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『 The image in a photograph is a mere illusion, 』
The sound of a camera shutter was faint when drowned out by the sound of life around him. Yeosang twisted his torso every which way, staring through the lens for anything he found worth capturing. His sight landed on his friends gathered together, laughing as they enjoyed their time off. They were in a McDonalds, the group of eight far too large for any set tables inside meaning they had to take it into their own hands and push some tables together.
He watched them from afar, his finger gently pressing down the shutter button halfway, trying to bring the camera into focus. Every so often he’d press fully to save the memory, a fond smile etched onto his face just watching them have fun.
“Hey, Yeosang!”
“H-huh..?” he stuttered out when a face suddenly appeared in front of the lens, his eyes wide as he lowered the camera and looked up to his peach haired friend.
“Forget the camera for a second; San’s about to down twenty milkshakes!” Yunho exclaimed with his usual wide smile as he took Yeosang’s hand into his own, dragging him over to the group.
“Why the hell is he drinking twenty milkshakes??”
“For twenty bucks of course,” he stated as if it were just the most normal thing.. Well, except- it was for them. “Jongho bet twenty dollars that he wouldn’t be able to get through it.”
“Hey, San… I don’t know if this is really a good idea..” Seonghwa’s apprehensive words glided into Yeosang’s ears as soon as he reached the table. San was already lining up the milkshakes in front of him, barely listening to Seonghwa’s concerns.
“Hyung don’t worry! Anything can be a good idea if it’s for money,” he reassured, flashing a smile as sweet as those vanilla milkshakes that were sure to fuck up anyone’s stomach with the quantity he was going to attempt to practically inhale at once.
“‘ Anything ’ you say? So if I were to shoot that guy,” Jongho points to a random, middle-aged businessman sitting lone in a corner, “for a hundred dollars, that’s a good idea?”
“Or, or, if I were to take that gun and rob this very McDonalds, it would be a good idea?” Yunho joined in, a stupid grin on his face as he raised his eyebrows suggestively.
Mingi stood from his seat, hand on San’s shoulder as he stared him dead in the eyes, “If I were to run butt-ass-naked in front of a camera that was live recording to the local news for fifty dollars, that would be a good idea to you?”
San stared back at him, jaw slack as he judged the boy that looked at him, scarily serious about the question before harshly pushing him to the side with a playful scowl. “Dude, get the hell away from me-”
“It deeply concerns me that all of your money-making thoughts are highly illegal..” Hongjoong spoke tiredly as he rubbed his temples to null the headache he was getting from their antics.
“Anyways,” Jongho quickly spoke, turning to San who was reaching for one of the milkshakes, “let’s get on with this, it’s almost 8 pm.”
Yeosang laughed along quietly as he observed them all, camera back to his face to photograph San’s eventual downfall. He loved being here with them all, even if he wouldn’t admit it out loud. He felt alive when they met up. He felt cared for, he felt seen. He felt like he finally belonged somewhere and he wouldn’t give that feeling up for the world. He’d do whatever he could to be with his friends forever, whatever it takes.
『 But I suppose it is humanity's vain dream to preserve it, 』
“Yeosang! Be helpful for once and help me carry these damn chairs.”
The boy was scrolling through the pictures taken on his camera, a faint smile on his face before he was called over to the storage room by Hongjoong. They were all on cleaning duty of the school’s auditorium for detention one faithful afternoon just before winter break a few days later. Never again was Yeosang going to subscribe to any stupid idea concerning the boys’ bathrooms that came from San and Mingi.
He looked from the storage room and back down to the device in his hands, eyes slightly frantic as he didn’t know what to do. He definitely couldn’t move those chairs while still holding the camera but placing it down somewhere… It wasn’t something he would ever do. But there is a first time for everything right? So his hands were slow and hesitant as he left it on the table he was leaning against before jogging over to help his struggling friend.
“Finally you’re here.” Hongjoong sighed out, letting out a couple of huffs as he attempted to lift more chairs than his entire body mass.
“Hyung.. You uh- You don’t have to carry so many at once.” Yeosang reminded as he worried about the strain the others’ arms were being put through.
“It’s fine-’ voice as strained as his arms, “I can handle it..”
“I could simply huff and puff and blown your whole shit down.” a new voice said from the entryway. Yeosang turned to look behind him, finding Mingi leaning against the door nonchalantly.
“I don’t want to hear a single thing from you Mr. ‘I-Eat-Ass-Call-Me’.” Hongjoong deadpanned with the roll of his eyes.
“I’m still not over that.” Wooyoung shows up now, too, “What sort of dumbass number one, pulls such a lame ‘prank’ and number two, uses their own phone number for it?”
