Yearning

The English-language readership scene has made the term a benchmark: what's sought is not the quick encounter, but the ache before it — the unspoken sentence, the hand that stops just short of the shoulder, the chapter that ends without resolution.

The difference from the related term pining lies in direction. Pining describes the person who longs; yearning describes the state in which the entire story exists. The counter-movement is called insta-love — and is explicitly rejected by many readers.

Interactive stories can do this particularly well because you control the pace. If you want, you can maintain the distance over chapters — and the characters maintain it with you.