Seong Somin

I cleaned and organized everything in my house in a span of 72 hours. I don't remember much of it, I was still caught in my daze. Once Yoongi had left, the comfortable mess that I'd constructed around me suddenly grew intolerable. I'd picked up a gold plated feather duster I'd bought for decoration and seldom set it down for three days. We'd been together for a month, thirty-one days, and suddenly without him, the warm honey gold, the coffee brown lifestyle I'd crafted for myself grew dull.

Thirty-one days. I'd been alone for most of my life and this one man enters and everything went to . My style of photography grew darker, I found myself enjoying shades and cool-toned metals, everything that I'd turned my nose up at for twenty-three years of my life. And once my photography career had taken off, magazines listed me as a "young urban photographer that specializes in the darker half of human nature" it became difficult for to break from the style. I had willingly succumbed to the dark side in my art, I began to dress the part too. Ripped jeans and graphic tees, fishnets and chokers. And my popularity only grew from there.

Now, starring at the pictures I'd taken of BTS, of Yoongi, I could really see how much my style had changed in the last eight months. My assistants slid quickly printed, glossy photos the floor around so that we could pick through them I leaned down to pick up a picture of Yoongi sitting at a piano. Reaching into my pocket, I pulled out my phone and searched for one of my most prized pictures. I'd taken when Yoongi was still living in my house.

He sat at my piano. One of his hands rested slightly on the keys but he had turned his body to face me. He was reaching out for me with his free hand, a welcoming smile on his face so bright that it turned his eyes into crescents. Around him in the old set up of my studio, gold shone from the walls and complemented the creamy white turtleneck sweater he was wearing.

The new picture of Yoongi was an almost complete opposite of the photo I carried in my phone. His hair was platinum blonde now and styled to look mussed and tousled. He wore the clothes for the brand. Ripped black jeans, a tucked in button down with detailing ed at the cuffs with additional fabric giving him a smoldering pirate appeal. The glint of belt caught the glean from the piercing in his ears and the thin cross pendant he wore as accessories. The piano was matte black and covered in questionable things. In this picture, Yoongi leaned back on the open keys, showing off his jawline as turned his head to play with the lace of a female underwear.

I shoved my phone back into my pocket, scolding myself for even making that comparison. Of course, the pictures had changed, we'd both changed so much in the last eight months, it was almost as if we were trying to run from the people we'd been during that month back in my apartment.

My photography finally took off thanks to Yoongi and he returned to his team to produce an album that won  a Grammy overseas.

When I heard that my assistants had booked this job I'd felt the jolt of excitement I felt whenever something happened and our paths crossed. It only happened three times in the last months and the moment would pass without either of noticing it in our busy lives, but this photoshoot meant potentially sitting down with them and having a conversation.

However, now as I stood alone, surrounded by pictures of a man that I missed so much my throat hurt, reality had started to kick in. We'd been awkward. I'd smiled and he'd smile politely back. I spoke to him informally and he'd looked surprised when I called his name. Strangers. It felt like I was interacting with a stranger.

And were we not? The distance that we set between us and those eight months, we'd put them there. We were not forced apart by warring families or an evil fiance. We'd willingly become strangers. And looking back on the time I'd spent without him I realized that it was the reason I could never bring myself to get past staring at his phone number or bring myself to send that text. We'd become strangers and strangers didn't have any reason to talk to each other, much less love each other, so why had I expected anything less today?

I sighed, stepping out of the ring of photos carefully.

"I'm going to grab some snacks," I tell my two assistants Yena and Kris. They nod, distracted by the printer that was launching the prints, as I step back into the dressing room where I knew all the uneaten food from today would be waiting. I didn't want to waste time so I hadn't taken the lunch break that I usually did and gone without. It was no big deal then but now my stomach rumbled for the cold dukbokki containers that sat uneaten and unopened on the tables.

I grabbed a pair of disposable chopsticks and peeled the plastic covering off. I'd only gotten through four bites of food when the sound of my ringtone surprised me. It was my ringtone, but it wasn't my phone. I set the chopsticks down and glanced around the fitting room trying to locate the sound. Finding a slim smartphone ringing plainly, discarded on the empty dressing table I cautiously picked it up a