A/N: Guess who's baaaaaaaaaack! :D 

Feels amazing to be back, I just want to say a HUGE apology for not updating in like, nearly three weeks. I know that's normal for some people and I know that real life comes first (and I've had a lot of crazy going on, finishing uni, sorting out next year etc.) but I love writing and I love that my readers have been so incredibly receptive all throughout the story. Seriously guys, your comments have been the best I've ever read on AFF - so insightful, so filled with individual thought and queries and allusions. They're just a joy to read.

Anyway, once again I'd like to say I'm sorry, but I'm back now, and not only am I determined to finish this story very soon but I already have ideas for another Seulrene story around the corner, and this one will be very different. I'll talk about that more in the future though :)

I hope this makes up for lost time. Comments/discussions welcome as always.

Enjoy!

XVI. ALL I KNOW

"Baby if you let me, I won't hesitate."

For a long time she stood there with her phone in her hand reading the message on screen and reading it again and when the screen had dimmed to a black she hit the Home button again and read it until she could barely stand to read it anymore. Like some code indecipherable. Like an illusion of a text, an apparition of that very same thing sent to torment her. She found after a while that she didn’t quite know what to do or say or even feel. This sort of hollow emptiness that had become so very familiar in days gone. This lingering hole in her heart where love or hatred or something should be, just something. Anything. She read the message again and then finally she opened it and scrolled up and tried to scroll down beyond the end of the page and she read it until the words were lodged in her mind as if to never be rid of them. It was growing darker and colder but she didn’t care.

Hey. Can we meet?

Just like that. Those four words, two capitals, one full stop, one question mark. She read them again and again. Her hand quivering now and her lips the same and her eyes wet. It was Irene and Irene had text her first and Irene wanted to meet her and it may not be good, because why would it? What would Irene want with her? What could she possibly want? To tell her goodbye? To tell her that their entire time together had been naught but a mistake, a failed romance from two lost souls who so desperately needed that sort of loving, who desired more than anything else to feel that special connection, that binding warmth of the heart and body and so much more, because that’s what it had been, had it not? That’s what it had been? Seulgi read it again and one more time and she found that trying to read it any longer was impossible because she was crying and she couldn’t see much of anything.

She put her phone away and stood by the window soaking in the long light of that dark night. A coal darkness where towerblocks stood like menhirs excavated from a time lost to the annals of some chapbook or similar false history and adorned in lights bright as to match the purple sky and the moon so bright and so alive and so very much unlike her, unlike all that Seulgi had become, stumbling about in her unwashed state and stinking of whiskey and other such drinks and in that state she was not approachable nor pitiable nor had she been at any point. This unloved and unwelcome pilgrim and what was her journey if not love, or acceptance? If not to be wanted be a world that had for so long cast her aside, treated her as naught but an object for their inspection, their appraisal and their disapproval and their scorn and their scrutiny. What had she become? What had she been all along?

