The static hurts Seungwan's ears. She grumbles in wordless protest, but she doesn't open her eyes, because if she does, she'll have to face the world around her.

Something bumps against her side and she can only assume it's Seulgi's shoulder, teasingly prodding her.

Finally, the noise dims as the radio settles into an occupied frequency, and the first notes of what could generously be considered music fill the old car. Reluctantly, she lets her eyes fall open.

"Why am I being kidnapped, again?" She follows the pattern of street lights out the window.

"Because. I'm tired of seeing you stuck at home every night with your nose in your books."

"Sue me for studying."

"You can study every other day. Tonight, you're going out."

She sighs, digs her chin into the palm of her hand. "You make me sound like some reclusive introvert. I do have a life, you know?"

"Not the right kind of life."

"Meaning?"

"Meaning you're great at making friends. Not so great at meeting people. Romantically." Seulgi turns to face her but she keeps her eyes on the sidewalk, scanning it absently.

"I can meet people later."

"Seungwan." This time she does meet Seulgi's gaze, if only because she's worried they're going to crash if her friend doesn't get her eyes back on the road soon. "Do you ever have one of those days where you just know?

Where you wake up a moment before your alarm and you lie there and you can feel it all the way up and down your spine, that something big is going to happen?"

She shrugs. Seulgi ignores her.

"Today is one of those days, I just know it. You're going to meet the woman of your dreams tonight, and I'd be a pretty crappy best friend if I didn't do whatever I could to make it happen."

"Do you actually believe that?" she asks around a mouthful of laughter, because the words hit a vein in herself that she never knew she had, and she is hit by a wave of vertigo as powerful as it is brief, and she doesn't know what else to do but laugh it off.

The car stops and Seungwan is spared the effort of any further protest, or of having to decide whether she wants to protest at all. The radio turns off and they are left in silence, broken only by the muffled music spilling from the building across the street.

The lights inside the club fill it unevenly, glaring harshly in some places and casting others in near darkness. The effect is strangely disorienting, disturbing Seungwan’s balance before she’s even tasted alcohol.

She clings to Seulgi’s arm on their way to meet their friends, eyes scanning the crowd in spite of herself, but she sees only a uniform mass of bodies, anonymous faces drawn in shades of red, green, purple, as the lights shift and shimmer over them.

The night progresses and Seulgi’s words continue to resonate within Seungwan, growing more prophetic by the hour. Something inside her surges, like waves breaking against her chest, heavy with purpose, and her eyes are drawn irresistibly to the dance floor.

What seemed so silly in the car now has almost reached the weight of inevitability. The tension rises, tightens around her limbs, whispers in her ear. Tonight is the night.

And then it happens. The drink in her hand slips in her slackening grip and drops to the floor. The tension snaps, the prophetic turns ominous, and the glass shatters with a mute impact.

Something is wrong.

Her eyes stubbornly refuse to focus on the source of the disturbance, sliding smoothly from end to end of the bar whenever she directs them that way. But she can see it at the very corner of her vision when she looks away, ambushes the presence into view.

A shadow, a shape, someone who shouldn't be there yet undeniably is. It exists violently, defiantly, and threatens to swallow her whole with its very being.

And she knows this isn't how it goes, some part of herself is now surer than ever that somewhere in that dance floor is the one for her.

But it's like she's suddenly been transported to someone else's life, like her actions now matter only to the happiness of some fictional character in some game, designed to entertain while reality waits.

And reality, the figure in the corner of her eyes tells her wordlessly, will wait no more.

She stands before she knows what she's doing. Unable to focus on her target, she walks blindly forward, into the surging crowd that the harsh lights frame in technicolor.

The sensation from earlier that evening intensifies and she lurches forward as if drunk, the ground swaying unsteadily underneath her. The crowd around her moves at a pace she can't match, to a rhythm she can't divine.

On every side, bodies twist and turn to fit in the empty spaces that others have left, and she knocks against them all, precarious balance slipping, clinging to foreign limbs for purchase.

Like a wave breaking against the shore, and she stuck in its crest, the world revolves in cruel motions, the ground recedes from where she'd expected it, and she is at the mercy of the waters.

But she must go on.

She needs to break through, to escape the crowd, to reach the bar. She needs to find her.

She s her hand forward in search of emptiness, just as something massive slams into her back and knocks her off her feet.

Careening forward, she reaches out every which way, desperate fingers struggle for something solid, but the world has cleared. Against her shut eyelids, the club lights still shine muted colors as she falls, falls, and nothing to stop it.