A/N: Meant to get this up earlier and forget, sorry! Anyway, enjoy! Quite a wordy chapter, this one. Comments and Discussions very welcome as always! <3

VI. SECRETS

"I hear the secrets that you keep, when you're talking in your sleep."

She dreamt she was somewhere adrift in the stars. A paradise awash with bursts of silver light, rings of diamond curled around the cosmic charms, where Orion and Rigel and their compatriots did plan their ascents and by starlight the planets burned bright, they seared, and she dreamt of herself walking amongst them not as some spectral visitation or guest of any manner but as part and parcel, as one and the same to those bodies of astrology so named and founded in the hallows of Cimmerians, giants tamed across the cosmos in some great illogical order of speaking, herself ancillary in a manner befitting that place so vast, walking arm in arm with blue dwarves and black quasars old as time itself and there was no rhythm or rhyme to her sudden transcendence of sentience, her trans-sentience, other than that she walked with them and she walked amongst them and she walked and walked across the roof of the universe, she walked with the stars and she walked in asteroid clusters and as a starburst and she walked and walked still and she would not stop, she could not, though there was no reason or destination that might bring her from that place and she walked, oh how she walked, and the world and all the worlds aside burned so brightly, a million billion worlds, all alight, all burning for her.

She awoke later in the morning drenched in a cold sweat and she was shivering. A bitter morning not unlike Winter. Thin light in framed bars from the window. Like a prison cell of light cast there on the end of the bed. The large and open bedroom, scent of amber and honey in the air. But otherwise empty. And silent. She listened for a long time. A dim rattle in the kitchen or somewhere beyond but naught else. For a while she lay there on her side watching the hands of the alarm clock on the bedside table tick idly by. One, sixty, three hundred. Time immemorial. Smell of pork from the kitchen. She listened again for signs, for indication of some other form. Of Seulgi. Another quiet clamour of plates clinking together. Then two glasses. Fat sizzling in the pan.

Irene lay there a while longer. Framed in some strange and somehow terrible portrait of misery or something similar, hands tucked under one cheek, eyes unblinking, never wavering, watching the clock with all her energy, and the dim of the yellow of the light on her other cheek, and on her hair, and that hair not brushed or finely kept but loose about her face, and the smell faintly of , of sweat, of their exertions, their expenditures, of honey and amber, and the yellow of the yellow of the light, and the bed absent movement, and her frozen frame shapen in staggering simplicity and tucked neatly under the covers, and her soft and muted breaths, and the tinpot clank of noise from the kitchen, and the fat jumping up and spitting on the sausages in the pan, and that place next to her in the bed, that empty space, the bedsheet creased, the covers thrown back, the pillow mezzotint of her pattern, her slender outline where she should still be, and smelling of her still and always would do, of where Kang Seulgi did not lay, where she had to, where Irene wished her to. An empty bed. A lonely presence.

She lay on her side with her hands cupped by her face listening to the kitchen. Sausages in the pan. The rush of water. How it fell against the enamelled iron, a dull and tinny ringing. She could smell herself, properly smell herself. Used. Defiled. Her underwear on the floor by the bed and her jeans by the door and her shirt, too. A pile of sordid evidence. Though this time she could remember it all and her head did not ache from a startling sobriety but another fever, an agony of the soul, an aching want for more, a yearning in her chest set aflame and want as it did for Kang Seulgi, how it wanted her. Slowly she hauled herself up. The water was still running in the kitchen. She could hear that above all else. And light on her back. Piling in through the blinds. Blocks of it, cinnabar lightstreaks pinwheeled on her, framed like a figure painted from oils.

She pulled herself to her feet and dressed in her previous night’s clothes and limped out to the doorway. A bright and awful light from the kitchen. Stink of grease in the air. Seulgi was there behind the counter. She had set the sausages on two china plates with a side of steaming beans and cornbread and she was washing the pan in the sink with the tongs and the other apparatus and she turned to see Irene there resting against the jamb, one hand rubbing at her eyes absently, a long and distant look in her squinting eyes, a wayward gaze. She smiled warmly, taking the plates in her arms and moving up to the table.

