body&soul.

Length: Short

Genre: Straight Fluff

Now Playing: KALLITECHNIS - body&soul

Seulgi finds a stranger alone at a club.

Seulgi stood there in the space by the door between the neon glare of the club and the outer dark like a voyager from some distant world, haloed in shadow, sipping slowly at her drink, the cool of the wind from the door on the back of her neck, one foot tapping along on the cold hard linoleum, and she could hear almost nothing beyond the music. But what else was there to listen to? By the side of the door she studied the room as one might inspect an artefact, with great caution and tepidity. It was almost too busy to move. She felt the rhythm of the bass run under feet in some electric current and the rising heat made breathing feel like a chore and all about bodies moved their way past her with little care and much clumsiness, as if the people navigating that space were naught but the blind or close to it. She ran a hand back through her hair and drank again. Immediately the thought crossed her mind to leave but she would not. Each night was nothing if not an opportunity to escape that which she had come to loathe and even if she were alone she would attempt it. She would make the effort. Another guy pushed past her. Two girls followed. They were headed for the stairs. In the hot dark the shimmer of alcohol sat quaking sourceless on the surface of the steps like ice. She stood there as if feeling out some obscene dark from which there was no reprieve and she had no idea what to do. Another group nudged her as they shifted by. They looked all like one great mass writhing and undulate by the pink shinelight, intermittent in the shadow of each glow, stinking of sweat and vodka and cheap mixer in that quivering claustral vision. She sipped at her drink again. Already she felt quite drunk. Her world seemed to rotate on some inordinate axis measured against nothing of any sense or reason and each shape became like the vague outline of a shape, like a crowd of figures seen through dusty glass, or through rain.

She moved slowly through the crowd towards the stairs and up onto the balcony and stood there looking out over the dancefloor below. Against her face the light made her wince. She finished the last of the drink. All she saw down there wanted to make her leave save the appearance of one girl near the front of the DJ’s stage. She was dancing on her own and she paid no attention to the world around her and she was very beautiful. Seulgi could see that from a distance. She wore her hair down about her shoulders and she was slick with sweat to a shine that was almost waxen and she looked in that pale and sallow makeup like a porcelain doll, the sootblack piping of her eyelashes and her thin red lips and the sharp line of her jaw as she turned and danced and made a step and another and passed back and threw up her arms and tipped back her drink and shifted about and ignored the crowd about her as if they were not there at all. In a sea of people she looked so very different, so very at peace with herself. As if nobody were there or had ever been. Each of those looked in their own way as if afflicted by some awful self-consciousness but not her. She swayed and she danced to her own rhythm and as the heat rose Seulgi watched her entranced.

Each action she made seemed almost magical, ethereal. When she drank or when she moved or switched from favouring one foot to the other, or when she ran a hand through her hair and tousled it and let it fall to one side and turned and looked about and in that moment she looked like something raised from another world, like something formed out of the recesses of Seulgi’s mind. Seulgi didn’t move for a long time. Someone pushed behind her, someone else started a fight by the bar on the floor above. But she paid these no mind. She watched the girl. When the girl turned and saw her there on the balcony looking down she almost looked away but she didn’t. She stood there and she looked back. And the girl smiled, smiled at her. She was sure of that. There existed a moment however brief where all her worries and her troubled thoughts seemed to evaporate and all that remained was the impression of the girl, her impossible visage, her widelipped whitetoothed smile as she stood there and she danced from foot to foot and ran a hand back through her sweatslick hair and fanned herself and smiled and smiled a long time and motioned for Seulgi to come down and dance with her. Seulgi looked around. All in that balcony booth was empty save her. She looked back at the girl and the girl nodded her way as if to tell her to come and she did. She moved as if tethered by some supernatural choice or perhaps destiny to do so. She parted the crowd that had massed by the stairs and made her way down and onto the dancefloor and through the people, pushing them gently to one side, navigating the narrow space available to her, the music pumping in her ears, her heart racing, sweat beading on her forehead, the stench of spirits in the air, stink of Coca Cola, her hair tangling in her face, her legs aching already, the floor sticky beneath her, the world entire spinning. Always spinning.

