This Maze We Call the World.

Length: Long

Genre: Romance/Heavy Fluff

Now Playing: MONDO GROSSO - ラビリンス (Labyrinth)

Seulgi and Irene learn to laugh, love, and live together. A longing tale of what it means to be human.

The first time they had met had been in the hallway.

They had come out to hear the commotion. The old woman from across the hall had thrown a vase at her husband. She had missed. Nobody had seen this happen but they had all heard it, all twelve of them on that floor. But only Seulgi and Irene had come out. Neither knew her name nor did they know each other’s. They stood there beside each other on one side of the corridor listening to the racket and laughing like schoolchildren and when it had dimmed to a low murmur they stood still looking upon one another not quite knowing what to do or what to say. Seulgi leant against her doorframe, the cold ceiling light illuminate on her round and soft face.

‘They’re quite loud,’ she said.

Irene smiled. ‘Yeah. I’ve figured.’

‘Are you new? I don’t think I’ve seen you before.’

‘I moved in on Monday.’

‘Right.’

‘You?’

‘I’ve been here a month now.’

‘Really? What’s it like?’

‘It’s alright,’ Seulgi said.

‘Yeah?’

‘Yeah. It’s alright.’

‘Alright how?’

‘What?’

‘How’s it alright?’

‘Well. I don’t know. It’s just alright in the way things are, you know?’

And Irene smiled and brushed her hair back out of her face and laughed a shy laugh. ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘I think I do know.’

*  *  *

She came out on Saturday night with a bag of trash balled in one hand and a broken broom handle in the other, careful as to shut the door quietly behind her with one foot, stretching to accommodate the space, awkward and stilted, almost falling twice. The door next to hers was open. Irene was there watching her with a smile. Any indication as to why she was there was absent in that small and silent light. She just smiled.

‘Need some help?’ she said.

‘I’ll be alright.’

‘You sure?’

‘Yeah. Give me a sec.’

When she came back up Irene was still there. It was raining outside. She stood by the window with the rain falling behind her like a figure animate from a painting. Her hair was tied back. She played with her fingers nervously, the way a child does in front of a teacher, or perhaps a crush.

‘I didn’t want to make a noise,’ Seulgi said. ‘That’s why I was so clumsy.’

‘It’s alright. You didn’t. I was just on my way out for a walk.’

‘Right.’

‘But I don’t think I’ll go now. Since it’s raining.’

‘Yeah.’

‘I don’t mind the rain. I actually like it. I just don’t feel like walking, I mean.’

She made to brush her hair out of her face regardless of the fact she had tied it back and found nothing. Like a tic or something.

‘Well,’ she said. ‘I’ll see you around.’

She turned to open her door and Seulgi called out to her.

‘Wait,’ she said. ‘I never got your name.’

‘Irene. It’s Irene.’

Seulgi smiled. ‘I’m Seulgi. Kang Seulgi.’

‘Like James Bond or something.’

‘What?’

‘Nothing. It’s…doesn’t matter.’ She smiled. ‘Nice to meet you, Kang Seulgi.’

‘Yeah. Nice to meet you, Irene.’

‘I’ll see you around.’

‘Yeah. See you.’

*  *  *

It rained most of the day and into the evening. She came back up the stairs almost weeping with exhaustion, the rain slick on her forehead and matted in her hair, the stink of sweat entirely washed from her. As she came up and out into the hallway she heard first a shout and then a doorlatch unlocking. It was the old woman and then it was Irene. She stood there in the doorframe smiling, the light almost translucent on her back. Her skin was very pale and her lips very red and she was wearing a white jumper and a pair of jeans and when she saw Seulgi devoid of all stamina she smiled and Seulgi with great effort managed a smile in return.

‘You look like you’ve just run ten miles through a monsoon,’ Irene said.

‘Something like that.’

‘Been at the gym?’

‘Yeah.’

‘I wish I had.’

‘Why don’t you?’

‘Go to the gym?’

Seulgi nodded.

‘I mean, I used to. I just got tired of it one day and decided not to go, and the rest is history. I guess I fell out of the habit of going. Which I guess was bad for me, but whatever. And it’s expensive and I can’t really afford it.’

‘You’re telling me.’

‘It’s good, though. You look good. I mean, you know what I mean.’

‘Thanks,’ Seulgi said with a smile.

‘Nice weather, I take it.’

‘I’ve seen worse.’

‘But you’ve seen better?’

Seulgi nodded.

‘Not a fan of the rain?’ Irene said.

‘I don’t mind it. It’s calming, I guess. Kind of puts me at ease. And I like the smell. I like the smell of dust when it’s wet. That’s not weird, is it?’

‘Maybe a little.’

‘Well. I’m a little weird, then.’

‘Me too.’

There was a quiet between them. No longer could they hear the old woman shouting. Nor anything at all, not even the rain. It was coming in dark in the evening. Neither moved for a long time.

