The Controller

Legend has it that Puppet Controllers are an advanced class of puppeteers.

When people tried using human puppets in place of wooden ones, Puppet Controllers came into being. Those under their control had every movement, gesture, and expression dictated by the controller. They could think but not act, feel sorrow but be forced to smile. Their plight was beyond miserable.

The most skilled Puppet Controllers need only a single transparent thread to manipulate someone. Free from the limits of stage performances, they can use their art in everyday life: some force virtuous people into prostitution to entertain their clients; some commit murder and let others take the blame; some, consumed by ambition, control the imperial court; some, blinded by lust, force people into unwanted marriages. And then there are the deranged, who manipulate their dead loved ones and carry on living alongside them... When the two greatest Puppet Controllers of the age meet, love and rejection, control and resistance, clash in a fierce struggle along a single transparent thread.

In the end, they discover that the most powerful form of control in the world is something everyone knows how to do, yet no one notices.