She was always the weird type, so it wouldn’t be a surprise to anyone who knew her that she had the tendency to abandon her phone and go somewhere she was not familiar with. She carried a paper map, and she was sightly careful. Her focus though was clear. Alyssa was hell bent of losing herself.
Maybe that is why she usually went to places not absent of presence in moments like these. If the streets were busy or the park with sounds of children, she felt comforted. She didn’t have to be anybody. Alyssa was, at least for a moment, just an extra in the background of someone’s life.
Today took her to Han River, but her eyes looked to traffic. She looked into windows seeing brief moments of someone else’s life. She made out stories for them. He was an angry henchmen for some secret society. That couple were planning their trip back to their birth planet. She liked fantasies, and she liked cameras.
He had sported a fancy one, she had decided. Standing meters away, he noted his time capsuling device and the look on his face. His mind was looking for the best way to make art, and his fingers would maybe listen soon. It was almost too perfect of a moment to interrupt, but again, Alyssa was a weird one.
“Camera man,” she spoke out to him. “Do you believe in love at first sight?” Alyssa questioned looking back to the passing cars a light smile on her face. “I do. I think if I spent my life capturing moments like you do, I’d love everything too much,” she told her smiled growing. “Even just if was people in passing cars or trees sprouting. “I would fall in love with it all,” Alyssa expressed. A sigh soon left her lips.
He was within. Camera in hands, and eyes fixated onto his subject of children playing with dried up leaves scattered all over the floor, parents watching over them from behind. Of course, prior to his activity, he had kindly asked if he would be allowed to take photos. Lucky for him, they didn’t care much. In fact, he was even half-jokingly asked to print them up for an exhibit of their own. To which he laughed, probably even agreed, before setting up his equipment. Shallow focus: ISO 100, F 1.8, 1/30. For this “occasion”, he opted to use his 50mm prime lens. He wanted to practice his utilization of a shallow depth of field, and so far he was having the time of his life. After a couple of shots and quick conversations with the parents, he was good to go, ready to head over to the next subject of choice: a couple. A couple that oddly enough, reminded him of his parents. They were far too busy up each other’s noses to hear his quick request for consent, and so, hoping to be sneaky, he began finding the right angle to shoot in.
It wasn’t going to be anything obvious. Just a few wide-angle, and close-up shots which required him to move about. He was about to do more when a voice was suddenly heard; a mixture of warm, and cold, and the starkness of unfamiliarity. Putting his equipment down, he turned his head in a slow manner and donned a confused, quirk-of-an-eyebrow expression, blinking at the figure turned towards him. Camera man. “No,” Do you believe in love at first sight. “Well,” Word, after word, after word was spoken before he could even respond – the stranger was rather talkative. She reminded him of his students in class who did nothing but talk, and he wasn’t sure if he was annoyed, or amused. Or perhaps an odd mixture of both.
Once given a chance to speak, he quickly snags it up by first clearing his throat, lowering his gaze briefly to let out a little chuckle. Simple as that. “It could be true, but that kind of love is shallow. It could be, per se, considered as infatuation. It’s like visiting a museum and “falling in love” with a specific painting. ‘Up to you what you’d like to do with it afterwards – research? Take a picture? Try to steal it and keep it framed on your bedroom wall? It’s possible, yes, but it’s shallow.”
