A month passed, quietly and smoothly. It was refreshingly uneventful and calm; and everything fell into routine. The weather turned cool and cold with the early breath of winter, and people were beginning to relax.
  But Yira felt no different. The changing seasons were a mundane fact of time that had little meaning to her. Her eyes remained stern as she sat in the tiny room in the corner of the shop.
  Smoky tendrils swayed before her still eyes, pointed at the door behind the beads, but looking to somewhere far away, her attention retreated to the depths of her mind.
  The cards that lay before her on the table almost appeared to blink in the flickering candlelight, telling a tale of things to come.
  She shut her eyes to the sound of footsteps behind the door, and she leaned back and put on a bright smile as Taehyung pushed through the clicking beads.
  “A little early today isn’t it?” she asked, her tone as light and airy as if she had just been playing.
  “How come whenever I come here, even when I have free periods, you’re always here before me?” he questioned.
  Yira made a dismissive gesture with her hand. “Merely poor timing on your part, that and the fact that my school schedule always ends before yours.”
  “Couldn’t you have just started with saying that our schedules are different?” he complained, rubbing his eyes as the intense glow of the candles ached at the back of his head. “It’s too early for this.”
  “I wouldn’t call ten thirty early.”
  “Yeah well it’s been an eventful day,” he grumbled, rubbing his neck as he rested his hand on the clothed table.
  Yira looked to him and gave him a mischievous smile. “Just had fun getting some?”
  Taehyung’s eyes grew as wide as saucers and his face turned beet red from his ears to his neck. “What the?! No, I- how did you?”
  “Well…” she began playfully, with her hands folded under her chin. “Your hair still smells of shampoo which means you showered very recently. But…” she pointed a single finger at him but lowered it to his arm, sliding it across his skin. “You’ve sweat. And quite a lot.”
  Taehyung yanked his hand out of her reach, glowing like a lantern. He covered his skin with his shirt, growing intensely self-conscious under her gaze. She was the last person he wanted to know about it.
  “I see things are going well with your new girlfriend,” she said.
  “Chaerin’s not my girlfriend,” he denied in a low, grumbling voice. “She doesn’t have time for that. We just casually go out sometime.”
  “Smart girl,” she complimented. “She puts her career first. She’ll go far in future.”
  “Is that a prediction or an observation?” he asked, rubbing his eyes.
  Yira didn’t answer, watching carefully as Taehyung groaned and rubbed his temples, squeezing his eyes shut as if a light were being shone in his face.
  “Headache?” she asked.
  “Ugh, yeah,” he admitted, dropping his hands but blinking repeatedly. “It’s been happening a lot lately but I don’t know why. I saw a doctor but he says it’s just stress or dehydration.”
  Yira’s fingers slipped under the table, but her eyes remained still on his bare neck. “Have you been wearing your charm lately?”
  “Wha?” he said.
  “Your evil eye charm,” she clarified.
  Taehyung’s thoughts retreated to his memories. He had left the necklace on his desk. He had worn it for a few days but had taken it off one day for a shower, and never put it back on. He didn’t think much of it, brushing it off as just a useless good luck charm.
  “You’re not telling me that’s what’s causing me headaches are you?” he questioned disbelievingly.
  Yira pulled out of her chair, walking around to where he stood with something small held in between her fingers. “It’s up to you what you think, but I do suggest you show appreciation for a gift by wearing it,” she said.
  She stepped before him, uncomfortably close and Taehyung became acutely aware of her presence. She raised her hand to him and waved a little, white pill. “Until then, this will help.”
  “That’s not some weird herbal remedy cooked up by your grandma is it?”
  “It’s aspirin,” she chuckled. “Open your mouth.”
  Before he could even reply, he was rendered numb as she placed her fingers beneath his chin, tilting his head up by just a hairs breadth. He felt the warm touch of her skin against his and the sound of her breathing in his ears as she dropped the pill in his mouth, her fingers grazing against his lips.
  “That should hold off your headache for a while,” she said, pulling away and returning to her seat.
  Taehyung gulped involuntarily, swallowing the pill. His heart beat rapidly in his chest, filling him an uncontrollable sense of alarm and anxiety.
  Yira didn’t appear to notice; instead she looked calm, and raised three fingers. “A customer is going to come through these doors in three, two, one…”
  Taehyung leapt out of the way for fear of being hit again, and he scrambled to the corner, just as the door opened to reveal two, shadowy figures behind the beaded veil, one taller than the other.
