One day, ~ brought Meemo a toy. Red yarn.

Meemo loved it, but Arin hated it.

Whenever she looked at it, she remembered Minghao.

"You know, there's invisible red yarn connecting your pinky finger with mine? It means we're soulmates," he used to tell her, sincerely believing it too. He had always believed in these mystical things, and Arin had always found them ridiculous.

But she was the ridiculous one now. Seeing Meemo play with red yarn made her anxious and brought back flashbacks of Minghao's purple face.

She snatched the red yarn from between Meemo's paws, threw it over the roof of the building, and never saw it again.

-

She didn't know if she believed this stranger, but imagining Woozi's dying purple face broke her heart.

As she considered it, she felt stupid for feeling a false sense of security with Woozi. Just because his name didn't work now didn't exclude the possibility that it would work later. Perhaps the curse was just waiting for her to love him more, just like the stranger was predicting.

Whether it was true or false, the idea of it made her want to die even more. She really wished she could have some pills with her. An overdose sounded like an easy way to die...

"Please help me die," she asked the stranger, who looked horrified at the idea.

"No, Arin. No. I can take you away from him. I can take you to MRS, and..."

"No!" Arin instinctively reacted. For years, she had been living in fear of that acronym, for all she was told about them was that they wanted her curse to activate, and that they would torture and torment her for as long as she lived.

"We are not the bad guys!" the boy claimed.

"We?" Arin asked, looking toward him in alarm. It was the first time he had ever expressed that he was a member of that organization.

Now that she thought of it, of course he was a member; he worked with the witch who cursed her.

"Look, I don't know what Hyojung told you about us, but all we do is try to restore balance by restoring magic. And magic is not evil..."

"Magic cursed me," she cut him off.

"Wrong. The mage cursed you. Hate the mage, not the magic," he replied.

It seemed hypocritical for him to say that, especially as he was the one who was seen outside the building with the so-called "mage" who cursed her.

She suddenly began to doubt everything he was telling her. Even the part about Woozi being her soulmate. Of course he was saying all of that to manipulate her: he wanted her to leave the building and come with him to MRS.

She felt stupid for even thinking of trusting him.

"Magic can be used to kill and curse people, but it can also be used to cure and help people," the stranger continued. "MRS wants to restore magic, because we want to do good. When we collect our magic, our first order of business is to uncurse people, actually. We have a cursed man who can't eat, and everyday, we try to collect magic, little by little, to have enough to take him out of his misery."

Arin had heard about this man from ~, but she had painted a completely different picture. According to ~, MRS would force this man to eat and disgorge so that they collect the magic from his activated curse.

"He's dying, Arin. Because he was cursed to barf everything he eats, his body is so weak, and we can barely have enough magic to keep him going. We need magic to uncurse him, and a lot of it. Your curse is so powerful with magic, so you can help us..."

"By activating it?" she asked in terror.

"Look, if I wanted you to activate it, I wouldn't have warned you about Woozi," he said. "There's another way you can help us..."

The boy was cut off by the sound of sirens coming toward them. It was the emergency service people that Woozi called, coming toward them in an ambulance.

"How are you going to get out of this?" the guy asked, eying her curiously as the sirens got closer and closer. "You can't go outside, and if they try to force you, it won't be good."

Arin shrugged. She recognized that this situation will end badly for her if they try to force her to leave and they see that there's this invisible, magical force that's preventing her from stepping out. She couldn't even imagine what would happen, but it would be a public spectacle that would only draw attention to her and make it harder for her to avoid people, to avoid names.

"Play along," the guy whispered, as the ambulance pulled up, and a service worker came up to speak to Woozi. It was a woman wearing scrubs.

Woozi pointed inside, toward Arin, and the service worker slowly approached her.

"Hello Arin," she said. "I'm Hana."

Arin's heart dropped. . She felt the boy also become tense beside her.

"I'm here to help you," Hana said, slowly moving closer toward Arin.

"She's okay now," the boy said to Hana. "She doesn't speak Korean so..."

"Oh?" Hana asked.

"Yeah, she's my sister. We're Chinese," he said. "I spoke to her, and she has calmed down."

Woozi was standing there at the side. He knew it was a lie, but he didn't say anything. He just narrowed his eyes and watched it all unfold before him.

"Could we take her into the van and check on her for a bit?" the woman asked. "If you want, we can even take her into emergency services for the night to make sure she really is okay..."

"Actually, I really think that would make her worse. She hates strangers, and she's a very anxious person."

