One Useless Rebirth

Di Qiuhe slowed down his typing thinking about something. If you noticed his pause, you would know he was deeply upset about what he had done before.

Di Qiuhe: The point is that I didn’t tell him the truth when I got the chance. And there is also the voice message.

Niu Junjie: What about it?

After taking a deep breath, Di Qiuhe said: I lied to him about how I was bullied by my family and how I wanted to commit suicide in desperation, just so that I could get him to send me messages like “Qiuqiu, Good Morning. Good Night. kiss you.”

Niu Junjie froze for a while and typed: … Dude, what’s wrong with you?

A normal person wouldn’t coax his friend into sending such intimate voices. What a bad past of him. This Di Qiuhe looked reliable. Who would have thought that he would be this crazy.

Di Qiuhe wiped his face and started beating himself up: I also set those voices as my alarm and he heard it when he came over for my birthday.

Struck dumb, Niu Junjie turned his head to sweep a look at He Bai, and then quickly turned back. He tapped so hard on the screen that it felt like it’s gonna break any minute: How dare you set those disgusting voices as your alarm?! Moreover, Bai was not supposed to hear them! He was nice enough to show up at your birthday party and that is how you repay him? What the fuck, man! You deserved it! Dude, you’d better keep a distance from him, otherwise you would be dead.

Di Qiuhe with a pale face: Is there a way to fix this?

Niu Junjie: No way. What with your lies and those shameless voices, the best you can do now is to run away.

Di Qiuhe: But I don’t want to run away. I hope Bai would forgive me. Do you think it’s possible?

Upon hearing that, Niu Junjie fell into deep thought. He sneaked a look at He Bai who was busy working on his photos and continued typing: Of course. For starters, you can drink three cups of wine as punishment. Then you will offer a humble apology and shouted “Boss, it’s my fault.” three times to him. Last, you are to serve him for three months. Only then will it pass. Don’t worry. Bai is very kind. If you apologize sincerely, he would feel it and forgive you sooner or later.

After a while of pondering, Di Qiuhe typed determinedly: Ok.

Niu Junjie nodded in satisfaction: Good luck.

Feeling confident, Di Qiuhe replied: Thank you.

After plotting like two sneaky thieves, both of them felt quite good about themselves. Niu was glad that he had done Di a favor, while Di was delighted that he found a way to get his lover back.

At the beginning of the new semester, students were required to re-select their optional courses. He Bai logged in the campus network and a bunch of private messages from A Bird Born in Autumn popped out. With a sneer, he clicked “Delete” without hesitation.

Sitting next to He Bai, Niu Junjie clenched his hands tightly and took out his mobile phone: Bai didn’t read them. He simply deleted them all!

With a twitch of eyebrows, Di Qiuhe put on a serious look: I’ll keep sending.

So, during the entire process of course selection, He Bai was bombarded with countless private messages over and over again.

Noticing that, Niu Junjie couldn’t help but pretend to be curious and asked, “How come you have so many private messages? Why don’t you read them? Maybe some of them are notices from the school. ”

“Have you received a notice from the school?” He Bai turned to look at him.

Niu Junjie shook his head, “No.”

He Bai deleted all the newly private messages as well and said with a smile. “We are in the same class. If you didn’t receive any notice, neither will I. So, it’s unnecessary to check those spam messages. Besides, it’s fine if I miss any notice, because the monitor would inform us again in the class group chat.

Niu Junjie: “…”

“Anything else?”

“No… nothing.” Niu Junjie sat up straight and texted a message quickly when he got the book: Dude, Bai is too smart. There is nothing I can do. I’m sorry.

Di Qiuhe fell back into the lounge, put down his phone, and then with a long sigh he picked up the script.

The deputy director came close to Jiang Guanshan. He swept a glance at Di Qiuhe who was concentrated on studying the script at the corner and praised, “Jiang, you are a good judge of character. Di Qiuhe is very mature for his age and he is hardworking. He has got a lot of potentials.”

