There is something ancient and ineradicable in the human need to look into another person's eyes and see their doom written there. Not metaphorically, but literally, as if the iris were a seal and the sclera a parchment upon which the universe had inscribed its verdict. The Japanese call it sanpaku, meaning "three whites," and it refers to a condition where the white of the eye is visible on three sides of the iris rather than the customary two. According to a tradition that stretches back through centuries of East Asian face reading, this third crescent of white is not mere anatomy. It is prophecy.
