The attic was dusty and dimly lit. Junsu scowled as he climbed into the attic, wondering what possessed him to make him offer to clean his grandmother’s attic. It was on the spur of the moment when he decided that he wanted to clean instead of go play soccer outside.

Sighing, Junsu stretched his arms a little before he decided that the faster he cleaned the attic up, the faster he could go out and play soccer. Dusting most of the antique yet almost useless junk, Junsu carefully put them inside cardboard boxes, just in case they were memorable and precious to his grandmother.

As Junsu was packing, something caught his eye. It was a box. Junsu was a little curious at first, as to why such a dull looking box would even catch his eye. However, when Junsu pulled the box towards himself, he realised why. The box was dustless. It was clean and seemed as though it had been wiped regularly. Junsu ran his fingers across the lid of the box, it was as smooth as recently polished floorboards.

Cautiously, Junsu opened the box, his head rolling around wondering just what would be kept inside the only box that was not covered in dust. It must be something of importance. However, what Junsu found inside the box was not gold, diamonds or jade, it was simply a bunch of faded out papers.

“What is this?” Junsu whispered as he took out what seems to be envelopes, envelopes and more envelopes. Junsu took the first envelope he had taken out and opened the delicate looking envelope. The envelope was thin, so Junsu was not surprised when all he pulled out from the envelope was a newspaper clipping. As Junsu looked into the envelope to see if there was anything else, a black and white photo fell into his lap.

It was a picture of a man in his late twenties. Junsu held the photo and stared at the man in the photo. The man had almond shaped eyes with a stare as though he could see right through your soul, a really nice looking jaw line, cleanly shaven and neat hair. The man was handsome. Junsu traced the black and white photo with a finger slowly, it felt as though he could feel the warmth of the skin and the roughness of the hair of the man in the picture. And even though the photo was not in colour, Junsu felt as though he could see the other’s skin tone, the colour of the lips that were curved slightly into a small but sincere looking smile, the colour of the clothes the man was wearing, everything seemed as though it were in colour.

Placing the photo back in his lap, Junsu reached for the newspaper clipping. There was a picture of the same man in the paper. It was an obituary. The man’s name was Jung Yunho, a musician from the past. The obituary went through briefly Jung Yunho’s contribution to the society, yet as Junsu read the lines of facts, he found it strange that he had no recollection of there ever being a Jung Yunho in the world of music. He was still naïve. But now he knew.

Without a trace of hesitance, Junsu took out the other envelopes, opened them up one by one and read the contents. The rest were letters, written for someone from Jung Yunho. Someone he called ‘my inspiration’. Junsu briefly wondered if the someone, the inspiration could be his grandmother, but as he read more and more letters, he realised that the letters only contained details from Jung Yunho’s life, there was no mention about the person he was writing to. Confused, Junsu even checked to see if the addressee was written on the envelope, but all he found was plain envelopes. Nothing was written on any of them.

The more Junsu read, the more Jung Yunho became familiar to him, the more real Jung Yunho became. He learnt about the hardships the other had to go through to place music as a part of his life. The way he tiredly agonised over choosing between his family and his future in the world of music. He learnt about the emotions Jung Yunho felt when he had finally made a breakthrough in the music industry but when that happened, all that was left of his family was himself. Junsu read about Jung Yunho’s loneliness and pain. He read every single word and tried to imagine himself in Jung Yunho’s position.

Junsu didn’t even know how Jung Yunho was even related to his family, why his grandmother even had a box full of Jung Yunho’s thoughts. It was peculiar, but Junsu didn’t want  to think too much about it. When Junsu was about three quarters of the way through with the lengthy monologues, he picked up Jung Yunho’s photo again. On a closer look, the edges were really frayed. Junsu couldn’t even begin to estimate from how long ago Jung Yunho lived. It didn’t matter what era Jung Yunho was from. Junsu liked his eyes. He likes the other’s lips and the way the man seemed to carry himself in that one simple photo. He felt a little silly for even thinking that he was falling in love with something that was 2D. Yet when his eyes glazed over the box of letters, he knew that it didn’t matter if the man he was staring at was only 2D. All the content in the letters make up the person he was falling in love with.

“Junsu?” A weary voice called out, “Junsu?”

Suddenly looking up from the single photo, Junsu hastily stood up when he recognised his grandmother calling for him, “grandmother!? What is it?”

“Junsu-ah!”, the grandmother called up into the attic, “you’ve been cleaning my attic for the whole day, are you not going to eat?”

“The whole day?” Junsu asked himself, picking up the photo of Jung Yunho he had let slip from his fingers when he stood up, had it only really taken a day for Junsu to fall deeply in love with a man of the past? Junsu called out to his grandmother, “I’m coming now”, before he climbed down from the attic.

Junsu slipped the photo into one of his pockets before he turned to smile brightly at his grandmother, “grandmother, I’m in love.” And Junsu felt that he was a fool.