The man stacking apples in front of his store gave Taehyung a grin and an acknowledging nod of his head as he passed. He had become such a familiar face along the street that the locals had accepted him.

  The sky was still bright and the happy voices of children sounded along the street, but it was a quiet day. The cars seemed less and the people more private.

  He saw Yira’s shop ahead and he quickened his pace, but the moment he opened the door and set foot on the wooden floorboards, he sensed something wrong with the air.

  It was quiet, eerily so, but then angry, muffled voices cut through the air, sounding from behind the innocent looking, little green door of peeling paint.

  A man’s voice, unreasonably angry shouted from inside, his words becoming clearer as Taehyung drew closer.

  “What do you mean you won’t tell me?!”

  The trinkets rattled on the shelves.

  Suddenly worried, Taehyung yanked open the door and pulled aside the beaded hangings to see a man in a grey suit hunched over on Yira’s table, his hands gripping onto both edges with his knuckles turning white.

  “I’ve been coming to you for five years and this is how you treat me?!” he spat, red with anger. He violently shook the table, knocking over cards and unlit candles. The crystal ball rolled off the tabletop but she gracefully caught it with one hand.

  She placed the ball back onto the holder, her face the picture of calm, cold apathy. “Are you done with your fit?” she asked.

  The man panted, slow controlled breaths of restrained rage through his teeth. “I can pay you,” he said. “Thousands. Hundreds of thousands.”

  “My answer is no, Sukjin-ssi.”

  The colour red rose on his face again, but under the rage in his eyes laid a different emotion; panic. “How dare you-”

  “She said no,” Taehyung cut in, glaring at the man with a look that could turn someone to stone.

  The man paused, only just noticing his presence in the room. “Who the hell are you?” he snarled.

  “Sir, I suggest you leave right now before I call the police and have you charged for assault,” he threatened, his eyes glowing with anger.

  With the light of the open door exposing his person, the man’s chest rose up and down with heavy breaths as he looked at the people in the room. Yira sat calm and unresponsive, patiently waiting for him to leave, unmoving in her decision, and Taehyung stared him down with threatening eyes, authority radiating off his figure.

  The man growled and fixed his suit, scrounging what remained of civil image, before storming out of the room. “Fine. But just so you know you little , I’ll get you back. Good luck with this business because it’s going to hell when I’m done with it.”

  Taehyung’s hands balled into fists as he repressed the urge to run after him and bury his fist in his face, the word “” sparking a fire in him that boiled his blood.

  “Let him go,” she advised with a sigh, kneeling down to collect her spilled cards.

  “Who the hell was he, what the hell did he want?” he questioned, still glaring out the door he left.

  “His name’s Ji Sukjin,” she answered. “You should have heard of him.”

  “Ji Sukjin?” he repeated in disbelief. “Of Ji corporations? That was him?”

  “He wanted business advice,” she said coolly, stacking the cards in a neat pile on the table before straightening the tablecloth and sitting down.

  “He threw a tantrum over that? Why?”

  Yira sighed and gestured for him to sit. “What can you tell me about Ji Sukjin?” she asked.

  He sat down and furrowed his brows, unsure of where she was going. “I don’t know. He’s rich. He’s a successful business owner. He only got big in the last few years. Why are you asking?”

  “Because he built his name and empire on my advice,” she answered, propping her head up by her arm. “Five years he’s been coming to me and paying me large sums for information. He saw it as a business investment. Business conditions, strategies, investments, all foreseen by me. In crude terms, I was his cheat sheet.”

  “He’s rich because of you?” he asked.

  “Unfortunately yes,” she answered.

  “So what the hell went wrong this time?” he questioned. “You’ve never rejected a customer before, especially when they paid you tons of money.”

  “He’s overdrawn his account,” she answered wearily. “Metaphorically speaking. He’s reached the limit of what he can take. It’s been a long time coming.”

  “What?”

  Yira placed her hands on the table, neatly folding them before looking him in the eye with her big, watchful eyes. “Have you ever been curious as to how fate works, Taehyung?”

  “Uh…” he murmured. He had never really thought about it. “I guess not. But now that you mention it… Isn’t it just what’s going to happen?”