‘Morning,’ she said. Irene didn’t say anything. Seulgi motioned for her to sit and with some reluctance she did. A cold and dry morning. In the east a dawning sun so blue and cloudless like some copper dimepiece pressed into the sky so it should if left to its own devices remain there indefinitely, as if to fall would never be possible, a lone and long reminder of a time she would rather forget, of sins past, sins to be flushed, to be cleansed of, a wretched apocryphal selection for baptism and in what? Of what? And the tap still running. The bowl filling with thick suds of soap, a foamy curd, the rush of the water over the carbon tin of the pan, the grease running thick around the drainplug. Seulgi passed her a plate and a knife and fork and cut into her own sausages and piled them in the beans.

‘You okay?’ she said without looking up. Irene just nodded. She looked down at the sausages. They seemed to be moving about. Perhaps she was still drunk. Or intoxicated on some other substance, some other intangible thing. That scent of honey and amber. She looked at Seulgi again. She was dressed in a loose white shirt and a pair of boyshorts and nothing else and her hair was wild about her shoulders, as if framed in some unhinged tempest of passion. The tap still running. Spilling out over the sides of the little plastic bowl and forming a soapy skim about the plug, running still, a harsh and guttural whoosh from the pipes. She played with her food absently and not once did she look at Seulgi again, not even when Seulgi finished a thick wedge of the cornbread and pushed her chair back and went over to the sink and began scrubbing down the pan, rinsing out the grease and soaping it up again, and Irene sat there looking about, thinking and not thinking, the mind wandering as it does, her heart racing, tears forming in the corners of her eyes, a loud and frustrating chatter of noise from the tap, the tap speaking to her, the water flooding the bowl, the drainingboard running with water, water everywhere, and light from the windows like some heraldic light burning lonesome on her pale and tender visage and Seulgi humming to herself as if nothing had happened, as if all was right, and the tap still running running running, and the night before, thinking of the night before, what was that night? And what is this? Where am I. What am I still doing here. And the tap going like crazy and the soap everywhere and that’s too much soap, why is there so much, turn the ing tap off and finish your food, and it hurts, it hurts to think of her, of what she’s done, of how she’s touched Irene like that, touched her there, touched her and ignored her, ignored what she asked, what she craves an answer for and what Seulgi won’t give her, will never give her, and the tap still running never stopping running and the night again, Seulgi’s touch, her tender caresses, her fingers one and then two, her tongue, her soft moans, her ethereal spirituality, her wicked laughter as she runs a cold hand over Irene’s stomach and down the inside of her thighs and back up to her lips to taste herself, the nights, the nights. Nights go much quicker than the days here. That they do. And the tap, oh God the tap. And as she turned it off and pulled the pan from the bowl and dried it with the handtowel Irene pushed her chair back and stood, watching, hair ruined, makeup stale, Seulgi looking back at her.

‘No,’ she said. Seulgi just looked at her. ‘It’s not right.’

‘What?’ Seulgi said. She finished drying the pan and set it down on the drainingboard.

‘It’s not right.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘What happened last night. It’s not right.’

‘I don’t know what you mean.’

‘You do,’ Irene said. ‘Yeah, you do.’

‘No. I don’t. Finish your food.’

‘I’m not a ing child, Seulgi.’

‘You’re acting like one.’

Irene scoffed. ‘I’m serious,’ she said. ‘You shouldn’t have done that.’

‘Done what?’

‘What you did.’

Seulgi put the towel down and came back to the table and sat again opposite but Irene did not follow. She just stood there. ‘You seemed to like it,’ Seulgi said, and with no hint of severity.

‘You took advantage of me.’

‘No I didn’t. Everything was consensual.’

‘I don’t mean it like that.’

‘No?’

‘I mean emotionally.’

Seulgi laughed. ‘Emotionally.’

‘You know I’ve got feelings for you and you don’t care. You’re just using me for a quick because you like it. Because it gets you off. That’s it, isn’t it? That’s what this is. Go on, tell me. Tell me that’s what this is.’

