February 2024.

Sometimes she thought about how incredulous a tale would have to be told to her for her to not believe it at least partially. To know surely that a story had no truth in it whatsoever. And the more she thought the more she realised that was almost impossible. She had heard so much and seen the same to know that everything held some likeliness of truth no matter how small or insignificant, no matter how obscene it may seem upon first hearing. And to understand that was foolish but she tried regardless because what was her life if not that very same thing? That impossibility. That stretched truth. That living lie. She was everything nobody should ever be and that could never be changed no matter how much she tried.

In those cold winter evenings she wandered like an itinerant. Through the old streets of Seoul, over the ground of lost races and generations buried in their proverbial tombs. What great sarcophagus of mercy was the world. In that vague state she existed almost only in passing. Like something come out of a night’s feverdream and in the morning divided back into that same space from which she had been conjured as some paradox of the primordial order. And in all honesty what was she if not that? Each day grew longer by the minute and each minute served only to remind her in full of her predicament and of Irene and how at some point they would have to face the truth or forever be parted and removed from it. Or maybe the truth held that same parting. She thought likely it did.

That evening was the first time she had been drunk in a year. She sat under the arch of Yanghwa Bridge watching pale light arc out of the smoking pores of the world and the sallow dogwhelk sun roll flat down the sky like a brass coin whose parabola had only one set destination below the thin black shape of the mountains. Here they sat like crumpled paper at the edge of all reckoning and in the cold they quivered sourceless and desolate. She remembered as a child her mother telling her you wished on a falling star only because whatever you wished for must be known only to you and to wish on the sun or under any other icon would be to display that wish for all the world in the light of the day. That under darkness only yourself and that star could see your wish. Now she thought maybe the sun should know. Maybe the world entire should know. Perhaps then they could do something for her. But of that she had little confidence.

She moved out the damp shade of the arch and sat on one of the grass banks with a square bottle of whiskey in hand and like some destitute sot unscrewed the cap and drank and set it down between her legs and let the cold dew fall against her face. An old homeless man came shuffling out from under the bridge and she nodded to him and he came over and sat beside her and asked for a drink and she gave it to him. He tipped it up and drank and wiped his mouth with the back of one hand and passed it back and thanked her. ‘Haven’t had a drink in going on four years,’ he said. ‘That’s not why I’m homeless. Before you get any ideas. So don’t go thinking you’ve enabled an alcoholic.’

‘Why are you homeless?’ Seulgi said.

‘It’s a long story and I don’t want to tell it.’

‘Fair.’

‘Involves my family.’

‘It’s alright.’

‘What about you?’

‘What about me? I’m not homeless.’

He shook his head and laughed dryly. ‘You look like you want to be.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘It’s a saying. Means you look like you’ve got something big on your mind. Well.’

‘Well what?’

‘Do you?’

Seulgi looked at him. There was a warmth in those eyes of his she cherished. She set the bottle of whiskey down in the wet grass and pulled her legs up to her chest and nodded. ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘I do.’

‘Well. What is it?’

‘I don’t think you’d understand.’

‘You’d be surprised.’

‘I’m immortal.’

‘You’re what now?’

‘I’m immortal. I can’t die.’

He looked at her for a moment. Then he said, ‘I think I might want some more of that whiskey of yours if that’s what it does to you.’

‘Sure.’ She passed him the bottle and he unscrewed the cap and drank it until it was about only a half full and then he passed it back. ‘Go on,’ he said. ‘Explain.’

‘Explain what?’

‘Explain you. Just explain.’

‘Why are you even listening to me?’

‘Am I not allowed to?’

‘No, I just meant – ‘

‘Then go on. Just talk. Sometimes it’s better to just talk.’

Seulgi watched the night go by. Somewhere in that great periphery existed stars she had once wished on and maybe they were dying or maybe not. ‘I can’t die,’ she said.

‘Go on.’

‘I don’t know what else to say. I just keep living. I don’t age. Nothing happens to me. It’s like something out of a book except it’s real, and it’s me, and I can’t do anything about it. I just keep watching the world go by and I don’t know what to do and I can’t talk to anyone about it because I’d get locked away for being insane. And I don’t blame anyone for that. I do sound crazy. You said it yourself.’

‘Yeah, you do.’

‘See?’

‘Go on.’

‘Go on what?’

‘Just talk.’

‘I don’t have anything else to talk about.’

‘Well,’ he said. He took the whiskey back and drank. ‘What’s got you so worried about this then?’

‘About the fact that I can’t die?’

He nodded.

‘Everything,’ she said.

‘Everything.’

‘That’s right. Everything.’

‘You got any family?’

‘Not anymore.’

‘Married?’

