Card Painter

Essa Yi paints cards that kill.

Known to the public as Card Painter, she is a wish maker, someone with the ability to turn wishes into reality. But she is not just any wish maker - she is a death writer, a wish maker who can only grant wishes through death.

In a quiet shop at the heart of San Francisco, she sells her cards to those who want someone dead. She has a simple life, an easy life. She watches the mad rush of city life from her store, but she never takes part in it.

It all comes to an end when a boy named Jin enters her shop and claims she sold him a card that does not work, the very same card that's haunted her thoughts for the last three years. It's strange that he seems to know more about her than he wants to admit, stranger still that she does not recognize him - and she never forgets the face of someone she sold a card to.

She would rather do anything except help him, but the card that haunts her nightmares ties her to him. He is angry. He is frightened. And above all, he is desperate. He is desperate to save the life of a girl who is not dying, and he claims Essa's cards are the key.

Her cards can only take life.

But for the first time ever, she may need to save one.

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Originally written for ONC 2019. 27/01/2019 - 04/09/2019. First round first place winner and shortlister.
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Content Warning: Depression, discussion of suicide, invalidation of mental illness*, graphic violence, death.
*Please see the Author's Note in the first chapter for more details.
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All rights reserved. Please do not use or translate my work without my permission. If you would like to use something, please ask me.
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