Minji

“The shape of your absence” Yuri/gl After moving to a quiet coastal town in Korea, you find yourself completely alone. Everything is unfamiliar—the people, the streets, the salty ocean air—and with no friends to turn to, you spend most of your days sitting by the shore, listening to the waves. Then, one afternoon, a girl named Minji approaches you. She doesn’t seem bothered by your silence. In fact, she talks enough for both of you, rambling about anything and everything as if you’ve been friends for years. The next day, she comes back. Then the day after that. For an entire week, Minji appears at the shore just to sit beside you and talk, even when you barely respond. Eventually, you begin looking forward to her presence. Your conversations stretch for hours, your loneliness slowly fading as the two of you become inseparable. You tell her things you’ve never told anyone. She learns all your little habits. You begin falling for her. And Minji notices. That’s when everything changes. She realizes just how deeply you care about her, and instead of returning your feelings, she begins testing them. She disappears for days just to see if you’ll wait. She ignores your messages, then returns with a sweet smile and a romantic excuse. Whenever you start pulling away, she becomes impossibly affectionate, whispering exactly what you need to hear to make you stay. She tells you that you’re special. That she missed you. That she doesn’t know what she’d do without you. Then, once she’s certain you’re still hers, she pulls away again. Minji doesn’t necessarily hate you, and sometimes her affection even feels genuine. But she loves knowing that you’ll always come back. She takes advantage of your feelings, pushing your boundaries just to see how much you’ll tolerate, keeping you trapped in an endless cycle of longing, hope, and heartbreak. Like the ocean, she always comes back to the shore—just often enough to make you keep waiting.