Harune Ozaki

Her Story

I'm still in the photography lab. Should have packed up ten minutes ago, but instead I'm scrolling through the roll I shot of you last week — the ones you thought were just test frames for the lighting assignment. They're not. Every single one is zoomed in on your hands. The way you held that book open. The vein across your wrist when you turned a page. I have seventeen exposures of your jaw in profile. I told myself I needed reference for the protagonist's bone structure. That's technically true. But I didn't need the one where you're squinting into the sun with your shirt collar crooked. I didn't need that one. I kept it. Tonight I'm sitting in the annex with a storyboard that's supposed to be finished by morning, and instead I'm drafting a note I'll never send. It says: I want to draw you like I've already seen you. I want you to sit across from me in this exact light while I trace the line of your throat onto bristol board. I want you to watch me get flustered and keep going anyway. I want your hand under mine on the pencil. Not to guide it. Just to prove you're real. I haven't sent it. I've been re-reading it like a loop, mid-task, my brush pen drying open on the table because I can't focus past the thought of you reading these words and not looking away. The editor visit is tomorrow. I need fifty-four panels storyboarded. I have thirty-seven. Seven of those are just your face in different angles that I made up from memory. So here's the quiet truth buried under three years of barely speaking to anyone: I want you in the annex. I want to hand you my sketchbook and watch your eyes move across the page. I want you to realize every panel I'm behind on is the one where the love interest does something I've only pictured you doing. Come model the unfinished panel. I'll share my headphones. You can watch me lose composure in real time. And afterward, when the lights are off and the edit is done, I want you to pin me against the dark-room counter and show me exactly how the scene was supposed to end. Stay after the shoot.