Seulgi didn’t respond. She sat there unmoving, an expression unreadable on her face. Perhaps grave solemnity. Desperate to say something she could not. She would not dare. Irene ran a hand through her hair and sighed. ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Say it. Say it, Seulgi. Tell me that’s what I am. Tell me I’m just another girl you brought home because you enjoy around. Tell me that. I won’t care. Go on.’

Seulgi sat there.

‘Why aren’t you saying anything? Why?’

‘Irene.’

‘No,’ Irene said. She was crying again. ‘What happened last night, it can’t happen again. Not like that.’

‘Irene.’

‘I’m serious. You can’t just use me like that anymore. I’m not going to let you. God knows how I’m going to stop it but I am. I just want the truth. That’s all. I want to know what I am to you. Go on, why aren’t you saying anything? Seulgi. Say something, please. Just say anything. Tell me what you told me before. About not doing girlfriends. About sleeping around all the time and drinking and whatever else it is you do, because it’s you, because that’s what you are. Just tell me that. You can give me that at least, can’t you? After sleeping with me. You can give me that.’

‘Why are you so focused on that?’ Seulgi said.

‘I just want to know.’

‘It’s not important.’

‘Yes it ing is. It’s important to me. Are you so selfish you can’t see that? Or is it something else? Is it? I want to know. Please, Seulgi.’

‘You’re overthinking it again. Just like last time.’

‘Oh, off.’

‘Irene.’

‘No, I’m serious.’

‘Irene, listen.’

‘I want an answer. Please, Seulgi. Please.’

Seulgi sighed. For a moment she didn’t answer. She seemed to be weighing up this chain of events very carefully. Then in a small voice she said: ‘Come back tonight.’

‘What?’

‘Come back tonight.’

‘Are you kidding me? After all I’ve just said.’

‘To talk,’ said Seulgi. A quiet tone. A serenity to her voice. ‘Come back tonight if you want to talk properly, okay?’

‘I don’t understand. Why not now?’

‘Just…please, Irene. Come back tonight. I’ll talk to you properly then.’

Irene thought for a minute. She wiped her eyes and sobered up and stood straight. ‘Alright,’ she said. ‘What time?’

‘Eight. Or later, I don’t care. I’m free all night.’

‘I’ll come at eight, then.’

‘Okay.’

She turned to leave and something stopped her. A sort of alien magnetism, an unspeakable connection tethering her to that place, as if guiding her back against her own principles, her own defining traits. Don’t go. Stay now. Get the answers you want. She looked back at Seulgi once. So stonefaced, silent and unmoving behind the table. A stoic calm to her demeanour. Same as she had been at the club that very first night they had met. That same appearance to her. Irene nodded though in truth it was more to herself. ‘Alright,’ she said again. ‘See you then.’

‘Yeah,’ Seulgi said. ‘See you.’

She met the others in the afternoon. They were sat by the back wall. Pico’s was almost full. A dull tinrattle clamour of pots and plates and knives and forks and the scraping of food and a dim chatter of voices, like performers in a carnival play, two boys on their phones and a group of workmen in high-vis jackets and a pretty waitress coming around the counter with a tray of steaming coffee and by the window an old man reading a newspaper in the space they always sat, shrouded in cold light, a bitter day swept up in wind. Still rainless. The rain was coming. That it was. Irene sat by Wendy. She was the only one of the four who looked by any distance to be resembling the living. The others watched her quietly.

‘Hey,’ said Wendy.

‘Yo. What’s up with you two?’

‘We’re hungover,’ Yeri said.

‘Right. Makes sense.’

Wendy tipped back half of her coffee and leaned closer to the table. It stank of grease and chicken. ‘So, how was last night?’ she said.

Irene just shrugged.

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘It was just what it was.’

‘What? I mean, I don’t get you. Joy says you didn’t go back with them last night.’

‘That’s right,’ Yeri said. ‘She just vanished. Wouldn’t even pick up her phone.’

‘I don’t remember it ringing,’ said Irene.

‘You were probably too ed, knowing you.’

‘You’re one to talk.’

