A/N: Thanks for all the amazing support on the feature, I appreciate it so much <3 

This chapter has quite a bit of angst. I know I said it was going to be fluffy, and it still is, but if you want to read my thoughts/notes on why it's not super fluffy yet (and I guess a bit of an apology? idk) read the Author's Note at the bottom of this chapter. Anyway, enjoy! Comments/Dicussions welcomed with open arms as always :)  <3

IX. SIDEWALKS

"I ran out of tears when I was eighteen."

They were there and they were lost amidst the crowd, a turning of a hundred faces slowly dispersing, shoals of bodies shifting about, hauling themselves up from the grass and dusting themselves off and emptying out their pockets into the little trashbins and laughing amongst themselves and muttering. More of the onlookers coming up from down the bottom of the embankment, haloed in the last shine of the moonlight, a sort of changing of the guard, and if they were observant they could see it, that final light, the one melting away from the earth like a great candle in the sky. The end of the sunset. Of that Summer’s day. Irene and Seulgi still sat there on the grass. No longer holding hands but did it matter? Were there not other concerns? Other victories. Irene turned to look at her. She was still watching the water. As if by sorcery some other light or display may appear there or be it conjured from the cold and placid waters but there was nothing. Just the darkness. Reflection of the city convex in spires like a washboard painting and crooked did it dip as the waves rode like contusions, bobbing and flowing and weaving, and the boat slowly floating westward and away across a dark horizon where stars the size and shape of grapefruits suffused like bolls of ice fading from the cosmos. What had been and what was to come.

Seulgi watched it go. She watched the boat pass like a ghost ship illuminate only in shadow and she watched until it had gone entirely and she sat there with her legs tight to her chest and her arms wrapped around them and she was almost crying and not with the cold. And Irene watched her. She was so different. So very interesting. What secrets are in there, Seulgi? What of you and what you’ve become and why? What are you hiding and will I ever know it? Your heart, your heart of stones. Would that it was diamonds. That glimmer there in her eyes when she turned to view the cityscape on the far side of the river. That soft and focused glint of something so painful, so utterly constructed of dread that she would not dare ask about it directly, never would. Seulgi turned to her and smiled a faint smile and wiped her eyes with the back of one red hand.

‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I just get emotional seeing fireworks.’

‘It’s alright,’ Irene said.

‘My mom took me to a display when I was eight and I’ve loved them ever since. I know that sounds really dumb – they’re just fireworks. But they’re one of those things, you know? One of those memories you hold onto, one of those tangible feelings. I can’t describe it. It’s just, how do I say it? It’s one of those experiences you attribute a certain feeling to, you know? Like, I think that most of the memories we have in life, we unknowingly attribute a negative emotion to them. I’m not a psychologist or anything, I just think about it a lot. When we think of something bad in our lives, we attribute fear, or anger, or sadness, misery, hatred. Whatever. But when we think of something positive, a good memory, most of the time we think back on it with nostalgia, with a sort of longing for the past, for something that’s already happened and might not ever happen again, something we cherish. Because we enjoyed that memory as it was happening. We laughed or loved or whatever, but we enjoyed it. And we wish we could do it again. We go: damn, that was good. Or: I remember that, it was great. We think back on it and sigh. Most of the time.

‘But sometimes we get these other memories. These ones that are so special – or maybe not even special at all, just these random ones that slip through the cracks – that we can’t possibly attribute sadness or nostalgia or longing to them. We just think back on them happily. We don’t miss them, and we don’t mourn for the past, and we don’t wish for it again. They exist as such great singular moments that we just treasure what they are, what they’ll always stand for. We hold them on their own as these individual moments where we were full of joy and we don’t think of the current absence of that joy, we just take them as they were. How they used to be. That’s fireworks for me. That’s the display my mom and I went to see when I was eight. It’s something I look back on and smile. It’s probably the only memory I’ve got of that. I don’t really have anything else I can look back on and smile about. Not without that longing. I don’t know. Maybe that says more about me than anything else. About my mindset or whatever. I don’t know.’

She looked at Irene again. Her eyes shimmering, lip quivering. In that windswept state she looked so impossibly fragile, so crucially under-serviced, underappreciated. Enough to make Irene’s heart ache. Oh, what has become of you. Where did it all go wrong. Seulgi tried to smile softly. She laughed. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I tend to mumble when I get distracted. I know that’s completely off topic. It just got me thinking.’

