Kang Minjae didn't step out of his room until sunlight hit his windows. Even then, he hesitated.
He hadn't slept—how could he? After seeing the lockscreen photo that she had taken—from inside his room—he had searched every inch of it. Closets. Vents. Under the bed.
Nothing.
No cameras. No hidden devices.
Only a single truth remained.
She had been here.
Minjae finally gathered his things and left for class. Each step down the stairwell felt like a risk. Every turn made him glance behind his shoulder.
At university, everything looked the same. Students laughed. Ate ramen. Napped under trees.
And yet…
For Minjae, the world had shifted.
He was being watched.
He couldn't see her—but he felt her everywhere.
Like the invisible weight pressing against the back of his neck.
Like a presence that moved between his blinks.
He sat through his literature class, barely hearing the professor's breakdown of Romanticism.
His bag rested against the leg of his desk. Untouched. Ordinary.
At least… until he opened it later.
He reached inside to pull out his notebook—
And stopped.
There was a folded piece of black paper. Expensive. Heavy.
It hadn't been there this morning.
He checked again—his zippers had remained closed. No one had come near his bag.
Still, the note was there.
He slowly opened it.
Elegant handwriting greeted him again. A quote first, then a line written beneath it in different ink—almost like a whisper layered over a scream.
"The heart has reasons that reason cannot understand."
—Blaise Pascal
Beneath that, a cryptic message in crimson-red ink:
"Each room you've entered is a story I've rewritten.
The order is wrong.
But the sequence is true.
Find the word in the gaps you don't recall."
Minjae blinked. Reread it. Again and again.
What did it mean?
Rewritten stories… rooms he's entered…
And "find the word in the gaps you don't recall"?
What gaps?
Suddenly, a cold wave ran down his spine.
How many times had he forgotten something minor lately?
He tried to trace back his steps.
Library on Monday. Canteen. Dorms. Class.
Had there been moments—seconds—where things didn't add up? When he walked into a room and forgot why he was there?
Yes.
Just yesterday, he remembered entering the lab building but couldn't recall what class it was until halfway through.
Was that just stress? Or something more… deliberate?
Had she been manipulating his memory?
His head throbbed.
He shoved the paper into his pocket and tried to focus on the lesson.
He couldn't.
That message clung to him like a spiderweb.
He left campus as soon as possible, heading straight for the nearest café. He sat in the corner booth and ordered an Americano—extra strong.
Then he pulled out the note again.
"Each room you've entered is a story I've rewritten."
He closed his eyes and thought back.
Library. The first envelope. No one saw who placed it. But had he truly checked every part of that room?
Classroom two days ago. He remembered sitting down—but not the ten minutes before it.
Even his own dorm. Had she been there more than once?
The idea turned his stomach.
Minjae reached for his phone and texted Mirae.
📲💬
No weird stuff at home lately, right?
💬
📲💬
What do you mean?
Everything's normal. You okay?
💬
He hesitated.
Should he tell her?
📲💬
Yeah. Just making sure.
See you tonight.
💬
He didn't want to involve her. Not yet.
Because the more this went on, the more he realized:
Whoever she was… she didn't just want him.
She wanted control.
Of his space. His time. His perception.
And if he wasn't careful—of his mind.
That night, he reviewed the note a dozen more times. Rewrote the cryptic message in a separate notebook.
Then, using his phone, he began listing every room he'd entered in the past week—cross-referencing anything he could remember.
He even found a timeline app and began reconstructing his days. Hour by hour.
The result?
He couldn't account for small windows of time.
Five minutes here. Ten there.
Meaningless—unless someone was slipping in, observing, even manipulating things while he wasn't aware.
He began comparing them. Matching "gaps."
Each time something strange had happened… there was a window of uncertainty just before or after.
He didn't yet know what the "word" hidden in the gaps was. But something told him…
This was a puzzle.
And she had left the pieces scattered in plain sight.
When Minjae finally crawled into bed—he didn't turn the lights off.
He faced the door. Wide awake.
Half-expecting it to open again.
But it didn't.
And when morning came, the first thing he noticed was that his phone was missing.
He tore through the sheets. Checked under his desk. Flipped every pillow.
Nothing.
Then he looked at his mirror.
A post-it note was stuck in the corner.
This one, unlike the others, was sloppy. As if written in haste.
"I have your voice.
I just wanted to keep it safe.
Don't look for it.
Or you'll find something else missing tomorrow."
Minjae stared at it in horror.
His phone wasn't stolen.
It was taken.
Deliberately.
By her.
And now, for the first time… he felt genuinely helpless.
Not because she was watching.
But because she had touched his world so completely—
And he hadn't even noticed.
____
[End of Chapter 6]
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