ⓘ 01. THE WAY THAT YOU SEE YOURSELF
⤷ ANGST ﹫ timeskip!kenma kozume x fem!reader ﹫ established relationship ﹫ be ready to cry :)
-> part.2
⚠︎ cyber bullying, emotional distress (reader), mental health struggles, eating disorders (throwing up), heavy themes, strong emotions, cursing, heavy insults, you’re gonna cry .ᐟ.ᐟ
You still remember the stream like it was yesterday.
Kenma had pulled you gently into frame, eyes soft beneath the warm glow of the LED lights in his setup. He smiled, shy but proud.
“This is my girlfriend,” he’d said, rubbing the back of his neck with that same familiar awkwardness. “Be nice to her.”
At the time, it had felt like a dream. You were glowing with love and disbelief. Kenma—your Kenma—was introducing you to millions of his fans. Your face was warm with the thought, your heart thudding loud in your ears. You’d looked at him, smiled nervously, and waved to the camera.
The chat had exploded.
He’d chuckled.
“Okay, okay. We’ll play now,” he’d said, dismissing the tsunami of reactions with a lighthearted grin.
He didn’t see it.
Not what came after.
It started small.
A comment here and there on your Instagram posts. A DM.
“Who the hell are you?”
“She’s not even cute lol.”
You’d laughed it off at first. But they didn’t stop. They didn’t forget. You were no longer just “some girl.” You were Kenma’s girlfriend. And to them, that meant you were someone to tear apart.
The hate grew like rot beneath the surface.
“You don’t deserve him.”
“Pig.”
“Go kill yourself.”
And it wasn’t just the words. It was the way they dissected you. Your smile. Your clothes. Your hair. Your body. Every post you made was swarmed. Every picture was analyzed, compared to some ideal they had crafted for the man you loved.
Kenma didn’t know.
He didn’t see.
Because it wasn’t on his streams. It wasn’t in his mentions.
It was you. Your phone. Your DMs. Your world that was growing darker.
You told yourself not to care. You told yourself they were just kids, strangers, faceless names with too much time.
But at night, in bed, you scrolled.
Your fingers trembled.
Your stomach turned.
And eventually, you changed.
You stopped posting pictures of yourself. You started dressing differently—trying to look more like the girls they praised in his fan edits. You painted your face carefully, calculatingly. You skipped meals. Told yourself it wasn’t a big deal.
Kenma would smile at you, kiss your temple. He had no idea.
He still looked at you like you were the best thing that had ever happened to him. And so you acted. Played the part. You’d hold his hand tighter in public just to make yourself believe it. Laugh a little louder. Smile a little harder.
But the truth was, you were drowning. Quietly. Alone.
Sometimes you’d cry in the shower, biting your knuckles to muffle the sound. Other times you’d stare at your reflection, confused.
Who was this girl?
Where was the one who used to sing in the kitchen, who used to smile without checking a mirror first?
She was gone.
Buried beneath thousands of hateful words. Words from people who had never met you. Who didn’t know that Kenma loved how you always brought him tea without asking, or how you stayed quiet when he streamed, or how you understood when he needed silence. They didn’t know how he reached for you in his sleep. How he whispered “I love you” even when half-awake.
They didn’t want to know.
And now, you didn’t even want to look at yourself.
The worst part wasn’t even the hate.
It was pretending.
You didn’t want Kenma to worry. He worked so hard. He was building something beautiful—his own world—and you were supposed to be the lucky one invited in. You didn’t want to be the crack in the foundation.
So you smiled. Always smiled.
It was the beginning of the end.
But Kenma wasn’t stupid.
He just didn’t know what he was looking at.
But he knew you were not okay.
It had started subtly—like hairline cracks in glass. Imperceptible at first, something most people would walk past without noticing. But he wasn’t most people. And you weren’t just someone.
You were you.
The you who used to giggle half-asleep when he snuck behind you and wrapped his arms around your waist. The you who wore his hoodies and danced barefoot in the kitchen. The you who told him you hated pineapple on pizza with the passion of a full-blown warrior.
That you hadn’t disappeared. Not all at once. That would have been easier.
No—she faded. Quietly.
At first, he thought you were just tired. You’d yawn more, sleep in. He’d offer to cancel a stream to spend the day together and you’d insist you were fine, just wanted to rest. It made sense. You were busy too. Life was heavy sometimes.
But then… other things began to happen.
He remembered the vase.
It was a plain thing, honestly—ugly, even. Some cheap, tacky glass piece his fans had gifted him years ago. He only kept it because he felt guilty throwing it away. You had knocked it off the shelf by accident while dusting and it shattered into a million pieces on the hardwood floor.
You stood there frozen for half a second—and then you crumpled.
