Chapter 13

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Twenty-three is truly the age of growing up—this sentence was on Duan Qingshen’s mind but he held back from saying it aloud, instead conveying it through his gaze. Liang Yuanxing calmly met his eyes for a moment.

The night scene shoot took place near the office building. The building was designed with a curved facade, and when lit up at night, it looked much more beautiful than during the day, with rings of lights spiraling upwards.

Liang Yuanxing held the light to assist Duan Qingshen with the lighting. The office building was quite busy at night; whenever people passed by, they had to pause briefly.

“It’s pretty cold, isn’t it?” Chi Shuanghai’s assistant brought over several hot drinks from a nearby café and first asked Liang Yuanxing, who was closest to her, “Little brother, do you want hot cocoa? Or hot black tea? Which do you prefer?”

Liang Yuanxing was very obedient: “I’ll have either, I’m not picky. Let everyone else take theirs first!”

“Haha, no worries! We all drink whatever; with such intense work, no one is controlling their sugar intake. Just drink what you like.”

Liang Yuanxing chose hot cocoa, and the group sat down at the outdoor tables by the café to rest for a while.

Chi Shuanghai sat opposite them, flipping through photos on his computer, while his assistant helped touch up his makeup.

“It’s so hot…” Liang Yuanxing whispered.

“Open the lid and let it cool down for a bit,” Duan Qingshen said, holding a cup of tea. Everyone opened the lids of their drinks to let the autumn breeze of Beijing cool them.

“Look,” Liang Yuanxing lifted the lid of his hot cocoa, revealing a chocolate piece shaped like a panda’s head floating on top. The white parts were white chocolate—so cute.

Duan Qingshen leaned over to look: “Cute.”

Liang Yuanxing reached over to grab Duan Qingshen’s camera, wanting to take a photo. His hand almost touched it before he noticed that Duan Qingshen had swapped to a telephoto lens.

“So, if I only have a telephoto lens but can’t step back from the subject, what should I do?”

“Use your phone to take the photo.”

“Oh—”

Liang Yuanxing snapped two pictures with his phone, seeing the chocolate was about to melt. Duan Qingshen was about to ask the café staff for a small fork to scoop it out, but in the next moment, Liang’s assistant just stirred it into the drink with a straw.

“…I was just about to ask for a spoon or fork.”

“It all ends up in your stomach anyway,” Liang Yuanxing laughed.

Indeed.

After a short break, they resumed work. When they first sat down to drink, Duan Qingshen scouted several shooting positions. He stood up and removed his jacket; Liang Yuanxing almost mirrored the motion, and their eyes met briefly.

“This is too hot, I’ll drink mine after it cools,” Liang Yuanxing said.

“I drank mine hot too.”

Duan Qingshen instructed Chi Shuanghai to sit still here and then briefly explained the lighting setup to Liang Yuanxing.

Then Duan Qingshen took the camera and stepped into the café, shooting through the floor-to-ceiling glass.

The artificial lighting among the office building clusters was carefully designed: the light strips on the corridor’s outer walls, street lamps on the ground, and the signs of the shops on the first and second floors. Though the lighting was mixed, it was concentrated and balanced, allowing control through shutter speed.

He wanted some cute little stickers on the café glass to contrast and echo the night scene of the office building. When Duan Qingshen focused, he unwittingly focused on Liang Yuanxing.

In the viewfinder, the young man wore a simple, thin, long-sleeved T-shirt in a lead-gray color with a cartoon print. He held the fill light with both hands; the light source wasn’t directed at him, so from Duan Qingshen’s perspective, he was looking toward where the light was cast. He was very focused, only caring about the fill light in his hands, oblivious to everything else around him.

In a split second of distraction, Duan Qingshen pressed the shutter.

But he quickly regained composure, refocused on Chi Shuanghai, and continued working.

“Wow…” Chi Shuanghai’s assistant was flipping through the day’s shots on the computer, “Boss Duan, you really know how to shoot.”

Soft music from a classic Hong Kong film played quietly in the studio, with the night view of Beijing’s second ring road outside the window. Hearing the praise for their boss’s photography, Liang Yuanxing turned his head. There were quite a few people in the studio, as they were preparing winter collections, so he chuckled quietly and went back to watching the traffic below through the window.

