March 2024.

That night in February she said no more. She lay there in Irene’s arms and cried until she was asleep and Irene took her to bed and there she slept and in the morning they said nothing. They spoke little in the time between time. In the space they occupied when they were not at work or with associates or elsewhere, at the gym or a café or walking late into the evenings. As if they were both ignoring one another. Or as if they had never spoken at all.

Each night Seulgi would lay awake and listen to the soft rise of Irene’s chest beside her and eventually she would go out bearing the new spring cold against her and watch for some cosmic sign apparent in the stars but there was not never anything save the barren astral darkness that slept eternal above. Of her fate no signal or sign or warning or anything to show recognition of her at all. She stood there watching the claustral dim of Busan illuminate and shapen only in fog and she would watch stars fall across the face of the world like silver fire and every night without fail she would cry until it became too much to bear any longer. Then she would go back in and stand watching Irene for a time and then she would sleep and in each new morning wake and go downstairs and eat breakfast in silence and kiss Irene and tell her goodbye and that she loved her and that would be that. That would be it.

When she came in out of the steaming rain the house was dark save the light by the TV in the livingroom and from the hallway downstairs she could see this unshapen silhouette of light only vaguely and it unnerved her for there was no sound. She took off her shoes and hung her coat to dry and pushed her hair out of her face and went on up. It was about a half way up the stairs that she heard Irene crying. She went through into the livingroom. There in the cold and sallow light Irene sat curled on the couch by the back wall and there she cried to herself and if she noticed Seulgi at all she didn’t show it. She looked almost inhuman, so pale and small and vulnerable, so childlike and painfully afraid.

‘Irene,’ Seulgi said. Her first thought in that moment was almost strange. She moved immediately to take Irene and pull her close and ask her if she was alright and what was wrong and how she could help and in that moment she remembered how very lovely her Irene was and how much she loved her entirely, how far she would go to protect her, to do anything for her. Irene looked up at her. Her eyes so redrimmed and swollen and indication enough there that she had been crying for some time already.

‘Are you okay?’

She wiped her eyes with the back of one hand and shifted so that she was sat with her legs crossed facing the darkly lit shape of Seulgi existing there as if in some plane between her own world and the world beyond and in truth what if she was? Would it make more sense or less? Irene didn’t know. She pushed the cushion off her knees and looked at Seulgi there, so crudely painted in the thin ovoid of quaking light, like something transfigured from a spirit. ‘Irene,’ Seulgi said. ‘What’s happened? What’s up?’

Irene just sat there.

‘Irene. Did something happen?’

‘No.’

‘What’s wrong?’

‘I don’t know. Nothing. Everything. I don’t even know what to say anymore.’

She looked up at Seulgi and then she was crying again and Seulgi just stood there unsure of what to do, whether to hold her and brush her hair and cradle her and tell her that everything was going to be okay or to stand there and let her cry. In the end she just stood. Irene turned up and looked at her again. She smiled a weak smile. In those eyes Seulgi saw twinned some unbearable state of conscious, as if every waking moment for Irene were painful. As if there was something unbearable weighing down on her. ‘Irene,’ she said. ‘Tell me what’s wrong.’

‘When I look at you,’ Irene said, ‘I don’t know what to think anymore. It’s like I’ve lost the ability to think. Like I don’t know what’s going on. I start questioning my sanity. I start wondering whether I’m even ing real or not. Do you know what that’s like? To start questioning yourself. Everything about you. What you are. Who you are. It’s like I’m slowly going insane and it’s been this way for a while. For a month.’

‘Since I told you.’

‘Yeah. Since you told me.’

‘Irene.’

‘What do I do? What do I say? You know what I thought about it? Nothing. Maybe that sounds cruel or whatever but I can’t help it because it’s the truth, Seulgi. I thought nothing of it. I didn’t want to. Even the idea of it felt strange to think about so I didn’t. I just left it there, I just let it go. But it kept coming back, again and again, time after time, like some ing parasite eating away at me, and I can’t stop it anymore. And it hurts, you know that? It hurts. You want to know why it hurts? Because every time I look at you it comes back to me and every single time I get this feeling, this little itch, and it tells me: what if she’s right? What if she was telling the truth about everything? What if I’m not losing my mind and neither’s she? What then? And every single time I look at you the possibility starts to build. That you might actually be serious. Because I look at you and then I look at myself in the mirror and I see just how different we are and I think maybe in some impossible way you’re right about this. You’re actually ing immortal.’

