Yandere! Reclusive! Artist x Journalist! Reader
ā¤· TW: This story includes yandere themes, stalking, deep fixation, isolation, severe codependency, and intense psychological devotion. Yandere behavior is strictly fictional and not condoned in real life.
The apartment building was old and dark, smelling like damp concrete and strong paint thinner.
You walked down the dim hallway until you reached Room 408. The wooden door was covered in deep scratches and had three heavy deadbolts locked tightly from the inside.
According to the rumors in the local art scene, this was where Julian was hiding. A few years ago, he was a prodigy, a quiet, shy kid whose haunting oil paintings were selling for thousands of dollars. Then, at the absolute peak of his success, he suddenly destroyed all his artwork, cut off his phone lines, and vanished completely. People said he had lost his mind, driven into hiding by a severe paranoia that made him terrified of the outside world.
As a journalist for The Metropolitan Review, this was the story of a lifetime. You didnāt want to exploit him. You just needed him to give you five minutes of his time for a profile on the cityās forgotten talents.
You took a deep breath to calm your nerves and knocked firmly on the wood.
Inside, the loud, fuzzy buzz of a television static instantly cut out. A heavy, suffocating silence followed. Then, you heard the frantic, messy clicking of three separate locks turning one after the other in rapid succession.
The door cracked open just a few inches, held back by a thick metal security chain.
From the dark gap, a pair of wide, glassy eyes stared out at you from beneath a messy, tangled nest of faded ash-blonde hair. His eyes were a striking, clear shade of light gray, looking almost like smoke in the dim light of the hallway. He was incredibly pale, with deep purple circles bruised heavily under his eyes. He wore a huge, baggy gray sweater covered in old paint stains that seemed to weigh down his thin, hunched shoulders.
Yet, despite how messy and neglected he looked, you could easily see the sharp, delicate lines of his face. He was remarkably handsome, possessing a fragile, high-fashion kind of beauty that his unkempt appearance couldn't fully hide.
"I-I don't have anything," he whispered, his voice cracking and shaking badly. He gripped the edge of the door with white knuckles, looking completely terrified. "Please. I don't go outside anymore. Tell them I'm not here. Just leave me alone."
"Julian?" you said softly, keeping your voice calm, steady, and professional. "Hey. My name is (Y/N). I'm a culture journalist working with The Metropolitan Review. I'm not here to force you into anything, and I don't work for the galleries. I just wanted to talk to you for a few minutes about your art, if that's okay."
The second your voice hit the air, Julian froze completely solid.
His gray eyes went wide, and his chest gave a sharp, sudden hitch. He didn't look at the press badge pinned to your jacket, nor did he seem to care about the name of your company. Instead, his ears focused entirely on the sound of your name.
Hearing those specific syllables roll off your lips made his light pupils dilate so fast they nearly swallowed his irises. He stared directly at your face, looking as if he were staring at a miracle, or a ghost.
All the defensive tension left his body so fast that his knees literally gave out. He dropped straight onto the floor, kneeling on the dusty welcome mat right at your feet.
You stared down at the boy, your heart hammering against your ribs. The sheer intensity in his light gray eyes was dizzying. He looked completely broken, yet the way he looked at you felt so heavy, as if your safety and his entire existence rested solely on your shoulders.
He was shaking all over. He slowly reached a trembling, paint-stained hand toward the bottom of your coat, but stopped his fingers just an inch away, too scared to actually touch you and ruin the moment.
"You're real," he wept, letting out a breathless, unhinged little laugh as tears ran down his pale cheeks, his ash-blonde bangs falling over his face. He looked up at you with total, terrifying obsession. "You're actually here. I thought the TV static was finally making me go crazy. Please don't disappear. If you're a dream, please don't let me wake up."
"Julian, please stand up," you said gently, taking a small step back to give him some space.
Your movement made him flinch. His hand instantly dropped back to his side, and a look of pure, agonizing terror washed over his handsome face. He looked like a stray animal that had just been scolded for getting too close.
"I'm sorry," he whispered frantically, his voice cracking as he buried his face in his hands. His ash-blonde hair fell forward, completely hiding his eyes. "I'm sorry. I'm disgusting. I shouldn't have spoken to you like that. Please don't go. If you leave, the dark comes back. Please."