‘It’s fine. Honestly. I love hearing about it.’

‘About my past?’

‘Just listening to you in general, I meant.’

Seulgi smiled again. ‘Well, if you say so.’

‘What do you want to do now?’

‘What do you mean?’

Irene nodded to the river and then back along the path. It had cleared almost to an emptiness. A handful of kids stood by one of the bins up to their right, two men finishing their burgers across the path from them. Elsewhere a calm quiet. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I mean, there’s nothing going on anymore. Want to go for a walk or something?’

‘Where?’

‘Anywhere. Along the river.’

Seulgi thought for a moment. Then she smiled. ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘Sure.’

‘Great.’

They walked along the river in silence for a good half hour. Sharing small glances here and there. Seulgi with her hood wrapped tight around her face. She looked like some small and terrified creature in that black attire, bitten by the wind and sheltered only partially. She ran a hand back through her hair and tied the strings on her hoodie and stuffed her hands into the pockets. They stopped a minute to observe the night. Stood by the side of the grass watching in silence the turning of the stars in their beds and the moon where it slept like a great orbital crown of silver somewhere out in the universe and tethered to it their soaring spirits, one and the same, reaching to each other, walking out amongst the clouds, hoping and praying for what was soon to come. Then they walked again. A soft wind blew against them. They passed under streetlamps in quivering pools of small light, two figures cast out in shadow and moving distorted and torsional in penumbrae, mute and leptosome creatures of some maladroit fate both were tied to. It was Seulgi that spoke first. Irene had not expected her to at all. Her voice calm and quiet.

‘Thanks,’ she said.

‘For what?’ Irene said. They walked as they spoke. Pavements laying down before them eternal, two souls guided by that path along the slow rolling waves of the water face beside them, hand yearning to reach for the hand. Seulgi sighed.

‘For this,’ she said.

‘For walking?’

‘Just for this. I don’t know how to explain it. Honestly I’m pretty at describing things. Always have been. I don’t really know how to go about doing it. It works alright when I’m talking about books or movies or whatever but not about myself. I can never properly express my feelings. I’ve never been able to. But for the longest time I felt sort of empty, something like that. This sort of hollowness. And I know why. I do. Properly, but I can never say it. Never get it out there. I don’t know if I’m ready to do that yet. I really don’t. But I hope so. That’s all I want, really. I just don’t think I can right now.’

Irene went to say something and Seulgi stopped her. ‘I don’t mean it like that,’ she said. ‘It’s just, I’m in this position where I don’t quite know what I’m going to do in the future or how I’m going to do it or how I can even come to grips with it. And I know it sounds like I’m talking in ing riddles, but that’s because I’m really bad at describing things, like I said. It’s just that with you, I feel different. I don’t know how better I can put it. I don’t know what it is. Whether it’s this deep emotional thing or what. I don’t know. I’m at this point in my life where I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to pick up on something like that again, if I can even feel anything at all. That’s how bad I’ve gotten. But it’s all for a reason.’

She looked down at her feet and sighed. When she turned back to Irene there was that glint in her eyes again, that soft shivering of her bottom lip. She smiled awkwardly and shrugged. ‘I know you’re curious,’ she said. ‘About me. About my past. Why I’m like this. Why I’m so ed up, right?’

‘No, it’s not that.’

‘C’mon, really.’

Irene laughed. ‘Alright,’ she said, ‘maybe a little.’

‘See? I don’t blame you. I’d be the same in your shoes. And it’s not something I talk about often. If ever, actually. I can’t remember the last time I literally went for a walk. Stupid, right? How something so simple feels so alien to me now. I can’t remember the last time I actually sat and talked to someone properly that wasn’t you without them having an ulterior motive, without them wanting something from me. Instagram pics, money, ten minutes of fame. Whatever. But you’re not like that. You’re different. I think that’s why I’m like this. Why I can sort of talk about it again. Not fully, and I’m sorry for that. But maybe some other time. I hope, at least.’

‘It’s okay,’ Irene said. ‘Really, it’s fine.’