‘I should probably get changed,’ Seulgi said.

‘Yeah.’

‘I’ll see you around.’

‘Yeah. Hey. Wait.’

Seulgi stopped. Her key was already in the door. ‘Yeah?’ she said.

Irene looked at her. She looked away. Then back. ‘You want to go grab a drink sometime?’

‘A drink?’

Irene shrugged. ‘I’m lonely,’ she said. ‘I just moved, remember?’

‘Right. Forgot about that.’

‘I don’t really know anyone here.’

Seulgi smiled. ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘We’ll grab a drink sometime.’

‘Great. That’s great.’

‘I should get changed.’

‘Yeah. Of course.’

‘See you.’

Irene smiled. ‘See you later,’ she said.

*  *  *

From their table in the corner it was clear to see the slow turning of the world come the evening. It had been raining for most of the day. Seulgi sipped at her cider. She watched Irene over the rim of her glass. Watched her do the same thing. They each observed in some way the locomotion of the night, of its many colours and shapes, the cars and late shoppers and kids on bikes filling the sidewalks, the rain forming into a loam against the underside of the curbs, runoff into the old drains, rain falling over the windows in some minutiae of cold times ahead, a palimpsest of a darker season, in which they could see themselves disfigured, distended, oddly shaped creatures drinking from their warped glasses, offering to them a window to a world beyond that wasn’t quite theirs, wasn’t quite right.

‘Sorry,’ Irene said. Seulgi looked at her again. She had set her glass down on the table and with one hand she brushed her hair back out of her face. It was becoming a habit.

‘For what?’ said Seulgi.

‘Not talking. I’m not the best at small talk. Never have been.’

‘It’s alright.’

‘Maybe that’s why I don’t have any friends anymore. Or why I’m no good at making friends in the first place. I just don’t know what to say to them. I’m supremely awkward.’

‘Me too.’

‘Yeah?’

Seulgi shrugged. ‘I mean, I’m not the best.’

Irene laughed.

‘What?’ Seulgi said.

‘I was going to say something to you and I realised in my head just how ing useless a thing it is to say. It’s the same thing people say to me all the time.’

‘What is it?’

‘I was going to say you seem sociable enough.’

‘Oh. Right.’

‘Yeah. I get that a lot. I tell people I’m awkward and I’m bad at talking to people and they tell me I seem alright enough. I don’t come off as awkward. It’s not that, you know? It’s not meant to obvious. It’s something personal to me. It’s like I clam up around people. My mind starts racing, going through all these possibilities. What if they don’t like me? What if I embarrass myself? What if they start talking about me once I’m out of sight? What if they have a group chat talking about me? All this dumb , you know?’

Seulgi smiled. She sipped her drink again. ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘I get you.’

‘I’m sorry for rambling. It’s just something I do, when I get to know people. Maybe that’s why I’ve got no friends.’

‘Because you ramble?’

‘Yeah. Because I ramble.’

Seulgi watched her for a minute. The sharp outline of her countenance. Her palely dolled face. Like some ornament. Small beads of dew clung to her jacket.

‘It’s alright,’ she said. ‘I don’t mind.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Yeah.’ Seulgi smiled. ‘It’s fine.’

*  *  *

She was sat at her desk reading her phone when the knock came. Reading through nothing in particular. She answered to Irene, standing there in her pyjamas, one hand resting against the doorjamb, smiling a nervous smile.

‘I didn’t know if you’d be in,’ Irene said, ‘since it’s the afternoon and all.’

‘It’s alright.’ Seulgi smiled. ‘Why are you in your pyjamas?’

‘Am I not allowed to be?’

‘No, I mean, it’s just. Well. It’s three in the afternoon.’

‘I stayed up too late, I guess.’

‘Makes sense.’

They looked at each other for a second. Cautious eyes, weary ones. Irene playing with her fingers awkwardly. ‘I need your help with something,’ she said.

‘My help?’

Irene nodded.

‘What with?’

‘I need you to fix something for me. Or try. If you’re free, of course. I don’t want to bother you if you’re not.’

‘No. It’s fine. What is it?’

‘My sink.’

‘Your sink?’

Irene nodded again. ‘It’s busted, I think.’

‘How?’

‘I don’t know. I think I’ve got the little ceramic thing stuck in the bottom of the basin. I think I pushed it in by accident and now I can’t get it out. It won’t drain or anything. I had to brush my teeth in the kitchen sink.’

‘And you want me to fix it.’

‘I don’t want to call a plumber unless I have to. It’s too expensive for something so simple. But I kind of need my bathroom sink, you know?’

‘I’m not exactly an expert at manual labour.’

‘Neither am I. I just figured two heads are better than one, you know?’

Seulgi looked at her for a minute. She smiled. ‘Yeah. I guess you’re right.’

