Archive of Our Own

Junhong always liked taking pictures.

Whenever I’d gone visit, wanting to go out to play, the first thing he’d do, before even letting me in, was check the remaining battery life on your camera. It was dependent on that single device whether we would go out somewhere far, or just wander around the little playgrounds behind our apartment complex.

I never did really like your camera.

I wanted to play with Junhong, to run around screaming and laughing as I used to with the other neighborhood kids. I honestly didn’t know why ever he’d want so desperately to record every little second of his life digitally. And he never did give me a proper response either.

“Because,” he tried to explain one day, the day I’d constantly got at him for taking pictures instead of playing with me, “I want to record everything.”

Back then, I’d argued back, hissing back at how he was a jerk for wanting to play with that camera more than his best friend. He laughed, and put aside your camera for a minute to play with me; but within minutes, the thing was back in his hands and we, by then, took turns snatching the device from each other to snap probably shaky pictures of each other laughing.

Eventually, I grew to accept it. To play with him, meant having to deal with the constant snapping of lens from your camera. I could put up with a stupid camera if it meant being with him.

And one day, when one of the bullies from school dropped your camera, he absolutely freaked out.

He was screaming awfully hard, tears and snot mixing as they rolled down his chin in this god awful disgusting mix. And mind you, no offense, he wasn’t quite the best fighter, and it took more effort to pull him off, bleeding and broken, than it should have.

Taking him down to the hospital was quite the journey as well. If he didn’t like going to hospitals before, without your camera and sanity intact, he was even worse, if that’s even possible.

Very much unlike the Choi Junhong I knew, he threw the biggest fits ever, screaming and clawing at whichever nurse tried to help him. He was like a rabid cat, to be honest. And while it was cute, it was, all in all, too embarrassing.

For his next birthday, I decided to buy him a new camera.

He stared blankly down at it as if I’d given him a dead rat. Frankly, I was a little hurt. I was almost sure he’d be happy; I thought for sure that he’d cheer and cling off my neck like he always did when he was over excited. Apparently not.

“What’s this?” His voice was dull, so very not like him.

“A camera. Your other one broke.”

As if not mentioning it had managed to wipe his memory clean of the past events, Junhong nodded slowly at me, taking the smaller device in his hands. It wasn’t anything like the shooter camera you had before - those cost a fortune and I could only do so much as a high school with a petty part time job at the convenience store.

And for a deafening second, he just stared at it. When he sighed, I could nearly swear my heart broke into a thousand and one different pieces. See, I only wanted to please him. I figured this would be the way to bring back that cheeky smile I loved so much on him.

Maybe I was wrong again.

“Smile.”

I blinked hard when the flash went off straight in my face. I’m pretty sure that I’d managed to make myself look like a complete idiot on that first picture of his.

Whining, I complained at him to erase it, but he didn’t. He refused. He never erased pictures. “It’s like erasing memories,” he’d tell me. “I want to make memories, not erase them.”

During the homecoming event period our junior year, was when I finally brought up the courage to ask him out. Actually, to be precise, it was the the hour after homecoming had ended. Without a date - a lot of people asked him, I’m sure, because the same was for me - he roamed around the party like a lost puppy, taking pictures of this and that.

I’m sure he snapped one or two of me while I was dancin’ with my date. Because as much as I wanted to be by him, so he wouldn’t be lonely, Hana wanted my attention just long enough for a dance or two. And while he let me go easily enough, I could tell he wasn’t all too happy at my ditching him.

Maybe I shouldn’t have gone with a date that homecoming.

When the dance ended, I send Hana off with her friends, tellin’ her that I was going to head home with him. She was nice and stuff, and not really my girlfriend, so she waved us bye.

And in minutes, it was just us two in the parking lot.

Junhong was flicking through your pictures, a slight tug pulling down his lips. “Most of the pictures are blurry.” He complained, running through the hundreds he took that day.

Normally, I knew he didn’t go through the pictures. That’d take forever, judging he took a million shots a second. He was doing that because I was there, I could tell. Because it was awkward to stand with me alone at the bus stop.

“Why didn’t you come with Jieun?”

He shrugged. “D’know. Why didn’t you go back home with Hana?”

