At thirteen, Anshu didn’t fall in love.

She fell into a phase.

It started with a random reel. A soft smile. A few seconds of comfort from a boy band member named Seo Juhan from AURORA7. She didn’t know all the songs. She couldn’t afford concerts. She never followed him publicly. But slowly, quietly, he became her escape.

For two years, he lived in her imagination — in late-night scenarios, in silent classroom daydreams, in the small space between reality and hope.

He never knew she existed.

And that was the hardest part.

As Anshu grows older, reality replaces fantasy. Distance becomes clearer. Attachment becomes self-awareness. And one night, after sending a message she knows will never be read, she realizes something life-changing:

It was never about him.

It was about wanting to be seen.

This is not a love story.
It’s a coming-of-age story about parasocial attachment, quiet obsession, financial limits, growing up, and learning that you don’t need to exist in someone else’s world to build your own.

If you’ve ever loved someone from far away,
if you’ve ever replayed a clip more times than you’d admit,
if you’ve ever whispered “what if” before sleeping—

This story is for you.

There was a time I genuinely believed he was my world.


If someone had asked me back then, "What makes you happy?"


His name would've appeared in my mind before anything else.


Because how can someone who doesn't even know you exist…


For a long time, I thought the pain came from distance.


Yet separated by something so wide that only I could feel it.


Not because I expected him to notice me.


But because I felt small inside that silence.


If this life didn't align us, maybe the next one will.


But one day, I asked myself something simple.


If we couldn't exist in the same emotional space in this life—


when both of us are alive, breathing, on the same planet—


Why would I expect another life to fix it?


About a version of me who needed something bigger than her small routine.


About a girl who felt ordinary and wanted something extraordinary to attach herself to.


And escape can feel like oxygen when you don't realize you're holding your breath.


But oxygen doesn't come from one person.


The more I think about it now, the clearer it becomes.


And I used him as the symbol of that feeling.


He represented a world that felt brighter than mine.


But that doesn't mean my world was dark.


It just means I hadn't built it fully yet.


Aware that I once gave someone too much emotional space.


Aware that I once confused admiration with identity.


Aware that I once thought distance was romantic instead of structural.


And that feels bigger than any fantasy I ever built.


Chapter 17 - It Was Never About Him