Japan Trip Epilogue
Film student!Ted Nivison x Male Photography student!Reader Word Count: 4494 Warnings: Vaping/ Juul mentioned. Anxieties about feelings but that’s really all. Also lightly edited so you can’t sue meee Description: A progression of yours and Ted’s relationship, forming when the two of you grow close during an abroad trip to Japan. Author’s Note: Inspired by a comment made on an edit of college Ted. It took awhile for me to finally get it how it felt right, and I hope you all enjoy.
Ted stares at you from across the room, not looking away whenever you catch his glance. He intensely stares back, his eyes locked on you every second they can be. You do what you can to focus on the conversation happening in the circle of friends you stood with, but can’t catch on to what’s being talked about, your focus on the male across the room.
You had talked to Ted before, but you never seeked him out. The two of you take the same journalism class, and had started talking more after silently sitting beside each other for the first few days of studying abroad. He’s funny, and there’s something about him that keeps you wanting him around. Something about the way he stares at you from across the party makes it feel like he feels similar, like something is pulling the two of you towards one another.
Before anyone in your group can notice how checked out of the situation you are, you quickly lean into the friend closest to you, tapping her shoulder to get her attention. “I’ll be back,” you say quietly, not waiting for a response before you slip away from the group. The circle closes the gap you leave, continuing to talk as you walk towards him.
Without saying a word, you pass him. He follows behind you almost immediately, out of the door and into the garage. It’s not where you meant to go, but it was quiet, and empty. You turn to acknowledge him, and he’s so close that your abrupt turn nearly makes the two of you collide. Ted stops close, and when you look up at him, you can almost feel his breath from how close he is, the smell of mint from the gum he chewed lazily tickling your senses.
“What’s out here?” he asks, breaking the silence, only stepping back half a step and looking around the empty garage. Honestly, you were surprised the garage hadn’t been taken over by couples trying to ‘get a room.’
“Nothing,” you reply. “Just needed to get some air.”
“Yeah, a lot of people in there,” he replies. He motions to your camera. “Get any good shots?”
You look down at the camera, then back to Ted, opening your mouth to answer. “Yeah, some.” He looks around the random garage, nodding. He finds a stack of Home Depot buckets, and you watch silently as he slides his silver Juul between his lips. Using both hands, he separates two buckets from the stack, separating them from each other and laying them both upside down on the garage floor. He sits down on one, ripping his Juul as he pats the bucket beside him.
“Let me see,” he says, a white cloud of smoke enveloping him for a moment, offering the Juul to you. You take it, taking your own puff of the cucumber pod as you sit on the other bucket.
You power on the small digital camera, loading the gallery. You tilt the screen and lean in towards Ted to show him. The pictures are candids of your friends, and other party goers, starting from the pregame in someone’s campus apartment, all the way to about an hour before this. When you get to the end of the day’s pictures, you look up at Ted for a reaction.
“Those are amazing,” he says. “Even before editing those are like, really awesome pictures.”
“There was another one I wanted to get but I didn’t want to creep you out,” you begin, a previous photo idea springing back to your memory. You didn’t want to mention it, but the words bubble out before you can stop them. “When you were staring at me through the crowd, I thought it would make a cool shot to get you like that.”
Ted stands up immediately. “Let’s do it,” he says, heading towards the door. Shocked, you stand and follow.
“Really?” You follow him into the house. Ted nods, silently walking into the house and towards where he stood before. He greets people as he passes, and he puts himself right into the spot where he had stood earlier.
You walk towards where your group once stood, now gone, and turn back towards Ted. He smiles at you from across the room as you hold up your camera. You adjust a few settings, pointing the camera at him, and motioning for him to not smile. “Poker face,” you mouth to him, and his smile drops.
He stands how he did earlier, same nonchalant expression as he stares you down through the crowd of people. Goosebumps rush over your skin as you stare back at him through the viewfinder. You hold the shutter button down, a burst of pictures taken in a few seconds. As you go to take more, he smiles, lifting his hand up to wave at you. A smile spreads across your lips as you continue to take pictures. Once done, he quickly walks over towards you.
