A woman says her family’s exchange student sided with her abusive mom, then items missing from her room started appearing in plain sight

A TikTok video from @chronicallygirl has drawn hundreds of thousands of views after the creator, who goes by Scarlet, described a foreign exchange student who she says sided with her mother against her, according to the Daily Dot. The exchange student storytime runs about six minutes and has collected tens of thousands of likes.

Scarlet says her mother psychologically abused her throughout childhood, including by telling her that no one would ever love her. According to the video, the mother removed things Scarlet liked and got rid of the family’s pets, and Scarlet’s younger brother also took part in the treatment she describes during the storytime.

The girl, who is from South Korea and was the same age as Scarlet, then arrived as the family’s exchange student. In Scarlet’s telling, the girl quickly joined in as well, and the video centers on how daily life at home shifted once a third person began siding with the mother in conflicts with Scarlet.

Scarlet says her missing things kept turning up with the exchange student

When items went missing from her room, Scarlet says, they later turned up with the exchange student. After Scarlet sought comfort from the girl following a hard moment with her mother, she says, the student repeated the situation to the mother and placed the blame on Scarlet instead of offering support.

Scarlet says her mother also took belongings that other people had complimented and handed them to the exchange student. According to Scarlet, the student became something like her mother’s sidekick, which is the dynamic the exchange student storytime spends most of its runtime unpacking for viewers, one belonging at a time.

Scarlet titled the clip a storytime about an evil foreign exchange student and captioned it as feeling like a special feature DVD, which frames the clip as bonus content. The caption also carries hashtags for exchange student and storytime posts. Throughout the video, Scarlet speaks directly to the camera while she recounts the events in order.

The comments section reacted strongly. One commenter asked how Scarlet turned out normal after all of this and called the story “diabolical.” However, another viewer took a more measured view and wondered whether the exchange student acted out of survival, as siding against Scarlet might have made the girl the mother’s next target.

A newer follower joked that Scarlet must now be no contact with everyone, and Scarlet has said she is no longer in contact with her mother. The video rests on childhood memories. However, details such as which items disappeared and when they reappeared come only from Scarlet’s telling, and the exchange student’s perspective is not part of the video.

Families can take sides in ways that stay with a person for years, and another viral account involved a woman describing her parents drilling her window shut and taking away her bedroom door. Scarlet’s account of her mother removing belongings, and of an outsider benefiting from it, fits that wider pattern of viral household stories on the platform.

Scarlet’s video may also prompt more viewers to share how they handled similar situations with relatives and guests, and further storytimes could follow as the clip continues to circulate on the platform and reach viewers who have lived through comparable family dynamics.

Attack of the Fanboy was unable to independently verify the mother’s and the exchange student’s side of the story, as this account originates solely from Scarlet’s TikTok video.