As they reached the class’ meet up spot, the rain had already thinned down, and they almost didn’t need the umbrella anymore. But Mingyu continued to hold it over their heads, waiting until the water was completely gone before daring to put it away.

Maeri had just pulled out her phone, checking to see if any of the teachers had answered the texts she had sent a few minutes before. To her luck, they had – the teachers were probably checking their phones constantly to be able to help any student that got lost somehow – and the text told her were the teachers were hanging out to pass time. They were only a block away from the food court, drinking coffee in a coffee shop.

“That way.”

She communicated, pointing her phone in the direction her GPS had given her, and Mingyu started moving again, trying his best to continue to cover her from the light rain as they walked. They reached the shop, and saw one of their teachers already outside, waiting for them.

The rain was completely gone by then, and a bright blue sky was starting to show again through the clouds, but they didn’t care. Mingyu barely had time to close the umbrella properly before Maeri advanced too much and accidentally pulled him with her because of the string.

“Hey, careful!”

He finally complained, getting annoyed by the constant tugging and pulling that was happening on his hand.

“Sorry.”

The girl answered, not sounding very sincere, but she seemed to take notice, and moved her arm more carefully, so not to pull him again.

“Hey kids. Is something wrong?”

The teacher addressed them as soon as they got close. It was clear in the man’s face that he was a bit puzzled to see Mingyu and Maeri together like that; Maeri could see that the teacher was probably as confused as she first was. But such a look was expected; she had a loner reputation, so anyone who saw her hanging out with Mingyu would definitely find it weird.

“We need scissors.”

Maeri was the first to respond, her troubled look seeming to get the man’s attention, and he looked at the two with watchful eyes.

“Scissors? Why?”

He asked, and in a synchronized motion, without accidentally pulling each other, the two raised their hands, the red string loosely hanging between their tied fingers.

“To cut this string. It’s not coming off, we need to cut it.”

Mingyu answered, using his free hand to point at the obvious red thing between their hands. But the teacher’s expression was still that of confusion, and he stared at their hands for a while, before looking up at their faces.

“What are you kids trying to pull? Is this a prank?”

The man asked, a hint of a smile appearing on his face, as he truly thought that his students were possibly trying to trick him. But the two teens weren’t amused; they were desperate to be freed.

“No. Some random lady tied this to us, and we can’t get it off. We need to cut it.”

Mingyu explained, holding the string between the tips of his fingers and moving it closer to the teacher, showing it to the man. But the teacher just scoffed, chuckling and nodding at them.

“You can’t trick me, kids. I don’t fall for these silly things.”

The man said, smiling brightly, but Mingyu and Maeri just felt confused by his reaction. Why was he not helping them?

“No, sir… We’re not joking.”

Mingyu tried again, but the man wasn’t serious anymore.

“There’s nothing there kids, I’m not stupid.”

The man said, and suddenly – and much to the teens’ surprise – he simple passed his hand between theirs, going right through the string as if the thing didn’t even exist.

“See? Nothing!”

The teacher laughed, but Mingyu and Maeri couldn’t even look back up at him, they just started at the red string, baffled. It was there, they could see it, they could feel it, and they could touch it. But their teacher couldn’t see; he couldn’t even touch. They were slowly starting to freak out, and it was very apparent on their faces.

“Are you two okay?”

The teacher’s cheerful ‘you-can’t-trick-me’ behavior quickly turned to concern as he noticed the seriousness in his students’ faces. The two were frowning, mouths gaping open as they were concentrating too hard to try to understand what was happening. Mingyu was the first to snap away from his own mind, looking up at the teacher with the frown still on his face, since he couldn’t get rid of it.

“Ah… We’re fine.”

He simply said, and then turned away, holding onto Maeri’s hand and pulling her away with him, having to tug her arm to make her move, since she was still completely absentminded. Once they walked far away enough, and Mingyu looked back to confirm that the teacher wasn’t looking anymore, he turned to Maeri. He didn’t quite know what to say or ask, but he didn’t even need to start the conversation, because Maeri’s mouth was already open, with the words leaving like bullets from a machine gun.

