And then.
A strand of glowing red thread unspools from her hand, wrapping around her wrist, until it finds its way to the man, and wraps around his wrist. No one sees this but me. The red thread of fate.
I know I have about ten seconds, so I focus on the man’s face—following the map of patterns on his features until I feel it. The tug in my chest, theclickof recognition.
And then as quick as a blink, I’m out and back in the room with Gemma. It takes a few seconds for me to adjust and wait out the wave of nausea. The jade cuff I’m wearing on my right wrist is warm.
“Your future has been laid out in my mind’s eye,” I finally say, placing my hands in my lap. “And in it, I’ve found your match.” The words are so familiar to me that I barely register saying them as I twist my still-warm bracelet around my wrist.
“You have?” Gemma is both hopeful and skeptical.
Dispelling people of this skepticism gives me a high that’s better than any drug. “Give us one week and we’ll find you an array of potential matches.”
When Gemma leaves, I head to Halmoni’s office, which is next to the reading room upstairs. Her office is where a crucial part of our process happens. I find all the Park women gathered there, drinking coffee. All their shoes have been kicked off.
I hand Halmoni my cuff and she wraps her delicate fingers around it. All of us wear a piece of jewelry made of jade: Sunny wears dangling stones in her ears, Emoni a pendant on a necklace, and Halmoni a ring. These pieces of jewelry—they’ve been forged from the same piece of jade handed down in our family. And they all hold the same power. Every woman in my family is born with the same gift I have—inexplicable yet reliable: the ability to see past lives and past loves.
Halmoni’s eyes close as she holds my bracelet. “Yes, you found him.”
Behind her large redwood desk is a floor-to-ceiling apothecary cupboard—a piece of furniture that has been in our family for centuries. Halmoni opens one of the drawers and pulls out a piece of paper, handmade by Emoni, an almost-transparent sheet. The “recipe” for the paper has been passed down through our family as well. Regular old paper will not do for this job.
Halmoni places the bracelet on the scrap of delicate paper and we watch as a name appears, stitched in red thread:
Peter Cruz
“Gotcha,” I whisper. Halmoni picks up the scrap of paper and places it back in the drawer. On the placard placed on the front of the little drawer, I write Gemma’s name. This piece of paper will be kept in the drawer for as long as the courtship, until we know the match has been successful: when the red thread turns white—thefinal step before we take the name out of its drawer and place it in our archives, a compartment in the back of the cupboard, hidden by a false back.
“I’ll get the interns on finding Peter,” I say, putting my bracelet back on. When I reach Lila’s and Matteo’s desks, they each have about three devices open, toggling between all of them.
“Gemma Flores is our newest client,” I say, grabbing a Post-it off one of the desks. They gasp. “I know, I know. We have to be discreet, okay?” They nod.
“I just did her reading and we’re looking for a ‘Peter Cruz’ to add to her matches. Los Angeles.” I write the name down and hand it to Lila. This would seem like an impossible task—to find a single human in the entire world. But what my family has learned over the centuries is that fateds always wind up in the same area lifetime after lifetime. They cannot help but be drawn to each other. That helps us narrow it down incredibly. And the one thing I’ve learned with interns is that there is no human being that a twenty-three-year-old cannot find.
Well, almost no human being.
“Peter Cruz,” Lila repeats out loud, looking at the Post-it. “Sounds hot.”
No one else at the agency knows how we get these names. They think we draw it from some database that only the founders have access to. It’s taken as part of the whole “secret sauce” vibe of this business.
The secret sauce being, of course, the gift that runs through the women in my family.
“God, I wish we could post this on socials,” Matteo complains. Then he slides a look at me. “Too bad.”
We don’t have a social media presence, at my grandmother’s insistence. The secret behind our matches must be protected at allcosts—even if it means missing out on an entire customer base. Also, the shamanistic roots of our business might rub some in the Korean community the wrong way. There’s a bit of fear and stigma surrounding some of these ancient traditions. Our altar, for example, would freak some people out.
“Actually I’ve been meaning to talk to you about social media,” I say to the interns. They both perk up comically, like cats hearing a can opening. “Create an Instagram account. Let’s test it out.”
Matteo clutches his chest. “For real?” Lila is unnaturally still, as if she doesn’t want to scare me off.
“For real,” I say. Then lower my voice. “Keep it on the down-low, just between us. Basic info and imagery. No posting about Gemma, obviously. Create an initial grid and then review it with me by end of day, okay?”
They nod enthusiastically, and as I walk away I hear them squealing.
When I get back to my office, I see that Gemma’s already emailed me.
Thank you so much for that incredible experience. You’ve made me a believer! xx G
I remember the moment when amusement turned to hope in Gemma’s expression. The complete vulnerability of saying you believe in love.
