The red thread forever wrapped around her pinky tautens enough to hurt. Kisa gasps, stumbling back. One of the girls worriedly asks if she’s all right.

“I’m fine,” Kisa murmurs, attempting a smile before hastily wheeling the now-full hamper out into the corridor, heart pounding and finger screaming in agony. As she waits in the corridor for the elevator to take her to Deck 3, where the laundry room is, Kisa does everything in her power not to look at the red floral knot squeezing her throbbing pinky.

In the seven years since her death, Kisa has come to the rather unfortunate conclusion that it is not a stress-induced hallucination at all. She’s considering another hypothesis instead: that she is experiencing an extremely rare part of the mythological canon, a physical manifestation of destiny that is meant—in theory—to lead Kisa to her soulmate. It took her a while to form this hypothesis—the red thread, even to shamans, is viewed as little more than a legend. Yet here it is, tied to her finger.

As she gives in and looks at it, it wriggles slightly. Like it’s an anxious caterpillar trying to say “hello.”

Kisa is quite certain her Red Thread of Fate is faulty. Seeing as she is, one, dead (has anybody ever met their soulmate after they died?) and, two, in seven years, it has become incredibly tangled. Perhaps Gameunjang Aegi, the luck goddess, made a mistake.

What a fascinating mistake, though.

There is no end to the scarlet string, which seems to span on forever and ever as matted lines of messy, snarled knots and lumps, winding around corners, curling through the hallways, tangling in on itself before stretching out across the Seocheongang River to a place far away.

She has attempted to study its material to no avail. Whatever its composites, the string is untouchable, and entirely unbreakable. It is no usual thread: no indications of cotton, nor rayon. Both those materials can be neatly severed by scissors rather than passing through them like a ghost. In addition to that, the red thread isn’t visible to anyone but her.

Why has it tightened? In all its years of existence, the string has never squeezed her finger like that. Still puzzled, Kisa dumps the dirty linens in the laundry room, where a plump-faced dokkaebi with pointy ears promptly sets to queuing them up for the next line of washing. The vast room of machinery smells like the gallons of detergent used every week: birchwood and lavender. She lingers for a moment longer, letting the rhythmic churning of the industrial-sized washing machines wash over her. Her pinky still feels as if it’s about to be sliced off at any moment, but she doesn’t let it show. Kisa has become quite good at hiding her pain, burying it under mental recitations of her favorite books, which range from smutty paperback romances to heavyweight volumes on the dokkaebi cardiovascular system.