Chapter 6

Pictures / Words

Words:

‘Why did you become a singer?’

They’re lying on the carpet in room twenty-two. Seulgi’s not sure how they ended up there, but she’s sure of the way Irene’s fingers are drawing figures on her back and she’s sure of the way her breath hitches every time. The lights inside are turned off and they watch as all the neon shines bright outside. There are no stars but tonight Seulgi doesn’t mind.

‘I don’t know,’ she says, but that’s not very true.

Irene smiles at her and says ‘that’s not very true.’

She sighs and turns her face towards Irene. ‘I wanted to move people,’ she says. That’s very true. ‘I wanted to be able to make them cry or smile, just with my voice.’

‘Is it still what you want?’

Seulgi shrugs. She watches as Irene’s skin glows in the moonlight and lets her fingers paint it with soft caresses. ‘It doesn’t matter what I want anymore. It’s too late.’

‘That’s not true, Seulgi. It always matters what you want, even if it might not change anything.’ Irene lays a soft hand against Seulgi’s cheek. Their eyes meet and Seulgi watches the stars twirl around in those black orbs. ‘Besides, it is never, ever too late to change.’

Seulgi smiles even if she disagrees. It’s an automatic response. Action-Reaction, Newton’s third law. Action: Irene smiles at her / says anything / looks at her. Reaction: Seulgi goes breathless / smiles / falls.

‘It is still what I want,’ she says, and that’s also true. ‘I want to be on a stage forever, I wouldn’t throw it away for anything.’

‘But?’

‘But I also want to be able to say what I want to say and eat what I want to eat and be who I want to be.’

Irene nods. Her fingers travel from Seulgi’s cheek to her neck and stay there, drumming soft songs against her skin. Seulgi closes her eyes and guesses what song it is. It either doesn’t exist or she doesn’t know it.

‘Who do you want to be?’

She opens her eyes again. ‘Sometimes I want to be an artist, and want everyone to know my name. Sometimes I wish no one knew my name. Sometimes I want to be just a girl, a nobody.’

Irene nods.

‘But that’s impossible. They’re polar opposites, I have to choose. And I made a choice already.’ That’s all true. That’s the all cold, all hard truth.

‘That’s not true,’ Irene whispers, her fingers now Seulgi’s collarbones. ‘In here it isn’t,’ she says, ‘In here you can be anyone or no one at all. It’s your choice.’

Pictures:

Irene standing by the balcony. Her dress fluttering in the night breeze and her hair fluttering around her face and the curtains fluttering too. There’s a glass of wine in her hand, deep red. Behind her Seoul lays dark yet wide-awake, calling for them.

Seoul. Dark but not asleep. Never asleep. Cars in the street below. A few people still walking the pavement, youngsters and drunkards, reduced to nothing but little dots. The neon sign of hotel SEOUL DOWNTOWN and the neon sign of the club opposite it. Further away skyscrapers and more hotels and more neon. Further still the mountains.

Irene looking at her in the half-dark of room twenty-two. Skin bare and eyes honest; soul bare. The moonlight painting pretty pictures on her skin. The carpet white and soft beneath her. The room empty and dark around her. Seulgi’s fingers trailing down and down and down.

Herself in the mirror the next morning. Skin covered in cherry red lipstick. Behind her the shower is already running, but she’s still standing in front of the mirror, watching her reflection in the damp glass. Her skin cherry-red and an alcohol stain on her dress. Her head full of pictures and words.

+++

Is it really what I want? Seulgi asks herself on a Monday morning when they’re preparing for the comeback stage of their new song. This has always been what I wanted, but is it still?

The people move around her busy and quick like ants. The hairdressers moving fast and steady fingers through her hair, combing and straightening. The stylists arranging their clothes, fastening the last straps and closing all the buttons. Sooyoung and Yerim in the back of their waiting room, going over the steps one last time. Even further in the back; Seungwan discussing something with one of their managers while warming her vocal cords.

Seulgi feels like she’s in the middle of a tornado, like she’s the eye of a big, all-consuming storm. Everyone moves about frantically. The waiting room is chaos around her; a cacophony of buzzing phones and loud voices and hushed whispers and Seungwan belting out a D6 in the corner. A clash of the vivid colors of their dresses and the white of the walls and the black that everyone else is dressed in.

Seulgi sits there, in the middle of all that, in her make-up chair, and sits there quietly and unmoving. All the business around her is reduced to a low humming in her ear and a soft haze of color around her. She hears nothing but the loud beating of her own heart against her ribs and she sees nothing but that girl in the mirror who is just as silent and still as she is.

