A Camera, A Laptop and A USB Flash Drive

Description: The guy was a prospective journalist who wanted his articles and pictures speak the truth, while the girl was a physicist who thinks.

Rating: G

Characters: Choi Siwon and Fictional Character

Disclaimer: I do not own the characters in the fiction.  The story is only a narrative and does not involve any real life situation.  The whole plot of the story is written originally by myself.  If there's any similarity to other fictions, it is totally a coincidence.

She looked at the photos in the digital camera.  Dragonflies, a red car, a mechanical pencil, tulips, animals, plants, stuffs, animals again and the cycle repeated by itself.  She often wondered why this guy likes to take such pictures.  He was just weird.  She pressed and pressed the button again until it ended up at the dragonflies again.

“Do you know they were so big during the Mesozoic Era?” he asked.

“What?” she asked back.

“Dragonflies.  They were big during the Dinosaur Times,” he replied.

“How big?” she asked again.

“As big as peacocks,” he said while taking the camera from her.  He smiled while looking at the photo he captured by himself.

“Oh, I don’t believe you,” Ety rolled her eyes and lied on her back.  She closed her eyes and pretended to ignore him.

No answer from him.  Just a plain silence.  The only thing that can be heard was the crackling of the fire.  She thought Siwon had left her, but she heard his voice again.

“You should read more, you know,” he said.

She opened her eyes to that statement and quickly, she pushed herself into a sitting position.  She looked at him, who was scribbling something in his notepad.

“Are you implying I am lazy to read?” she asked, feeling so annoyed that someone so close to her saying such things.

“No.  I only asked you to read more,” he coolly said, while smiling at his note.  Weird, just weird and getting weirder.

“I read enough,” she said, rolling her eyes to express how she felt very annoyed.  A silence followed, but not for long.

“You don’t know that dragonflies were big in Triassic,” he replied, as if he didn’t know at all that his friend was shooting a glare at him.

“Siwon, by not knowing that, does not me a person who is lazy to read.  That was a bad hypothesis,” she said.

“Alright,” he shrugged it off.

She sighed.  This guy was always like that.  He didn’t like to prolong any argument.  He once said that too long will involve hard feelings, and that was the last thing he ever wanted to happen.  But, she hated silence.  She threw more woods into the fire.

“What are we going to do tomorrow?” she asked him.

“Explore more,” he said.

“Siwon, we are in the middle of the jungle.  What is there to explore?  Less Physics, less Mathematics.  No civilization. Nothing much.  I don’t even know why I want to come with you in the first place,” she said.

“I just want to capture a photo of a snake.  I promise you we will get out of here once I get the photo of it,” Siwon replied while scribbling more and more notes.

“Stop being weird,” she said.

That managed to freeze him.  He stopped writing.  He looked up, into her eyes.  There was no smile, but no evidence that he was hurt by her word either.  He was just expressionless.

“I am doing this for the Media and Journalism Club,” he said while putting down his pencil.  He took a jacket and put in on her, “You must be cold,” he said.

“Thank you,” she replied, “You’re always obsessed with your Club,” she said.

“It is one way of revealing the world to people,” he said.

“Revealing?”

“Yes.  Our world is getting less transparent day by day.  I hope my writing and my pictures will become the tongue for truth, to speak up for it,” said Siwon.

“Why need words and pictures when you can say it out?” she asked.

“Oftentimes, words from mouth can be too offensive.  Trust me Ety, you can even end up in a prison.  But, through books, they are oftentimes more approachable.  Although, sometimes people can ban such books that speak up the truth, they will somehow be delivered to people.  It will get through,” he said and smiled.

“You are thinking too much,” she said.

They were in the park.  She was reading her Physics book while lying down on a bench while he was busy taking photo of a family having a picnic.  She puffed up her cheeks and closed her book.  She saw him smiling at his own photo.

“Can I look at them?” she asked.

He nodded to her and gave her that digital camera.  The SONY Cyber-shot DSC-WX1, not so much of a camera, but he had done a lot of amazing things with it.

“Man, you need a new camera.  Try to get a DSLR,” she commented.

“I am a student and have no income.  I’ll get one once I work.  Besides, this camera does wonders.  I don’t have a DSLR, but I can still show the world my photos.  I might not have a Macbook but I can still type something that can educate the people,” he said.

