Flash Effects
Summary: Before classes start for Fuji, Atobe, and Shiraishi, Fuji finds out something no one can predict. Then, all kinds of problems start popping up.
Warnings: Shounen-ai
Pairings: Shiraishi x Fuji, Tezuka x Atobe, Chitose x Yukimura
Disclaimer: Prince of Tennis is not mine.
This part is a lot less dramatic, much to you guys' pleasure, or to your...um...agony? It's basically about finishing the project. But I personally like this chapter, because this was the time to show what I know about art and Photoshop. This chapter was SO fun to write! So please read, review, and enjoy!
Chapter 7:
How are we going to make up for lost time? The sentence rang through Atobe's ears over and over. They, meaning Fuji, Shiraishi, and Atobe were currently sitting in Shiraishi's room, thinking over how to get the project done.
Atobe looked over at Fuji. He was talking animatedly to Shiraishi. He still hasn't taken off his mask yet, Atobe thought. He still feels something in his heart, telling him to worry about other people over himself. It will always be there. There is no way of getting rid of it, after this long of a time. Fuji will always wear a mask, whatever people tell him. He will never feel secure.
Atobe looked down. Was it his entire fault? Was he the one to blame for Fuji's current condition? If a normal person looked at Fuji, they would probably be asking, 'What condition?' But if anyone knew Fuji at all, they would know that Fuji wore a mask always. Even when he was truly happy, he didn't let his mask fall entirely.
If he hadn't broken Fuji and Tezuka's relationship, would Fuji still wear this mask? Or did he have it before he started dating Tezuka? They got together in their second year at Seigaku; that much Atobe knew. If Fuji had developed it before moving to Seishun…Atobe felt bad for the younger Fuji. A mask, so that no one could tell what you were feeling, at that young of an age. To be a child is to run around with no worries except for if your mother gave you enough money to buy ice cream. Why would Fuji be worried about if people knew what he was feeling at that young of an age?
But there was also another alternative? What if Fuji had developed the mask when he was dating Tezuka? Would Fuji be worried about Tezuka knowing what he was feeling? Atobe thought about it for a moment. He didn't think Fuji was the type to easily trust people. But that was also part of the mask. Atobe couldn't imagine Fuji without his mask. A free, truly expressive Fuji wasn't the Fuji that he knew. It wasn't the right Fuji.
Maybe that was something that was just meant to be. It was something that Atobe would never know, anyway.
"Ah, I thought of it!" Fuji said suddenly, pulling Atobe from his trance. "Atobe, you have to hear about this." He smiled at Atobe, who smiled back. He didn't know at first why he smiled back. Maybe because smiles were contagious. Especially Fuji's smiles. Smiles that looked so pure and true.
He also smiled because he was grateful. He was grateful that Fuji forgave him and that he could so easily smile at him that way. Fuji was strong, Atobe thought, and he was such a caring person, if you didn't get on his bad side. Fuji's personality just attracted people to him, and he could so easily forgive, but he couldn't forget. Inside, he still remembered all the things that happened, but he just let it go for now, knowing that thinking about it won't help at all. That was what strong truly was, Atobe thought.
Fuji turned to Shiraishi. "Kuranosuke, remember the first day of school when you found me on the balcony in the rain?" Shiraishi nodded. "Atobe, you were at a class or something. But anyway, I had brought my camera out. I don't know what was controlling me, since I know that I wasn't controlling myself then. That time, I had taken a great picture of the moon. It was perfectly in focus, and it was the perfect brightness and such. We could use that as a basis for our project."
"Yeah, that's a good idea. Syusuke," Shiraishi said.
"I have my camera right here," Fuji said and smiled. He moved his hand to his camera, which was by his side.
"That's my wonderfully prepared Syusuke," Shiraishi said. "Let's see that picture."
Fuji turned on his camera and turned the little knob on the top to the little play icon. The two other boys crowded around Fuji. The first picture was the picture they were looking for, of course, since with all the drama, Fuji hadn't used his camera much at all.
Atobe looked at the picture and gasped. It was beautiful. It was absolutely stunning, much like Fuji himself. "It's great. I love it. It's so perfect. I can't believe you took that, Fuji. It's like a professional photograph," Atobe said.
