A/N: Okay sooo...I was planning on putting this up tomorrow night (I usually update my fics every 2-3 days, even if I have them finished in 1, just to keep a schedule) but since I've finished another chapter ahead of time I thought I'd go ahead and post this early. Enjoy! :) 

Comments/Dicussions welcome as always :)   <3

II. PARTY MONSTER

"Woke up by a girl, I don't even know her name."

She awoke to a pounding in her head unlike any she could remember. A soft scent of honey and amber. The world seemed balanced by some distant cosmic axis on which she tilted and whirled and spun unencumbered and then again back and forth like some marionette trying desperately to right herself, to locate some sense of normality, a centre of gravity again. Her head ached fiercely and she was much too hot. She opened her eyes to see nothing but a white ceiling. Like the ceiling of some clinical ward or hospital except lightless. A dim sunshimmer warm over her face, a soft breeze. She pulled herself up against the headboard of the bed, locating her surroundings like a blind woman searching the dark, her eyes still coming to terms with that strange and alien scenery.

She was in a wide bed, the covers soft and silken and lived-in. It was empty save her. A great bedroom leading out into a hallway though through the door she could see nothing. On the left sunlight through the blinds in thin bars and a dim and muted hum of traffic somewhere out there. On the bedside table was a bottle of wine and a small alarm clock and an assortment of jewellery, gold broaches and a necklace and a pair of diamond earrings and they were not her own. She smelled honey and amber again. She put a hand up to her forehead to check the temperature and immediately she could tell she was too hot. ached and felt like sawdust, so dry and furry, a soft mould of alcohol across her tongue and the stink of it when she breathed. Enough almost to be sick.

For a while she just sat there. Trying to recollect the fragmented memories of the night before. Of what had transpired. She found with some shameful embarrassment she couldn’t remember much of anything at all. Just leaving with Yeri and Wendy and Joy. Getting there. Then nothing. A black void from which she wished to pull kicking and screaming the truth of her situation, of what she had done, of where she was and with whom. Vaguely she remembered a girl though her name or age or even face were like ripples skimmed across a source of water, indistinct, the shapeless shape of her calm demeanour, of how she had spoken and of what and all else. It was not coming back to her. She looked around again. The bedroom as big as her house. Oh God. I did, didn’t I. Yeah. I did.

With some great difficult she leant over to the bedside table and picked up her phone. It had died. She almost laughed at that. Of course it has. I’m not even surprised. She tossed it idly next to her and lay back down. Her head spinning in some violent fevered storm. She needed water badly. Almost craved it. For a while she lay there listening quietly to the motorhum of cars out somewhere on a street she had no memory of ever navigating and listening elsewhere. To the sound of the house. But there was nothing. Not even the tick-tock of a clock. Just silence.

She sat there for a time longer. Her clothes sat in a sordid and very telling pile on the floor beside the bed and she was utterly. With a quiet and terrible lack of grace she stumbled up and put on her underwear and her shirt and went on up to the door. Her head felt fit to burst and her nose was blocked and save the tang of amber and honey she could smell nothing at all. For a minute Irene stood there surveying the room again. There was an en-suite on the right. Somehow she had not noticed it before. She staggered in like some timeworn crone hunched double and holding her head and clawed about for the switch. Immediately she regretted that decision. The light so white. In front of the big mirror she looked in her wincing demeanour like some cadaver raised from a grave and given a second animation, her pale and tired skin, the swollen rings under her eyes and her cheeks where the makeup had run in some explicit display of her night’s activities, the dishevelled mess of her hair caught about her face in perpetual recklessness. As if she had been caught in a long rain.

Irene stood grimacing for a while. Inspecting herself. She ran the tap and bent to drink as if by some cruel transitive fate it would soon reveal itself a mirage. She drank until she could drink no more and stood back and wiped with the back of one hand like a glutton and then she went out into the hallway. It was a long corridor going both left and right. A strange apartment. On the left was another cream door closed and the wall. She went right and through into the living room and stood there under the arch of the doorway looking around. A great wide space not unlike a museum gallery. There were two couches running the length of the wall on her right and opposite a TV some sixty or more inches across pinned and bracketed on the other wall and where the walls met a vast display of glass looking out over a city devoid of city and very bright in that clockless hour.