“He couldn’t see it? It’s right there! Why couldn’t he touch it?”

She was properly freaking out, and her reaction was so over the top, that Mingyu actually looked to be quiet and calm next to her, despite him also feeling disturbed by what just happened.

“We should go back.”

Mingyu firmly said, trying to control himself, knowing that if he started screaming and freaking out like her, they wouldn’t be able to solve that problem.

Maeri reacted with a look of confusion first, her clouded mind taking more than a second to realize that the boy meant they should return to the woman’s shop.

“That lady put it on, she has to be able to take it out. Let’s go back and ask her to take it out.”

Mingyu explained, and Maeri was already viciously nodding in agreement midway through his words.

The two ran back to the shop, constantly tugging each other’s arms in rather bothersome and painful ways, since it was quite difficult to move that quickly when being forcibly so close together. They were desperate to reach the shop as soon as possible.

But from down the street they could already see the doors to it closed, and a wave of panic was already hitting them. They stopped directly in front of the closed entrance, seeing a wooden plaque with a paper glued to it.

It was a note to all her customers, saying that she was going away on a trip, and would only be back the day after the next, at 3o’clock.

Then the two properly panicked. That couldn’t be happening, the shop was open just a few minutes before; there was no way she had left already. Mingyu knocked on the door, lightly at first, but then getting stronger and stronger, to the point where he was fully pounding on that door, sounding quite desperate. He just hoped that the woman would still be inside, but it didn’t seem like it.

“She’s not there.”

Maeri said, not because she was a person who liked to state the obvious, but because she wanted the boy to stop hitting the door so forcefully.

“What do we do?”

Mingyu stepped back, looking up and down the shop, as if he was trying to find a way to get in. He was clearly too troubled to be rational, but Maeri managed to think of something.

“Let’s ask around. Maybe the owners of the other stores know where she went, or where she lives.”

She said, and Mingyu turned to her with a determinate look, nodding.

The two teens talked to everyone who worked on a block radius of the strange woman’s shop, but all they got was disappointment. No one knew much about her, they didn’t know where she lived, where she went; most didn’t even know what her name was. The words ‘weird’, ‘crazy’, and ‘strange’ were often used to describe her, but aside from that, no one knew how to help them. It was a lost cause.

They had given up, slowly walking back to the meet up place, knowing they had to rejoin the group soon, since their free time was ending.

The entire walk, Maeri fiddled with the knot on her finger, trying to undo it, and even trying to cut the string with her teeth, but nothing happened. She wouldn’t stop though, she continued messing with it, to the point that the skin of her pinky finger was getting red from all the abrasion, and her teeth had started to hurt from gritting against the invisible string for too long.

“It won’t work.”

Mingyu addressed her with a tired out voice. He had completely given up touching the red string, and he wished she would stop too, so he could put his hand back down, since her constant attempts were making him have to keep his arm up near her.

“And what are we supposed to do? Give up? I don’t want to be tied to you for two days!”

She complained, not realizing how rough her words might have sounded. But her emotions were boiling over, and she wasn’t able to deal with it all properly, causing her to verbally explode like that.

“Hey, I don’t want to be tied to you either!”

Mingyu roughly responded, pulling his hand back towards his own body in one swift and strong motion, forcefully making her have to stop meddling with the knot, as her hand flew away from her grip with the string’s tight pull. She immediately turned to glare at him with a furious look, seeming like someone who was ready to enter a fight.

“Don’t do that!”

She complained in a louder tone, and pulled her hand back.

“Sorry! But you’re driving me crazy! My arm is hurting from being in this hovering position!”

Mingyu explained himself, slightly tugging back on the string until their arms were both down and comfortable next to their bodies, like they normally should be. The 30cms allowed them to walk side by side at a quite natural distance, but any other movement would definitely tug the other’s hand along.

“Ok, then what? What should we do?”

She asked, still too flustered to properly fix her tone. She sounded like a stubborn and angry child, and she didn’t even care. It was all too frustrating.

“Well, for now we have to go back and join the group. If we don’t, the teachers will get worried, and they’ll probably get mad at us because of it.”

Mingyu started, and before