in dreams

+++

The girl stands by the water much like any other night, the water sloshing around her ankles restless and blue. Her face is hidden by her hair and tonight her hair is purple and it waves about wild and untamed and a purple so deep it’s almost unreal.

When she turns around there’s a small smile curled around her lips. Her lipstick is purple too, or maybe her lips are, and her teeth are pearly white just like her skin.

Seulgi, she says, voice soft as velvet. I was waiting for you.

+++

There’s the hard mattress underneath her and there’s the small desk and the wardrobe and then there are the four blank walls surrounding her and that’s all there is and there’s nothing more to it. She’s trapped in a cage she has created for herself. A cheap apartment in the outskirts of Seoul worth little more than two hundred thousand Won a month, with a bed and a desk and a wardrobe for the belongings she doesn’t have.

Seulgi is her name, but she hasn’t heard that name in a long time and sometimes she forgets it herself. There’s no one to say it and there’s no one to tell it to, but her name is Seulgi and tonight she remembers. Some days she whispers it to the four walls surrounding her so she won’t forget the taste of her name and the sound of it in her apartment. So she doesn’t forget what talking feels like and how she’s supposed to do it.

Her life has been reduced to this; the four walls surrounding her and the whispering of her name to those four walls, but she’s not sure how it’s gotten to this point. Once it was different, of that she is sure. There’s proof in the pictures in her wallet, pictures of a life that feels longer ago than it actually is. One picture of herself in a group of her old friends, half of whom she’s forgotten the name. The second picture is herself on her graduation day along with her parents and brother, all of them wearing proud smiles.

There’s also the sole phone number left in her contact book. Son Seungwan. Seulgi knows her name but she doesn’t remember why she didn’t remove her phone number when she deleted all the others, years ago. Seungwan’s name she remembers but Seungwan has moved to a faraway country and lives in a nicer apartment and has a nicer job and maybe she’d be better off not remembering. She does, however, remember and perhaps that’s one of the cruellest jokes life has played on her; she remembers all that she wishes to forget and she forgets all that she wishes to remember.

Seulgi has a job, or at least that’s what she tells herself every night and every morning and sometimes at noon as well. In reality she hasn’t, or not yet at least. She writes. For the moment it’s a novel about a spaceman and his love for the moon but two weeks ago it was a different novel that she never finished and sometime in the near future this novel will probably be abandoned too.

It’s the curse of every artist; to never be satisfied with their own work. She writes and writes and writes and when she’s almost finished she deletes everything in a haze of disappointment and frustration. It’s a part of her life that she’s grown used to just as much as the desk and the wardrobe and the rest of her apartment.

She lives in that apartment but actually she doesn’t live anywhere at all. Nowhere that is real or tangible at least. She lives in her head, that’s the easiest way to explain it. She lives for her dreams and for a faraway future and she spends more time thinking about doing things than she spends actually doing them. Sometimes she doesn’t eat in days because she forgets that she hasn’t eaten in days. She thinks about going down to the little Japanese take-away on the corner of the streets and thinks about how the sushi would taste and then she can’t differentiate between dream and reality and doesn’t go down to that sushi bar and doesn’t eat anything at all and never really realizes it.

Sometimes she writes on her laptop and sometimes she just lies in her bed and thinks about all the things she could be doing instead. Often it’s hard to differentiate between the dreams and the reality, but when she dreams of Irene it never is.

+++

Irene stands by the water looking at her own feet and Seulgi watches her from a distance, her toes buried in the sand. Tonight Irene’s hair is orange like a beautiful sunset and it reminds her of the oranges in her mother’s garden. It reminds her of childhood and summer and she wonders what it smells like but dreams don’t have smell and she knows that too. The girl’s skin glows in the moonlight and maybe it would glow without the moonlight too but Seulgi can’t be sure.

It’s not long before Irene turns around and watches her and smiles that smile so bright it’s almost blinding. In her eyes the sun is disappearing into the sea and everything is aflame with the most beautiful colours.

Seulgi, she says. I’ve been waiting for you.

doesn’t open but the words are there and somehow Seulgi hears them and knows it’s Irene who said them.

‘Irene,’ Seulgi answers.

The waves make a soft noise when they splash against the beach and Irene’s ankles and there’s the sound of leaves rustling in the wind but Irene doesn’t answer. Instead she stretches out her hand and waits for Seulgi to take it and then pulls her along into the water.

Dreams don’t really feel like anything too. She wonders how Irene’s hand would feel in hers, if it’d be soft or rough, but she can’t actually feel anything at all. She’s always been good at imagining though, so tonight thinking about it is enough. The sea also doesn’t really feel like anything. She sees the water rippling around her legs but she doesn’t actually feel it and her feet don’t get wet and the little cut on her ankle doesn’t sting either.

She wonders if dreams have taste and she almost bows down to taste the water but decides against it when Irene looks at her. Instead she focuses her gaze straight ahead and watches this dream-world she’s created for herself. The sea stretches in front of her for as far as she can see and maybe even further. Everything is so blue; the sea and the sky above, and the blue is so deep and so bright and Seulgi wonders if the colour even exists outside of this made-up world.

‘Do you wanna swim?’ she asks. She asks this every night and she’s not sure if that’s because she wants to or because she has to anymore.

Irene nods and wades even deeper and Seulgi follows and watches the way Irene’s dress flows underwater in amazement. Nothing in here is like it is in the other world and the flowing of Irene’s dress is no exception. The dress flows like it would if Irene was standing on top of some windy mountain and not at all like it’s wet and underwater.

Gravity also works differently. Seulgi can’t swim in the real world but somehow here she floats in the water and she feels like she’d float away even higher if Irene would let go of her hand. But Irene doesn’t. Instead she pulls Seulgi along until they reach the place where sky and sea meet. After that there is nothing; a huge all-consuming darkness and nothing else. No lights and no colours and no sounds either.

‘What is down there?’ Seulgi asks like she does every other night.

Irene turns to her smiling and looking at her with big brown eyes and her orange hair flowing around them smelling like nothing at all. I don’t know, she says. There’s only one way to find out.

Seulgi grips her hand a little tighter and they move a little closer to the edge and watch the darkness below. Then Irene takes another step forward and pulls Seulgi along and then they’re falling. There’s only darkness and Irene’s hand in hers and they fall and fall and fall and don’t ever stop falling.

+++

When she wakes it’s in her own bed; gasping and clutching the sheets and still feeling like she’s falling.

+++

She’s dreamt of Irene for as long as she can remember. Since she was a little girl and maybe even before that. There have always been dreams that really mean nothing at all, dreams of mundane things and boring people that she forgets as soon as she wakes, and there have always been dreams of Irene. Those dreams she does remember. She’ll wake gasping in her bed with Irene’s wide eyes burnt into her eyelids and by noon she’ll still be thinking about her and by night she’ll lay in her bed waiting until Irene’s there again but it never works like that. Irene is only there on nights she doesn’t think about her. Never two nights in a row and never on nights where Seulgi cries wishing to see her again.

She lives for her dreams – in her dreams – and if it were possible she’d live there forever.

