Chapter Text
REI'S POV:
People think obsession is loud.
They think it's dramatic.
They think it's impossible to hide.
They're wrong.
Real obsession is quiet.
It sits beside you in class.
It smiles when spoken to.
It gets good grades.
It says "thank you" and "sorry."
And then it goes home and spends hours thinking about the same person.
Over and over again.
My name is Naoi Rei.
And I am obsessed with Kim Jiwon.
"Liz".
I don't remember when it stopped being a crush.
Maybe it was months ago.
Maybe it was the day I moved countries because of her.
Maybe it was the day I realized I knew more about her than some of her friends.
I don't know.
I only know that every part of my life somehow leads back to her.
When I wake up, I wonder what she's doing.
When I eat, I wonder if she's eaten.
When I sleep, I dream about seeing her the next day.
Sometimes I catch myself smiling because I know exactly what class she's in.
Exactly where she sits.
Exactly who she's talking to.
Exactly what expression she's making.
It's pathetic.
I know it is.
But knowing doesn't stop me.
Nothing does.
I know which teachers stress her out.
I know which classmates annoy her.
I know which café she visits after school.
I know what songs she listens to when she's sad.
I know what kind of flowers she likes.
I know what makes her panic.
I know how her voice changes when she's tired.
I know things I was never supposed to know.
And somehow that still isn't enough.
I always want more.
More information.
More details.
More pieces of her life.
Sometimes I watch her from across campus and feel angry.
Not at her.
At everyone around her.
The people who get to stand beside her.
The people who make her laugh.
The people she notices.
People who don't deserve her attention.
People who have no idea how lucky they are.
Meanwhile I'm invisible.
After one and a half years, she still barely knows me.
I know her favourite colour.
She doesn't know mine.
I know her birthday.
She doesn't know mine.
I know everything.
She knows almost nothing.
The unfairness of it makes something ugly twist inside my chest.
Yujin says I'm crazy.
Maybe I am.
She's the only one who knows the truth.
The only one who knows why I came here.
The only one who knows that every major decision I've made in the past year somehow involved Liz.
"You're ruining your life over a girl who doesn't even know you."
Yujin said that once.
I laughed.
Not because it was funny.
Because she thought she was telling me something I didn't already know.
I know this isn't normal.
I know healthy people don't think like this.
Healthy people don't memorize someone's schedule.
Healthy people don't spend nights staring at photos.
Healthy people don't build their entire world around one person.
But every time I tell myself to stop, I see her again.
And suddenly stopping feels impossible.
Because the truth is simple.
I don't live my life anymore.
I live hers.
From the shadows.
Watching.
Waiting.
Wanting.
And the worst part?
I don't think I want to be saved.
---
I first saw her two years ago.
It wasn't some magical moment.
I was lying on my bed, mindlessly scrolling through TikTok, half asleep and bored.
Then I stopped.
Someone had posted a group photo.
A girl named Wonyoung.
The caption read:
"Jiwon is shy, but she doesn't say no to us."
I should have kept scrolling.
Instead, I stared.
There were several people in the picture, all smiling at the camera.
But I only noticed one.
Jiwon.
She wasn't even standing in the center.
She wasn't doing anything special.
Yet my eyes kept returning to her.
Her expression looked awkward, like she didn't really want to be photographed but agreed anyway.
I zoomed in.
Then more.
Until everyone else disappeared from the screen.
Only Jiwon remained.
I took a screenshot.
I told myself it was because she was pretty.
That's what normal people do, right?
See someone attractive and save a picture.
But normal people don't spend the next hour looking at the same image.
Normal people don't search every account connected to that person.
Normal people don't memorize faces of strangers.
I found myself studying her.
The shape of her eyes.
The way she smiled.
The way she stood slightly behind her friends.
As if she was more comfortable being overlooked.
Something about her settled into my mind and refused to leave.
Days passed.
Then weeks.
Instead of forgetting her, I became more curious.
Curiosity became routine.
