Tears in the Rain.

Length: Short - Medium

Genre: Angst, Drama

Now Playing: The Weeknd - Tears in the Rain

Seulgi regrets all she has done, and all she has become.

Seulgi stood there for a very long time. It had started to rain just before six and it was coming down almost to a storm and in that moonless sky it looked fixed to start in thunder at any moment. It was falling from the rooftops and over the park railings and down over the hoods of the cars and on the corner of Fifth Street it had come over the neonboard signs and it was running from the gutters in long streams. It was raining still in Busan, in Daejeon. It was raining over all Korea.

She had been thoroughly soaked to the bone for almost an hour and it hurt to move in that bitter and frozen place but she didn't care anymore. She just stood there. Thinking and watching. How she had come so far and not really gone anywhere at all. How she had done so much without doing anything. How it had come to this. What her life had meant, had it any meaning at all? Her life's debts and its assets squared against one another. Her kaleidoscopic fate. Was there even such a thing?

She thought until it was dark and she could no longer think. She thought first of Irene. It was almost funny. The first thing she remembered of Irene wasn't her smile. Nor was it her sense of outward sensibility, the way she had so delicately balanced the public with the private, her silly jokes, her gimmicks and gags, what she had been away from straying eyes, how she would sit and pull stupid faces and make them both laugh and she would bound about full of life and energy, and she would stop and look at Seulgi and laugh and say sorry. I got carried away. I do that don't I? Nor was it her strange eating habits. The way she would pick only at the very minimum of her food. She would always order something separate whenever they went for meals with family or friends. She would always be different. It was none of that. In truth the first thought of Irene was of how strong she had always been.

It was of how she had always been the first one to look out for anyone. How she had always been there whenever someone needed her and sometimes when they didn't, too. And for Seulgi. How she had always been there for Seulgi. A shoulder to cry on, a friend in laughter and in tears equally so, her silent stoicism broken so gently, so effortlessly with Seulgi's touch, with her care, with their love for one another. She remembered that most of all. She remembered the way Irene would just watch her for hours on end without saying anything. She would just be there on the edge of the bed, or on the couch opposite, or sat by her in the library or in the park or in the cafe, and Seulgi would look at her and smile nervously and say what? What are you looking at? And Irene would just laugh at that. You. I'm looking at you.

That had been the calmest year of her life. In a way she wasn't quite sure she would have managed without Irene by her side and for that she was grateful perhaps most of all. Of all she could remember. Irene had grounded her. Kept her on her feet. Made sure she was never for want or she was never in trouble or never was too down. Always keep a smile on that face. You do that, Seulgi. You do that and the world can never hurt you. It can knock you down and it step all over you and it spit on you while you're there and so hell it will. It'll do that. But you just smile your way through it. You keep that damn smile on your face and you fight through it. You do that for me, Seulgi. You do that for me.

She still didn't know how she had survived that. When she had left. When she had taken her things and walked out that door and never looked back. You've lost it, Seulgi. You've gone off the rails. You need help. Can't keep living like this. You pick me or you pick no one at all, that's how this goes. And then she was gone and Seulgi couldn't quite believe it. Her rock, her anchor. Just like that. In a fleeting instant. That next month had been impossibly hard. Had she even come out of her room at all? Couldn't remember. Likely not. And then she had sobered up and stood on her own two feet and gone out there and made what it was into what it could be. What she truly wanted. And she had met Wendy that Fall.

Wendy had been good to her. Much too good for what she deserved. While she stood there in the rain watching the cold and black of the evening she remembered that with regret looming in her empty heart. She couldn't even remember how they had first met. Friend of a friend. Through their course or something. But they had and it had been instant. And Wendy had been too kind, that was her problem. She was too generous, too giving, too willing to please. Never hurt a soul, Wendy. Never could.

But Seulgi was too different. Too opposite. Too willing or perhaps in truth more ignorant to the pain she caused. To what she had done to Irene and what she was in those long days of Winter to do still to Wendy. But she never said anything. She smiled and she laughed and she cried all the same but she never raised her voice. Never said a damn word. She just took it all. All the lies and the excuses and the drugs and the drink and all Seulgi had done and all she had become and all she had saddled on Wendy, all she had taken from her. Not one word. Because I love you, Seulgi. Why can't you understand that? I love you for who you were when I met you. You're still that person. I love you for that. I really do.