The outside world is hard and cold and lonely. In there Seulgi has her apartment with the four blank walls and the bed and the desk and the empty word document on her laptop but not much else and no one else. Irene says her name so beautifully and she’s the only person to still say it and maybe she’s the only person who Seulgi still has left in general.

In the beginning the dreams with Irene were different, that she still remembers. There were a lot more words and questions. Seulgi didn’t understand and desperately wanted to. She’d ask Irene where they were and who she was and what the purpose of such dream was but Irene had smiled at her and said she didn’t understand either.

Back then Irene didn’t have a name either. Seulgi had asked her and she had said that she only existed in the dream-world and that there was nobody there to call her by any name except Seulgi. So Seulgi gave her a name. Irene. It means peace in some old language she doesn’t know and she doesn’t remember how she found it but she remembers that she knew it was perfect from the moment she saw it. Irene means peace and Seulgi’s mind is restless all the time and she keeps on thinking and dreaming about things of a distant future and things that can’t ever be but when she’s with Irene it’s only ever the here-and-now of things. It somehow brings her peace. Sometimes she looks at Irene and gets lost in looking at her and for once her brain is silent and for once she actually does and doesn’t just think about doing.

Irene is perfection, or maybe she could be if she were real. It’s her only flaw; that she isn’t real and can’t ever be.

+++

One morning Seulgi wakes up in the launderette downstairs in her apartment complex. She doesn’t quite know how she ended up there but she knows that she’s there and she knows that this is real and not a dream. She was just lost in all the hidden corners and crooks of her mind, thinking about Irene from the night before and thinking about the novel she’s writing, and then suddenly the door of the laundromat slammed close and she was pulled back to the real world and realised where she was.

She listens to the shuffling of feet behind her and she watches all the blue and yellow and red of her clothes twirl around in the washing machine. The colours move so quickly that they become a blue-yellow-red haze and the edges of the colours blur together and Seulgi watches and gets dizzy but keeps watching. She thinks about taking a picture and thinks about how beautiful the picture would be but stays seated and doesn’t do anything else but watching the haze of colours twirl round and round.

The person who’s inside with her sits down onto the chair next to her and Seulgi blinks and keeps her eyes trained on the washing machine and wonders why this person is sat next to her when the laundromat is completely empty except for the both of them and there are still multiple other chairs free.

The stranger smells of coffee and cinnamon and Seulgi thinks about the cinnamon cakes her mother used to bake and wonders how long it’s been since she’s eaten anything. When the stranger sighs overdramatically and obnoxiously loud she turns to her left and looks at them.

A girl with fluorescent pink hair and make-up in a shade of pink that’s even brighter than her hair is seated next to her. She lulls her head back against the chair and slumps downwards sighing again. Seulgi thinks she might want her to say something but it’s been so long since she’s had any real human contact and she doesn’t know what she could possibly say.

‘God,’ the girl says, stretching her hands out above her head and yawning. ‘I hate Mondays.’

Seulgi nods in agreement even though she had no idea it was Monday. Her days all consist of the same pattern that isn’t really a pattern at all; she lies in her bed and thinks and sometimes she writes but most of the times she just lies there wasting the days away. Sometimes whole weeks go by without her even noticing. When her dreams are of the bland kind, the kind without Irene in it, her nights are much the same as her days and then everything becomes a big blur of just lying there. Her Mondays are the same as her Thursdays and her Saturdays but she hates them all so she’s not really lying either.

When Seulgi doesn’t answer the girl pulls her head upright again and watches her through long pink lashes with a pink-lipstick smile plastered onto her face. Seulgi watches her back; her smile and her pink hair and the mischief in her big eyes. She reminds her of Irene in a way. Then her eyes travel downwards over the girl’s pink leather overall with a silver glitter belt around the waist and silver glitter straps around the legs and hips. She looks like she came out of some science-fiction action movie that takes place somewhere in a faraway future. Something alien-esc that reminds Seulgi of the novel she’s supposed to be writing about the spaceman with his love for the moon.

The girl notices her staring and smirks dangerously. ‘This,’ she says, pointing to her outfit. ‘This is fashion.’ Then she points to Seulgi’s chest and arches both of her eyebrows. ‘That is not. That’s your pyjamas.’

Seulgi looks downwards and realizes she’s indeed wearing her pyjamas. Except they’re not really pyjamas because she doesn’t really differ between day and night and sometimes wears them weeks on end. Today she’s wearing beige pyjamas with Mickey Mouse’s head sewed onto her chest and her pants printed with his face too. She’s also wearing white fluffy slippers that are now not so white anymore.

‘Oh,’ she says, and that’s all she says because she doesn’t know what else to say about this. She wonders how long she’s been sitting here because she doesn’t remember coming here and she doesn’t remember ever owning Mickey Mouse pyjamas and she wonders what else she doesn’t remember.

The pink-overall girl steps forward and loads her own bag of clothes into the washing machine next to Seulgi’s and Seulgi watches her do so. The girl’s clothes are all in various shades of pink and purple and they’re all just as obnoxious and eye-catching as the ones she’s wearing now. There’s even one pair of pants that’s entirely made out of little glittery 2d disco balls and a pair of thigh-length leather boots that are the same shade of pink as her hair. Seulgi wonders if you’re supposed to put boots like that in a washing machine. She doesn’t think so but she doesn’t know how to say that either so she keeps shut and watches as the boots disappear into the dark hole of the washing machine along with the other clothes.

‘It’s okay,’ the girl says when she sits back down. For a moment Seulgi thinks she’s talking about the boots and sighs in relief, but then she notices the girl’s gaze is aimed at her pyjamas again. ‘I get it, and, honestly, I kinda admire you for it.’

‘Oh,’ Seulgi says, not at all understanding what is going on. ‘Thank you.’

‘This is a statement you’re making,’ the girl says, ‘That’s really brave. You’re a little rebellious, I like that.’ Seulgi has never, ever been rebellious. Not even a tad. She’s always been more of a keep-your-mouth-shut-and-blend-into-the-crowd kinda girl. ‘I myself would never dare to do what you’re doing, and I don’t know a whole lot of people who would.’

‘Huh?’

The girl frowns at her. ‘Wearing your pyjamas in public, just to show you don’t care about what other people think. I could never do it, I don’t like getting too much attention from strangers,’ she says.

Seulgi watches the bright pink of the girl’s make-up and her overalls and looks at the glitter disco-balls pants twirling around in the washing machine and then looks back at the girl. She must be crazy. She must be absolutely bat crazy because Seulgi’s sure that if they were to cross the street right now her pyjamas would seem very normal next to this girl.

Instead of saying all that she says: ‘Thank you’ and focuses her eyes back on the washing machine.

A smile crosses the girl’s pink lips and then she sticks out her hand and Seulgi notices her nails are bright pink too. ‘Yerim,’ she says, ‘Kim Yerim, but you can call me Yeri.’

‘Kang Seulgi,’ Seulgi says, shaking her hand.

Then the little beep-beep announcing that her clothes are finished resounds and Seulgi stands up and puts her clothes in a big plastic bag and smiles at Yerim one last time before walking through the doors and up to her apartment.

That night she lies on the hard mattress of her bed in her Mickey Mouse pyjamas and wonders if Kim Yerim is real or if she was a dream too.