*  *  *

They sat by the window again. This time they ordered food and they ate in silence and they watched each other for a long time and they both smiled and there was a sadness in each of those smiles, an unspeakable sadness, one from some place of longing both shared and neither was properly aware of, a heartache of some untenable variety. When they were finished eating they watched the rotation of the evening. On some lightless axis in the rain.

‘Thanks,’ Irene said.

‘For what?’

‘For fixing my sink the other day. I totally blanked and forgot to say it then. Must’ve looked like such an .’

‘It’s alright. It wasn’t exactly brain surgery, in all fairness. It was just sticking a knife down a plughole.’

‘Yeah, but still. Thanks.’

‘It’s fine.’

Seulgi looked at her again. She seemed on the verge of saying something but she did not and all was quiet. ‘Hey,’ Seulgi said.

‘Yeah?’

‘I was kind of curious about something.’

‘About what?’

‘Your favourite animal. Is it a deer?’

Irene turned up a cautious smile. ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘Yeah, it is. How’d you know?’

‘When I was in your apartment the other day. The wallpaper.’

‘Oh. Right. A bit too gaudy, you think?’

‘I mean, jury’s still out on that. It wasn’t what I expected though. I didn’t know we were allowed to redecorate.’

‘I honestly don’t think we are.’

Seulgi laughed. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘you’ll find out sooner or later.’

‘Yeah, guess I will.’

‘Your bedsheets, too.’

‘You saw them as well?’

Seulgi nodded. ‘Sorry if that’s a bit creepy.’

‘No. No, it’s not. I mean, maybe it’s a bit childish and all that but I don’t care. The first animal I ever saw was a deer. My mum took me to see them at a deer park when I was, like, still in a pram. I’ve loved them ever since and I don’t even know why. Maybe we make easier emotional connections to things when we’re babies? Kind of like a super-nostalgia? Like a baby-nostalgia? I don’t know. But yeah. I love deer.’

Seulgi smiled. She looked at Irene again and she knew there from watching Irene that there was something she would not dare ever say and something Irene was hiding too and they could both feel it but neither spoke a word. Fate is as fate does. They just watched each other.

‘That’s cool,’ Seulgi said, a lasting smile on her face. ‘It’s good to have something you can hold onto like that. It’s a great thing to have.’

*  *  *

She lay there on her bed for a long time and she slept and woke and slept again and woke in the late evening and after a while she began to cry. She to her side and cried into her pillow and cried watching the nodules of paint lightless on the ceiling and she wished in some way that she were not so lonely and not so unfortunate as to be cursed with the unalterable weight of emotional discontent. That her life had to culminate here, in this. Where she was and where she was not. Where she had been heading. Where she no longer dared to venture. Who she had known and who she still knew and how short that list was. And work. When had she last been to work? As she ruminated on these unbearable questions the door began to knock. She wiped her eyes and rose and the bedside light and listened for a minute. A quiet hum of noise from the other side.

She answered to Irene and a man she had never seen before.  He was her age, maybe a year or two older. Tall, slim, somewhat handsome. She looked to him and to Irene and back and then to Irene again. Irene smiled a hollow smile. A smile that said all and said nothing. Said all in saying nothing.

‘Hey,’ Irene said.

‘Hi.’

‘Are you okay?’

‘What?’

‘Your eyes.’

Seulgi shrugged. ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘I was asleep. Just woken up.’

‘Oh. Sorry if I woke you.’

‘It’s okay.’

They said nothing for a moment. They looked at each other. Seulgi to the man.

‘Sorry,’ Irene said. ‘This is my boyfriend, Hyun-soo.’

Seulgi looked at him again. ‘Your boyfriend.’

‘Nice to meet you,’ he said. He smiled at her. He shook her hand. He said it was nice to meet Irene’s neighbours. It was good to meet her friends. It was a nice place Irene lived in. Nice area. Seulgi didn’t say anything. Irene the same. She looked from Hyun-soo to her and back and she looked almost to be crying.

‘Well,’ Irene said, ‘sorry if I woke you.’

‘It’s okay,’ Seulgi said. ‘Really, it’s okay.’

‘I just figured…’

‘It’s okay.’

Irene smiled. In that smile it very apparent that her eyes were not of the same nature as her lips nor had they been for a while. She smiled for a long time. Seulgi managed the same. Outside it was raining.

‘Sorry again,’ Irene said.

‘It’s fine. Stop apologising.’

‘Yeah. Right.’

Seulgi turned to Hyun-soo.

‘It was nice to meet you,’ he said.

‘Yeah.’ She forced a smile. ‘You too. Nice to meet you.’

