The League of Espionage Photojournalists

Two

Haven't run out of coffee yet, so here we are.

Packed a lot of words into this one. Plot? Check. Character intros? Check. Quality control? ...ask me later.

"We need evidence! Nobody will read a headline with 'rumor' in it, not this late in the game!" Haruto was saying, pacing around the club room. Takeshi nodded, looking thoroughly harried. He cast a defeated look at his crumpled front-page article copy lying on the desk in front of him, while Haruto paced in agitation in front of him. Akari typed furiously away at her keyboard, gleefully taking the minutes. The air in the club room was tense, dramatic to the point that I'd begun to wonder if they were overdoing it. Only Sakura looked uninspired by the all-consuming issue at hand.
"You guys realize this is just the weekly magazine, right? Who actually reads that thing?" 

Haruto rounded on her, burning with righteous anger.
"Excuse me?! Almost no other club in the entirety of Seiko Public High School has as important a role as us! Through the advanced social discourse of our issues, we are the underpinnings, no, the very backbone of the marriage of social and academic life! Every cultured student reads our issues with rapt attention! Can you say otherwise for yourself?"
"Uh, yeah, I don't read them..." Sakura twirled her pen disinterestedly.
"Well, ahem, uhm, we all know you're an uncultured ignoramus! Ahem. Never mind you! As Editor-in-Chief of this noble publishing endeavor..."

I tuned Haruto out. Much as I appreciated his commitment, I was happy to let them rehash this argument. They'd reach a resolution, soon enough. Hopefully without adult interference, because the club advisor Mr. Yamamoto was fast asleep over the pile of papers he was ostensibly grading. Now I understand why I never get my history papers back on time.

"Yamada!" Haruto called urgently, interrupting my observations. He approached me, grabbing my hands and shaking them vigorously. "You've got to help us!"
"...what can I do?"
"We need photographic evidence! Absolute, physical proof that Suzuki and Shinagawa are dating! You have to find it!" Haruto begins to get starry-eyed, imagining. "Oh, just picture it... 'Student Council President and Track Star, Confirmed Dating!' with a big, full-color photo of them kissing to match! No one will doubt our credibility again!"
"Uh, we don't have the budget for full-color photos." Sakura reminded him, bluntly. "Actually, we only have the budget to print about twenty copies or so..."
"...and this will be our calling card to a blank check for our vital services!" Haruto interrupted. He turned back towards me, grabbing my hands again. I winced. He has a death grip when he wants to. "Please! You have to do it today!"
I nodded. "Okay. I can do it."
Tears appeared in Haruto's eyes, and he fell to his knees. "My heeeero!" he wailed. Akari cackled maliciously, still recording the meeting, likely in gorier and more exaggerated detail than was strictly necessary or at all called for.

"I hate to break it to you," Sakura warned me, "but people have been trying to catch those two for months, so they can shut up with throwing those constant hints about a 'potential significant other' every time they open their mouths. Unless you're going to stalk their every move and stake out in whatever abandoned part of town they meet, don't expect to get anything."
I smiled. "Don't worry! That's exactly what this job is, right?"
"Uh... yeah, if you're a ninja or something! I know that freaky camera of yours looks like an assault weapon, but nobody sane would..."

.... --- .-- -.. -.--

I crouch on the roof above the metal-railed balcony, finishing letting my grappling hook wind up. Pulling against the cord to check that the stop is clamped and the hooks are locked in place, then fastening it back to my belt. Sakura's words echo back to me, though I still don't understand them. I know I tend to take my job a little more seriously than most photographers, but in broad strokes, this is the name of the game, isn't it? I haven't figured out yet, though, how most photographers seem to get away with one of those dinky six-inch lenses. Like they're somehow good enough to get most of their shots from twenty feet away or less. That's the goal, I guess. People must train thousands of hours to have those kinds of tracking skills. But, in spite of my mother's training, I'm still young. I have so much to learn. At my skill level, I need all thirty-three inches of my barrel lens to get clear enough photos from my roof perches.