  “No, not quite,” she replied calmly, closing her eyes. “Fate isn’t set in stone. There rarely is an unchangeable course of fate in this world. Haven’t you wondered how you have the chance to escape death even though it’s seen in your fate?”

  Taehyung gulped, an uncomfortable sweat forming on his skin. He hadn’t thought about it in a long time, he avoided it, and he didn’t need the reminder.

  “There generally are two kinds of fate,” she began. “The first is the most common. It usually applies to everybody. Fate is the predicted most likely series of events, built on past and present decisions. It is completely changeable. For example, imagine a woman who acquires a drug addiction. It doesn’t take much guesswork to tell that her future will involve either death or imprisonment. That is the future that I will see. Of course, she has every chance to change it, seek help and better herself. However, how often does that happen? It is perfectly possible but unlikely. With all the actions and choices she made, she was writing the blueprint to her future. Her fate is therefore death. Change is possible, but it is the blueprint that I see.”

  She held up two fingers. “Then there’s the second kind; unavoidable. An example of this is a man who comes from a line of men who died of cancer. His genetics dictate that he will die of cancer too. It is unavoidable regardless of what he does, although he can take measures to delay it. It is the result of external factors out of an individual’s control.”

  She brought her hands together and shut her eyes. “And then there’s also a third kind, exceedingly rare. It’s when the forces of the universe or whatever controls it actively intervene to direct the course of a person’s life. Like the heroes of old stories. Few people are ever that significant, so this form of fate can be ignored in this conversation for practical reasons.”

   “… So what am I?” he whispered, his face dark and unreadable.

  Yira paused for a moment, before resting her hands to the table. “Type two. But you can be considered a special case. The death I saw in your face was particularly potent to the point that it was comparable to type three.”

  “Because Jun Jirin’s out to kill me,” he muttered darkly.

  “You should thank her.”

  His eyes grew wide and he looked up. “Why should I thank her?!”

  “Because she changed your fate,” she told him calmly, her eyes still but deep. “You were a Deadman walking even before you came across either of us. When you first stepped foot in my shop, I could see you were fated to die some point from then and the next year or so. If it wasn’t for Jirin, you may have well died already.”

  He grew cold at the notion that he may not be sitting here today.

  “Jirin did not cause your fate,” she clarified. “She simply redirected it. You were a type two. Your fate was determined through external factors. However Jirin was an outlier external factor that changed the direction you were headed. While it is true that the fate I see is still death, she changed it so that you are no longer a type two. You are a type one. She gave you the option of using your own decisions to affect your fate. She gave you control.”

  She looked him in the eye and spoke out slowly, but clearly. “The day she makes her ninth attempt, is the day you time period of potential death ends. She gave you the chance to live.”

  Taehyung sat speechless, numb and uncertain of how to reply.

  She looked away and leaned back. “But, back on topic. The fate of the world is determined through the combined fate of every single person alive.” She placed her hand on the top of the hourglass. “Like this hourglass. If you remove one or two grains of sand it would make no difference to the time, however it is the sum of all the sand in this glass that measures up to exactly two hours.”

  “Few people in the world are influential enough to affect everyone else. For most, it only limits to a few family, friends, or just a small portion of society. However, sometimes a person can acquire enough wealth, power, and influence that they may start to affect others on a larger scale.”

  “People aren’t supposed to know their fate,” she said, cool, but final in tone. “In the first place, people like me aren’t supposed to exist. If humans were meant to know the future, there would be more of us. Of course, it’s alright for some people to receive a little guidance so that they are not completely unprepared and have some emotional assurance in their life. However, what would happen if one person would to use it like a guide book, to know everything that would come and use it to get whatever they want?”

  “They’d have an unfair advantage over everyone else,” he answered.

  Yira nodded. “That’s right. That is what happened to Ji Sukjin. I was able to give him a little insight into his future; however he has reached the point that he now has too much influence on the lives of too many people. People in general aren’t supposed to know the future. People like him even less so. For someone like him it would be disastrous. I won’t tell him anymore, not news that he took well as you’ve seen. These past years he has relied too heavily on me and doesn’t know how to manage on his own.”

  “He threatened you,” he murmured. “What about you? Would you be okay?”

  “I don’t matter,” she replied. “I still won’t tell him. People aren’t supposed to know their fate. There are lines for people like me that even Jirin won’t cross.”

