‘My mother told me that it would be around the corner somewhere,’ Luhan says, looking around the train station.

‘I don’t get it,’ Jongin groans, shaking his head. ‘Why did you have to drag me along? You’re just taking a few ID photos, right?’ 

‘Yeah, but it wouldn’t be any fun going home alone after, would it?’ Luhan responds, tugging on Jongin’s uniform sleeve. ‘Anyway you can stop grumbling now, you big baby. I found it!’

‘Why do you need these again?’ Jongin questions, watching Luhan slip a five dollar bill into the photo booth machine.

‘I’m graduating soon, and apparently high schools don’t want their students walking around with their chubby 12 year-old faces printed on their ID cards.’ 

Jongin tries to ignore the stab in his chest. Time had flown by too quickly, and in a few months, Jongin’s morning walks to school would be solitary again, and Luhan would be attending another school, meeting new people, growing into an adult.

Luhan takes a seat in the booth and adjusts his school uniform, smoothing out the wrinkles on his blazer and straightening out his tie. Jongin decides to lean against the booth on the outside, and Luhan draws the curtains in the booth closed. 

Jongin hears Luhan fumbling with the buttons, and the younger boy calls out. ‘Hyung, press the blue one.’

‘The blue one?’ Luhan repeats, ‘There’s isn’t a blue one, I’ve pressed all the– Oh.’ Beep.

‘Please sit up straight and look into the camera,’ the feminine voice instructs from the speaker. ‘Your photo will be taken in 3, 2­–‘ 

The flash goes off once, and Luhan’s smile is picture perfect, hair coifed to the side, not a strand out of place.

Jongin pulls the curtains aside. The flash goes off for a second time. 

‘Hey–!’ Jongin’s hip collides into Luhan’s, and Luhan is at a loss for words. The flash goes off for a third time.

Jongin has Luhan caught in headlock, eyes smiling, lips curled up like a cat’s. The flash goes off for the last time. 

‘Your photos are complete. Printing…’ The machine beeps, counting down the seconds before Luhan’s photos are to be collected. 

Luhan stares at the younger boy incredulously, who is too busy laughing his head off to notice. 

‘You– M-my pictures!’ he sputters. 

‘I kinda think I made them look better,’ Jongin observes, pulling out the printed photos from the machine. Luhan takes it from him, gaping at his own face, twisted in surprise and confusion, next to Jongin’s trademark toothy smile, caught in a laugh. 

‘And hey, look,’ Jongin points at the touchscreen. ‘We can even get you a little dog tag with your picture on it. Let’s buy one – I want ‘If found, return to Kim Jongin’ engraved on it. And then you can hang it around your neck when you start attending high school. Nifty, huh?’ 

Luhan sniggers, ‘If you were going to miss me this much, you should have just said so.’ He pulls Jongin in, ruffling up his hair. ‘I’ll always be your best friend, you little brat. Don’t forget me.’ 

‘Yeah,’ Jongin nods with an offhand look on his face, thinking that if it were one of us that would forget the other, you would forget me.

As they head home, Luhan cuts up the photo booth pictures, putting aside the first one for his ID card (as if the others were usable anyway). He gives the last frame to Jongin, because I was really ugly in the other two, okay! Jongin only agrees, earning himself a punch in the arm. 

‘Hyung, you have to keep the rest. Don’t lose them.’ 

Luhan shoots the younger boy a reassuring smile, holding up a pinky, ‘I promise.’