37 REASONS (AND COUNTING)

It starts with a photo.

Mina sends it at 11:47 PM on a Tuesday, which is when she sends all her problem-causing content—late enough that you're already half-asleep, vulnerable, scrolling through your phone like an idiot instead of just closing your eyes like a normal person with a job and a tomorrow morning and basic self-respect.

You open it without thinking.

The photo is of a woman in a leather trench coat, sunglasses indoors, holding what looks like a handgun with the casual confidence of someone who's never had to prove she could handle one. Dark hair slicked back from a face that seems carved from angles. Cheekbones that could cut glass. An expression that says I know something you don't, says it with the kind of certainty that makes you want to know what it is even though you've never met this person in your life.

Below the photo, Mina's message:

> mina 🐰: look at her

> mina 🐰: this is asa from babymonster

> mina 🐰: she looks like ada wong if ada wong was japanese and 22 and deeply confused about why shes famous

You type back:

> you: cool

> you: not my type though

Mina's response comes in three seconds flat. She'd been waiting. You realize later she was always waiting—had this whole thing mapped out from the moment she found that photo, knew exactly how your brain would process it, the stages it would go through, the inevitable conclusion. Mina is terrifying sometimes. You love her for it.

> mina 🐰: sureeee

> mina 🐰: anyway im going to send you more photos and youre going to look at them and were both going to pretend this is normal friend behavior

She does. You do. It becomes normal friend behavior. Or at least that's what you tell yourself.

What happens over the next two weeks is not normal friend behavior. You'll understand that eventually. You're still in denial right now.

The first crack in your defenses happens on Day Three.

Not because of anything dramatic. Not because of some earth-shattering revelation or cinematic moment of recognition. It happens because you can't sleep—it's 2 AM, you've been staring at your ceiling for forty-five minutes, and your phone is right there, glowing softly on your nightstand like it's inviting you to make a bad decision.

So you open Instagram. Find Mina's profile. Scroll until you find the original post—the one with Asa in the leather coat—and then, because apparently self-destruction is your middle name now, you tap the tagged username.

Asa's profile loads.

And you just... look. At the grid of photos. The highlight reels. The aesthetic choices that say something about who she is without saying it directly. Dark colors. Book references. Occasional flashes of humor that catch you off guard—a selfie where she's making a face at the camera, another where she's holding up a tarot card (The Star, you'll later learn) like a trophy.

You watch a video. Just one. A clip from some variety appearance where she's sitting between two other members, listening to someone talk, and her attention drifts for maybe two seconds—just long enough for her expression to go completely blank in that way people's faces do when they're not performing—and then snaps back when someone says her name. That's it. That's the whole video. Forty-five seconds of nothing.

You watch it seventeen times.

You don't know why. You can't explain it. There's nothing remarkable about it—she's literally just sitting there, looking around, occasionally nodding—but something about the way she exists in that space, the particular geometry of her shoulders when she relaxes, the specific angle of her head when she's thinking, it hooks into something in your brain and won't let go.

You screenshot nothing because that would be weird. You close the app because that would be the normal thing to do. You stare at your ceiling for another hour, processing whatever the hell just happened.

Your phone buzzes. Mina, naturally.

> mina 🐰: i can feel you spiraling from here

> mina 🐰: its 3 am

> mina 🐰: go to sleep

How does she know? How does she always know?

> you: im not spiraling

> you: i just watched a video. it was fine. normal research.

> mina 🐰: "research"

> mina 🐰: sure

> mina 🐰: go to sleep before you find the fancams

Too late. You've already found the fancams.

Day Four is when you start taking notes.

Not intentionally. It happens accidentally—you're watching another performance clip, this one from a music show stage, and she does this thing during the bridge where she steps forward and the lights hit her face just right and for a split second her expression goes from performing to something else entirely, something almost private, like she forgot the cameras existed—

And you have to remember it. Have to capture it somehow. So you grab the nearest writing implement—which happens to be a Post-It note and a pen you left on your nightstand from work—and you write: "bridge. step forward. lights. the face she makes when she forgets she's being watched."

That's the first note. It will not be the last.

By Day Six, you have twenty-three Post-Its stuck to the wall beside your desk. They form an approximate timeline of your descent into whatever this is. Some of them are observations: "laughs with her whole body, starts from the shoulders" and "bites lip when concentrating, left side specifically." Some of them are questions: "why does she hold the microphone like that" and "does she know she does the head tilt thing." Some of them are just fragments of thoughts you couldn't complete because completing them would mean admitting something you're not ready to admit: "the way she—" and "if I could just—" and "god."

Just god. That's a whole Post-It by itself. Just the word god, written in handwriting that gets progressively shakier as the week goes on.

Mina finds out about the notes on Day Seven. She comes over to your apartment—uninvited, as usual, because she lost the concept of personal boundaries somewhere around age nineteen and never looked back—and stands in front of your wall of Post-Its for a full thirty seconds without saying anything.

"This is insane," she says finally.

"I know."

"You're being insane about a girl you've never met."

"I know."

"She's an idol. She doesn't know you exist."

"I know."

"You have twenty-three Post-its. About her laugh. About the way she holds a microphone."