A/N: Thanks for the comments and feedback regarding the slow build/angst stuff, and for all your comments in general - I honestly have a blast reading each and every one, so please keep them and the discussions coming! :)

I promise there's going to be a payoff that's worth it once all the angst is out of the way and stuff, so I hope you enjoy for now! <3

X. SIX FEET UNDER

"Real love's hard to find, so she don't waste her time."

When she walked she walked aimless again. Down streets long and dark against the falling of the stars. Turning of the intestate earth, a glaucoma dimming away the world. It had stopped raining sometime earlier. She thought on that for a while and thought that walking had very much become her most important hobby, perhaps her solitary one. She walked for miles and miles. Streets the same, cars the same, people faceless and nameless. These figures with their coats and their umbrellas folded away and their boots on the rainsodden concrete of the paths and their voices come back like spirits of voices in echoes.

It was clear to her where she was in relation to Seulgi now. She thought on that all the way. How Seulgi had looked almost inhuman when she stood there on the verge of tears, how devastating it had been. What pain in that heart of hers. And elsewhere. Irene imagined for herself scenarios whereby their conversation had gone some other way but she knew in truth whether desirable or not that the way it had been was the only way. That way and not some other. And that was good. It hurt, but it was good. She would come around. Irene was sure of that now. A surety that was almost startling in how sudden it had come about, how it had risen inside of her, insidious and parasitic.

When she came again upon the bridge across the river she stopped on the curb and looked about. in the cold night. A wide and bright moon perched like a wounded satellite in the sky. The tower blocks behind her rising out of the murk like an ossuary of menhirs erected before man was man, small lights in the windows indistinguishable from one another, this large complex of concrete and steel and glass reaching spire to spire into a black and sodden sky. Purple islands of cloud obscuring the stars where they soared and Irene could see naught. Cars still passing. It had settled almost to no traffic at all even on the bridge but every so often a handful come from the far end of the avenue, boring out of the dark light on light like the advent of some rude coagulation of suns loping across the tarmac. She was not thinking of Seulgi any longer. She was thinking of herself.

She was thinking of her life without Kang Seulgi. What it had come to and what remained ahead of her. Almost immediately she came to the realisation that she didn’t much know anymore. Hadn’t for a long time. Couldn’t remember anything of her life at university or before that or where she was now or what she had done for the past year. It all seemed to blur together. Like a sight observed through rippled water. All these moments, these fleeting memories. Or were they even such in the first place? And if not then what else? Hopeless. Pointless. So utterly pointless.

Was she happy? Irene stood there thinking on that for a while. She watched the waves chop and spit below the bridge and then she moved on. Walking at a slow pace. The sidewalks slick with rain, a dark and blotted grey on the concrete and her shadow tethered to her feet like some awful and distended thing, amorphous in the thin light of the streetlamps. She stopped between each one and looked out over the city by the river. Like a printed press of a city intaglio over the earth. What remained, what lingered. And what soon would. She thought again on all she had amounted to. Her life’s value, it’s accumulation of worth over the years, and the last year in particular. Was she happy? Again that question. She found with a sort of awful urgency that she was unable to answer it properly. Perhaps temporarily. Perhaps with Seulgi. But she could think of nothing else but that. Where had her job led her and where was she going in the future and what would she do? What was there to do? Had she picked the wrong path? Gone down the wrong road? Was there time to turn back? Was there a clear route?

She debated with herself on the intricacies of this situation for some time. Standing there between lampposts, voided in shadow, hands in her pockets. On her dreams and her aspirations and where they had gone, what destination they had departed at along the way, on this journey her life was taking and was destined to take for so much longer. She found after a while that all her musings brought her back to the thought of Seulgi. To what Seulgi now meant to her. It was strange, in a sense, and she thought perhaps a slight pathetic too. To have known her for such a small amount of time and to feel already such a strong bond, a sort of unbreakable tethering between their soaring, wishful hearts. Two lost spirits in the void of living, searching for something else. Something meaningful. A tangible experience they could both cling to and both searching for such different reasons. One damaged by the world that had given her so much. One by a world that given her nothing.

