Chapter 17: Elder’s Wisdom

The Porcelain Goblin had long fallen silent, curled into a tight ball on the edge of the counter. Chen stood rooted to the spot, her eyes fixed on the empty space where Shen and Su’s red thread had been, as if she might will it back into existence with sheer concentration. The shop felt colder now, the usual scent of jasmine tea and old paper muted by the heavy silence. Shen still held the crumpled milk candy wrapper, his thumb rubbing over its faded surface until his knuckles turned white.

The bell above the door jingled before Chen could find her voice. Zhang stepped in, his leather ledger under one arm, his expression calm but not unkind. He didn’t need to ask what had happened. His gaze flicked to Shen’s wrist, then to Chen’s stunned face, and he nodded slowly. “I felt the thread break,” he said, setting the ledger down gently on the counter.

Chen turned to him, her throat dry. “But the Affinity Talisman worked. Their threads knotted perfectly. We did everything right.” Her voice cracked, the weight of her mistake—first the curse, now this—pressing down on her. “I thought magic guaranteed it. That once the thread was tied, it stayed tied.”

Zhang pulled out a wooden chair and gestured for her to sit. Shen stood, muttering something about checking the shop’s inventory, and retreated to the back room, leaving the two alone. The goblin scurried after him, a rare display of tact.

“A thread is a ticket, not a guarantee,” Zhang said, his voice steady. He opened the ledger to a page filled with faint, faded threads—hundreds of them, some knotted, some frayed, some broken. “We Yuelao weave the connections, but we don’t live the lives. Magic can bring two people together, can make them see the potential in each other, but it can’t make them choose each other every day.”

Chen stared at the ledger. “But their compatibility was perfect. The Marriage Book gave them a gold star.”

“Perfect on paper doesn’t mean perfect in life,” Zhang replied. He traced a broken thread with his finger. “That pair was a scholar and a poet. Their threads glowed brighter than any I’d seen. But he wanted quiet nights of study, she wanted to travel and recite her work to crowds. Magic brought them together, but it couldn’t make their dreams align.” He closed the ledger. “You thought your job was done when their threads knotted. But matchmaking is just the start. The real work is what they do after—listening, compromising, choosing each other even when the cake burns or the antique platter conflicts with the anniversary.”

Chen thought of the way Shen had prioritized the shop over Su’s anniversary, of how Su had felt unseen. The magic had given them a chance, but they hadn’t known how to hold onto it. She thought of her own temp thread with Shen, the way it had grown not from magic alone, but from days of fixing mistakes together, of shared frustration and quiet understanding.

“I didn’t just match them,” she said slowly. “I handed them a ticket and walked away. I should have taught them how to use it.”

Zhang smiled faintly. “Now you know. That’s the wisdom even the oldest Yuelao took years to learn. Love isn’t a spell or a talisman. It’s showing up, even when it’s hard. And sometimes, even when you do everything right, people choose different paths. That’s not failure. That’s life.”

Chen looked toward the back room, where Shen’s quiet voice mixed with the goblin’s high-pitched complaints. Outside, the sun broke through the clouds, casting a warm light over the shop. For the first time since the thread broke, she didn’t feel defeated. She felt ready—to learn, to do better, to remember that her job wasn’t just tying threads, but guiding people to nurture them.