You looked at his trembling shoulders, completely torn between professional curiosity and deep pity. He was clearly mentally unstable, but he didn't look dangerous. He looked entirely pathetic, a fragile boy who was utterly terrified of being abandoned in the dark.
"I'm not leaving, Julian," you said softly, making sure your tone was as warm and soothing as possible. "But it's cold out here in the hallway. Can we go inside? We can just talk for a little bit."
Julian snapped his head up. His gray eyes were wide and watery, staring at you in absolute disbelief. He swallowed hard, nodding quickly as he scrambled off the floor. His movements were clumsy, his long legs nearly tangling in his oversized gray sweater as he stood up and stepped aside, holding the door open wide for you.
"Yes. Yes, please come in," he stammered, his cheeks flushing a bright, painful pink as he looked down at the floor, unable to maintain eye contact now that you were actually entering his space. "It's a mess. I'm sorry. I don't usually have guests. I don't have anyone."
You stepped across the threshold, and the heavy wooden door immediately closed behind you. You watched as Julian turned around and locked all three heavy deadbolts, the metallic clicks echoing loudly in the quiet room. It felt less like he was locking the world out, and more like he was locking you in.
The apartment was dim, the windows completely covered by thick, heavy black curtains that let in zero natural light. The only illumination came from a single lamp in the corner and the soft, ambient glow of three large, old CRT televisions stacked on top of each other against the far wall. They weren't playing any channels. They were just displaying fuzzy, gray static, filling the room with a constant, low buzzing sound.
The air was thick with the scent of old paper, dust, and the sharp sting of turpentine. Canvases were stacked everywhere against the walls, all of them turned backward so you couldn't see the art.
"You can sit on the couch," Julian murmured. He was standing a few feet away, wringing his paint-stained hands together nervously, his eyes fixated on your shoes. "I can make tea. If you want it. I have tea."
"Tea sounds wonderful, thank you," you said, taking a seat on the worn fabric sofa.
The moment you sat down, you noticed a small detail that made a strange chill run down your spine. On the coffee table right in front of you sat a small, ceramic mug. Inside it was a cluster of dried, faded flowers.
Your breath caught in your throat. They were white camellias. They were the exact type of flowers you always bought from the street vendor outside your office, the ones you kept on your desk every single week.
You looked up at Julian, who was currently fumbling with a kettle in the small kitchenette. His thin back was hunched, his ash-blonde hair catching the dim light of the lamp. He looked so innocent, so fragile and shy.
Itās just a coincidence, you told yourself, shaking the weird feeling away. White camellias are common.
Julian carefully walked back over, carrying a mismatched tray with two steaming mugs. His hands were shaking so violently that the ceramic clicked against the tray with every step he took. He set the tray down on the table, then hesitated, looking around the room as if he didn't know where he was allowed to stand.
"Sit down, Julian," you said with a gentle smile, patting the cushions on the other end of the couch. "Let's talk."
He looked at the spot next to you as if you had just offered him a throne. Slowly, carefully, he slid onto the very edge of the sofa. He didn't sit normally. Instead, he pulled his knees up to his chest, wrapping his long arms around his legs and burying his chin in his knees. His gray eyes locked onto your face, wide, unblinking, and filled with a suffocating, desperate devotion.
"What do you want to know?" he whispered, his voice trembling as a soft, shy smile tugged at the corner of his lips. "I'll tell you anything. Anything you want. Just keep talking to me."
The first interview did not yield much professional information, but it gave you something far heavier: a deep, lingering sense of responsibility.
During that first hour in his dim, static-filled apartment, Julian had barely spoken about his art. Whenever you asked about his paintings, he would stutter, hide his face in his oversized sweater, and shift the conversation back to you. He wanted to know how long you had lived in the city, if you liked your job at The Metropolitan Review, and if you were truly happy. He listened to your answers with a frightening level of concentration, his gray eyes tracking every single movement of your lips.
By the time you stood up to leave, he looked absolutely devastated. He had followed you to the door like a shadow, his hands trembling as he unlocked the three heavy deadbolts.
"Will you come back?" he had whispered, looking up at you through his messy ash-blonde hair, his eyes swimming with tears. "Please, (Y/N). I will be so good. I will prepare better answers for your article next time. Just please don't forget about me out here."
You had promised him you would return. At first, it was just for the article. A profile on a reclusive, handsome prodigy who had lost his touch was exactly the kind of piece that could secure your career.
