A/N: I just want to say a massive thank you for the amazing support all the way through this. This is now officially my most viewed/most popular story, which I never expected at all. And 140+ comments is honestly the most amazing thing ever, I read every one and love the feedback from everyone, thank you again so much <3

Enjoy this chapter, next one coming at the standard time 2-3 days from now! :)

XIV. ORDINARY LIFE

"Heaven knows that I been told, paid for the life that I chose."

On the way home she stopped by a local grocery store and bought herself a bottle of water and a sandwich and she sat on a bench in the park opposite watching the sun fall away across the horizon like the descent of some last terminus of light on earth. She was there almost an hour and she did not think of much. Not Seulgi, at least. She thought about Yeri and about what she would say if she could listen in to their conversations. Would she be proud? Maybe. It depended. Then she thought about her job. She thought about quitting it and doing something else and for a long time it seemed very appealing but what then? And what of the consequences? To drift unencumbered by the obscene weight of her joyless work was still, at its core, to be drifting. And if there was anything worse than repetitive tedium it was the idea of aimless wandering.

She sat drinking her water and observing her surroundings as if viewed through a mesh fence at a zoo or perhaps like the inside of some great glass snowglobe. These people drawn up against the hot sun in long shadows, an old man just across the cobblepath and a woman walking her dog and two boys dipping low to feed shelled corn to the ducks in the reed pond. They looked like yellow waxworks softly coppered by the sun. Save the hum of traffic and the billow quack of the ducks it was all quiet. As if that place existed in some way removed from the world surrounding, inhabiting its own solitary plane where under its unique ecosphere did they all flourish in tranquil thought. It was placid, in a way. And Irene liked that. She sat there with her legs crossed in the heat, thinking.

Maybe it was best to quit. To move on. But perhaps not. After a while she came to the conclusion that deciding for herself was significantly harder than both she and Seulgi had made it sound. To stand up for themselves was a luxury barely afforded to them. They were much one and the same. These wayward nebulous penitents in rebus to a long and chronic night. An equinox of the internal order. Threadbare of dreams and threadbare of heart. And what of your solutions? What and where now? And to come. What to come.

She took out her phone and debated ringing Yeri or one of the others. Just to talk. They would no doubt let her, especially Yeri. They would allow her in the way that she so often did to indulge in her fears and her concerns. She sat there running a thumb over her phone and then she put it back in her pocket and sat back and took a deep breath. For a moment she allowed herself to turn back to Seulgi. Imagining her there. The look in her eye when Irene had admitted it all, when she had bared her soul to the world and let Seulgi know how she was feeling at last. At first she thought it had been a kind of relief, how similar to her own, as if she had been expecting the same thing from Irene but had not had the courage to admit it. But now upon reflection she was sure it was something else. It was something worse, something insidious, this parasitic self-doubt that plagued Seulgi as it always had done. It wasn’t a joy at their sudden mutual understanding nor anything even of the sort. It was fear.

She was scared of change, Irene thought. Scared of what it might do to her. Worried in honesty that she could not face the same challenges as Irene, go through the same trials and come out the other side unscathed. Because she had already done that before, and it had not ended well. It was a terror in her eyes, in that small and welling glint, and a false smile on her lips when she had nodded and said okay and goodbye and see you soon. Because she wasn’t as strong as Irene. She didn’t have that same instinct for self-preservation, for utter perseverance, and in truth it was easier to run away from her problems than to confront them.

Irene pressed her palms against her eyes. When she opened them again the world seemed twinned. A blur across the pond and the space where the boys had been crouched feeding the ducks now empty, the small footpath littered with mud and shelled corn where they had dropped it and other various birds skimming across the water like toy ducks at a carnival, bobbing back and forth and flapping their paperthin wings and disappearing again. She was not crying but thinking of Seulgi it was hard to remain that way. Maybe she should ring her. Let her know her concerns, her worries and troubles. She took her phone again and held it up against the dim cone of sunlight in the west and put it back again. They would take their time apart. That much was clear. For better or for worse.

She walked left out of the park and down the avenue against the backdrop of a warm eve coming over that cloudless day. It had not rained at all. As befitting summer, she thought. At the end of the street she stood looking around and soaking in the atmosphere of that place. Beggars lined by the doors of the restaurants in old parkas and snowcoats and huddled in their blankets like mendicants poised to receive gift or tribute, cars motionless in their tracked wheelpaths, a patient waiting for the lights to change and the low and rumbling growl of a hundred engines, a thin and volute billow of exhaust smoke in the air, two men passing on the edge of the curb and talking between mouthfuls of bacon sandwiches and a boy walking his dog across the street and a handful of girls with iced coffees behind her, all talking as they went by and she stood there listening to them each in kind, like some strange pantomime show and she its sole and outlawed witness, forced to pay attention to this urban pandemonium, this tinpot chatter of voices and motor engines and café clatter and footfalls coming back like echoes in the long halls of the arcades and tall the buildings and tall in their shadows and lightless in the window transoms and reflected down on her there in some halo of terrific and noble light.