‘Yeah. Sorry. It’s just…’ She picked at her nails and bit her lip and looked at Irene and then out right towards the dark. Streetlights passing down the embankment like water, soft streams of cinnabar poured between them, intermittent as they were in passing shadow, black yellow black, figure to figure, their fetches come up like hallucinations from some other side of life. And the mute hum of the river and the city beyond it and around them. Of cars on the streets, of voices from alleyways, from arcades, all come back there like footfalls set to follow them purposeless. She dropped her head and for a moment however brief she looked almost childlike, so vulnerable, so off-centre, so unlike the Seulgi that Irene had come to know. Or perhaps just like her. Like she had been in bed, hands under her face, rocking slowly back and forth, face contorted in some great and unspeakable pain, murmuring to herself. How she had been watching the fireworks with a sort of boyish awe, a brilliant shine in her stargazing eyes. Which was her? Or both? She dropped her shoulders and sighed again.

‘It’s just, I’ve been hurt before,’ she said at last. ‘And I didn’t think I’d ever admit that to anyone again. I thought I was going down a dark path, and , I still might be. I don’t even know anymore. But here I am, speaking about it to you. Funny how things work.’

‘Yeah.’

‘I’m sorry. I don’t know how to say it without sounding dramatic or whatever.’

‘You don’t sound dramatic. It’s fine.’

‘It’s just, everyone I’ve met in the last eight or nine years has wanted me because of what I am, not who I am. Because I’m a top star, I’m a big-time celebrity. Because I’m famous, basically. And that gets other people famous, gets them attention or money or whatever else they want. And on the off chance I meet someone already famous in the industry, they don’t give a either. That’s how this world works. The entertainment industry. It’s insidious. Poisonous. It’s everyone wanting to get a leg up on everyone else, and all the nasty that follows is something I never wanted to be a part off and never want to again. It’s just awful, all of it. I wish I’d never gone into modelling. Wish I’d never been picked. Because look where I’ve ended up. Look at me.

‘I can’t even say I’ve ever been in love. Not really, at least. I’ve loved a few people here and there, but what does that matter? They’ve never loved me. Nobody has. Not like that. I’ve been used and chewed up and spit out by so many people I can’t even count. Literally almost everybody I’ve ever met. You know how that feels? To be used like that for your fame and your fortune and your influence, and then to have fifty paparazzi constantly shoving it in my face and telling me I’m no good or I’m scandalous or I should be with so and so. It’s the worst thing that’s ever happened to me. It’s a curse more than anything else. Because I’ve never been able to meet someone I can relate to. Not once.

‘I’ve tried. God knows I’ve tried, so many ing times. I’ve had relationships and friends and stronger love interests and all that but look where it’s all gotten me. I’m not afraid to admit it’s ed me up. It’s damaged me. Which is crazy when I think about it, since I never thought I’d talk about this to anyone. I thought I’d go on for quite possibly the rest of my life like this, surrounded by hangers-on and sycophants and fans to the stars, by people who don’t give a about me and people who pretend to. Because that’s basically who I am now. What I’ve become.

‘What I’m trying to say is…, I don’t even know anymore. I don’t know if I can come to terms with it. With what I’m feeling. Because if I’m being honest I don’t even know what it is myself. I really don’t. It’s strange. I mean, I’ve felt like this before, but nothing good’s ever come of it. Nothing at all. So that’s why I am like I am, and I know it’s been frustrating and I’m sorry for that. But that’s it. That’s me now. ed up beyond belief. That’s why I drink and I smoke too much, and I sleep with random girls every night and kick them out in the morning. So they don’t get a chance to ruin me like so many other people have. If I’m cruel to them first, it builds a wall around me. A barrier, I guess. And they can’t get in then. They can’t get to me.’

Irene just listened. When Seulgi was finished they stopped walking and stood there in silence for a while. Taking in the cool air of the night. A pale glimmer from the sky. Stars in patterns the complexion of milkglass, bloodless and bright. A gibbous moon hung. They walked further. Irene on the outside of the path, Seulgi closer to the embankment on their right, haloed in streetlight, lamps cast down on her in some angelic force of glow or similar baroque arrangement of light and she looked so very fragile, so tranquilly beautiful. Beauty enough to steal Irene’s breath in the cold. After a moment Irene said: ‘I think I understand.’

‘Understand what?’

‘How you feel.’

