There were always those few stray photographs that I never took out of my box again. They remained buried under the ones in celebrated albums and the ones retired from frames. They were the ones whose captured scenes I could not even bear to imagine again. After the breakup, I could no longer bring myself to recall the times that we had together, because the photos we took together returned not only those heartwarming memories, but also every argument and dispute laced between those giggles and cuddles.

Nonetheless, I kept them with me all these years, because I never acquainted myself with the practice of deleting or disposing of my pictures. Ever since I got my first camera, an entry DSLR, I had kept every single picture that I captured. There were always flaws in every photograph, despite however desperately the photographer tried; it was only a matter of beautifully imperfect displacements or completely jarring aesthetics. A photo may had appeared utterly horrendous the day it was taken, but perhaps five years later the viewer may develop a new found appreciation for the documented scene. Even a scene that seemed completely acceptable to one audience might very well have been unpleasant to another.

Every moment captured was a moment slipped away in the blown dust of time, never able to be returned, but the photo would always remain.  A photo deleted was a possible regret, a moment that could never be vividly restored. Those memories might not have been the happiest, but they were times I cherished. I cherished the photos and kept them, because they relayed milliseconds that I could never come close to reenacting.

However, when I opened that box after gaining sufficient courage and resolve to revisit the past – in order to seal it, I found the first picture that rendered me speechless. His smile that took my breath away each time – it didn’t fail this time, either.

He seemed happy, and so did I.

I was thirteen then. Chanyeol was seven months older than me, so we attended eighth grade together in our town middle school. The night after my family had moved in, our next-door neighbor had invited us over for dinner to welcome us to the neighborhood.

“Do I have to go, Mom?” Being the slightly introverted lump of socially awkward I was, I whined for them to let me stay home. Even after claiming that I had been craving instant ramen for the past week and wanted to just sleep early – for which I didn’t even know why I bothered since everyone knew I slept at ungodly hours, they saw right through my act and dragged me along.

“Come on, Soph. It was really nice of them to invite us over, so we should at least go as a family.”

“But Mom…”

That was when my dad stepped in. “Liam told me they have a son your age. You can meet him.” Was that a smirk I saw on his face?

“I don’t need you guys setting me up with friends, Dad.”

“Maybe you’ll finally find yourself some guy friends,” he said with a casual wink.

God, kill me now.

Turned out the kid never even came home for dinner, causing his parents to continuously apologize to us for his son’s inconsiderate behavior. And when they did, mine turned towards me, almost staring me down, as if boasting that would’ve been us if we hadn’t dragged you.

At that point, having given up, I lackadaisically slumped on my chair and shoved the broccoli around on my plate. When they asked me questions, I answered, and then tuned them out again. It was then that a five-foot tall figure burst through their door, continuously apologizing for forgetting about the time and not showing up for dinner.

It was then that he flashed his pearly whites at me for the first time, introducing himself to us by the name of “Chanyeol”. I thought it was a name that I would readily forget, a face that I wouldn’t see often other than on our block. I didn’t realize that one particular smile would captivate my senses and those deep brown orbs, the beating of my heart.

He dismissed himself to quickly shower and change in his room before joining us. And when he did, my parents were each already enjoying a cup of wine, from the bottle they had brought over, with his.

“Chanyeol, why don’t you take Sophia for a walk around the neighborhood?” his mother suggested, since all that I was doing was sit on the loveseat and pretend that my fingers were the most fascinating things I had seen in decades.

“That would be too much of a bother. And it’s already so late,” my mother said, probably already sensing the hole that my glare was burning into her face. She probably knew that my glower meant I hate