On the left was a wide-open space where old cabinets and wineracks sat like the furnishings of some archaic room excavated from a manor house and paintings pinned to the walls, portraits from the great Europeans during the Renaissance and Rococo visages hung by gold frames, and a tall pinewood bookcase filled with literary classics and more modern works. Beyond that another arch leading through into a kitchen area. On the left was the door. On the right a long marble table empty save a fruitbowl and the kitchen counter on the left larger than Irene’s entire kitchen. All looked freshly cleaned. All looked new. She stood there for a while not knowing what to do. After a few minutes she sat down at the kitchen table. The clock hanging above read just after midday.

Her head still ached. She waited with her face pressed against the smooth cold marble in some slight reprieve from her self-inflicted torture. She could smell whiskey on her breath, feel it on her teeth like enamel. When she heard the door she winced and looked up. The woman stood there was wearing a red camouflage hoodie and a loose-fit pair of joggingbottoms and she looked up at Irene as if stuck there and then she smiled softly. ‘Good afternoon,’ she said.

‘Hi,’ said Irene.

‘Do you want something to eat?’

Irene thought for a second. She studied that round face. Obscured as it was by the hoodie, by the dim light of that great place. It smelled overwhelming of eucalyptus. ‘Sure,’ she said.

‘Toast okay?’

‘Yeah. Toast’s fine.’

Seulgi went over to the kitchen counter and set the toast on and buttered it and came over with two glasses of fresh orange juice and two plates and she set them out. Irene couldn’t even smell it. She ate slowly and carefully. Every movement a pained one. Seulgi watched her for a while. The expression on her face was unreadable. Perhaps amusement, perhaps annoyance. It was impossible to reckon anything from that visage. When they had finished Irene pushed the plate across the table. ‘Thanks,’ she said.

‘Don’t mention it.’

Irene was quiet a minute. She looked at her feet. ‘About last night,’ she said. ‘You and I…we didn’t…did we?’

‘What?’

‘Did we…’

‘Did we have ?’

Irene nodded.

‘Yeah,’ said Seulgi. ‘We did.’

‘Right.’

‘You don’t remember?’

‘To be honest I don’t really remember much of anything. I was a lot more drunk than I thought I was. Jesus, what a mess.’

‘Do you at least remember my name?’

‘No. Sorry.’

Seulgi laughed. ‘It’s Seulgi. Kang Seulgi.’

‘Right. Yeah. I remember it now.’

‘Because I just told you.’

‘Yeah. Sorry.’

‘You’re Irene, right?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Pretty name.’

‘Thanks.’

There was a small quiet between them. Neither speaking, Irene not knowing what to say. She looked around idly. Tapping on her glass. After a while she said, in a low voice: ‘Are you a big art fan?’

‘What?’

‘Art. I saw the paintings.’

‘Ah. Yeah. I am.’

‘That’s pretty cool.’

‘I guess. I don’t really know much about art. I just buy what speaks to me. Emotionally, and stuff. I guess I’ve got enough money to waste, so yeah.’

‘Are you a big fan of reading, too?’

‘Yeah. How’d you know?’

‘Saw the bookcase.’

Seulgi made an O with . ‘Right,’ she said. ‘What about you?’

‘I’m a big reader,’ Irene said. Seulgi seemed almost to light up at that comment.

‘Really?’ she said.

‘Yeah.’

‘What sort of books? I mean, any particular authors?’

‘Mostly proper lit stuff. Not that there’s anything wrong with genre fiction or anything.’

‘No I agree. Me too. Who’s your favourite author?’

Irene thought for a second. ‘Thomas Pynchon,’ she said.

‘No .’

‘What about you?’

‘Faulkner, probably. Or Cervantes. I don’t know.’

She spoke at length on the topic of her favourite authors, on their works and their symbolism and their place in the modern canon and the significance of their prose on its influence, and as she did her whole face appeared to glow, and she spoke with wide and declarative gestures and nodded and smiled all the time. Irene just watched her. A fascination growing there between them though unspoken as it was. She watched for a long time, nodding along and agreeing or disagreeing but mostly just listening to Seulgi. To all she had to say. When she was finished she drank about half of the juice and said: ‘Sorry. I tend to ramble sometimes.’

‘It’s alright,’ said Irene.