Seulgi laughed dryly. ‘I don’t think you do, and I don’t mean any offence with that. I just don’t think you know what I’ve been through, or I’m going through. And I don’t mean to sound like I’m purposely making my life sound worse or whatever. Like I’m vying for sympathy. I’m not. I don’t care about sympathy. I’m just letting you know.’

‘Okay.’

‘Not for me it isn’t.’

‘Seulgi. Okay.’

‘Are you listening to me?’

Irene sighed. ‘What I mean is, I get everything you’re saying. It’s fine.’

‘No it isn’t. I’m not fine.’

‘I mean it’s fine that you’re talking to me about it. I’ll listen no matter what. Trust me.’

‘You don’t get it.’

‘I don’t want to argue with you again. Please, Seulgi.’

‘I’m not arguing, I’m just saying.’

‘Okay.’

‘Can you stop saying that?’

Irene looked at her. Flush on her cheeks. Cold and alone. This visage of some uncountable nature so exquisite in proportion, palely done like a chinadoll. So frightfully sensitive though she opted not to show it. Irene knew that now. She smiled a soft and warm smile. ‘Let’s not fight,’ she said. ‘Tonight was great. I really enjoyed it.’

‘The fireworks?’

‘Yeah. The fireworks. And the walk. I should go walking more often.’

‘It’s fun, in a strangely cathartic way. It’s something to do to just drift off, you know?’

‘Yeah.’ Irene looked at her phone. It was almost eleven. ‘I should head back,’ she said. ‘I’ve got work tomorrow.’

‘. Yeah, right. Sorry about that.’

‘Don’t sweat it. Like I said, it was fun tonight. I’ve got to go.’

‘Yeah. Alright. See you.’

‘How about tomorrow?’

‘What?’

‘How about I see you tomorrow?’

She waited for what felt like an eternity for a reply. The cold space between them like a void. Then Seulgi said quietly: ‘Yeah. Sure, whatever. What time do you finish?’

‘Just after three.’

‘Alright, cool. Come round in the evening. Like, six-ish. I’m free then.’

‘Sweet,’ Irene said. She smiled.

Seulgi nodded left. ‘I’m going this way,’ she said.

‘Back the way we walked?’

‘Yeah. Before you ask, I wasn’t expecting it.’

‘What? What was I going to ask?’

‘Why didn’t you just walk home.’

Irene thought for a second. ‘You know what,’ she said, ‘you’re actually right.’

‘See? Pretty good, aren’t I? Anyway, I’ll see you later.’

‘Yeah.’

She stood watching Seulgi go, passing again like a spectre under pockets of pinpoint light like a creature formed entirely out of the intermittent holes in that darkness and passing again by shadow and underneath and trailing into the distance like a mirage of a thing fleeing there, some Antiseulgi fetched from an etiolate dawn and attired out of pure darkness her black and shapeless figure, slowly falling, adrift on the streets and adrift in the stars, her burgeoning spirit and Irene’s too, that flame in the pit of her gut welling up, simmering searing blazing, a grin unconscious on her face, her pale and swollen face, her hair caught flush in the wind, the lights growing brighter against her skin, a warm and inviting glow, her lips trembling. She watched until Seulgi was gone entirely. Like a phantom lost to the same darkness whence she had been drawn up. Then she turned and made for home.

She passed through work like a woman lost in a dream. Hours turning upon hours, time immemorial, filling in spreadsheets and filing letters and taking calls and learning closely and thinking all the while of nothing but Seulgi. Of her face, her craft. The elegant occupation of her cheekbones, round and soft. The flush on , on her cheeks. The low timbre of her voice. The way she broke into that brilliant smile, how warming she felt in its presence, how at home. How much she had come to treasure both Seulgi and that smile in the closing days of the week. How she missed it so dearly.

How natural again. By the time she was finished it was raining. A light breeze from the east. She walked along under arcades like a figure chased up out of a feverworld, shapeless shape in the rainswept murk of each pane of glass, moving with a slowlegged gait, rain battering against the long tin rooves of the awnings like gunfire come barrelling out of some untenable darkness and its origins specifically never to be designated or discovered, this harsh and violent fall of rain over all things. Cars came boring out of the wet eve in long slishes of tiretreads in the rain, slick as they passed, loud thrum of enginenoise. Irene walked with her hands stuffed into her pockets. She walked for a long time and she did not go home.