*  *  *

She crossed the avenue, weaving between the traffic as it rolled to a halt somewhere far ahead, the rain beating down on her nape and against her hair and cold on her skin and cleansing in some strange and newly appointed manner, turning at the end of the street and passing through the lobby and ignoring the elevator and taking the stairs two at a time, hauling her legs in some mechanical locomotion one and then the other, the rain falling away behind her, the sourceless sound of thunder somewhere in the quaking heavens, lightless in the transoms of each room as she passed them, her bags heavy in her grip, cold and raw fingers, the rain falling from her shopping, falling from her coat, wet and slick on the back of her neck. With great effort she propped the hallway door open. She fumbled with her keys. They spilled out of her pocket and onto the floor and she cursed. She dropped the bags. First the groceries. The meat, the cigarettes. This week’s TV guide, a dogeared paperback, already wet in the rain, already ruined. She bent down in pursuit of her keys. Her phone slipped from her pocket and she cursed again. The rain rolled down the back of her shirt. With one hand she scooped her shopping back into the bags and straightened herself and turned the key in the lock and opened the door to the stale and quiet air of her cold and lonely room and she was crying again.

She didn’t hear nor see Irene in the elevator behind her. Irene watching her drop her groceries, watching as she fumbled on the floor for her things, hands shaking in some dopeaddled antirhythm, Irene seeing her push into the apartment and drop her things on the table and cry into her sleeve and take her shoes off and let the door close behind her and disappear, swallowed up into the darkness of that place. And another like it. Another much like it.

*  *  *

It was raining in the morning and it was raining in the afternoon. In the evening it was still raining. It was dark and it was raining, over the apartment tops and the high rooves, limp and sagging in the leaves of the park trees, running into the gutters by the roadsides and in the lees and alleys of darker places, and under the bridges and along the tops of the drains, and in the quagmires of silt and mud in the grassbanks along the riverfront, and in some hail of distended shape between the lights on the avenue. It was raining against Seulgi’s window and it was raining against Irene’s and it was raining in the space in between and it would not stop raining. It was raining in Busan as in Seoul. It was raining in Daegu, in Ulsan, in Incheon. It was raining over all their world.

She lay on her bed watching the light form and unform and shape again on the ceiling and she listened to the silence inhabiting that space and she did not cry. She had nothing left to cry over. Perhaps in an hour or so she would. Perhaps in a day or three or fifty. But what was life if not that. What could it ever be.

After a while she sat up and pushed herself back until she was leant against the cold plaster of the wall and she listened again. She listened to the soft and muted strangle of Irene’s crying on the other side, so close and yet so very far, so apart from her own world, as if they shared two separate planes of existence, as if they transfixed by those small chambers they each occupied, both in some form or way damaged and troubled and neither with the courage to ever admit to such a thing, for that was nothing if not weakness, was it not? Or something akin to the same. Or a fear of what was not known.

She tilted her head back and closed her eyes and she listened. On the other side of the wall Irene was still crying. She did not say anything. She just cried. A low and dim hum between them. Seulgi turned to press her cheek against the cold wall. She listened for a long time. Soon the crying stopped and all was silent again save the rain. She listened, she listened. She waited for the beating of Irene’s heart and it never came or maybe it did and she was unaware of it but she liked to think so. She liked to think Irene was on the other side, her own face resting against the plasterboard, waiting for Seulgi to make a move, waiting ever so patient for Seulgi to stand or call out or tap lightly on the wall, to make a signal of any kind, to close that space between them, to mend what she thought to be unmendable.

But there was nothing. She listened for a while longer. She heard the rain and the cars on the street below and nothing else. Sometime later she slept.

*  *  *

She had passed away sometime the week prior. Neither of them knew about it. None of them did. They knew little of her save the arguments so frequently overheard, and none of them ever serious enough to warrant investigation. The old man they didn’t know. Had seen him maybe three or four times between them. And the rest of their floor too. The next time they saw him he told them that she had taken ill with complications from pneumonia and she had passed away and that was that. Seulgi told him that she was very sorry for his loss and she would think of him in her quiet moments and Irene did the same and he thanked them. He told them that he would be fine. That to be anything else would be wrong. That there is no shame in not showing grief just as there is no shame in the opposite. That it was in some way to silently accept such grieving. That it was not shunning it at all but another form of quiet reflection. That she would have wanted it that way. They didn’t know her well enough to laugh or smile at this or even agree with him. They just told him they were sorry.

In a quieter moment Seulgi came to realise that she didn’t even know the old woman’s name. That she was there one minute and she was arguing with her husband and she was throwing vases around the room and calling him all sorts of names and the next she was dead and that was all for her, that was her last page, that was the end of her story. That she had no dignified or even forewarned end. But that was life. She was sure that the old woman thought the same. That she had lived well enough. She had not thought about death. To spend your waking moments thinking of what was inevitably to arrive at some point in the future was to be never really living at all. It was to be waiting for death. To be anticipating it. And that wasn’t life. That never could be.

*  *  *

‘I just wanted to see you.’