“Lemme see, I wanna see,” excitement is thick in his tone. You smile and open the gallery, flipping through the shots. They had turned out exactly how you wanted, and you blushed slightly, Ted over your shoulder watching the sequence of pictures.
“Thank you, that was actually pretty cool,” you reply. “It turned out just how I imagined.”
He smiles, his own cheeks a slight tint of pink. “Anytime, really.”
You nod, looking around the party. Should you find your friends? Did he have friends he needed to find? The music seemed louder than before, and you were easily getting overwhelmed with the crowd.
“You wanna get out of here?” Ted nearly shouts into your ear as he leans into you. You can smell the cologne on his collar and the breath of his last vape hit. “I could go for some ramen right now.”
You nod, smiling as you begin to follow him out of the party. Before you forget, you quickly text your roommate and closest friend in the group, letting him know that you would be home late and were leaving the party with Ted. Your roommate’s response nearly stops you in your tracks.
Roommate: Ted? That dude from Journalism that you can’t shut up about? Fuck yea dude, have fun ;)
Had you really talked about Ted that much to your roommate? You didn’t think the connection had run that deep, not enough that you’d bring him up to your roommate. You shake your head, trying to push out the thoughts as you follow Ted out of the party house.
The two of you walk around a drunk college student, who lays in the yard, wailing about a girl, an empty and half crushed red solo cup in his hand as he rolls around the grass. Ted and you exchanged glances before walking faster, moving down the street quickly to escape the cries of the heartbroken drunk.
The two of you walk down the street, heading out of the neighborhood and towards the main road and retail strip in the small town outside of Tokyo. Every place you went to amazed you, everywhere your abroad program had taken you was beautiful, and you even debated staying after the program had ended.
It doesn’t take very long for Ted and you to find a ramen spot, sit, and order. While you wait, Ted turns to you. “Sorry, by the way,” he starts. When you look at him confused, he continues. “I didn’t mean to keep staring at you at the party.”
“It’s okay,” you look down at the table, your face flushing again as you remembered how he looked at you. “Why were you staring at me though?”
He hesitates, and when you look up at him, his own face is flushed. “I don’t know, I just couldn’t help myself. Something just keeps pulling me towards you, I couldn’t look away.” He looks embarrassed, and shakes his head as he looks away. “It’s weird, I’ve never had this kind of like, gravitational pull towards someone.”
Before you can think of what to say, an older Japanese woman comes out from the kitchen, walking towards the table and setting down the two big bowls of ramen. The two of you say your thanks, making the woman smile as you say it in Japanese. She smiles and says something neither of you understand before she walks away.
“This amount of broth could drown someone, oh my god,” Ted’s eyes are wide as he stares down at his pork ramen bowl.
“That’s the way to go,” you begin, grabbing your chopsticks and digging into your own bowl. “I’d love to drown in ramen broth.” You take the first bite of noodles, using the renge to get a spoonful of broth. “If you could pick any liquid to swim in, what would you pick?” The hypothetical escapes your lips before you can consider how weird the question might be.
Ted thinks seriously for a moment, taking a few bites of his ramen. “Hmm,” he sips some of his broth. “I’d pick Sprite, I think. I feel like the bubbles would feel funny.”
You nod, agreeing. The two of you fall into a comfortable silence as you eat. Neither of you feel the need to fill the warm silence with chatter, the natural ambiance in the restaurant and the closeness between you enough.
Over the next few weeks of the program, that closeness grew. Journalism had become your favorite class, and he had become your favorite person. It became a regular thing to let your separate groups drag you along to parties, and had made a game out of finding each other and ditching the scene for ramen.
The two of you had become regulars at the ramen place, making it the main hangout. Homework, hypothetical questions, and your projects were the main topics of discussion, but nothing was off the table. You and Ted could talk about anything, and talked about everything.
Everything but labels. The two of you danced around the idea of furthering the relationship. It was obvious, on both sides, that the feelings you two hid from each other, about each other, were actually mutual. However, neither of you would make any moves to tell each other. The two of you continued through the weeks, tension growing as the two of you dropped vague hints towards each other.
