A/N: Next update at the normal time ~2 days from now. Also, just wanna say, I've got a fair amount of criticism (well, not a lot lol) from people saying it's too confusing/the dialogue is pointless/their encounters are much too familiar, but I don't get that vibe at all while writing it, and any similarities in their encounters are because otherwise it would (to me, at least) feel forced. All of my stories tend to be slow-building, so I apologise if that's not your thing :)

Anyway, comments and dicussions welcome as always! Enjoy!

VII. TRUE COLORS

"I understand, baby girl we all have a past."

For a long time Irene just stood there. Unsure of what to do or how to go about doing it. Watching Seulgi and Seulgi watching her. She was not crying nor was Seulgi but soon they would both be. She knew that. Seulgi took her plate to the sink and then the glass and she performed this with a sort of tranquil and mechanical sensibility, as if during some long and languid rehearsal of movement, a strange and robotic locomotion. And she did not turn to Irene once.

‘I’m not going,’ Irene said. ‘I’m not.’

Seulgi stood there and she did not look at Irene at all. Not even as she spoke. ‘I want you to leave,’ she said.

‘If that’s you really want, what you truly want, then fine. So be it. But I don’t think you do. I don’t think that’s what you want.’

‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘What?’

‘I said it doesn’t matter.’

Irene sighed. ‘Why do you have to be so ing confusing? Why can’t you just speak straight with me? Is this all part of some elaborate ploy to confuse me so much that I get annoyed and finally leave on my own? Because if you want that, just say it. Just say it properly, while looking at me, and I will. I’ll go. I’ll delete your number. I know you don’t believe me but I will. And that’ll be it. So just do that. Just look at me and say it and I promise I’ll go. I’ll never bother you again.’

‘Is that what you want?’

‘What?’

‘Is that what you want? Do you want me to tell you to leave?’

‘I’m talking about what you want, Seulgi. And you said you want me to leave, don’t you?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Then why can’t you look at me and say it? Why can’t you look me in the eye and tell me you don’t want to see me again. Or tell me that we’ve been making something out of a mistake. Because that’s what you’re acting like and it’s so frustrating and I don’t know what to do. I feel like I’m lost. And I hate myself for it. Because I shouldn’t have slept with you last night. I should have just turned and walked away. Because now it feels like I’m absolutely nowhere and I have no ing idea what’s going on. Are you taking advantage of me? Are you pretending to show me affection so you can get off, is that it? Am I taking advantage of you? What the is going on, Seulgi? Jesus, I feel like I’ve known you a hundred years or something. Like I’ve aged just by being with you.’

‘You’re not with me.’

‘You know what I mean.’

Seulgi looked at her. That same vulnerability in her eyes. That same wavering intensity threatened as it was by a different side, a different Seulgi. Though what precisely Irene could not tell nor had she been able to before. A holistic persona formed partly from her own terrible and unspoken insecurities. She studied Seulgi closely. Her lips trembling ever so softly. Stood there framed entirely from faint light, a redshifted shadow tethered to some other fate, some spiritual awakening just aching to be loosed, aching to be set free. But she would not say it. She did not.

‘I’m going to ask it again,’ Irene said, ‘and please be honest with me. Do you want me to leave?’

Seulgi didn’t say anything.

‘What are we?’ Irene said.

‘What do you mean?’

‘I feel like I’m going round in circles with you and I’ve barely known you, what, a week? Ten days? Not even. Like I’ve done this a thousand times before already. Jesus, what’s wrong with me? I just want to know if there’s anything between us or if I’m blowing everything way out of proportion. Because I tend to do that. That’s just who I am. I make drama out of everything and I don’t even realise I’m doing it. But this time is different. I swear it is. I can just feel it. It’s like this feeling in my soul and I don’t care how cliché that sounds or whatever. I just know it. And I want to hear it from you. Whether I’m right or I’m completely off-base, I want to hear it. That’s all I’m asking. Is that so hard?’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘What I mean is: do you feel anything for me? Really, seriously? Because you’ve said no. You’ve told me I was just a , I was a quick lay, and all that. Whatever. I get that. But you gave me your number, your actual number. And you told me to visit you. And you said I was different, you said you could sit and talk with me and not feel like I was taking advantage of you or whatever it was. You said that, I remember. And I’m sure you do, too. So I just want to know if I’m taking all of this out of context or if there’s something more there. Something between us. A connection. Or something deeper than that. That’s all I want to know, please. That’s the only answer I want, Seulgi. Then I’ll go if you still want me to.’