  “But what happens to you?” he asked, feeling strangely anxious.

  Yira paused, but she waved her hand dismissively. “That’s not of your concern.”

***

  A cold night, when the sky was the deepest shade of navy with pale, wispy veins of clouds like the brush of a painting. A white, plastic bag heavy with items swung from his hands as he walked home, his breath fogging in the air.

  The leaves of the trees rustled above him as he passed the state forest. A dense gathering of straight, thick trunks that glowed pale blue under the moonlight blocked the entrance, with only a small rocky opening at the centre.

  He slowed to a halt and grew still as he saw Yira, her back turned to him with a thick parka wrapped over her shoulders, but her long inky tresses that glistened like a river under moonlight was unmistakeable.

  She seemed to look up at the sky for a moment before stepping onto the path, and steadily disappearing into the gathering of trees.

  Taehyung was stunned for a moment, his thoughts suspended, before he returned to his senses. Turning on his heels, he followed after her, running onto the uneven, downward path into the forest.

  The path twisted and turned, covered by twigs and leaves that threatened to slip him on every step. The thin limbs of plants edging onto the path scratched at his legs and caught on his pants. As he progressed, the forest opened like a story book, revealing an open space with a quiet bubbling brook protected by towering trees that touched the sky above.

  It was a singular path, but he couldn’t see Yira. But a crunch of a twig to his right caught his attention and he saw her stepping off the path into a trackless part of the forest covered by tall grass and scraggly bushes.

  He fought with the greenery to follow her, pushing through the resistance of untamed nature. Yira continued out of his sight and he struggled to keep up. By the time he forced his way through the final gathering of bushes, he found himself at a clearing.

  His breath left his lungs as the sky above seemed to continue forever like an embroidered sheet covering the earth. Stars swirled across the navy sky like shimmer in water.

  “Wow,” he breathed.

  “It looks like you were busy.”

  He looked down to see her sitting on the edge of a rock cliff, dipping down to the entirety of the forest. She gestured to the bag in his hands.

  “Uh, yeah my mom had me run some last minute errands,” he explained. “What are you doing here?”

  She looked back up at the vast sky, her breath escaping into the air. “Stargazing.”

  He dropped the bag on the rock and sat next to her, dangling his legs over the edge where he could see the tops of the trees below. “Do you come here a lot?”

  Yira smiled but instead of answering, she raised a hand to the sky. “Do you know astrology?”

  “Don’t tell me you know how to read fates from stars too,” he replied.

  She laughed lightly. “No. However, it’s my mother’s forte. But I do know a little bit about them. Your birthday is December 30th, correct?”

  “I don’t remember telling you that but yes,” he said with a slight frown.

  “You’re a Capricorn, the sign of the lamb. Your characteristics include hardworking, determination, and inflexibility. Which I have to say are quite true.”

  “Yah,” he complained.

  She smiled. “Of course, these are largely just superstition. Supposedly you’re also supposed to be domineering and pretentious. When you find a task to be worthwhile, you will always put in the effort to complete it, regardless of how difficult or challenging it may be.”

  “What are you then?” he asked.

  “21^st of November, Scorpio,” she answered. “My traits include secretive, steadfast, passionate, and insensitive.”

  “Passionate? You?” he replied with a raised eyebrow.

  She looked away and chuckled. “Supposedly Scorpio is also the most ually active of the signs.”

  A blush came to his face as red as a firetruck and he stuttered for words before shutting up.

  They fell quiet for a few moments, looking up at the sky as they breathed in the cool, late night air. The shadows of the trees swayed around them.

  “So how have you been handling death?” she asked him.

  His face twitched as he was once again reminded of it. He hadn’t been sleeping as well but he managed solely through one single reason. He didn’t think about it. He pushed it down and kept it from invading his thoughts.

  “… I don’t think about it,” he answered darkly.

  She shrugged her shoulders. “That coping mechanism going to have side effects, you know.”

  He grumbled under his breath.

  She looked up at the sky and sighed. “Would it comfort you to know that your problems are insignificant?”

  “Wow, thanks a lot,” he replied in a bitterly sarcastic tone.