After a while she went home. Cold and alone. She showered and lay there in bed counting the cracks in the ceiling. Thin light through the curtains. An adumbrate night painted across the room, faint outlines of buildings in silver silhouettes, the ceiling partially illuminated. She counted five and then twenty and then gave up and rolled over. It smelled somewhat stale. A foreign air in her own home. Somewhere she didn’t belong anymore. How long could she continue like this? She thought on that for a time too. And of her friends and family and all others she knew. What were they doing now and did it even matter? Did any of it matter anymore? Any but Seulgi. Before she could come to any meaningful conclusion she was asleep, sailing in dreams, high amongst the stars, hoping for better days. For a change.

The next day passed the same. She was suffering with it now and she knew it. A kind of urban dysphoria. How all felt so entirely familiar and yet so alien at once, as if she was naught but a spirit raised from some other time, some other place, and deposited amongst this metropolis of steel and scattered light and humming vehicles and mute and chattering mouths and dogs roaming the sidewalks and band parades and buskers and the stink of burgers and motoroil and dust after rain. Someone who didn’t belong anymore. Hadn’t belonged in a long time. Work much the same. Coming and going. People talking to her she didn’t much care about nor them her. Perhaps they felt obligated as such and she the same. That was her life. A social obligation.

By the time she had finished it was still very bright. A wide and rude sun hung high in the sky. A white heat raised like rocksalt, chalky dust over the pavements and in the roads. Where cars passed unobstructed. Stink of old food, debris blown from bins in the wind, her hair swept about. She walked along to Pico’s in silence. Just listening. Absorbing the sounds of that place. It felt much like some pandemonium of noises, tiretread screeches and footfalls tapping against hard concrete and voices across the street and voices closer still and people coughing and the wind bearing down on her from behind. She stopped just up the street in front of an off-licence and watched herself in the window. Like a mime act come to life. Mimicking her every movement, hand reaching to the hand, this other-self come up from life’s opposite side, dark hair blustered in her face, stonefaced as some silent medusa, cold and flushed red and lost, so lost. Faceless in a sea of faces.

After a while she moved on. She came upon Pico’s ten minutes later. It was quiet inside. The usual patrons. Overwhelming smell of bacongrease and beans. Yeri was sat in their usual spot under the window. She was wearing a denim jacket and her hair was tied back and she didn’t see Irene at first. She watched the turning of the afternoon through the window. Like a parade of carnival figures against a sunkissed backdrop and her face much the same. Dappled in light. Irene ordered herself a coffee and sat opposite and only then did Yeri turn. She seemed almost startled by this.

‘You surprised me,’ she said.

‘Sorry,’ said Irene. ‘Didn’t mean to. You looked like you were somewhere else.’

Yeri smiled. ‘I was lost in my own little world.’

‘Looked like it.’

‘Yeah. How are you doing anyway? Feels like I haven’t seen you in a year and it’s been, what? Three or four days?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t keep count. But something like that.’

‘Sometimes I honestly think that I’ll end up forgetting the day I was born, you know. Like, I’m way too forgetful.’

‘That you are.’

Yeri tipped back the last of her coffee and set the mug down. It looked like she had been drinking it for quite some time. ‘So,’ she said, ‘how are you? Doing okay?’

‘Yeah. I’m alright. Why wouldn’t I be?’

‘I don’t know. It’s just, the last time I saw you, you were talking about what you were going to do about Kang Seulgi and all that. I thought maybe something had happened since then.’

‘A lot’s happened since then.’

‘Really? In less than a week?’

‘Yeah. I know, feels crazy to me as well. Can’t believe I’m actually saying that. But it’s true.’

‘Well, what happened?’