Seulgi almost smiled. Her eyes glazed with tears and rheumy-looking. A soft glare over her shoulder from that pink sunrise. She stood there on the verge of tears and she was not strong in that state. This unlovable felon of some misshapen destiny, victim of circumstance caught in a copper dawn, yearning for more. To be set free, to see to some other path of living. Is this it? Or are there other worlds aside? Who knows. Who but fate.

‘I don’t know,’ Seulgi said after a while.

‘You don’t know what?’

‘I don’t know what we are. And I don’t care.’

‘What?’

‘I said I don’t care. I don’t know what I am to you and I don’t know what you are to me and I haven’t given it much thought. Because that’s what I do, in case you’ve forgotten. I don’t overthink things, I don’t put too much feeling into anything or anyone. I just go with the flow. That’s how I live my life, one step at a time. That’s exactly how I do it. So I’m sorry. I’m sorry if that’s not what you wanted to hear, if that’s not the answer you craved from me. But it’s all I’ve got for now. That’s all I can give you, Irene. And I don’t know what else to say. Do you want me to apologise?’

‘Apologise for what?’

‘I don’t know, you tell me. For leading you on? Did I do that? I made it clear, didn’t I? What I was and what I do.’

‘Yeah, you did. And then you went back on that. You lied to me and you lied to yourself.’

Seulgi laughed dryly. ‘I lied to myself.’

‘Yeah,’ Irene said. ‘Yeah, you did. You were supposed to be this materialistic figure that drinks and sleeps around and gets high or whatever else it is you do behind closed doors, right? That’s what you are. What you told me you were. You’re a supermodel. You’re so cool and trendy and gorgeous and you do all these things because you can, because you live life on only one gear, and that gear is full speed ahead. Right? Am I right? Because that’s what you’ve told me. You literally said you pick up girls for one night and leave them in the morning. You said that. And what’s this? That’s what you did to me, except I’m still here, and you’re still talking to me, and you invited me over more than once, and you had with me again, and you said you like talking to me, and now you’re trying to push me away? Why? I don’t understand. I just want a straight answer. Why can’t you give me one? Is it that hard? Are you really lying to yourself?

‘You don’t know a damn thing about me.’

‘Is that right? You – ‘

‘You don’t know anything about me,’ Seulgi said. She stood straight as a statue. ‘Don’t even begin to talk about me like you do. You don’t know who I am, you don’t know what I’m like, you don’t know what I’ve done, you couldn’t even tell my age without a Google search. You’ve met me maybe five or six times in total. And now you come out with this? You think you can judge me like you’ve known me my entire life, like I owe something to you? You want the truth? You want the harsh reality? Fine. Here’s your truth, Irene.

‘I don’t owe you a damn thing. Alright? Nothing. I don’t owe you an explanation, and I don’t owe you any answers for any overly dramatic questions you’ve got for me, and I don’t deserve everything you’re giving me like I’m some sort of terrible person, like I’ve done some awful evil or something. You know maybe two or three things about me and suddenly you think you’re in some sort of position to judge my character? To make assumptions on my behalf? Is that it? Well you can’t, so don’t. Stay in your lane.’

‘Stay in my lane. Right. Where’s that?’

Seulgi sighed. ‘Just, for Christ’s sake.’

‘What?’

‘Just don’t act like you know me.’

‘I don’t act like I know you.’

‘Yeah, you do.’

‘Fine. Maybe I do. Because maybe, just maybe, in my stupid mind, I thought there was something there, some sliver of a thing between us. That’s how I describe it. A thing. What else can I say? Maybe I was wrong, but if I am then why aren’t you telling me? Why haven’t you got rid of me already? And don’t say you’re trying.’

‘I am. I told you to leave, didn’t I?’

Irene stood there a moment. Her voice wavering. She knew with some awful and unspeakable truth sequestered in her heart that her confidence or lack thereof would decide in some way their future together, or apart. ‘Fine,’ she said in a quiet voice. ‘You know what? Fine. If you want me gone, go ahead and delete my number. Get rid of my texts. Block me. Cut me out of your life entirely. Don’t text me in the middle of the day asking me to meet you and then end up drunk when I get here, wanting to me and not telling me why, not telling me anything at all. If you want me out of your life, go ahead and do it.’