At the front of the floor the girl smiled to her again but she did not stop dancing. She danced and danced. After a while Seulgi did too, with no great enthusiasm. The girl finished her drink and so did she. As if part of some mirrored marionette. As if one and the same. The girl flashed her another smile to stop time itself and she held out a hand to Seulgi and Seulgi took it in her own. It was so small and soft and warm. Felt so right. The girl leaned in close. The first thing Seulgi noticed was the smell, faintly of some woody undertone and of lavender and rose from her perfume. And the taut skin of her neck, the flush of . In the mayhem ensuing around them she could barely hear and the girl had to strain to speak.

‘My name’s Irene,’ she said.

‘Seulgi.’

‘Seulgi.’ She smiled. ‘That’s a pretty name.’

‘Thanks.’

‘Dance with me, Seulgi.’

‘I’m not much of a dancer.’

‘We’re all dancers.’

She stepped back and took Seulgi’s hands in her own and led her in a dance. She took her by the waist and pulled her close and they beat out their own rhythm and they danced across all the night and in the burning heat they burned the hottest and the brightest and the longest and Seulgi searched for some answer as to what had come over her there but there were no rational responses because she didn’t know, she truly didn’t. She had never danced much and she had never been one for embarrassing herself but this was different, something had changed. The girl called Irene took her by the hand and she never let go and they only stopped dancing when the doors were opened and the lights were turned back on and the music began to seep away and all memory of what had transpired seemed to congeal into one great mess, like something seen from underwater, vague and indistinct. Then they were outside, as if by some sorcery they had been transposed from one location to another, out in the biting cold, people streaming from the doors into the dark of the morning. They walked hand in hand to the end of the road and stopped and Irene looked back.

‘Thanks for tonight,’ she said.

‘You’re welcome.’

Irene smiled. Without another word she turned and began to walk away and Seulgi stood there watching her go. She never called out. She watched until Irene was at the end of the street and then around the corner and like a phantom she was gone, like something divided back into the darkness from which she had once sprung. Seulgi stood there for a long time. It felt almost like a dream. Perhaps it was. And perhaps that was for the better.

*  *  *

She sat with the spoon stirring the cream against the rim of the cup and she watched the steam coil helical in small patterns she thought of very little. It smelled strongly of coffeebeans and bacon and grease and in the faint light of the morning it looked like a meeting place for a congregation of the luckless and the unfortunate, all hunched over their breakfasts in silence, all sullen of face and tightlipped and weary. And was she not, too? She was sat by the window and through the dustmottled glass the castellated press of Seoul stood quivering in the soft heat like something evolved from some alien architecture part and parcel with the sunless shade. The people passing looked like origami shapes, crudely illuminate in the waking light. She sat watching them for a long time. As if inspecting the discovery of some other race or species, these silent creatures in their masses.

Her coffee was already cold when she saw the girl. Saw Irene. She was wearing earphones and her hair was tied back in a neat ponytail and her shirt thin and yellow and her skin so very pale, like a porcelain doll, the alabstrine figure of her collarbones and the flush of her bulging throat and the way her lips parted ever so slightly. She passed under the awning like something out of a fever and when she turned towards the window and saw Seulgi there she stopped and smiled and Seulgi smiled back instinctively. Immediately she wondered why she had done that. The girl looked at her for a while and she did not move. She nodded towards the door and Seulgi nodded back and she came in and ordered a coffee and as she did this Seulgi studied her like a priceless artefact, the soft curves of her back and her hair down past her shoulders and her slim figure, everything about her, how very perfect she seemed in that moment, how unreal. How much like a dream.

She came and sat across from Seulgi and she smiled again, that same smile. ‘Hi,’ she said.

‘Hi.’

‘Funny seeing you here.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Strange how things happen.’

She sipped her steaming coffee with a grin and she looked so at peace it was almost contagious. ‘You’re Irene, right?’ Seulgi said.

