Since letting Dr. Jang into his mind, Seokga has discovered he has a plethora of daddy issues, an avoidant-dismissive attachment style (for everyone besides Hani, of course—it seems that she was the exception to everything), and a boatload of trauma from watching the love of his life die in front of him with his hand around the hilt of the dagger that killed her. Fun. And since beginning to treat Seokga some thirty-three years ago, the good doctor has gone significantly grayer. Although Seokga would very much like to take the credit for that, shamans do age. At a slightly slower pace than mortals, yes (a sign-on bonus from their patron deity), but they do wither, acquire depressing wrinkles, and ultimately die. He’s loath to admit it, but other than the storm-cloud gray hair, Jang looks rather sprightly for a seventy-something-year-old.

“Seokga?” Dr. Jang prompts expectantly. Now, seven years after the red thread first appeared, Seokga just rubs his eyes in exhaustion. He’s tired, bone-tired, and even the large iced coffee currently perched on the table between himself and Dr. Jang isn’t helping. “I just got back from Antarctica,” he replies hoarsely. His voice is always raspy, but the bitter winds hadn’t helped. At all.

“Antarctica,” Dr. Jang repeats. Her warm brown eyes, lined with wrinkles, show no emotion save for a calm neutrality that Seokga has grown to appreciate. She tilts her head, and the autumn sunlight from the circular window behind her illuminates her permed gray hair. “You thought Hani would be there?”

Seokga grits his teeth, glaring at the long Red Thread of Fate attached to his pinky. Nobody can see it but him. It’s tangled, twisted, and has so far led the trickster on a wild goose chase all around the world. For a blessed handful of hours after it had appeared, the red thread seemed to have been bringing him to Hani—a clear, straight line with neat turns. Imbued with a lightness and filled with a pure, sparkling cheerfulness that he hadn’t felt since before Hani’s life sputtered out in front of him in that cursed warehouse, Seokga had called Dr. Jang almost immediately, bursting at the seams with the need to tell somebody that everything in his world—everything—was going to be right again. Seoul, he’d panted out loud to the kindly doctor as he leaned heavily on his cane. It was leading him to Seoul. But a few hours after night fell, it was like the damned thing had stopped working. It ran him in circles until it tangled itself, brought him to one place only to twist back and head toward another, and was an overall useless piece of string.