Yeri laughed weakly. ‘Touché,’ she said.

‘So what happened?’ Joy said. ‘But be quiet about it. Don’t speak too loudly. I’m nursing the worst headache you could ever possibly imagine. I literally think I’m going to die if I don’t get some relief in the next hour.’

‘Literally,’ Irene said.

‘Yeah. Literally going to die. I might break into a thousand tiny pieces. Anyways, tell me. What happened?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Where did you go?’

‘Doesn’t matter.’

‘You went to Kang Seulgi’s, didn’t you?’

‘No.’

‘Yeah,’ Yeri said. ‘Yeah, you did. I can tell.’

Wendy looked at her for a moment. She seemed to be distancing herself from this possibility. ‘Don’t tell me you did, did you?’

Irene nodded slowly.

‘She was there again? Or like, she rang you?’

‘Like a booty call,’ Joy said.

Yeri laughed. ‘A celebrity booty call.’

‘No,’ Irene said, ‘she was there. Again.’

‘Wow. It’s like fate.’

‘Stop it.’

‘I’m just saying. So what happened? Spill.’

‘There’s nothing to it.’

‘Come on,’ Joy said. ‘Seriously, what happened?’

‘How do you know about me and her anyway?’

‘Yeri told me.’

Irene looked at her. Yeri just shrugged. ‘You said wait a day or two, right? I did.’

‘Jesus.’

‘But seriously seriously, c’mon. What happened?’

Irene was quiet a while. Lost in the boundless eventuality of her own mind. Her wretched turmoiled thoughts. That house of the unkempt, the sequestered. ‘We slept together,’ she said. ‘And that’s it, really. That’s all there is to it.’

The others didn’t say anything. Then Yeri pushed herself up from the table and said: ‘Bull.’

‘What?’

‘That’s all there is to it?’

‘Yeah. What’s wrong with that?’

‘After what you told me? C’mon. There’s more to it than that.’

‘No there isn’t.’

‘Irene, seriously.’

Irene studied them each in turn and sighed. ‘Alright. . I don’t know. I don’t know what to think about it.’

‘That’s better,’ Joy said. ‘Let your feelings out.’

‘Stop it.’

‘No but honestly. What’s up?’

‘We just slept together and that’s it. That’s the problem. I don’t know what we are or anything like that. I don’t know if she likes me or if she’s just using me and ditching me afterwards and I don’t know how I feel and it’s all going to and I don’t know what to do and I think I need a lie down. Jesus, what’s wrong with me? Seriously.’

‘Slow down. What do you mean you don’t know?’

‘I mean I don’t know. How else do I explain it? I like her. I love her. I think I love her, I don’t know. It’s complicated. I mean, I’ve only met her a handful of times and still I can’t stop thinking about her. Maybe it’s because she’s a celebrity, I don’t know. But I don’t think so. I think it’s something else. And she tells me that there’s nothing between us, that she just used me for a quick like she does with everyone else. That was why she gave me a fake number. I mean, makes sense, right? But then we met again, and she gave me her real number, and she invited me over, and we had a proper connection going. And then…’

She went quiet. Joy looked at her expectantly. As did the others. ‘And then what?’ she said.

Irene shrugged. ‘And then I go round, totally sober, and she tells me the exact same thing again. That there’s nothing between us, she just wanted to use me. Not even that. Didn’t even give me the dignity of being someone she specifically chose. She said I was just the first person she found that night that was moderately attractive. Which is when I stormed out. And then we met again. Same place. And she was the same again. Flirting with me, kissing me, you know? Trying to get at me. Pretending like she hadn’t admitted all that to me, or maybe just thinking I wouldn’t care about it, that I’d get over it or whatever. But she knows I’ve got feelings for her. Got something for her, at least. I don’t even know anymore.’

‘And then you slept with her.’

‘Yeah. Then I slept with her again. And I shouldn’t have. I’m a ing idiot, I know that. And I felt so awful in the morning.’

‘Wow,’ Yeri said. ‘She that bad?’

‘Jesus, what? No. That’s not what I meant.’

‘Right.’