‘I know you’ve got a headache.’

‘Yeah. Pretty bad.’

‘Sorry. I just don’t really get time to talk to people about books or paintings or anything like that. Not really, anymore. It’s surprising to come across someone that likes reading as much as I do. It’s a refreshing change.’

Irene didn’t say anything. She was holding her head. The room was still spinning and the smell was becoming too much to bear. She looked around.

‘Did you say you were a model?’ she said. Seulgi’s face seemed to drop at the mention and when she spoke it was with no great enthusiasm.

‘Yeah,’ she said.

‘That’s pretty cool.’

Seulgi didn’t say anything. ‘Is this your place?’ said Irene.

‘Yeah. It’s mine.’

‘You own it.’

‘Yeah, I own it.’

‘How come you were at Mission last night?’

‘I just wanted to have a good time. Same as anyone else.’

‘Really?’

‘Yeah. What’s so hard to believe?’

‘Nothing. Nothing.’

‘You should go,’ said Seulgi.

‘Yeah. I probably should.’

There was a long quiet between them. Irene just watched her. The soft contours of her face and the smell of honey and amber and the way her lips curved slightly upwards and her hair and the way she had felt and how electric her touch had been, it was all coming back to her, how they had talked in the club and it had felt good for a change, it had felt right, there had been a connection between them immediately. She watched Seulgi for a moment longer. Her head still ached though not as bad.

‘Hey,’ she said. ‘Can I get your number?’

‘What?’

She looked at her feet. ‘Can I get your number?’

Seulgi was quiet. Then she said: ‘Sure.’

‘Really?’

‘Yeah.’

She went and got her phone from the bedroom and came out and realised that it was still dead. Seulgi gave her a strip of paper and she looked at it and folded the number away. When she was done she stood there in the doorway looking awkwardly about. ‘Hey,’ said Seulgi. ‘You probably want to get dressed.’

‘Oh. Yeah. Right. Sorry.’ She stopped halfway to the bedroom. ‘Hey,’ she said.

‘What?’

‘Where are we?’

‘What?’

‘Like, where do you live?’

‘Gangnam.’

‘Jesus.’

‘What’s wrong?’

‘Nothing. It’s alright.’

‘I’ll book you a taxi.’

‘Seriously?’

‘Yeah. Where do you live?’

She gave Seulgi her address and went to change. By the time she had finished the taxi was already outside. She said goodbye to Seulgi and promised she would call. Seulgi just nodded to her. Then she was gone. Down three flights of stairs, the footfalls coming back like echoes, her skull so brittle with that sound. It was a warm day and just as bright. A clean air to the afternoon. She arrived home some thirty or forty minutes later. The first thing she did was charge her phone. She sat waiting for it to turn on and thinking of Seulgi. Of what she looked like, of her love for art and books, of how beautiful she was. A sort of casual, tomboyish charm to her. How effortless she had been. How little she had seemed to care, and how good that looked.

She had more missed messages than she dared count. Mostly from Wendy, a few from Yeri, some in the group chat. She told them in no great detail that she was fine and home and she had gotten a little bit drunk and they told her Yeah, as you normally do, and she laughed and agreed to meet at Pico’s at five. In truth she didn’t much want to go. She wanted to sleep. Her head throbbed and there was a flush at her cheeks and she was desperate to shower and brush her teeth. Her tongue felt like some other tongue, like a strange invader perched there in , interred as it was in a soft mould of whiskey and Cola. Disgusting. Why do I do it? What do I get out of it? She stood in front of the bathroom mirror. After a while she was smiling. It was worth it, though. Yeah. It was.

By five the sun had settled somewhat. A sky devoid of clouds. No less hot than it had been early. A smouldering frame of shadow cast from the arcades by Pico’s and across the street and a band of buskers playing acoustic guitars just outside the Starbucks and a traffic as heavy as any she could remember seeing, stink of motoroil and fumes, a pandemonium of sound there. It was doing her head no favours at all.

The others were sat by the window. They just grinned when she went over, coffee in hand, wincing in the heat of the day. The black gloom of the café shaded as it was. She sat by Wendy and grimaced again.

‘You look rough,’ said Yeri. She grinned a grin of mischief.

‘Stop it,’ Irene said.