+++

‘Irene?’

They’re standing on the beach again and Seulgi stares in front of her but she’s not really staring at anything at all. Irene’s hand is in her own and the only way she knows that is because she took it herself and not because she can feel it because she can’t. Irene looks at her and smiles. This time her hair is a minty colour and Seulgi wonders if that’s what it smells like too.

‘What do you do when I’m not here?’

What? Irene watches her through long mint green lashes and her smile doesn’t leave her face for even one moment.

‘When I’m not dreaming of you,’ Seulgi repeats, ‘what do you do then?’

Irene watches her with that same smile on her green lips and Seulgi wonders if the smile ever leaves her face. If she’s physically able to stop smiling. She doesn’t think she’s ever seen Irene without the smile before.

I don’t know, she says. I am your dream, this is my sole purpose. I don’t think there’s anything for me to do when you’re not here.

‘You don’t think so?’

No, I don’t.

‘So what? You just sit here and wait?’

She shrugs but keeps on smiling. Not really. I only exist in here. When you’re gone I am too.

Seulgi sighs and wonders why she ever even bothered to ask. If she kept shut she could still be pretending that all of this is real and not just some bizarre illusion that she’s created as a distraction from reality. That Irene’s real and not just a friend she made up for herself because she needed one.

‘So you’re not real? You’re just a dream?’

Of course, Irene says, smiling like that’s a good thing and not at all like it’s ripping Seulgi apart by her very threads.

+++

Seulgi’s just balancing on the thin line between lying on top of her sheets thinking about nothing at all and lying on top of her sheets dreaming of nothing at all, when there’s a knock on her door. For a minute she stays in bed and blinks up at the ceiling and wonders if she didn’t just dream that up. Then there’s another knock and she sits up and watches the door and thinks about all the people who could be knocking on her door but comes up with no one at all.

‘Oh,’ she says when she opens the door and Yerim is smiling back at her with her lips coloured bright purple. She’s wearing a dress made entirely of little silver rings that reminds her of a medieval chainmail. The smile on her lips falters slightly when Seulgi doesn’t say anything else and for a moment Seulgi fears she’ll turn around and go back to wherever she came from.

Then Yerim arches an eyebrow and asks: ‘You do remember me, don’t you?’

Seulgi nods and says: ‘I thought you were a dream.’

‘A dream?’

‘Yeah,’ Seulgi says, still standing in the doorstep watching Yerim in amazement, wondering if this is real. ‘You’re not, right?’

Yerim throws her head back and the sound of her laugh echoes through the whole of the hallway and Seulgi checks if anybody’s watching them but the hallway is empty and she supposes if there were people they wouldn’t care anyway.

‘You’re funny,’ Yerim says when she’s calmed down enough to say that.

‘Thank you,’ Seulgi answers, not knowing what else she’s supposed to say because it wasn’t meant to be funny at all. ‘Come in.’ Yerim enters her apartment and when she does her chainmail dress makes so much noise Seulgi thinks even her neighbours can hear.

‘Nice apartment,’ Yerim says looking at her bed and her desk and her wardrobe and the empty walls.

‘Thank you,’ Seulgi answers.

‘Have you eaten already?’

‘What?’

‘Have you eaten already,’ Yerim asks again. ‘It’s almost nine already.’

Seulgi thinks about it and thinks long and hard but she only remembers things she’s not supposed to remember. She’s not sure if she’s had dinner already and she doesn’t know if she’s had breakfast in the morning and she also doesn’t remember if she has eaten anything yesterday or the day before that.

‘No,’ she says, ‘I don’t think so.’

‘Nice,’ Yerim says. ‘I have, but I’m really hungry again and I know a real good hamburger place. You like hamburgers, don’t you?’

Seulgi nods even though she doesn’t know how long it’s been since she’s eaten a hamburger and doesn’t quite remember what a hamburger is supposed to taste like.

‘You can wear your pyjamas if you want, I don’t mind. I actually think it’s kinda cool.’

Seulgi nods and says: ‘I will,’ because she has no idea how to tell Yerim that she was only wearing them because she didn’t even realize she was wearing them and not because she’s some inspiring fashion rebel.

+++

They go to a place two streets away from her apartment block that smells of grease and of not much else. Yerim orders an extra-deluxe double burger and Seulgi wonders how that will ever fit inside a girl as small as Yerim but she doesn’t say this. She orders a Manhattan burger and a prosciutto salad even though she has no idea what either of them are.

‘I’ll pay,’ Yerim says, already taking out her card although the burgers haven’t even arrived yet.

‘Thank you, Yerim.’

‘Yeri.’

‘What?’

‘Call me Yeri,’ Yerim says.

‘Okay, Yeri.’

‘It’s my stage name,’ she explains.

‘Stage name?’

‘Yeah,’ she says, smiling proudly and twirling a strand of pink hair around her finger. ‘I’m a singer-songwriter and performer. I’m kinda famous. Or I’ll soon be. Look!’ Then she takes out her phone and types something and shows Seulgi a youtube video of herself singing and dancing to a song Seulgi doesn’t recognize. The video has a total of two-hundred and five views and twenty-nine likes and the quality of it is so bad Seulgi doesn’t even see half of the dancing, and the singing comes out broken and whizzing.

‘Wow,’ Seulgi says. ‘You’re really talented.’

‘Thank you,’ Yeri says, smiling so big Seulgi fears her cheeks will burst. ‘For now I’m only performing in local clubs but I’m sure soon I’ll get bigger invites. One day I’ll be standing on the stage of Tomorrowland, I promise you.’ Then she leans forward over the table and whispers: ‘don’t worry, I’ll get you free passes.’

Seulgi smiles at her and says; ‘thank you,’ but she knows she won’t ever go to Tomorrow land and she also knows Yeri won’t ever perform there.

‘So,’ Yeri then asks, drawing out the o. ‘What do you do?’

‘What do I do?’

‘Yeah, for a living.’

Seulgi shrugs. ‘I write.’

‘You’re an author?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Wow,’ Yeri says. ‘Really?’

‘No,’ she answers, ‘not yet anyways, but I’m almost finished with my first novel.’

‘Really? What’s it about?’

Seulgi shrugs and takes a sip of her diet coke. ‘A spaceman,’ she says.

‘A spaceman?’

‘Yeah, a spaceman who falls in love with the moon.’

Yerim throws her head back and laughs and somewhere in the back of the burger tent a woman turns to them and scowls.

‘The moon,’ Yeri chokes out. ‘Who the hell falls in love with the moon? That’s just plain sad. That’s one sad spaceman you’re writing about.’

‘It’s not like he really falls in love with the moon,’ Seulgi says, watching as Yeri tries to hold back her laughter and fails. ‘He just kinda falls in love with being there.’

‘Oh?’

‘Yeah, when he comes back to earth it just doesn’t feel right anymore, doesn’t feel like a home anymore, and he realizes he needs to go back.’

‘What happens then? You can’t live on the moon, can you?’

Seulgi shrugs. ‘He dies,’ she says.

‘What? He just dies?’

‘Yeah, you can’t live on the moon but he can’t live without it either, so he goes and dies there.’

‘On the moon?’ Yeri asks.

