“Sorry—just three minutes,” I whispered
Sub-Level 2B, university library. 8:14 p.m., November 7. One fluorescent tube flickered. I had already occupied the same chair for fifteen days. The angle at which she tilts her head, the way a strand of jet-black hair brushes her nape when she takes notes, the exact curve of the fingers she raises to cover a yawn—I knew them all.
“Jisoo, I’m beside you again today,” I said inside my head. Of course she never heard. That was the sweetest part.
Why my pupils tremble only to her silhouette
People speak of love at first sight. I was not smitten; I was seized. I wanted to imprison her entire existence inside my gaze, the way a hunter counts every breath of his quarry.
I already knew. This was not love; it was acquisitiveness.
The basement signal was weak, phone images too grainy. I hid a DSLR in my bag—200 mm telephoto. A 50 mm would have sufficed in the narrow reading room, but I wanted to magnify the gap between her brows even from a distance.
November 14, my first stalk
She arrived at 7:49 p.m. in a blue hoodie and black jeans—six minutes late. I had been waiting since 6:30. I sat in her usual seat, warming it with my body so that my heat would seep into her later.
A single strand of hair on the desk—undeniably hers. I slipped it into an unmarked white envelope and slid the envelope into my wallet. No label, yet I could smell her on it.
During lunch, while she was gone, I lifted the corner of her notebook. At the end of her notes, a faint penciled heart. For whom? My fingertips trembled.
Could that heart ever be mine, or was it already someone else’s?
I closed the notebook and replaced it exactly. No one saw. No one.
November 21, crimes germinate in darkness
It rained. She had no umbrella. At closing time she stood alone in the entrance. I watched her drench for seventy-three seconds. I could have stepped forward, offered my umbrella, said, “Let’s walk together.” Instead I stepped back.
Sharing an umbrella would start a conversation. A conversation would expose my fixation.
She left with another man under his umbrella. I narrowed my vision until only her silhouette remained, enlarged and blurred by the rain.
Why must I be like this? Why circle her without ever drawing closer?
Dissecting love, composing obsession
Psychologists call obsession love’s distorted twin. Yet I never loved her. I simply wanted to keep the entity named Jisoo inside me. Everyone has felt the craving—to know someone completely, to witness every second of their day. Most suppress it under names like ethics, like fear.
I crossed the line. From the beginning, no line existed.
A final question: have you never quietly watched someone?
November 28. Sub-Level 2B. Jisoo never returned. Exams must be over, or perhaps she changed rooms. I still sit in the same seat. Her chair stands empty, yet I see her—inside my skull, behind my retina.
Right now, aren’t you storing someone’s receding figure in memory, unsure whether it is excessive fixation or first-love’s tremor?
I have no answer. The only evidence is the lock of Jisoo’s hair still in my wallet. And you—someday you may have stared at someone and whispered, If only they were entirely mine.
The fluorescent tube flickers again in Sub-Level 2B. I remain, recalling her name, the strand of hair, the seventy-three seconds she once occupied.