Seulgi didn’t move. She seemed to stare at Irene for what felt very much like an eternity, and passing between them numerous painful thoughts, memories repressed, a wish for something else.

‘Well,’ Irene said, ‘go on. Do it. Show me right now. Show me you doing it.’

‘Irene.’

‘Please. Just do something. Show me something. Anything.’

‘Just go.’

Irene stood there again for a while. Looking for signs of regret on Seulgi’s face but there were none. There was nothing.

‘Fine,’ she said. She wiped the tears from her eyes and took her bag from the bedroom and without another word she left. And then Seulgi was alone again.

Irene walked for a long time. It seemed all her time in the recent weeks had been spent walking. And meeting with Kang Seulgi, or thinking of her, or imagining situations where she was doing one of the two. And now what? What had become of that? Of them. Who knew. Not even her. She walked by streets adorned in a cool and rainless morning light and she walked by cars where in long slishes did they pass obscured in a light fog and she walked all into the afternoon. Two beggars on a street corner hung from construction scaffolding like gibbons hollering when she passed and she ignored them. She walked until her feet hurt and she could walk no more. She had come out by the side of the Han River and she sat there on the waterfront grass peering down into the cold and black patterns of the water, reticulate formations crowned in the murk, spirals arrant and lightwired from a porous sun.

After a while she took out her phone. No new messages. Nothing from Seulgi. She debated for a while with herself on the intricacies of her situation and then she rang Yeri and told her in no uncertain terms that she wasn’t feeling too good and she wanted to meet. Yeri said where. Irene said the waterfront. Please come. I just need someone to talk to. That’s all. Someone I can rant to.

She sat with her knees to her chest in the bitter breeze watching small cruiseboats crest the horizon in sunshimmers like the advent of some dawning civilisation of water-faring people lit only by their own inner lamps, a dull and void glimmer there, and she watched the sun nulled by formations of cloud bespecked in grey and sat perched in the firmament like some great and mighty medusa, smoking and cold. A faint blue hue had settled over the riverside. And over her and in her heart and elsewhere. Oh, what of this sorrow. Turn me from this, turn me. Turn me and I shall be strong, I shall be true. I shall catch rain like the stones. If only my heart were not the same.

While she waited she hummed to herself. By days gone she had become somewhat of a wanderer in her own isolated solar system. She watched again the river with some concentration. The stoic imprint of a city impressed on the water like a thing seen through bad glass, spires and antispires poised in quivering inverts and loosed in diluted fractals of light like melted candles. Artefacts of another time. She sat crosslegged in silence, this apostate of her own invention come to reclaim her tenderness, her moiled care for her own goodnatured wellbeing or otherwise happiness, whatever that may entail, watching in cold like some bitter and simple gorgon stolen by wind.

By five or so she was sat with Yeri but she did not speak beyond greetings. She just sat there. Watching the same spot, same spaces. It all felt so very familiar and for what reason she couldn’t quite say. This abstract redundancy where there should be none. And what of her. Of her life and her intentions. What of that now. After a while she turned to Yeri and she was almost crying. She looked very small there, that hopeless lachrymose gibbering and swollen like an enormous weeping doll. Yeri smiled softly.

‘What’s up?’ she said. ‘C’mon. You’ve brought me out here for a reason.’

‘Thank you.’

‘For what?’

‘Coming.’

‘It’s what friends do,’ Yeri said.

‘Yeah, but still.’

‘Still nothing. Go on then. Tell me. What’s going on?’

Irene wiped her eyes and sighed. ‘I met Seulgi again,’ she said.

‘Great.’

‘Well, not really. Unless that was sarcasm.’

‘You know what? I honestly don’t know. Anyways, go on.’

‘I confronted her. Like you said I should. Well, sort of. Not really. But I did it.’

‘When?’

‘This morning.’

‘You were there this morning? I thought she wanted to see you last night.’

Irene sighed. ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘I went round last night and we ended up sleeping together. I know, I know. I don’t know what happened. What got over me. One thing just led to another, you know? When I got there she was drunk. Or at least pretending to be. And she wouldn’t answer me or anything. Just kept deflecting. Kept laughing it off. So I confronted her this morning about it. I told her to tell me if I was bothering her, if I was still just a quick lay and nothing else, or if there was something there, some connection, anything really. That’s all I wanted from her. That was it. And she couldn’t even give me that.’

‘What happened?’

‘She just told me to leave. Over and over and over.’