Irene was quiet a minute. She traced a finger around the rim of her cup and took a big mouthful right down. Steaming hot. When she put the cup down Yeri was still looking at her. Probing for an answer. ‘I don’t know,’ Irene said. ‘ A -ton. It feels like we’ve been at this for about a thousand years or something when it’s been like two weeks. It’s so strange. Every day feels simultaneously super long and super short when I’m with her.’

‘So you’ve been meeting her?’

‘Yeah. Sort of regularly, I guess.’

‘And?’

‘And what?’

‘And how’s it going, duh.’

Irene shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I mean, I sort of have an idea. But I don’t know.’

‘What do you mean you don’t know?’ Yeri said.

‘I mean it’s complicated. Really complicated. I don’t know how to explain it properly.’

‘Try.’

‘We had this amazing time the day before last. Honestly just the best, and all we did was go down to the river and watch the fireworks. That’s it. We barely spoke, we just sort of sat there for a while. And yet, it was one of the best times I can remember having in a long time. It was just so comfortable. It really felt different. It felt like she was opening herself up to me, you know?’

‘Not really. What do you mean, opening herself up to you? Like, in a ual way?’

‘Really now.’

Yeri laughed. ‘I’m just kidding,’ she said. ‘Couldn’t resist. But seriously, what do you mean?’

Irene looked down at her coffee. Steam coiled and reticulate about the rim. She sighed. ‘I don’t know,’ she said, ‘maybe I’m getting things wrong again. But it feels like she’s had problems in the past, whether specifically with love or not I couldn’t tell you. But she’s hurting, Yeri. Or she has been. And it makes her hard to talk to sometimes. Has done, at least. I don’t know about the future. She even told me. She said she finds it hard to open up to anyone because of what’s happened before, all the people that have taken advantage of her and like that. People that were after her for her money or her fame. And I couldn’t help but feeling so bad for her. Because I know she’s a celebrity and I know she’s super popular and rich and whatever, but she’s a human too, you know? And she’s a damaged one. She’s in pain. She’s been through a lot from a young age. That’s all I know. She won’t tell me anymore.’

‘No .’

Irene nodded. ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘Like, yesterday I went round to hers and there were all these paparazzi guys there with their cameras and , just waiting for her to come out. They were waiting for hours. Just stood there. In the end I had to push past them and they started hounding me for pictures and stuff. Said they knew who I was.’

‘Are you serious? They recognised you?’

‘Yeah.’

‘How?’

‘It’s a long story. But anyway, can you imagine that? Living with that sort of , day in and day out? It kind of gives me a whole different appreciation for celebrities. Especially ones like her. She’s so…I don’t know. I can’t find the word. Not fragile. Vulnerable, I guess. Like she wants to open up but she genuinely can’t. And I feel stuck now.’

Yeri sat back in her chair and corrected herself. ‘Stuck?’ she said. ‘Why?’

‘It’s kind of hard to say. It just feels like I’m walking this tightrope right now, and if I accidentally slip up and say the wrong thing or I push her too far in the wrong direction then she’ll blow and then that’s it. We’re all over. And I’m ing terrified of that. Because as stupid as it sounds, in the little time I’ve known her I feel like I’ve developed this genuine connection to her like no other, honestly. And I think deep down she feels something similar, too. I hope so. I just think she can’t express it properly.’

‘Because of all the she’s gone through?’

‘Yeah. Something like that.’

‘Well, I don’t know what to say to that. But it sounds like you’ve got it.’

‘Got what?’

‘The lovebug.’

‘Very funny.’

‘I’m serious. Sort of. But it seems like it still means a lot to you. To be honest I thought you’d be over it in a week. I thought one of you would just give up and move on. I mean, I don’t know her at all, except seeing her through TV I guess, but I just thought that you’d go your separate ways or something. But I guess not. Maybe there is something there. You know, they always have said that love is best at first sight.’

‘Who’s they?’

Yeri shrugged. ‘I don’t know. They. The ominous they. But what I mean is, maybe they’re right. Maybe it was love at first sight for a reason. Maybe you’re meant for each other. And if not, what’s the harm in trying, right?’