Her stomach is a mess and if she’d move her hands up from her lap they’d be shaking and she thinks: is it? Is it really?

Then their name gets called through the speaker in the far left corner of the room and everything falls silent. Seulgi stands up from her chair and ignores the shaking of her hands and the dizzying feeling in her stomach. The hair-stylist pats her on the back.

‘C’mon,’ she says, ‘ready?’

Eight minutes later she’s standing on the stage, chest heaving and hands no longer shaky, and doesn’t even have to fake the smile on her lips. The noise around her is deafening; the fans screaming and their feet stomping loud against the floor and their hands clapping along to the same rhythm of their feet.

It really is, she thinks. There is nothing that I want more than this.

The fans yelling their names and yelling for more. The cameras zooming in on her face and the knowing that a hundred thousand more fans are watching at home. Yerim and Seungwan to her left, Sooyoung to her right, all just as breathless as her, all with those same big, blinding smiles. There really is no better feeling, Seulgi thinks, and there really isn’t.

It has always been like that; a dangerous pattern of highs that are so very high and lows that are so very low.

First it’s the nervousness in the waiting room; the not being able to eat because she’s so worried and the bile that rises up at the thought of messing up. Then it’s the stage; the fans calling for her and the feeling of being a god to them. At home it’s reading the comments and feeling so loved and so admired. Until it’s the crying and throwing up when she finds that one negative comment.

It’s a rhythm that is so very dangerous and Seulgi knows that it’s tearing her apart, but she knows that she could never stop, too. Because in the end this is still her biggest dream, the thing she’s worked for all her life. All of this still feels like it’s her purpose and she doesn’t think she could ever live with herself if she’d quit. She doesn’t think she could look that mirror-girl in the eye ever again.

‘I’ll tell her,’ Seulgi says. ‘When Irene asks again I’ll tell her that this is still what I want.’ The bathroom stays quiet around her and the girl in the mirror doesn’t answer, but when Seulgi smiles at her she smiles back that same exact smile.

+++

Three days later she tells Irene all that.

The older girl smiles at her and says: ‘I’m happy for you.’

But she doesn’t look all that happy and her smile fades as soon as the morning comes around.

+++

‘Do you know why I approached you?’ Irene asks one Tuesday morning.

It’s almost five already and light is starting to pour in between the blinds and Seulgi should really be thinking about getting some sleep, because she’s got a schedule in the morning. Instead she thinks about how good Irene looks, in the hotel bed. Thinks about the soft glow of her skin in the morning light. Thinks about how much she wants to kiss her.

‘No,’ she says.

Irene smiles at her. It’s a soft little smile that has Seulgi’s heart singing in her chest. ‘You reminded me of myself.’

Seulgi her head in question and watches her through the strands of hair that fall in front of her eyes.

‘I used to be quite lost at those kinds events too, when I was younger.’

‘I wasn’t lost,’ Seulgi says, wanting to sound offended, but failing miserably. It’s because she can never get that love-sick, sugary tone out of her voice whenever she speaks to Irene.

‘Not literally lost, I mean, but like mentally a bit lost, if you know what I mean.’

‘I don’t.’

‘I mean that you looked like you didn’t really know what to do.’

‘Oh,’ Seulgi says. ‘Then I guess you’re right; I did feel a bit lost.’

‘I know,’ Irene explains. ‘Because I recognized it from when I was younger.’

‘You were lost at parties? Wouldn’t peg you for the type.’

Irene smiles again, and averts her eyes. She almost looks a bit bashful, but that’s an expression so unfitting for Irene. ‘I know,’ she says. ‘I’ve grown quite confident over the years-’

‘Well, it’s hard not to, with your face half over Korea and all over the TV.’

Irene pushes her back by the shoulder and huffs. ‘What I wanted to say is that I wasn’t always like that. When I started in the industry I was really shy. I had been pushed into the acting career by my parents, and I had actually never been really good at acting.’

‘But you were pretty enough?’

‘Yeah, that’s what they said. But at events I’d always feel kind of guilty because of all the girls who were probably better than me but hadn’t made it, because they weren’t as pretty, so I’d stand off to the side and quietly drink champagne.’

Seulgi looks at her and thinks about the image of a younger Irene, shy and self-blaming. It doesn’t fit with the image she has of the older woman right now, but somehow it still makes hurt bloom in her chest at the thought of Irene being sad.

‘What would you be,’ Seulgi asks, ‘if you w