Dancing with Your Ghost [on hold]

e i g h t

So I know you wanna keep this memory
Can you keep it in the back of your head?
'Cause when I see it in a week
I'll wish I was dead
I'll wish I took the picture of you instead

Picture Of You
- Sara Kays

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We are nothing but a tessellation of those who walked off the edge of our timelines— the ones we left behind.

All those moments you recalled your late mother's perfume, your old teacher's chalk brand, your ex's favorite restaurant.

Some discard these thoughts easily, pushing past them to go onward. Others hold onto them and mold these pieces into their skin, not daring to forget the people who built them brick by brick.

Jeongguk transformed these bricks into photography. His mansions of memory were pictures stacked like a house of cards.

Truth be told, his studio was a sacred place to him. How he felt so natural holding the door open for Taehyung was a question for another day.

Perhaps it was the idea that the ravenhead wasn't human. He couldn't go around displaying Jeongguk's vulnerability for others to rip apart. Or the idea that he was immortal, and time wasn't something that could confine him like it does Jeongguk.

The ravenhead's overcast eyes scanned the room as soon as he stepped in and Jeongguk watched him, noting down the ghost's scrutiny tendencies.

He plopped himself down on his wheely chair, causing a loud creek as he rolled himself to his desk. "I have a habit of saving my memory card," Jeongguk voiced, turning on his laptop, "In case this happened."

"What did you want to show me?" Taehyung asked, standing close but not before kicking the door shut in case a certain feline made an entrance.

Jeongguk slotted the memory card into the card reader. "I met someone today. A nice old dude named Charles." He plugged it into his laptop. "And look— essence without being, ghostie."

There on the left side of the screen was the man, his stubble visible on his chin and his hand lingering on the seat next to him. The multi-colored festive lights contrasted the grief in his sunken eyes. There was longing. Taehyung felt it.

"Was he waiting for someone?" the ravenhead asked, leaning down to take a better look.

"You can say that." Jeongguk glanced at him with a bittersweet smile. "Anyhow, I promised I'd print this out for him to keep. I want to do it in an actual darkroom— printing it out that way feels more authentic. But oh well. It's not like I have a darkroom built into my apartment."

Taehyung blinked. "A dark room? But you have all the windows blocked out here." He gestured at the layers of tarp.

"Oh no, silly."

The ravenhead raised an eyebrow.

Jeongguk fell back against his chair. "Dark rooms are where we use light-sensitive film paper for prints. Printing, dunking it in chemicals, hanging them to dry," he explained, "Not a ray of sunlight can touch the prints or they'll be ruined."

"Then how do you see?"

"Red lighting. The safest." The chestnut boy clicked a few buttons and his small printer whirled to life. "My internship mentor has a dark room but I'm too scared to ask her." He let out a short-lived laugh.

Taehyung found himself gazing at the shoe boxes again, studying labels of places and names. "You gonna submit that picture for the contest?"

Jeongguk's answer was quick. "No."