This was her and always would be, Irene or no Irene. She remembered occasionally a story she had read as a child. It had been the story of a wolf that had lost sight of her pack sometime in her youth. She had been older than a cub but not by much. And she had in those times following tracked ground through woodland and sedge and up through snowy passes and across the mouths of gorges and by streams and great rivers and had come out perhaps a year or two later by another pack. At first she had cordoned herself from them. She slept away and she hunted when they slept and she kept to a large distance and observed them as if under a microscope and she did not let her presence be known or so she thought. But they had seen her from the beginning. It was not until they approached her that she allowed herself to be taken in. To be welcomed as one of their own. For maybe two years following she had hunted and walked and lived with them, amongst them, as one of their own, and she had found a mate and settled down and moved around and followed them back through snow and mountains and across white deserts where ice blew up like chalk from the dust and no sun existed save a silver impression of one high in some birdless cerulean circle and where all skies were blue skies and one and the same and never did that climate change nor would it for it existed as if on the precipice of conceivable terrain, like a land fathomed from the cavities of some fevered mind and now unalterable. Late in that winter they came across another pack and they were hunted almost to extinction. They had been wiped out utterly save her and one other female and then they had parted somewhere in the woods. Late at night she heard them following. She heard them wailing far below on the forest floor and she could smell their scent and in moments of quiet solitude could hear their whimpers and she knew that they were very much aware of her existence and that they would be pursuing her. One night she listened for a long time and she listened as they chased her packmate through the hills to the east and listened still as they caught her and tore her apart and listened to her cries until she was dead and all was silent and she was alone. For a month she tracked terrain away from all still giving chase and she ate what she could find and she was very thin and frail and worn ragged and her senses gone far behind her. On the fortieth day she came across a pack of wolves beyond the clearing of the hills and she knew immediately that it was her pack and that she had come home. Either by miracle or some other means of authorial intent. And they had accepted her amongst them but she was not the same nor would she ever be. She had been changed irreversibly by the world around her and she did not fit any longer. She could not live with them. No matter what she did it was impossible. She was not like them and she could not alter herself to be so and so she left them and wandered the woods alone and scared and there she died and nobody remembered her and that was that. That was the end of the story.

Seulgi remembered reading it when she was still young but of the details had paid no mind. Now she found herself relating to it. In some strange manner she was more alike that wolf than she ever realised. She had been changed by the world and she could not go back to anything resembling her previous life nor would it take it her and she was alone. She was damaged and solitary and in that solitude she would perish for what other option was there? What but to give herself up to the world again? To allow herself to be consumed by that insidious parasite that had made her like this, that had moulded her in her most malleable state into this pitiful creature, this self-loathing inebriate beset with all manner of vices and none of them fixable. What did she have left.

What but the meagre hope of Irene? It was as if she could not hide it any longer. Could not ignore it. Irene had been this faceless figure in her life and then as if by some obvious magic she had not. She had been Irene. She had been given a name and an identity and she had been worth more to Seulgi than any person she could remember and Seulgi had lost her like she had lost so many other and what now? She wiped her eyes and a second time and took out her phone and read the message again. Thinking perhaps it had in truth still been some illusion of the mind but it was real and it was there. Four words, a question. It was too late for any sort of meaningful reply and her head spun and her breath stank and she had not washed for such a time that she could not remember. She looked back at the night. What was that night but a coagulation of people with greater aspirations than her? Of people soaring to heights she had never been to. Never had the opportunity. I want that. I want to be that. I want to be proper again. Let me be real.

Without thinking she showered and changed and doused herself in perfume and brushed her teeth twice. The stink of whiskey was still there. Perhaps it had bonded to her. She stood by the doorway obscured in red light like some daemon conjured up from a fresh spring of intoxication, swaying ever so slightly from side to side as if coiled on a spring. She read the message one more time. It occurred to her almost comically that she did not know where she was going or when and she almost laughed.

Hey, she wrote. Where?

The minute reply felt like a hundred. She waited in red light and she stepped aside and rested against the door and she waited again in darkness and in the cold and wiped her eyes. She was not crying any longer. It hurt to cry. Come on, she said. Come on, Seulgi. Pull yourself together. This is it. This is your last chance at something normal. At making something work. Don’t lose her again. Don’t let her walk away. Tell her how much you want her with you. How much you need her.

When the reply came she opened it and stood and smiled.

In the park, it said. She turned the lights off and went out and through the lobby and across the street between shadows long and wide and then like a spirit lost to the cold air of the lightless night she was gone.

While she was sat there it started to rain. She had not noticed it a first, a light shower on her shoulders. It grew heavier but she would not leave. She looked back at the text Seulgi had sent her. Only one. Perhaps she was not coming but Irene would wait. She would wait long into the night and then into the morning and when the sun came up pink and incunabular on a new day she would still be there, hands in her lap, waiting silently for Seulgi to show. Her quiet guardian, a watchful protector to guide her through the darkest of times, a candle in the obscene dark of her torrid life. Of this torment and others aside. She studied the streetlamps and the cobblestone pathways and she observed their architecture and with no great difficult found herself drifting to thoughts of Seulgi, of her soft face so flushed in times of exasperation, of her hair bundled up or loosed across her shoulders, how effortless she appeared almost at all times. How fragile she looked when she wept, how much like a child in need of something, of somebody to reach out and take her in their arms and hold her close and tell her that everything was going to be alright, that she was fine or soon would be, that she wasn’t broken or damaged or unloved. That she was loved very much indeed.