‘So,’ said Joy, ‘what happened? Give us details.’

‘I don’t remember.’

‘Bull.’

‘I don’t. Honest.’

‘Who did you go home with?’ said Yeri.

‘I don’t know. Well I mean, I kind of do. I just don’t remember it actually happening. I don’t remember any of the night, really. Apart from actually leaving with you guys.’

‘What a mess.’

‘Classic Irene,’ said Joy.

Irene tipped back about half of the coffee. ‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘What about you guys? Anything good?’

Wendy shook her head. So did the other two. ‘Nothing,’ Wendy said. ‘Except getting far too drunk. Jesus, I was a mess.’

‘We all were,’ said Yeri. ‘Anyways, what about this girl?’

‘What girl?’ said Irene.

‘C’mon.’

She finished the last of the coffee. The café was beginning to smell of bacon and cheese and it was overpowering. Her head still hurt. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Like, apparently I sat and talked with her for a bit but I don’t remember it at all. I don’t really remember any of it. She was super cool though.’

‘Did you sleep with her?’

‘Really now.’

Yeri shrugged. ‘Just a question. So did you?’

‘Apparently. I don’t remember it.’

‘Wow. Classic.’

‘I was pretty drunk, to be fair.’

‘Did you get her name?’

‘Yeah. And her number.’

‘From a one-night stand? Wow.’

‘So who is she?’ said Joy.

‘She’s a model.’

‘A model?’

Irene nodded. ‘Her name’s Seulgi.’

Yeri and Joy laughed. ‘What?’ Irene said.

‘Her name’s Seulgi,’ said Yeri.

‘Yeah.’

‘Kang Seulgi.’

‘Yeah. How’d you know?’

‘C’mon now.’

‘What?’

‘The TV model?’

‘I don’t know. I didn’t recognise her. Should I have?’

‘Probably. Although I know you practically live in ancient times so I’m not surprised you don’t.’

‘You slept with Kang Seulgi?’ said Wendy. Irene just shrugged.

‘She quite obviously didn’t,’ Joy said. ‘That’s what happens when you’re drunk. You do dumb things. Like thinking you slept with a supermodel.’

‘She didn’t say she was a supermodel.’

‘Well. She is.’

‘I got her number.’

‘Really?’

Irene nodded. Joy finished the last of her coffee and leaned over slightly. ‘Have you rung it yet?’

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

‘I only got home a few hours ago.’

‘From hers?’

‘Yeah.’

Joy just grinned. They were all quiet for a while. Then Yeri said: ‘So are you going to ring her then?’

‘Yeah. I guess so. I mean, why not?’

‘Well I mean, that kind of defeats the whole purpose of a one-night stand, doesn’t it?’

‘I guess so. But I didn’t go out to get laid. That was just a bonus.’

‘A bonus that you don’t remember,’ Wendy added.

‘So where does she live?’ said Joy. ‘If you remember.’

‘Somewhere in Gangnam. It’s a big place.’

‘Holy , really?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Maybe she actually did sleep with Seulgi.’

‘Maybe I’m the next President,’ said Yeri.

‘I hope not.’

‘I think I’d be pretty good in charge.’

‘I think I’d leave the country.’

‘I wouldn’t let you.’

Joy just laughed. They finished up the last of their drinks in quiet. A steady din of tin noise from behind them. The scarlet embers of that dusk were beginning to rise from low across the sky in some starbust of red light. When they were done Joy sat back in her chair and stretched and yawned. ‘How is it six already?’ she said.

‘What a waste of a day,’ Wendy said.

‘Yeah. What’re your plans for the rest of the night?’

‘I don’t know. Probably just go and chill or something. What about you?’

Joy shrugged. ‘I’ll come to yours.’

‘Sure. Yeri?’

Yeri shook her head. ‘I think I’m going to go feed the ducks,’ she said. They just looked at her for a minute, dumbstruck. She looked at them back in turn. ‘What?’

‘Sometimes I forget how strange you are,’ said Joy.

‘What? Why?’

‘Feeding the ducks.’

‘What’s wrong with feeding the ducks?’

‘Nothing. But like, not many people take time out of their day to schedule feeding the ducks, if you know what I mean. People just sort of show up at the park and start throwing bread in because they can.’

‘Well.’

