Story 82
āThe Blue Thread Snappedā:
This is a story from when I worked part-time at a call center.
It was a call center for a health food company, so most of the callers were elderly men and women. Otherwise, it was mostly middle-aged men and women.
One day, a phone call came from a girlās voice.
It was indeed the voice of a young girl, probably elementary school age, but it was so mechanical, flat, and monotone, with static mixed in, that at first I could barely understand her.
Still, I could tell that the girl was repeating the same words.
Gradually, I began to understand what she was saying.
“Red thread, red color. Red thread, blue color. Blue threadā¦ snapped.”
The girl said exactly that.
It made me feel uneasy, so after a while I hung up the phone.
I had often heard of the āred thread,ā but I didnāt understand the meaning of the āblue thread.ā
Later, though, I somehow began to understand the meaning of the āblue thread.ā
That night, my friend A-ko died in an accident. A-ko had been a classmate in middle and high school who pretended to be friendly but secretly bullied me. But my parents were close to hers, so I had no choice but to endure it.
At that moment, I thought:
Maybe the blue thread, the opposite of the red thread, is a thread of a bad fate. In other words, perhaps the girlās voice had been telling me about A-koās death.
Now, I find myself impatiently waiting for another call from that girl. This time, I think about my call center supervisorāthe one who acts friendly on the surface but whom I absolutely hate, the senior who often yells at me. I canāt help but hopeā¦ that she would die.