This, all of this. All that she couldn’t bear. This ceaseless turning of an iron world. Her participation a glim and distant prospect. She walked back the way she had come, tracking home along avenues dried in the heat and littered with trash from bins overflowing. In the air a general stink of processed food and gas. By the time she was home it was nearly seven. She cooked and ate and watched TV for a while. Going through the motions of a life she so very much wanted to leave behind but didn’t know how. For the rest of the night she lay on the couch with her laptop beside her, searching for possible university courses and college programs and graduate associates and other internships. Not quite deciding on what she wanted. But it would come to her. She was sure of that. In due time, as all things did.

When Irene was gone she began to cry and she did not stop for a long time. A dry and soaring heat watching over her shoulder. She stood holding the doorknob, debating whether to exit out onto the street and chase Irene down and tell her to stop, tell her to come back, that in truth it wasn’t alright that she was going to find herself, not anymore, even though it made sense, even though it was the best thing to do. And besides, had Seulgi not done the same? Had she not pushed Irene away so many times, scared of what may stem from this raging current in her heart? But this was different. Irene was normal. She was persistent and headstrong and determined in all that she did. She would pursue her true goals until whatever end she met. Seulgi was broken and scared and unfixable.

She wiped the tears from her eyes and sat back on the couch in great breaths to calm herself. From so high she could see by the windows the faint and disproportionate outlines of a dozen or more figures so far below on the street, those shapeless entities with their pinpoint cameras and their boom mics and their waiting video cameras, all patiently waiting. Perhaps she would not even come out. Perhaps she was not even in. They didn’t know nor did they care. They stood there on the curb like a band of wretched statues raised from a cemetery or similar. White and quivering against the shimmer of the sun. Seulgi made herself a coffee and finished it quickly. She stood by the kitchen counter taking in the lingering scent of Irene. It was not a good smell. Alcohol and sweat and . But it was her smell. It belonged to Irene. And she would treasure that.

She opened the cabinet beside her and studied the contents. A number of ornate glasses with various markings and carvings etched like some gothic assortment of tableware, an unopened bottle of wine with a seal made from gold leaf, a bottle of whiskey at the back beside another handful of glasses and small round tumblers, an empty decanter. On the top shelf sat a stack of unused china plates and other cutlery. She had not touched them in months. After a moment to gather herself she took the whiskey and closed the cabinet and moved back to the couch. It was disturbingly quiet in that hallowed hall of the sinned and the sorrowful. Those ghosts that walked there. Phantom memories of phantom people and she much the same.

They were still there by the time she had drank half the bottle. She stood by the window observing their motionless trap. Some ate from packed lunches and some drank flasks of coffee but otherwise they were still. A soft carmine hue rose in the west of the world against which the backbone of towerblocks fell into destitute and monolithic shadow, each their own entire structure, solitary and singular in the cold and hardtoiled sun. She was already feeling a light haze. Her head throbbed as if to warn her away from the bottle. As if already accustomed to the hollow and awful loathing she would no doubt succumb to in the hours following. Perhaps it was for the best.

Instead she tipped the bottle back and drank straight from the rim and with a grimace she staggered back to the couch. She set the bottle down on the table and took up her phone. That sight there looked like some pitiful afterparty. Half a bottle of whiskey beside an empty ashtray and naught else. Just her quiet solitude in that enormous place. She checked her phone. A number of messages and none from Irene. It was almost funny, in a sort of terrible and heartbreaking sense. She was not alone but she was very lonely. Ten or twelve messages in three or four hours. Photographers wanting to see her, managers and agents checking up on her, old friends or so-called friends and acquaintances and associates of acquaintances from parties long gone or parties forthcoming with invitations to other events both formal and social, magazine editors and journalists and friends of friends of friends and other agents and other models and actors and idols and so many people, so many names. These faceless voids in her black heart. These people she did not care for nor had she ever because she knew that they did not care for her either. She was as much a product of their eternal faux goodwill and they were enamoured with her fame, not her. Always had been. That was her life, by fate or by choice. She was this vagrant, adrift on the wind, friendless and without family to turn to. What had ever offered her solace or comfort save drink? There is truth in the bottle and there always has been.

