Chapter 118: HE REALLY LOOKS GOOD IN THAT COAT

The second outfit was darker. Deep navy structured jacket over a white inner, slim black trousers, clean white sneakers. Less playful than the first, more deliberate, the kind of look that asked something different from the person wearing it.

Lin Yansu adjusted his collar once, stepped back, nodded.

Guiying stepped back into the shooting area.

’Okay,’ Bai Zichen thought from the side, watching. ’So the first one wasn’t a fluke.’

Shao Mingye lifted his camera. "Relax your shoulders.." he said. "You’re holding them slightly too high... let them drop naturally."

Guiying became aware of them for the first time, that slight tension sitting up near his neck that he hadn’t noticed he was carrying.

He rolled them back once, slowly, felt the pull of it releasing, and let them settle where they naturally wanted to be.

"Better." Shao Mingye started shooting. "Now turn your body about forty degrees to the left but keep your face forward."

Guiying did, feeling the shift in his weight as he adjusted, the way the light moved differently across his face when his body angled away from it.

The flash went off.

’He takes direction fast,’ Shao Mingye thought, already moving to a different angle. ’Doesn’t overthink it, doesn’t second guess, just does it.’

Impressive. 𝙛𝓻𝒆𝓮𝒘𝙚𝙗𝒏𝙤𝙫𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝒐𝙢

"Chin down slightly... not that much, come back up a little."

Flash.

"There. Hold that."

Flash.

Flash.

"Good. Now give me something with your hands, don’t just let them hang."

Guiying crossed his arms loosely over his chest, the same way he’d stood in the first outfit, natural and unhurried.

Shao Mingye lowered his camera and looked at the screen. "That works," he said. "But try one with your hands in your pockets instead."

Guiying slid them in, adjusting until the weight of his arms felt balanced, not forced.

Flash.

’Oh that’s better,’ Shao Mingye thought. ’That’s considerably better.’

"Stay there," he said, moving around him. "Don’t move."

From the side Jiang Wenxi watched quietly. "Mingye," she called. "Try him against the left wall, natural light coming in from that angle."

Shao Mingye looked up, considered it, nodded. "Mr. Tang, move to the left wall please."

Guiying moved, and as soon as he stepped into the natural light he understood immediately why she’d suggested it. The quality of it was different from the studio lights, warmer and more honest, and it sat differently on his skin.

Shao Mingye raised his camera and went still for a moment before he started shooting again.

’There it is,’ Jiang Wenxi thought. ’Good call.’

"His jaw," Lin Yansu said quietly from beside her, not looking away from Guiying. "The light is hitting his jaw perfectly from that angle. Make sure Mingye gets that."

"Mingye," Jiang Wenxi said. "His jaw."

"I see it," Shao Mingye said, already adjusting.

The third outfit arrived and Lin Yansu moved fast, pulling pieces with the decisiveness of someone whose eye had locked onto something.

Rust coloured oversized coat, black fitted turtleneck underneath, wide leg cream trousers, chunky loafers. She added a thin gold chain at his neck, stepped back, tilted her head.

"Yes.." she said quietly, to herself more than anyone.

Guiying looked in the mirror briefly.

The gold chain sat where his ring finger was bare, two small absences that somehow balanced each other.

He turned away and walked back to the shooting area.

"This one I want movement," Shao Mingye said. "Walk toward me slowly, don’t look at the camera, look past it."

Guiying walked, keeping his gaze fixed on a point beyond Shao Mingye’s shoulder, letting his feet find their own pace rather than counting it out.

Flash.

Flash.

Flash.

"Slower."

He slowed, feeling the difference immediately, the way each step became more deliberate when you weren’t rushing through it.

"Good... now stop. Just like that, stay."

Flash.

Bai Zichen made a sound.

"What?" Jiang Wenxi said.

"Nothing," Bai Zichen said immediately. Then: "It’s just... he looks really good in that coat."

"He looks really good in everything actually," Pei Jiahao said, without looking up from his planner, which coming from Pei Jiahao who never said anything he hadn’t fully considered first, made Bai Zichen turn and stare at him.

Pei Jiahao kept writing.

"I need to restructure the afternoons,’ he thought. ’Give him more time. We can get more from this shoot than we planned for.’

The fourth outfit passed.

The fifth.

"Left shoulder back slightly," Shao Mingye directed. "There... good. Now give me something with your expression, you’re too neutral."

Guiying let something shift in his face, not forced, not performed, just something that had always been there underneath everything, the particular quality of someone who knew things they weren’t going to tell you.

It came forward without him having to reach for it.

Shao Mingye stopped shooting for a moment.

’Where did that come from,* he thought.

He started shooting again, faster this time.

"That," he said. "Whatever that was, keep it."

Guiying kept it.

"His expressions change faster than I expected," Lin Yansu said quietly to Jiang Wenxi. "He’s not performing them, they’re just... there."

"Mm," Jiang Wenxi said, watching.

By the fifth outfit the room had fully shed whatever polite resignation it had walked in with that morning.

Bai Zichen had stopped pretending he wasn’t staring. Jiang Wenxi had put her tablet down entirely.

Lin Yansu moved between the rack and the mirror with the focused energy of someone who had been handed better material than expected and intended to use every bit of it.

Shao Mingye called a break.

"Good work," he said to Guiying, straightforward, the way he said everything. "We’ll pick up in fifteen."

’Good work’ from Shao Mingye was, as Bai Zichen would later tell anyone who would listen, basically the equivalent of anyone else bursting into tears of joy.

Guiying stepped out of the shooting area and Lin Yansu was already there with a small towel, blotting the faint warmth the studio lights had built up over the last hour.

"Your skin holds up well under the lights," she said. "Some people go flat after an hour... you don’t."

"Thank you??" Guiying shrugged, it was out of the blue compliment.

"It’s not a compliment," she said, though not unkindly. "It’s useful information."

Or not.

Pei Jiahao appeared at his elbow. "Can I get you anything? We have juice, some sports drinks——"

"Water please..." Guiying said.