‘On the moon.’

‘Wow,’ she says. ‘That’s one super-duper sad spaceman you’re writing about.’

Then the burgers arrive and Yeri doesn’t say anything else anymore. Seulgi takes a small bite of her burger and watches as Yeri wolfs hers down in less than five minutes and wonders how she still manages to look so thin.

When they’re finished they walk back to the apartment block, Yeri in her chainmail dress and Seulgi in pyjamas and slippers, and when they arrive Yeri smiles up at her through long pink lashes and kisses her cheek and says: ‘goodnight’.

That night when Seulgi lies in her bed again Kim Yerim is all she can think about until she opens her eyes and finds Irene and a sea so blue it almost hurts to look at.

+++

Irene looks at the sea in front of them with a yellow smile on her lips and her hair waves around them all wild and yellow and Seulgi wonders if it’d taste like lemon or pineapple or maybe a combination of both.

‘What if it’s the other way around?’ Seulgi whispers. ‘Maybe this is real and the other world is the dream.’

Irene turns to her and says: maybe.

It’d make sense, she tells herself. Because in her apartment lying on her bed she’s not sure. Things happen and Seulgi never knows what’s real and what’s not. The things she thinks or dreams about are as vague and bland as the things that she actually does and none of it makes a lot of sense and she never really understands what’s in her head and what’s real. But with Irene it’s always clear. She knows that Irene is the dream, but maybe knowing that makes her real after all.

‘Perhaps I’ve been wrong since the beginning,’ she tells Irene. ‘Perhaps you’re real and the other place is the dream.’

Perhaps, Irene says.

Then she pulls Seulgi along into deep blue water that feels like nothing at all until they’ve reached that place where everything ends and the huge dark nothingness begins. Seulgi stares but sees nothing but darkness and hears nothing but the rustling of the sea behind them.

‘What’s down there?’ she asks.

I don’t know. Only one way to find out.

Then Irene grins up at her and grasps her hand a little tighter and soon they’re falling and falling and falling until Seulgi wakes up to the cold of her apartment and the hardness of her mattress. It’s wishful thinking, she realizes. This is real and that is not and there’s nothing to do about it but live through the reality and wait for the dreams and cry.

+++

On Thursday she’s going out with Yerim. She’s not sure how it happened, her head is full of different possible scenarios but she doesn’t remember which of them is the real one and which are the ones she dreamt up. At first she thought all of it was fake; the thought of anybody asking her out is mad already but the thought of her agreeing is absolutely bonkers. Maybe she’s also still not entirely convinced of Yerim’s existence.

It’s weird, surreal even. Yerim is standing there in her doorstep waving a bottle of some sort of alcohol. Seulgi can smell the lavender of her perfume and she can name the exact shade of pink of her lashes and if she’d reach out she’d be able to feel the leather of her pink jacket but still none of it feels real.

The logical part of her knows it is. She’s been seeing way too much of Yerim and her 80s disco outfits for it to be mere dreams. She can smell her and dreams never smell of anything. The logical part knows all that but Seulgi has always been more guided by instinct and feeling and the logical part of her is rather small and hidden somewhere behind all the other irrational crap in her mind.

It is real but it doesn’t feel so at all. She’s so numb to it. She’s here with Yerim, she could touch her if she’d want to, but her mind is far away. It feels like she’s watching through a hazy, distorted lens. Like she has no control over anything that’s happening. She doesn’t want to go out and she’d never agree to such thing but Yerim is here and Seulgi is already pulling on her boots and the shirt of her Mickey Mouse pyjamas.

‘You look great,’ Yerim says, winking at her through her obnoxiously big, fake glasses.

Seulgi wonders if Yerim is blind, stupid or just has a thing for young women who look like they’ve just slept through the last few months but somehow still manage to be tired to the point of actually being dead. Maybe it’s the glasses. It must be, Yerim’s eyes do look a bit too big and a tad too round through them.

They take the underground to wherever Yerim is taking her and Yerim tells her the entire story of how she once accidentally hacked the South-Korean government and Seulgi nods every once in a while but actually she’s not listening at all. They’re sitting opposite one of the big windows and in the darkness of Seoul underground all Seulgi sees is their reflection. It’s displayed right there, all big and clear and so brutally real, and now there is no escaping it anymore.

The Seulgi in the reflection looks right back at her with small glazy eyes and real Seulgi wonders if she has always seemed this dead. She reminds herself of the houseplant she used to own when she was fourteen, she had always known it was alive, third grade biology taught her that, but there wasn’t ever any actual evidence proving so.

It’s painstakingly obvious against the bright pink of Yerim’s jacket and the fluorescent yellow of her leggings but even in between all the other strangers on the eleven o’clock underground it’s visible. They’re all busy watching their phone screens or reading the newspaper or conversing in low, hushed tones and she’s just sitting there doing absolutely nothing at all, looking like a potted plant.

The worst thing is that she knows all that but somehow she doesn’t even care, her eyes are still so void of emotion in her reflection, so empty, and she still feels so numb to everything around her. She cries over things that aren’t real, over a girl that exists only in a world she made up herself, and now she knows her real life is falling apart and she can’t even bring herself to care.

Seulgi wonders if any of the other people notice this and if they even notice her at all. Maybe she looks lifeless enough and they just assume she’s part of the décor and not real at all. Maybe they really think she’s a potted plant that is alive but isn’t really.

+++

The club is loud and hot and filled to the brim with strangers, all dancing and yelling and pouring drink after drink down their throat. Seulgi’s Mickey Mouse shirt is sticking to her skin and her ears kind of hurt and once she would have run to the nearest bathroom and locked herself in, but now she just stands there and lets her shirt stick to her skin and lets her ears hurt.

There are a lot of lights, flashing quick and to the beat of the song that’s playing, changing from blue to purple to red. Seulgi sticks out her arms and watches as her skin changes from blue to purple to red. There’s smoke too, flashing the same colours as the lights. Seulgi breathes the smoke in and for a minute she thinks that maybe it’s poisonous but she keeps breathing it in anyways.

She looks around and wonders what is real here and what isn’t. Wonders if anything is real at all.

It’s only when there’s a tap on her shoulder and Yerim says: ‘I’m back’ that she notices Yerim was ever gone at all.

‘Hi,’ she says, wondering how much time has passed and what else she doesn’t remember or didn’t notice.

‘This is the friend I was telling you about just before.’ Yerim points at a tall woman with long, silky hair and a dress that is so glittery it hurts to look at.

Seulgi doesn’t remember anything Yerim said all evening and she doesn’t remember anything about a friend either. ‘Hi Samantha,’ she says, shaking definitely-not-Samantha’s hand.

‘Joy,’ the woman says.

‘Sooyoung,’ Yerim says.

Seulgi moves her gaze between the two of them and frowns.

Joy/Sooyoung shrugs and says: ‘Sorry, Joy is my stage name. Habit, I guess.’

‘Oh, stage name. Are you a colleague of Yerim?’

‘Colleague?’

‘Yeah,’ Seulgi says, ‘A singer-songwriter. A performer.’

Sooyoung chuckles. ‘No, but kind of. I’m a stripper.’

‘A stripper?’

