It's raining again--a violent rain.  I hear it before I see it, and I'm not surprised when I do.  Fat drops pound from the sky to shake up the neighborhood, washing away last night's episode of horror.  I step out of the house, hiding my camera in my coat as I trek to the bus stop.  

The drops of fresh courage slip down my collar as I wait by the plastic awning .  I have no umbrella, only thin hope that the torrent will subside soon.  

__

I arrive at the studio with hair that is drenched and arms that are shivering with the chill.  Rainwater tapers down the nape of my neck and rests in the dip of my collarbone.  It's cold and painfully refreshing.  But I am happy, because my camera is dry.

Another day of work begins.  Obtrusive flashes and eyeing cameras that seem all too familiar.  I can't tell if I've gotten too used to this routine of work, camera, work, or if I'm just too tired to stimulate passion.  I sit by the window again, forgetting for a moment that I've come to make money. The way the director looks at me tells me that he's seen through my act, and I'm not trying hard enough.

A few of the studio frequenters huddle by the front door, speaking under hushed whispers and murmurs.  I hate their secrecy, feigning the fact that I don't notice them.

The minutes pass, and the door to the studio opens.  A few fragments of my idleness flake out the door as a young man enters.  Eyes follow him as he silently makes his way to the lonely backdrop.  

I watch his form, tall and lean, as he fixes the lip of his hair.  His skin is smooth and fresh--a mix between shattered sunlight and autumn smoke.  A new recruit, I assume.

"Jongin," the director says as he moves to a marble stage set in the middle of the studio, "you can get ready now."

Jongin.  I slip the letters of his name into a blank page of my notebook.  The first and last letters of his worded identity linger on the tip of my tongue, but I savor it.  I feel like one day, this name will be of use to me.

Jongin settles himself on the stone surface, his smooth limbs a bedded contrast with the coarse plains of the stage.  The deep ridges of his ribcage and the valleys along his torso expand and contract as he breathes.  He doesn't say a word and I have a newfound urge to capture this strange creature on film.  The director hands me a clean roll of film, and I take my place.

Jongin watches my camera as it watches him.  His gaze never meets mine, but I keep quiet, trying to understand why his eyes blink so often even when there are no sudden flashes to surprise them.  His figure seems so comfortable, reclined across the marble throne.  He's sure to leave his imprint in the studio, the way he grins when I fumble with my camera film.  I suddenly can't bring myself to remember him as a model, because I feel he isn't.

My camera clicks.

He doesn't seem like one who comes to the studio one day, and leaves the next.  A true model is built of skin and bones, not of heart and flesh.  A model works for the money, not for himself.  A model is one who allows himself to get lost in front of the lens and the shutter.  Jongin does not; he looks like he knows his place.

Click.

Jongin is a tempted heart who lies on a marble mountain with an aching smile.  He blinks with tight lines around his irises that tell me he's done so much more than pose for a machine.  His calloused fists clench and unclench as he moves.  He grins like a hungry soldier, coming home after years in the fields.  His hair eats away at the sadness creased in his eyebrows.  

Click.

Models are broken horses who stand in front of the backdrop, lacking smiles, and dressed in fabric wealth from head to toe.  

Click. Click.

The new recruit is dressed in a textile that only exists in unspoiled nature.  A suit made of fabric the color of sand yet as soft like the turn of a new fall season.  It fits him, suits him, embraces him.  He wears it well, as if it were made just for him--and it must be.

Every camera in the room must remember him now, and I hope mine will, too.  He is a open storybook, inscribed with a gallant neighborhood of dreams in the making.  Burning laughter and surprises and disappointments.  He is a light of a person, a light of model.  And I know this, because I know that every model looks best when he poses in nothing but the fabric that Mother Nature bestowed upon him--

his skin.

A/N: I'm sorry these chapters took forever to write -.- finals, ugh.  But yay, double update!  Also yay for Jongin who apparently doesn't need clothing on his first day at work xP