By the time she rounded the corner at the far end of the street it was just after six. A large crowd had gathered outside the lobby. She crossed to the other side and watched. Figures obscured in rain, garbled amorphous shapes volute in the fall, wet and steaming, clad in thick coats and rainparkas and carrying other gear with them, like a parade of tinkers drawn together in the vesper with their many items of miscellanea about them, cameras and small microphones and satchels with notepads and biro pens behind their ears. All seemed to congregate about that one place as if in auguring to some unseen and unspoken spirit, talking between their groups or busy on their phones, pacing back and forth, one making a small makeshift campsite out of a tent and a portable battery heater. Cars came and went and she watched, curious and afraid and not knowing why for either. Occasionally somebody would pass through the lobby and they would stand as if called to attention by a piper’s tune and swarm shoal-like and undulate into the jaws of the lobby doors with their microphones primed and their faces muffled under bacterial masks and hoods and they would hound the person until they were gone entirely and then they would sit again and resume their odd postures about the wet ground, like guards at a royal ceremony.

Irene stood observing this gathering for a while longer. It was obvious even to her that they were paparazzi or otherwise photographers. A general mayhem had been roused there. She took her phone and rang Seulgi and waited. No answer for a long time. Dim and ominous ringing. She tried peering up into the windows but there was nothing she could see save the fall of the rain like a hail of wire, thin and lean as it came down. She rang Seulgi again. On the second time she answered. Her voice low and long and slurred, her words broken by the faint static on the other end.

‘Seulgi?’

‘What?’ said Seulgi.

‘It’s me. Irene.’

‘I know. I’m not stupid.’

‘I’m outside.’

There was no answer on the other end. Irene waited a moment. Then she said: ‘There are people outside the building. Photographers, I think. Are they here for you? Seulgi? Are you there?’

‘Yeah,’ Seulgi said. A long pause before she spoke. ‘Yeah, they’re here for me.’

‘What do they want?’

‘What do they always want? To take pictures of me. To get me on record saying something bad about them, or lashing out, or whatever. So they can put me in their little magazine columns or on their blog posts and label me a hazard or some . Or a bad influence. Am I a bad influence, Irene? I think maybe I am. Maybe I’m just the worst. Maybe that’s just me. I’m the worst, aren’t I?’

‘Are you drunk?’

‘Am I drunk?’

‘Seulgi.’

‘Yeah, I’m drunk. What’s wrong with that?’

Irene looked back across the street. The crowd growing larger by the moment. ‘Are you okay?’ she said.

‘Am I okay? Why would I not be okay? I’m fine as can be. I’m just ing brilliant, Irene. You know me. Just the absolute best. That’s all I ever am. The best. That’s all anyone ing cares about. Until I go downstairs and I say something dumb and suddenly I’m the worst person in the country and I should never do anything again. I should sit and reflect on what I’ve done, or what I’ve not done, and never show my face for as long as I continue to live.’

‘Seulgi.’

‘What? What, Irene? What do you want?’

‘Can I come up?’

‘Up here?’

‘Yeah.’

Silence on the other end. A soundless deliberation. ‘If you can get through the lobby,’ Seulgi said. ‘I’ll let you in.’

‘Okay.’

She put the phone away and crossed when the traffic had died down, head tucked against her chest, rain beating down on her windswept hair. She looked almost frightful, that leptosomic pilgrim navigating with some difficulty the confines of the crowd, pushing her way past a collusion of chattering voices, passing through the lobby and into the elevator and up to the second floor, a number of journalists following with pens and pads, hounding her from just beyond the doors. Three men in oversized coats came and stood in the lobby, slick with rain, faces pink and flushed, holding out boom microphones and asking her questions she could barely understand. They looked like a triune of madmen. What’s your relationship with Kang Seulgi, one of them said. Are you two dating? What do you think about her latest escapade? Is it true that those pictures were staged by you for publicity? The club ones. Can you confirm? Then the doors were closed and all was quiet and they were gone.