But as the weeks bled into a month, the article became an afterthought.
You started visiting Room 408 every Tuesday and Thursday after your shift ended. You quickly realized that Julian could not take care of himself. His kitchen was always empty, and his hands shook too badly to cook proper meals. So, you started bringing him homemade food, making sure he actually ate. You helped him clean the dust off his stacks of backward-facing canvases, and you even bought him a soft blue blanket to replace the thin, tattered one on his couch.
In return, Julian treated you like you were his entire universe.
"You're late today," Julian murmured softly.
It was a rainy Tuesday evening, three weeks into your routine. You had just walked into the apartment, shaking the water off your umbrella. Julian was already right there, taking your damp coat from your shoulders with practiced, gentle care.
"I'm sorry, Julian. Traffic was terrible because of the downpour," you said, offering him a warm smile as you kicked off your wet shoes.
Julian did not answer right away. He stood close to you, closer than a normal friend would. He held your coat against his chest, burying his face into the fabric for a brief, fleeting second to inhale your scent before hanging it up. When he turned back to you, his pale cheeks were flushed a soft pink, and his gray eyes were wide and adoring.
"It's okay," he whispered, his voice sweet and timid. "As long as you're here now. I was just getting a little scared. The TV static was getting really loud, and my chest started to hurt because I thought you finally got tired of a freak like me."
"I told you I wouldn't abandon you," you said gently, reaching out to brush a stray strand of ash-blonde hair out of his eyes.
The moment your fingers touched his skin, Julian let out a shaky, breathy sigh. He leaned heavily into your palm, closing his eyes and pressing his cheek against your hand like a starved animal. He looked so incredibly handsome in the warm light of the lamp, his sharp, delicate jawline relaxing completely under your touch.
"You're too good to me, (Y/N)," he mumbled against your skin, his long fingers carefully coming up to grip your wrist, anchoring your hand to his face. His grip was surprisingly firm, almost desperate. "I don't deserve you. I really don't. But if you ever stop coming, I think I would just let myself rot in this room. You're the only reason I even wake up anymore."
You felt a sharp tug in your chest. It was a terrifying amount of devotion, but under his fragile, broken appearance, it felt deeply romantic. You were the only one who could save him. You were his anchor.
An hour later, Julian was sitting on the floor by your shins while you sat on the couch, working on your laptop. He was quietly sketching on a small pad, his thin shoulders hunched over.
"Hey, Julian," you said casually, stretching your arms. "I need to run out to the art supply store down the block. I noticed your white paint tubes are completely empty, and you mentioned wanting to try canvas priming again."
Julian snapped his head up, his gray eyes instantly widening with anxiety. "You're leaving?"
"Just for fifteen minutes," you reassured him with a soft laugh. "I'll be right back."
Julian swallowed hard, his knuckles turning white as he clutched his sketchbook. He looked terrified, but then he took a deep breath, forcing a small, trembling smile onto his lips. "Okay. Okay, I can do that. I'll stay here. But can I go instead? You shouldn't walk in the rain. I can try to go outside. For you."
You stared at him, genuinely shocked. For a boy who had not left his apartment in years, offering to go outside into the crowded, loud city was a massive sacrifice. It proved how much he was trying to get better just to please you.
"Are you sure, Julian? You don't have to force yourself," you said, touched by the gesture.
"I want to," he whispered, standing up and wrapping his huge gray sweater tighter around himself. He looked incredibly brave, even though his knees were shaking. "I want to be useful to you, (Y/N). Write down the exact brand you want. I'll get it and come straight back."
You wrote down the list, and after five minutes of Julian frantically checking his locks and bracing himself, he finally stepped out into the hallway.
The heavy wooden door clicked shut. For the first time in a month, you were completely alone in Room 408.
The silence in the apartment was deafening without his quiet breathing. You stood up, deciding to stretch your legs. As you walked past the kitchenette toward the back hallway, your sleeve caught on a heavy, floor-to-length dark velvet curtain that blocked off a small alcove near his bedroom.
The curtain shifted, revealing a solid wooden door behind it.
You blinked. You had been here for a month, and you had always assumed that curtain just covered an old closet. But looking closely, there was a brand-new, expensive digital keypad lock installed on the door handle.
And the little light on the keypad was blinking green.
Julian, in his frantic hurry to go outside and impress you, had forgotten to pull the door completely shut. It was sitting open by a mere fraction of an inch.
