*click*

Mei’s eyes were blinded when she saw a light flash before shutting them. She flinched and almost let her spoon fall with the piece of cake which she was about to put in . Laughter could be heard and when she blinked for a few times, regaining her full sight, she discovered Luhan sitting in front of her—with a silver camera in his hands.

“I didn’t know that you were scared of cameras.”

“It was so sudden and the flash was so bright.” She pursed her lips and lowered her head, picking at her cake like she was miffed.

Luhan slowly took his camera down and frowned in surprise.

He tried to catch a glimpse of her face to find out if she was really offended or hurt by his action. That would be the last thing he needed—fighting with his best friend’s girlfriend on the second day of their journey. What if she was a person who felt insulted very easily? Or a person who loved to give the silent treatment? He despised that the most because it reminded him of his ex-girlfriend (that tiresome girl). He was on this trip to have fun, not to be annoyed by someone all the time.

“It’s just that I’m not very confident of getting my picture taken.” Now, Mei was looking at him again, her lips covered in crumbs and her cheeks tinted pink while she was still chewing like an embarrassed little kid. “I always look weird and awkward and dorky in them.”

“What?” Luhan asked, still surprised.

He pressed the button on his camera and the picture he had taken before was shown on the display again. Mei was eating in the image, lifting the spoon with a piece of cake up, guiding it in . And although her sight was fixated on that cutlery and was slightly open to welcome the food, she didn’t look weird or awkward or dorky at all. To him, she looked natural.

“There is nothing wrong with the picture,” Luhan stated, turning his camera to show her, but she shifted her head away directly.

“Maybe for you.” Mei ate the last piece of her cake she had ordered for breakfast and put the spoon on the plate to show that she was done. “In the past years, I could never find a good picture of me. Neither when I took selcas nor when someone was taking a picture of me. It looked worse the more I tried. One day, I just stopped trying. Cameras don’t like me, I guess.” She shrugged and smiled slantly.

“Maybe it was the wrong camera,” Luhan replied.

She shrugged again. “Or the wrong photographer.”

For this suggestion, she couldn’t find an answer, yet she was thinking about it. How was this possible? Her mother, father, grandparents, friends and even Ren tried to take pictures of her and with her, and she liked not a single one of them—not even when the people who took them claimed that she didn’t look weird at all.

“You don’t want to see it?”

She shook her head.

“Then... permit me to take pictures of you.”

“What?” Mei faced him with a look mixed of surprise and suspense.

“Permit me to take pictures of you,” Luhan smiled. “What would a journey be if we don’t capture everything we see in pictures? People tend to say that the memory is better than a camera. They are right. But isn’t it also beautiful to have everything in front of your eyes again instead of recalling the memories?” He looked over at Mei with his dreamy eyes, lost in a small trance. She didn’t seem to agree with him though. “Well, for me, it is. It’s livelier, almost touchable. I love to capture everything that amazes me. It’s like I caught a special moment and I can keep it only for me. So.... permit me to take pictures. Of you. With you. Because you’re a part of my journey. Of our journey. I don’t want everything to pass by and be left without nothing.”

Mei let Luhan’s words sink in, thinking about them carefully.

He was very eager with his speech, wasn’t he? She never thought of somehow “capturing” the trip, although her grandma had already asked her to take a camera with her. She had never intended to meet someone who was so passionate about this journey. Well, she was passionate about it too, but more for the fact that she was on her way to Ren.

Luhan on the other hand...´she looked in his bright, crystal clear eyes. They were truthful, sincere. He was so excited and serious about this. How could she reject him?

“Alright,” she sighed and he let out a quiet “Yay!” which made her chuckle. “But you won’t show them to me.”

Luhan pouted, thinking about her precondition. “Not now.”

“Never.”

“Not now.”

“Never.”

“Not now.”

They tossed around the words like they were playing ping pong and while the words were serious in the beginning, their grins got wider with every syllable that they let out.

“Okay, stop.” Luhan laughed and placed the camera back on the table. “We’ll make a deal. I will offer you a look at the pictures once we reach Kunming and you can decide whether you want to or not. But you have to promise me that you will think seriously of the option to look at them, because for me… you don’t look weird at all in it.”

Mei shifted in her seat, feeling really uncomfortable.

“You don't look weird at all.”

She hated it when her family and friends were saying this, even when it was Ren, because she got the feeling they just wanted to appease her. In the end, weren’t they supposed to reply “You look good in it!” because she was their friend?

But Luhan was a person who didn't really know her. There was no need to lie to her or to make her feel good in any way. It could’ve been totally irrelevant to him how she looked, yet he reassured her of the opposite. Was he just being honest?

“Alright. Promise.” She sighed, but didn’t dare to look at him when she put out her list, pointing at the current date. “So, we will stay here for two days. What are we going to do?”

Truth be told, there was something Mei needed, some place Mei really wanted to visit.

Of course, she had looked everything up on the internet before, yet she didn’t want to be rude since Luhan was the one who, for the most part, planned their days. She wasn’t eager to visit the places; she still felt indifferent to the attractions in each town. Everything she wanted was to be with Ren, as fast as possible.

But Shenyang… Mei bit