She rode up to the dim whir of the elevator. A cold ceiling light to keep her company. Hands quivering, so very cold and wet. When she came out on Seulgi’s floor it was empty, a fact that surprised her somewhat. She stood and knocked and waited. The door swung wide on its hinges. Immediately she was greeted by the stink of whiskey and Seulgi there with a bottle in hand. She passed to the left of the door as if pulled by its force and stumbled back and eyed Irene up and down and up again. She looked like she had been crying. Eyes soft and puffy, face flushed alcoholic.

‘Come in,’ she said. She staggered into the kitchen and Irene followed but she did not sit. She just stood there in the middle of the room. Seulgi behind the counter taking a glass from the cupboard beside the fridge and offering it. She swayed from side to side like a thing caught in a trance unable to pay proper attention.

‘Drink?’ she said. Irene shook her head.

‘Suit yourself.’

‘Are you okay?’ Irene said.

‘I told you I was alright, didn’t I?’ She stood there behind the counter with the bottle on the tabletop, sipping occasionally and wobbling and belching. Irene watched her the way a mother watches a small child caught in some potentially dangerous situation.

‘Seulgi,’ she said.

‘What?’

‘What’s happened?’

‘To what?’

‘Downstairs. All those people.’

‘Oh, that’s just normal. Don’t worry about them. No, don’t you worry. They’re only here because I got so ed up the other day I couldn’t stand up straight, and now they’re calling me an embarrassment. I mean, I guess I’m lucky the general public’s pretty forgiving on things like this, right? They’re saying it happens to the best of us. Saying it makes me more relatable. Doesn’t stop those parasites downstairs making a story out of it though, does it? I’m surprised you even got up here, to be honest. The only reason they’re there is because someone took the photos and they think that you set them up to it.’

Irene winced. ‘What?’ she said.

‘They think you staged it all. That it was your plan to get me drunk or something and then come and rescue me, so you could get the credit for being a great friend or whatever. That you sold those photos on.’

‘Are you ing kidding? How do they even know who I am?’

‘Are you surprised? You think they don’t keep tabs on every aspect of my life? On all celebrities’ lives? It’s their job, it’s what they do.’

‘This is a joke.’

‘Did you?’

‘Did I what?’

‘Did you sell them?’

Irene just looked at her. Perhaps she was even being serious. ‘Why do you even feel the need to ask that?’ Irene said. ‘You know I didn’t.’

‘Yeah. I guess.’

‘You guess.’

‘Want a drink?’

‘Seulgi.’

‘I guess I should probably stop this, right? All this drinking. All the awful I’m doing to myself. I bet that’s what you’re going to tell me, isn’t it? You’re going to act like some moral compass over me. Well don’t. Save it for someone who’s redeemable. Because that’s not me. Never will be. I’m ed up. I’m broken, if you want to put it that way. I don’t need your lectures.’

‘I wasn’t going to say anything.’

Seulgi laughed. ‘Right. Of course you weren’t.’

‘What’s happened?’

‘What?’

‘Something’s clearly happened to make you like this,’ Irene said.

‘Like what?’

‘The way you’re acting towards me.’

‘You think I’m acting a special way towards you now? Is that it?’

‘Seulgi.’

‘You want to know what’s what? You see all that down there in the lobby? That’s been my life for about a decade now. I had people lining up to take pictures of me like that when I was ing sixteen years old. How’s that for some ? So you know what? I won’t calm down. I won’t. I won’t relax or tell you slowly or anything like that, because I’m sick of it. I’ve just about had it with people telling me what to do and how to do it. Don’t get mad, don’t get drunk, don’t go out and party, don’t go on TV, don’t meet people more than once, just calm down. All this from everyone. From reporters, from journalists, from managers and directors and producers, from photographers and artists and stylists. From people I’ve never even ing met before. From you. I’m sick of it.’

‘Seulgi, please.’

‘No. You know what? No.’

‘I don’t want to argue again.’

‘Is this arguing? Is that what you call it? Are we arguing now? Because I’m telling you why I’m so upset? Is that it?’

‘I can see you’re upset.’

‘Oh, you can see it, can you? Why do you have to sound so ing patronising when you say it?’

‘I’m sorry.’

Seulgi was quiet a moment. She looked by that rainmisted light from the windows like some creature of the night, haloed in red from the ceiling, lips shaking, bottle bobbing about in one hand. Irene watched her. Head ducked down, looking at the floor, refusing to meet with Irene’s eyes.