‘What?’

‘I’m not like most people.’

‘Got that right,’ Wendy said. ‘What about you, Irene? You want to come?’

‘No,’ said Irene. ‘I’m good. I’ve got work tomorrow.’

‘We all do.’

‘Still. I’m tired.’

Yeri nodded to her phone on the table. ‘Are you going to ring that number?’ she said.

Joy laughed. ‘Kang Seulgi’s, you mean.’

‘Right. Kang Seulgi’s. Of course.’

Irene thought for a moment. She thought of Seulgi. ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘I guess I will. I mean I might as well. What’s the worst that could happen?’

‘Horrible and crushing rejection?’ said Wendy.

‘Completely embarrassing yourself?’ said Joy.

‘Being called a creep and getting hung up on?’ said Yeri.

Irene just sighed. ‘Yeah. Whatever. I’m going to go.’

‘Let us know how it goes, alright?’

She waved her hand at them and took her phone and left. A soft wind had come up again. By the light of that waning eve the streets looked ethereal. The windows reflected outward in a sheet of electric light and the roads turning in circadian rhythm, footfalls and engine pulsebeats and should it be one and the same there a gentilic appropriation of denizens of the approaching night fevered in a copper light almost to luminescence. Irene walked aimless. She walked through parks and across bridges and by long street corners and dark alleys where silent did tinkers wander in the vespers. She walked thinking all the while. Should I do it. Should I. Yeah. Why not.

She stopped outside her house taking the wind against her face and thinking again. She liked Seulgi. That much was obvious even to her. The extent of her liking was elusive but she liked her and that was a rarity. And it appeared that Seulgi liked her back. That was good. That was a good sign. They had hit it off. She went in and changed into something more comfortable and sat on the couch conjuring different scenarios in which her call would play out in vastly different ways. Outcomes strange and fanciful alike. In one they would hit it off instantly, and they would sit and talk for hours about nothing in particular and agree to meet up again and go from there. The way they would in movies. In another Seulgi hung up on her immediately. She didn’t particularly care for that one.

By nine she had showered and eaten and she sat listening to an audiobook and debating whether to call or not. Yeri had text her asking and she had replied no and Yeri had asked her why not. She hadn’t replied to that. In truth there was no real answer save a sort of awful anxiousness in the pit of her stomach. She took up the phone and thumbed through to the number and sat just staring at it until the screen had gone black. Alright. Yeah. Come on, Irene. You can do this.

She rang the number. At first she expected a voicemail response but instead she was greeted by an automated voice telling her that the number she had dialled was not in service nor had it been. She put the phone down and sat there just watching the wall for a minute. Not a wrong number. One that doesn’t even exist. What are they going to think of this? How long is Yeri going to tease me over this. Jesus Christ.

It all felt odd. As if something was off. As if by some new destiny it was her fate to talk to Seulgi. As if the wrong number had been a diversion of sorts. She went to bed that night not thinking of work the next day at all. A nine-to-three. She didn’t care. She thought again of Seulgi. Of what she could remember of her. Her face, her eyes. That light there when they had talked briefly about books and how it had been so rapidly extinguished when she had mentioned modelling and the house and money. How it gone just like that. She slept quiet and without dreams for the first time in as long as she could remember.

Seulgi awoke to the smell of perfume and it was not her own. Her head ached and was dry and there was something cold across her chest. She rose and pushed herself up against the headboard. It was very dark in the gloom of that predawn room. Not yet five in the morning. She could see little. All was silent save soft breathing. There was a girl on her right. She was asleep, her hair caught about her sharp face, softly snoring. And another on her left. A blonde, this one. She looked at them both in turn. Then she pushed gently over them and stood and went out into the kitchen.

Lightless in there, too. She staggered up to the counter and poured herself a glass of water and finished it in one breath and filled it again. Her head throbbed even worse when she did that and it was too cold. She could still hear them snoring in the bedroom. Their clothes were scattered across the hallway like the scene of some murder mystery, a breadcrumb trail of underwear and bras and pumps. She stood in great breaths for a moment. Then she drank another glass of the water and sat at the kitchen table trying to recollect all that had happened the night before. It was remarkably easy for a change.