“D’know,” I copied. But I knew why I didn’t go back with Hana: I didn’t want to leave him alone. “Seriously Junhong, if you put down your camera for like, a minute, I’m pretty sure loads’a girls’ll be chasin’ after you like bees to a flower.”

“You calling me a flower?”

“Maybe.”

I laughed. He laughed.

But I was being serious. He was like a flower to me. A precious flower that I wouldn’t let anyone touch.

The silence sunk in a little after that. We were seated on the metallic seats of the stop. His feet were flat on the ground while I kicked awkwardly at it. The silence wasn’t bad or anything, but I still didn’t like it. I wanted him to be comfortable around me enough to talk. I was pretty sure he had a reason for not comin’ with Jieun. In fact, I’d been pretty sure that he and Jieun were goin’ together when I said yes to Hana.

Imagine my surprise when he asked me out as his bro date.

If I had known that he wasn’t goin’ with Jieun, I would’ve never said yes to Hana. Would’ve been fun just bein’ the two of us; as it’s been until now.

Scratching the back of my neck, I stretched my back, hearing it crack. “Would it be weird if I said I liked ya’?”

I don’t know what brought me to tell him, but with the hum of love in the air - I blamed it on the vast amount of couples at the dance - maybe it was my hormones doing the talking for me.

“Nope, not at all. Cause’ I like you too.”

For a second, I studied his expression. Because he probably weren’t feelin’ the same like as I did.

“No, I seriously like you.”

“And I seriously like you too.”

He was too nonchalant about this. While I was going red in the ears, he was sitting with that usual blank expression of his, checking his phone for the time. I thought I was going to explode.

When he sensed that I wasn’t really believing him, he turned around and smiled. “I like you too,” he laughed, patting my head. “Really.”

I ignored him and hissed, turning tomato in the face. “I’m older than you, show me some respect.”

He laughed, this time, putting down your camera - the one I’d presented to him - and taking my cheeks in both his hands. “No,” he smirked, squishing my face in his hands. “Don’t wanna’.”

Junhong and I had been friends since even before we’d met - or, at least that’s what we liked to joke. Since middle school, we’d been all but attached by the hip. Did you know that teachers liked to call us siamese twins despite our obvious height differences and physical features? I guess that just showed how close we were.

In fact, maybe it was because of that, our unknown bond, that our little relationship escalated real far, real fast.

By our senior year in high school, we were way too deep in our little fantasy world. We were often over at your house or mine, curled together. He’d most usually be takin’ pictures of the house or me, this weird smile on this face. And by then, I’d grown so used to it, that I wasn’t even really surprised. He took pictures wherever he went anyways.

In fact, I wasn’t at all too surprised at all when he brought the camera with us to bed the first time we decided to cross that little point between sane and insane. If that camera ever got out, I was pretty sure our parents would’ve hounded us down. You would’ve tried to kill me with your bare hands if you could.

“Smile,” he breathed, his bare chest still rising and falling, pressed up against mine.

I laughed, but did as he asked, even going through the bother of putting a cute little ‘v’ to my eyes. “Your turn,” I snatched the camera out of his hands and flipped our positions so he was under me. The process repeated a few times until we heard the door unlock.

I swear that was the fastest I’d ever managed to struggle on my clothes - even if I did wear my tshirt backwards.

We went like that the rest of our high school careers. In university, Junhong and I moved in together in some apartment. I was pullin’ off part times jobs while Junhong was going on in his life like you would’ve wanted him to.

Arts. I thought the subject was perfect for him and he did too. He liked being able to learn more about the graffitti he especially liked to take pictures of. And while it lessened the amount of time we had to mess around together, I didn’t mind it one bit. It just made our free weekends together all the more precious.

It was during the beginning of our second year together that Junhong decided to show me the reason why he liked to take pictures.

All this time, it had been for you, did you know?

I didn’t. No way in hell.

And who would’ve thought that it’d been you to buy that overpriced camera for him? I heard that it took the all of your pay for as long as the whole year. Wow.

When he pulled me onto the bus, I was all curious as to why he was deciding now to remain almost scary calm. Usually, he would’ve taken at least a dozen pictures the second we stepped out the doorway; but that particular day, he hadn’t even brought his camera. The whole time, one hand remained in his pocket while the other one wrapped around my hand.

