Kannika’s POV
The day had been one long performance. Not just the press conference, not just the cameras, but the small, careful version of herself she’d been wearing since morning—like a blazer she couldn’t take off.
By the time their managers floated the idea of dinner, her smile felt stitched in place.
“A little celebration,” they said. Just the cast, the teams, all at one long table.
She glanced at Luna. The younger woman gave a small nod—the kind of automatic politeness Kannika had learned to recognize. A nod that said I’ll go along with it even if I’d rather not.
Kannika knew that feeling.
She was halfway to forming a neutral Sure when something in her chest stopped her. In her mind, she saw the elevator doors sliding shut. The flicker of eye contact. The stranger’s polite but cool nod—exactly like P’Tall’s, except older, quieter.
And she imagined sitting through two hours of polite congratulations, of champagne glasses clinking while someone inevitably leaned across the table to ask—half-teasing, half-prying—about the elevator clip.
She could already hear the questions:
“So, who was she, huh?”
“Your girlfriend? A fan?”
“You’re so private—people are curious.”
Her throat tightened.
She leaned back in her chair, letting her posture shift into something breezy, unbothered. “I’m going to have to pass,” she said, voice light. “I’ve got some things to take care of.”
It was a lie. The only thing she wanted to take care of was peeling off these heels, letting her hair down, and—if she was being honest—pulling up that video again to study the blurred shape of the girl’s smile.
Because even though she’d told herself she might have been imagining it, the way that stranger tilted her head… the faint curve at the corner of her mouth…
It was too close.
She caught Luna’s glance from across the table—quick, unreadable—and returned it with a polite half-smile before excusing herself.
---
Her house greeted her with the kind of silence she could breathe in. She set her bag down, kicked off her shoes, and padded barefoot into the kitchen.
A glass of water.
A deep breath.
She leaned against the counter, phone in hand, thumb hovering over the search bar. She knew the hashtags fans were using for the elevator clip, the frame-by-frame breakdowns already circulating. But instead, she typed something else.
She didn’t expect to find anything—just the usual online guesswork. But buried in a thread full of blurry screenshots was a link. Mystery girl’s Instagram? 👀
She tapped it.
The profile loaded instantly.
Public.
Her breath caught. No fuzzy profile picture to hide behind—this was her. Erin. Not P’Tall. Not the playground nickname. Erin.
The ache that had been gnawing at her since the elevator flared into something messier—half sadness, half anger, and a warm, dizzy rush of She’s here. She’s back.
Before she knew it, she was scrolling, not really clicking each posts just scrolling. Just to be safe. Years of her life laid out in neat little squares. Erin at the beach. Erin holding a coffee cup. Erin with friends Kannika didn’t recognize.
And then it happened.
Somewhere in 2018, her thumb betrayed her. Accidentally tapped a photo. A small red heart blinked to life under a photo of Erin grinning at some street.
She froze.
She could almost hear a sitcom laugh track in her head.
“No. No, no, no—” she whispered, stabbing the screen until the heart vanished.
Her pulse was racing. She was halfway to throwing her phone onto the couch when her eyes darted to the corner of the screen…
…and she noticed the username.
Not her main account.
Her smurf.
The one she used to lurk on random accounts and follow street-food reviewers. A plain, boring profile with no posts, no followers, no link to her name.
Relief washed over her like cool water. She slumped back against the couch, pressing the phone to her chest, laughing quietly at herself. She’d been a hair away from a public catastrophe… and all Erin would see, if she even noticed, was some harmless nobody liking an old picture.
Still, she stared at that follow button for far too long.
And then—because she couldn’t stop herself—she tapped it.
No turning back now.
The screen blinked. Following.
She exhaled, a strange mix of triumph and anxiety coiling in her stomach. She set the phone down, meaning to walk away… but it buzzed almost immediately.
Erin had posted a new Story.
Kannika’s thumb hovered over it. She tapped.
It was a picture, an artsy shot of a lamppost outside her hotel window.
The caption read:
Funny how the past finds you when you’re not looking.
Kannika froze. Her stomach dropped, then flipped, then tied itself into a knot.
“...No way,” she muttered.
Somewhere in the back of her mind, the laugh track started up again.
YOU ARE READING
Before I Knew Your Name
General Fiction"The friend she once loved like home, or the stranger who feels like falling in love for the first time." A heartfelt WLW romance set in Thailand, Before I Knew Your Name follows Erin, a diplomat's daughter, as she returns to the country she calls h...