She checked her phone again. Minutes passed clockless there. A dark absent sound. It had been almost an hour since Wendy had left her and she had not stopped crying for a long time. She checked her phone a third time to see if a message had perhaps appeared without her consent or acknowledgement but it had not. Slowly she put her hands in her lap and waited. A single light cast down on her from high above, this angle of some small enlightenment, cast out and alone in her needs, her desires, her desperate yearning for something to be tethered to, for a connection of love or lust or something, of anything, longing to feel that again. To be kept in check by her feelings. And she was sure Seulgi was that. Seulgi was that and everything more.

The next time she looked left she had to pause and turn away and look back again. Seulgi was stood there no more than twenty or thirty feet away, obscured partway in shadow, the rest of her lit like some carnival attraction in light so pale she appeared at first almost translucent, the rain cast on her in some halo of dampness, hair matted about her face and makeup soot and piping and running. She looked so achingly small. So insignificant. So unlike the Seulgi in the media or on television. She looked like the Seulgi that Irene had come to know well in the past few months. Irene stood and she did not move from that position. Fixed in place by some nervous rumbling in her gut that made her want to be sick. The sudden and awful realisation that this was the culmination of everything she had come to understand or know, of all her feelings had presented for her and all she had readied herself for and that Seulgi felt the same way, and in some manner this was the finale of something, whether good or bad.

She stood that way a long time and so did Seulgi and neither moved. Blurred in rain and swept in the cold and motionless. Irene smiled first. It was hard to do much of anything without crying.

‘Hey,’ she said.

‘Hi.’

‘You okay?’

‘Bit wet.’

Irene laughed. ‘Yeah. Me too.’

‘Should’ve brought an umbrella.’

‘You should’ve, since you were coming out here.’

‘It wasn’t raining when I left.’

‘You can never be too cautious.’

Seulgi shrugged. She took a few steps towards Irene and then a few more cautiously. It all felt so very strange. So inhuman. As if to make one false move would see Irene disappear from that position by the bench in an instant, never to return. As if she were no more than a cruel apparition, a spectre of torment for her withered soul. When she stepped closer Irene regarded her with a shy smile.

‘You look good,’ Seulgi said.

‘Not really.’

‘I mean, minus the rain.’

‘Thanks. You too.’

‘Not really.’

Irene was quiet a second. ‘Have you been drinking?’ she said.

‘Can you tell?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Can you smell it?’

‘Yeah.’

‘. I brushed my teeth twice.’

‘Really?’

Seulgi nodded.

‘Didn’t do a very good job, then. I thought you were going to stop drinking.’

‘Why did you think that?’

‘I don’t know. I just kind of figured.’

‘Well. I didn’t.’

Seulgi looked away. This sense of shame on her face that made Irene’s heart drop. When she looked back she smiled softly. There were tears in her eyes already. ‘Hey,’ she said.

‘Hey.’

‘Can we go for a walk?’

‘In the rain?’

‘Why not?’

Irene thought for a moment. ‘Okay,’ she said with a smile. ‘Where?’

‘Anywhere. I don’t care.’