Ted got touchy. Not in a weird way, but in a sweet, kind, welcoming way. His hand would linger a moment too long on your shoulder if he was trying to not lose you in a party crowd. After a few ramen trips, he’d began to hug you before you two split for the night, your dorm rooms on opposite sides of the dorm hall.
You welcomed all of it, falling harder. Ted had become your muse, and it made you blush every time you had to transfer photos to your backup drive and off your cameras. He was everywhere. One night, you stayed up and counted just how many pictures there were of him, making a folder of the hundreds of pictures.
Ted had begun to grow his own collection of you moments in his own gallery. Bloopers from videos you had helped him in, little daily moments. He had begun a habit of recording when greeting you, capturing your smile and immediate mood boost when you see him. His mind wandered to how things could be, and the tensions began. Ted wanted to wait for the right moment to confess how he felt, but as the end of the semester got closer, he was afraid of how it would end. What if you didn’t really feel the same, and deep down you were only ever friends, and only meant to be friends? His chest ached as the days continued, waiting for the moment to finally tell you how he felt.
It took the final two days of the trip to Japan for him to finally say something. Unsure of how to process the emotions, he turned to his folder of you. At first, he felt stupid, sitting in his dorm, alone as his roommate was out partying, practicing his lines to a picture of you, smiling wide at the most recent greeting he had recorded. When the words wouldn’t come out clear or he would cut himself off from uncertainty, he grew more frustrated. He hated how hard it was to just do something, and hated the anxiety that ate away at him whenever it happened.
Ted’s phone pings, and excited, he checks to see if it’s a message from you. Instead, it’s a Canva notification, reminding him of an assignment for film class that was due tonight. Being so caught up in his crush on you, he hadn’t even begun editing the project. Stressed, he leans back in the chair, staring at the paused video of you, his phone open to the Canva page for the assignment.
Something clicks in his head as he reads the prompt again.
There are two options for this project: A short film of a day in your life as an abroad student, or a documentary style film about your overall trip to Japan.
As if hit by a rush of adrenaline, Ted opens Adobe, switching his phone over to Spotify and hitting shuffle on an album that you had just recommended to him the other day. Blue Neighborhood provides the soundtrack to his work, the album repeats twice before he’s interrupted by his roommate coming home. Ted slides his headphones on, continuing to work until the light outside the window begins to come in.
When he walks into journalism, Ted looks exhausted. You stare at him in shock, waiting until he sits before you react verbally.
“Hey,” you greet slowly. He slumps dramatically against your shoulder. “Are you okay?”
He yawns, his jaw moving against your shoulder. “I didn’t sleep last night,” he states through the yawn. “At all.”
You look at what you can see of him as he settles into your shoulder. “No sleep at all?”
“I was working on a project, I was at my desk all night,” he says. “I didn’t even lay down.”
He sits up, taking his laptop out. You watch as he logs in, and a folder open in the sea of all of his tabs catches your eye. It’s simply titled with your name, and before you can look closer, Ted closes the tab, opening his notes for the class, his face flushing at the slip up. He couldn’t believe he had left that tab open. The idea that you could have seen his folder of you makes his stomach churn. You try to focus on your own computer as class begins, the folder in the back of your mind, soaked in anxiety. The folder sits in Ted’s mind similarly, the disconnect between the two of you widening, relief from the tension locked behind a confession. A release felt closer than it had ever been, like a snap could come at any time.
When class ends, you gather your things and stand, following Ted silently from the classroom. He gives you his normal parting hug, but something feels off. Pretending all is well, you two exchange smiles before you walk away from each other, heading to your other classes.
The next time that you see each other, it’s at the same tree in the front of your dormitory, after your classes end for the day. He smiles at you, falling into step at your side, taking a sip of a Sugar Free Redbull. “How many of those did you need to get through today?” You ask, slightly teasing him.
“Two,” he replies proudly, the puffiness on his eyes less dark, but still more prominent than normal. “I’m hoping this ramen fixes me.”
“The all holy ramen that fixes all.” The two of you turn the corner, getting closer to the shop. The air is cool, a breeze brushing through Ted’s hair. The familiar smell of broth draws you closer and closer, until Ted pulls open and holds the door for you.