Duan Qingshen lingered by the assistant who was reviewing the photos, waiting for her to reach the shots of Liang Yuanxing—

“This one is out of focus,” Duan Qingshen pretended to just notice and walked over to her seat, “Sorry about that.”

“Oh!” The assistant nodded, “No problem, you took great shots of the little brother too!”

The photo was taken with a slow shutter, dragging the light trails.

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“Could you please send me this one…”

Before Duan Qingshen finished, the assistant interrupted, “I’ll email it to you, Boss Duan. The address on our contract is fine, right?”

“That’s perfect, thank you. Sorry for the trouble.”

Duan Qingshen breathed a sigh of relief.

The studio on this floor was quite spacious; five or six people were bustling about in the central hall. It was almost nine at night, but no one was showing signs of wrapping up.

“Oh, Boss Chi.” Liang Yuanxing saw Chi Shuanghai approaching from the window reflection. He turned sideways, feeling a bit awkward, nervously searching for something to say, “You guys… seem pretty busy.”

“Yes, since we’re launching the winter collection, we’ve been working overtime lately. So Yu Jie couldn’t even make it to the wedding,” Chi Shuanghai casually tucked his loose hair behind his ear and strolled over to him.

This gesture made Liang Yuanxing somewhat uneasy; there had been some awkward moments during the afternoon shoot, and he tended to keep to himself, suspecting that Boss Chi might not like him very much.

So Liang Yuanxing just stood there, holding his phone. Earlier, he wanted to take a nighttime photo of the street below. Because the studio’s lighting was strong, he had to press the lens against the glass to avoid reflections, but with the double-layered glass installed here, there was still some distance and glare.

“Taking night photos?” Chi Shuanghai asked again.

Liang Yuanxing nodded, trying to look obedient and non-threatening. Chi Shuanghai caught on, smiled, and walked to the other side of Liang Yuanxing where there was a curtain—not a window curtain but likely a backdrop curtain—about a meter from the window.

Duan Qingshen watched as Chi Shuanghai pulled the curtain across, cutting off Liang Yuanxing from his view.

The curtain stretched from one wall to the other. Liang Yuanxing blinked in surprise. Chi Shuanghai said, “Shoot here; no more reflections.”

“Th-thank you, Boss Chi…”

Liang Yuanxing was utterly puzzled by the sudden change in Boss Chi’s attitude but very awkwardly took out his phone and snapped a couple of quick photos, then nodded and said, “Thanks.”

At this moment, Chi Shuanghai cleared his throat and said, “Hey, sorry for being harsh this afternoon.”

“No, no, Boss Chi,” Liang Yuanxing replied, “I was the one who was rude first.”

Chi Shuanghai said nothing more, folded his arms naturally across his chest, and looked down. After a while, he also took out his phone and snapped a photo downward.

Liang Yuanxing didn’t understand; since he worked here, he should see this every night. Naturally, he didn’t ask, not wanting to risk touching on any sensitive topics.

They stood about two steps apart, awkwardly for a moment. Then the curtain behind them was pulled aside from the wall’s edge. Duan Qingshen looked over: “I thought you were lost.”

“No way.” Liang Yuanxing breathed easier and walked toward him. “Look, I took photos.”

Duan Qingshen leaned over to see his phone and quickly glanced toward Chi Shuanghai on the other side.

“Nice shots.”

“Can we go now?” Liang Yuanxing moved closer, lowering his voice, “I kind of want to lie down—not sleepy, just don’t want to stay upright.”

Duan Qingshen chuckled, “I was just about to call you.”

“Ah, thank goodness.”

Duan Qingshen went over to greet Chi Shuanghai, then as he stepped through the curtain, he noticed Liang’s assistant already dressed, packing up, even holding his coat—everything ready, watching him.

“Um…” On the ride back to the hotel, sitting in the back of the taxi, Duan Qingshen couldn’t help but ask, “What did Boss Chi say to you?”

“Hm? Oh, nothing much. He just apologized to me, but it made me a bit uneasy.”

Duan Qingshen looked at him, but Liang Yuanxing wasn’t looking back, instead staring out the window on his side.

He didn’t know what Liang Yuanxing was thinking and didn’t dare ask—it would be too strange. But one thing Duan Qingshen was certain of: despite Liang Yuanxing’s youth and perhaps limited experience, he possessed a strong and steadfast sense of conviction.