They walked through the park and then by the far end they stood and looked out at the city as it simmered in the rain like a reflection of a cityscape seen in some blinding heat all distorted and slowly wobbling and then they doubled back and walked again through the park and by the other end they came out in the slush of the long hail and passed by streets they had both come across before and they did not stop nor did they talk. There was again that instant calm between them. A sort of tranquil silence that was not uncomfortable at all. To set them both at ease. It all felt so very right. Seulgi watched Irene here and there. She watched the contours of her jawline daubed in rainwater and the matted tangle of her hair and her content smile at the world and at what had transpired and all that was set to do so and Seulgi smiled as well. They did not speak at all. They passed down more avenues and they came out across the road from the river and they crossed and went down to the bank and walked and still it was raining but neither cared and when Irene held out her hand without a word Seulgi took it in her own as if it were the last time she would ever do so and she smiled and cried quietly and all felt so right, felt so good, and Irene was there and Irene was with her and Irene was hers again and Irene Irene Irene, yes Irene.

They walked along the river to places they had both been before, separate and together, and all felt so familiar. Like they had by some property been transposed on those very same walks, those nights alone by the glimmer of streetlamps like waifs incorporeal and detached from all reality in their solitary shadows and still they did not say a word. When they stopped they stopped by a bank of grass slick with mud and it was still raining. They stood side by side soaking up the night. Lights pockmarked across an infinite sky. All possibilities and all hope of any possibilities existed there, all of time in a belljar casing waiting to be plucked like diamonds from the stars. And theirs amongst them.

‘It’s beautiful,’ Irene said.

Seulgi looked at her. ‘What is?’

‘The night.’

‘Not the word I’d use, really.’

‘What then?’

‘Wet, probably. Quite wet.’

Irene laughed. It was a laugh that soothed Seulgi, a theriac of immediate effect. ‘I mean, you’re not wrong,’ Irene said.

‘We’ll catch a cold.’

‘I don’t mind.’

Seulgi smiled. Still Irene did not look at her. She watched Irene while Irene watched the night. ‘I don’t either,’ she said. ‘Not tonight.’

‘Remember the fireworks?’

‘Yeah.’

‘This is where we watched them. Right down there, on the grass. Remember?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Been a long time since I saw something that pretty. I know that sounds kind of stupid, but there’s something about that night that was different. It’s weird. It’s kind of like, you know how you can go to a concert or a festival and afterwards you end up thinking it was better because of the whole vibe? Like, the whole experience. I can’t really describe it because it sounds pathetic.’

‘No it doesn’t. Go on.’

Irene hesitated a moment. Then she said, ‘Well, there was this one concert I went to a couple years back. You won’t know them. But still. I went to see them twice in two months, crazy as that sounds. First time I went on my own and it was amazing. Performance was great, never seen anything like it. Second time I went with a bunch of friends from school. I don’t know what happened but the singer, this guy he barely sang that night. Just got the audience to do it all for him. And there’s nothing inherently wrong with that, I guess, but it just wasn’t up to par. It wasn’t anywhere near as good as the first time. And this is after we queued three hours in zero-degree weather without coats, and then we were let in late, and we had to rush to get the last train back because it wasn’t even in Seoul.

‘But, in a way, it was a better experience. Because of the whole vibe, you know? Because even though it was freezing, and we waited for ages, and the performance wasn’t even that good, it had this whole vibe to it, this sort of energy that I can’t properly explain. I’m not smart enough for that. But being with friends and making new friends in the queue and laughing about rushing for the train, small like that. It sounds so stupid and so pathetic like I said, but that’s kind of what I meant.’

Seulgi smiled. ‘It doesn’t sound pathetic at all,’ she said. ‘It’s good to take notice of the little things. Of all the things that make you truly happy, no matter how insignificant they might be to other people. Be proud of that. Take charge of what brings you joy. I wish I could have done that a long time ago.’

She smiled a sad smile. A smile that in its simplicity told Irene a thousand stories and none of them good and none she had the desire to ever see replicated in any way or form. All these memories. These lost emblems of a lost time. ‘Go on,’ Seulgi said. ‘Finish your story.’

‘Right. Sorry. Anyway, what I meant was that the concert kind of reminded me of that night watching the fireworks. There wasn’t really anything that special about it. I’ve seen fireworks before. I’ve been to firework displays before. I’ve done all that. But there was something different. Something about that night that just felt special, you know? Like I was somewhere else, like it was something I always needed but never really knew I wanted. That’s what it felt like to me. And I don’t know how to describe it better than that.’

