Snap.
Ronabelle looked at the screen. A perfect photo—everyone smiling, sunlight pouring in from the windows, even the decorations behind them caught in sharp detail.
Then one of her classmates looked around, confused.
“Wait… what are we doing here?”
Ronabelle laughed. “What do you mean?”
He scratched his head. “I don’t know. I forgot why I was even smiling.”
That was the first time it happened.
At first, she thought it was nothing. Just a weird moment. But then it happened again. And again.
Every time Ronabelle took a photo, the person in it would forget the moment. A joke shared. A hug. A surprise visit. They’d look at the photo and smile, but they couldn’t remember how they got there or why they looked happy.
Her best friend forgot the entire school fair. Even teachers looked confused after she took class photos, as if they weren’t sure what had just happened.
Only the photo remained—evidence that something real had happened, even if no one remembered it.
It creeped her out—the way people forgot, the way no one else noticed, the way only the photos remembered. She didn’t know if the camera was broken, cursed, or something worse. All Ronabelle knew was, she didn’t want to hold onto it anymore.
She carried it one last time, planning to throw it away. That’s when she noticed a classmate crying alone in the hallway.
Light from the window spilled across the corridor, turning the empty space into something quiet and heavy. The way the girl sat there, small against the wide wall and silence, made the whole moment look like a photograph waiting to be taken.
Ronabelle wasn’t planning to help. She just felt the urge to capture it—one last photo of something raw and real.
Click.
A few seconds later, the classmate stopped crying. She looked around, then broke into a big smile.
“Hi, Ronabelle—what’s up?” she said, like nothing had happened.
That’s when it made sense.
If Ronabelle could help people forget pain—even for a while—then maybe the camera wasn’t a curse after all.
So she used it.
She took photos of heartbreak, trauma, and regret—one snapshot at a time. She helped people let go, even if they never knew. Even if Ronabelle was the only one who remembered.
And maybe that was another side of photography—not just keeping memories, but also freeing people from them.
On August 19, World Photography Day, Ronabelle raised her camera once more.
Snap.