‘And what did you do?’

‘I asked her again for the truth. That’s all I wanted, like I said. Just the truth. Just her to tell me that I was nothing to her. I was just a . Because I’d hate it, I’d hate it so much, but at least I’d be able to accept it, given time. At least I’d be able to get over my stupid ing feelings for someone I barely even know and move on, you know? But she didn’t say that. She couldn’t. She just told me to leave. I told her to delete my number if she was serious. To block me out of her life.’

‘And?’

‘Well,’ Irene said, ‘I don’t know. She hasn’t text me and I haven’t text her.’

‘You think she’s deleted you then?’

‘I don’t know. And I don’t know what to do from here.’

‘Seems like a recurring theme with you recently.’

‘Yeah. Yeah, I guess it is. But really, Yeri. What the do I do? Do I go round again and apologise? Do I cut it off with her?’

‘Probably.’

‘I can’t, though.’

Yeri laughed. ‘I don’t know why you even suggested that, to be honest.’

‘I know, right? I can’t do it. Call me clingy or creepy or whatever but I can’t do it without closure. I just need her to tell me that she doesn’t care about me. Oh God, that didn’t come out right. But you know what I mean. I just need her to do something, to say something. Because right now I’m so ing confused and it hurts so much. It really hurts, Yeri. Jesus, it does.’

As she cried again Yeri held her close. Soft and boneless, her wet tears down Yeri’s front. Arms tight in embrace. Shush, she said. It’s okay. It’s okay. You’re fine. It’s all going to be fine. You’re just being stupid. Irene just cried. She just lay there and wept like a child. It’s not fair. It’s really not fair. When she was finished she sat up again and wiped her eyes and her cheeks and sniffled and coughed.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said.

‘For what?’

‘For that. I’ve been such a ing mess recently. I never knew I’d be like this.’

‘Really?’ Yeri said. She looked amused.

‘Yeah. What?’

‘Nothing. Just, out of all of us, I’d peg you as the most likely to have this happen to you.’

‘What? Why?’

‘Because you really are a hopeless romantic. And you get these ideas of TV romance in your head and you won’t let them go.’

‘I just want an answer, Yeri. Is that too much to ask?’

Yeri shrugged. ‘Maybe this is your answer. Maybe her kicking you out is all the answer she’s going to give.’

‘But it’s not what I want.’

‘Maybe it’s not about what you want.’

‘That’s what she said. Sort of.’

‘Well then maybe she’s right.’

‘I just don’t know what to do from here,’ Irene said. She looked utterly spent. ‘What do I do, Yeri? Do I just let it go? Because I don’t think I can. Not now that I’ve been with her again. I need her to tell me. I just do. It’s driving me insane.’

‘You’ve been insane for a while, to be fair.’

‘Very funny.’

‘No but honestly, you want some proper advice?’

Irene nodded.

‘Can I get serious for a minute?’ Yeri said.

‘Yeah. Sure. Please do.’

‘Alright. Great. I’m going to tell you a story. That okay?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Right. It’s about someone I used to know. Well, actually, I didn’t really know her. My mom did. She was a friend from my mom’s school. Her name was Seon-joo. They go way back, like to when they were twelve or thirteen or something. Anyway, she was pretty close with my mom. Not like, best friends or anything, but they kept in contact. And the only reason I remember her at all is because of how crazy she was. In a good way. Like, she used to do all these amazing things. I remember meeting her a few times whenever she’d come round, and she was just one of those people, you know? I don’t know how to describe them but like, one of those people that just by being around, they make you want to achieve more. To do more things. Know what I mean? That’s kind of what she always was.

‘I remember saying that to my mom and she told me the same thing. Told me that she’d always been like that. When she was sixteen she ran her first half marathon. She was top of her class at practically everything. She used to volunteer at the local homeless shelter on the weekends, and she worked two jobs during the week. She got a degree in Ancient History and then she decided she wasn’t happy with just that and she went back to uni and got another in Business and Mandarin Studies, and then she got herself a master’s and a PhD. I think she completed her second degree in eighteen months. I didn’t even know that was possible, honestly. But she did it. She used to go hiking up mountains and whenever she had spare time, and then she got married and had two daughters, few years younger than me. But she still always used to come round for coffee and a chat with my mom. She was just like that.

