A/N: I know I said no Author's Notes at the beginning because it ruins the snapshot flow but just wanna say I'm away this weekend so no regular updates, so instead expect another update (or maybe even 2) tomorrow to tide everyone over :)  Enjoy!

August 2025.

She paid the last of her rent the week after and by February they had moved back into a place in north Seoul where they lived in a small house overlooking the city on the north side and all felt immediately as it once had been, as if they had never been apart at all. It was almost comforting in a sense to realise that. Seulgi still went for her walks in the evenings but it was not Irene she thought of, or rather not of Irene’s mortality, of their predicament, but of Irene as she was, as she would be, ever changing, always hers. They settled back into a routine. Seulgi found work at a local newspaper and Irene as a reporting journalist and they worked from home and sometimes at night they would sit out in the back garden watching the moon diffuse in the cold late night and pour glasses of wine for themselves and toast to better times, to a happier future.

They didn’t speak much about Seulgi or what would happen to her but it was there and it was permeating in everything they did and neither could avoid it but this time neither wanted to. Yet sometimes in moments of quiet solitude and reflection Seulgi would remember something her mother had told her a long time ago. She’d said that time was the worst of all evils because time remained the only entity that could take from you the means by which to recollect the past, and after everything else was gone that was all that remained. That memory was the most powerful of human abilities and nothing not man nor animal could remove that if you were so inclined to keep it. You would always have your memories. But time did not ask nor make its intentions known and that was dangerous. How could you defend yourself from something you were unaware of? Time sapped you slowly. It took from you again and again each fleeting piece of your memory, fears, insecurities, times spent and times not, regrets, wishes. It took from you everything and you would never even realise it and then what? Then what remained? Nothing.

*  *  *

In the evening she watched the last of the copper sun melt into the cusp of the world and all under it quake in some heatless pink meridian and it was a cloudless day and there was no wind and she walked for a long time. Through the park and down alleys and by bus stops where under the arcades her own desolate footfalls came back like terminal laughter and her alternate shape warped in the glass of the stalls like some other her, like some Seulgi raised from the other side of life. Or what she could ever feel of that same thing. It was a quiet night and not busy and she walked in silence with her headphones in while Seoul turned around her like some picturebook display from page to page.

Irene was sat in the livingroom watching TV when she came in. It smelled vaguely of bacon and eggs. She set her coat down and smiled and Irene smiled back and made room on the couch so she could sit and she did.

‘You look tired,’ Irene said.

‘A little.’

‘Where did you go?’

‘Just around and about. Nowhere in particular. Have you already eaten?’

‘Yeah. I was going to get a takeout but I thought I’d better not. Not again.’

Seulgi laughed. She took the remote from the glass table and flicked through the channels. ‘What’s on?’ she said.

‘I don’t know. I only just put it on. You’ve got the remote.’

‘Are you okay?’

‘What?’

Seulgi turned to her. ‘You look tired yourself,’ she said. Irene smiled a nervous smile, almost cautious. She set her hands in her lap and picked at her nails and turned away and back again as if debating internally on some unbroachable topic.

‘What’s up?’ Seulgi said.

‘It’s nothing.’

‘Really?’

‘I mean, it is. But I don’t know how to say it.’

‘Just say it. Whatever it is.’

‘It’s about us.’

‘What about us?’

‘About our future together. About what we are. Or what we’re going to be.’

For a long time Seulgi didn’t respond. As if unsure of what quite to say or do. Irene just looked at her. Right there she looked older than Seulgi could remember her ever looking and it was almost startling. As if in her eternal youth Seulgi had drawn up this image of Irene as the same, as she had been five or six years ago, and now she was coming to understand how wrong it had been and how Irene was not like her at all because nobody was. Nobody ever could be. She existed through no logic or consistent reason and if she was being truthful she should not exist at all.

‘Go on,’ she said quietly.

‘These past seven or eight months have been amazing,’ Irene said. ‘Being with you, everything we’ve done. It’s been the best. And I want it to continue. I want it to go on forever. But I need to know where we’re at first. I need to know we’re both being honest with each other about our feelings and what we want in each other and where we’re going to be in five, ten, twenty years, you know? Because we’re different. You’re different. Realistically you shouldn’t even be you, but you are. So we can’t have a normal relationship if you’re telling the truth, and we’ve built a life on lies if you’re not.’

‘I am telling the truth.’

‘I know, I know. It was just a hypothetical. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to sound like I was doubting you or anything.’

Seulgi smiled wearily. ‘It’s okay,’ she said.