‘Yeah, I strip. In front of fat, old men with way too much money. I’m kind of high-class, you know.’

‘Oh,’ Seulgi says. She doesn’t say anything else because she’s never met a stripper and no one has ever told her how to properly communicate with a high-class stripper.

Sooyoung doesn’t seem to mind her lack of knowledge on stripper etiquette because she’s pulling both her and Yerim into the mass of people and yelling: ‘let’s dance!’

It’s been a long time since Seulgi last danced and she has forgotten how to so in the beginning it’s a bit stiff and unnatural. Sooyoung tells her she looks like a dancing mackerel and Yerim whispers she digs the rebellious dance moves. Then suddenly there’s an empty glass in her hand and things go a lot better. After a second and third drink Sooyoung even upgrades her status to dancing meerkat. Seulgi doesn’t know what a meerkat is but it sounds a lot better than mackerel so she doesn’t object.

+++

It’s four am and Seulgi stands in the middle of the dancefloor and watches as everything spins around her. She’s stopped dancing by now. The relation between dancing ability and alcohol is a parabola and Seulgi has far since passed the top. Her legs don’t really work anymore and all she can do is sway a bit and look around with unfocused eyes.

Suddenly Yerim is there looking up at her with glazed over eyes and a smile coated in alcohol. ‘Hi,’ she drawls. ‘Hii Ssseullgi.’

Seulgi tries to smile back at her but her face doesn’t work the way it should anymore either. Yerim doesn’t seem to mind because she’s pulling her into a big, uncomfortable hug. Seulgi feels like she’s suffocating so she tries to push Yerim away a little but the alcohol messes everything up and instead she accidentally grabs Yerim’s left .

Yerim pulls away and stares at her and for a moment Seulgi is glad she d the younger girl’s if it means she finally gets to breathe again. Her happiness lasts a total of three seconds and six nanoseconds because then suddenly Yerim is pulling her closer by the collar and slamming their noses, teeth and chins together in something Seulgi assumes was supposed to be a kiss.

She’s not sure how you kindly tell someone to get their tongue out of your mouth, so she doesn’t try. It’s not too bad anyways; Yerim tastes of strawberry-and-milk lollypops and Seulgi loves strawberry-and-milk lollypops.

+++

Seulgi opens her eyes when the sunlight starts burning through her eyelids. There are hazy images and noises in her head; something about Yerim and a stripper and strawberry-and-milk lollypops, but she’s had weirder dreams and her head is hurting too much to worry about anything else.

It’s only when she turns to her left to escape the sunlight, just when she’s about to close her eyes again, that she finds the lump on the floor that is Kim Yerim. Her eyelids hover between open and closed and her pupils settle onto the steady rising of Yerim’s chest. She’s not dead, that’s a beginning.

Seulgi finds herself wishing that this is all a dream, desperately wishing that all of yesterday was a product of her imagination too, but then there’s a small weft of Yerim’s lavender perfume hitting her nose and it’s game over to all her wishful thinking.

+++

She finishes her novel sometime the next week and she has no clue how. The last days are one big haze in her head. She knows she’s finished the novel because the words THE END are blinking back at her from the screen of her laptop, but she doesn’t know when she did that or how long she stayed awake for it.

Half of her wants to reread the novel because she has no idea what she wrote and if it’s decent enough to publish, but she’s tired like she’s never been before so she neglects that half of her. She’s half asleep already by the time she’s writing the e-mail to all the editors in Seoul and when her finger hits the send button she falls into her bed with Irene’s name already on her lips.

+++

She wakes to the soft crashing of waves against the shore but actually she doesn’t wake at all because this is a dream and in dreams no one is ever awake. So she falls asleep to the soft crashing of waves against the shore instead and finds a girl with hair soft and pink like cherry blossoms.

Irene is standing by the sea as she always is and Seulgi waits for her in the sand and waits for a long time before Irene finally turns around and looks at her. She stretches her lips in a pretty pink smile and in her eyes pink clouds are twirling round and round. Seulgi is rendered breathless for a while but it’s okay because in dreams you need nothing but imagination.

‘There’s something wrong with me,’ she says.

Irene smiles at her and says: it’s okay, don’t worry. She says it like it really is, like everything is really okay, but Seulgi knows that if she said her house was on fire Irene’s response would be much the same. Everything will always be okay in this no-consequence world, but nothing ever is in the real thing.

‘No,’ she says, trying not to sound too desperate. ‘You don’t understand. There’s really something terribly wrong with me.’

Irene shakes her head and takes her hand and pulls her into the crystal blue water. come, let’s swim, she says, without ever opening .

Seulgi shakes her head and plants her feet in the sand. She doesn’t want to swim and she doesn’t want to fall and she doesn’t ever want to wake up.

What’s wrong then?

‘I don’t know,’ she says, honest and raw. ‘I just-’

You just what?

‘I don’t understand either.’

Irene her head in question but the smile doesn’t ever leave her lips. Understand what?

Seulgi’s not quite sure what happens next, but suddenly her hands are wrapped around the pale porcelain of Irene’s neck and their lips are pressed together in a kiss that feels much too real for what it actually is – nothing but a dream.

Irene tastes like nothing at all but Seulgi pretends there’s cotton candy and strawberries and a pinch of honey. She thinks about how soft Irene’s lips would be if she could actually feel anything at all, and when she buries her fingertips in Irene’s cherry-blossom hair she imagines the smell of sweet roses and lavender. They part with heavy breaths and Seulgi’s heart is beating against her ribcage like it never has before.

Oh, Irene whispers, and for the first time ever her lips are pressed tightly together in something aching to a frown. Two little cherry blossom flowers flutter downwards on the soft breeze that blows around them.

Seulgi wants to cry and laugh and scream all at once. Instead she pulls Irene closer by the silk of her dress and wraps her in a hug she promises herself to never let go off. ‘You,’ she whispers into the pink of Irene’s hair.

Me?

‘Yeah, you are what’s wrong with me.’

Seulgi waits for a long time but Irene doesn’t say anything else, perhaps because she doesn’t want to say anything else or perhaps because there’s nothing else to be said. Maybe this is the truth and they just have to accept that.

‘Someone kissed me,’ she says. ‘In the real world. A girl kissed me and she tasted like lollipops and smelled of lavender but I felt nothing at all.’

Irene struggles against the tightness of her embrace but Seulgi is afraid she’ll float away if she ever lets her go. Afraid she’ll disappear and never come back.

‘When I kissed you I felt so many things. Too much almost.’ Tears are falling from her cheeks onto Irene’s pale shoulders but she pretends they’re not. ‘And you’re not even real. You taste of nothing and you smell of nothing and when I touch you I can’t feel anything either. That’s what’s wrong with me. You.’

Seulgi, Irene says, and it sounds so unlike her, so breakable and desperate, that Seulgi has to let go of her and look her in the eye. Cherry blossom leaves are twirling all around her and in between all the pink she looks even more surreal than she usually does. The clouds in her eyes are dark and chaotic and Seulgi has to take a step back. Let’s go swimming, Irene says.

‘I don’t want to.’

You have to. You have to go. She sounds desperate and afraid and a tad sad too.

‘But I don’t want to. I don’t ever want to go.’