‘I don’t know,’ Irene said. She finished the last of her coffee. ‘I really don’t know.’

‘Don’t know what?’

‘If I should still stick to it.’

‘Are you kidding me? You go through all that, you sit and tell me everything about her like you’ve known her all your life and then you think about giving up? For real? Why?’

‘I don’t know. I mean, it feels like we’re making progress, but at the same time I’m so scared of pushing her. Of trying to get her to open up and going too far, like I said. Or I’m scared that she’ll just never open up at all. She’ll just stay in her shell. The shell she can’t even properly admit to me. And then what do I do? I can’t force her to do anything. I can’t do anything at all. I’m stuck then. And so is she.’

‘Really?’

‘I honestly don’t know.

Yeri pushed her cup across the table. She folded her arms and sat back and sighed and turned and watched the passing of traffic like some strange and alien vision, as if focusing on that and that entirely. When she turned back to Irene there was a serious glint in her eyes. Eyes black to be almost all pupil.

‘Okay,’ she said. ‘You want some sagely advice again? Because you know I’m good at giving that when I want to.’

Irene nodded.

‘Alright. Here’s what I think. You shouldn’t quit. I know you don’t like it, but you shouldn’t quit. Where are you going to go if you do? And if you do end up quitting, just walking out or whatever, what are you going to do for money? For rent? How are you going to pay the bills? How are you going to live? Because the only other option I can see that’s clearly visible is working part-time for now like I am, at some convenience store or something, and I know you, Irene. I know you’d like that about as much as you like what you’re doing now.

‘So you know what I think? Stay? And you know why I think that? I’m about to tell you why and it might sound harsh or cruel or whatever but it’s what I’ve come to realise.  The world isn’t fair, Irene. It’s just not, and for the vast majority of us it never will be. We can’t always get our own way. We can’t always do everything we want. And you know what? I think that’s alright, and I think the sooner we realise that the better. I’m not saying by any means cancel all your dreams and get “realistic” or whatever. I don’t mean that. Dreams are good. Dreams are there for a reason. They’re an endpoint, a goal to strive towards. They’re one of the things that keeps us going, I think. But dreams can’t be all we have.

‘What I mean is, life isn’t a big green thumbs-up, or a big fat red thumbs-down. It’s a set of scales. We’re going to get bad . We’re going to get things thrown our way that we might not want, or we don’t think we can handle. We might get things that we feel are going nowhere, or are weighing us down, or whatever. And you know what? Sometimes, we can throw those things out. We can push them to the side, get ride of them and say: I’m better off without that, or without this, or without him or her or whatever else it is. But we can’t always do that. We just can’t. It’s not realistic, and it’s not healthy to try and look to do that. What I think we’ve got to do is treat life like those scales.

‘So sure, we’ll get bad things. But we’ll get good things, too. No matter how bad it looks, we’ll get good things. And sometimes they might be small good things, little positives we try and eek out, you know? But that’s okay too. Because it becomes our job to balance them. To weigh up the good and the bad we get dealt and sort through them accordingly. Sometimes we might have to put up with a bad thing in order to achieve a good thing, or in the hopes that one day that bad might itself turn the opposite, and we might get something out of it. Sometimes we’re blessed with the opportunity to throw away the bad for a while and replace it with something good, and if that ever happens then you know we’ll sure as go for it. But that can’t happen a hundred percent of the time and anyone who says it can lives in another world.

‘So what I’m trying to get at is, don’t set up unrealistic expectations for yourself in life. And I know how negative this sounds. I know it might sound like what I’m saying is that life’s a and you’ve just got to roll with it, but it’s not. It’s that life’s a card game, I guess. You get good cards and bad ones, and you’ve got to assess the value of each and throw them away or keep them close to your chest and power through. You’ve got to make that decision for yourself. Nobody else can. That’s how we live. Or how we should.