Seulgi was quiet for a long time. When she finally spoke she did so with a smile that Irene reciprocated in kind. ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘I get it. I felt the same.’

‘Really?’

‘Yeah.’

They were quiet again and while neither spoke they both shared this inescapable destiny tying them together and in some way however hidden or quiet they knew that they must speak and that there was no other outcome that would leave them satisfied than that. It was still raining and it would not stop and they were both soaked and they looked a pair of mendicants or similar in their sodden clothes but neither cared. When they spoke it was Irene first and she did not smile. She was almost crying.

‘Look,’ she said. She turned to Seulgi and Seulgi to her and they watched each other a second. As if both knew that whatever was said next may be the end of them forever. A parting of some unbearable agony. A broaching of their sacred bond.

‘I’m sorry,’ Irene said.

‘What?’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘For what?’

She wiped her wet eyes with the back of one hand. ‘For everything. For all the stupid I’ve done. But especially for what I did when we split up. When we parted. Whatever the you want to call it. I’m sorry for that.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘How do I say this? How do I even start? I feel like such a ing idiot for everything I’m feeling and everything I’m about to say and I’m sorry for that. But , Seulgi. If I don’t say it now I don’t think I ever will. And it’ll eat away me and it’ll get me down and then that’ll be the end of that. I won’t know what to do anymore.’

Seulgi stood there not quite knowing what to say or what to do. These words alien to her, always alien. She stood and nodded her head slowly and said okay and Irene sighed.

‘,’ she said. ‘Jesus. Where do I start?’

‘Start wherever.’

‘Okay.’ Irene took a deep breath. She wiped the rainwater from her brow and then her eyes and sighed again. ‘You know everything I said the other day? About needing some time apart because I thought it was better for the both of us? Because it would help us get our heads sorted and realise that we’ve both got problems and we need to fix them separately and it’d be better that way? Because it’d clear our minds or whatever?’

Seulgi nodded.

‘It was all wrong. All of it. I was one hundred percent wrong. Completely and totally wrong. I ed up more than I think I’ve ever ed up before. I thought I was being brave or courageous or independent or whatever. I thought I was sticking up for myself and not being the hopelessly romantic pushover I’ve always been, and for once I thought I was finally maturing but I wasn’t. I wasn’t, Seulgi. I was doing the opposite. I was pushing you away because I had it through my head that it was for the best, for some dumb reason. I thought if we were apart it’d be better. That we wouldn’t have to think of each other. That you’d be able to figure out all this celebrity bull and I could sit down and think about what I genuinely wanted to do with my life and maybe quit my job and find something fulfilling or maybe go back to uni or whatever. I thought that’d be for the best.

‘But you know what? I was wrong. I was so wrong, and it hurts me to say that. Because it was bad for me, and it was bad for you, I know that now. I was being selfish and hurtful and boneheaded and I’m sorry. I’m sorry for that. Because what I’m trying to say is, we don’t have to be apart to solve our problems. We don’t have to push each other away for arbitrary reasons, or force ourselves to not see one another, or lock ourselves behind these false feelings or whatever. We don’t. Because where does that get us? I don’t know about you but it hasn’t stopped me thinking about you, and it hasn’t stopped me thinking about what it’d be like to be with you again, and it sure as hasn’t made it any easier to get on with my everyday life. It’s made it a lot harder, if anything. Because I can’t concentrate. I can’t think of anything but you. I can’t, and it’s so ing annoying, because I know I’m being that same old hopeless romantic again, wishing for something meaningful, longing for it, but I can’t help myself. I’ve gotten a taste and now I’m sick.’

When she was finished she wiped her eyes and stayed her trembling lip and looked up at Seulgi and Seulgi with tears in her own eyes back at her and she said nothing more.

‘Jesus,’ Seulgi said.

‘What?’

‘I’ve missed you so much. It feels like a hundred years.’