You had cried. Not sniffled. Sobbed.
Ten minutes. Ten long, gutting minutes. He had rushed over, confused, concerned, arms wrapped around you as you kept saying, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—God, I’m so stupid, I’m sorry—”
Kenma didn’t care about the vase.
He’d told you that again and again, even while he held you, smoothing your hair. But you kept apologizing, kept shaking, like you were trying to make yourself disappear.
And when your tears stopped, you wiped your face and told him it was “just hormones,” laughed a little like it was a joke. Like it hadn’t scared the hell out of him.
Like you weren’t breaking in front of him.
That was the first moment he realized something was wrong. Not just off. Wrong.
After that, he watched more closely.
Your smiles weren’t quite the same. Too quick. Too bright. They didn’t reach your eyes the way they used to. Sometimes, you’d smile before he even finished a sentence, like you were anticipating it. Like a reflex. A cover.
And when he streamed, you’d avoid the camera.
You used to love popping in—bringing him snacks, waving at the chat, kissing his cheek to make him blush. It was your little routine. He never asked you to do it. You wanted to.
Now? You barely entered the room when he was live. And when you did, it was only to leave something silently on his desk and slip away. He noticed the way your eyes flicked toward the screen, and the way your shoulders tightened like you were bracing for something. He just didn’t know what.
He should have asked.
He should have insisted.
But you kept saying you were okay. So he believed you.
Because he wanted to.
Still… the signs piled up.
The nights were the worst. You started waking up at strange hours, always with an excuse. Your footsteps down the hall. The bathroom door closing softly. Water running. Toilet flushing.
Then the silence.
He followed once. Quietly. Listened outside the door.
He heard it.
You throwing up. Gagging. Then coughing and breathing like you were trying to steady yourself. You ran the faucet again—he guessed to drown out the sound.
When you came back to bed, he was still awake. You’d crawled in beside him like nothing happened.
“Sick again?” he asked, gentle.
“Mhm,” you hummed, turning your back to him. “Must’ve been the sushi.”
You said it so easily. So casually. Like it hadn’t happened the night before. And the night before that. Like he was imagining the pattern.
He reached out, touched your back softly. “Maybe we should go to the doctor…”
“No need,” you interrupted. “I’m fine. Probably just a bug.”
Kenma stared at the ceiling long after you fell asleep.
You weren’t fine.
You hadn’t been fine in weeks. Maybe months. But every time he reached out, you retreated. Laughed it off. Shrugged him away. And he—idiot that he was—let you.
Because he was scared. Scared of pushing you too hard. Scared of being wrong. Scared that if he said the wrong thing, whatever this was would get worse.
But it was already getting worse.
You barely ate at dinner. You never asked him to take pictures with you anymore. You didn’t talk about your day unless he pulled it out of you word by word. And the way you looked at yourself in the mirror—he noticed that too. The pause. The silence. The frown.
You’d stopped singing.
He didn’t say it out loud, but he missed your voice.
One night, you stood in the bathroom in nothing but your underwear, brushing your hair out in the mirror. Kenma leaned against the doorway, watching you.
“You look beautiful,” he said softly.
You didn’t even look up. “Thanks.”
Not “thank you”. Not “you too.”
Just thanks. Flat. Distant.
It made his chest ache.
And still, when he reached for you, you leaned into him. Let him kiss you. Let him hold you like he was the only thing tethering you to the earth. You let him love you like he always did.
But you didn’t love you. And he could feel that now.
You were fading in his arms.
That night, he didn’t sleep. Just stared at the ceiling, wide-eyed.
He didn’t know how long he could do this—watch you disappear and pretend not to notice. But he also didn’t know what to do. He’d never been good with emotions, with people. He was the one who stayed quiet in the back while others took the spotlight.
But now the spotlight was killing you.
And you wouldn’t let him turn it off.
The scariest part?
He didn’t know what would happen first.
That you’d finally tell him what was going on.
Or that one day, he’d wake up—and you’d be gone.
Not in the physical sense. No. But gone in the way that mattered most.
And that terrified him more than anything.
—
Kenma couldn’t sleep.
Again.
You were curled up beside him in the dark, your breathing light and even. From the outside, it looked peaceful. But Kenma knew better now. He knew it was an illusion—just like the smiles you gave him, just like the way you said “I’m fine” when you were clearly not.
He stared at the ceiling until his eyes burned.
He couldn’t do it anymore.
He was angry. Not at you—never at you. But at himself. At the silence. At how long he had let this go on. He’d noticed the signs, all of them, and he still hadn’t done anything.
He didn’t want to confront you. Not if it meant making you retreat even further.
But tonight, the helplessness had crawled so deep into his chest it felt like it was eating him alive.
He had to know.
