so far made Hatate imagine it was giving off a deceptive aura.
"Written inside are instructions for whoever currently possesses it. This object is passed from person to another, but only if there are strong, positive, affectionate feelings shared between those exchanging it. I think this object stores just a little, teeny bit of that affection into it, granting it the power to subtly make others want to follow its instructions."
Although Hina only had the letter in her possession for a short time, she was confident in her deductions regarding its nature, since she was often a carrier of a different kind of human aspect herself.
"I think this would make for a pretty interesting article, right?" Hina said, gesturing for Hatate to take it.
"Maybe! It does sound pretty interesting." Hatate reached to take the letter, but her hand stopped just before her fingers made contact. "...Wait. You just said it can only be passed around between people with strong feelings for each other?"
"Yes, that's right." Hina nodded.
"...And you're passing it to me right now?"
"Yes. That's right." Once more, Hina nodded, this time with a warm smile directed at Hatate.
"Oh. I… see. That's… nice!" Hatate awkwardly chuckled before she took hold of the letter with a far more tense grip than necessary, and took it onto her own person. "Thank you. I'll uh… I'm going to go get today's photos processed as soon as possible!"
"Good luck with that, and with your article!" Hina waved farewell as Hatate headed out the exit.
The crow tengu took off into the air as soon as she was able to, holding the letter close to her chest and trying to ignore how warm her face felt.
She already knew that there was no way she could write an article about the letter she just received without revealing exactly why she had it in her own possession to all the readers of her public newspaper. The embarrassment from that might actually cause her to keel over.
It was settled then, that her evening was going to be spent looking for article-worthy photos through spirit photography again. ...But that would wait after she sorted through all the lovely photos taken that day.