“The dumbass named Song Mingi it would seem.” Jongho appears with an answer.
“Hey, let’s not forget, this is the only consistently straight-A student in our group we’re talking about here.”
Hongjoong stares at them incredulously, “Seonghwa- What are all of you doing here? You have work to get to.”
“We’ve finished so we came to bother you.”
“..the lord must be smiling upon me today with the amount of patience I have right now.”
Seonghwa spoke up to interrupt their bickering, “Anyways, let’s finish up in here too so we can rest in the auditorium or something. Yunho and San went out to get snacks.”
It didn’t take long for the five of them to finish up even with Jongho who more worked to distract them than worked to help them. They were now sitting on the auditorium floor in a circle, a pile of snacks in the middle of them for everyone to reach and grab whatever they’d like.
Yeosang loved being here with them; seeing them all happy and smiling while joking around with each other like normal high school boys did. He had missed this for a while.. His time without them was excruciating, unbearable, completely miserable. But he was able to see his friends again, all with the help of his-
“Yunho.. Did you buy expired food or something?” Wooyoung spoke up amongst the already lively conversation.
“You know what, now that you mention it, I feel a bit funny .” Jongho was sat with a frown, hand rubbing his stomach as he looked between Yunho and San.
“They all seem to be up to date,” Seonghwa sifts through all of the packages as he checks the dates, “but I feel sick too.”
One by one the other’s agreed, all feeling ill but without any reason. All except.. Yeosang, Yeosang who took to observing the group with furrowed eyebrows. Why was everyone else affected but himself? Why was he the only one sitting pretty without a problem?
“OH MY GOD!” the sound of Wooyoung screeching pulls the blond out of his thoughts, “ Why is San’s hand.. GLITCHING?”
Glitching? Like.. in games? In movies?
Their attention is undivided on San who stared terrified at his disembodied hand. They were frozen in what could only be described as terror. Their friend was glitching in ‘real-life’.
Yeosang’s stomach started to churn. Not in pain like everyone else but with unease. His fingers fiddled with themselves, not knowing what to do when they were so alone. Alone without
“My camera!” he shot up to his feet, eyes frantically searching the empty table where he had last set it. The camera. The fucking camera.
“Who gives a fuck about your stupid camera?! San is- San is doing whatever he’s fucking doing!” Mingi started to pace back and forth, a habit he had whenever he was panicking. They were all panicking, reasonably so. The unknown was terrifying. What was happening to them now? Some glitched like San, some seemed to be fading in and out of sight, and others were completely see-through in certain places. Almost as if they were all erasing from existence itself.
Yeosang ignored Mingi though, looking high and low for the camera.
At some point, he came to the conclusion that someone must have stolen it while they were all huddled in the cramp storage room. It was nowhere near cheap — a family heirloom amongst, what became, only the men of said family as the women were uninterested and wary of their family’s old practices.
He darted through the halls in search of any student still in the school after such long hours since the school day officially concluded. His legs burned as he went through the large school but he couldn’t stop, not now. Not when his friends were hurting again. He was desperate.
It was on the third floor where he slid open a class door, finding a lone male student perched on one of the desks.
“What the actual fuck do you think you’re doing?!”
The students’ head shot up at the sudden yelling directed towards him. In his hands was that faithful camera and from the angle it was titled in his hands, Yeosang could tell he was cycling through the photos, editing and otherwise just playing around with the pictures as if it meant nothing. As if it affected no one.
The blond was fuming, to say the least. He stormed over to the student, snatching back his belongings into his hands. “Why the hell do you have this?” It was taking everything out of him not to grab that thing by the collar. He wasn’t usually a confrontational person, not a single person in school having ever seen him angry before but when his friends were brought into question… he could feel all emotions at once if the situation called for it.
“Look man,” the thing held its hands up in nonchalant surrender, “you left it lying around. I thought it was free game.”
His fists started to tighten at his sides from the sheer stupidity that was stabbing into his ears and wasting brain capacity he could be using to store literally anything else. “Get. Out.” he seethed with the nastiest glare he has probably ever conjured up. The thing simply rolled its eyes, strolling out of the classroom like this was all a normal occurrence to it.
Yeosang let out the breath he was holding in, sinking to his knees as he pulled the camera to his chest, holding onto it for dear life. He whispered countless ‘sorry’s to his friends, gently stroking his precious device as if to soothe it. “Now let’s get you guys all fixed okay? You can finally stop panicking..”
“Mom?” Yeosang called out as he stepped from behind the wall and into the living room where his mother was lounging on the couch.