‘If you really want to leave, leave. But think to yourself for a while, and think honestly and properly, and ask yourself a few questions. Can you cope without it? Do you have a proper plan in place for after you do leave? How badly is it affecting you? Is it a boredom, a struggle, or something far worse? Is it actively affecting your health, either emotionally or mentally? Or even physically? Are there other options, and if so, how many? You know what I’m getting at? I’m saying you need to think about your life and sort out all the bad and all the good. Maybe make a list, write it down. Something like that. And just think for a good few hours. Cross out the ones you can afford to get rid of, or swap them for others, and then think: Would this be a better life for myself? Because better is what we should strive for. Better and not perfect. Because perfect doesn’t exist. There’s always going to be something that rears its ugly head to break apart that perfect peace, that spotless living, no matter how small or insignificant. And searching for it is a waste of time. Take life one victory at a time, Irene. That’s what you need to do.

‘Okay, so. I don’t know where your head’s at right now, but I’d say it’s like this. You’re not satisfied with your job, or with your daily activities, or anything like that, but you love Seulgi. You’re head over heels for Seulgi. Right?’

‘Okay. Right. So you’ve got two bads and a good right there. Now you’ve got to ask yourself: Can I give up either of these bads? And if so, which of these two bads can I give up and which is most important to me? And will they get in the way of my good with Seulgi? You see what I’m saying now? You’ve got to weigh up everything you do and be realistic about it. And I know how this all sounds. Probably really ing pretentious. But it’s what I genuinely believe in and I don’t admit that to many people. So, there you go. That’s what I think.’

When she was finished she sat back and nodded to Irene. Irene just looked at her.

‘You’re pretty good at that sometimes,’ she said. ‘When you want to be.’

‘Thanks.’

‘I mean, I’m not sure if I agree with all of it.’

‘You never do.’

‘But it’s the thought that counts. Thanks, Yeri.’

‘Anytime. So, what are you going to do now?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Really?’

Irene shrugged. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘It’s pretty hard to get my head straight.’

They were interrupted by a dim buzz on the table. Irene picked up her phone. She read it to herself and sat back with a grimace on her face and she did not speak at all. Yeri studied her a moment. Then she said: ‘What is it? Is it important?’

‘It’s Seulgi.’

‘And?’

‘She just said can we go for a walk again.’

‘Well?’

‘Well what?’

‘Well, are you going to?’

Irene looked at. ‘Why wouldn’t I?’

Yeri grinned. ‘That’s the spirit,’ she said. ‘When?’

‘When?’

‘Are you going for your walk?’

‘Why? So you can tag along?’

‘No, I’m genuinely just curious.’

‘Tonight.’

She walked down to the riverfront alone and cold. A soft wind had picked up in the early evening. Rainfall still fresh on the sidewalks. Silt pushed up the apertures in the concrete, patterns of rain pressed mezzotint in the roads, striae of old tiremarks, stink of gas. She walked with her head down against the falling of the sun like a damned and lost thing moving long and wide into the red jaws of some indescribable destiny step on step through the murk and she did not stop and her hands were shaking mad and violent. She thought on Seulgi as she went. It was almost eight and still somewhat light. A sky drawn up in pastel, the last of the light exploded out from the crest of the horizon like some cataclysm of light, cloudless figures of red in a burning holocaust.

Seulgi was there. She was stood down under the bridge and she was wearing a dark hoodie and had her head down and hands in her pockets but Irene recognised her anyway. Would recognise her anywhere. She descended onto the path by the riverfront and Seulgi turned to see her there but her face did not change. A hardened visage of some indescribable thing, emotionless emotion cold on her lips, her eyes. Irene went up slowly. Not knowing what to say. Seulgi looked at her properly.

‘Hey,’ Irene said. Voice and breath so very small in that cold and vast space. Lightless under the steel awning of the bridge above, those girders like the last girders, adorned in rust and interred in a soft blue mould and the smell of salt and grass and the water chopping about by their right. Seulgi smiled weakly.

‘Hey,’ she said.

‘Got your text.’

‘Yeah. I know. You replied.’

Irene laughed. ‘Yeah, sorry. Dumb thing to say.’