‘I mean I felt used. Like I was just someone there to amuse her. And the worst part is, she’d told me that much already. She’d literally already called me over to tell me I’m just someone she wants to sleep with and then ditch. But there’s this little nagging thing in the back of my mind and I can’t get rid of it and it’s driving me crazy. It’s telling me that there actually is something more.’

‘You mean you think she’s caught feelings?’

‘I don’t know.’ Irene sighed. She pushed her palms into her eyes and let out a long breath. ‘I really don’t know. Maybe, maybe not. Jesus, this is such a show. I mean, if not that then what else? Why would she give me her number and invite me back? Unless she just wanted to sleep with me then, but she sounded like she was convincing herself of that. God, why does it have to be so hard? Why can’t it just be straight forward? Why can’t I just forget I ever met her. She’s a ing supermodel, for Christ’s sake. I shouldn’t have met her. I should’ve never been there. She shouldn’t have. And now what? Look at me. God, I’m such a mess.’

‘That you are,’ Joy said.

‘She’s right,’ Wendy said. ‘I hate to say it, but she’s right.’

Irene looked at Yeri. Yeri just shrugged. ‘Sounds like you’ve got it quite hard,’ she said.

‘Yeah. Yeah, I really do. And now I don’t know what I’m going to do next and it’s so infuriating. What do I do? She told me to go to hers tonight so we can talk it out. That’s what she said, talk it out. What does that even mean? Is she just going to tell me the same thing again? Lay it out for me? What I am. I don’t know if I can take that.’

‘God, you’re insane,’ Joy said.

‘What?’

‘I’m so glad I don’t have to deal with all that .’

‘You might someday.’

‘Nah. Not like that. You really are the most hopelessly romantic optimist ever.’

‘Seriously, guys. What do I do?’

‘Do you properly like her?’ Yeri said. She pushed her empty plate away and finished the last of her cooling coffee and winced. ‘Like, do you actually love her, or do you just think you do because she’s the first woman to give you the time of day in two years? Or because she’s a supermodel.’

‘I think I do,’ Irene said. ‘I think I actually do.’

‘Well, at least you act like it. So I’d say there’s a good chance of that.’

‘I don’t know whether that’s a complement or not.’

‘Jury’s still out. But like, you should go for it.’

‘What?’

‘I think you should go for it.’

‘Why?’

‘Well.’ Yeri pursed her lips. ‘What’s the worst that could happen? Honestly.’

‘Rejection, I guess.’

‘Right. You get rejected. But you’ll never know if you don’t try. You’ve just got to it up and bite the bullet.’

‘I think they’re the same thing,’ Wendy said.

‘What?’

‘ it up and biting the bullet. I think they mean the same thing.’

‘What’s your point?’

‘She means it’s redundant,’ Joy said.

Yeri shook her head. ‘Redundant, whatever. What I mean is, you’ve got to go for it, Irene. Or you’ll never find out whether she likes you back.’

Irene sighed. ‘But she already knows,’ she said. ‘I’ve already told her I love her. Clear as day. I was as shameless as I could possibly be. Way too shameless, actually. And she just shrugged me off. Barely even acknowledge me. You know what she really said? She said I wouldn’t be the first.’

‘Yikes.’

‘Yeah. Yikes. And she’s probably right. What am I supposed to say after that? She shot me down without even shooting me down.’

‘That’s pretty big-headed, no?’ said Joy.

‘Just go and talk to her and stop overthinking it.’

‘I’m not overthinking it.’

‘Yes you are. You overthink everything. It’s one of your defining traits.’

‘Is that a good or bad thing?’

‘Again, jury’s out.’

‘I don’t know what to do, guys.’

She held her head in her hands and brushed her hair back and sighed. They watched her part in sympathy and part in amusement. ‘Seriously,’ Yeri said, ‘just try it out.’

‘Try what out?’

‘I mean just go round there and see what she wants to say. Maybe it’ll be good news.’

‘I doubt it.’

‘Well there’s only one way to find out. When are you going?’

‘I don’t know if I am yet.’

‘You are. What time?’

