“What is that?” Sunny’s voice over her shoulder made her jump in her chair. Stephanie tried to take away the piece of paper, out of her friends reach. Since she was taller, Sunny’s shorter arms weren’t enough to take the photograph.

“It’s nothing!” Stephanie was pushing Sunny off her while elbowing her.

“I know you’ve been looking at some photo all day long, Hyoyeon told me. Where did you get it? What’s so interesting about it? Show me!” Sunny asked when she finally surrendered and uncapped a yogurt bottle.

“I-I don’t know” red tinted Stephanie’s cheeks.

“So you’re telling me you’ve been staring at a stranger’s photo…Why, exactly?”

“I don’t know! I just…”

“Where did you get it?” Sunny repeated the question. The way she was looking at her, made Stephanie feel even more ridiculous about her obsession with the picture of an unknown woman.

“The b-book” Stephanie was looking everywhere but at Sunny.

“What book?”

“The one I found the other day in the storeroom”

“That’s disgusting! Did you keep that old sweaty thing? You don’t know where it had been!” Sunny scolded. Who knew how much that book had been in that room. So much transformations that building had experimented, it was impossible to know when the book had been left behind. A lot of old stuff was abandoned in that room and they used for sleeping and smoking when taking breaks from work. In one of those napping times, Stephanie accidentally kicked one of the boxes. While collecting the stuff all over the floor, she saw the dusty old book. The soft covers where all bent and she took it from one corner. A photo felt in her lap and Stephanie then saw the image of that woman “What’s in the photo anyways?”

“A girl”

“A really hot chic? That’s why you wouldn’t take your eyes off it?”

“No! It’s- It’s something in her eyes, I mean I don’t know how to explain it” Sunny looked at her like she was crazy. Maybe she was “I can’t stop thinking about it”

“Can I see the picture?” Stephanie doubted a little before giving the picture to Sunny. Then she looked at the picture, then at Stephanie.

“You see?” asked Stephanie “There’s something strange about that picture”

“Oh yes, there’s absolutely something weir about it” Sunny looked in the eyes while giving back the paper “There’s no girl in that photo”

“What?” it was true. The picture in her hands was of a bench, an empty bench and trees behind it, but no woman. There was not a young woman sitting on the bench, with her slender limbs and white skin, and that impassive look. It was gone “There was a young woman in that bench! I swear!”

“Not anymore” Sunny was seriously worried about Stephanie “Fany, look, you should get rid of it. Throw that book away together with that picture. You’re scaring me with this”

“But she was there!”

“It’s an old photo, maybe you’re confused, you mistook those trees as a woman… the image it’s not that clear anymore” Sunny consoled Stephanie

“No! She was there! A girl!”

“Calm down, it could faded you know? With your sweat or whatever… the paper is old and you had it all this time in the open after it had been kept in the darkness of an old book pages”

“Yeah I-It could be like that…you’re right” Stephanie noticed the look in Sunny’s eyes and was conscious for the first time that they were in the cafeteria. She put the photo back in her purse and started to eat her lunch.

It took some time for Stephanie to forget about the picture and the woman in it. She threw away the book with it. The days went on, uneventful and boring and soon, her head was full of things that had nothing to do with the book or the photo. She had problems sleeping and that was taking all of her energy.

“Hey, Fany, would you come with us later?” Sunny asked while turning on her computer. It was Friday and the strong sunlight outside filled the office with a yellow glow. Stephanie looked at her, one eye closed while trying to decipher the question.

“No, I think I’m going home and see if I can sleep”

“Oh, you should really go to the doctor, Fany. You had not been able to sleep for… over a week now?” Sunny was already typing on her computer and Stephanie imitated it.

“Yeah, maybe I should”

Her right eyelid twitched. That was the first thing she noticed once she was awake. She couldn’t sleep at all that night either. It had been over a month of sleepless nights and she was reaching her limit. That made her difficult to work and she finally decided to go see a doctor. He told her it was nothing wrong with her body besides her slightly irritated eye. The old man that looked like someone’s grandfather calmed her.

“It may be stress, your eye is a little bit red but besides that it’s all right” said the man chuckling at the disappointed look in Stephanie’s face “Look, I’ll give you something for the sleep and you could take some days off work. If after that you’re still not able to sleep then I’ll send you to the specialist and I’ll give you something for your eye as well”

She got out there as tired as before but with some peace of mind. If she relaxed maybe she could sleep. She’ll buy pizza and junk food and then a hot bath. That will help. So she called her boss at night and asked for a day off. Without nothing to worry about she lied of her sofa in front of the TV and after her bath, tucked in her bed she drifted into dreamland.

“Woa! What’s wrong with you eye?” Sunny looked in amazement at the swollen eye. Fany had slept but now her eye was all red and swollen.

“I got an infection” she put the shades back on.  Tuesday morning she was at the office with the only purpose of show her monstrous eye to her boss and get more days off “Gonna take a week at least, I call the doctor this morning”

“It really looks horrible” Sunny couldn’t quite stop looking at Fany.

“Thanks for the support, see you later” and went straight to her boss to scare her with her angry eye.

“It’s not as bad as it looks like” said the doctor with stronger medicine at hand. The infection took over her eye turning into a red ball “I assure you it will be gone in a couple of days. Just in case, we’ll check on it next week”

She was send home to rest for a week and she was happy for it. Two days after, redness and pain had gone but there’s was still an uncomfortable feeling on her eyeball. That feeling woke her up in the middle of the night. She got up cursing to check her eye in the mirror and to apply some more medicine. In the moment she saw her reflection the book and the picture came back to her mind. She now knew where the girl had gone. There in the mirror, the same impassive expression of that woman, in her eye.

NOTES:

That girl was of course Taeyeon, sinister Taeyeon.

I did find a picture of a girl in an old book, but there was no girl in my eye after that.

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