“Hell yeah, you can follow me around,” MyungSoo snorts, looking at his reflection in a car window. “I just need to make sure this will be worth my while. I want every picture that you take.”

“I’m not following you around because I want to, though,” I remind him. “It’s for my photography assignment.” It goes right in one ear and out the other. He smirks.

“I want every photo,” he says, again.

I start taking pictures of MyungSoo the next day, but he gets mad at me when I show them to him at the end of the day.

“What is this ?” He growls, and I swipe my camera from his hand before he smashes it. “You took pictures of me in ing Literature? Literature? Do you think people want to see that?”

“Well, it’s supposed to be a can-“

“Don’t take any more pictures of me like this.” The finality in his voice is kind of alarming, and when I look into his eyes I don’t see any space for compromise. He’s honestly serious. “I can’t be remembered this way.”

“Well, they’re just for-“

“I’m Kim MyungSoo and I’m ing spectacular. Don’t take any more pictures of me in Literature or I’ll destroy your worthless camera. After school tomorrow, wait for me at the front gates.”

The next day, MyungSoo takes me to the park, and he makes us wait in silence until yellowy beams from a story-like sunrise split the air around our faces. Then he instructs me to photograph him while he climbs a tree. Every moment of his is theatrical, but I take the pictures anyway. They come out looking epic and telling, but wholly deceitful. MyungSoo doesn’t seem to mind.

“These are the pictures we need, Jen,” he breathes, flicking through the shots with an impatient thumb. “Powerful and dramatic. I can’t be remembered as a Lit student.”

“Why?” He looks at me for a long time before he answers.

“Because at the end of the day, you aren’t anyone but who you’re remembered as.”

MyungSoo drags me to amusement parks at midnight, shady corners of the beach where he is the only thing in view, and libraries where we’re eventually kicked out for our antics. The entire time, I dutifully take photos of what he commands me to, and it’s a strange experience being led instead of leading.

My photography teacher really likes the pictures, and makes me submit them to the literary magazine for publication. They’re accepted, and, soon, photos of Myungsoo circulate throughout the entire school, mouths riddled with envious praise of what an exciting life MyungSoo must live. No one seems to notice the pictures of him from Literature that I snuck in, nor does anyone seem to notice that he’s in school for the same amount of time that they are. I successfully make MyungSoo a fantastic creature of adventurous living, and he forgets to scold me for the mundane photos.

“Hey, thanks, Jen. It was a lot of fun,” he says to me in the hallway about it later. When I search his face, I can see that he no longer remembers how hard he worked to falsify our time together. He smiles like we’re old friends.