‘Irene, I – ‘

‘You know how that sounds? You know how it feels? To live with the possibility that your girlfriend – your very closest friend – might not actually be aging? I mean, just listen to me. I sound ing crazy. I sound like I’ve completely lost it, don’t I? But I haven’t. At least, I don’t think I have, yet. How am I supposed to take it, Seulgi? How? Is there a way I’m meant to process this information? Because if there is I haven’t figured it out yet and I don’t know what to do and I’m scared. I’m so ing scared. I don’t want it. I don’t want to even think about what it means if you’re actually telling the truth. For you, for me, for us. For the ing world. Jesus. You might really be immortal. Genuinely.’

Irene studied her again. Cold and dark and shapeless in the sickly light. She looked so very old, so unbearably different. Like some other being had inhabited her Seulgi’s body and there was no letting go. In those eyes and in that stare she saw something of the world she didn’t like the thought or look of much at all. She saw the horrible truth of age and of time and the consequences of it and of pain beyond any she could ever imagine and most of all she saw something even worse, she saw that Seulgi was tired. So very tired. Seulgi smiled weakly. ‘Irene,’ she said.

‘What?’

‘It’s okay.’

‘What is? What’s okay? Don’t say that.’

‘Irene.’

‘No, don’t. Don’t say it because it’s not true, is it? Either you’re lying for whatever reason and we’ve got a huge problem or you’re telling the truth and then what? We’ve got an even bigger one, I guess.’

‘It’s okay.’

‘It’s not ing okay.’ She was crying again. ‘Would you stop saying that? It’s not okay, Seulgi. It’s not at all. Don’t lie to me. Don’t you dare lie to me again.’

‘I’m not.’

‘Seulgi.’

‘Irene, look at me.’

When Irene turned up again she saw a different Seulgi there again, her Seulgi, her curious and brilliant and childlike Seulgi, the same Seulgi she had met in university and shared countless drunken nights and silly laughs and fallen so madly in love with, her tender and caring and passionate and wise Seulgi, her best and truest friend, her lonely companion with whom those memories came back like water through a dam, so clear and torrid and painful to remember, indicatives of a lost and irretrievable time, like fragments of some greater treasure observed through a caged fence, just out of reach, just beyond her desperate grasp, as if they served in their recollection only to remind her of their happier times and nothing else. As if they existed only to taunt her. Look, Irene. Look at what you were. And look at what you’ve become.

‘What?’ Irene said. But Seulgi just looked at her with tears in her eyes and with a broken smile she said, ‘It’s okay.’

In the dark days of that spring she spent little time with Irene because to be around her was to be reminded of their predicament and she couldn’t bear it. Couldn’t even bear to look at her anymore. Sometimes when they ate their dinner in the evening she would watch Irene across the table and make out the delicate lines of aging appearing soft and fresh on her forehead and it would take a lot of effort to stop herself from crying. Or at night she would see Irene posted against the bedside lamplight sallow and pale and no longer the same girl from their university days and Seulgi would excuse herself and go and stand outside taking the cold and the rain against her and only when Irene was asleep would she come back inside.

Summer passed the same. She spent most of the time occupying herself elsewhere and their relationship became little more than a convenience for both of them. Every so often she would turn and look at Irene or they would share a joke or an old memory and she would remember how much she loved Irene and love her she did, with all her heart, and always would, but in times of quiet reflection there was something else much more potent and in its truth impossibly sad and equally unfair. Irene never said a word. Seulgi thought maybe she was trying to forget. Trying to postpone the steady flow of her own destiny. As if to pretend Seulgi had never said anything would be to erase it. Would be in some way to alter their fates for the better. But it was not so.