We traveled across town in silence like that for the next hour or so. Between the minutes, I’d pulled out my iPod and plugged the device up to our ears. We listened to rap while waiting for the right stop to come.

I thought, perhaps, that when the bus stopped, I’d come face to face with some amusement park. Or maybe some abandoned street - maybe Junhong needed to do some research for his school project but didn’t want to come alone. What I didn’t expect to find was a graveyard.

Junhong pulled me along the rows of tombs and came directly to a stop in front of a single particular one.

Yours.

Kim Himchan.

That’s what your gravestone read. I looked at him in question, and he shrugged.

“He was my brother.”

But you guys had different surnames. I was still confused, and Junhong must’ve read that, because in a another minute, after squatting down to pull at the weeds by your stone, he decided to explain. The every detail I should’ve known as his best friend.

“I’m dad’s kid. Himchan was mom’s. Mom broke up with her ex because he was an abusive dick face. He hit Himchan all the time because he was pretty or some bull like that. Mom got hit a lot of times because of that. Ya’ know, by that, you could even call my dad the knight in shining armour.”

With him telling his story, I squatted next to him, brushing the flower dust and dead leaves off your grave. I didn’t know who you are, and I probably never will properly understand, as you died before I got to know Junhong.

But I could feel some sort of connection.

If Junhong liked you, then I guess I did too.

“Hey’ya Himchan,” I nodded, pulling my arms around my legs as I looked down onto your grave.

I wondered how lonely it must be to lay there alone. It wasn’t like Junhong could visit every day. You must’ve been awful cold and lonely there all alone. Must’ve been scary.

Junhong had this sad sort of smile as he pat my back. It was as if he was thankin’ me for accepting you.

(And why wouldn’t I? You were Junhong’s favorite brother.)

“I took more pictures,” he smiled, reaching over to the small box sitting on your stone, lifting the cover off of it. There were already loads of SD chips in there. Hundreds of them perhaps. “Sorry it’s been a while since I’ve last been. School’s a bitch. But this one’s a whole 32GBs though.”

I watched Junhong as he dug in his pocket - the one he’d continuously occupied with his spare hand - and produced an SD chip. Probably the same one that had been inserted in his camera just the other day. He took a last longing look at the chip before dumping it in with the rest, closing the lid to the box with a relaxed smile.

“Don’t blame me if you get a lil’ grossed out with that one. Jongup’s a boss in bed.”

I almost choked. Sorry by the way for that.

After that, we made a usual happening to visit you, even if we didn’t have more pictures to give you. Even if there wasn’t anything to give you, we visited anyways, just to keep you company. Because us in person, was a hundred times better than any picture, right?

Then, around our third year going to your grave, Junhong said something that surprised even me.

“I’m going to stop coming.”

If you thought he was crazy, then it’s okay, because I thought the same thing.

“I’m going to let you find rest, instead of having me here every other day bothering you.”

He was all sniffly there, frowning as he tried to hold back tears.

And he really did keep to his words. I never once thought that Junhong would be able to stay away for longer than a few months at the best, but he did.

On some days, he’d look as if he needed to be somewhere, walking all around our apartment, several times going to put a hand on the door knob before pulling away as if it had burned him. He’d then mumble something under his breath and walk away again, shuffling into our room where he’d proceed to scream into the pillow.

I never did get why he did that.

But he never did stop taking pictures. We’d pose together in front of his camera and smile awful nice. Every time, he’d say that he wasn’t takin’ the picture for you, but I learned better than to listen to him. After all, he’d always go out to buy new SD chips when we filled the one in our camera. And he’d take the chip out, placing it on my desk where it’d be impossible to miss.

And … … and well, I guess you know the rest.

You can just think of me as a messenger between you and Junhong. He’ll come around, don’t worry; you probably know that better than me anyways.

He’s doin’ alright, by the way. He’s graduating soon, next month. I can promise you loads’a pictures from his graduation. You’ll get so many pictures that it’ll almost be like you were there yourself.

This time, you’ll get you see from my point of view; instead of looking through your brother’s eyes, you’ll see through mine.

He’s grown up real well ya’ know.