Jiang Guanshan nodded with a smile, “Hmm, he has grown a lot lately.” It seemed that the early training had paid off.

Di Qiuhe, on the other hand, was staring blankly at the script. He kept folding up and down the corner of the page, all the while thinking: Bai would forgive me, Bai wouldn’t’ forgive me. Bai would forgive me …..

He Bai simply ignored the incoming Weibo messages. After posting a Weibo to advertise the Little Mermaid autumn new arrivals, he turned off the computer. Then he took out piles of posters of TV series, films, MVs from his backpack and started poring over them.

Since this semester, Teacher Xu had talked to him once. Xu thought He Bai had got the hang of taking portraits and all he needed was to accumulate experience going forward. Now he could learn new skill on how to take group portrait …. like the ones on those piles of posters.

As far photography was concerned, it was easy shooting a personal portrait, but difficult shooting a group of people. Elder Xu assigned him a new task to take one group portrait every week. The workload sounded less than before. However, it was actually more difficult.

It was simple to capture a person’s unique features in a photo. As long as you keep shooting, you would eventually come out with a good one. While a group portrait might sound simple, when you put several people into one image, it was anything but easy. When you were cramming several people into a photo, there were several factors that had to work together to make it a great image.

Each person has their special traits, and if you want to capture the traits of more than two people into one image, you must first have a good command of the basic photographic skills and also the ability to balance the configuration of the photos.

As a group portrait was to cram several people into one photo, if you were not paying attention, your photo would lose its focus. He Bai had solid photographic skills, but he was quite new with the portrait photography, and he needed to gain more experience in taking a balanced picture.

What should he do if he lacked experience? Practice more, read more, study more in order to accumulate more.

After knowing his weaknesses, he immediately went to the library with a pen and paper.

There were thousands of excellent group portraits throughout history, and you could easily find piles of outstanding works in the library. He spent a whole day studying the works, and as he did that, he was getting more and more confused. When he came out from the library with the intent to shoot the schoolyard, he was frustrated to find that he had no inspiration at all after seeing such a pile of group portraits. If anything, this experience had disrupted his otherwise organized way of thinking.

The students walked up and down, and the click sound of the shutter rang again and again, but none of the photos turned out OK. After half an hour of fruitless shooting, he put down the camera with a sigh and left the school.

Taking photos for a single person was indeed different from taking group portrait, and it was impossible to start with the basics like taking snapshots. Let alone establishing a theme, he even had no idea how to balance a picture.

If you want to cram two people into a photo, then you must consider how they should be appropriately posed.

How to balance a photo with three people in it?

When taking photos for a crowd of people running back and forth, where should he focus on to make it look harmonious, while at the same time brought out each character’s distinct features?

There were too many questions, and he could only solve them one by one. Firstly, he needed to picture how he wanted to pose the group and frame the photo. Well, in this field, the most successful and commercialized example were those various posters of major movies and TV series.

There was more than one protagonist in a movie or a TV series, so their posters were typical group portraits. Except for a small number of matting posters, the rest all featured carefully arranged configuration and well thought out poses. They were definitely worth learning.

Niu Junjie was lying in bed quietly observing how He Bai was absorbed in writing and painting under the light of table lamp, and then he took out his phone.

Niu Junjie: Bai did not check the Twitter message.

Di Qiuhe: He hasn’t slept yet?

Niu Junjie: Yeah. He was working on new photography assignment given by his teacher. By the way, don’t let your friend send camera back over and over. It’s a waste of money. Bai has bought a new camera already.

For a while, Niu Junjie didn’t get any reply. Feeling frustrated, he typed: You just focus on your filming. Let me know when you come back. Let’s have a meal together with Bai. You could apologize to him in face. Then he would forgive you. Get some sleep.

After a few minutes, Di Qiuhe sent a message back: I see, thank you.

Niu Junjie: We are brothers. You are welcome.