“There she goes again.”
3 a.m. at the police-station desk. Fluorescent bars slice my face like prison grilles. Holding receipt number forty-nine, the detective glanced at the clock and murmured,
“If you keep showing up at night… you start to look like the problem.” The words wriggled like fingers under my tongue. I dropped my head; between the hacked ends of my bob, the nape of my neck flashed bare. His pupils unfocused, then sharpened. Did I imagine it? No—he skimmed me once, from collarbone to backside.
The corridor I pace every night
It began with a text.
“I stand behind you every night because your back looks good. Stay quiet.” After that, the elevator became a murky aquarium. When the man from the floor below stepped in, the scent of perfume rose—‘Red Rouge,’ the one that clings to shopping-bag handles. The doors closed, and the name-sticker on my mail reflected into his eyes. Eunchae. I pressed my lips shut, yet it looked as though he mouthed it: Eun… chae. One syllable, broken, tasted. A week later a trash bag waited at my door. Inside, stinking of fish, lay a torn scrap of black stocking—the same pair I had thrown out days earlier. Someone had retrieved it and gift-wrapped my garbage. The chill of the plastic turned to heat beneath my ribs.
Camera 21-F and my trembling hand
2:47 a.m. The infrared eye of the twenty-first-floor camera melts my outline into pixels. In the footage I become a woman pressing her ear to the wall. Even the tremor of my wrist, poking beyond the frame, is politely ignored. Down the hall the man pauses like a second hand. Tick. When both feet fall, I bow my head, eyes shut. Still he walks. Stops at my door. Fingers on the handle. Click. He never turns it, but the rattling grows fiercer each night. I went to the station for the CCTV file. The officer clicked his tongue while inserting the USB.
“Why wear something like this… your back keeps swaying.” Freeze. There I am in rumpled pajamas, hips angled toward the lens. He taps the screen. Pause. Rewind. Slow motion. The sway returns. I bit my lip until the blood felt hot.
Group chat and the blind
A photo surfaced on the neighborhood chat: a bare back. My white shirt half-lifted, skin exposed. Not me, I thought—until I recognized the floor, the angle. Someone had hijacked the corridor CCTV. Comments multiplied.
‘If the woman keeps coming out at night…’ ‘From the guy’s view, it could be a misunderstanding.’ ‘Who’ll compensate if our property value drops?’ The more the numbers climbed, the more my face vanished, leaving only the nude of my back. Because it was my back—not my breasts—it lingered longer. I’m still the victim, I whispered. No one in the chat heard. Instead, a realtor texted: “You’ll want to move out quickly. I have an urgent listing.”
Receipt number fifty
Counter 50. As the slip prints, the clerk greets me by nickname.
“Oh, Miss Fifty.” The thicker the stack, the smaller I felt. Each sheet a year. People behind me shuffled, muttering. “That girl again?” “With a face like that, how come…?” Pretty—an extra coin predators slip into the wound. Flip it, and the scar shows. I clutched the receipt and left. A new notice on the wall: ‘False reports will be prosecuted,’ illustrated with a tiny CCTV icon. It felt aimed at my backside.
That night: CCTV captures my trembling hand
While filling out the fiftieth complaint, the camera leaned closer. My quivering wrist casts a shadow over the form—Case No. 50-014. The clerk’s hurried scrawl makes ‘victim’ look like ‘culprit.’ I set the pen down and closed my eyes. Am I the problem now? The question swelled in the hush. The man who waits at my door each night, the neighbors who won’t let me be, and I myself— all of us locked in the same square frame.
While you traced her silhouette, did you brand her the offender?
Behind the CCTV’s trembling hand, your own face appears. A prison without bars. The moment we spit accusations at one another, we all become the perpetrator standing in the corridor that night.