  Yira’s breath fogged in the air, her face serene under the pale moonlight. “Look up at the stars,” she suggested. “It’s so big isn’t it? Extending beyond all that we can see and know. It places everything in perspective. In comparison you realise you’re tiny, only a temporary speck in the universe and your problems seem insignificant.

  “Well I’m pretty sure nobody has the same problems I do,” he muttered.

  “Someone has,” she said.

  “Who?” he questioned incredulously.

  “I don’t know,” she replied. “But there are eight billion people in this world and thirty of people like me, and it extends back countless generations for thousands of years, and it’ll continue on for more. Someone has been in your exact situation before, no matter how strange. It’s the same for everybody else. No matter what happens a million other people have been through the same.” She leaned back and let her hair pool onto the cool rock. “It’s quite comforting.”

  His brow wrinkled in slight disagreement, at a lost for how to reply.

  “Did you know, Taehyung?” she asked. “People like me aren’t supposed to exist. Our abilities are a gift in every sense of the word, bestowed on the generous whim of whatever holds reign to this world. What would happen if everyone were to see their future? If everyone could prepare and plan and choose?”

  “Then it wouldn’t be living,” he replied with certainty. “Life is supposed to be about not knowing. It’s about opportunity and chances.”

  Yira smiled. “Good answer. Eight billion people in the world and they’re still insignificant under the stars. Nobody knows what will happen. The inevitable will come, and concern is a waste.”

  “So you’re telling me I should just accept death?”

  “Do you want to live?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Then do it,” she said. “The fact that you exist in this world means you have a place in it. Keep it.”

  They looked to the stars and the wind blew through the trees below them. She let out a low sigh and raised her hand to the sky. “Did you know?” she breathed. “Even if I can see fate, it’s a useless skill. Billions of people in his world and all their problems are the same. You see the same fate in many numbers each day. You have no power to change it, and intervention yields little. It becomes pointless to care.”

  “Oh…”

  “That’s why I like the stars,” she continued, her tone cool and calm. “It reminds you of just how little power you have. It’s quite comforting.” She fell quiet for a moment. “On nights like this,” she continued, enclosing her fingers on a falling star. “When it seems like you can almost catch one.” She pulled her hand down and let go to reveal nothing in her palm. “Even I start to feel a little melancholic.”

  There was a smile on her lips but in her eyes there was a hint of what could have been sadness, making his heart sway.

  “Sukjin’s going to come back,” she said softly.

  He opened his mouth as if to say something, but the tone of his phone interrupted them, inappropriately light and bright music sounding in natural, silent dignity of the forest.

  He coughs awkwardly to excuse himself and picks up. Yira turns away to face the moon.

  “Hello?” he answered, wishing he had switched off his phone.

  “Tae?” sounded Chaerin’s voice, uncharacteristically low and lacking in her usual confidence.

  “Chae?” he replied. “What’s wrong? Are you okay?”

  “I just…” She gave a loud sigh. “Nothing’s going right for me right now, I just- I don’t know.”

  He turned to glance at Yira, an air of melancholy wrapping her like a shawl as she looked to the sky.

  “I just, I just need someone to talk to right now. It’s been a bad day…” Chaerin asked.

  Taehyung barely heard, seeming distracted. “Uh… yeah, sorry but can I get back to you a little later? Sorry but something’s come up.”

  “Oh but…”

  “Sorry, I’ll get back to you as soon as I can,” he assured, before he lowered the phone and placed it back in his pocket.

  Yira turned to him with a blank expression, glancing to his pocket. “It sounded important,” she said.

  “It’s fine,” he replied. “I’ll call her back… Are you… Are you going to be alright?”

  She looked back to the stars and gave a dry smile. “I’ll be the same,” she answered. “There’s not much to be done but watch and wait. Sukjin’s the sort of man with a fragile ego. It’ll be tedious but it’ll pass.”

  “You know I’ll help out anyway I can,” he offered sincerely.

  She chuckled. “Thank you for your concern,” she said, pulling her legs up from the edge before standing up and turning her still gaze to the full moon. “Something’s going to happen Sunday night.”

  “Is it…?”

  She pat down her dress and gestured for him to stand. “Don’t worry too much about it,” she said with a smile. “If you really want to help me, come drive me home.”

  He stood up and followed her out of the forest.

  From his pocket, a light faded.