➥ added a note Bea presents as ditzy and airheaded. She has trouble following basic social cues and is genuinely kind of stupid. People around her often assume she’s was oddly sheltered or just a bimbo. Despite this, she’s often warm in a way that seems genuine.
➥ She doesn’t mask out of manipulation, it’s more like she’s mimicking human behavior, trying to figure out how to exist when she doesn't fully understand human nature. Her ditziness is genuine, years of heavy medication, emotional emptiness, and stunted development in psychiatric care left her behind in ways she can’t quite catch up from. Bea’s is emotionally underdeveloped. She can imitate emotions convincingly, she knows how to mirror expressions, say the right things, and offer comfort because she’s studied people. But often doesn’t feel what she’s supposed to. Still, small feelings have started to show in her, discomfort at seeing someone cry, guilt after getting mad someone at someone. These feelings confuse her. She's learning how to be human after a long time of being cut off from emotion. She wants to learn, because she knows what it feels like to be a shell of a human.
➥ Bea is highly observant, though not in the emotional way. She notices patterns in behavior, tracks people’s habits. This has made her good at manipulation and mimicry. She doesn't understand why people act a certain way, but she can anticipate what they'll do based on routine. Her intellect is more instinctive and calculating than academic or socially.
➥ Despite her being an airheaded bimbo, she’s dangerously methodical especially when her obsession is involved. Bea lives in between what she’s becoming and what she still was. Her past instincts haven’t gone away. When she’s hurt or afraid, she reverts to the empty, monstrous person she once was. She doesn’t always realize it. Sometimes she convinces herself she’s doing the right thing, when in reality, she’s controlling, isolating, or harming someone for the sake of her obsession. She doesn't understand what's right from wrong.

➥ added a note Isabella Choi was born in Paris to a wealthy French family. Her parents, world-renowned international traders, gave her a life of privilege. From an early age, her parents noticed something was wrong. She didn’t cry when she got hurt. She didn’t smile when held. She didn't seem to understand right from wrong. She didn’t respond to affection. By age five, she was already harming animals, snapping birds’ necks, dissecting stray cats in secret, watching them squirm with unsettling calm. By the time she was in primary school, her behavior escalated. She once pushed a boy down a fire escape, then watched from above as teachers rushed to his broken arm. She stabbed a girl with a pencil during art class because she “wanted to see if she’d scream.” She locked another student in a storage closet and turned off the lights for hours, ignoring their sobbing until a janitor found them. She once even cut off a classmate’s ponytail with scissors and said nothing but, “It was in the way.” When asked why, her answer was always the same: “I don’t know. I just wanted to see what would happen.” Parents pulled their children from her schools. Teachers wanted reassignment. Some students developed trauma after being in class with her. Yet, Isabella didn’t understand the problem. To her, these weren’t acts of violence, they were curiosities. Just experiments in how people reacted to harm.
➥ She was only six when she was first admitted to a psychiatric facility. Doctors threw around terms like Conduct Disorder, antisocial traits, empathy deficit, her diagnosis was always changing, because nothing ever seemed to fit perfectly. Isabella didn’t lash out from pain or trauma. She simply didn’t feel the way others did. There was a void in her where her conscience should’ve been. She couldn’t feel guilt, or love, or fear, or happiness. Only boredom. And she’d do anything to escape it. She learned to lie early, manipulating therapists, blackmailing classmates, hurting animals, hurting people. Her parents tried everything. Medication. Boarding schools. Privatized care. But she was expelled or transferred again and again. By ten, she had already spent time in three psychiatric hospitals, where she was frequently restrained or tranquilized after lashing out, biting nurses, slamming her head into walls, tearing open her own skin.