I know, Irene whispers and then she’s pulling Seulgi closer and closer and closer and the last thing Seulgi sees before their lips meet again is the despair in Irene’s stormy eyes.

+++

Seulgi sits in the warm sand and watches Irene’s restlessness from afar. The girl is standing by the water like she always is, but this night it’s different. This night she’s not standing there calm and smiling. This night she’s not Irene but some version of her that’s more rigidness and chaos and restlessness. Somehow like this she seems more real, too.

She’s not sure how long she’s been here already but she knows it’s been way longer than she has ever been here before. She knows they’ve kissed a lot and they’ve swam and they’ve sat together and watched the sea and she doesn’t really want to know or think about anything else.

‘What are you doing?’ Seulgi asks because she’s afraid Irene will stay silent and rigid if she doesn’t ask anything. Not because she’s tired of looking at her. She could never be.

I’m waiting, Irene says.

‘For what?’

Irene finally turns around but when she does so she’s not smiling or looking at Seulgi like there’s no one and nothing else in the world. She’s glaring at her with eyes that are so very dangerous that they don’t seem like Irene’s at all and pink cherry blossom petals are twirling all around her. She’s a pink storm and Seulgi feels as if she’s going to be torn apart by her.

For you to go, Irene says. Her lips stay shut tight.

‘But I don’t want to.’

You have to.

‘Why?’ Seulgi asks. She prays that she doesn’t sound too heartbroken but she knows all prayers are futile in this case.

You’ve been here for way too long already, Irene says without actually saying anything at all.

‘That’s okay,’ Seulgi says. ‘I don’t mind.’

No, it isn’t. You need other things. Real things.

‘This is a dream. I don’t need anything real. Just you.’

Irene laughs but it sounds hollow and cold and not like laughing should at all. It’s all teeth and no humour. Just me, she says. Just me.

Seulgi waits for her to say something else, anything else, but her lips stay sealed together and all she hears is the rustling of leaves and the sloshing of the sea. Irene takes her hand and pulls her upright and into the deep blue of the sea.

‘I’m not falling,’ Seulgi says. ‘I’m really not.’

I know, Irene’s voice sounds in her head as they wade deeper. We’re not falling. We’re floating.

‘What?’

Irene’s fingers are pulling at her clothes and skin and guiding her deeper. Close your eyes, she says. Seulgi closes them without second thought. She feels Irene’s fingertips walking all over her, tracing and caressing and positioning her just like she wants to. Soon Seulgi is floating on the water only being held up by Irene’s hands on her and only being held down by Irene’s presence.

‘This is nice,’ Seulgi says, and it truly is. She doesn’t feel the water or Irene’s fingertips but she imagines them soft and cooling and so very nice.

Irene laughs and it’s still hollow and cold but a little less than her previous laugh.

I’m sorry, she whispers.

‘For what?’

For drowning you.

Seulgi opens her eyes and wants to say something but Irene’s fingertips are already wrapped around .

I’m sorry, Irene says again. I really am. And then she’s pushing at Seulgi’s throat until all Seulgi sees is the blue of the sea and the distorted image of Irene’s porcelain skin above her. She wants to stop her, wants to beg her, but her whole being is already being pulled downwards into a great dark nothingness. There’s Irene smile above her, vague and distorted and a little sad, and after that there’s nothing at all.

+++

She wakes to white walls and a white ceiling and a girl that seems familiar but whose name she can’t remember. There’s not much in the room besides the white of the walls and the ceiling. A potted plant on the windowsill and a chair and the girl that’s in the chair.

Seulgi looks at her from the bed and wonders where she knows this girl from. She remembers nothing but the fact that she knows her and that knowledge leaves her a little number than she already was.

‘Seulgi,’ the girl says, ‘you’re awake.’ Her blue eyes are curious and attentive and Seulgi thinks: I remember those eyes, I really do.

‘Yeah,’ she answers when her mind stays blank. ‘I am’.

The girl chuckles at that and shoves her chair a little closer to the bed. ‘I didn’t expect our reunion to be quite like this,’ she says, smiling to herself like this is quite funny. Seulgi watches her and thinks: I remember that smile, I really do.

‘Yeah, me neither,’ she says, because she doesn’t know what else to say, but actually she hadn’t expected anything. It’s kind of funny but her whole life is like that. She remembers little but the dreams so everything always comes to her so unexpectedly, so sudden.

‘Well, if I’m honest I didn’t actually expect to ever see you again.’ The girl says that like she knows exactly who Seulgi is and like Seulgi should too. Seulgi tries to remember like she’s never tried before but all she comes up with is: I know that smile and I know those eyes and I definitely know that voice. She doesn’t remember a name or a place or any sort of context.

The girl frowns worriedly and presses four warm fingers and a thumb around her wrist. ‘Are you okay?’ she asks, ‘Should I call someone?’

Seulgi shakes her head and pushes her heels into the mattress. ‘No,’ she says. ‘It’s okay. I’m fine, I- I just-’

‘You just?’

‘I just don’t remember you, is all. I’m sorry.’

‘Oh,’ the girl says. ‘It’s okay, you probably have some memory-loss or something. You’ve been asleep for a while.’

‘Yeah,’ Seulgi says, ‘probably’.

The girl moves her fingers away from Seulgi’s wrist since you don’t touch strangers like that and strangers are what they have now become, what Seulgi has now made of them. Seulgi kind of misses the warmth of her skin but she doesn’t know how to appropriately say that so she doesn’t.

‘I’m Seungwan, we went to high school together.’

‘Oh,’ Seulgi says. She does remember Seungwan, of course she does. She’s one of the girls in that picture in her wallet and she’s the sole number in her contact list. ‘I do remember you. We were best friends.’

‘Yeah,’ Seungwan says, smiling as if she’s remembering some good memory.

Seulgi doesn’t remember a lot and she’s not smiling either. ‘You’ve coloured your hair,’ she says instead. It’s true; in college her hair was dark but now it’s some honey blond colour. It suits her, Seulgi thinks, it really does.

‘Yeah, I did.’

‘Why?’

Seungwan shrugs and twirls a strand of hair in between her fingertips. ‘I’m not sure,’ she says, ‘I guess I wanted a change.’

‘Oh,’ Seulgi says, ‘oh.’

It’s quiet for a while then. Seungwan is fiddling her fingers and watching them like they’re the most interesting thing in this entire room, which maybe they are, and Seulgi watches her. She’s mentally comparing the woman in front of her to the girl in that picture in her wallet. Seungwan’s hair is not the only thing that’s changed. Her skin is a lot tanner and she’s also a lot skinnier than she used to be but the thing that’s changed the most is her aura. Less bright and energetic and more worn-out and blue.

‘Why are you here?’ Seulgi asks. ‘You moved back to Canada, didn’t you?’

Seungwan nods and lifts her gaze up from her fingers to settle on Seulgi again. ‘The hospital called me. They tried to reach your family but apparently I’m the only person who’s number you’ve got in your cell phone.’

That probably comes across really sad and Seulgi really hopes Seungwan doesn’t think she is, even though it might be the truth.

‘But why are you here?’

‘What?’

‘Why are you here?’

