This is another story written to a 'theme'. This was inspired by the word "photograph". I'm really not sure about the title, so that might change. I'm very, very open to suggestions. Really, I just didn't want to call it Picture Perfect and have done, because that's too cliche and typical. So I ended up with something that didn't quite make sense. (Formatting fixed. Ugh.)
There is a picture in his father's study, of a young woman and a young man. They are wearing traditional Japanese clothes: a yukata and kimono; the woman is holding a paper umbrella in one delicate hand.
His arm is around her waist; he's pressing a kiss to her cheek. They look so happy, and when Isumi was little he thought that it was just the way love should be.
Now those people, back then so much in love, are nearly unrecognizable, as his worn-out and strictly disapproving parents.
Isumi wonders if they remember what it was like to hold each other, to kiss, and know that they had the world at their fingertips. If they do, he doesn't know how they can want to deny him that. It changes faces over the decades, from framed pictures with well-groomed, proper young men and women stealing chaste and blushing kisses, to two boys who used to be 'just friends' (didn't everyone?) cuddling, immortalized in two-by-two mall photos kept hidden in a wallet, but love is still beautiful, agonizing, glorious, world-shaking love. And even if they think he shouldn't be, Isumi is in love.
And he is happy.
He may not ever have a wedding ceremony or his parents' approval or photos he can hang on his wall and not expect people to stare and become awkward, but he has love. And he has Waya. And he thinks that in the unprofessional snapshot into which a thumb (Hikaru's) intrudes, and the brown-haired boy's face is blurred by motion as he leans into his darker companion's (also blurry) embrace, love has never looked more beautiful.