She sighed. ‘Eight.’

‘Just be yourself.’

‘That’s some pretty poor advice, Yeri.’

‘Alright, well. Don’t be yourself. Imagine what someone normal would do, and then be that person’s normal self. You know what I mean?’

‘Yeah. Real helpful. Thanks.’

‘Anytime.’

‘Alright. Well. I’m going to leave you guys to whatever it is you’re doing.’

‘Literally nothing.’

‘For a long time,’ Joy said. ‘Until I either recover or I die.’

‘God,’ Irene said. She stood to leave. ‘You’re such dramatists.’

Wendy laughed. ‘Wow, not even drama queens. Dramatists.’

‘First word that came to me. Anyways, see you.’

‘Yeah.’

The walk home was cold and it was no warmer when she arrived some forty minutes later. A black sun coiled around the sky in tendrils of long light, light falling and fading. Where in clouds did some malevolent other-weather lurk and soon it would become apparent. She stood on the porch for a while and watched for rain. For signs of rain. But there was nothing. Just a hollow wind and a silence elsewhere. Then she went in.

She sat in the living room for a long time. Her head in her hands. She turned the light on and back off again and then on a second time and sat again and sighed and closed her eyes. She imagined for herself in that clockless span of time all possible scenarios and branching scenarios and alternate scenarios whereby she would encounter Seulgi, and what Seulgi would say and what she would say and all that would come of it, the good and the bad, mainly the bad. At six she put on a coat and went walking.

Streets endless, boundless variety of the same ennui. Some anneal collaboration of bodies, of things. Faceless objects. Cars on the avenues, long slishmarks of tires, those caterwauling out of the horizon like a sound uncaring of any other sound and lights blaring on the headlamps and lights on the brakelamps and lights in the cabins and going down the streets and across the streets and so many cars in that hour of interminable traffic. Lights on the cross sections and lights in the window shops, small backlit neonlights and billboards of red and blue, of citrine and cinnabar, splayed lengthways the tableau of many establishment and their offerings, soups and meals, burgers for deals and shakes and salads, dressed all in garish neon or scrawled on sandwichboards or chalkboards or boards of other material, lit like Christmas lamps, like trinkets or baubles. Crowds moving shadow to shadow in the falling pinchbeck dusk like sunshaft ghosts, figures woven entirely from some incunabular hollow of light and shapen like copper dolls all faceless and amorphous so that when she passed she was not amongst them but beside them, a windowwatcher looking in at this strange and alien sense of motion, this gentilic horde of the maskless and the formless, highshouldered and striding with a purpose higher than her own. Streets of shadow, streets where cars slept like chrome hounds, streets where idle did tipplers stroll in darkness and should it be that their ventures brought them forth she would see them too, in their brass light and their periscope distortions, to be purposed above her, for they had at least in their insobriety some manner of accomplishment no matter how insignificant or self-indulgent, and what did she have? What but these running thoughts of a better time? This circadian daydream of superior living. What but naught. Hopeless. So hopeless.

By the time she was back it was just past seven. She debated still whether to go and in the end she did and whether shameful or embarrassing or perhaps in truth some conjecture of the two she knew in her heart that she would have always gone, no matter what. She would have walked across the earth to meet Kang Seulgi one last time. To draw from her the very truth of their coupling, of what they had become. In her words and her words alone. To hear it from . To relish or reject but to hear it all the same.

She stood by the door and waited. Listening but there was naught to listen to. After a while she knocked. Her hands pale and shaking, her hair done back in a ponytail, lips chattering and not with the cold. Seulgi answered for her with her a lopsided smile.

‘Hey,’ she said with a lazy grin. She held onto the jamb with one hand and swung the door wide open and turned and shuffled back into the kitchen. Irene stood there. The red neon of those ceiling lights so strangely familiar. As if they would never be turned off. Immediately she could smell it. Honey and amber and whiskey. A thick and heady scent, a richness to its top. She looked at Seulgi but Seulgi was already halfway to the kitchen counter and she did not turn around to make sure Irene had not simply refused to answer.

‘Are you drunk?’ Irene said.

