Photos for the exhibition

Mira set up the tripod in front of the white wall. “You stand right here.”

Silke stepped onto it barefoot. Still naked. Her face could be shown in the exhibition—but here, Mira said, she needed footage of her in motion. Mira stared at her longer than necessary. Her soft belly. Her heavy breasts. The smooth patch between her legs. “It’s a shame about the hair,” she muttered, almost to herself. “Unretouched would have been better. A real woman. Pimples. Stretch marks. The truth.” She shrugged. “I can always put it back on with AI if I have to. It doesn’t matter right now.”

Silke didn’t quite understand the sentence. All she heard was: unretouched. Chubby. Mira didn’t reveal what she meant.

“I’ll add a background that fits afterward,” Mira said aloud. “Park. Backyard. Bedroom.

Now I want you to do a circuit workout. You’ll start with jumping jacks.”

“Jumping jacks.”

“Arms up, legs out. And again. Go.”

Silke started.

On the first jump, her breasts bumped against each other. A dull, soft sound. On the second, the movement was no longer graceful. Mass. Her breasts bounced out of sync, her belly undulated, her thighs slapped together. Mira crouched down, the shutter button held down the whole time. A burst of photos. Twenty, thirty frames of a moving, unvarnished woman.

“Keep going.”

Silke jumped. Her shame ran deeper than the physical exertion. She heard herself breathing. Then the memory came back.

A game night at Jonas’s apartment. Jumping jacks—the punishment for a bad roll of the dice. Silke had come that evening. [See the main story]

She grew wet again. A sheen between her lips that wasn’t from water or sweat. The next time she spread her legs, a thin trail remained. Mira saw it. She misunderstood.

“She thought Silke was wet *because of* the words and her plump body. The mistake stood between them and made everything worse.

“Faster.”

Her breasts slapped against her chest. Her stomach rippled. Sweat beaded at the nape of her neck. Mira changed the angle, photographing from below, right into the motion: the soft lower abdomen, the insides of her thighs, the wet line.

Then she stopped. “I don’t like the light.”

A button. A motor somewhere.

The blinds on the tall windows shot up. Daylight burst into the hall. Harsh. Unflinching. Without a soft focus.

Silke flinched and covered herself. One hand over her breasts, one over her crotch. A scream, too high-pitched for the hall. “Everyone can see me naked—”

“We need daylight on the skin.” Mira moved the tripod closer to the window. “Either here. Or outside.”

“Not outside.” Silke’s voice trembled. “What if someone sees me?”

Mira remained unflappable.

“Point one: The window is three meters above the street. Point two: It’s still early. So hurry up.”

Silke looked outside.

The street was far below. Across the way, a blank wall. No balcony. Still, the light felt like eyes. She let her hands drop. No choice. The contract. The costs. The video with her name on it.

She jumped back into position.

Mira turned her around. A little to the left. A little to the right. Always so that Silke was positioned right in front of the open window. The sun fell on her side, revealing every dimple, every stretch mark on her hip that Mira had missed earlier, the tiny pimples on her shoulder, the sheen on her soft belly.

Silke checked the window between jumps. No one was there. Too high. Wall across the way. Her mind knew that. Her body didn’t. Her pussy clenched every time a car drove by below and the light changed briefly.

“Enough jumping jacks for now. Start doing push-ups.”

“I can’t do—”

“Knees down. It still counts that way. Hands on the concrete. Chest down. Don’t stick your ass in the air as an invitation, unless I say so.”

Silke got down on her knees, then into the push-up position. Her soft belly sagged. Her breasts sagged. Every time she went down, her nipples almost touched the floor; every time she came up, her arms trembled. Sweat dripped from the tip of her nose onto the gym floor. Mira knelt beside her, photographing her face from the side—for the card, not for the wall—and her body from the front: the sagging breasts, the strain, the wet spot gathering on the concrete beneath her crotch.

“Ten. Keep going.”

Silke managed eight proper ones, and then it was just the trembling. Mira kept taking pictures anyway. Unvarnished, that also meant: failure. Mouth agape. Sweat on her eyebrow.

“Sit-ups. Here. Across from the window.”

Silke lay on her back. The light cut across her. Mira slid her feet under a box so she couldn’t cheat. Up. Down. The fold of her stomach piled up. Her breasts slid toward her armpits, then back onto her chest. Every time she sat up, Silke saw the open window, the wall across from her.

“Across.”

Mira turned her over. Silke on her side, one hand behind her head, doing side sit-ups. Her upper breast lay heavily on her lower one. Her stomach squeezed. A stretch mark on her hip stood out white. Mira zoomed in right there.

Sweat. Everywhere. On her temples, between her breasts, in her navel, in the backs of her knees. The smell of exertion mixed with that of a wet pussy. Silke’s skin glistened unvarnished—red where it had lain on the concrete, spotty on her shoulders, soft where Mira wouldn’t allow any retouching.

Mira laughed briefly.

“You’re dripping while working out. I’ll make a note of that.”

Mira lowered the camera. She looked at the display. Series after series: a chubby, sweaty, naked woman in front of the window, bathed in daylight. Unretouched. In motion.

“Break. One minute. Then the next set.”