The last two weeks of August had always been a strange time to Eunbi. It was the time of year when warm summer winds started to cool into autumn breezes, when the tips of flourishing green leaves began to fade into yellowish parchment that crinkled, but were not quite ready to fall off their branches. It was when the particularly keen cafes and delicatessens would bust out their new lines of pumpkin-spiced whatever, and throngs of young people would flock to purchase some because it was the sort of thing that the youth would do.

But this mid-August Monday evening felt a little strange, as if the Earth had tilted a degree off its axis and no one noticed but her.

To be quite honest, Eunbi didn’t actually know what was wrong - if she could call it that. It was more odd, a bit more different that it was wrong, and she knew exactly who was the cause behind this strange shifting of the ground beneath her feet. Placing her pencil down on her sketchbook, she stared blankly at the paper in front of her, knowing it would be filled with sketches of the same generic model she always used when designing outfits.

Except it wasn’t, and she wasn’t really sure when that change happened either. Not when the sketchpad was filled with drawings of the same woman, the woman with her long hair the colour of midnight and dark eyes that would often twinkle with amusement, with a mole placed on the tip of her nose as if someone had carelessly flicked a brush and a drop of ink had found its way there. The woman who had, Eunbi came to notice, a set of full lips that would occasionally swell when she chewed on it too much from nervousness, with corners that would perk up into a smirk when their eyes met.

The fact that Eunbi managed to even note down these things, committing them to memory, was so uncommon that she had to take a rain check. She placed her palm on her forehead, but there was no fever. She wasn’t feeling sick or tired, so it wasn’t exhaustion either.

It was just that part-time model Kang Hyewon had managed to upturn her entire world in the span of a month, and Eunbi hadn’t the slightest idea how or why.

“Sian,” Eunbi called out, “can I ask you a question?”

“Sure!” Sian’s voice chirped. As she strode into the office, Eunbi closed her sketchbook and covered it with her arms, acting nonchalant. That was another strange thing; Eunbi never felt the need to hide her sketches from Sian, and yet. Pretending not to be affected by the unusual behaviour, Sian leaned against Eunbi’s table. “What’s up?”

“I think…” Eunbi took her time thinking of the words to say, but she could not find the words to express her inner turmoil. “I think there’s something wrong.”

Sian furrowed her brows and immediately placed her hand on Eunbi’s forehead. Eunbi shook her head and chuckled. “No, not sick. It’s just that, I have this friend.”

Ah, Sian thought. The age-old ‘f