Even at an early age, Seulgi quickly came to the realization that she was different from all the other kids around her. There was something about Seulgi that no other child she knew seemed to possess.

         Seulgi saw the red strings when no one else seemed to be able to. She witnessed them tying people together, weaving up and over each other to form a tapestry of sorts invisible to others.

         No matter where the girl looked, the vibrant red threads were constantly shifting and moving. It was almost as if they were living and breathing along with those they were tied to. The sight was beautiful, and Seulgi couldn’t quite understand why more people weren’t joining her in gazing at endlessly at them.

         Her teachers often scolded her during class because they would find the young girl’s gaze meandering about the room. Truthfully, she was just watching the strings tightening and slackening with each of her classmate’s movements, or she was studying her own string rather than paying attention to the lessons.

         It didn’t take long before even the school’s principal believed that Seulgi had issues with focusing. After a few parent teacher sessions with Mr. and Mrs. Kang, however, everything quickly straightened itself out.

         Despite the young girl’s seemingly distracted behavior, Seulgi often reigned the top scorer in her class. She had even been placed in a few accelerated programs due to the potential shown in her standardized test grades.

         Because of this, Seulgi’s teachers had no choice but to permit Seulgi’s absentmindedness with terse smiles and slightly reprimanding words. Somewhat smugly, the young girl continued to gaze at the beautiful strings surrounding her, transfixed at what they could all mean.

         The first time Seulgi tried asking her parents about the crimson colored twine that seemed to be attached to everyone’s pinkies, she was seven years old and had just finished her first week of the second grade.

         “Mommy, what’s with that string wrapped around your finger?” Seulgi had asked her mother one afternoon after Mrs. Kang had picked her up from school.

         Her voice was high pitched and full of innocence, chiming above the volume of her mother’s favorite radio station as they drove home through the winding streets of their neighborhood.

         “What string, sweetie?” Mrs. Kang had replied, confused as to what her daughter was going on about. Glancing down at the steering wheel at her hands, Mrs. Kang saw nothing like a red string attached to any of her digits.

         The older woman was ready to brush it aside as her daughter’s wild imagination when Seulgi piped up from the backseat once more. “The one on your pinky that’s connected to dad’s,” the seven year old stated simply, gazing out of her window with a far away look in her eye.

         Mrs. Kang nearly slammed her foot down on the brake at her daughter’s words. She’d heard stories from her mother, long ago, of the same exact twine Seulgi was questioning her about now. Mrs. Kang herself lacked the sight, and had never believed her mother’s crazy claims until many years of maturing.

         Anything she heard about the fabled strings, Mrs. Kang had deduced to merely a fairy tale that had taken storm within the mainstream media. Her beliefs wavered, only slightly, when she brought her long term boyfriend home for the holidays one year.

         Mrs. Kang’s mother was slowly dying, anyone could see the consumption through the woman’s bone thin frame and sunken eyes. It had been a few months since she’d been diagnosed with a rare form of cancer, untreatable even by chemotherapy.

         Once she heard the news, Mrs. Kang had made it a point to return home as frequently as she could. She wanted to spend as much time as she could with her mother before it was too late.

          After dinner, Mrs. Kang and her mother helped wash the dishes while her boyfriend fell asleep upstairs in the guest bedroom. “He’s the one, you know,” her mother had said, her voice full of warmth and cheerfulness, despite the dull shine of her watery brown eyes.

         Mrs. Kang, a college sophomore at that point, flicked an eyebrow up at her mother’s words. “Oh?” she teased lightly as she ran a dry cloth over the washed dishes. It had been ages since her mother had even weighed in on her love life. “How are you so certain?”

         The older woman hummed a tune she used to sing as a lullaby, and winked at her daughter, “The red string never lies, Qian.” She and Qian shared a laugh at that, though deep down, Qian knew there was a truth to her mother’s words.

         Just a few weeks after her daughter’s graduation later that year, Qian’s mother passed away.        

         Mrs. Kang wished she could’ve told her mother how she started believing in the strings once again, that her boyfriend had proposed to her, how her name would change from Song Qian to Kang Qian…but she never got the chance.

         “Wait a second, you can see it?” Mrs. Kang asks in a bewildered tone, glancing at Seulgi in the rearview mirror. The seven year old giggled happily in her booster seat, the epitome of sunshine and joyfulness.

         On the other hand, Mrs. Kang had grown pale and her skin felt clammy. The older woman wasn’t sure why, but she had begun to feel anxious all of the sudden.

         “Of course I can see it! What’s wrong? Can’t you, mommy?”

         Rather than answering, Mrs. Kang pumps the gas pedal, urging the car to move at a faster rate. As soon as the older woman ushers her daughter into their home, she begins a quick lesson on the fabled red strings. “Which hand is my cord on, Seulgi-ah?” She asks gently, holding both of her hands up towards her daughter.

         The seven year old grins and points at her mother’s right hand, hooking a tiny index finger around her pinky finger. “It’s right there, mommy,” Seulgi says triumphantly. “Do you know what this string is?” Mrs. Kang asks, smiling at her daughter, pointing to her pinky.

         Seulgi pouts and shakes her head in shame, “No…? What?” Mrs. Kang helped Seulgi shrug off her backpack, then lowered herself on her haunches until she was eye to eye with her daughter. “This is the red string of fate, Seulgi,” Mrs. Kang said slowly, in order to guarantee she held Seulgi’s attention.