Seulgi looked at her across the table. She looked so impossibly old, those eyes that told of her tale better than any words ever could. She looked like a different person. She was not crying but almost. ‘I feel like it’s been months,’ she said.

‘Yeah,’ said Seulgi. ‘Feels that way.’

‘Feels like I see less and less of you nowadays.’

‘Yeah.’

‘You’re not avoiding me, are you?’

Seulgi didn’t say anything. She watched the traffic through the window. Small shapes obscured in the rainfall. Foreign creatures in the water. She turned back to Irene and finished her drink. ‘I’m not,’ she said. ‘I didn’t mean it to look that way. I just needed some time alone.’

‘It’s crazy, don’t you think?’

‘What is?’

‘What happened to that old lady.’

‘Yeah.’

‘I never even knew her name. I lived across the hall from her for, how long, a month, was it? Maybe longer. Can’t even remember now. And I never even knew her name. And just like that, she’s gone.’

‘Yeah.’

‘I feel sorry for her husband. I can’t imagine what it’s like, spending fifty or sixty years with someone like that, and then one day they’re just gone. I don’t even want to imagine it.’

Seulgi studied her closely. The sharp lines of her jaw, her trembling lips. She was still not crying but maybe she would. Sometime soon. She finished her drink. Seulgi did the same. They sat in silence for a while and did not look at each other. Watching the cars, watching the people under their umbrellas. Like coppered matchstick figures, small and oblique in the rainworked fog of the windowpanes. Everything they did not say said enough on its own. As if they shared some tethered connection unspoiled by words. They ordered another round of drinks and they had them in silence.

‘I broke up with Hyun-soo,’ Irene said.

Seulgi turned to her. She seemed to not be focusing on anything in particular and it was impossible to tell what degree of care she put into this.

‘I’m sorry,’ Seulgi said.

‘Yeah.’

‘What happened?’

‘I don’t know. We just drifted apart, I guess. I don’t know, Seulgi. I don’t think I know anything anymore. About anything.’

‘Nor me.’

Irene looked at her. She did not smile. After a while she was crying. Seulgi told her it was okay. She hugged her. They walked home in the rain and Irene was still crying and Seulgi told her again it was going to be alright. She cried until they parted and she cried long into the night and Seulgi could hear her through the wall and she listened until she could bear it no more. Then she slept.

*  *  *

By the wall atop the hill they could see all of Seoul on that side. This great carnival of lights presented to them so far below Namsan. They watched the tower behind them. They listened to the rhythm of conversation. It was a calm and clear eve for the first time in as long as either could remember.

‘I quit my job last week,’ Seulgi said.

Irene turned to her. ‘Why?’ she said.

‘Well. I kind of got fired. It was technically a mutual thing, but they didn’t want me.’

‘Why not?’

‘I stopped going in.’

‘You stopped?’

Seulgi nodded.

‘How come?’ Irene said. ‘I mean, if you don’t mind me asking.’

‘I don’t know. I really don’t. I just didn’t want to go. And I know that sounds really childish and I can’t help it but it’s true. It was getting to me. It was hurting me. That might sound stupid. I don’t care anymore. It was weighing on me. I needed to be away from there. I needed to be free for a while.’

Irene listened to her speak for a long time. When Seulgi was finished she turned to Irene. Irene was crying.

‘Hey,’ Seulgi said. ‘Hey. What’s up?’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘It’s okay. What’s wrong?’

‘I don’t know. I really don’t know. Jesus, I’m sorry.’

‘It’s okay.’

Irene wiped her eyes. Such unspeakable sadness behind them. Twinned the image of some selfsame lachrymose in Seulgi. Two of the same kind, separated by very little. ‘How do you do it?’ Irene said.

‘Do what?’

‘Smile. How do you do it every day?’

‘I don’t.’

‘Every time I see you, you smile at me. How do you do it?’

Seulgi thought for a moment. She turned to gaze out upon the city. A cold wind had come up in the earlier hours. She felt it creep against her nape. At the cusp of the world the carmine sun slept sound. What had gone and what was still to come. What mysteries untold. ‘You just have to do it,’ she said. ‘You just have to keep smiling. You’ll hate it. You’ll tell yourself it’s fake. That you’re doing it appear like something you’re not. It’s okay. That’s okay. Just keep doing it. And one day you’ll wake up and without even realising it you’ll convince yourself it’s real. You’ll convince yourself you’re happy. And that’s the best you can hope for. Maybe you’re still delusional but you won’t know that. And it’s better to live in that ignorance than to wallow in the truth, right? Because the truth is worse.’

Irene didn’t say anything. Seulgi wiped her eyes. ‘There’s this quote I try and live by. It’s from the Bible. I’m not religious or anything, I just like it because it has some genuinely good life lessons in there. It’s a passage I’ve read about a thousand times. It goes: I don’t think there’s any comparison between the present hard times and the coming good times.