Something Duan Qingshen himself had never understood in his thirty years.

He kept staring at the back of Liang Yuanxing’s head until he suddenly realized Liang was no longer looking out the window but meeting his gaze.

“?”

Liang Yuanxing sent a questioning look.

“…” Duan Qingshen snapped back to attention.

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If turning thirty brought Duan Qingshen any advantage, it was probably his calmness and fearless composure. He asked steadily, “Do you want something to eat? If we order delivery now, it’ll probably arrive just as we get to the hotel.”

“Oh—?” Liang Yuanxing’s eyes brightened.

He had asked the right question; Duan Qingshen felt a small thrill and pulled out his phone to open the delivery app.

The next day’s shoot was outdoors.

They started shooting at 12:30 p.m., when there were relatively fewer people outside.

“Boss Chi, stop here for a moment,” Duan Qingshen called to the group ahead. Shooting at noon was not only because there were fewer people but also due to the strong contrast in lighting.

Chi Shuanghai and his group stopped and turned around. They thought Duan Qingshen wanted a candid shot, so the assistant closest to Chi stepped aside a couple of steps.

Duan Qingshen habitually wrapped the camera strap twice around his wrist and said, “Yingying, take him to the left wall and keep his waist down in the shadow.”

“Got it.” Liang Yuanxing pulled out a diffuser panel from his bag. “What kind of light do you want?”

“Options?” Duan Qingshen laughed, “Such good treatment.”

“Of course. Want something in the foreground? I can ask the bookstore nearby if we can borrow the flower pot at their door.”

Duan Qingshen smiled wryly, “No, no need.”

He glanced at the flower pot again.

Liang Yuanxing nodded in understanding: “Let’s shoot this one first. I’ll ask afterward.”

Liang Yuanxing guided Chi Shuanghai to the position Duan Qingshen wanted, then raised the diffuser to prevent overexposure on his upper body. He roughly guessed Duan Qingshen’s intention—to have the subject emerge from the shadows.

Liang Yuanxing had only taken some online photography classes and learned editing then. Back then, big data pushed all kinds of photography content to him, good and bad. Some insisted, “Photos that need post-processing are trash,” claiming true photography should be straight out of the camera, ready to publish.

Those confident declarations made a strong impression on Liang Yuanxing, who was still in university at the time and might have been fooled if not for formal photography lessons.

He had once been curious how much Duan Qingshen edited his photos. There were rumors that landscape photographers edited as heavily as travel bloggers, even turning yellows into pinks—and fiercely defended their work.

But in the end, Liang Yuanxing agreed with this: photographic technique is the baseline; aesthetic judgment is the upper limit.

Finally, the commercial shoot wrapped up.

“This one deliberately has slight overexposure on the face,” Duan Qingshen explained to Chi Shuanghai’s assistant, “If you’re not happy, we can adjust the tones in post.”

“Okay, looks great.”

Music played continuously in the studio. Duan Qingshen was reviewing photos with the assistant while Liang Yuanxing hummed softly to the background music, finding a spot out of the way to watch everyone work.

After all the photos were imported, their work in Beijing was done. Chi Shuanghai suddenly approached and asked, “Boss Duan, how should we credit these photos? Use your real name?”

Chi Shuanghai had previously asked Jiang Yu if this photographer had a studio, and she said no, so he asked about the credit.

Duan Qingshen paused packing up his gear; Liang Yuanxing, helping nearby, also stopped and looked at him.

“Let’s not credit them,” Duan Qingshen said. “I don’t mind.”

For the same reason as before, he wasn’t a professional portrait photographer. He felt no need to formally credit himself.

“Why not make up a studio name then?” Chi Shuanghai suggested. “Otherwise, it looks like I did all the shooting myself, and that’s unfair.”

Duan Qingshen smiled, about to refuse outright, but then thought: Liang Yuanxing had been busy helping all along; if they credit, he should be included.

So he nodded, saying, “Okay.”

He turned to look at Liang Yuanxing.

Liang Yuanxing overheard their conversation and immediately said, “Qingshanxing.”

“Alright.” Chi Shuanghai patted his assistant’s shoulder, “Make a note: Qingshanxing Photography Studio.”