Routine became fixation.
By the time I realized something was wrong, I already knew far too much about a girl I had never met.
And the screenshot?
I never deleted it.
Even now, after all this time, it's still there.
Buried among thousands of photos.
The very first picture I ever saved of Kim Jiwon.
The beginning of a habit I should have stopped.
The beginning of an obsession that would eventually consume far more of my life than I was willing to admit.
---
Back then,
Once I found out which school she attended, everything moved surprisingly fast.
A normal person would have stopped.
A normal person would have realized they were crossing a line.
I wasn't normal anymore.
A week after finding out, I walked into my parents' office.
"I'm going to study in Korea."
That was all I said.
No explanations.
No reasons.
No discussion.
My parents exchanged a glance but didn't question me.
They knew me well enough to understand that if I wanted to tell them something, I would.
And if I didn't, no amount of questioning would change my mind.
Within hours, everything was being arranged.
Applications.
Documents.
Housing.
Transportation.
Things that would take most people months to organize.
For my family, it took days.
Sometimes being rich felt like having a superpower.
The world simply moved when you asked it to.
The next morning, I boarded a flight to Seoul.
I remember sitting by the window and staring at the clouds.
Most people would have been nervous.
Excited.
Scared.
I wasn't.
The only thing on my mind was a girl who had absolutely no idea I existed.
When the plane landed, a manager employed by my family was already waiting.
A villa had been purchased beforehand.
Large.
Quiet.
Far bigger than what a single student needed.
I didn't care.
I wasn't there for the house.
I wasn't there for the city.
I wasn't even there for the education.
I was there because Kim Jiwon was there.
A week later, I walked through the gates of my new school.
My new classmates saw a transfer student from Japan.
Nothing more.
Nobody knew the truth.
Nobody knew I had crossed countries because of a girl.
Nobody knew I had spent months collecting information about her.
Nobody knew that every decision that brought me here traced back to a single photograph.
And then I saw her.
Standing in the hallway.
Talking to her friends.
Laughing softly at something they said.
Real.
Not a photo.
Not a video.
Not a screen.
For a moment, I forgot how to breathe.
After months of staring at pictures, she was finally standing right in front of me.
Close enough to touch.
Close enough to hear.
Close enough to watch.
She didn't look at me.
Didn't notice me.
Didn't know I existed.
And somehow that made me smile.
Because now I had all the time in the world.
After all, I hadn't moved to Korea to meet Kim Jiwon.
I had moved to Korea to be near her.
There was a difference.
And that difference would become the most important secret of my life.
---
At first, I only watched her.
That was enough.
Or at least, I told myself it was.
I watched her from across hallways.
From the library.
From the cafeteria.
From empty classrooms.
Always far enough away that she wouldn't notice me.
Back then, I wasn't patient.
I had never needed to be.
Whenever I wanted something, I got it.
Whenever I made a decision, people moved to make it happen.
That was the kind of life I grew up with.
But Jiwon was different.
After only a week at school, I realized something important.
I couldn't rush this.
I couldn't force my way into her life.
I couldn't simply walk up to her and expect her to become part of my world.
So I waited.
And watched.
And learned.
The strange thing was that the more I learned about her, the more obsessed I became.
I knew it wasn't healthy.
I knew it wasn't normal.
But every new detail only made me want another.
One week became two.
And during the second week, I met Yujin.
Or more accurately, Yujin decided we were friends.
She walked up to me one morning, stared at me for several seconds, and said,
"You look like an anime character."
That was our introduction.
I remember blinking at her.
She laughed.
And somehow she never left after that.
Yujin was the complete opposite of me.
Bright.
Confident.
Loud.
The captain of the football team.
Tall enough to stand out in every crowd.
Popular enough that everyone knew her name.
People liked being around her.
Teachers liked her.
Students liked her.
Even people who had never spoken to her seemed to know who she was.
Meanwhile, I preferred being invisible.
The attention surrounding Yujin was exactly the kind of thing I avoided.