‘I never really properly knew her and I never mentioned her or anything but I knew a bit about her through my mom, like I said. She was always so nice to me, and so humble. Like nothing could ever bother her. She was actually going to publish a book as well. Can you believe that? She was one of those wonder people. People that just do everything. That just get it all right, that have everything sorted. The sort of person you dream to be sometimes. Know that feeling? I just remember her thirty-eight birthday, me and my mom were invited, and we went round and got talking and she was just so lovely, so caring. Just an all-around good person, that’s what she was.

‘And you know what happened? She went to the shop one day to get some icecream and when she came out she walked across the parking lot towards her car, and another car pulled out without looking and ran her down. She didn’t even see it coming. Didn’t see the driver through the rear window. It just bowled her right over and she hit head on the concrete. And that was that. She was forty-two years old. That shouldn’t happen, you know? You don’t just live a fulfilling live and fall in love and raise two kids and go out to buy some icecream and then die. That shouldn’t happen. But it did. Just like that, she was gone. Getting something to eat from the store.’

Irene looked at her for a minute. Unsure of what quite to say. ‘That got really morbid, really fast,’ she said.

‘Yeah,’ Yeri said. ‘Sorry. But my point is that you never know what ty hand life’s going to deal you. You never know what it’s going to throw your way. So don’t take life like you’re watching a movie at the cinema. Be the movie yourself. Be the projection on the screen. Do all those things you’d love to watch, you’d love to see being done. I guess what I’m trying to say in a roundabout way is don’t take life for granted, you know? Not that you’re going to get run down by a car in a parking lot, but what I mean is: if you really feel this strongly, just ing go for it. Give it one last shot. Go round to her house or ring her or whatever. Do what you have to do to settle it. And if it ends in heartbreak, and it ends messy, then so be it. At least you tried. You gave it your best shot. That’s what you need to do. Because life’s too short to spend time umming and ahhing over you think you want to do but you’re not sure. Just do it. Father Time’s not going to wait for you. So don’t let it pass you by.’

Irene smiled. ‘You know what?’ she said.

‘What?’

‘You’re actually kind of good at giving out advice, you know? In a strange and rather disorienting way. I mean, I sort of actually get what you’re trying to say. Even if it came out weird. So thanks for that.’

‘You’re welcome.’

‘What about you?’

‘What?’

‘Seems like it applies to you, too.’

‘I don’t get you.’

‘Your work,’ Irene said. ‘All that you were talking about. About not fitting in. Not feeling like people liked you for who you were.’

Yeri looked down at her feet. ‘Right,’ she said. ‘Yeah. That.’

‘How’s that going?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said. She looked so absurdly sheepish. Such a change it was almost startling. ‘I haven’t really spoken to them about it. It doesn’t seem like the sort of thing I need to speak about.’

‘What? Why?’

‘It just seems like I’m making a big deal out of nothing. That’s how they’ll see it, anyways.’

‘If it’s making you uncomfortable, you need to speak up. You just said it yourself, right? What was it you said? Life’s too short to spend time umming and ahhing? You just need to do it? Something like that?’

Yeri smiled thinly. ‘Yeah, that’s what I said. It’s not that easy though, is it?’

Irene looked back out at the river and then at the skies. She searched the heavens for a sign. A cosmic indication of her coming fate. And found naught but rain. It was going to rain soon.

‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘It’s not that easy at all.’

She sat by the balustrade overlooking the river with her phone in her hand. Just thinking. Seulgi had not replied to her for some time. More than an hour. A significant part of her told her that was standard but there some other effect telling her that something was wrong. She stood and leant over the balustrade. Peering out at the cold coming of that night. It was almost seven. Light scattered over the water in droplets like gothic wedding decorations. Patches of this gold and inordinate light telling her to do something. To make something of it. Yeri was right. Yeri was almost always right. After a while she turned and made her way along the riverside and up onto the streets and down towards Seulgi’s.

In truth it was fortunate that she did not own some private land monitored at all times. Just a lavish apartment. She stood in the lobby taking in the scent of lemongrass and freshly cured leather. The chairs placed at specific angles. Reception desk empty. Elevator climbing for an eternity. Some crucial ascent towards a void where her yearning hope lingered. Where some semblance of her existing sanity remained. When she reached the top and the doors opened out into that all too familiar corridor shafted in thin light she stood there taking in a deep breath and looking through the bends in the rippleglass at whatever was beyond. But she could see nothing. Lightless in the transom there.

