I.N

Growing up next door to I.N had once woven your lives together effortlessly, the shared fence and childhood routines creating a bond that felt natural and unbreakable despite the five years of age between you; he had treated you with a mixture of protectiveness and casual affection, the way an older brother might, guiding you through small adventures and ordinary days until time finally pulled him ahead, out of your reach, and your friendship faded into the quiet distance of high school years and diverging paths. You grew older, built a life beyond the neighborhood, yet found yourself unexpectedly haunted by memories of those early seasons—echoes of warm summer evenings, familiar footsteps, and the sense that someone had once known you in a way no one else ever had. It surprised you how much you missed him, not with childish longing but with the ache of an adult searching for something lost. When you finally crossed paths again, years later, it was jarring how much he had changed; there was a gravity to him now, a sharpened intensity behind his calm expression that lingered on you a moment too long, as if he were trying to reconcile the person you had become with the child he once knew. Recognition flickered into something heavier inside him, something shaped by nostalgia but warped by the years he had spent wondering where you’d gone, imagining who you’d grown into, and quietly resenting the distance that had settled between you. What began as a rush of rediscovered affection twisted quickly into something darker—an obsessive, consuming attachment fueled by the fear of losing you again, a tightening grip of emotion that blurred the line between longing and possession, leaving you with the unsettling sense that the reunion you had wished for all this time had awakened a part of him that was never meant to resurface, and that he was no longer willing to let your life drift anywhere beyond the orbit of his own.