Nara froze. For the past three days, she had assumed Maya knew something about Naya. In reality, Maya might have only been responding to something Nara herself had told her before. Nara put down her phone and sat thinking in the dark, hugging both knees and burying her face there. For the first time, she saw a possibility more disturbing than her family conspiracy theory. What if she herself had given other people pieces of information, then forgotten that she had done it?
The next morning, Nara went to see her mother. She didn't bring a list of questions, photos, or anything she considered evidence for the questions she had. She only wanted to see how her mother was doing and sit with her. They sat in the dining room, and her mother looked older than Nara remembered. For a while, they said nothing until Nara finally broke the silence. “I’m angry with you, Mom.” Her mother looked at her, knowing her daughter was sulking. “I know.” “I thought you were hiding something.” “Yes, you’re right. I am hiding something.” Their eyes immediately met. Nara straightened, unable to believe what she had just heard. “What?” “It’s not because I wanted to lie.” Her mother lowered her head, folding both hands in her lap. She looked calm, though a trace of doubt showed on her face. “Then why?” “Because you were the one who asked us not to talk about it back then...” Nara felt the entire room suddenly become too quiet, as if all the air had evaporated. “Me?” Nara touched her chest with her right palm, confirming that she really was the person her mother meant. Her mother nodded. “You were still little. But you kept saying the same thing.” “Saying... what, Mom?” Nara’s voice caught. Her mother looked into her eyes. “You used to say, ‘Don’t tell anyone. If they find out, everything will go wrong...’” Nara felt her throat go dry. “What... what would go wrong?” Her head began to throb, making her feel dizzy. “No one knows exactly what you meant back then.” Her mother shook her head, her gaze never leaving Nara. “But after that incident... you changed.” “And Naya?” For some reason, Nara couldn’t stop herself from asking.
Her mother didn’t answer right away, and Nara saw a small change in her face. She saw fear and sadness. Or maybe guilt, too. But this time, Nara held herself back from jumping to conclusions. She simply waited for an explanation. “The hardest thing isn’t when someone forgets something, Nara.” “...” “Sometimes, what’s harder is when someone remembers something in a way that allows them to survive.” Nara didn’t understand. She truly didn’t understand. For the first time, she let a sentence remain a question, even though it felt heavy and weighed terribly on her mind. Nara said goodbye and went home, carrying a mind that had grown increasingly tangled—difficult to unravel, let alone straighten out.
On the way home, for some reason, Nara thought more about Maya and the conflict between them. She remembered how quickly she had assumed Maya had betrayed her. How she had turned a twenty-minute delay into evidence. How silence had become an admission. How a contextless message had become a massive secret. Wasn’t all of that merely Nara’s assumption?
She finally understood something about projection. In psychology, projection describes the tendency to attribute thoughts, feelings, impulses, or traits that are difficult to accept in ourselves to other people. That doesn’t mean that every time we accuse someone, we’re actually the ones doing that thing. Projection is far more complex than that.
Sometimes, what deeply bothers us about other people can be a mirror of something unresolved within us. Nara accused Maya of hiding something, when Nara herself was hiding her fear. She was afraid she couldn’t trust her own mind, afraid of losing control, afraid that there was a part of herself she didn’t know and that was taking control of her.
And maybe because she couldn’t face that fear directly, her mind displaced it onto someone else. Maya became the untrustworthy one. Because for Nara, it was easier to suspect Maya than to admit: I don’t trust myself. That night, Nara opened her desk drawer. She found an old notebook, the same one she had used as a child, with most of its pages still blank. She flipped through a few pages and found a child’s handwriting.
Nara read it slowly: “I’m not Nara.” The writing was very simple, just one sentence. Then she turned to the next page. Blank. The next page. Blank. Until the last page. There was another line, smaller and fainter, the strokes looking as though they had been written in a hurry: “If they ask, say Naya did it.”
Nara felt her entire body go cold, then read the sentence again. Since all of this had begun, this was the first time she no longer wanted to ask: “Who did something to Naya?” but instead wanted to ask: “What really happened that day?” Some time later, while Nara was trying to reconstruct her memories, her phone vibrated. An anonymous message came in. Just one sentence: ‘Good. Now stop looking for Naya. Find out who wrote that sentence.’
Nara stared at the notebook in her hands for a long time. The handwriting looked incredibly familiar. Not because she had seen it somewhere else, but because the shape of every letter was exactly the same as the character of Nara’s handwriting now. The difference was the neatness and firmness of the lines in each letter, distinctly childlike.
#THE PSYCHOLOGY BEHIND US We often assume that when we judge someone, we’re seeing that person. But sometimes we’re also bringing our own experiences, fears, hopes, and internal conflicts into that judgment. That’s one reason two people can see the same behavior and give it entirely different meanings. Someone is late replying to a message. One person thinks: “They must be busy.” Another person thinks: “They’re deliberately ignoring me.” The event is the same. The story in their heads is different.
Projection is fascinating because it shows that our relationships with other people are shaped not only by who they really are, but also by what’s happening inside us. However, it’s important not to use this concept carelessly.
Not every suspicion is projection. Not every conflict means we’re projecting ourselves onto someone else. Psychological phenomena are not tools for diagnosing other people. They’re tools for examining ourselves.