She had not gotten as drunk as usual. It had been easy finding someone to go home with. To take for her own. Finding two was a bonus. After some careful reflection she found that she couldn’t quite remember their names but that was okay. That was usual. How many could she remember? Day in and day out. So many faces, coming and going. So many girls, guys. So many people. Of all races and sizes, shapes, ages. A different every day. That’s what it was. That was her life now. That’s what it had become. And she could not remember any of them save the girl from the night before. The girl from Mission. Her name had been Irene and as to why Seulgi remembered that she couldn’t quite tell and it annoyed her. Why. Why her.

She remembered their conversation. It was much like any other. Is this your place. Are you really Kang Seulgi. How much did it cost. How often do you do this. Are you really the Kang Seugli from the TV. Oh my God, I saw you on a billboard once. I think I did. I can’t believe this. Can I get a selfie for Snapchat. No? Okay. Never mind. I can’t believe it’s actually you.

On and on. Except she hadn’t recognise Seulgi. Or if she had it was only under some strong acting that she had pretended the opposite. That was new. Different. She remembered her face, too. That was even stranger. The sharp lines of her jaw, her pale chinadolled skin, the adorable flush of her cheeks when she tried to piece together the events of their sordid encounter and oh, what an encounter it had been. She was good. Seulgi even remembered that.

She finished another glass of the water and surveyed the kitchen. There were bottles of champagne splayed out on the table in front of her and solo cups half-drunk in the sink and another bottle on the counter and one left by the door and they had spilled wine through the hallway and into the bedroom. It had congealed almost into a paste and it stank. They had spilled some on their clothes as well. She sighed. A night like any other. That’s what it was.

They came in a while later. She made them drinks and they stood dressing in the hallway, dumbstruck with awe. They asked her a serious of questions and she did her best to answer. They asked if she was really Kang Seulgi and she said yes, they asked for her number and she gave them a false one, as usual, and they asked her if they could see her again and she said sure, just ring me, and they asked her a second time if she was the same Seulgi from the TV and she told them with no uncertainty that she was, she had always been Kang Seulgi, she had been born Kang Seulgi and she would die Kang Seulgi. They just said Oh my God. We can’t believe it. Thanks for the night. It was amazing. Seulgi just smiled. You’re welcome, she said. Any time. Just ring that number.

When they were gone she sat there watching the clock. Dusty timeless hours of the morning. A cool blue dawn had come up smoking in the east. She stood by the window peering out. Dim wordless machinations of the turning earth. Where she and others alike lay their fortunes. A Monday like all other Mondays. She checked her phone. It had naught in it but the location of parties and venues for parties and parties aside. More and more. By midday she had dressed and showered and eaten. By four she was ready. She went out into the parking lot. An array of cars only dreamt about there in their underground bays. Ferrari 488, a Lamborghini Aventador, Mercedes P1, a Range Rover, two others.

She took the Ferrari. By the time she arrived it was almost five. A place she had never been before. An address she would not remember in the morning. That was just how it went. Her days beaten out to the same rhythm. She went in. It was a rooftop apartment long and wide, a great balustrade overlooking the cooled russet dusk of a very short day. There were bottles of champagne and whiskey on the kitchen counter and on the table and beer pong in the corner of the room and neon hung from the ceiling and neon by the DJ booth and neon in the ceiling, neon everywhere, so that painted there in intermittent neon those nameless partygoers looked like feverish acolytes to a religion founded entirely on the right to express oneself through drink and lies. They all introduced themselves to her. People she knew and people she had only met in passing and people she had never met before. Oh my God, Seulgi right? Kang Seulgi? And she nodded yeah. That’s me. And they all said the same thing. Oh my God. I love you. I love your work. You’re so gorgeous. Seriously. And she’d say thank you, you’re very kind, and she would shake their hands and smile and pass drinks around, and what she never would say was: I don’t care what you think of me, I really don’t, I’m just here to get ed up and get high, to have a good time and forget about you and everyone else, I’m just here to find someone to , that’s it. That’s all I want.

She went home that night thinking long of Irene and she couldn’t quite figure out why. And when she kissed this nameless girl she thought of Irene, of their talk together, and when she felt this girl’s hands on her hips she thought of Irene, and then lower and still Irene, and in the morning when she awoke in darkness with this girl she couldn’t really remember next to her she was still thinking of Irene.