As she drank she thought of Irene. How strong Irene was. How she had stood up for what she had wanted and never backed down. How she had always been there. It felt like five years when in truth it had been maybe a month. She couldn’t remember anymore. She finished the last of the whiskey and set the bottle back on the table. Her hands were shaking and she was still crying. She thought about ringing Irene for a while and thought better of it. Irene was good. Irene was sorting herself. Seulgi could not do the same. Best to let one person suffer than both of them. With great difficult she navigated the wide and cold tiles of her kitchen and fumbled about in the cabinet for something tangible to hold. She came up with the bottle of wine. For a moment she stood just looking at it. Turning the wide black base of this ancient and expensive artefact in her hand, inspecting the liquid bubbling in the soft windowlight. She twisted off the cork and drank deep. With the whiskey it was awful but she didn’t care.

What occurred next came as a blur. It was almost pathetic the way her life had turned out. She went from the kitchen to the couch to the window to the bathroom without remembering any of it. Hanging her head there over the clear white ceramic of the bowl, spittle falling from her swollen lips, lolling back and forth like some bobbingduck in a carnival. hurt and her stomach too. And her head and her legs and everywhere else. She was crying and in that state she was not anything other than piteous. This wizened leptosome hunched over and dribbling on herself. Cursed to this warm insobriety. She held out a hand blindly to search for the wine bottle. When she held it up and squinted it was only a third full.

The next time she opened her eyes the wine bottle was on the floor beside her, its contents spilt in some vivid purple display like viscera. Maybe five minutes had passed or an hour. She didn’t know. Didn’t really care. It hurt to think of anything and so she didn’t. Not the reporters outside nor the messages lighting up her phone nor of Irene, of what Irene might be doing at that particular moment. Would she have already quite her job? Or would she be on the verge of doing so? Maybe. That would be like Irene. To be headstrong and determined. Not like Seulgi. Not that worthless.

By the time she had come around and was in any sort of state to stand or be cognitive of anything beyond the toilet bowl and the bottle beside her it was the early morning. Though in truth she had no recollection of this nor would. She writhed in great bouts of pain, her head swelling, stomach bloated, spittle daubing her lips in some grotesque display of alcoholic incompetence. After a while she dragged herself to the wall. The cool and white tiles pressed against her nape were a relief like no other. She sat there with her legs stretched out, one soaked with wine from the stain on the tiles and the bottle just beside her, and for more than an hour she cried into her hands and wished she had been born differently, wished she had been raised in a different place at a different time, that she had never come in contact with any modelling agents at all, wished in some awful way that she had never been pretty to anyone nor anything close to pretty, wished that she was not conventionally attractive nor had any charm about her, that she would be physically unloved by everyone, perhaps even repulsive, some hideous deformation of a girl who would blossom in black petals and long into her womanhood remain the same, that she had never been that curious and starstruck teenager that had so readily accepted each and every offer that came her way, each contract to be signed on dotted lines in some ink of invisible blood, unwittingly signing herself over to this life of eternal misery, this circus parade of cameras and microphones and lightshows and scrutinization, this farcical carnival of lucid vapidity, these would-be friends and could-be companions, these bedfellows and wine sots and Instagram models and fame-chasers and hangers-on and socialites and soulless associates, this long and prolonged exposure to some fatal indulgence, this candid display of her innermost vices, all the alcohol and the fast cars and the posing and the pouting and the girls, so many girls, these faceless accompaniments, these accessories to her miserable unpretty existence, no more worth than a watch or necklace to her. She wished that she was loved and could be loved and always had been that way. That way and not any other way. And as she sat there she thought at last of Irene, knowing deep in her heart that Irene was not thinking of her and had no reason to. Because she was undeserving of that level of appreciation and always had been. Look at me. Look at what I’ve become. Look upon me and weep for what I’ve lost and what I’ve never had. This is me now. This is all I have left.

‘I don’t understand.’

Irene looked at her. She was stirring her coffee slowly.

‘What?’ Irene said.

‘I don’t understand what you’re getting at,’ Yeri said.

‘What part of it don’t you understand?’

‘You got back with her again?’

‘Yeah.’

‘But then you ditched her?’

‘I didn’t ditch her.’

‘What then?’

‘It was a mutual thing,’ Irene said. ‘A good thing this time.’

‘What part of it is good?’

‘Well. We didn’t break up.’

‘Were you even together?’

‘I don’t know. You get what I mean. It wasn’t messy. We both agreed to just not see each other for a couple weeks. Until we get our heads sorted out. Until we’re in a better place.’

‘So it was a mutual thing?’

Irene nodded.

‘And you’re happy with it?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Good,’ Yeri said. ‘I’m happy for you then. As long as you’re actually okay with it and you’re just, you know, deflecting. Trying to blow it off or whatever.’

‘No, I’m actually happy about it.’

Yeri nodded. She drank her coffee quietly. A soft blue glow had come up in the late afternoon and it folded over the shapes of the towerblocks in slender shadow, hazy and indistinct. She set her cup down and watched Irene for a moment. ‘Are you okay then?’ she said.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Like, are you properly okay now? Or just with Seulgi? I know you’ve got a lot of you want to talk about.’

