Translation of Love

37

Photographs

"Taeyoung." His manager frantically looks around. "Where's Eunji?"

Oh?

"Is she not here?" He responds.

"No, we can't find her anywhere."

Guilt flashes over Taeyoung's face momentarily. Someone comes up to the manager.

"She picked up my call. She's being difficult and saying she 'doesn't feel like it today'."

The manager rolls her eyes in frustration. "That spoiled brat thinks she can do whatever she wants just because her daddy is the CEO?" She says under her breath.

Taeyoung and I exchange glances.

"What's going on?" The photographer comes up to us.

"Eunji bailed."

"What?"

Everyone begins to hustle to and fro, shouts filling the room, phone calls being made.

"We only have this room for two hours, we need a replacement," Taeho speaks to himself as he texts feverishly on his phone.

"Jinyoung? What has she said?" He calls this out loud to god knows who.

Someone responds. "She can't!"

"What about Jennifer?"

"She's in Busan," someone else says.

"Damn it," Taeho frantically looks around the room, his eyes moving back to mine after a while.

I feel dread rise up my spine.

"No," I tell him.

"Oh come on Sohee, 제발 [please]." The almost 40-year-old man holds his hands up, begging me. It's quite a sight.

"Please? We just need to get some demo photos to send to the designer. If they don't like the model change then you don't have to worry about it! They'll just schedule a new date. We just need some demo shots, hmm?"

I ponder on this. There's no way the designer would be happy with their model changing from the tall and sexy Eunji to the small and meek me.

"Okay, only because I like you."

He holds my face, kissing my cheek dramatically with a "mwah!"

"You'll just have to sign something first. Makeup team, get this girl made up right now!" His booming voice causes me to put my hands over my ears. Taeyoung looks at me excitedly. Taeho, in an organized chaos, orders people around and eventually hands me some piece of paper.

"Are you sure?"

I shrug. "It's not like the designer will actually agree on these photos."

He lightly laughs at me. I sign the paper which lets them legally take photos of me. Then I'm brought into the dressing room. It's absolute madness—one person does my makeup while another one styles my hair. A seamstress makes me stand up to try on the clothes so that she can do SOS hemming—and hemming she must because the clothes are all too long.

"Leave these few," a director of photography eyes some of the clothes. "These will look good as a baggy, a casual style."

***

"We can do something good with this," the photographer eyes us as we stand on the white sheet. Music blares in an attempt to get me in the mood.