The Perplexed Fate

The night had deepened, but no one at Chaewon’s house showed any signs of sleeping. Instead, they were sprawled across the floor with cups of soda in their hands and sleepy laughter bubbling up every now and then.
Music played softly from a speaker in the corner — upbeat but low enough to let their chatter float above it.

“Okay,” Sunghoon clapped, “we’ve done truth or dare, we've played cards, Jungwon’s sung three bad love songs… what next?”
Jungwon pouted dramatically. “Hey! My serenades come from the soul.”
“You sang to a sock,” Sunoo said, deadpan.

“It had feelings.”
They all laughed, and Eishi leaned back into the soft cushions, her long coat draped over her like a blanket.
Her mind was still strangely quiet from earlier — that moment on the rooftop with Heeseung lingering somewhere deep inside her. His voice, low and sincere, had felt too close, too real.
She looked at him now across the room. He was half-asleep, his head tilted back, arms crossed.

The black jacket, the slightly tousled hair — he looked like a shadow drawn in candlelight. And when he opened one eye briefly and caught her staring, he didn’t say anything. Just gave her the smallest, laziest smirk.
Her heart skipped. She immediately looked away.

“Let’s do something different,” Chaewon said. “Something fun but also… fate-related.”
Eishi froze slightly at the word. The others sat up curiously.
“Like?” Sunghoon asked.

Chaewon grinned and pulled out a glass jar filled with folded paper chits. “I wrote fortune-like wishes on these. Totally random. Each of us pulls one, and we’ll see what fate decides!”
Sunoo gasped. “Like a prophecy?”

“Exactly,” Chaewon winked. “Except, some of them are just jokes.”
One by one, they drew.
Sunghoon got: You will meet someone who changes your music taste forever.
Sunoo got: Your heart will skip a beat in exactly 3 days.
Jungwon read his aloud dramatically: You’re about to lose in love — but win in something bigger. “Cryptic,” he mumbled. “But I like drama.”

Eishi hesitated, then reached into the jar. She unfolded her chit slowly.
It read: You’ll have to choose... even when everything in you begs not to.
Her breath caught, but she folded the chit quickly and tucked it into her sleeve before anyone asked.

Heeseung was last. He picked one silently. His eyes scanned it — and for a moment, just a second, something in his face changed.
But then he crumpled it in his hand and smiled lazily. “Mine’s too boring,” he shrugged.
Sunghoon raised an eyebrow. “You’re lying.”
“Guess you’ll never know.” Heeseung tossed the crumpled chit over his shoulder, where it landed under the couch unnoticed.

Eishi watched him for a long time.
Later that night, after everyone had drifted off into scattered corners of the room, the lights dimmed and the music gone, Eishi lay awake, staring at the ceiling.

The memory of his voice on the rooftop. That soft, unreadable smirk. The way her chest had tightened when she read her fate.

She didn’t know what it meant. But she had a strange, sinking feeling — this wasn’t just a game.

It had already begun.