‘I try and live by that. We have to take each bad with some good, you know? That’s what we have to do, to balance everything out. Faking a smile, that’s the bad. Waking up with a real smile? I guess that’s the good. So I try and live my life according to that. And sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.’

Irene studied her for a moment in silence. Seulgi would not look at her. ‘What about now?’ she said. ‘What about right now?’

‘Now?’ Seulgi turned. She looked so very pale and alone and tender. So childlike and vulnerable. Slowly she smiled, her eyes wet. ‘I’m just waiting on the good right now. But I’m sure it’ll come. I’m sure of it.’

*  *  *

There it was again. That knock at the door. Like the call of some ancient gong or war signal calling her forth. She could almost feel the pendulum shift.

She rose and answered. In the evening light the corridor was dim but she could see Irene clearly, her face swollen and puffy, eyes redrimmed and raw. She smiled a faint smile. ‘Hey,’ she said. ‘Can I come in?’

Seulgi made way for her. She made Irene a coffee and made one for herself and they drank them there, Irene at the table, Seulgi sat on the edge of the bed, watching her over the rim of her cup, the world falling away from them. Irene said very little. She sipped at her steaming coffee and she looked into the black and volute coils of its interior and she did not look at Seulgi much at all. Outside it was raining. They heard it beating down against the window. The curtains were drawn. The light drew them up like copper dolls in its pale glow. A single light, a solitary heraldic light from the ceiling, and those two pilgrims shored up in its swelling glow, two lost souls adrift on the wind, falling and falling through life. And falling and falling.

‘I quit my job today,’ Irene said. She had finished her coffee but the cup was still in her hands. She folded her legs and unfolded them and crossed them in the other direction and unfolded them and shifted about. The cup didn’t leave her hands.

‘What?’ Seulgi said.

‘I quit my job.’

‘Why?’

Irene shrugged.

‘I don’t even think you ever told me where you worked.’

‘For an insurance firm.’

‘, really?’

‘Yeah,’ Irene said. ‘I thought I told you. Could’ve sworn I did.’

Seulgi shook her head. ‘Why did you quit?’ she said.

‘I don’t know.’

‘You don’t know?’

‘No. I just didn’t want to work there anymore. I felt I couldn’t. There were days where I physically couldn’t do what was asked of me. I would sit there in front of the computer and I would just stare at it and I would start to cry. It’s like there was this chain holding me back. Like I was fixed to it and I was trying to break free but I’d lost the key. I’d lost it a long time ago and I don’t know where. Don’t know where to even look. So I left.’

‘Jesus. I’m sorry.’

Irene wiped her eyes. She smiled. It was the smile of somebody with little left to lose and no recognition or cognizance of what that meagre sum even was or how long it would remain with her. ‘Don’t be,’ she said. ‘It’s alright.’

‘I’m sorry, Irene.’

‘It’s fine, honestly. I kind of feel better, you know? I mean, I obviously feel worse. I’m technically jobless now. Not even technically. I’m full-on unemployed. But it feels like a weight’s been lifted. I mean, I have no idea where I’m going to go from here, and you know what? I don’t even think I care. It’s done. It’s in the past. And I don’t live for the past. Anyone who lives for the past is doomed in the present. And in the future.’

Seulgi looked at her. She didn’t say anything. Irene stood and came and sat beside her. Together they studied the light hanging from the ceiling. Squinting, straining. They were silent for a very long time. Listening to the rain outside. Rain falling everywhere. Rain falling inside and out.

‘Hey,’ Irene said.

‘What?’

Seulgi turned to her. Irene was looking at her nor would that gaze ever leave her. She was strangely sure of that. There was a sadness in Irene’s eyes she had never seen before and it broke her heart, this sort of aching longing for something that could not be spoken of, as if it was all she had left, all that remained of her spirit or soul, of her essence of being, as if there was nothing besides that to ever form as part of her, no parsable entity for that core. She looked at Seulgi for a time longer and she didn’t speak and she wept silently and when she finally did she said, in a small and timid voice, ‘Can I kiss you?’

Seulgi expected herself to ask what Irene meant when she had asked such an absurdity. She expected herself to turn or push Irene away and say no, we’re just friends, or I think you’ve got the wrong end of the stick, or I’m sorry if you feel like I’ve been leading you on, or What do you mean, or Could you say that again, or Maybe I heard you wrong, but she didn’t. She sat there watching Irene and she said in an equally insignificant voice, ‘Okay.’

 And she did.

*  *  *

It was dark outside by the time she had showered and changed and knocked on Irene’s door. She stood waiting. Irene answered. She was dressed in her pyjamas, the same ones she had been wearing the first time they had ever met, the ones with the brown deerprint to match her walls, and her bedsheets, and other places much the same, bearing in some manner a sort of common insignia so as to easily recognise her. To stand apart from the crowd. As if she needed such a thing.