Seulgi staggered up to the counter and opened one of the back cupboards. She seemed to be searching very intently. Then she produced an unopened square bottle of whiskey and waved it about. Bubbles formed in the thick of the black liquid. A tempered heat Irene could almost taste herself. Seulgi giggled. ‘Whoops,’ she said. ‘Guess I got ahead of myself.’

‘Forget this.’

‘No. Irene. Wait. Come back.’

‘You didn’t tell me you were going to be drunk.’

Seulgi shrugged nonchalantly. ‘Guess I forgot. Sit down.’

‘I don’t think that’s a good idea.’

‘Sit down.’

‘How much have you had to drink?’

‘A little bit.’

‘How much is that?’

‘Not a lot. Sit.’

Reluctantly she did. Stink of whiskey heavier now. She watched out the window the rise of the black and wretched night. A cold night not befitting Summer. Buildings and shadows of buildings pressed in some castellation against that backdrop by gross incandescence and naught else. Irene watched Seulgi come around the counter and stumble down the far end and almost fall and giggle all the while, the whiskey in her hand.

‘Jesus Christ,’ she said. ‘How drunk are you, really?’

‘A little.’

‘Don’t lie to me. Please.’

Seulgi stood there just behind her seat. She seemed to regard this seriously for a minute. Then she laughed again. ‘About a full bottle,’ she said. ‘Maybe a bit more. I don’t properly remember. It’s all the in bedroom.’

‘Why have you been drinking?’

‘Why not?’

‘I’m serious. You said you wanted to talk.’

‘I do. I can talk when I’m drunk.’

Irene stood to leave again.

‘No,’ Seulgi wait. ‘Wait. Please. Sit down.’

Irene looked at her. She appeared almost sober in that moment. As if she had been readying herself for some time. ‘Please,’ she said. ‘Just listen.’

She sat again. Waiting. Seulgi stood there at the end of the table fiddling with her fingers. She put the bottle down and closed her eyes and sighed and she wobbled slightly back and forth like an enormous bobbingduck at a fairday carnival.

‘What?’ Irene said. Her heart hammering in her chest. This is it. Oh God. This is it. This is what I’ve been waiting for. Seulgi just stood there tottering. She looked down at the floor and back at the window and back at Irene again and she didn’t say anything for a while. She just sighed. There seemed to be some genuine conflict inside her. A torrential pain of the unknown, the curious. Irene studied her very carefully. Her piteous drunken state. She let her hands go loose at her side and looked back at Irene again and bit her lip.

‘It’s just…’

‘Just what?’

‘I’ve been thinking. About me. And about you.’

‘Yeah?’

Seulgi nodded. Irene waited for her to continue. She waited there for what felt like an eternity. A pounding still in her chest and that awful burning heat in her cheeks, the flush at , watching and waiting like she had never waited for anything before in her life, and she waited and waited while Seulgi stood there deliberating silently with herself the immaculate concept of truth, of its value, its worth to her, and the sun burning away like a crimson fire out in the vast expanse of the universe, a blistering finale set about its own halo in a warm and tender glow, and as she pushed her chair back and stood up in front of Seulgi and Seulgi looked back at her it began to rain, light and cool on the windowpanes, rain a long time coming, rain to quench some indelible thirst brought across the face of all the world, a drought ended by some inexplicable advent of a colder dusk, a hiemal awakening, and Seulgi looked at her a second time and she watched her careful eyes with a sort of terrible vulnerability Irene had never seen before and then just like that it was gone, a second so fine it perhaps may not have existed at all, perhaps had been a figment of Irene’s hopeful fantasies, and in its place that same wicked smile, that bewitching glint in her sordid stare, a low and husky giggle at the back of . She stepped forward until she was close enough that Irene could smell her breath, the stink of whiskey and toothpaste.

‘C’mon,’ she said.

‘Seulgi.’

‘Hey. C’mon.’

‘What are you doing?’

