The Villain Named Kiki

The story not based on true facts but true feelings

Kiki was never the obvious kind of villain-the kind with a sharp glare or a dramatic backstory soaked in tragedy. No, she was the smiling kind. The kind who knew things, or at least always wanted to know them. The kind who hovered at the edge of conversations, not close enough to belong but just near enough to collect details like shiny objects she could later rearrange into whatever story entertained her the most.

She wasn’t cruel. That’s what made it worse.

---

Lian didn’t notice her at first.

Back in high school, Lian lived in a smaller orbit, tightly wound and deeply guarded. Friends-yes. Noah was one of them, since freshman year. But there were others, too. People who knew how to read her quiet silences, who didn’t take her hesitations personally. Who waited.

Noah had been patient like that. Always had been.

Their friendship wasn’t loud or flashy. They sat together at lunch when he didn’t feel like performing for the world, and when she didn’t feel like being seen at all. She could sit with Noah in silence, and he never tried to drag her out of herself-he just sat beside her and kept her company in the dark.

Sometimes Lian felt like a ghost. A blurry outline of a person. She was never quite in sync with the others-never felt like her feelings landed on the same frequency. For years she cycled through identities, picking through scraps of labels like fabric samples she could never stitch into anything permanent. “Asexual.” “Demi.” “Broken?” Something always felt off.

---

Then came the trip.

It was never meant to be memorable. Like every history trip, and this one especially, Auschwitz.. It was meant to be respectful. Educational. But the ghosts of the place were heavy, and they clung.

Noah had gone quiet after stepping into the camp. Paler than usual. Stricken in a way Lian didn’t understand until later. It was one of those moments where something unspoken breaks—his shoulders started shaking, and Lian, for all her hesitation, didn’t think twice. She hugged him.

It wasn’t warm or romantic. It was cold outside, and he was crying. She held him while he fell apart for a few seconds that felt like hours.

And two girls saw.

---

Kiki and her friend, who always lingered near drama like moths near a candle.

Kiki didn’t see the weight of the moment. She saw Lian’s arms around a boy. That was all it took.

A few days later, people whispered in corners. About “what happened on the trip.” About how the quiet girl and her best friend weren’t just friends after all. It reached Lian, of course. Rumors always do.

But what hit hardest was how specific they got. As if people had seen things that never happened. As if every glance she gave Noah was evidence. Every word they shared, dissected.

Lian cracked.

Already fraying from untreated anxiety, depressive spirals, and the constant sense of being wrong, the rumor sliced her down the middle. She didn’t yell. She didn’t fight back.

She withdrew.

---

Noah noticed. He tried to reach her, but she pulled away-just enough to hurt. Their conversations dulled, became fewer. They never fought, but the distance between them widened. And it stayed that way for months.

Then one day, slowly, cautiously, the bridge between them started to rebuild. A shared joke. A quiet message. A familiar comfort in late-night texts.

By graduation, they were okay. Not healed. But okay.

---

What Lian didn’t know then was that Kiki hadn’t just watched. She had spoken.

Not long after that infamous rumor bloomed, Kiki cornered Noah in a hallway.

“Why are you still hanging out with her?” she asked. “Are you sure nothing’s going on?”

Noah, ever composed, had answered gently. “She’s actually one of the best people I know. I like her. That’s all that matters.”

But the damage had already been done. Not just to their reputations-but to Lian’s sense of safety.

Noah never told her about Kiki’s confrontation until years later. Because, like Lian, he tried to forget.

---

Then came university.

Lian had applied to her program thinking she’d finally leave all of that behind. New city, new people, new life. Noah was abroad now, studying. But they kept in touch. At first, infrequent messages, then longer calls-sometimes once a week, sometimes more. And something new grew between them. Familiar but unfamiliar.

Lian, now more confident in her identity-double demi, maybe.. was slowly letting herself hope. She loved him, in her own hesitant, complicated way. And he, with all his patience and softness, loved her back. Or something very close to it.

---

Then, in one of the most infuriating coincidences the universe could offer-Kiki appeared again.

She walked into Lian’s lecture like nothing had ever happened. Bright, chirpy, and still full of those same glittering questions.

“Oh my god, Lian!” she’d said. “Didn’t you and Noah… weren’t you two, like, a thing?”

Lian had blinked once, twice. Masked her rage with something brittle and neutral.

“We weren’t,” she replied flatly. “There were rumors. They were untrue.”

Kiki looked flustered. Caught off guard, maybe. But it didn’t matter.

The moment passed-but it stayed with Lian like a shard under her skin.

---

And then she found out.

Noah, in one of their late-night calls, brought up the past like it was nothing. A passing memory.

“Yeah, Kiki actually came up to me, remember? Asked why I was still hanging out with you. Like she was confused I liked being around you or something.”

Lian didn’t speak for a while after that.

It was a strange kind of betrayal. Small, maybe, compared to other scars-but it reopened everything. Because Kiki hadn’t just been a bystander. She pushed. She tried to crack the only friendship Lian felt safe in. Maybe out of boredom. Maybe out of misplaced curiosity. Maybe for the thrill of playing with people’s lives.

---

Now, Lian and Kiki share every class. Every lab. Every practical.

They sit across from each other in group assignments. They exchange polite greetings, sometimes. But Lian doesn’t trust her. Not even a little.

Kiki probably doesn’t even remember what she did. People like her rarely do.

But to Lian, Kiki is the face of everything she fought to escape. Every moment she felt like a walking wrongness. Every time she questioned if she was too much, too cold, too different to ever be loved without scrutiny.

Kiki smiled through it all.

And that, Lian thought, is what makes her a villain.

Not because she destroyed anything with intent.

But because she could’ve chosen silence-and chose curiosity instead. Because she had the power to let something die quietly, but she fed it instead, needing just one more piece of the puzzle that wasn’t hers to build.

Lian isn’t angry anymore. Just tired.

And resolved.

Because Kiki may be in every class, but she won’t be in every chapter. Not this time.