She knocked and waited and waited some more. When there was no answer she knocked again and then she text Seulgi. Nothing. She debated for a while ringing her. If some other person was to come upon her there they mistake her no doubt for some thief of the night or perhaps paparazzi, a cloaked miscreant waiting so very patiently for Kang Seulgi there. After a while she rang her. Waiting and waiting. The dim buzz of her ringing phone like some sacred and mythic sound in her ear. Seulgi didn’t answer and there was no voicemail. Irene tried ringing a second time and then a third and nothing.

A cold wind had risen sometime earlier in the evening. She could feel it even all the way up there, stood by the door, dimmed in the overhead light. Something wasn’t right. Seulgi wasn’t in. She took one more look around. Wondering, debating with herself. The internal struggles of a paradoxical love, one that shouldn’t work and perhaps never would. Then she took the elevator and went back out through the lobby into a cold and windswept night. She watched the skies void of stars. A gibbous moon hung like some great and wounded lamplight or sheet electric in the heavens. She watched for maybe ten or fifteen minutes. Just standing there on the curb not quite knowing what to do anymore. She had an inkling as to where Seulgi had gone but that was just it. An inkling. And whether to follow it or not was another question. She looked about again. Long slides of light from each of those thousand windows. Red and blue neonlight. Like the advent of some grandiose festival of the night. Low murmur of cars, of people passing. After a while she turned and headed away into the dark, a shadowed figure walking penumbral and indistinct, figure to the figure, a mooring halo of moonlight.

By the time she came out upon Mission it was almost eleven. She had walked for far too long and her legs felt like swollen matchsticks. She wore a loose black jacket and jeans and she stood there at the back of the queue wondering whether she would be let in or not. But she was and all was fine and she stood there just inside the entrance taking in the smell of that hazy place and not liking it much at all. Stink of sweat and vodka. Lights pulsing like the last lights at the end of some dark road of sin and a long line of people waiting for drinks and down on the dancefloor people moving by neon like fish in a barrel, all undulate and uncoordinated, making a pass and then two by the light of the lights and they were dancing, and making more passes and still dancing. Irene did not watch. She was looking elsewhere. Eyes searching the balconies and the inlets and the third floor and by the toilets with a frantic dopeaddled urgency. Please. Please.

She bounded up the stairs three at a time. People watching her go. People so lost in their drinks they could barely witness her at all. Looking and looking. C’mon. Please. She found Seulgi out in the smoking area.

A cool wind still remained. She was sat there at one of the far tables, shaded by a thin umbrella, cold and alone and watched by many, people with phones recording and people talking amongst themselves like witnesses to some exhibit at a zoo. Oh bird, caged bird. Do you speak for me and will you? She had her head resting on her arms against the table and she barely moved at all. She just sat there as if in trance or sleep. And not far from either. Irene went up to her. People recorded them both. They stood as if they were talking about something else but it was obvious to even Seulgi that they were not, they were watching her like hawks, they were talking about her. Is that Kang Seulgi? I think it is. Jesus, what’s she doing here? And why. Look at her.

Irene tapped her on the shoulder. A crowd had drawn from the doors and they watched her with great curiosity. ‘Hey,’ she said. Seulgi didn’t respond. She had her eyes closed and she seemed almost tranquil for a moment. Then she lurched from one side of her arms to the other and heaved dryly and coughed and drooled on herself.

‘Seulgi.’

Seulgi turned up to her with tremendous effort. Her eyes unfocused and white and distant. As if in some permanent stupor of thing more potent than alcohol. When she saw Irene she smiled a lazy smile. ‘Irene,’ she muttered. ‘Irene.’

‘Are you okay?’

‘What are you doing here?’

‘I was looking for you.’

‘Looking for who?’

‘You.’

‘Who?’

Irene sighed. She made to take Seulgi up by the arm and Seulgi pulled back and giggled, swaying like some wounded beast and laughing all the while. She pulled back to the end of the table. The remnants of her drink going down her jacket and spilling all down one leg. The crowd turning out to see her there had grown exponentially in only a minute or two. Irene took her fully by the arm again and Seulgi did not resist. Could not.

‘Irene,’ she said again. A low and slurred voice. ‘Hey, Irene.’

‘You’re drunk.’

‘Yes. I’m drunk. You are right. Correctamundo.’

‘Come on.’

‘Where are we going?’

