Chapter 3

Hotelroom Blues

Room twenty-two.

Irene’s white dress flutters around her on the soft night breeze. The balcony window is open and outside Seoul shines bright in the dark. Seulgi watches and watches and watches, trying to remember every single detail. The strap of Irene’s dress loosely hanging over her shoulder. The empty bottle of wine on the bedside table. The full one next to it. Their shoes forgotten on the carpet. The smudge of lipstick on Irene’s cheek, deep red. Seulgi’s lipstick.

She wishes she remembered how it got there. How Irene’s skin felt against , if she tasted like Seulgi has always imagined she would.

‘Stop dreaming,’ Irene says, giggling. Face red from the alcohol. Lips redder still. ‘Come dance with me.’

Seulgi stands up from the bed. The floor moves underneath her feet and the walls come closer and closer. She wonders how many drinks she’s had already, but can’t quite remember. Somewhere in her mind there’s an image of a glass against Irene’s mouth. The liquid the same cherry as her lips. She wonders if that drink hit like straight vodka too. Then she mistakes the bottle of wine on the bedside table for Irene and thinks; yeah, it probably did.

Irene laughs and takes her hand. Seulgi pulls her closer and buries herself in Irene’s perfume and Irene’s soft humming and Irene. It’s an automatic response. A habit almost. Formed after many, many nights in room twenty-two. In Irene’s embrace. Always the same perfume. Always the same routine. Their bare feet shuffling against the carpet, Seulgi swaying along to songs that only exist in her mind, Irene swaying along to god knows what.

After, it’s always the same too. When their eyes start falling close and their feet get tired from all the slow-dancing, they fall into the bed together and Seulgi stares at the ceiling for a while and Joohyun stares at her.

‘Seulgi,’ the older woman then says after a god knows how much time has passed.

And Seulgi always smile at her and says, ‘Joohyun. Joo-hyun.’

Then they fall asleep and it’s always the dreams. Dreams of things she had forgotten of the night. One last taste of them before they’re gone forever. Images of Irene dancing with red and blue and green lights dancing across her skin. Images of Irene in the hallway and in the elevator. Images of Irene swaying softly on the carpet, glass of wine in her hand and dress fluttering around her.

Then she wakes up and everything is gone.

+++

She wakes up at six from the alarm on her phone.

Irene is standing by the window, still in her white dress, but it’s no longer fluttering.

‘We fell asleep,’ she says, like they don’t do so every night. ‘You better hurry, before your bandmates wake up.’ Then she takes the bottle of wine still left on the bedside table and fills herself a glass.

‘This early?’ Seulgi asks, like Irene doesn’t do this every morning.

Irene shrugs. ‘You know what they say. Alcohol is the best remedy for a hangover.’ She raises the bottle. ‘Want some?’

Seulgi shakes her head and rolls out of the bed. Her head feels like it’s gonna burst and she can’t seem to find her shoes anywhere. She groans when she stands up and the walls move closer and the ground is wobbly beneath her feet. She has to steady herself on the wall to look for her shoes. They’re not beside the bed and their not underneath either. Seulgi sighs and rubs her forehead, wishing the terrible throbbing in her head would just disappear.

‘Need some help?’

She shakes her head.

‘They’re behind the pot plant next to the door.’

She’s right, they are. Her right shoe is even half in the pot plant. She mumbles a quick thank you and hurries to put on her shoes, wondering how Irene seems so okay. Does she not get hungover? Does the wine really help? And why the does she still look this good?

‘I’ve called one of my drivers already, he’ll take you home. Black Mercedes-Benz. Should be parked across the street.’

‘Thank you,’ Seulgi says.

Irene shrugs. ‘Thank him, I guess.’ Then she turns back around and opens the double glass door of the balcony. It’s not dark anymore, but it’s also not yet light. The stars are gone, but the moon is still there, lonely in the half-dark-half-light. Seulgi hears the sound of cars and people already, but up here, at floor nine, everything is muted.

‘Goodbye,’ she sighs when her boots are zipped up and her jacket hangs askew across her shoulders. Irene doesn’t answer and doesn’t turn back around. The only proof she has actually heard her is the quite nod and hum just before Seulgi closes the door behind her.

The walk through the hotel is always different in the morning. There’s no more giggles and stumbling. No more Irene holding her hand. Just Seulgi and her massive hangover. And the guilt and the shame.

All the hallways are empty, the elevator too. In the lobby it’s just a young man behind the mahogany desk typing something on his laptop. He nods at Seulgi when she passes and takes a sip of his coffee.

She nods back and takes her face-mask and sunglasses from her purse. The black Mercedes is waiting for her across the street, as promised. She hurries to it and steps inside. The driver is a big guy with his hair shaven till it’s barely there anymore. He nods at her through the rearview mirror and drives off without any words.

Seulgi turns around and watches hotel SEOUL DOWNTOWN for one last time. The half attached neon sign and the dirty walls. The rows and rows of balconies, stained and muddled on the outside, but pristine and clean on the inside.

She wonders if Irene is still standing in front of the balcony. Still sipping her wine. She wonders if she’s watching her.

Then the Mercedes-Benz makes a turn and SEOUL DOWNTOWN disappears. Seulgi sighs and turns back around, closing her eyes and listening to the traffic outside.

+++

The dorm is quiet apart from the creaking of the door and the jiggling of the keys when she enters.

Their shoes are all piled up next to the door and Seulgi hides her boots somewhere under in the mountain of shoes. She throws her jacket over the coat rack and takes her phone from the counter.

It’s half past six. She’s slept around an hour-and-a-half, two at most, and she wishes nothing more than to curl up into her bed and sleep for another hour. But she knows that if she does she’ll never be able to wake up in time for their schedule at eight. Instead she fills a mug with pure, dark coffee and sits down in their worn-out sofa, trying to keep herself busy with her phone so she doesn’t fall asleep.

There’s an article about Irene’s most recent movie on her internet feed. She skims through it but doesn’t actually take anything in. The movie was nice, Seulgi watched it with Sooyoung three days before, but not Irene’s best. Not by far. She’s gotten yet another damsel-in-distress roll, where the only character development is that she falls in love with the protagonist.

Seulgi used to love sappy and predictable movies like this, and she wonders why that changed. Maybe because she now knows Irene, or tells herself she does, and knows that Irene is way more than all the flat personalities she seems to get. Maybe just because there was a kissing scene and Seulgi’s stomach had done weird, unpleasant things when she watched the male co-star press his thin, chapped lips onto Irene’s.

After that article she types in ‘Red Velvet’ and waits for the page to load. There are three recent articles, two of them about their latest music show.

The first article is all positive. About how loud the fans yelled and how stable their vocals were. Seulgi smiles.

The second article is about how Wendy has lost weight again. She frowns and quickly closes the page. She hates articles like that. They can’t even lose an ounce of weight, or it’s all over the internet.

And then there’s the third article. Her name in bold letters on top. Red Velvet’s Seulgi. That’s who she is now. Not Kang Seulgi or just Seulgi. Red Velvet’s Seulgi. Singer, dancer. Idol. Example for half of the little girls in Korea.

Red Velvet’s Seulgi Falls Asleep During Radio Show.

She remembers the radio show, of course she does, but the article is overexaggerating. She didn’t actually fall asleep, but that was probably only due to the elbow shoves Seungwan kept giving her. The show was four days ago, after yet another hotel night with Irene. Two hours of sleep, three cups of coffee and one energy-drink. And still it wasn’t enough