Markjae Wonderland

Of Red Strings And A Wedding

The red strings of fate, do you know about them? 

According to Japanese legend, it is said that a red string is tied to the  small finger and connects two people who are destined to be lovers, no matter the time, place, or circumstance. It's a beautiful legend that can make people's hearts flutter just by the mention of it. 

Have you ever seen these mythical strings before? 

If you're like Choi Youngjae, then I suppose you never stop seeing them. You see, he's one of those rare people who can actually see the strings. Everywhere he looks, there'll be at least a few strings laying around, connecting those to their lovers. Some are tangled, some are stretched, but none ever seem to be broken. 

Youngjae isn't the only one with this ability, for there are very few others who have this, too. Along with being able to see these red strings, there are various things that they are able to do as well. People with the ability to see them can further manipulate others' strings. For instance, they can create more tangles, stretch the strings out even more, break the strings, or even tie them together.

You can imagine what kind of power these people have, and depending on the people, they'll either let the strings do their jobs or they'll bring chaos to destined lovers. Unfortunately, there are people out there in the world, who actually seek to create this disorder in the world by cutting strings and connecting them to other random people. What they're essentially doing is preventing those from being with the lover that the gods themselves chose for them and haphazardly changing their destinies to be with people that they are not supposed to be with. 

This is the hideous reality of how some use the power. 

Now, these chosen ones don't exactly have the ultimate capability of playing cupid or anti-cupid for everyone. The only string that they absolutely can not alter is their own string, which also spills into them not being able to alter their destined lover's string as well, since they are connected to the same one.

It's a fair trade for being able to change others' fates, right? At least this way, they're not cutting their string to match themselves up with whoever they want. 

Youngjae, who was mentioned to have this special ability, doesn't care about any of this, because he's a apart of an even rarer group of people, who don't seek to create any kind mayhem in the world. In his eyes, he believes that people's destinies shouldn't be toyed with and that there's a reason why certain people are meant to be together. 

The only good thing that comes out of having the ability for Youngjae is being able to see where the strings lead to. He loves watching people and being able to witness when the strings are shortened to the point where the people on the opposite ends are practically standing in front of each other. He loves seeing the lovers smiling at each other, as if they already knew that they were their destined partner, and he especially loves when the string matches up with their assumption. 

There were definitely times when Youngjae would think about getting people together, but he would always deny the desire, for he knew that it was straight out wrong to dictate who a person should be with. This is the belief that Youngjae had always stuck to for all his of life, and he didn't ever plan on changing that.

Not even when his best friend came running to him to ask that he cut his string.

"Youngjae, please," Mark begged him, his hand grasping Youngjae's. Mark's current lover, Jinyoung, was standing next to Mark with one hand holding Mark's other hand and seemed to be pleading for the same thing with his eyes.

Youngjae could only stare at the two in front of him, his eyebrows furrowing and his palms getting sweatier by the second. They were all at the cathedral for Jinyoung's marriage to someone his parents had arranged for him, and minutes before the wedding ceremony could begin, Mark had brought the both of them to Youngjae, so that he could cut both of their strings and tie them together. It was a request that Mark had always asked of Youngjae ever since he came to the conclusion that Jinyoung was for sure the only one for him, but as you all know, Youngjae's morals wouldn't allow himself to do it, even for a best friend.