The green light on the digital keypad blinked rhythmically in the dim alcove, casting a faint glow over the cracked wood of the frame. Your heart gave a heavy, nervous thud against your ribs. Julian had been so careful with his privacy over the past month, never even letting you glance into his bedroom, yet here was a hidden door completely left unlatched.
You told yourself to walk away. You told yourself that a good journalist respects boundaries, and more importantly, that a good friend does not snoop. But as you stared at the sliver of darkness gaping between the door and the frame, a cold knot of curiosity tightened in your stomach. The white camellias on the coffee table flashed in your mind. The way he had collapsed at your feet the moment he heard your name. The terrifying, absolute devotion in his smoke-gray eyes.
Nothing about Julianās behavior wrapped up neatly. The pieces of the puzzle were right in front of you, hidden behind a velvet curtain.
Slowly, almost automatically, you reached out and pressed your fingertips against the cool wood. The door swung inward without a single sound, the hinges perfectly oiled.
The air that rushed out of the room hit you instantly, making you shiver. It was ice-cold, smelling strongly of ozone, metallic dust, and something deeply stagnant, like an attic that had been sealed shut for decades. It was pitch black inside, far darker than the main apartment, but as your eyes adjusted, you noticed the faint, eerie glow of electronic standby lights.
You stepped over the threshold. The floor beneath your shoes shifted from old hardwood to a thick, heavy carpeting that completely muffled your footsteps.
As you reached out to find a light switch along the wall, your hand brushed against paper instead. Dozens of papers. Hundreds of them. The entire wall was textured with layers upon layers of parchment, taped and pinned over each other so thickly that the drywall beneath was entirely covered.
You pulled out your phone, flipping on the flashlight tool. The sharp beam of white light sliced through the darkness, and the breath completely left your lungs.
It was not a closet. It was a massive, soundproofed studio, and every square inch of it was a monument to a single subject.
Your beam of light caught the wall first. Thousands of sketches were pinned to the drywall, cascading from the ceiling down to the floorboards. They weren't abstract paintings or the haunting landscapes that had made Julian famous. They were drawings of you.
There was a charcoal sketch of you laughing while waiting for the subway, the shading perfectly capturing the exact tilt of your head. There was a detailed pencil drawing of you typing furiously at your desk at The Metropolitan Review, a stray pen tucked into your messy hair. There were sketches of you sleeping on a bus, reading a book at a local cafe, buying coffee from the street vendor, and walking home in the pouring rain. Some were years old, the edges yellowed and crisp, while others looked so fresh the charcoal smudge was still vibrant.
Your hands began to shake violently, the flashlight beam dancing erratically across the room.
In the center of the studio sat a massive horseshoe-shaped desk. Stacked on top of it were six old, heavy CRT televisions, their black glass screens reflecting the beam of your phone like dead eyes. Beneath the monitors sat a neat, terrifyingly organized shelving unit filled with rows of black VHS tapes.
Each tape had a neat, white label stuck to the spine, written in precise, elegant handwriting.
You walked closer, your knees feeling entirely hollow as you forced your feet to move. You shone the light on the labels.
Your eyes scanned down the rows, the numbers and months blurring together until you reached the very bottom shelf, where the dust was thickest. You wiped a layer of grime off the oldest tape in the corner. The handwriting on this one was slightly different, less practiced, but the ink was clear.
May 24, 2020 ā First Sight.
Your breath caught in your throat as you did the math in your head. That was six years ago. You were just a freshman in college back then, completely unaware of the world around you, long before you had ever even heard of The Metropolitan Review.
Julianās severe paranoia, his absolute terror of the outside world, his locked doors, and his broken mind, it wasn't a random mental illness. He hadn't been hiding from a dangerous world. He had shut himself inside this concrete tomb because his entire brain had rotted from a high-definition, six-year-long surveillance of your life.
The white camellias hadn't been a coincidence. Your meeting hadn't been a stroke of journalistic luck. You hadn't found him.
authorās note: hello, my dears! i am so sorry for being inactive for a bit š this story took quite a bit of time to pull together. honestly, i keep getting a million different ideas in my head lately, but i've been struggling to actually sit down and finish them. š„²
but i really wanted to get this one right for you! this is just Part 1. the second and final part will be posted very soon, so comment down below if you want to be tagged when it drops. thank you so much for reading and for your patience! š