He needed to see it.
Whatever it was that had hollowed you out like this.
So, with trembling hands and guilt tightening his throat, he turned slowly toward your sleeping figure, careful not to wake you. Your phone rested on your bedside table, screen dim, innocuous. Innocent.
But it wasn’t.
He picked it up.
Every second of it felt wrong. He hated going through your things. Hated the invasion of it. But god, he loved you too much to care. He’d break a thousand promises if it meant saving you.
He unlocked the screen with your fingerprint—you had given it to him months ago, jokingly, so he could queue music while you cooked.
He never thought he’d use it like this.
He checked your texts. Nothing out of the ordinary. DMs on Twitter—mostly muted. Barely any responses. You didn’t talk to anyone.
Then he opened Instagram.
And the world collapsed beneath him.
Your inbox was full. Not with friends. Not with kind words.
But with poison.
“Slut.”
“Pig.”
“Who paid you to pretend to be with him?”
“Why are you still alive?”
“Lmao she thinks she’s his type? Has she seen herself?”
“You’re ruining his brand.”
“You don’t deserve him. You’re dirt.”
It was endless.
Message after message, comment after comment, posts and story replies, group DMs you’d been added to just so they could tear you apart.
Kenma stared at the screen. Scrolling. Scrolling. Not blinking. Not breathing.
Your followers had tripled since he introduced you on stream a year ago. But it wasn’t love. It was a target they wanted. Someone to ruin.
And they had.
You hadn’t just changed.
You were being destroyed.
And he hadn’t fucking seen it.
His fingers were trembling, the screen a blur of hate and cruelty. He felt sick. He wanted to scream.
And then—he didn’t want to scream.
He wanted them to hear him.
To see what they had done.
Without thinking, without a plan, without even wiping his eyes, Kenma stormed into his streaming room. He sat down, headset on. Pressed “Start Broadcast.” It was past 2am. No notification. No schedule.
And yet… within minutes, the chat lit up.
“Wtf??”
“Is he okay?”
“Emergency stream??”
“Kodzuken??”
He didn’t speak at first.
He stared into the camera, eyes red, expression unreadable. His hands were folded on the desk. His jaw clenched.
The silence stretched. The comments piled in.
And then, finally—he spoke.
Voice cold. Low. Razor sharp.
“I wasn’t planning on streaming tonight. I wasn’t planning on talking at all. But I just found out what some of you have been doing.”
The chat slowed.
A pause. Confusion.
“To her.”
A single sentence.
And the shift in tone was immediate.
“You know who I mean. You all know.”
He didn’t blink.
“You looked me in the eye while tearing her apart behind my back. You called yourselves fans. You said you supported me. But what you actually did… was destroy the one person I care about more than anything in this world.”
His voice broke slightly—but only for a second. He cleared his throat.
“She didn’t tell me. I had to find out by going through her phone while she was asleep. You did that to her. You made her hide it. You made her feel ashamed of being with me. Of existing.”
The chat was chaos. Apologies. Excuses. Confusion.
He ignored them all.
“I saw everything. Every message. Every comment. Every threat. Every time you told her to kill herself. Every time you called her a pig. Every time you said she was dragging me down.”
“Let me be very clear.”
He leaned in.
“You didn’t just hurt her. You hurt me. You stole her smile. You took away her laugh. The woman I love—the only person who ever made me feel like more than a screen name—you broke her. And I let you.”
He exhaled, shaking.
“So this isn’t a brand. This isn’t a game. This is my life. And if you think for one second I’d ever forgive you for what you’ve done, for what you’ve taken from her—from us—you’re not a fan. You’re a parasite.”
He paused again. The chat had slowed. Silent. Some still begged forgiveness. Others left.
“She was happy before you. She was whole. Now she cries in secret. Now she throws up in the middle of the night and tells me it’s nothing. And I believed her. I fucking believed her.”
He sat back, face pale, knuckles white.
“I’m not playing anymore. You either support both of us, or you don’t support me at all. Ever again. No more middle ground. No more pretending you didn’t know. No more looking away while she drowns.”
“You killed her spirit.”
Another pause. He looked down. Voice quieter.
“And I’m not sure I’ll ever get her back.”
Then he looked into the camera one last time.
“Stream’s over.”
Click.
Silence.
Kenma sat there, headset off, chest heaving. The tears finally fell—slow, quiet. He wiped them away with the sleeve of his hoodie.
He didn’t care about the fallout. About the fans he just lost. About the hate he might get now.
None of it mattered.
Because you were in the next room, sleeping through it all, unaware of the war he just declared on your behalf.
Unaware that he had finally seen what they had done.
Unaware that he was done watching you disappear.
And now—he would burn the whole world before letting it happen again.