“Why do you have to be so logic, Siwon?” she said while looking through the photos.  She froze at a picture of a mother feeding a baby.

“Lovely, isn’t it?” he asked.

She nodded and stared at it, this time longer.  She might not be able understand this guy until the very end of his life or her life, but she understood the photo.

“It speaks a thousand words,” she said, still staring at the photo.

“I know.  Rather than going around try to convince people about mother’s love, a photo and a caption are enough to explain everything,” he told her while taking back the camera.

She looked at him, thinking of what he had been telling her all this while.  All their conversations and all their arguments, explained a lot of things.  Suddenly, she sensed a flash and he laughed.

“And this photo explains that my friend is thinking,” he laughed.

“Open up,” she said.

It was Siwon’s birthday and she gave him a big present, something that she thought will be able to help him with his ambition.  Siwon stared at the box and he looked at her.  She nodded vigorously, as a sign that he should open the box.

He carefully untied the ribbon.  Then, he looked at her again and smiled.  He opened the box, revealing a Nikon DSLR.  His smile got wider and that smile revealed lines of white teeth, which expressed happiness in him.

“Seriously?” he asked.

“Yes,” she nodded.

“Thank you, Ety.  Really, thanks,” he said.

“Hope you like it,” she said.

“Are you kidding me?  Of course, I like it,” he said while carefully looking at the new camera in his hand.

“Now, you can go for a job interview.  Be a good journalist,” she encouraged him.

“Nah…I don’t think of going to any publishing company,” he said.

“Why?”

“I want to be an independent journalist.  Self-publishing my articles.  That works better in this world,” he said.

“How?” another question from her.

“There will be restriction under publishing company.  You know, government controlling stuffs.  In the end, there will be biasness, false information.  My aim is to speak up the truth, remember?” he asked.

“But, how will that help you to survive your life.  No income?” she asked.

“That is how people nowadays think.  We are the one that make money everything.  Truthfully, money is not everything, Ety,” he replied.

The more she talked to him, the more she knew about him.  But, what she didn’t know was that might be their last conversation.

It had been three years since then, and she was still in the same university, pushing her brain to its maximum capacity.  Formulas, numbers, theories, those were the things she played with each day.  That was the price she needs to pay in achieving her ambition, to be a theoretical physicist.  Less social life and the only books she read were related to the field she was taking, if people know what she means.

Perhaps Siwon was right, she should read more, not only Physics books but also other stuffs.  She knew how things work in Physics but not how people think.  Perhaps other people were just as same as her, because the people were too ignorant.  She was living in a society where each people think he or she is right one, while the others are wrong.

She sighed.  She signed in to Gmail, waiting for at least an email from him.  But, none.  For three years, nothing from him.  No news, he just disappeared.

An email came in.  It was from the school’s mail service.  It was stated that she received a parcel.  She had not remembered if she did any online shopping recently.  Not even her birthday for people to give any present.

Curious, she quickly went to the Mail’s Office to collect her parcel.  She gave her ID number and collected the parcel.  It was very small and light.  She tore off the wrapper and found only a small, 16-gigabyte USB flash drive.  That was weird, and the only person she knew will do such weird thing was only Siwon.

She ran to her room and quickly inserted the USB flash drive into its port.  Indeed, the USB’s name was Siwon.  She found out a lot of files.  There were photos and captions and some were articles, in the form of formal reports, perfect with date.  That guy had even arranged all those photos according to date.

She went through every single photo from the earlier date to the latest.  Photos of plants, animals, families, animals, stuffs, plants, couples, stuffs, people killing people, genocide, war, war, war, war, war… it continued until the last file, dated a year ago, in Libya.  Those photos were getting less humane day by day.  She read all the reports.  They were just the same, ended up with some reports on war, with the latest dated a year ago, in Libya.  But, they were different from the news that she read.  These went a lot deeper, revealing things that were not revealed to the world.

She held her head.  That weird guy went to such place to find out the truth, and his articles ended up unpublished.  Those pictures and reports were the tongue of truth, but left unspoken.  She wondered why the latest date of those files was a year ago and then no more.  She even wondered if he was still alive.  She also wondered why the USB flash drive only reached her that day.

She asked herself, “Shall I make these things speak?”

__________

heaDeVil^23

Mood: Focusing for Exam