Seungwan frowns. ‘Well, I just told you. They called me when-’

‘No,’ Seulgi says. ‘I mean why did you come? You’ve probably got a really nice job and a real nice apartment back in Canada.’

Seungwan laughs to herself and shakes her head. ‘Not really. I mean my job’s good and all and it pays really well, but it doesn’t really make me happy. I was glad for the excuse to get out for a while, if I’m honest. Besides, you’re not doing too bad either, are you?’

‘Huh,’ Seulgi says, because her life is pretty much the epitome of bad.

‘Your book.’

‘What?’

‘Your book. The novel you wrote. I read it and it’s really good. A bit weird, but really good.’

‘I wrote a novel?’

Seungwan arches two eyebrows and looks at her like she’s gone absolutely mental, which she admittedly maybe has. ‘Yeah, you did. The Man Who Fell In Love With The Moon. You don’t remember?’

‘I do,’ Seulgi says. ‘I just didn’t know it was out already.’ That’s true. She remembers nights and days spent behind the screen of her laptop and she remembers sending the mail to the editors in Seoul but after that she remembers nothing but Irene.

‘How does it end?’ she asks.

‘What?’

‘My novel. How does it end?’

Seungwan gasps as if she’s just said the most ridiculous thing ever. ‘You don’t know the ending to your own book?’

Seulgi shrugs. ‘I forgot.’

‘Oh,’ Seungwan says. ‘Well. The spaceman goes to the moon one final time, but when the other astronauts go back he doesn’t. He just stays there and dies, but he doesn’t really mind because he loves the moon and if there’s any place he should die it’d be there.’

After that it’s awfully quiet. Seulgi turns around and watches the clouds outside and before she knows it her cheeks are wet with tears. It’s weird. It’s been a long time since she’s cried, so long she thought perhaps she couldn’t cry anymore, perhaps was too numb for it. For a moment she wonders if they are not real. If maybe they’re just a fragment of her imagination she made up to convince herself she’s more than a potted plant or an empty human shell. Then Seungwan is standing up and wiping her cheeks with worried eyes and Seulgi sighs in relief. Either they’re real or nothing here is.

‘What’s wrong?’ Seungwan asks, sounding awfully like her own mother. ‘Are you okay?’

‘It’s real,’ is all that Seulgi says. She watches Seungwan’s distorted image through the wetness of her tears and clutches the hem of her woollen sweater in between shaky fingers. ‘It’s all real.’

‘What?’

‘The novel. It’s real. I’m the spaceman.’ She sounds properly desperate and maybe that’s because this is true and she’s only now realizing it. She’s the spaceman, she really is. She wrote the whole novel about herself without ever knowing it and it’s perhaps the realest thing she’s ever done.

‘You’re in love with the moon?’

Seulgi shakes her head against the wetness of her pillow. ‘No,’ she says. ‘I’m in love with my dreams.’

+++

Seungwan flies back to Canada two days later and Seulgi moves to a different room where they run different tests on her and take all kinds of scans and blood-samples.

Yerim stumbles through her door a while later, wearing something that reminds her of cleaning gloves. She’s not sure how much later because time is a strange concept to her since every minute and every second are much the same and she’s always had trouble differentiating them from one another. But Yerim stumbles in some time later and Seulgi only has time to blink before she’s engulfed in the warmest, tightest hug ever.

‘You’re stupid,’ Yerim mumbles into her neck, her breathing warm and damp and making her shiver. ‘You’re so ing stupid.’ Seulgi doesn’t know why she’s stupid but she also doesn’t ask.

Yerim answers anyway. ‘You’re so incredibly stupid,’ she says. ‘I hadn’t seen you in almost three ing weeks. You never responded when I knocked on the door and you never came outside anymore and I was really ing worried.’ She grimaces at Seulgi. ‘So I did what every normal person would do, I broke into your apartment.’

‘What?’

‘Oh, don’t worry,’ Yerim says, patting Seulgi’s arm in a reassuring way. ‘Sooyoung has a past in lockpicking, we didn’t do any damage or anything. Anyways, I broke into your apartment and you were just sleeping peacefully, in your stupid Mickey Mouse pyjamas, but then I tried to wake you, and you wouldn’t wake up for the world. You slept for another whole week in the hospital. A whole week, Seulgi! And god knows how long you slept before that. How long did you?’

‘I don’t know,’ Seulgi says. ‘I was asleep.’

‘Anyways, doesn’t matter, I seriously thought you had taken some drugs or something, I don’t know, but they found no trace of anything in your blood. So what the hell did you do? It must be something really ing stupid.’

Seulgi shrugs. ‘I just fell asleep,’ she says.

Yerim takes her by the shoulders and stares at her in silence for a whole minute long before she bursts out laughing. It’s loud and unfiltered and bouncing off Seulgi’s walls and she’s wincing again.

‘That’s it,’ Yerim says. ‘You’re absolutely crazy. Totally mental. Bat. Koo-koo.’ She makes a twirling motion next to her temple. Then she moves her hands from Seulgi’s shoulders to her cheeks and squishes them. ‘I really want to kiss you again. Can I?’

Seulgi doesn’t really want to kiss Yerim but she also doesn’t mind, so she nods once and then closes her eyes and waits for the other girl to press their lips together. Yerim still tastes like cotton candy and Seulgi kisses her back harsh and fast and tries her very best to feel anything in her chest, but all she finds is the monotone beating of her heart and some more emptiness.

+++

Yerim leaves an hour later and is replaced by a doctor with a tiny moustache and calculating eyes that stare at her from behind thick, round glasses. The name card pinned onto his white doctor’s coat reads Mr. Lee. He asks her if she’s feeling alright and if she’s maybe a tad dizzy. Seulgi shakes her head yes and no when she’s supposed to.

The doctor, Mr. Lee, takes the stethoscope from around his neck and puts the headset in his ears. The cold metal of the chest-piece he presses against Seulgi’s skin. ‘Breathe in,’ he says, and Seulgi breathes in. ‘Now let go.’ She breathes out again and watches the doctor in quiet wonder.

‘Okay,’ he says. ‘That’s good. Steady.’

She now has the confirmation that at least she is real and not just an illusion someone else made up. She has a heart and it beats because this doctor just told her so. She’s the potted plant she used to own; alive just because her biology teacher once told her so.

‘What’s wrong with me,’ she asks Mr. Lee, looking up at him with big, curious eyes and trying to read the answer on his face.

He smiles at her and gives her a little shoulder pat and says: ‘Nothing. We ran some blood tests and took some scans, and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with you. Congratulations.’

Seulgi smiles at him and says thank you but inside she’s not smiling at all. Inside she’s screaming and roaring and so, so furious because this doctor just lied to her and nothing is right and everything is wrong with her.

‘You can go home,’ Mr. Lee says. He shakes her hand and then he’s out of the door and Seulgi is left alone again. She falls into the bed and watches the ceiling and wonders if this is maybe a midlife crisis that came early.

+++

Two stale coffees and an empty glass of lemonade. Seulgi sits with her hands folded in her lap and watches their drinks with feinted interest. Sooyoung sits across her staring with narrow and cold eyes and Seulgi pretends she doesn’t notice any of it. Yerim is somewhere at the bar ordering a bag of crisps.