Which was why I never spent much time with her during school hours.
The moment Yujin entered a room, people looked.
And if people were looking at her, they would eventually look at me.
I didn't want that.
Being noticed made observing Jiwon harder.
Being noticed meant people remembered you.
Asked questions.
Started conversations.
I hated all of it.
So during school, Yujin usually left me alone.
At least publicly.
After classes, however, she would appear out of nowhere and follow me around like a stray dog that had somehow adopted me.
Eventually, she became the only person I tolerated.
The only person who knew where I lived.
The only person who knew my family's real status.
The only person who knew about Jiwon.
Unfortunately, she also happened to be the only person willing to tell me the truth.
"You're weird."
That was one of Yujin's favorite sentences.
She would say it while I watched Jiwon from across the courtyard.
She would say it while catching me staring at Jiwon's social media.
She would say it while finding yet another random fact about Jiwon written in my notes.
And every single time, I gave her the same answer.
"I know."
The problem was that I did know.
I knew there was something wrong with the amount of attention I paid to Jiwon.
I knew normal people didn't move countries because of a stranger.
I knew normal people didn't structure their days around someone else's routine.
Yet every morning, the first thing I looked for wasn't my classroom.
It wasn't Yujin.
It wasn't my schedule.
It was Jiwon.
And every time I spotted her, the rest of the world seemed to fade into the background.
Just for a moment.
Just long enough to remind me why I had come here in the first place.
---
At school, nobody really knew me.
I was just another student.
The quiet transfer girl from Japan.
Good grades.
Good behavior.
Nothing memorable.
People knew my face, but not my name.
Exactly how I wanted it.
Meanwhile, everyone knew Jiwon.
Not because she was the loudest person in the room.
Actually, she was one of the quietest.
But people naturally gravitated toward her.
Especially her friends.
I spent so much time watching them that I could recognize them from a distance.
Sometimes I knew where they would be before they got there.
The funny thing was that none of them knew I existed.
I wasn't part of their world.
I was just a background character walking through the same hallways.
And I intended to keep it that way.
The only exception was Yujin.
Shortly after becoming friends, I made one request.
"Don't tell anyone we're friends."
Yujin stared at me.
"That's a weird request."
"I know."
She sighed.
Then agreed anyway.
That was one of the reasons I trusted her.
Yujin asked questions, but she respected boundaries.
She never forced answers out of me.
She never told people things I wanted kept private.
She was reliable.
Annoyingly reliable.
At school, she acted as if we barely knew each other.
Sometimes she would wave from across a hallway.
Sometimes she wouldn't acknowledge me at all.
Most people assumed we were strangers.
Which was perfect.
After school was different.
Almost every weekend, Yujin ended up at my house.
Or rather, my villa.
The first time she saw it, she stood at the entrance for nearly a minute.
Then she looked at me.
Then back at the house.
Then back at me.
And said,
"What the hell?"
That reaction never really changed.
Even months later, she still looked around like she had accidentally walked into a luxury hotel.
Meanwhile, I barely thought about it.
The villa was simply where I lived.
Nothing more.
Yujin, however, loved it.
The movie room.
The indoor pool.
The enormous kitchen.
The garden.
She treated the place like her second home.
Eventually, I stopped asking if she wanted to come over.
I just assumed she would.
And most of the time, I was right.
Those weekends became routine.
Yujin talking endlessly.
Me pretending not to listen.
Yujin stealing food from my kitchen.
Me threatening to kick her out.
Neither of us meaning it.
She was the closest thing I had to a normal friendship.
Which was ironic.
Because she was also the only person who knew about the least normal thing in my life.
Sometimes I would catch her looking at me while I scrolled through pictures of Jiwon.
Not saying anything.
Just looking.
Like she was trying to figure me out.
As if there was still something she didn't understand.
There wasn't.
The truth was simple.
My life in Korea had started because of Jiwon.
And no matter how much time passed, that fact never changed.
---