‘How do you know that?’

‘I know you. I can just sense it.’

Irene laughed. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘you’re not far off.’

‘Knew it. What’s bothering you?’

‘I never said anything was bothering me.’

‘No, but I can tell that too.’

‘Really?’

Yeri made a 50-50 motion with her hand. ‘Go on,’ she said, ‘what’s up?’

Irene was quiet a while. She stirred her black coffee with one finger idly. It had gone cold a while ago. ‘I don’t know,’ she said at last. ‘I mean, I do know. It’s just hard to quantify. To put into words.’

‘Well, you can try at least.’

‘Yeah.’ She turned to the window. All quiet in the long arm of that eve. ‘It’s just a bit of everything,’ she said. ‘My job, where I’m at, my education, everything I’ve done so far. It feels like it’s just all amounted to absolutely nothing and I’m not okay with that. I’m not where I want to be, and the big problem is that I don’t know where exactly I want to be. I just know it’s not here. It’s not in ing accounting anymore. Or economics or business or anything to do with either of them. I just feel like all of this is for nothing and I know that it might sound like a pipedream to wish I was doing something else but I really do. And I’m sick of sacrificing my wellbeing for something I don’t care about just because it could possibility hold a bit of stability and I’ve deluded myself into believing that’s more important than anything else. But I don’t think it is anymore.’

‘What about history?’ Yeri said.

‘What about it?’

‘I’ve always known you to love history. Why don’t you pursue that?’

‘That’s what I’ve been thinking. I don’t know what exactly I’d do but I’m still thinking about it. Maybe I’ll go back to uni again, do another degree program.’

‘Another three years of your life in uni?’

Irene shrugged. ‘If it’s something I actually, genuinely want to do this time, I don’t mind. I can hack it. I’d have to pay for it myself this time, but I don’t mind. I think it’d do me some good to be around something that makes me properly happy again. And I don’t like that word but I’m using it anyway.’

‘What word?’

‘Happy. Forget it, just a little pet peeve of mine. But yeah, I’m thinking about applying more and more every day. Maybe I could get admitted somewhere decent for spring next year. I’ve got the grades and . I don’t know what else I’d need.’

‘A genuine passion?’

‘I’ve got that.’

‘Good,’ Yeri said. ‘That’s a start. What’s brought all of this on anyway?’

‘All of what?’

‘This big epiphany of yours. It’s like you’ve just opened yourself up and you’re discovering all this about yourself.’

Irene smiled. ‘Seulgi,’ she said. ‘I think it’s Seulgi.’

‘What? I don’t get it.’

‘I think all this drama with Seulgi’s had me so preoccupied that I kind of forgot about all the bad I was suppressing. All the I didn’t want to hear or talk about or even think about. About how I’ve been feeling. And now that it finally feels like we’re getting somewhere it’s all come flooding back, except this time I’m ready for it and I want to do something about it. I want to get it all out in the open. I want to finally do something with my life that I want to do, not that other people want me to do. I’m not going down that path anymore.’

‘That’s great.’ Yeri finished the last of her coffee. The waiter came over with their food and they ate in silence save the clatter of pans from the kitchen. It smelled vaguely of mint and bacon. ‘Seriously,’ she said, ‘that’s great. I’m glad you’ve got your life in order.’

‘Well, not yet.’

‘I’ve got faith in you. So how’s she taking it anyway?’

‘Who? Seulgi?’

‘Yeah.’

‘I don’t know,’ Irene said. She was quiet a moment. ‘I haven’t spoken to her since we had that discussion. We agreed to stay apart for a while.’

‘How long is a while?’

‘Honestly? I don’t know. We didn’t figure that bit out. I kind of didn’t stay around long enough to find out. Probably should’ve done that. But I’m guessing a couple weeks maximum. Maybe a month. I don’t know. Long enough to get both our lives sorted out.’

‘Both? What’s wrong with her?’

‘I’m not sure I can really tell you, sorry.’

‘It’s alright.’

‘She’s been in the entertainment industry since she was sixteen. I can’t imagine that feels too good. She says she’s all kinds of ed up and there’s been a lot of in the past that’s really affected her badly. That’s why we’ve been going back and forth for so long. Why everything up until recently felt like one step forward, two steps back. Because it’s hard for her. And I get that. I can’t fully understand it because I’ve never been in her position, but I get it. It must be awful.’

‘Yeah,’ Yeri said. ‘Do you think she’s doing okay?’

‘Honestly?’

‘Yeah. Honestly.’

Irene looked back to the window. For a long time she was quiet. Her face this unreadable rictus of expression. As if very heavily debating the possibility that she was not okay nor would she ever be. When she turned back to Yeri there was this grave look in her eyes. ‘Honestly,’ she said, ‘I’m not sure.