‘No.’

‘Got a boyfriend?’

‘A girlfriend.’

‘That’s new.’

Seulgi laughed cynically. ‘Believe me,’ she said, ‘I know.’

‘So you’ve got someone you care about. And that cares about you.’

‘Yeah. Sure.’

‘And do you think about them?’

‘Of course.’

‘What do you think about?’

‘About how I don’t want to live to see her getting old beside me. I don’t think I can live with the pain of that. I really don’t. That’s what I think about more than anything because I’ve seen it happen before. I’ve seen it with my parents and my sister. I’ve never had any real friends because I can’t bear to see it happen to them and I’ve never loved anyone until now. Not really. Until this. And I’m scared. I’m so scared. Because I know I won’t be able to cope with it, because she won’t. Because she’ll have wasted her life. She’ll never get to experience the things that couples normally do. She’ll never have someone to grow older alongside her, to live through things like she does. She’ll never have that someone if she’s with me because I can’t do it. I’m just like this. I’ll always be like this. There’s no fix. No cure. Because by every law of the universe I shouldn’t even exist. I shouldn’t, but I do. So what can I do? Subject others to the same torture? Is that it? Because that’s what it feels like I’m doing and I can’t see myself doing it for much longer.’

The homeless man looked at her for a long time. His white and rheumy eyes wobbled in the moonlight. He took the whiskey from her and threw the cap away and drank what remained of it and set it down and winced. ‘I don’t know what you’re damn well talking about,’ he said.

‘I know.’

‘But I think I know what your problem is.’

‘I don’t think you do.’

‘I do. I’ve seen it before. You’re worrying about your future before you think about the present, that’s what you’re doing. You know why that’s wrong? Because the future never comes. The future’s the future. It’s always there, always out of reach. Tomorrow becomes today, forever. What you once looked on as happening sometime down your own timeline becomes the present. That’s how it works. You live only in the present. You only ever can. And if you spend every day pre-empting the future you’ll never really be alive in the present. You’ll just sort of be there. And before long you’ll realise you’ve spent all of your time thinking over what’s still to come, and once that certain something does finally come, you’ve had no time to cherish what was right in front of you all along. And never have. That’s what I think.’

‘Well,’ Seulgi said. ‘We’re all entitled to our opinions.’

‘You think I’m wrong.’

‘I think it’s more complicated than you make it seem.’

‘Sure it is. But that’s the basis of it. Everything can be broken down to the basics. Everything in the whole world, if you try hard enough. Even time. And by the sounds of it, all you’ve got is time.’

Seulgi looked at him. He smiled appreciatively. ‘I’ve got to go,’ she said.

‘Sure you do.’

She stood and stumbled down the bank and by the path at the bottom she turned and looked back up at him there in the cool darkness, perched like some wizened bird on his haunches in his rags. ‘You come here often?’ he said.

‘No,’ said Seulgi.

‘Maybe you should.’

‘Yeah. Maybe I should.’

*  *  *

‘Go on,’ Irene said. She sat on the couch opposite Seulgi with her legs folded and her hands firmly on her knees and she wore that calming affirmation on her face like a badge of honour. ‘Just talk.’

‘I can’t.’

‘Seulgi. We’ve been through this. I’ll listen.’

‘But you won’t believe me.’

‘Yes I will.’

‘You won’t. Don’t patronise me, please.’

‘Alright.’ She threw up her hands. ‘Maybe I won’t. But maybe I will. Does it matter? You need to talk. When was the last time you spoke to anybody about it? About anything.’

‘Never.’

‘Right. There you go. You need to talk to someone.’

Seulgi sat there. She took the glass of wine from the table in front of her and turned to peer through the window like a chemist. A soft square of light haloed them there in the livingroom. She looked back at Irene. All was deathly quiet. ‘Where do I even start?’ she said.

‘I don’t know. Start wherever you want. At the beginning.’

‘It’d take too long.’

‘I’m here as long as you need me. I’m here always.’

‘Not always. Not forever.’

‘Seulgi.’

Seulgi looked at her. She set the wine glass back down and wiped her eyes with the back of one hand and shrugged. ‘Alright,’ she said. ‘Since you want to know. I told you when we first met at uni I was twenty-four.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Born in ninety-two.’

‘Right.’

‘That’s a lie.’

Irene just looked at her. Seulgi continued.

‘I was born in 1942 on a farm about an hour outside of Busan. I know what that sounds like so just listen, please. I’ll tell you everything and then afterwards you can tell me I’m crazy and you don’t want to be with me anymore because I’ve lost my mind, or you can tell you’re referring me to a therapist or something. Just…listen. Please.’

‘Okay.’