         “Everyone has a string, but not everyone can see them,” Mrs. Kang continues. She reaches her hand out for Seulgi to hold and smiles down at her daughter. “Whoever your string is connected to is your soulmate. You have the power of having this knowledge, sweetie.”

         With that out of the way, Mrs. Kang walked into the kitchen and rummaged around in the fridge for one of Seulgi’s favorite meal: carrots and peanut butter dip. “You have to use it wisely,” she called over her shoulder, “Don’t let anyone know unless if you trust them, really trust them.”

         “But why, mommy?” Seulgi pouted, following her mother into the kitchen. She’d struggled to pull herself up onto one of the kitchen table seats and followed her mother’s movements, shadowed by the string tied around her finger.

         “Because people will try and use your powers, Seulgi,” Mrs. Kang replied, breaking out a cutting board and a kitchen knife to slice Seulgi’s carrots. “Bad people might try and use you, Seulgi-ah,” she continued, giving her daughter a pointed look before turning back to chopping the second grader’s snack.

         Seulgi cutely furrowed her brows together and began tapping her finger on her chin, rocking back and forth on her heels. She was troubled by the fact that she didn’t know what that word meant…soulmate.

          “Mommy?” The second grader asked, her voice quiet and shy.  

         Mrs. Kang hummed in response, turning back towards her daughter as she finished fixing the second grader her afterschool snack.

         “What’s a…soulmate?”

         **

         Seulgi was thirteen, almost fourteen, when she realizes the consequences of her gift.

         She’d forgotten vital part to her gift. Her mother had mentioned it to her all those years ago, when she first told Seulgi about the red strings of fate, about how people might want to manipulate the power the young girl held over fate.

         But somewhere in between the years of harboring her secret and not letting anyone know her powers, the truth had slipped out of her. The rumors spread like wildfire, causing her to have to move schools twice.

         Seulgi’s awakening of the dangers of her gift came sharp and fast, exactly like the shove that sends her toppling to the ground of the courtyard after school one day.

         She looked up, frightened and bleeding from a few scrapes on her arms, and glared at her assailant, wondering what she ever did to get targeted in the first place. She typically kept to herself throughout the school day. As a teenager, Seulgi was quite uncharacteristically quiet around other kids her age, and tended to study people before interacting with them.

         Seulgi squinted up, one hand hovering over her eyes to protect herself from the harsh rays of sunlight blinding her. The only features she could make out at first were a glimpse of her school’s uniform and a brown leather shoulder bag.

         “What’s this I hear about you being able to see people’s destinies?” The boy sneered, shoving Seulgi’s shoulder back down onto the pavement when she tried to scrabble back up.

         When she peered up again, Seulgi recognized him immediately as Lee Donghae, a senior at her new high school. His shaggy brown hair was spiked up with an excessive amount of expensive hair product, and his smooth and pimple free face was twisted up into a disgusted expression.

         Even though the young man had a charming look about him, his personality was anything but, and left much to be desired of such a pretty face. As a lowly upcoming freshman, she’d heard many stories of Donghae and his gang of friends.

         Usually, these stories depicted them picking on new students for no reason whatsoever, but the warnings she received from her peers couldn’t protect her now. It was too late for that now. Seulgi would have to deal with them all by herself, surrounded and alone in the courtyard.

         “No… I can’t. It went away when I was little,” Seulgi quickly said, trying not to wince at her smarting palms. She was lying, of course. She’d always been able to see, but she had long grown tired of other adolescent, hormonal teens begging her to reveal who they were destined to spend the rest of their lives with.

         “Seulgi-ah, can you pretty please tie my string to Exo’s Sehun? He’s so beautiful…I’ll name our first child after you, I swear!”

         “I want to get married to Kim Taeyeon! I’ll be your friend forever if you tie our strings together, Seul.”

         “I’ll give you a year’s worth of my allowance if you knot my crush and I’s strings!”

         Her classmates had hounded her for years about her ability, mercilessly pestering her for personal favors and outrageous requests regarding the strings they couldn’t see themselves. They wanted her to connect them with models, with idols, with actors.

         The list of instances where Seulgi had been witness of this ranged on and on. Yet despite having her day constantly filled with these naïve requests, Seulgi never allowed herself to succumb to the peer pressure. She found a brilliant way to rid herself of this nuisance, she claimed in her second to last year of middle school that she no longer had the sight.

         It worked, for the most part. The constant rumors and demands from her fellow students diminished considerably. Many people moved away for high school, or went to different schools, diffusing the knowledge of Seulgi’s abilities almost completely. Still, part of Seulgi’s reputation still seemed to proceed her.

         The teenager had never tweaked someone’s destiny, and she never planned on doing so. She knew that she shouldn’t listen to anyone’s selfish desires, not even her own. Fate wasn’t something to be meddled with lightly, and she’d been taught by her mother to uphold its ways.               

         “Well, now,” Donghae scolded in a condescending tone. He cracked both of his knuckles to appear more menacing, and Seulgi would’ve laughed had she not been so afraid. “That’s unfortunate, isn’t it?”

         The four boys began closing in on her, each sneering cruelly at her like a pack of wild hyenas. “Alright then, fellas,” Donghae sighed exasperatedly, “looks like Seulgi here’s out of luck.”

         With that, the ring of boys began an onslaught of fists and kicks at the girl’s fallen form. The young teenager merely screwed her eyes shut and kept herself huddled on the ground, her arms over her head to protect from any stray blows.

         This wasn’t the first time Seulgi had