She had ignored it. And for a while, that was okay. That was just okay. She had done her thing and she had ignored the growing distance between the two of them and she had, for a time, paid no attention at all. Not resentment. It was never resentment. Wendy didn't have a bad bone in her body. In those long days she would try harder to reconnect that love she had once shared with Seulgi. To reignite that burning flame. But it was no longer there. It had gone a long time ago and Seulgi had never even realised it. And when she came back that evening to find Wendy there in the living room crying she had no idea what to do, and when she had gone to hug her and Wendy had turned and pushed her away and wiped the tears from her eyes and sobered up and wiped down her face and told her we're done, we're through Seulgi, we're completely over, I can't take this anymore, I can't handle it, the only thing Seulgi had said in her supreme and appalling ignorance was: I don't understand. What's wrong? What's happened? What's gone wrong. And Wendy had said everything. All of it. I wish I had never met you. I would have been better off without you, Kang Seulgi. Do you know how much of my life I've given trying to love you? How much I wanted to be with you, to make something out of this. And you just spit in my face and throw it all out the window. Well I'm done. I can't do it any longer. I just can't. I love you but I can't.

Seulgi thought on that for a moment. She was the one. Of all of them, Wendy was the one. The one she shouldn't have let get away.

And in those months of that following year she had done what she had come to do so often in the months before. She had descended into a pit of sordid excitement from which there was almost no escape. And nobody had been there to offer her a hand. To tell her she needed to stop. There was no Irene and no Wendy. There was nobody.

That was when she had met Joy. Joy had come into her life like a perpetual storm. She had changed everything. It was if she could be herself while being with Joy at the same time. Unlike Irene, unlike Wendy. There was no change. And Joy had gone along with it. Joy had been there every step of the way, for good or for bad. Those hot months of Summer were the most memorable of her life. The burning passion they had shared for one another had been untenable. It had been a raw heat, a flame in the pit of her stomach, a rush of adrenaline pinned about her whole body. That rush had never stopped. She had treasured it always. Every touch of every hand, every kiss on the lips or the cheek or across her jawline, or over her neck or her s or down lower, every look they had stolen, every knowing smile or tiny glance or glint in their eyes, everything they had bared to each other that Summer, in those long evenings where the gardens smelled of honeydew and lemongrass and dust, the cool scarlet dusks side by side holding each other and laughing and smiling and drinking.

And it had gone from there. They had both gone down that path together. As she had before with Irene and with Wendy, but with Joy it all changed. Joy was there with her. Joy would do what she did, and they would laugh about it and they would indulge themselves utterly and they would do it because it was all alright, they were together and that was all that mattered, they had each other. They adjusted. Their love or lust or whatever it was and that Summer it had been so good, so perfect, except it truly hadn't at all, it had been insidious, it had been a sickness seeping into every pore of their beings, it had been a poison chalice and unknowingly they had both drank from it and drank deep they had, drank until they had finished the cup and gone again and drank and drank until that cup had overflowed. They had exposed themselves. They had done it all and more.

It didn't matter to Seulgi at all. It never had. Too caught up in her own emotions, in her wants and needs and her desires, her lust, her untenable, unstoppable fire, her cold and blackened heart. And slowly in those waning months it had come to light. What she had done. What they had done together. What had become of Joy. Of their love. Of what they been and what could not be put back. There was no more laughter between them, no more cool sunsets arm in arm, no more soft red cocktails by lemon breezes, no more sordid nights of by the cover of a pinchbeck dusk, no more stolen glances from across the room when they were both busy, no more youthful wanton need between them. It had become a parasite. An illness of the soul in both of them and Joy most of all. She had become a shell.

There was no life in her eyes in those months. Seulgi came very quickly to realise that there had not been for a long time. She had been gone for a while and Seulgi had not noticed, she had been too caught up in her own foolish wants, her own placeholder happiness, what she so desperately wanted but could never had, that peace of mind, a contentment of the heart and soul. And Joy had gone. If not in body then in spirit. She had gone a long time ago and Seulgi had not let her truly leave. She had kept her. A prisoner to her own deluded sense of what was good for her, what was good for both of them. She had been selfish. Should've let her leave, Seulgi. You should've let her leave when you had the chance. Shouldn't have tried to make her stay. Now what? Now what.

Because in those final months of that year, when the rains had come and then the snow and it had all been cold and soulless, Joy had faded away entirely. She had not been there any longer. She spent more time away, more time out, more time trying to find some small piece of herself that Seulgi hadn't destroyed, hadn't taken for her own awful selfish conquest. The drugs and the drinks and the and the violence. What had it all become. She remembered very vividly sitting on the rooftop of their apartment watching Joy sat by the other end looking out over the city. That face she would never forget. Pale and gaunt and distant. So very distant. A place she would not return from for a long time. That had been it. When she had come to the truth. Her own haunting truth. Oh God. I've gone too far. All of this. It's too much. I should've let you leave. I should've set you free. And I can't fix it. I've done too much to change. I've exposed myself. It would all be too late.

