"Cursed before she was even born?"
Kurumi was clearly quite surprised by Fang Zheng's conclusion.
"Can something like that... really be done?"
"Of course."
Fang Zheng nodded as she looked at Kurumi.
"Fate is invisible, but it truly exists. A sufficiently skilled Prophecy Mage can infer from someone's Thread of Fate when they will have children. That isn't strange. Hmm... what matters is what he intends to do with the child."
"I don't... quite understand what you mean."
Kurumi glanced at the fishing rod in her hands, which had not moved in the slightest, then at Kuru in the distance, who was cheering as she reeled in a fish.
Fang Zheng merely smiled.
"Kurumi, do you know about organ transplants?"
"Of course I do."
Before becoming a Spirit, Kurumi had been an ordinary human. The technology of the Spirit world was fairly advanced as well, so she was no stranger to organ transplants.
"An organ transplant is essentially replacing a failing, unusable organ with a healthy one. Heart transplants and kidney transplants work like that. A fate transplant is a similar concept."
"A... fate transplant?"
"That's right."
Fang Zheng nodded at Kurumi's question, her twin ponytails swaying as she glanced toward the cabin.
"I just examined Katie's fate. Someone took away all the good luck in her life and replaced it with misfortune."
Fang Zheng's tone turned grave as she spoke.
As a Prophecy Mage, even without having received much formal education, Fang Zheng knew that this was against the rules. Prophecy Mages foretold fate and changed fate. That was normal. But there was one crucial principle: fate was like the tides, rising and falling. You could never expect to encounter only good things and no bad things. People blessed with absurd luck were rare creatures. If you truly met