  Quietly, he took his space in the corner as the two figures entered, both women. The elder one appeared to be just shy of middle age and the other a teenager, a mother and daughter of strong resemblance, including the same look of tense stress.
  The two shuffled in sheepishly, as if almost afraid to make a noise. The mother sat down first, the daughter taking space behind her, placing her hand protectively on her shoulder.
  “Welcome back, Mrs. Park.” Yira greeted with her most courteous voice. “And this young lady must be your daughter.”
  The woman nodded, gesturing to the girl. “My daughter, Sandara,” she said in a deep voice. She fumbled in her shiny, branded purse and pulled out a wad of bills in an elastic band, handing it to Yira.
  “What appears to be troubling you so, ma’am?” Yira smiled, tucking the bills away beneath the table.
  Tension weighed on the woman’s face and she looked to her daughter for assistance, communicating in fearful nods. Taehyung felt pity for the two women; he recognised the signs of living in emotional abuse.
  “Uh, my mother and I have a problem,” said Sandara, trying hard to summon a voice.
  “That’s what I’m here for,” said Yira. “Take your time and speak.” She leaned forward and hushed her voice. “And I assure you, discretion is part of what we do. Feel free to speak your mind, there is no one to judge you here.”
  The women looked relieved and the daughter continued. “We have an important concern that we can’t let anyone know.”
  “It’s about your brother, isn’t it?” Yira surmised.
  Sandara nodded. “H-he disappeared last week and… a large sum of money disappeared from our home’s secret storage.”
  The mother ruffled through her purse and pulled out a folded note, spreading it out on the table and revealing a message scrawled out in thick, black, permanent marker.

  We have your son Park Chundong. Do not call the police if you care about his safety. We will call later for a ransom if you want his safe return.

  “A ransom note,” Yira said. Her face was blank but her tone sounded mildly amused. “Poorly written however. Did you call the police?”
  Sandara shook her head. “No, he wrote this. It’s even his handwriting; he just used his left hand instead of his right to try and make it look different.”
  The mother shouted something in loud, distressed Tagalog.
  “The moment we saw it,” Sandara explained. “We hid it immediately. We knew it was from him and we couldn’t let father see it. We knew Chundong just went off somewhere, but he left behind his phone. We can’t find him.”
  “That’s quite a problem,” Yira said, sounding almost sympathetic.
  The mother spoke a long line of disappointed sounding Tagalog.
  “Chundong used to be a good kid, my mother says,” Sandara translated. “He studied and did well for himself. But then he met his new friends. I’ve met them, and I don’t like them. Neither does my mother. They’re all a bunch of irresponsible party kids with very rich parents, and my brother's been trying harder and harder to be just like them, even though he’s not like them. Our family is wealthy but we don’t have much money on our own, especially him. Everything belongs to our father. He’d have never have run away before he met them.”
  “And you’ve kept all this a secret from your father,” Yira supposed.
  “Our father is very strict,” she explained, her lower lip quivering. “He’d kill him if he knew. He’d make all of us pay. So we hid everything. We hid the note, my mother replaced the missing cash with a withdrawal from her bank account, and we told our father that she sent Chundong to visit our aunt who is borrowing the missing money from my mother.”
  “However, this is not an act you can maintain forever.”
  “Yes, Chundong doesn’t have his phone so we keep telling our father that he’s just busy with our aunt. But it’s already been a week and we haven’t heard from him. We need him to come back or we’ll all be in trouble! Please, we need you to tell us where he is. We brought the note because we thought it could help.”
  The mother nudged the note towards Yira and nodded.
  “I’ll do what I can,” she assured them with a smile.
  Carefully, she placed her hands on top of the note, the paper crinkling under her palm. She shut her eyes, as if in intense focus, and the slow sound of her breathing filled the air. The shadows of the flickering candles danced on her serene face.
  The mother and daughter watched intently, pinning all their desperate hopes onto her powers, praying help. Sandara gripped her mother’s shoulder anxiously, and the woman patted her daughter’s hand.
  Finally, as the candle flames stilled and dimmed, Yira opened her eyes, slowly, like a waking cat, with news on her lips.
  “As he is now,” she began, in a low, ominous voice, her eyes still looking somewhere far away. “He will not return before you are uncovered by your father.”
  Sandara whispered a translation to her mother and the woman whimpered.