‘Yeah, it does.’

‘I didn’t know what to do without you, Irene. I didn’t. I was so lost and I felt like such an idiot because you were right there and I felt like I couldn’t talk to you, like I couldn’t reach out and touch you. I felt so alone. More alone than I think I’ve ever felt. And you’re right. It didn’t get any easier. I didn’t do anything. I didn’t talk to my managers or my assistants or my agent or anyone. I sat in and I drank and I thought of you. I thought of what it’d be like to have you next to me again, what it’d be like to just sit and talk with you about any old random and laugh and have a genuinely good time. I thought about being normal again. And that was all I could do. Think about it. Think and dream. I couldn’t be normal. I couldn’t do that while I was thinking of you. While I was away from you and still wanting you. It was too difficult. I need help, Irene. I need help so bad.’

‘I know.’

‘I need you to help me.’

‘I know.’

‘And I don’t want to rely on you. I don’t want that at all. Because that’s just as unhealthy as pushing you away and pretending you don’t exist, or the other way around, or whatever. I don’t want to have to use you a crutch.’

‘No,’ Irene said. ‘Me neither.’

‘Really?’

Irene nodded. ‘I want to be able to help you, and I want you to be able to help me. But I don’t want to have to lean on you and pretend that all my problems aren’t problems and hope that because I’m with you they’ll just go away. That’s toxic. It’s not healthy at all. And the same for you. I don’t want you to hide away behind me and pretend all this awful lonely celebrity doesn’t exist just because you’re with me, okay?’

‘Okay.’

‘You promise?’

‘I promise.’

Irene laughed. ‘I don’t know if it’s going to be that easy,’ she said.

‘What do you mean?’

‘When has anything ever been easy with us?’

‘Like, in general?’

‘Yeah.’

‘I don’t know, honestly. You might be right.’

‘Of course I’m right. I’m always right.’

Seulgi scoffed. ‘Don’t get ahead of yourself.’

When she looked at Irene again Irene was crying.

‘Hey,’ Seulgi said. ‘Hey. What’s up?’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Don’t be. What’s wrong?’

‘I just…Jesus, I’m a mess. I’m as bad as you. Not to be rude or anything. I just, I don’t know what I would’ve done if I couldn’t talk to you. I was with my friend a couple hours ago and without her advice I wouldn’t be here and I can’t imagine that. I can’t imagine not being with you, even like this.’

‘It’s okay.’

‘It’s not. It’s not okay. I’m sorry, Seulgi. I’m such a ing idiot. None of this should’ve ever happened in the first place and I’m such a up for letting you get away because it did nothing for either of us and it didn’t help you and it sure as didn’t help you and now I’m just as messed up as I always was and I don’t know where I’m going or what I’m doing or anything like that and – ‘

She looked up at Seulgi fast enough to register Seulgi’s lips on hers and then there was nothing. There was no thought rational or otherwise and there was no worry and no awful thought of the future or of a future she couldn’t much bear to witness and there was no cold shiver down her spine and no fumbling for the right words to piece together and no soft and stupid crying or anything of the sort. There was just Seulgi. Seulgi and Seulgi’s lips. And Seulgi took her face in her hands and cupped her by the chin and kissed her and she kissed her deep and her lips tasting like cherries and the faint and rainwashed tang of amber and honey from her collar and and the flush of her cheeks and Irene closed her eyes and let it wash over her and Seulgi kissed her deep and deeply still and Irene let herself go limp there and they kissed like they would never kiss again, two spirits alone adrift on a wave, a flame like no other flame and it would never be put out and it would soar and it would burn up the night and sear across the universe and they would still be there, holding each other close and kissing and kissing and holding each other tight and kissing again and tasting cherries and amber and sweat and dust and rain and smiling and crying and Irene so small and boneless weeping like a child and taking Seulgi against her and kissing her until she couldn’t breath and yes I said yes this is yes this is good this is Seulgi yes yes I yes I love you I love you Seulgi I do I love you I do.