‘Yeah. And you’re Seulgi.’

‘You remember.’

‘I’d never forget that name.’

Seulgi just looked at her. Irene laughed. ‘Relax,’ she said. ‘I was just seeing how you’d react. But really, it was only a couple weeks ago. My memory’s not that bad.’

‘Right. Makes sense.’

Seulgi looked down at her empty cup and back at Irene. Irene was watching her curiously. ‘You don’t mind that I came and talked to you, right? I mean, you nodded and everything, but maybe you were just being polite. If you’re busy, or you’re with anyone then – ‘

‘I’m not,’ Seulgi said. ‘Not with anyone. I’m not busy either. And I don’t mind.’

‘Great.’ Irene smiled. ‘Nice day.’

‘Yeah.’

She expected Irene to ask her where she worked or how old she was or what she was doing at the club that one night but she didn’t. She just sat there and drank her coffee in silence and when she was finished she leant forward ever so slightly and said, ‘Thanks for the other night.’

‘For what?’

‘For dancing with me.’

‘I was pretty drunk.’

Irene laughed. ‘Are you shy about it?’

‘About what?’

‘About that. About dancing.’

‘I’m just shy in general,’ Seulgi said.

‘I can tell.’

‘Really? Is it that obvious?’

‘Yeah. Kinda. Don’t worry, though. It’s pretty cute.’

Seulgi didn’t say anything.

‘Thanks, though,’ Irene said. ‘Not often you find someone that doesn’t mind embarrassing themselves like that.

‘I do mind it.’

‘Really?’

‘Yeah.’

‘You didn’t look like it.’

‘Well. I was drunk.’

‘I wasn’t.’

‘No?’

Irene shook her head. ‘I never do anymore,’ she said.

‘Were you on your own? Or with friends? You looked like you were on your own.’

‘I was. Were you?’

‘Yeah,’ Seulgi said. She folded her hands in her lip and when she looked back at Irene Irene was smiling. ‘Don’t be shy,’ she said. ‘There’s nothing wrong with partying on your own.’

‘There is a little.’

‘No there’s not.’

‘I mean, it’s a little sad.’

‘How is it sad?’

‘It’s the sort of thing you do with friends.’

‘It doesn’t have to be.’

‘But it always is.’

‘Only because you make it that way. I never go out with friends anymore.’

‘You go out on your own often?’

Irene nodded. ‘All the time,’ she said.

‘Why?’

‘To dance. To have fun.’

‘Don’t you get embarrassed? Or self-conscious, or whatever?’

‘No.’

‘Never?’

‘Never.’

Seulgi was quiet a minute. Then she said, in a small voice, ‘I wish I could be like that.’

‘You can.’

‘I can’t. It’s not that easy.’

Irene seemed to regard this statement with interest. She pushed her empty cup across the table and leant on her folded arms and said, ‘Why do you go out on your own in the first place?’

‘I don’t know.’ Seulgi shrugged shyly. ‘I just want to clear my head.’

‘But you don’t.’

‘No.’

‘You know why?’ Seulgi looked at her. ‘It’s because you don’t let yourself go,’ she said, ‘even if you think you are. You’re not. You’re constantly worrying about things and comparing yourself to others around you and telling yourself that they’re thinking about you.’

‘Yeah.’

‘You know what most people will tell you? They’ll tell you that it doesn’t matter because no one else is ever looking at you and unless you’re really unlucky nobody ever gives a about what you’re doing or anything like that. That you should just be you, because nobody else ever will be, and they won’t care either. And you know what? That sounds like good advice on the surface. But sometimes it isn’t. Because it’s not as easy as just telling yourself that nobody else is watching you, or that nobody else cares, or that you’re just you. It’s really not. Do you want the truth?’

‘Yeah,’ Seulgi said.