You wave sweetly to the lady behind the counter. A small pit of sadness washes over you, overpowering your anxiety of growing feelings. You were unsure of where you would go for such a good, big cheap bowl of ramen like this in Ithaca. The other realization that you feared more, was how your routine with Ted would change once you left Japan.
“Are you okay?” Ted asks you, bringing you back to the moment. The two of you slide into opposite sides of your normal booth, and the Ramen Lady comes by the table, saying hi and something else in Japanese as she grins widely at the two of you. One word slips through, making your face flush. Boyfriends.You pay closer attention, working overtime to translate the Japanese into a message you can comprehend. She gives you a quick and comforting pat on the shoulder before she walks away.
“Did you understand her this time?” Ted asks, his own face flushing. “Why are you blushing, what did she say?”
Your face flushes even harder. “All I understood was that she was sad our program was ending and that her favorite couple wouldn’t come to see her anymore.” The sentiment actually made you sad, you had grown to really enjoy the Ramen Lady, even if you could only pick up on bits and pieces of what she said.
“She called us a couple?” He asks, shocked, his face growing more red.
“Sort of, I heard her say boyfriends,” you say, shrinking into your seat slightly at his reaction. Ted sounded upset. A confession teetered at the edge of snapping, but if he was upset, you couldn’t confess to him. Ted mentally smacks himself, upset with himself for sounding mad with his shock. He wasn’t mad, he was just shocked at how obvious his feelings must be.
“You seem upset,” you say before he can say anything else that might hurt you. “Are you upset that she thinks that we’re dating?”
Ted shakes his head quickly, mind racing to explain his thoughts, which translate out in a mess of panicked words. “No, I’m not upset at all, the day has just been really long and I’m not firing on all cylinders like I want to be,” he takes a deep breath, then takes out his laptop. “Did you see something on my laptop earlier?”
The folder. He was inviting you to talk about it, and your stomach jolts as your own thoughts come out exactly as they did in your head. “I saw it, but I’m not upset or anything about it, I’m actually kinda curious what’s in there.” There’s a moment of tense silence as Ted opens his laptop, going to his file explorer, finding the file, and positioning to turn the screen towards you.
“Are you sure you aren’t going to think I’m a creep?” he asks, his voice slightly shaky, his knuckles white around his laptop.
You hold up a finger to pause the moment, silently taking your own laptop from your bag, and copying Ted’s movements until your own folder, titled simply Ted,is opened. “Only if you don’t think the same of me.”
You turn your laptop screen to him, setting it on the table in front of him. A fresh flush of red swirls around his face, and he hands his laptop over to you, focusing on your laptop screen. The tension seems to ease as the two of you silently scroll through each other's folders of each other. Memories in pictures and videos from each other’s point of view seeps into the air, twisting the air around the two of you into a new rush of excitement and adoration for each other. There wasn’t a need to say the words, the two of you knew exactly what it was between the two of you, seeing a new side of things through each other’s snapshots of life together. You see the way you light up towards him when you see him in every morning greeting, and how you start to glow when you finally spot him at a party.
Ted sees the way he smiles around you, finding clips from your point of view of him mid laughter, or candids he doesn’t remember seeing you take. There’s a new rush of emotions the two of you begin to feel, a mutual understanding of how each other feels.
“I’m glad that we did this before the trip ended, I was starting to get nervous about what it all meant these past few weeks,” The words spill out before you can stop them, the moment opening a floodgate of what you’d been keeping in the back of your mind forever. “I’m sorry, I just don’t want any of this to end, I’m scared of what’s next.”
Ted pulls back his laptop, pushing yours back towards you. “Why are you nervous for what’s next?” he asks softly, curious in his tone.
“I mean like, what was next for us,” you begin to explain, pulling your laptop back to him and closing it to put it away. “Ithaca doesn’t have ramen like this.”
He smiles, Ramen Lady turning the corner, bringing your regular orders to the table. Following behind her is another older gentleman, one you recognized once when Ramen Lady had brought him out from the kitchen. He holds a green disposable camera in his hand. She sets the bowls of ramen down, then turns towards the old man with the camera, motioning for Ted and you to pose.
