Snip.

Shu-hua sat at her desk at home, pair of scissors in hand as she tried to sever the red thread that hung on her finger, the blades phasing right through it as if it wasn't there.

Dinner was alright, Soo-jin paid for all of it as an apology for being late, and walked her home too. Her parents seem to enjoy Soo-jin's presence a lot, cooing and complimenting her when she showed up on their doorstep earlier this evening, their daughter right beside her.

She took the chance to check, blinking as she saw the foreign red strings dangle on her parents' fingers, running throughout the house. What were they? What did they mean?

She tried to search it up on the internet, but there weren't any answers, as if whatever she was describing was a story from a parallel universe. There was a reason why information about red strings are prohibited from being distributed through digital or physical mediums, there had been reports from a few decades ago that people started to chase after people that they wanted to be with after learning about the red strings, attempting to create a soulmate bond through brute force, only for their soul to be twisted by desire and lust, rendering them to be incompatible with their original soulmate. The information can still be found online, but you gotta know where to look. Shu-hua did not know where to look.

She twirled her finger around a pen, and the red string seemed to wrap itself around it. She tried to grab it, and her fingers seemed to phase right through, but it was being manipulated by her fingers, yet it felt like nothing, not a single tickle on her fingertips.

She scribbled down her observations, being the science major that she was, trying to make sense of these strange threads. Everyone seemed to have them around their finger, it can interact with the physical world, but the physical world cannot perceive them except for her.

She searched again, this time looking for colour theory. Red was the colour of blood, and often represented sacrifice, danger, or courage. It represented passion and love, yet others perceived it as a sign of anger, like a bull seeing red. Could the red strings be a sign of a certain relationship dynamic?

Could it be lovers? Or could it be enemies? She's seen the strings on her parents' fingers, they went off in opposite directions. That either meant that they weren't supposed to be lovers, or they had rivals elsewher