Ji-yoo was forty-two and had keys to every kind of lock—deadbolt, padlock, digital, rusted—except the ones that closed silently on her life.
She was a locksmith, a widow twice over, and a mother of three.

Her first husband had died in a car crash, the kind that got a headline but no follow-up. The second had wandered into someone else’s arms and stayed there. When the divorce papers were signed, he left behind one child and no explanation.

She lived in a cramped apartment in western Seoul, stacked above a butcher and beneath a fortune teller. The rent went up every time the landlady saw her in mourning black. Widows were unlucky, but two-time widows were considered contagious.

Ji-yoo didn’t argue. She fixed the leaky sink herself. She cooked with one burner. She worked long hours, cutting metal under neon lights while her daughters read in the shop’s corner and her son folded laundry in silence.

The job paid less because she was a woman. Everyone knew it but pretended not to. She didn’t mind, not really. What gnawed at her was the quiet resentment of her tools—how they seemed heavier in her hands some nights, how the tumblers clicked like they pitied her.

When her youngest daughter got sick, everything cracked.

There was just enough money left for medicine or rice—not both. Ji-yoo asked everyone she knew. They gave her looks, sighs, pats on the arm. Not money. That was always somewhere else, with someone else.

That night, Ji-yoo waited until the streetlights flickered and the dogs stopped barking. She picked a house—not rich, just careless—and climbed the side gate like it was a decision. The lock on the back door was simple. A child could’ve broken it.

Inside, the house smelled of fish sauce and bergamot. She stepped carefully, her breath thin, every creak raised another reason to run.

And then she saw him.

A man in the kitchen, crouched by the fridge, cradling a half-eaten boiled egg. He looked up, blinked once, and fainted.

Ji-yoo didn’t run. She crouched beside him and checked his pulse like a nurse she never became. He was alive, just hungry. Terribly hungry.

She gave him water. Then, guilt loud in her ribs, she used the last of her money to buy him a warm meal from the 24-hour corner store.

They ate in silence on the park bench. He didn’t thank her. Not at first. But after the second rice ball, he looked at her with strange eyes and said:

“You’re cursed, you know. Born under bad stars.”

Ji-yoo said nothing.

“I can fix it,” he added. “But it’ll cost you.”

She laughed. It was the kind of laugh that’s not really laughter, just air escaping a tired chest.

“Not money,” he said. “Time. Years of it.”

He told her his name was Do-yoon, a shaman without a shrine. He lived in a crooked hut behind a shuttered noraebang. No offerings, no clients. Just dusty scrolls and incense that never burned evenly.

Ji-yoo followed him there. Not because she believed—but because belief was a luxury. Desperation, though, was free.

The ritual was long. Monotonous chants, faded symbols drawn in salt, flickering candlelight that seemed to bend toward her like it wanted to listen.

She fell asleep halfway through. Not because she trusted him. But because her body hadn’t slept properly in months.

When she woke, she was in her bed, her children curled around her like commas. Her youngest wasn’t burning up anymore. The fever was gone. The air felt less heavy.

Then came the knock.

A courier with news: her second ex-husband had died. Accident. Sudden. But he’d won the lottery—first prize. Weeks before. The guilt had eaten him. In his will, everything went to Ji-yoo and the child he abandoned.

She didn’t cry. She didn’t even feel joy. Just the slow unfolding of relief, the kind that came in layers.

From that moment on, things shifted.

The flat’s landlady tripped down the stairs and forgot to raise rent again. The eldest daughter won a scholarship. Her son found a used guitar on the sidewalk that still played like a dream. People started treating her like someone they’d always liked.

Luck came, and stayed.

For one year.

Then, one morning, Ji-yoo didn’t wake up. Her heart had given out sometime in the night. The doctor said it was sudden. Clean.

At the funeral, her children said she looked peaceful. The neighbors said she smiled like someone who’d just remembered the punchline to a very old joke.

Do-yoon never showed up again. But sometimes, the corner store clerk saw a man with strange eyes buying eggs after midnight. Always just one.

And in her old apartment, the locks still turned smoother than they should—like the metal remembered her. Like it’s still waiting to be picked.