The first thing Irene said was, ‘Are you okay?’

Seulgi smiled weakly. ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘I’m fine.’

‘What happened?’

‘Can I come in?’

‘Sure.’

When they were sat with their coffee on the bed they pushed back to lean against the plasterpaint, side by side, listening to the turning of the earth around them. The cars and the people in their sockets, lodged like striae in the concrete workings of the great jungle of the world.

‘I went for an interview today,’ Seulgi said.

‘Yeah?’

She nodded. ‘For an internship at an auditing firm.’

‘Is that your sort of thing?’

‘I don’t know what my sort of thing is.’

‘Right. Do you think you’ll get it?’

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Did it not go well?’

‘It went fine. Or it felt like it did. But I don’t know. There’s just something. Something I can’t explain.’

‘I think you’ll get it. I’m sure you will.’

‘Well.’

‘Well.’

‘Well we’ll see.’

She finished the last of her coffee. The night was coming in cold and very dark. A sunless night quivering in the pale heat. They listened to the calm and they listened to each other breathing slowly and they did not say much.

After a while Irene said, ‘I don’t know what I want to do either. I don’t know what I am anymore. Or what’s for me.’

‘That’s alright.’

‘Is it?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Why?’

‘Why what?’

‘Why’s it alright?’

‘Well. I just think it is,’ Seulgi said. ‘I think it’s okay to not know what you want for a while. To be drifting. To let life take you wherever it takes you. I think it can even be good, it can be beneficial. You can learn so much from it, about yourself, about others. About the world. But after a while it starts to take its toll. You feel like the world runs you down. You feel like it picks you back up and drags you along and you’re just there because there’s nowhere else for you to go, there’s nowhere for you to stop and get off. It starts to hurt. And you end up feeling lost.’

‘What if I want that?’

‘Want what?’

‘To feel lost,’ Irene said. ‘What if I want to get lost?’

And Seulgi thought about this for a long time and it came to her in the end that she had no answer, she had nothing to respond, because she didn’t know. And she never had.

*  *  *

They listened to the hum of the night for an hour longer and they drank hot coffee and shared cookies from an old biscuit tin Irene’s mum had left for her and they heard shouting out in the corridor, cheering from some other room down the hall. The baseball was on. The Doosan Bears were winning.

When there was no more light and no more cookies nor coffee Seulgi rose to excuse herself and Irene stopped her.

‘Wait,’ she said.

‘What?’

Seulgi looked back at her. She looked so fragile, so pale and beautiful and tender and easy to hurt. To set your heart afire. See me, see this. I will be strong. My face will turn rain here. See me. Irene was almost crying.

‘Will you stay?’ she said.

‘When?’

‘Tonight. Will you stay the night?’

‘Are you sure?’

Irene nodded. ‘Please. I don’t want to be alone.’

And Seulgi said, ‘Yeah. Okay. I don’t either.’

*  *  *

‘Can I come in?’

She heard it and heard it again. It was becoming almost claustrophobic. This small hole of concrete, tunnelled into the function of some greater place. They heard shouting from across the hall again. The baseball was back on. It was baseball season. They sat on the edge of the bed and they shared another kiss and they watched each other and they lay there not saying anything, Seulgi with her arm draped over Irene, Irene with her head buried against Seulgi’s chest, listening to the rise and fall of her breathing, the pumping of her blood, the kaleidoscopic pulsebeat of her heart.

‘I got my university application back today,’ Irene said.

‘Oh , yeah. I remember you saying.’

‘Yeah.’

‘How’d it go?’

‘I didn’t get in.’

‘Really?’

‘Yeah.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘For what?’

‘I know how much you wanted it.’

‘Yeah,’ Irene said.

‘I got an email back about the audit job this morning.’

‘You did?’

Seulgi nodded. ‘I didn’t get it.’

There was a silence that fell between them that neither comfortable nor disconcerting. As if it existed solitary in some strange manner, inhabiting neither side of any emotional spectrum. It just was. Seulgi Irene’s hair gently.

‘I’m sorry,’ Irene said.

‘It’s okay. Honestly. It’s fine. Or it will be. I’m sure about that.’

‘Me too.’

‘It’ll all work out in the end. It has to.’

‘Yeah,’ Irene said. ‘We’ve taken the bad. Now we’re just waiting on the good, right?’

Seulgi smiled softly. ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘We’re just waiting on the good. I’ve been waiting a long time. But it’s coming. It always does.’

*  *  *

They were sat as they always did on the edge of the bed when Irene said it first. It had become a habit. To occupy one of their two rooms and sit and watch movies or old TV shows or play games or read quietly, to enjoy the silence, to listen to the rain beating out its own wayward rhythm on the windowpanes. In the long days of the monsoon season it did that very often. Seulgi was sat with her legs folded under her and she was reading from an old Faulkner novel when Irene called out to her from the other side of the bed. She looked up, looked at Irene. There was no expression on that terribly pretty face she had ever seen or could in confidence make any sense of.

