She’s slid down to the floor, hugging her knees against her chest. Kisa’s face is so pale behind her curls, and Seokga staggers, momentarily swarmed with terror. He has seen fear before, on countless different faces, but this is…This is not mere fear. Her eyes are fixed on something he cannot see—a memory?—and her chest is rising and falling so unevenly that it cuts Seokga to the bone to see the choppiness of her shallow breaths. He can’t—fuck, he can’t leave her like this, stuck in an elevator. What sort of fucking soulmate would he be?

“Kisa?” he asks, grabbing her shoulders in his own fear, giving her a gentle shake. But it’s as if she doesn’t hear, or even see, him. “Kisa?”

The red thread shakes and shakes as Kisa remains lost to him. Seokga tries to fight off rising panic. His hands flutter uselessly around her—smoothing down her hair, cupping her chin, holding her shoulders, her hands. Seokga doesn’t—he doesn’t know what to do. Doesn’t know how to send a calm, silver serenity down the bond as she once did for him. He’s too panicked, too frightened. What’s happened to her?

“Please,” Seokga whispers. “Kisa, please—shit, shit, shit—” It’s as if he’s back in that warehouse, watching Hani’s life drain from her eyes, unable to do anything…Unable to help…

Around Kisa’s pinky, the red thread glows black…And when that color reaches his end of the thread, the terror he feels—Kisa’s terror—is endless, as suffocating as drowning in a dark sea. He’s nearly sick from the taste of it. Only when it fades is he able to move again.

The red thread tugs insistently on his finger and he glares at it through a sudden onslaught of pained tears. “Help me,” he begs. “Help me help her. Please—”

It hesitates before rising farther into the air, twisting itself into a shape composed of one unbreaking red line that twirls and turns to create an image, a threaded pictorial of a man holding a woman. Seokga doesn’t hesitate as he sits on the elevator’s floor, gently pulling Kisa to him and mimicking the position of the couple in the thread’s suggestion. Her head rests limply on his chest. Seokga’s own fingers spasm as he holds Kisa’s. “Kisa,” he murmurs into her ear. “Come back to me.”

It could be seconds, or minutes, or hours until she surfaces—but surface she does, her breathing slowly steadying. Seokga could nearly weep with relief as she looks up at him, as she sees him.

“Seokga?” she whispers.

“I’m here,” he assures her, voice catching in his throat.

Kisa smiles—a trembling rictus on her face that dies as quickly as it was born. “Don’t leave me…”