In the quiet stillness of dawn, as mist curled around the tiled roofs of the hanok, Hae-won sat before her mirror. A court maid wove her hair into a bridal knot, each strand pinned in place like expectation.
The wedding was days away.
And yet, all she felt was absence.
Later that afternoon, a package arrived wrapped in plain cloth—delivered by a child with no name and no message. Inside was a small wooden box. Hae-won opened it slowly, breath halting.
A brush.
A bottle of ink.
And a single red string.
No letter.
But she knew.
The red string—*unmyeong-ui sil*—was a legend her mother once whispered during storms. "The gods tie an invisible red string between two souls destined to meet. It may tangle, stretch, or fray, but it never breaks."
She pressed the thread between her palms like a heartbeat.
That night, she wrote him a letter on mulberry paper:
*I once feared disobedience more than silence. Now I know silence steals more from the soul.*
She hid the letter inside the hollow of the plum tree, their silent post for weeks now.
But dawn brought news like ash.
Jin-seo was gone.
Disappeared in the night. No trace. The villagers claimed he had been seen walking toward the mountains with nothing but a book in hand. Her father said nothing—only that the boy was no longer welcome.
Hae-won's chest ached in stillness.
Had he left her?
Or had someone made him leave?
She wandered to the plum tree in the courtyard. The petals had begun to fall.
The hollow was empty.
Except for one thing—carved into the bark, a line in familiar handwriting:
*"Even if the string is pulled across oceans, I will still be tied to you."*
She traced the words with her fingers, tears falling silently.
In a world bound by honor, duty, and class…
Love had no place.
But perhaps, in the space between breaths and letters, it still lived.
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