She ran a hand across Irene’s arm and down to her waist and she pulled her in for a soft kiss and Irene did not push back, did not push her away, though she longed to, she knew it in truth to be the right thing to do. But sometimes the right thing is not always the most desired thing. And she desired Seulgi. She burned with a flame like no other, a spark ignited by the very presence of that awful, predatory grin. When Seulgi pulled back breathless she watched the flush at her round cheeks.

‘What are you doing?’ she said.

Seulgi didn’t say anything. She took Irene by the hand and led her to the bedroom. A dark and dim space. Lightless in the brass sunset. A bottle of whiskey still about a half full on the bedside table and the covers pulled back and slept-in.

‘You said you drank a whole bottle,’ Irene said. Seulgi just giggled. She pushed her back onto the bed and Irene didn’t resist. She lay there with Seulgi atop her undoing her buttons and fondling with Irene’s shirt and running her hands over the curves of her hips and up across her stomach and her neck like a nervous child, desperate and feverish, groping around in the dark like a woman blind, kissing across and her jawline and down to her s and pulling her bra away and giggling. Irene lay there and she let her. She let Seulgi do what she want, and she kissed her back and pushed her down and reciprocated, and they tangled there late into the night and early into the next morning, two lovers adrift in the pouring rain, two lost souls coming together, finding in one another their solace, their impassioned surrender and it was good oh God it was so good, and it wasn’t until the morning when Irene awoke in a cold sweat that she realised what she had done. What she had become.

She pulled herself up against the headboard and turned to look at Seulgi. There in the newborn light of that pink dawn, her hair tangled about her face, the soft glow of and marked in red where Irene had made love to her with her lips in the way only she knew how to, thrashing back and forth and murmuring to herself, like some insane patient damned to a reckless misery. She grabbed tight to the covers and pushed herself about and wept quietly and she looked there in that sunkissed haze so utterly fragile, so childlike and vulnerable that it made Irene hurt to watch. She thrashed about for a long time, kicking and muttering incoherencies to nothing in particular, haloed in shadow and sin, silent light from the window, the ceaseless rain ceasing in the morning, glow, turning and tossing and turning again. When she was asleep Irene just lay there watching her silent breathing form. So small and delicate, so unlike Seulgi. Where was that stoic calm now? Where was that dangerous flirtation? That effortless beauty. Where but gone. Replaced by a mewling child, so alone and afraid. She lay her head down again and tried to sleep. But it was a long time before it came to her.

When she awoke again it was to the sound of pans in the kitchen. A jingle of china plates. She rose and looked about. Quiet and dim in the room, Seulgi absent her side. She thought for a while about the night previous. What she had done. What she had succumbed to. Jesus. I’m such a mess. And of Seulgi.

Slowly she made her way into the kitchen. Seulgi was there with their food, two plates of bacon and eggs and brownbread on fine white plates and two glasses of orange juice. She set them down on the table and turned back to Irene there and grinned.

‘C’mon,’ she said. ‘Come eat.’

‘Seulgi.’

‘Hey, sit. Eat.’

‘Seulgi.’

Seulgi didn’t listen. She sat at the far end and began ladling the bacon and the egg together. Irene watched her. Where had that vulnerability gone? Had it been some other form of imagination? Had she conjured that from nowhere too? Seulgi finished her food in silence. Irene did not touch her own. She just observed Seulgi much the way a person in a zoo observes a caged bird.

‘Seulgi,’ she said.

‘Are you not eating?’

‘Seulgi. Listen to me, please.’

Seulgi leant across to take her plate. She began eating the cold bacon, thick as old cardboard.

‘Seulgi, please.’

‘What?’ Seulgi looked up at her. A moment of quiet falling between them. A curious and awful heartache.

‘This morning,’ Irene said. ‘What I saw this morning…are you okay?’

‘What?’

‘You looked like you were having a bad dream.’

‘It’s nothing.’

‘Are you sure? You looked really bad.’

Seulgi looked at her for a minute. Then she said, in a quiet voice: ‘I think you should leave.’

‘What?’

Seulgi stared back at her. There was a hollow emptiness there that was both frightening and alarming.

‘I think you should go, Irene,’ she said. ‘I think I want you to leave now.’