‘The truth is that some people might be. Doesn’t matter what you’re doing. Whether you’re out at the club on your own, or with friends, or you’re walking down the street minding your own business, or you’re getting your car serviced, or you’re waiting for your food at a restaurant, or you’re on the phone at the back of the bus, or you’re having coffee with a stranger that talks too much in a café on a warm summer’s morning – there’ll be people thinking about you, people watching you. People talking to themselves. To think otherwise, to think that nobody ever cares about anyone else in that way, is honestly naïve. It’s human nature to compare yourself to others, even subconsciously. Even when you don’t think you are, or don’t want to do it. You just do.

‘I think it can sometimes be a little dangerous to tell people that. That nobody around cares about what they’re doing or how they’re doing it. That everyone is just going about their day. Because sooner or later you’ll come across one person that does care, one person that calls you about over something stupid, or something even smaller and more insignificant than that, and it just gets your brain working in this way that you’ll never reverse. Let’s say, for example, that someone tells you that on your way to work in the morning, nobody cares about your commute. They’re all thinking about themselves. They’re all on their phones or reading the morning paper or listening to music or wondering what they’re going to be having for lunch. But then one day some guy offers you his seat. He’s been watching you, hasn’t he? He’s been aware of the fact you want to sit down. He’s been working up the opportunity to offer you his seat. Now you start thinking everyone’s been doing it. That everyone’s been watching one another and taking mental notes, judging people, weighing them all up. Weighing you up, too.

‘Sounds dumb, right? Well, maybe it is. But it doesn’t stop you thinking it. I think that’s probably human nature as well. Not quite paranoia, but something similar. The best thing to do is to realise that other people might care, or might laugh at you, or might talk about you to their friends, but that doesn’t matter. Never has, never will. What matters is you. Is your total belief in yourself. And I realise I’ve kinda gone a long way off topic here.’

Seulgi laughed. ‘Sort of,’ she said.

‘The point is, people think we’re constantly looking for escapism. For something where we can just say Forget the world. Forget everything for a while. Like dancing.’

‘Is that not what dancing is for you?’

Irene shook her head. ‘I don’t like that word. Escapism. I’m not escaping from anything. I’m not forgetting my troubles, I’m not hiding them, I’m not pushing them away. I think that’s a romantic idea but in truth it never works no matter how big or small your problems are. You can’t just “forget” about everything. Doesn’t work like that. Only in movies. I just like dancing. Maybe I look like a fool, or I make an idiot of myself, and maybe I care about that. I do care about that. But I care more about dancing because I love dancing. I used to take classes. Used to do ballet for a while. But it’s really just dancing in general, of any sort. It’s a part of me, and I embrace it like it is. It’s not escapism because it’s still me, it’s still always me. I have my flaws and my faults and my problems, I have my bad days as I have my good, I have issues with other people and with myself, I’m often insecure, I’m nosy and weird and a little ditzy at times, I’m extroverted and loud and sometimes obnoxious, and I love dancing. They’re not separate things. It’s just me. I think to treat it as anything different is wrong. I think the same for anyone. Don’t escape your problems. Do the opposite.’

Seulgi sat there for a while not quite knowing what to say.

‘What?’ Irene said.

‘You have a way with words.’

Irene giggled. ‘Thanks,’ she said.

‘Do you do any public speaking?’

‘No. Should I?’

‘With a speech like that? Yeah. You know how far you’d get?’

‘Pretty far?’

‘Damn right, pretty far. I didn’t expect any of that, you know?’

‘Well. I didn’t expect to see you in a café window when I got up for a walk this morning. So I guess it evens out.’

‘I guess so.’

‘Sorry for rambling.’

‘No, no. It’s fine. Honestly.’

‘Really?’

Seulgi nodded. ‘Good,’ Irene said.

‘Can I get your number?’ said Seulgi.

Irene’s face curved into a mischievous smile. ‘I thought you were shy?’

‘I am. Normally.’

‘But not right now?’

‘I guess you have an effect on people.’

‘I guess I do.’

‘So can I?’

‘Sure. Any particular reason? Or do you just want to see me again? Because I wouldn’t complain either way.’

Seulgi smiled warmly. A smile to set the world to calm. ‘I was just curious,’ she said.

‘About what?’

‘About whether you want to go dancing with me sometime.’