"Thanks! Though I can't really claim that I took it. I didn't really know what I was doing then," Fuji replied.
"Well, it had to be something in you that made you take it," Shiraishi said.
"What are we going to do about the mythical creature part, though?" Atobe asked.
"Well, I just said this would be a basis. I don't really know what we're going to do for that part," Fuji said. "But I do know that teachers are suck-ups to morals and themes. If you include a moral to your story, art piece, etc, teachers will love it. Especially morals that will teach you something in life."
"Wow, you know a lot about this, Fuji," Atobe said.
"Well, I did take art classes and photography classes. When the teachers assigned projects, I got a better grade if my project had a moral to it than if it was just random or if it had a dark theme."
"You, a dark theme? You don't seem like the type," Atobe said.
"Yeah, that brings me to another point. If you create a piece that reflects your own nature and your own thoughts and personality, the teachers and professors seem to like that, too."
"Let's brainstorm," Shiraishi suggested. "When I say 'moon', what's the first thing that you two think of?"
"Sun," Atobe said.
"Star," Fuji said.
"Well, they're pretty much the same thing in a scientific sense, but not in an artistic sense, unless they're the subject of your image," Shiraishi said. "What is the sun and stars made of?"
"Fire," both boys said at the same time.
"Right," Shiraishi said. "When I say 'fire', what mythical creature do you think of first?"
"Dragon," Atobe said simply.
"Phoenix," Fuji said.
"Oooh, phoenix, that's a good one," Shiraishi said.
"I agree," Atobe said. "Dragons are kind of cliché, and they don't really represent a moral, nor do they represent either of us. Phoenixes, on the other hand, can symbolize many morals and themes, and I think that all three of us have a phoenix in us. Especially Fuji, with his 'Phoenix Return'."
Fuji laughed. "I think that was the reason I thought of phoenix first."
"Okay then, it's decided. It's going to be a phoenix. What are we going to do with the moral part?"
"Well, you know how the moon reflects light from the sun?" Atobe said.
"Yeah," both Fuji and Shiraishi said, giving him the I-don't-know-what-you're-getting-at-but-I'm-going-to-say-yes-anyway look.
"Well, what would happen if there were no sun?"
"We wouldn't be able to see the moon," Fuji said.
"Exactly. So the theme I'm suggesting is that you can't have the moon without the sun, like how you can't have yin without yang, and visa-versa."
"That's a pretty good theme you have going there, Atobe," Fuji said.
"So we can have the moon in the background, with a phoenix flying around it, and the only part of the moon that's illuminated is the part that is near the phoenix. And maybe we could add some stars in the background for a nice effect," Shiraishi said.
"That's a good idea for an image," Fuji said. "You guys can create a phoenix, right?"
Atobe and Shiraishi looked at each other. "You think we can do it from scratch?" Shiraishi said.
"Wait, my professor said that if you wanted to do a unicorn, you could take a picture of a horse and edit the horn in or something," Atobe said.
"So maybe you could take a picture of something like a peregrine falcon and edit the flames in," Fuji said.
"Yeah, that's pretty good, Syusuke. I thought you said you didn't know anything about computer editing," Shiraishi said.
Fuji shrugged. "I picked up some of it from my time here."
"We could change the hue and saturation to make it orange-ish, too," Atobe said.
"Of course," Shiraishi said. "We can't have a brown phoenix."
"So where are we going to get a picture of the falcon? We can't look up one online, since we have to do this completely by ourselves. This isn't for fun, anyway," Atobe said.
"I think I might have a picture of one in my camera," Fuji said.
"Where do you get all theses pictures?" Shiraishi said. "It's like you randomly snap pictures of random stuff."
"That's what photographers do. And sometimes, some of their pictures might prove useful later. This one in particular," Fuji flipped through the pictures on his camera, "was taken when I was outside a couple weeks ago. I saw this person on a hill hawking. I asked if I could take pictures of his falcon, since I'm a photographer, and he said I could. So of course, I did, and to thank him, I gave him prints of the pictures. He was really impressed." Fuji smiled. "Here are the close-ups."
Again, the two other boys crowded around Fuji to get a look. "Wow, those are amazing. I'd be impressed, too, if I was that man, since you're only a college student," Shiraishi said. "I really like that one, since it looks like it is flying around something with its wings fully spread out."