"Yeah, I can see that," the paramedic said, glancing down at Arin's worn down fingers covered in dry blood and dead skin. "Could I have her ID please?"

"Well, uh, I don't think she has it on her now, but here's mine," the boy said, reaching into his back pocket for his wallet. "I can send you her ID when we go home if you need it."

It seemed to have worked. The doctor, Hana, accepted his ID and went back to the van to bring some equipment down from the van. She checked Arin's blood pressure, among other things, and began to talk to the boy about staying with her at all times, and calling emergency services as soon as she showed any suicidal signs; he listened with intent as if he really were her brother.

Doctor Hana gave the boy a number to contact if anything goes wrong.

"Thank you Doctor. I'll take care of her," he reassured her.

She smiled. "Thank you. I wish you and your sister all the best, Jun."

Arin's heart stopped for a moment. She heard it.

The boy, Jun, also became visibly anxious, his widened eyes glancing toward Arin with uncertainty.

The name settled in her thoughts, and she knew it was futile to try and forget it. As that name became connected to everything she knew about this stranger. Jun was the reason she knew Hyojung's name. Jun was a well-spoken and polite member of MRS, who certainly did not seem as evil as she thought MRS was. Jun was the boy who helped her get out of this situation with the emergency service workers. She didn't particularly like Jun, but she didn't hate him either. But she certainly didn't want him to die by her curse, even if he was a manipulative liar who only wanted to trick her.

The paramedics soon retreated, which was a relief for Arin, but the person who was making her most anxious was still there.

Jun cleared his throat, eyes on the floor. He seemed afraid of looking at her now.

"Well, Arin, I guess this is goodbye," he said. "I don't feel safe being in front of you anymore, but I have so much more to tell you. May I please have your number?"

Arin decided to give it to him.

"Thank you," he told her, putting his hands together in sincerity. "Goodbye, Arin." With that, he bowed and left, leaving Arin there alone with Woozi.

"Are you sure you're okay?" Woozi asked when he was gone.

"I'm fine," Arin told him, offering him a weak, but thankful smile. "Thank you, Woozi."

Saying his name now, considering what Jun told her before, made her tremble a little.

"Want to spend the night on my couch?" he asked. "Might be better than spending it on the roof by yourself. And I'm not offering this out of kindness. I also was hoping to have someone to help me out, you know, given the state of my ankle."

Arin glanced down at it; it was really swollen, but she couldn't accept. She had to stay away from him.

"I'm sorry but I would not be comfortable with that."

He nodded. "Fine. I just offered because it seemed to me like we both need each other tonight."

Need each other. It made her heart flutter to hear those words, and she felt dumb for it. She really liked being needed, and liked the idea of having a two-way mutually beneficial relationship with someone else, and not just being completely and wholly dependent on someone like she was with ~ and even Jeonghan.

A part of her also wanted to fall in love with him like Jun was predicting. She didn't think such a thing would be possible for her after she was cursed, but the prospect was now in her head and she couldn't shake it away. She thought about how it would feel to be in love with someone again after Minghao left her heartbroken and destitute, and she craved it with every part of her. She wanted to kiss someone, to touch someone, to be with someone.

"Are you sure you'll be okay?" he asked her as they made their way back up. He used his palm to push up his slipping glasses, and Arin's heart skipped a beat. He was cute when he did that.

"I'll be fine," she insisted, and she meant that. That slump she felt that drove her to want to end her life had passed, because she was seeing a light at the end of the tunnel, so to speak. The prospect of falling in love again excited her, even though she knew that it shouldn't.

She took the elevator with him to the eighth floor with him, at his request, acting as his crutch as she helped him to his bed. Holding his arm and touching his hand felt different now that she contemplated the prospect of being his soulmate.

She said goodbye, and turned to leave the apartment, but he held her hand to stop her.

"Arin, can I just say something?"

She stopped and turned to look at him.

"I just want to clarify that everything I did for you today, I would do for anyone else," he told her. "It's not that I have any hidden intentions or feel any special way about you. I just don't want to send the wrong message."

Ouch. Arin didn't know why that hurt, but it did. Although she probably should have been relieved to hear him say that, she wasn't.

She just nodded, and pulled her hand to get away from him, so he wouldn't sense how his words brought her down.

As she climbed up the stairs toward the roof, she realized that maybe this was the moment when she really started to like him. It wasn't just that his company pleased her or that she thought he was a nice person; she actually liked him.

That meant she had to do everything in her power to get away from him.