‘Seulgi,’ said Irene.

‘Yeah.’

‘I think I love you.’

Seulgi looked at her. Properly looked at her. They could hear nothing but the rain and each other, slow and trembling breaths.

‘I think I love you too,’ Seulgi said.

And with a smile, Irene nodded.

*  *  *

Maybe she would get the job, maybe she wouldn’t. She was more confident than she had been for the audit work and she had in her heart some strange and prophetic sense of the coming good times. It had to be that way. That way and no other. Just had to be.

In the long eves of that Summer she went like a dreamer. These streets that were not streets. Between the arcades, under the awnings where her footfalls came back like conversation to herself, stretching shadow to shadow, shapeless and formless on the sidewalks, selfsame figures distorted in the windowpane reflections, fetched up from some other side of life. She studied these each in turn and by the last shop she stood looking in for a long time. It was a jewellery shop. She studied the items on the display case for a while longer. Like some migrant loosed on some alien culture, gawking at this show of minor extravagance, lips parted if only slightly. It was cold but she didn’t mind. After a while she went in.

She made straight for the counter and the young woman on till duty regarded her with a warm smile.

‘How much is that necklace?’ Seulgi said.

The cashier took the necklace from the display case. It was small and silver, a single pendant hanging from the end of the chain. ‘This one?’ she said. Seulgi nodded.

‘Three hundred thousand won.’

‘I’ll take it.’

‘Would you like it wrapped as well?’

‘Yeah, please. It’s a gift.’

The cashier smiled. ‘Must be a very special someone.’

‘Yeah,’ Seulgi said. ‘She is.’

*  *  *

‘Close your eyes.’

Irene did. She took the little velvet box from the shoppingbag and opened it up like a clam and stood waiting for Irene to open her eyes. When she did and when she saw the necklace perched there in the soft trough of the box she began to cry and she did not stop for a long time.

‘Go on,’ Seulgi said. ‘Put it on. It’s for you.’

Irene held it up in the light. The pendant was a small silver dear.

‘How much was this?’ Irene said.

‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘Can you put it on for me?’

With great care, Seulgi did. ‘Give me a twirl,’ she said.

Irene smiled. There was a silence between them. A silence that had become so commonplace in the time they had known each other. This silence that was neither comfortable nor uncomfortable nor in truth could ever be anything else, and neither could quite say why it had to be that way but it did. It just did.

‘Hey,’ Irene said.

‘What?’

‘Can we go for a walk?’

‘Now?’

‘Yeah.’

‘It’s raining.’

‘Seulgi.’

Seulgi looked at her. She looked at her properly and for a long time. ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Yeah. Let’s go for a walk.’

*  *  *

They walked hand in hand through the rain and they were soaked to the bone and they didn’t care. They walked along the river and they walked down the streets beyond PC Bangs and video arcades opening late and they walked in neon scatterlight and in shadow and by streetlamps and they walked through the park where over the surface of the pond the skimming geese looked in the bald and slender moonlight like creatures from another world, small and cranenecked and elegant and white almost to a translucence. They walked up onto Namsan and by the tower and walked along the edge of the hill and as they watched the rim of the world seep away into darkness they shared a kiss. They walked until they thought it would stop raining but it did not stop raining. They walked and walked and they were both crying.

Irene took Seulgi again by the hand. She pulled her close. They stood down on the street and they were not alone but they very much were. They looked at each other and they would look nowhere else and both were still crying. Seulgi wiped Irene’s eyes. She laughed. She drew Irene in for a kiss and felt her go boneless and limp in her arms and Irene pulled back and they kissed again and she wiped Seulgi’s cheeks with her cold red thumbs and laughed. Her lips were trembling. There was a longing in her eyes and in Seulgi’s and neither knew how to voice it but it was there and it would always be there, it would always be with them, like a curse they were doubtful as to ever having existed in the first place.

‘What you said,’ Seulgi started. ‘About not knowing where you’re going. About getting lost. About wanting to get lost. You remember that?’

‘Yeah,’ Irene said.

‘Me too.’

‘What?’

‘Me too. I don’t care anymore. I want to get lost in the world. That’s what I want. So let’s do it. Let’s just get lost together. The whole world’s a maze. Let’s go and lose ourselves in it. Let’s go and make something of this. Of what this is.’

Irene smiled a sad smile. ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘You know what? Yeah. I’d like that. I’d like that a lot.’

In the rain they kissed again. They kissed away the pain and they kissed away the tears and they kissed until the bad times were gone and the future was there and it was calling to them. Seulgi held Irene against her.

‘Let’s go get lost,’ she said. ‘Let’s go find our good times.’