‘I’m sorry,’ Irene said again. ‘I’ll ring you tomorrow, okay?’

She turned to leave. Seulgi didn’t say anything. She watched Irene at the door and she watched her leave and her reflection distended in the ripples of the bad glass and then like a projection she was gone. She passed through the lobby again, all feeling somewhat like a trance replayed, a sleepwalk conjured up from some nightmarish reality. They hounded her on the way out, reporters with microphones and notepads and their mobiles at the ready, as if on the turn of a word she would alter both her path and Seulgi’s. She tucked her face into her jacket and pushed through them, squeezing between the gaps like parting a wave. They pursued her across the street, hollering questions both obscene and absurd and others perhaps not as much, eager for anything but she would not give. She thought maybe Seulgi was watching her from the apartment window. Seeing her flee. She hoped not.

When they were gone she stopped and turned and looked back and around. Wet and desolate streets. A late evening and where had that Summer sun gone? Plucked from the sky. She tottered back towards Seulgi’s and stood on the curb opposite, obscured by shadow, watching them still beside the lobby like a collaboration of carrion. There was this ache she felt deep in her gut. This sort of woeful longing for what she could never have, what she could aspire to become and never see it realised. This untouchable courage, a heartfelt desire to find the right words to say, a sort of spoken puzzle she could navigate with great dexterity, prying out the correct answers as if by magic and speaking them into existence, and in this dream of longing she would speak them directly to Seulgi and Seulgi would answer her truthfully and it would be good, it would all fine. They would be right again.

But in truth reality is not always so accommodating and her wishful nature directed her and had always directed her to where exactly? Towards the jaws of some untenable destiny from which she was very well aware there was almost no return, no escape or reprieve, a sort of universal theme, and her fantasy was absolutely just that, a certain sense that something wasn’t quite right and never would be, that in this trance all save her and Seulgi would be incorrect, would be slanted or slighted, would be off-balance. April in the winter leaves.

What else was there to do? She had no intention to be lost but in aiming to avoid such she had become as lost as ever. On the curb it was impossible to make out anything above the second or third floor. Lightless in the dim halls of the shadows cast upon the glass. A ripple as if impressed upon water. Men in parkas and black jackets across the road with their cameras primed for some appalling circus display, murmuring amongst themselves like mummers at a carnival, a coalescence of some evil force gathered in waiting. And how they would wait. A cold wind blew up from the east. It was raining, too. Had been for a long time. It was raining in the streets, where by lampposts did the figures of people splayed in harps of light look like beings birthed incunabular from a fog, and cars like the slowly rusting spawn of some ulterior species. It was raining in the west, above the hills and over the inkblack fold of the mountains, mired in murk like the dark and lingering remains of some atavistic cataclysm. It was raining high in the heavens, where soundless did sheetlightning break like the great body electric tethered to the polestar and covering the night pale as milkglass frozen over all the world, and it was raining too in the south and across the sea and on Jeju Island and everywhere else. It was raining over all Korea.

She thought on Seulgi for a while. They had not argued. She had let Seulgi shout at her but she had not shouted back. She had let Seulgi vent her frustrations in the manner that she so desperately wanted to do, a manner even Irene could see now, this dam welling up inside of her, fit to burst at any moment, ready to explode outwards her worst feelings, all those moments of anger and hate at a world that had for so long treated her so poorly. A sort of paradox, that was. How in treating her so well it had come to ruin her. And so she had let Seulgi shout down to her. And that was good, she thought. That was good.

That was a start.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Okay, if you don't read this it's fine, I just want to say quickly about the -ton of angst this story's had so far:

I'm a firm believer (and my regular readers will know from my other long stories) in never rushing or forcing anything in my writing, and my characters and such reflect that. I feel personally that a slow and angsty build to any sort of happy/fluffy encounters is the best and most realistic way to go about it, and also the most fulfilling when it finally pays off. Seulgi is a damaged person in this story, and I personally don't think it would make sense in the narrative for her to be fully accepting of Irene so early in their relationship.

Anyway, sorry for that. Just felt like I'd explain myself since I guess I sort of felt bad about advertising it as fluff, even though that's still the plan (no spoilers ofc lol). Anyway, I'd love to hear peoples' thoughts on this as always. Next update coming soon! <3