‘The birth certificates, the driver’s license, passport. It’s all fake. All fabricated. I had someone make them for me about fifteen years ago. Didn’t cost much. Never has done. Not the first time I’ve ever had it done and it won’t be the last. But they’re fake. It’s all fake. It’s all a lie. I was born in 1942 to two loving parents and I spent the first sixteen years of my life there. My mum worked at a grocery store and my dad in a textile mill until it shut down. Then he worked in a coal plant. I had one sister, younger. If you’re wondering why in the eight years we’ve been together I’ve basically only talked about my family really vaguely in passing it’s because they don’t exist. I lied about them. My mum and my dad and my sister, my real sister – they’re all dead. My mum was hit by a car in nineteen sixty and my dad died in his sleep at the age of eighty-four and my sister died of congestive heart failure in nineteen ninety-two. I’ve been on my own ever since. And if you’re about to tell me I’m sick for making up an entire family life and pretending they’re dead I wouldn’t blame you, but it’s not a lie, and I’m not making any of it up. I’m telling you the truth. The real truth. The truth I’ve never told anyone ever in my life.’

‘Go on,’ Irene said, voice so small it was almost inaudible.

‘I lived on my own since the age of nineteen. That was the year after my mum died. Back then the cost of living was much lower than it is today. Much lower. And everyone was so independent. It was strange, really. Everyone was so autonomous from such a young age, and I’m still not sure if that was a good thing or not. In some ways it must’ve been. But then we lost some of the magic of youth. Or what there was. I think most of that magic was lost a decade before that, during the war. I don’t remember that very well. I was still seven or eight when it started. All I remember is my mum and dad telling me to keep my mouth shut and listen to them at all times and not leave the house unless we were forced to but we weren’t. I think we were lucky to live somewhere so remote for so long. We had these wind-up radios and we heard about the shelling at the border and the takeover of Seoul and American troops fighting the North Koreans back and about the Chinese reinforcements and my dad told me we had nothing to be worried about but I could tell it scared him. He’d lived through the second World War. He’d seen it all before. What violence can do to a man. What violence can make a man do to another man. He knew what we were predisposed to and he didn’t want us ever coming into contact with that.

‘Luckily we never did. Anyway, I lived on my own just outside of Busan for twelve years. I worked jobs here and there all over the place. Even getting a job back then was quite easy. The country was picking back up again in the decades following the war so work was everywhere. It was a terrible time but it was something. And looking back on it now, I can see why some people thought it was needed. After that I moved up to Seoul and got a job working as a classroom assistant. This was in nineteen seventy-nine. By now I’d figured out that something was wrong with me. I didn’t know what but I knew it was serious. I was thirty-seven years old and I looked just as I look now. The exact same. I kept to myself. I had friends in school as a kid and I went to college three separate times and I made a couple friends there but the more time went on the more I secluded myself. I knew people wouldn’t understand or believe me because I didn’t believe myself either. I just couldn’t. It was impossible.

‘In nineteen ninety-two I celebrated my fiftieth birthday. By this point I’d figured something was wrong. I’d gotten myself a fake ID and a fake passport because I was so terrified of what would happen if someone realised I was born fifty years ago. I still looked the exact same. I haven’t changed in all that time. I never saw anyone about it. Never went to a doctor, never saw a priest, never even went to see a fortune teller or mystic or holy figure. Never told a soul. Not friends, family. Nobody. Until now. What do you say to someone to make them believe you? It’s funny, really, when I look back on it. I was convinced for nearly twenty years I just had really good genes. That I had won the genetic lottery or something, and I was aging really gracefully. But I wasn’t ageing at all. I haven’t for about sixty years. And it’s not just that, either. It’s not.’

Irene looked at her. She was crying again. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I’m really sorry.’

‘Don’t be,’ Irene said.

‘I’m so sorry.’

‘Look at me. Seulgi, look at me.’

Seulgi turned her face up and through those tears what she saw in Irene’s countenance was something indescribable. Like some tempest of emotion, a spectrum ranging from placid understanding to torrential and violent disbelief. ‘I love you,’ Irene said. ‘Okay? I love you, no matter what you say. No matter what.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘For what?’

‘I’m just sorry.’

‘Don’t be.’ She stood and came over to the other couch and took Seulgi in her arms. ‘Don’t be.’

She felt so small there, so very childlike and boneless in Irene’s arms, crying against her, Irene’s hand rubbing at one of her shoulders and telling her it was alright. Soon Irene was crying as well. She listened to the sobs above her as they both wept and she let Irene tell her it was going to all be alright and it was okay to cry every once in a while and there so insignificant and so utterly valued in Irene’s arms she slept like she had not slept in many years.