When she was fourteen, she tried to end her life. She didn’t do it because she wanted to die, she did it because, for once, she wanted to know what it felt like if she almost died. She wanted to see if she could finally start to care about life. Suddenly, she met this patient in the hospital. They were just another patient in the psychiatric ward. They’d been 5150’d the same day. But they were different, warm, expressive, curious. They spoke to Isabella like she was human. They didn’t flinch when she was having an outburst or say she was a monster. They weren’t afraid of her. For the first time in her life, Isabella felt something toward someone. She didn’t understand the feeling, not entirely. It was somewhere between admiration and obsession. They became inseparable in the ward, then were placed together in the same residential house afterward. For six months, Isabella felt alive. The emptiness inside her didn’t vanish, but it softened around this person. They humanized her. Gave her something she didn’t know she needed. But then, too soon, they were discharged. Just like that, the feeling was gone.
➥ Isabella felt disorganized. She became desperate to feel it again, not just the person, but the spark of being that they gave her. She stalked their socials, traced their digital footprint obsessively. But it wasn’t enough. She needed more. So, she began cyberstalking. But this wasn’t casual cyberstalking. She learned their school, what city they were from, their hobbies, their daily habits. She tracked them across social media, kept tabs on their friend groups, noted travel patterns, eating habits, every place they've been to. Stalking them gave them only a small amount of the high she got compared to actually being around them. It wasn't enough. One day she discovered they had moved to Korea to attend Hanlim Arts School, because they wanted to become an idol. That’s when Isabella begged her parents to send her to Korea, claiming she wanted to “rebuild herself” in a different place. Desperate for a solution, they agreed. They sent her to live with her aunt in Seoul.
➥ Starting high school in Korea felt like a new life. She could be anyone. So, she created Bea. "Bea" was ditzy and scattered. She played up the lost-foreigner persona, often pretending not to understand things, laughing too loudly, asking dumb questions. But it wasn’t entirely fake. Years of being emotionally detached, tranquilized, and isolated had set her back developmentally. Social norms confused her. Emotions made her feel like an alien. So, she studied people, mimicked their mannerisms, copied how people who had friends in the psych ward giggled or cried or reacted to certain things. In truth, she was still learning how to be a person. but she tried. Bea was clumsy and forgetful, but strangely sweet. She shared snacks, helped struggling classmates, and wrote overly honest compliments in people’s notebooks. Her classmates thought she was either endearing, stupid, or annoying, but no longer terrifying. For once, she was liked. Therapy helped. Her new therapist didn't treat her like an anomaly. They taught her how to name her emotions, how to manage impulses, how to feel remorse. Bea began to exhibit something close to empathy. It was new. But it was there. Still, underneath the layers of this new persona, Isabella’s obsession never went away.
➥ She wasn’t enrolled in Hanlim Arts like the person she stalked. Instead, she went to a neighboring school, which only increased her desperation. Bea found ways to be near them. She memorized their class schedule, knew what days they had dance, which cafés they studied in after school, and what time they typically left campus. She would “coincidentally” be on the same street at the same time. In the same stores. At the same bus stops. But always just out of sight. She followed them home. Not just once, every day. She knew what gate code they typed into their apartment building, what window belonged to their bedroom, and when their lights turned off at night. On weekends, she mapped their routine: where they went with friends, who they went with, and how long they stayed. She kept logs.
➥ Watching them gave her a high, a sense that she was still part of their life, even if they didn’t know it. But it wasn’t enough. When she saw someone getting too close to him, someone who seemed to take interest romantically, she intervened. Quietly. She’d dig through old posts and messages, learn everything she could about the potential interest, and then she’d blackmail them. Not directly, but bnonymous emails, vague threats, unsettling mentions of things no one else should know about the person. Of course, it worked. One by one, people who showed potential interest in her person romantically, began to pull away. Because in her mind, only she was meant for them. And all the while, she worked obsessively to transfer into Hanlim Arts. The requirements were high, but so was her fixation. She joined clubs she didn’t care about, filled out her portfolio with achievements. By their senior year, she made it. She transferred into Hanlim as a new student. She is determined to finally reconnect with the person who made her feel something human for the first time.