In June she began making arrangements in Seoul. She told Irene she was going to work and took the morning train to Seoul and paid four months rent upfront for an apartment in Sindong and came back in the evening and never said a word. When Irene was asleep she woke and sat on the edge of the bed in obscene darkness surrounded by silence and there she watched Irene as if to lose sight of her would be to lose her entirely and forever. She watched her all night knowing it would be the last time she would ever do so and in the morning she had not slept at all and she was crying. Irene came in sometime later. When she saw Seulgi sat there already dressed she stopped and looked about and came over and sat across very straight as if at attention or listening intently for something.

‘Is everything alright?’ she said. Seulgi leant forward on her arms and wiped her eyes with the back of one hand and then again and tried to smile and couldn’t. Smiling was impossible. She looked at Irene and then she was crying again.

‘Seulgi,’ Irene said. ‘Seulgi, what’s wrong?’

Seulgi just sat there. It was a long time before she stopped crying. Eventually Irene asked her what was wrong again and she leant back in her chair and turned up to Irene and said very quietly, ‘I can’t do this anymore.’

‘What?’

‘I just can’t.’

‘Do what? What’s wrong?’

‘This. I can’t be with you.’

Irene just watched her.

‘I’m sorry,’ Seulgi said.

‘About what?’

‘I can’t do it any longer.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘I can’t see you anymore, Irene.’

‘What? You’re not making any sense. You’re kind of scaring me a bit.’

Seulgi didn’t respond. ‘Seulgi,’ Irene said. ‘Seulgi, look at me.’

‘I can’t bear it,’ said Seulgi. ‘I can’t bear looking at you each and every day knowing you’re going to get old and I’m going to stay like this. I can’t live knowing you’re going to suffer and nothing’s ever going to come of it between us. We’re never going to be able to grow old together, to go through our lives as one, because our timelines are so different. Because it won’t work like that. And I can’t do it anymore. I can’t let you waste your life with me. I can’t sit and watch you throw away your only chance at happiness. Because it’s not with me and it never will be.’

‘Seulgi.’

‘I’m sorry. I should’ve never met you in the first place. Should’ve never fallen in love. What a ing idiot I am, right? For meeting someone as perfect as you. Someone so good to me. And now look.’

‘What’s gotten into you?’

When she looked at Irene again Irene’s eyes were wet and she wore on her face an expression so wrought with worry it was frightening. She looked fit to break. ‘Seulgi,’ she said. ‘Seulgi, please. Just talk to me.’

‘There’s nothing else to say. I can’t do it, Irene. I can’t. I’ve been thinking about it for so long. For years now. And I just can’t. I can’t let you do it, either. I couldn’t live with myself knowing you’d be wasting the rest of your life with me. It just wouldn’t be right. You need someone you can be with properly, who can be there for you.’

‘You can be there for me.’

‘No I can’t. There’s a lot we can’t do. There’s a lot I can’t do with anyone.’

‘Seulgi, you’re scaring me again.’

‘I can’t do this anymore.’

‘Seulgi, please.’

Seulgi had already stood and made her way out towards the hallway when Irene called after her. By now she was crying with such graceless indignity she was almost inaudible. ‘What are you going to do?’ she said, so desperate it was evident, so desperate it hurt to listen to. ‘Where are you going to go?’

‘I’ve rented a place in Sindong.’

‘Sindong? In Seoul?’

Seulgi didn’t say anything.

‘Seulgi, please. Wait. Just wait.’

‘I can’t.’

‘I love you.’

And Seulgi turned and looked back at her and there existed a moment however brief, however tender, where they shared that same love that had kept them for so long, and that made it harder, because there and then Irene knew that Seulgi still loved her with all her heart. That Seulgi would always love her.

‘Seulgi, please.’

Seulgi didn’t respond. ‘What about your stuff?’ Irene said. ‘What are you going to do?’

‘I’ve booked a removal van for tomorrow.’

‘Seulgi.’

‘It’ll be here around one.’

‘Seulgi. Please.’

And when in response to that Seulgi turned and opened the front door and disappeared into the outer dark like a thief Irene thought it would be the last time she ever spoke to her.