She looks over at him with a smile, but Yeosang could tell there was something hidden behind it. There was always something with her and her smiles were never genuine in his eyes. “Yes, dear?”
He steps closer to her, fingers tapping against his thighs to keep himself calm. “..where’s my camera?”
Her smile faltered for a second before she faked another one. Just like always. “It wasn’t in your room like usual?”
Her voice was sweet; sweet to the point it made him feel sick. His stomach churned as he slowly shook his head, fingers picking up speed as he began to grow anxious. “It’s- It’s not in my room at all.. I looked everywhere and I can't find it..” his stare bored into her eyes as if trying to read her. She was already starting to see him slipping. “You know how much that camera means to me right? Yo- you know.. that I need it... right?”
She slowly stood to her feet, cautiously stepping close to her son and resting her hands on his shoulders. Her hands moved along the length of his arms in an attempt to comfort him, “Yeosang, sweetie, you don’t ‘ need’ that old camera. Maybe it’s for the best that you’ve lost it?”
His breathing started to pick up at her abhorrent suggestion, his hands started to ball up at his side, “‘For the best’..? ‘For the best’?!” He threw her arms away from his body — everywhere it touched leaving his skin burning and feeling diseased. He stepped back to create distance between himself and this thing “Where is it.. Where.. is it? Where is it?!”
“I told you, I don’t ha-”
‘NO! No! No. no no no no no..’
His breathing was labored as he dropped to the floor, hands over his ears as he shook his head wildly, the word ‘no’ slewing from his lips into a mess of incoherent letters. His eyes were starting to fill with tears as he continued to yell and his hands started to hit the side of his head, not caring if he got seriously hurt or bruised. His heart had never moved this fast, not even last time.. He couldn't hear a thing over the sound of his hectic breathing, not that he even wanted to hear anything else.
He had lost it all in the span of a single night's sleep.
It was gone.
They were gone.
“Yeosang! Yeosang, please! It’s- It’s in my room..” She hated when he was like this. She hated his episodes. She hated the way her son had become. And she especially hated that camera that he was so dependant on.
He wasted no time running towards the stairs, desperate to have his camera right where it belonged in his nimble hands that were shaking from the fear of losing everyone he loved. He stumbles up the stairs, tripping over his own feet but he couldn’t care less if his knees yelled in pain, if his ankle throbbed for him to slow down and stop. He wasn’t important to himself at all.
His tears finally started to spill over as his eyes locked onto what he considered to be the center of his entire world because without it, what was his point in living?
“God.. I missed you guys.” he sighed out as he scrolled through the pictures, stopping on one of his favorites. The eight of them at a beach in Busan during the summer a few years ago, all looking into the camera with the biggest smiles on their faces. Some were wrapped in towels while others were wrapped in arms, all with dripping wet hair. “You guys can never leave me again okay? We should do this again sometime; we all had so much fun then.”
He smiled fondly as he looked over each and every one of their faces before sliding his finger over it. The image started to warp where he touched as if he were a raindrop falling into a pond. He closed his eyes, still shaken from before when he thought he had lost all of his friends, his body felt light — like when he’d be seated on a swing with Wooyoung behind, pushing him to soar as high as possible without falling.
His eyes slid open, met with a setting sun into the horizon, painting the sky all sorts of oranges and reds, water crashing against the sand under his bare toes. The ocean glistened beautifully and he wasted no time to capture it forever.
“Hey, dude, what's up with you? You seem like you shit your pants or something.” he heard right against his ear, looking to the side to see Wooyoung who had slipped his arm around the formers’ shoulders.
“Really? I feel just fine.”
“You sure.. ‘Cause you're shaking right now.”
Yeosang thought back to just moments before when he was brought to his knees in his living room. It was best to lie; his friends wouldn’t understand otherwise. “It’s nothing, promise.”
Wooyoung studied him with narrow eyes for a few silent seconds as if interrogating him right on this very beach before shrugging it off and turning back to head further up shore.
“Kay, well come on, Hwa and Yunho are about to start grilling soon,” he called out to Yeosang from over his shoulder, “or you could stay here… and have San eat everything like last time~”
The familiar click of the camera shutter as he gazed through the lens at the fleeting back of his longest friend, his first one and the one who had introduced him to everyone else. He smiled that fond smile of his as he looked over the photo.
“Goddammit- wait for me!” he hurriedly yelled out once Wooyoung’s last statement sunk in, jogging over to the centers of his life, the most important people, the only reason for his still-beating heart captured like a picture-perfect, long-lasting memory.
『 it will be forgotten. 』