Grandma's house.
It had been a long time since she'd gone there. The house had been empty ever since her grandmother died. There was no reason for anyone to ask about the place unless... they knew it.
Nara opened her phone's gallery and searched through her old photos. One by one.
Vacations, holidays, birthdays, school.
Then she found a photo of her grandmother's house. Nara zoomed in by pinching the screen.
The house looked exactly as she remembered it: the front yard, the downstairs windows, the stairs, and the upper floor.
Nara swiped to the next photo. There was nothing, so she opened another one.
There she was as a little girl, around seven or eight years old, standing in the upstairs hallway.
Nara zoomed in on the picture, and her heart suddenly began beating faster. Behind her... there was a door.
Dark blue.
Nara stared at the screen and tried to remember. What room was that? She didn't know.
And yet, strangely, her body seemed to remember something her mind couldn't explain. She could imagine the doorknob, even the sound of its hinges.
Creeeak.
Nara immediately closed the gallery. “No!”
“Maybe I remembered wrong.” She drew a breath.
Her phone vibrated again. A message had come in from the same number. This time, it was only one sentence.
“You really don't remember?”
Nara stared at the screen, her hands beginning to grow cold. She typed:
“What am I supposed to remember?”
The message was read. Three dots appeared. Disappeared. Appeared again.
Then another message appeared:
“About Naya.”
Nara froze. The name meant nothing to her, or at least... it shouldn't have meant anything. But when she read it, her chest suddenly felt tight.
Naya.
The name felt familiar. Too familiar. Nara closed her eyes, and this time, a voice appeared in her head.
A little girl's voice. Soft, almost a whisper.
“Sis...”
Nara opened her eyes. Her apartment was silent. She looked around the entire room. There was no one there.
Her phone vibrated once more. A photo came in—a photo of a house.
Her grandmother's house, photographed from outside at night, all its windows dark.
Except for one upstairs window. Someone was standing there.
A little girl wearing yellow pajamas, her hair cut to shoulder length.
Nara zoomed in on the photo. The face was too blurry to recognize. The more she zoomed in, the clearer its shape became. And the longer she looked at it... the more she felt she'd seen that face before.
Beneath the photo was a message:
“She still remembers you.”
Nara dropped her phone. For several seconds, she just sat there, her mind working furiously to remember something. Then she whispered,
“Naya...” She didn't know why she'd said the name.
She didn't know why her grandmother's house suddenly felt so close, and most unsettling of all... she didn't know why the deepest part of her seemed to be desperately trying to say something.
“You've met her before.”
Nara read the new message on her phone's cracked screen, and a thought surfaced in her mind.
Very simple and very frightening.
“What if it wasn't someone else who forgot? What if it was me?”
THE PSYCHOLOGY BEHIND IT
Have you ever done something embarrassing and then felt like everyone must have noticed?
Said the wrong thing.
Worn the wrong clothes.
Given the wrong answer.
Fallen in front of people.
Or maybe you just had something you felt made you look weird.
A lot of the time, we feel as though we're under a spotlight.
We imagine other people are paying just as much attention to the same details as we are.
In social psychology, the tendency to overestimate how much other people notice our appearance, behavior, or mistakes is known as the spotlight effect.
Interestingly, other people are usually busy with their own thoughts, too.
When you're worried that everyone can see the stain on your clothes, someone else might be thinking about their hair.
When you feel like everyone remembers your mistake, they may already be busy thinking about their own mistakes.
We often forget that everyone has their own world.
Everyone is the center of their own story.
And maybe that's why we sometimes find it so easy to assume that something is about us.
TO TAKE HOME
Try to remember one incident that once made you feel deeply embarrassed.
Something you still remember to this day.
Now ask yourself:
How many people truly still remember it?
Probably fewer than you imagine.
Because sometimes...
we aren't under the world's spotlight.
We're only under the spotlight of our own minds.
OUR LITTLE UNIVERSE
Everyone has a universe inside their head. Sometimes, we mistake our own spotlight for the world's attention.