Seulgi didn’t say anything for a while. She watched the river. Flowing out and away. Water over the stones on the bottom of the embankment. So that they came up again white as rocksalt and clean. If only my heart were the same.

‘Can we just walk for a while?’ she said.

‘Sure,’ Irene said. ‘Yeah, let’s walk. Where?’

‘Anywhere.’

‘Okay.’

They walked westward against the sepia sleeping of the world, set over all living things a golden hue and they passed like wanderers anticipating the night in their black attires, a pair of unfortunates bound to one another in triumph or in heartbreak. And that they very much were. A while later they stopped by a bench and sat and rested and watched the river. There was nothing much to see. Shades of a city stacked selfsame in reflection on the waves, slow and white and distorted. Irene watched Seulgi. She was looking there at nothing, as if focusing and not all at once. What sadness did that gaze hold. What untold truths and would they be spoken. Would they be divulged.

‘Hey,’ Irene said. When Seulgi turned to her she smiled reassuringly but Seulgi did not follow. She watched the cold and black gaze in Seulgi’s eyes and Seulgi hers and what she found there in amongst Irene’s eyes was her selfsame shape pushed up thin and sheer in reflection, two of her besides a scarlet sun, and she looked and saw those two small and indistinct figures of frightened children and she had not known that you could see shapes such as those in eyes before and was not quite sure she had wanted to see them but she did and it scared her. The child in the adult. Twinned cold and sheltered against the rising dark in that visage. She could reach out and almost touch it. Touch them, her.

‘Are you okay?’ Irene said. Seulgi looked down at her feet. Irene thought she was almost crying. She flattened down her jeans with her hands and wiped at her eyes and turned up against the river in time to see the pattern of the apartment blocks stencilled in gold on the surface like a graphite painting.

‘Can I ask you something,’ she said.

‘Sure,’ said Irene.

‘Do you think I’m a good role model?’

‘What?’

‘For kids. Do you think I’m a good role model for kids?’

‘I don’t know you well enough to say that.’

‘Not even from TV?’

‘Not really, no.’

‘What do you think, though?’

‘I don’t know. Sorry.’

‘Neither do I. But I don’t think many other people do. You know what I mean? I don’t think they believe I’m the sort of person their daughters should be looking up to. Because of what I’m like. My drinking habits and my ual promiscuity and all that. I mean, maybe that’s not all that bad, but that’s another argument entirely. That’s a moral free-will argument. I don’t give a about that. I mean what they make me out as. The magazines. The papers. TV broadcasts. Whatever. Internet rumours, the whole lot. I don’t think they make me out as a good person. I think they hound me relentlessly.’

‘I see what you mean.’

Seulgi was quiet a minute. When she spoke it was in a voice so impossibly sad. Like a shattered spirit of a voice the same. ‘It’s almost funny,’ she said. ‘My whole life I’ve been raised to act and be a certain way. You know when I started modelling? When I was fifteen? I was literally a ing child. And yet they ualised me. They made me feel uncomfortable. They told me to act a certain way. Said it’d sell more magazines, get more eyes on me and on the companies, bring more attention, you know? And I can see that. I can understand it. They told me that acting like a bit of a rebel was the quickest way to get people to notice you, and all publicity was good publicity.

‘That’s not really true though, is it? I realise that now, probably a bit too late. I’ve been taught how to act and how to speak and how to present myself since I was still a child. And I’m not trying to blame the world for that, not really. But when you tell somebody to do something for long enough, eventually they’re going to do it. And that’s what happened to me. And now the magazines and the papers and everyone else looks down on me as if a good portion of them weren’t interested in me in the first place because of all that . I don’t know if I’m making any sense right now. Probably not. But I don’t even care anymore. I’m sick of it. Sick of all of it.

‘They berate me and they tear me down and they tell me not to do this, or criticise me and scrutinise every little thing I do, like holding me under a ing microscope, waiting for me to slip up, to step out of line or say something wrong. And I do, often. And sure, it’s my fault. But don’t you think they should take some responsibility too? For goading me into it. For making me like this. For ing me up. Because that’s what I am now, Irene. I’m ed up. And I don’t think I’ll ever not be.’

