Freed from whatever hold she’s had on them, they snap back to their original locations, still faintly glowing and discernible among the uncountable others.

The slowly fading light illuminating each strand as it snaps back into place also illuminates something else.

The fact that the two strands are nowhere near each other in the suddenly heavy, crushingly heavy air.

They never really cross at all.

“Aaaaaayyyyy!”

Kwang Soo and Gary immediately erupt with objections.

Jong Kook is silent. He chews lightly on one side of his lower lip for a second and then nods, lowering his head.

“Hey. Hey, you.” Gary points at Ji Ji Min. “They’re nowhere near each other. What does that mean? That doesn’t mean anything, right?”

Ji Min hesitates.

Jong Kook takes a deep breath and exhales slowly, tipping his head back to look up into the spaaace where the strings vanish off into nothingness above their heads. He still says nothing, arms hanging limp by his sides.

“Well?,” Kwang Soo prods.

“I just pick out the two that match each other. I don’t…” Ji Min shifts her weight. “I don’t know what will happen to the two people.”

“But does that mean something? You know that without knowing the people, right? You know. You know something. What the hell are we looking at? SAY SOMETHING.” The usually calm and steady Gary’s patience has more than run out. His vision of having a bit of a laugh with some friends is more than long since run out.

The fortune teller still hesitates a bit, but finally supplies the information Jong Kook clearly already suspects.

“Okay. Yes. It means something. It… doesn’t appear as if these two strings ever overlap each other.”

“But… but…,” Kwang Soo stutters, his hands clenching into fists as he takes a step toward Ji Min. “But you just showed us that they cross. They cross a lot.”

“They match each other well, yes, and that’s what it would look like if the two strands met. It’s just that… these two don’t.”

Jong Kook runs both hands over his face, clearing away the last butting effects of the alcohol he consumed earlier in the evening. He feels like he has whiplash. His friends bring him to a forunte teller, which is clearly a joke, but Ji Ji Min actually seemed to have something about her, something going for her that’s impossible not to believe. But then, just when he gives over to believing and starts to feel the first flutters of hope, it’s all yanked away again. He can’t deny that he expected nothing less, but still, it stings and he’s not entirely sure what to think.

Is everything that seemed so real just a few moments ago now garbage because the answer didn’t go his way? Or is everything even more real now, now that it’s ended in disappointment like every other relationship he’s attempted?

Kwang Soo and Gary are edging up on the fortune teller, words flying, as if they can argue their way out of the situation. Despite his own confused upset, Jong Kook can’t help but be moved by their almost frantic defense against reality.

“So he can go meet her,” Kwang Soo reasons. “He can just go there. Wherever she is, he can go there and then they will meet and --”

“Kwang Soo.” Jong Kook cuts him off.

“This is ridiculous! This woman can’t just wave her woo woo hands around and tell you that she’s got something for you and you can’t have it!” Gary rages. He points at the woo woo woman in question. “Fix this. Do something. Bring that one back over here. Just bring it. Look at it.”

Ji Min is shaking her head in response.

“Don’t shake your head at me! Poke that string again. Go get it and poke it and tell us who and where she is. Tell us now, and we’ll just go get her.” Gary takes a deep breath, ignoring the hand that Jong Kook places on his shoulder though it does serve to calm him down a bit. “Listen, be reasonable. Just point us the right way and we’ll go there and leave here and be out of your hair and everything will be fine. Who is she? Where is she?”

Ji Min shakes her head again. “I told you from the start that you’d probably have questions and I wouldn’t answer them. You all knew that going in to this.”

“But you didn’t say-- !” Kwang Soo cuts himself off this time, jaw working but nothing coming out. His hands clench and unclench as well.

“No, I didn’t lay out every possibility for you. But I also didn’t lay out these strings. I didn’t do this.” Ji Min shrugs helplessly. She looks almost regretful at this turn of events.

Jong Kook shakes his head. “Let’s go.”

“But hyung --” Kwang Soo protests.

“Let’s just go, Kwang Soo.” The older man is still staring back and forth between where the two strings snapped back into their own places.

The haziness surrounding them starts to fade, some