"If we could edit that picture into the moon picture and change the lighting a bit so that it's coming out from the phoenix to the moon, it would be perfect," Atobe said. "And that's easy enough to accomplish. I say the most tedious thing about this project is cutting out the falcon from the rest of the sky."
"We could just either use the magic want tool or select the blue sky and set the layer fill style to multiply," Shiraishi said. "And of course, clean it up a little. At least there aren't any clouds."
"Okay, now I don't know what you guys are talking about," Fuji said.
"We'll take care of the editing part. You can rest, since you've already done the photography part," Shiraishi said.
"Yeah, and you didn't even have to do any work today except for helping up brainstorm," Atobe said.
"See, this is the good thing about being a photographer. If in need, just search through your previous images," Fuji said and smiled. "But I couldn't go to sleep now. It's only 8:00."
----------------------------------------
"How does it look?" Shiraishi said. Fuji got up from the bed and put down his book. He walked over to the screen where both Shiraishi and Atobe sat. "We just finished the phoenix, and we're going to do the rest tomorrow."
Fuji looked at it, and he almost didn't recognize it as a peregrine falcon anymore. It looked like it was a real phoenix, if phoenixes existed in real life. The flames were flaring out of the phoenix, but not so that it looked messy and unorganized. It looked perfectly clean, and the phoenix itself was stunning. The color of the feathers had been changed, and the shadows and highlights were more drastic. The lighting looked perfect. Everything looked perfect.
"Oops," Shiraishi said. He did something quick with the keyboard and his tablet and said, "There. Now it's really done."
"What did you do?" Fuji asked. "I can't tell the difference."
"Trust me, you would've if it had been on the dark background," Shiraishi said. "There was this little flame sticking out at a random place. The checkered background kind of camouflages it."
"Yeah, don't you hate that?" Atobe asked.
"Yeah. Sometimes I just add a new layout under the rest of them just to see it on a dark background to see if you colored outside the lines or something."
"Colored outside the lines?" Fuji asked.
"Yeah, it's a term I use for the little mistakes that you can't tell by just looking at it normally."
"Well, maybe we all should get to sleep. We do have classes tomorrow, anyway," Fuji suggested.
"Yeah, that's a good idea," Atobe said. "You guys have to wake up earlier than me. I'll be heading back. Are we going to meet here at the same time tomorrow?"
"Yep," both Fuji and Shiraishi said.
----------------------------------------
Fuji woke up to sounds in the bathroom. Not again, he thought, but he knew it was just Shiraishi taking a shower like he always did in the morning. It was good that he took his showers in the morning, because Fuji took his at night and they never fought for the bathroom. Fuji sat up and looked out the window. There was a hazy light outside. The sun had already risen, but it was overcast. It made Fuji feel tired, but he knew that he would have to get up today.
He got up and walked over to his own room quietly, careful not to wake anyone he didn't need to. He opened the closet doors and picked out a set of clothes for the day. That night, they would finish the project and turn in a beautiful completed masterpiece. Completed in half the time, too, Fuji thought. He wondered how much better it would've looked if they hadn't wasted half of that time. But he knew it was one of those things he couldn't do anything about, so he just left it.
By the time he got back to Shiraishi's room, Shiraishi had changed and was sitting on the bed, reading the book that Fuji had been reading the day before.
"You read some pretty challenging English books," Shiraishi commented.
Fuji smiled. "I like reading English. Reading Japanese gets boring after a while. English is a challenging language in itself."
"I don't understand what half of these words mean. But I heard it was a good book to read, if you wanted a challenge. 'The Scarlet Letter'," Shiraishi read the title aloud.
"I'm still in the introduction. It's about thirty pages long, compared to the rest of the book, which is only around 180 pages. I can read around a page for every couple of minutes. This book requires a lot of concentration. I've been reading a lot of long English books lately, and I decided to take a break from long ones. This is hardly a break. I think it would take me just as long for me to read this as it would to read 'Wuthering Heights', which is much longer."
"I see what you mean," Shiraishi said. "C'mon. Let's go eat breakfast, and then we'll head to our morning classes." He walked out of the door and Fuji tagged along.
Did you like it? Well, more like did you get it? xD;; Don't worry, you don't have to get it to like it. Please review!