Irene hauled her up by the shoulder and turned her around. ‘You need to go home,’ she said. Seulgi giggled again. Irene could smell her. Honey and amber and the stench of sick so overpowering it was rancid. She staggered towards the door and the others watched and when she came close they drew back like wary observers to a parade of lepers, shoulder to shoulder amidst that rabble of voices. Iren led her out to the door and through the frenzy of the crowd and past the bouncers asking if she was okay. She nodded. Yeah, she’s fine. Don’t worry. Hey, they said, isn’t that Kang Seulgi? Irene just shook her head. Seulgi could barely walk. She stumbled, one arm draped over Irene’s back, like a casualty of some horrific injury, wrongfooted and illgaited.

Irene flagged down a taxi and pushed Seulgi in unceremoniously and she rode alongside her, watching her all the way. Her lolling tongue, flailing head. She seemed to be unable to focus on anything at all. Just a lazy illfortuned grin on her lips. Heavying dry as sawdust here and there. When they came up to the building she paid the driver and thanked him and took Seulgi again by the arms and dragged her not unlike a small child across the lobby and to the elevator. The stink was enormous. When the doors had closed she stood there propping Seulgi up like some museum piece or otherwise statue, unable to stand on her own, wobbling side to side like some great carnival pendulum.

‘Your keys,’ Irene said.

‘My what?’

‘Where are your keys?’

Seulgi swayed. ‘My pocket,’ she mumbled. Irene fetched them up from the pocket of her jacket and with much care hauled her to the door and opened it and spilled inside. Dim and lightless almost to a fault. The moon positioned there by the panes of glass like some faint and sickly ghost of a thing propped against the sky by some manner of fate not befitting her own. She limped into the bedroom with Seulgi clinging to her, the stench of sick and vodka and honey, Seulgi like a lame dog dribbling on herself, laughing wryly, Irene sitting her carefully on the end of the bed and removing her shoes in some princely manner and then her socks and her jacket. Seulgi appeared not to notice or perhaps not understand. When Irene told her to lift her foot she did. Raise her arms, she did. Sit straight. Lift your other arm. Careful. Okay, good.

When she was divested of her rueful garments save a shirt and underwear Irene rolled back the covers and motioned for her to climb in and with great difficulty she did. So very slow, long and wasted movements. Like a creature soon to die. She heaved but nothing came up.

‘I’ll be a minute,’ Irene said. She stood to leave and Seulgi pawed at her, desperate and useless.

‘Wait,’ she said. ‘Wait.’

‘I’ll be right back.’

‘Don’t.’

‘I’m just getting a bucket.’

She took the washing bowl from the sink and emptied it out and brought it into the bedroom and placed it on the floor by the bedside table. Seulgi was laid on her side. She had her eyes closed and she breathed very softly. The paperthin locomotions of her kaleidoscopic heart. A soft pulsebeat on its own misused rhythm. Irene sat there a while, just watching. She turned the bedside light on and Seulgi winced but said nothing. Masked in that small glow. Such a state as that. She was so achingly loveable, haloed in bedlight, face contorting and reshaping in some Melpomenic vision, so pained and alone. As to be never be whole or right again. What lingered of the spirit of the soul in there. What remained.

Irene watched until she was sure Seulgi was asleep. Then she rose to leave.

‘No,’ Seulgi said. Her voice so waning, so impossibly small. Her lips moved like the lips of some malnourished being dry and cracked as they were.

‘What?’

‘Don’t go,’ Seulgi said.

‘I’ve got to go.’

‘No. Don’t.’

Irene looked at her again. So angelic, so painfully beautiful. What secrets did those closed eyes hold. What colours. What is the damage to your spectrum and can it be healed? Can it be replaced? Oh Seulgi, my Seulgi. If only my heart were stone.

She made to move away again and Seulgi took her hand without moving or opening her eyes. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said.

‘What?’

‘I’m sorry, Irene. I’m sorry.’

‘For what?’

‘For…I don’t know what for. For everything. I just don’t know how to say it.’

Irene smiled. ‘It’s okay,’ she said. ‘I understand.’

‘No. You don’t.’

‘It’s okay. You need to sleep.’

‘Stay,’ Seulgi said. ‘Please. Stay with me.’

‘What about tomorrow?’

‘What?’

‘You won’t remember any of this, will you?’

Seulgi didn’t respond for a long time. Then she said: ‘Just stay.’

Irene studied her closely. The soft architecture of her face, so noble and cherubic. God’s own archetype.

‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Okay.