And it had been. Joy had left her and never looked back or even said goodbye and she had deserved it, every single minute of it, every long day of each endless month sat poring over old photos, old times they had spent together, happier times, polaroids and selfies filled with smiles of happiness. Smiles of Joy. Of a time gone that could never again be put right. That year had been unlike any other. She had told herself to change but in truth no change had amounted to much of anything. She had been the same entirely. All the casual , the sordid encounters, the drink and the drugs, the nights she couldn't remember and the nights she didn't want to. So many nights. All the same. All filled with regret. If only I could do it all differently. If only I could go back and change it and do this and do that and stop myself from doing that and rewind this part and say this and stop Irene from walking out and tell Wendy I love her and never meet Joy, never ruin her life entirely. If only.

But then Yeri had come along. Yeri so very unique. Younger than she was, different. Pure. Good. There was still good in her. They had immediately felt the connection. That much was obvious. And Seulgi had hid it so well. The poison that was eating away at her. The addiction to addiction. How she had for so long come to ruled by it. How it had almost killed her. For a while they had been perfect. She had been doting, she had cared for Yeri, she had loved her oh so much, and Yeri had done the same back, she had filled their afternoons with giddy laughter and bright smiles and a youthful exuberance, she had been the silly and comic foil that Seulgi much needed. She had been what Irene and Wendy and Joy could not.

She remembered vividly the times they had spent in the Spring walking together. It had been different from anything else. Hand in hand along the gardens and the banks and through the park over the bridges where below the trout in the ponds gleamed dacebright and slick. All season long. In cherryblossoms, in good light. They had talked of the future. Stupid as it was. They had talked about what Seulgi had never given much thought over. What she had been consumed by as to never mention it. They had talked of moving in together, of settling down. Of one day being something more. Silly talks. Idle conversations. But there had been something there. Something more.

And then she had ruined it. As she did with everything. It had never really stopped. It had been dormant. That insidious nature of hers. The manipulation, the lying. The one night stands and the cheating and the casualness she had gone about it all with. The drinking, the bottles hidden under the couch or in the basement or in plasticbags behind the bin when it was full so when Yeri came round she wouldn't be able to see them over the pizza boxes and empty crisp packets. And then it had spiralled out of control. And from that point Yeri hadn't mattered. She had been as insignificant as all who had come before her. She had been a nothing. A nonentity. And Seulgi had not even been aware of it. She had gone by oblivious to her own despicable behaviour, as she always had been. Only this time it had been much worse. Because Yeri couldn't or wouldn't stand for it like Wendy, and she wouldn't help her like Irene, and she wouldn't join her like Joy. She would just sit there watching, silent. She would sit there and Seulgi would look over and set down her bottle and see Yeri's face and for a moment, for however brief a second, she would feel her heart break. Because she realised in those seconds that she hadn't just taken the smile from Yeri's face for an afternoon. She had taken it permanently. She had taken her happiness. She had ruined her faith in all that was good. She had defiled her.

When Yeri walked out she didn't even register it. She went deeper and deeper still and for a long time didn't care. What was there to care about? She was gone just like the rest. Like the others had been. Faceless faces coming and going. It was better that way. One night stands and callgirls wouldn't ring back, they wouldn't get attached. They wouldn't sit there and watch her drink until she could barely move and they wouldn't cry while she threw up on herself and they wouldn't sit awake at night wondering if she was going to kill herself in a drug overdose or drink until her liver gave out and they wouldn't watch the ceiling and ask what had happened, what had gone wrong. You need help, Seulgi. You're not in a good way.

And as she stood in the road she thought on that for a long time. It felt interminable. The rain had not stopped. If anything it had picked up worse. She remembered them all now. She would remember them forever and she would regret all she had done and she would sit up at night or in moments of quiet self-reflection and she would think: What if I had not gone down that path? Would I have been any different? Would it have changed anything? And she found that she didn't know, she had no idea, because she very much had gone down that path and she would never know the alternative. She would never live through it again. It was gone and it was over and there was no salvaging it.

It was raining still all there and it would not stop. It was falling heavy on the cars and from the rooftops and in was running from the cherryblossoms in the park and it was running in streams through the gutters and down along the curbs and it was running still, in Busan, in Daejeon, where Irene was, where Wendy and Joy were, where Yeri had been. It was raining and it wouldn't ever stop. She stood there and she thought of all of them, of all the people she had met and the things she had seen and the things she had done and all the times she had spent and all the times she had never seen and all the times she wished she could get back, times she wished so terribly she could change, fates she could alter, fix, repair, make better, make right, and as she remembered those long Summer times and the nights in Spring and the cold days of Fall and the endless evenings of Winter she began to cry, and she would not stop for a long time, and in that moment she thought on everything her life had been up until that point and all she had come to regret or ever ever would.

Senseless, she thought. Pointless. Like tears in the rain.

Yeah. Like tears in the rain.