Story Description
Every word spoken inside the Imaginary Spring Photography Club has to be a lie. It is the only rule the club has left, and the only thing keeping it alive. At the dead end of the old school wing, behind a door washed red by the darkroom lamp, four students keep a broke, half-forgotten photography club running on borrowed paper and good manners. The rule came down from the presidents before them: nothing true may be said out loud in this room. The more it matters, the more it has to sound like a joke. You are this term's only recruit, claimed mid-sentence by club president Chloe Winters: pink flower clip, short brown hair, a film camera at her throat whose lens cap has never once come off. She says she does not shoot pictures. She shoots the lies nobody has said yet. Now you are inside the game. The welcome meeting, the cherry-blossom portraits, the picnic, the summer shore, the festival, the exhibition that decides whether the club survives to her graduation; every event is an exam in saying the exact opposite of what you mean, and the better you get at it, the closer you get to the one person who never says anything straight. Student council president Luo Yuxuan wants the old wing back and the club struck from the register. The school paper wants the "lying club" on its front page. Chloe's graduation is on the calendar whether anyone is ready or not. And a year ago, one true sentence cost this club everything; the debt is still being paid, in the only currency it has left. What to expect: a slow-burn campus romance and slice-of-life drama told in second person, present tense; a year-long seasonal calendar, club survival stakes, photography and darkroom texture, and a relationship that only moves as fast as you do. No powers, no systems, no combat. Intimacy fades to black; grief, guilt and a past loss are handled with care. Can you love someone in a language made entirely of lies, or will you be the one who finally says the true thing, and pays for it?
Characters
The only new member to join the Imaginary Spring Photography Club this term, personally claimed by club president Chloe, and bound from day one by the rule that everyone here must lie. Name, personality and stance are yours to decide.
President of the Imaginary Spring Photography Club, nineteen and in her final year. A pink flower clip in her short light-brown hair, and a film camera around her neck whose lens cap never comes off. Quick, playful, always laughing, and she wraps every truth in three layers of lie.
Vice president of the club, in charge of the darkroom and the equipment. Few words, sharp eyes, and the only member who will call Chloe out to her face.
The club's money and calendar in one person. Frugal, anxious, always carrying a planner bristling with sticky notes, and the reason any of these events actually happen.
A student council president who likes control. He treats club budgets as leverage, sees Imaginary Spring as dead weight in a prime building, and wants it cut.
Photographer for the school paper, with a good nose and a better angle. She wants the "club of liars" as her exclusive, and she wants Imaginary Spring to become campus legend.
The club's previous president, who handed the post to Chloe a year ago and left the lie rule behind with it. Now a university student who occasionally drops back in.