You smile, leaning in slightly, Ted mirroring your action. Ramen Lady says something, and smiles widely, doing a peace sign in front of her eye. Ted stares at the camera, his smile big and his thumb up. You throw a peace sign up seconds before the camera flashes. Ramen Lady taps your phone on the table, and you understand, opening the camera and handing it to the older gentleman, who takes a picture of the three of you with your phone. You and Ted thank them, Ramen Lady leaning in and quickly hugging the two of you before letting you eat.
“I’m really going to miss her,” Ted says after a few bites of ramen. He sounds choked up. “But we’ll find something in Ithaca, maybe a cafe.”
“Yeah, and we’ll obviously have to come back to Japan,” you take a look around the restaurant before taking another sip of broth. “We need to come back here and see those two.”
Ted nods. “Absolutely.”
The bottom of the bowls feel sorrowful, knowing that, at least for a while, they were the last bowls of ramen from the shop that had become a second home. You snap a few pictures of the empty ramen bowls, and a quick picture of the two of you, sad at the table. You tidy up, gather your things, and give the Ramen Lady and her husband another sad goodbye before walking out. Ted waits for a moment before rushing onto the street, taking his camera out and starting to record the sign of the shop, along with the welcoming storefront. You stand by the door, waving to his camera with a melancholic smile.
“Any final words for our lovely ramen shop?” He asks, camera pointing to you.
You nod, looking into the camera. “I wish I could take the broth home on the plane with me,” you say simply. “Also, we’ll be back, promise.”
Ted changes his hold on the camera as he stands besides you, the two of you falling into your walking pace. “We’re 100% coming back.”
You smile at him, and he turns his attention from the camera, smiling back at you. “Already planning the trip in my head and we aren’t even leaving the country until tomorrow,” you reply.
Ted laughs, his arm brushing against yours. His hands brush obviously against yours. In a brave moment, you take his hand into yours, his fingers automatically and easily linking with yours. He turns the camera off, keeping a hold of it comfortably in his free hand, not letting your hand go as you continue towards the dorms.
Three Weeks Later
Ted stands besides you happily, his arm wrapped around you as he admires your spot in the back to school gallery. Both of you had done so well on your final projects from the abroad program, you had both been asked to share them in the back to school gallery. Ted’s short film about his day in the life of Japan was on loop in a small theatre setup along the gallery walk, and your photography final stood proudly on display besides others who had wowed the professors.
Ted’s video of Japan starts with a quick morning routine, continuing into his breakfast at the dorm cafe. It goes through his first class, then journalism, where he strings together a few of his favorite clips of you greeting him at the beginning of the class. He mentions in a voice over that his favorite part of the day included the time he spent with you; from the first greeting, to the late nights at the ramen shop, which had been mentioned as the film continued through his day. The video ends with a nightly routine and a brief, but mindful moment of reflection from voice over Ted, talking about his trip to Japan. Voice over Ted talks about what came from the trip in inspiration and new relationships, and a promise to return to the restaurant, ending the video with the picture taken by the Ramen Lady’s husband at your last visit to the shop.
Your pictures on the wall are a mix of different sizes, ranging from polaroids to 4x6 prints, to larger, framed pictures, arranged similarly to a family photo wall. Polaroids from parties of the two of you. Shots of historical buildings and shots of stores in Japan. There’s more shots of Ted, including shots of him in the booth at the ramen shop, focused on books. Ted’s Juul even makes it into a few shots, where he holds it in his mouth like it’s a cigarette. Pictures of the two of you enjoying ramen or other snacks, including the picture of the two of you with Ramen Lady. In the center of the various Japan memories is the picture that started it all, a simple, lightly edited picture of Ted, staring at the camera through the party crowd, his eyes locked into the lens, his face intense.
A small sign is fixed in front of the wall where your prints hang, displaying your name, the title of the collection, and a brief description. Ted smiles as he reads it under his breath. “Japan Trip Epilogue,” his hand rubs your side as he continues.
“Love, ramen, and my youth, which will always be yours.”
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Yes.