She was almost crying again. Irene nodded. ‘I understand,’ she said.

‘No. No you don’t.’

‘I do. Really.’

‘How could you? How could you even possibly begin to imagine what I feel like? What I’ve been feeling like for ing years? How could you know what that’s like unless you’ve been in my position?’

‘I know what it’s like to be dissatisfied with your life,’ Irene said.

‘What?’

‘I know that feeling. Like you’re going round in circles. You’re never getting anywhere. I know what that’s like.’

‘It’s not just that, though.’

‘I know. I know. But that’s part of it, no?’

Seulgi didn’t say anything. She looked at Irene for a long time. That visage so childlike, so fleeting. Small and flushed face, eyes welling, eyes almost entirely black. She laughed dryly and wiped at her eyes with the back of one hand.

‘I’m so ing stupid,’ she said. ‘God, I’m so thick.’

‘What? Why?’

‘Look at me. Look at how I am right now. I’m a ing mess. I’m ruined. Irredeemable.’

‘No you’re not.’

‘How would you know?’

‘Seulgi.’

‘I’m serious. How would you know? All the I’ve been through, how much I’ve hated it all. But you get no sympathy when you’re a celebrity, because you’ve got money and fame and adoring fans. They don’t think you can go through the same problems. They think my material stuff makes up for my mental health. For some reason they equate them. So I’m just left like this. And this is what happens.’

‘Seulgi, please.’

‘I honestly thought it could work, you know? For a minute. Just for a minute, I thought it might work. But look at me.’

‘It’s okay.’

‘No,’ Seulgi said. ‘No it’s not. It’s not okay because I’m not okay, and I don’t think I ever will be again. God, why did I ever think I could make it work? Why did I ever think I could have anything normal? That’s just like me. To be so ing short-sighted.’

‘Seulgi, look at me.’

‘What?’

‘It’s okay. Everything you’re feeling, I get it. Don’t beat yourself up over it.’

Seulgi laughed again. A dry and cynical laugh. She shook her head and winced. Fighting back tears. She looked so fit to break. There beside lamplight she was so loveable. That lachrymose night child and her heart of tempered steel. Irene waited for her to say something. For a long time she was silent and when she finally spoke Irene wished she hadn’t. Wished she would have remained silent for a time more. For all eternity.

‘This,’ she said. ‘This was a mistake.’

‘What?’ Irene said. ‘What was?’

‘This. I don’t know what to call it. This. I don’t know what else to say.’

‘Seulgi.’

‘I think I need some time alone, Irene. I need some distance. To clear my head. Sort myself out.’

Irene looked at her. She was crying mute and wet tears. Her cheeks irrevocably defiled.

‘Okay,’ she said, a soft and quiet voice. She tried to smile but it was impossible. ‘Okay. Whatever you say.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Seulgi said. ‘I just need to chill out for a bit. To just be on my own.’

She wiped her tears away and smiled a thin smile and rose to leave and Irene did not stop though she wished in times of quiet reflection that she had, that she had reached out and took Seulgi’s hand in her own and turned her around and told her then, told her it wasn’t right for her to do this no matter what she was feeling, told her in no uncertain terms that she wanted an answer and she wanted it so very selfishly, she wanted Seulgi to tell her she was loved, that it was mutual, that they shared that connection real as it was, that they were one and the same and they shared a common burden, a disdain not only similar but the very same, and that in doing so they were closer than either realised. She wished and wished for the tilting pendulum of time to reverse its course and bestow upon her one more opportunity, one final chance of will to alter her fate.

But instead she stood and watched as Seulgi moved between shadows like a ghost, like an apparition summoned from the most evocative figment of her vivid and fevered mind, come to taunt her in longing as in love. What is done is done. And what remains to do. What road remains open.

Then she was gone and all was dark and she was alone.