‘I just mean we need to seriously look at what’s going to happen in the future because it’s better that way, in my opinion. It’s better to get everything out in the open, to just be completely honest about what we’re scared of, or what we’re going to think when I inevitably start changing and you don’t, and how ing crazy this whole thing is. I mean, I still can’t wrap my head around it and I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to, but I have to try. For the sake of both of us, I’ve got to at least try. So I just want to us to be honest with each other. To just get everything out there in the open now that we’re settled again and we’re working and we’re doing alright. Because I can’t bear going back to how we used to be. You hiding away all the time, me not knowing what was going on, you feeling guilty over something you should’ve never felt guilty about. All because we didn’t talk. We didn’t sit down and explain everything and figure out what to do. So, yeah. That’s what I want.’

Seulgi just looked at her.

‘What?’ she said.

‘You know, you can ramble at times.’

‘I’m not rambling.’

‘A little.’

‘Alright, maybe a little.’ Irene laughed. ‘But I was making a lot of sense, too.’

‘Yeah.’

‘So you agree?’

‘Yeah.’

‘About everything.’

‘About everything. No more lying or hiding . Just the straight and honest truth, whatever you ask me, whenever. And no more looking on the future and seeing something that’s not there. No more putting words in your mouth or thinking for you or anything like that.’

‘Good.’

Irene smiled and in that smile there lied such stunning sincerity as to set Seulgi at ease forever, to bring a smile to her own lips. ‘What?’ she said. ‘Why are you smiling?’

‘I love you, Kang Seulgi.’

‘I love you too.’

‘Forever.’

Seulgi shuffled closer. Before they kissed she looked Irene in the eyes and with a grin on her face she said softly, ‘Yeah. Forever.’

*  *  *

They sat side by side watching the cold shadow of Seoul in the morning appear out of the dewfall like something etched out of stone or some ancient cave painting and they listened to the absolute silence. It was almost strange, unnerving, but not quite. They sat with their hands folded in their laps and a smile on Irene’s lips and as Seulgi watched her she just continued with that same smile so sheepish and childlike and evasive. A pale light had come up in the east and there at the rim of the world it sat squat in the sky like some wounded pink medusa vaguely silhouetted out of some smoking hole in the universe and by its light Irene looked almost ethereal, like she much the same as Seulgi was some other very unique sort of human, not quite human at all.

‘What?’ Seulgi said. ‘Why are you looking at me like that?’

Irene turned about. She looked out over the top of Namsan Hill where in the dry morning all was quiet and desolate and there was no life nor wind nor sign of anything and she turned back to Seulgi and sat side-on facing her with that same grin on her lips and a blush high on her cheeks and her breathing catching in the thin and bitter air.

‘What?’ Seulgi said again. ‘What is it?’

‘I’ve been meaning to do this for a long time.’

‘Do what?’

‘I kind of got sidetracked a little. Which is stupid when you think about it, really.’

‘Irene.’

‘Come on.’

‘Come where?’

She took Seulgi by the hand and led her to the rim of the fence overlooking Seoul in its infinite slumber and they stood perched like gorgons guarding the silent dark and there Irene remained quiet for a long time as Seulgi watched her partially with curiosity and partially with worry. As if something was very wrong or very right but she couldn’t quite tell. ‘What is it?’ she said.

‘Close your eyes.’

‘What?’

‘Go on.’

‘Irene, what are you doing?’

‘Just close your eyes. Please.’

In that dim glimmer of love in Irene’s eyes she saw such brutal sincerity it was startling and so she did. She waited. Nothing moved and there was no sound and then Irene said very quietly, ‘Now open them.’

She did. Irene was crouched there on the grass with one leg bent in front of her and in her hand she held up a small velvet box and from this she produced a silver ring finished with a stone of violent sapphire. ‘What are you doing?’ Seulgi said.

‘I’ve been meaning to do this for so long I can barely remember a time I wasn’t thinking about it. But with it now being legal and all, I figured…you know. And I didn’t know when we’d be going on vacation again and I know this would be more romantic on Jeju or some like that but I didn’t plan that far ahead. And I know I’m rambling again. I can’t help it. I’m just thinking about a lot of stuff right now and my heart is like a ing ping-pong ball and my hands are shaking. Like, actually shaking.’

‘Irene.’

Irene there on one knee looked up at Seulgi with such pure and genuine adoration it was almost upsetting. ‘Kang Seulgi,’ she said, ‘I love you more than I could ever, ever describe. I mean that. I literally don’t have the words to describe to you, so I won’t even try. All I can say is I want to spend the rest of my life with you, no matter where that takes us, no matter how strange or impossible you are, no matter what. I just want you with me.’

‘Irene.’

‘Seulgi, will you marry me?’

And with tears already in her eyes Seulgi bent down and took Irene’s face in her hands and kissed her as if it would be the last time she would ever do so and in the cold and rainswept wind she pulled Irene to her feet and wept for the taste of her lips and the scent of her perfume and the laugh in and she said yes yes yes I do I do I will I love you, I love you Irene. Yes I will, forever with you. Forever.