‘Good coffee,’ she says. ‘Rich flavour.’

Sooyoung nods even though the cup stands untouched in between the both of them. Seulgi doesn’t have to taste the coffee to know it’s not good. They’re in the cafeteria of the hospital and in hospitals nothing is ever good.

‘Do you know why I like Yerim?’ Sooyoung asks. Before Seulgi can answer she’s already continuing. ‘Because she reminds me of myself in earlier days. She’s still so young, you know. So naïve and so blissfully unaware. She still believes she’s gonna end up a superstar, thinks she’s gonna be famous and rich and all that.’

‘Yeah,’ Seulgi says, not knowing what else there is to say.

‘So untainted by this harsh world, still convinced that this is a good world and that these are good people.’ She gestures around her to all the old people drinking soup out of paper cups with shaking hands. ‘Now I think you’re gonna be the one to finally taint her.’

‘Why me?’

Sooyoung shrugs. ‘You don’t really like Yerim like that, do you?’ she asks.

Seulgi’s not sure whether this is a situation where it’s better to tell the truth or lie so she says nothing at all and just watches Sooyoung from behind their steaming mugs.

‘You don’t dislike her, but you don’t like her either.’

Seulgi takes a sip of her coffee so she doesn’t have to answer. She was right; the coffee is really bad and tastes of not much besides the metallic taste of the thermos flask it was in.

‘I’m a stripper,’ Sooyoung continuous, and somewhere to their left an elderly lade scoffs scandalised, ‘I know every single expression of wanting someone, love and lust and all the in-betweens, but you’re always blank. It’s like you feel nothing for her, nothing at all.’

‘Sorry,’ Seulgi says, and she means that. If she could feel anything at all she’d be sorry right now.

‘It’s okay,’ Sooyoung comforts her. ‘If you wouldn’t taint her it’d be something or someone else. I don’t mind it being you.’

‘Why not?’

‘I don’t know. I kinda like you. You’re so quiet and emotionless, it’s like you’re barely there and it’s kind of hard to be angry at something that’s not really there.’

‘Oh,’ Seulgi says, not really sure whether that’s an insult or a compliment.

Then Yerim returns with a half-eaten bag of paprika crisps and a cola. She sits down beside Seulgi and presses a kiss against her cheek and all Seulgi can smell is the paprika of the crisps and that musty, tell-tale smell of hospitals and old people.

+++

She doesn’t see Irene again for what feels like whole months or maybe whole years or decades. Her novel is finished and Yerim is gone on some self-proclaimed tour - she’s really just performing in some low-life, shady clubs - so Seulgi is back to lying in her bed and thinking of nothing at all and waiting for Irene.

+++

She closes her eyes for three nanoseconds, and when she opens them again there’s rosy sand and bright blue water and a girl balancing on the shoreline.

Tonight Irene’s hair is some shade in between blue and grey and it falls down her shoulders in silky waterfalls. Seulgi watches it drip down her back and calves until the droplets disappear in the sand. She just stands there for a while, watching, and lets the emotions roar within her. She’s not used to feeling so many things and she thinks perhaps that’s the part she’s grown most addicted to; the feeling. In the real world she’s numb to everything.

The sea is angry today, Irene says. She doesn’t turn around and doesn’t open and Seulgi keeps her lips shut tight too.

The sea is angry today, it really is. The blue is a shade darker than it usually is and the waves are high and wild and everything turns and turns and turns into big dark whirlpools.

Seulgi is angry too, but she thinks perhaps Irene knows that and perhaps that’s exactly what she meant. She is this sea after all. She is this sea and this sand and this sky and everything else here. The sea is as much a part of her as everything here is, as much as Irene is. All her. All unreal, just products of her imagination.

‘Of course I am,’ she says.

Why?

Seulgi chuckles. ‘You drowned me,’ she whispers into the quiet of the dream. She knows Irene hears it anyways.

I didn’t. Irene finally turns around and watches Seulgi from the edge of the water. Her eyes are stormy whirlpools of dark, dangerous water. I didn’t, she says again. I didn’t drown you, I saved you.

Seulgi takes three steps forward. She has to. She’s not sure how or why but she absolutely has to. It’s something about the storm in Irene’s eyes that’s pulling her in. The whirlpools pulling her in deeper and deeper and soon she’ll be drowning. ‘I don’t need saving,’ she says.

You do.

‘From what then?’

Irene shrugs and takes Seulgi’s hands in hers and pulls her closer until they’re standing almost chest-to-chest. Seulgi can see every single detail of her. The storm in her eyes; every single droplet of water, the foaming and the whirling. She can almost hear it. Her hair still falls down her neck fizzing and bubbling and Seulgi can see the droplets splashing onto her own skin. She can almost feel them.

From me, Irene says.

‘You?’

Yeah.

‘Why?’

I’m too selfish, she says. I want you too much.

A waterdrop escapes from the storm in Irene’s eyes and trails down her cheeks and leaves a single tear track behind.

Seulgi leans forward to kiss her again. She wants to drown in her eyes and her touch and lips, wants to drown in the storm that is Irene. She wants that rush of emotions within her and that loud, hurried beating of her heart. She wants Irene to drown her, but not to save her.

Their lips touch for a split second, or not even that long, before Irene pushes her away and lies a single finger against her lips.

Seulgi, she says. I can’t.

Seulgi sighs and takes two steps backwards but doesn’t let go of Irene’s hands. ‘I’m not going to leave,’ she whispers. ‘I’m really not, I hope you know that.’

Irene shakes her head and the water spats everywhere. Onto their clothes and feet and onto the sand below. You have to. This is bad, don’t you understand?

‘Everything is already bad,’ Seulgi says.

No, you don’t understand, you’ll die.

‘I know,’ Seulgi says, trailing her fingertips up Irene’s cheek and imagining skin so soft and warm. ‘I know.’

You’ll die. You really will.

‘I’ve never felt alive, not really.’

No, Irene says, begging almost. No, you don’t understand.

‘I do. I can’t live here but I can’t live without you either. If there’s someplace I have to die I want it to be here. With you.’

Irene watches her and the storm in her eyes grows and grows and grows until it stops all together.

Okay, she says. Okay.

Seulgi smiles and reaches for her fingertips again. Her insides are all warm and fuzzy and her chest is spilling with emotion. Overflowing. ‘How?’ she asks.

Irene smiles back at her and takes her by the hand and into the darkness of the water. They wade deeper and deeper until they’re standing in the eye of the storm. The sea is angry; the waves are giants around them, pulling at their clothes and their hair and whispering harsh words in their ears.

Irene is the opposite. She smiles at Seulgi in a way that dims all the images and noises around them. All there is, is Irene and the sweet smile curling around her lips. The calm in her eyes.

‘What now?’ Seulgi asks.

Irene shrugs and pulls her closer by the back of her neck.

Now we drown.

Then she presses their lips together in a kiss that is so very passionate and bruising and real and she doesn’t stop kissing her until the water rises all around them and above them, until the waves consume them whole and there’s nothing left of the both of them.

Voila, finished! Thanks for reading, hope you guys enjoyed it, let me know what you think!

xxx - Daydreamz