  “You will need to find him within the next two days, or all hope will be lost, and fury will erupt from your father as he realises your deception. On a Friday night one week ago, he was convinced by his friends to take off on a long distance party trip. Your father, having limited your spendings, gave him no money to finance the unsanctioned vacation, so on a reckless, ill thought out impulse, he stole from the family, and ran off with his friends on a road trip.”
  “Oh my God…” she uttered.
  “He is in the coast of Busan,” she advised. “Residing on an unpopulated, secluded beach, by a rocky eel pool, and an unreachable cave in the wall of a cliff. He is burning through the money he stole, spending it like water. Unfortunately, you will never get it back. At his current rate, he is unable to keep up with his friends, and he is at risk of being stranded.”
  She folded the note neatly in her fingers before returning it to the mother. “Unfortunately, I cannot give you a name or address. The beach he is at is unnamed due to its seclusion, and he is sleeping in a friend’s car.”
  Tears began to form in the mother’s eyes, a salty mixture of fear and disappointment. Sandara too, looked to be on the verge of tears, inwardly cursing at her brother.
  “So…there’s no way to tell where he is?” she asked. “So we have to search for him up and down in Busan?”
  Yira shook her head. “You’ll never find him in time that way in time.”
  “Oh God…”
  Yira locked eyes with Taehyung, reading the keen look on his face. She sighed and closed her eyes, gesturing towards him with her ringed hand. “However, I can direct you to my assistant, who I’m certain, can be of use to you in your predicament.”
  The two women turned to Taehyung, paying notice to him for the first time with with apprehensive looks of hope.
  “I can’t promise you anything,” he told them. “But I think I can be able to help by digging up some information of where he might be.”
  “Please,” the sister begged. “Anything would be helpful, even the smallest detail. Please.”
  “I can do my best,” he promised.
  Sandara took the note out of her mother’s fingers and scribbled numbers onto the back with a pen. “Here,” she offered. “Our contact details. Please call us if you have anything.”
  “I will,” he nodded.
  Sandara and her mother whispered thanks to the both of them before they gathered their things and left the store.
  The door shut with a soft thud, and the beaded hangings swayed from side to side. The flame of a single candle by Yira’s side flickered out of life, leaving a trail of smoke from the burnt wick.
  “You sure seem to love extending help don’t you?” she asked, weariness showing in her voice.
  “And you think it’s somehow a virtue not to?” he questioned.
  “It’s a pointless hassle,” she sighed with a true look of disdain rarely seen on her usually apathetic face.
  “You know, it really annoys me that you can just ignore other people when they’re upset,” he accused with judging eyes. “Besides, I felt pretty bad for them; their dad sounds like a dictator.”
  “Yes, that’s unfortunately true,” she agreed. “The man is quite an oppressive and controlling figure. I’m afraid whatever happens to people after death that man will not follow where his family goes.”
  “Man, I can’t imagine living with someone like that,” he said. His own father was a stern, but good humoured man who always raised him with respect and a good amount of personal freedom.
  “The poor mother will have to live with that for the rest of her life, although if it’s any consolation her husband will die before her, but only by a couple of years. The daughter will escape soon though. She is preparing for university where she’ll reside on campus.”
  “Anyway, who’s the son?” he asked, unfolding the note. “He sounds like a real to do this to his family.”
  “I’m sure you know him,” she told him.
  “Who?”
  “Park Chundong.”
  “Park Chundong?” he repeated with a look of shock. “Isn’t he in our year?”
  “Yes, and in your History class,” she said. “I believe you’re quite acquainted with him.”
  Taehyung shook his head in denial. “Look, I met the guy at a couple of parties and talked to him but I really don’t know him that well, we’re not even friends.”
  “Ah, yes…” she sighed, resting her cheek on her hand. “I forgot. Despite being 'popular' in our school, you are actually a solitary figure residing on the sidelines.”
  “Can you not put it like that?” he protested, sounding annoyed. “I just like being alone sometimes, I don’t always have to be a part of everything, and I’m nowhere on your level of solitary.”
  “You are not part of a specific clique, but you have friends in every group, although only a few are particularly close in any way,” she told him with watching eyes. “You’re the rare example of an outgoing introvert.”
  “Stop it,” he demanded curtly. “I’m your friend, stop doing the 'I know everything about you from first glance' psychic thing you use on other people. It really pisses me off.” He tucked the note into his pocket. “And my life isn’t the problem right now; we need to figure out what to do for Chundong.”
  “And you’re going to have me come with you?” she predicted.
  “Yep. I’m going to drag you with me in school tomorrow whether you like it or not.”