January 2026.

They were married at four-forty in the afternoon in front of a small ceremonial chapel twenty-one miles north of their house in the middle of the woods where only the light of the pink afternoon sun fell from overhead and in that flaming starburst they looked like waifs preparing for some ethereal ritual. The only people in attendance were two of Irene’s friends from work as witnesses and the pastor. He was a small man of seventy years they had found through a local service and he spoke in a soft voice belying much wisdom about the world and he looked upon them with an easy smile while they stood at the makeshift altar both clad in their stark white dresses like al brides and recited their vows and laughed at how silly it all sounded and when they were finished he told them they were officially married and Seulgi with her hand in Irene’s turned and pushed the veil back from Irene’s face and then her own and in the pale and slender light she held Irene close and savoured their first kiss as something else, something more, and Irene kissed back and they shared a moment so tender as to feel the world slip around them into some delicate void where naught existed save Irene and Seulgi hand in hand kissing in the fresh winter’s afternoon.

In the evening they took a taxi up to Namsan and they stood looking out over the gunmetal flake of Seoul’s quivering skyline and Irene with her arms in the air told the world that they were married and they were in love and always would be and to that the world had no response but they laughed regardless. They sat there hand in hand as tender as when they had first met so long ago in university and all felt right and good again and in the evening when the waxen sun fell squat against the grey seam of the world and the shadow of the other mountains appeared as some deathly pallid shape crudely sketched against the sleeping horizon Irene lay her head to rest on Seulgi’s shoulder and they laboured there for another hour in silence and to their ceremony there was no party or other celebration and that was that.

When they were home Irene sat at the kitchen table while Seulgi cooked dinner and in the square of outside light procured from the window she smiled that same brilliant smile until Seulgi turned to look at her with the pan of chicken in one hand. ‘What?’ she said.

‘What?’

‘Why are you smiling like that?’

‘Like what?’

‘Like that.’

Irene shrugged. ‘I’m just happy, is all.’

‘Me too.’

‘Good. You should be. Hurry up, I’m hungry.’

They ate their food in silence and the house was silent and all the world seemed to quieten with them and in the low light they talked about the past and about the future they would share and what it entailed for them and both admitted they didn’t know. Irene said she didn’t care. That they were together and as long as they were together they would remain tethered by some inextricable cord to one another and in that manner share in each way as all couples must the trials and struggles and losses that accompany time and time’s passing though they were not so normal at all, but what did it matter as long as they were together? And to that Seulgi just nodded and said nothing and finished her food. They talked after dinner about honesty and truth and how important it was deemed and Seulgi told of something her mother had told her as a child that she had taken through life with her, always believing. She said that honesty is so rare because we are most vulnerable at our most honest, for when we lay bare our truths to the world we leave ourselves exposed to its criticisms, its tribulations, all it can throw at us, and in some way believe we deserve what we receive even if really we do not. That we are all afraid in some way of some greater truth even we do not know it. That we all run from such honesty and only once we truly come to terms with it and its implications can we turn and face it and better ourselves as a result. And when Irene asked her why she recalled such a story Seulgi said she had been running her whole life. That she would always be running.

‘Running from what?’ Irene said. ‘You’ve got me now. You don’t have to hide anything anymore. You don’t have to be dishonest.’

‘Yeah,’ said Seulgi. And she smiled and Irene smiled back and they said no more.

After they had washed up they went upstairs and in the cold and unsettled timbre of the bedroom they made love and there they fell asleep arm in arm smelling of sweat and lemon and with the stink of dust in the air from the open window where against the shimmering skeleton of Seoul the rain fell in lashes and later in the night it began again in storm. Sometime in the early morning before daybreak Seulgi rolled away from Irene and rose and went out to the balcony downstairs and stood smoking a cigarette while the rain fell just beyond her reach, out there in the violent dark void of that unrelenting cold. She had not smoked for many years but something about it in that solitary moment felt very right, very real and urgent to her. And what did it matter regardless? What negative outcomes from smoking could even affect her? None, ever. She leant over the balcony railing and smoked the last of her cigarette and with the smoke coiling in the wet air she watched the shape of the moon hung like a hospital light in the damp sky and she watched sheetlightning break in sourceless phantasmagoria without sound or shape in the cloudless ceiling of the world and stood questioning the right reckoning of that awesome sight and whether in its timeliness it held any meaning or merely served as reminder of the fraudulence of nature in posting those manifold to false destinies. She searched for sign or reason in the architecture of the moon but there was nothing and after a while she locked shut the balcony door and went back up to bed and slept until late into the morning.

When she awoke it was to a sliver of amber light from a sun newly risen and against it she winced. Irene was already downstairs preparing breakfast. ‘Morning,’ Seulgi said. From the sink Irene turned back and said good morning and they sat and ate enjoying the quiet between them. After a while Irene looked up.

‘What?’ Seulgi said.

‘Something’s on your mind.’

‘What?’

‘You’re thinking about something. Rather, you’re thinking about whether to talk about the thing you’re thinking about. Or something to that effect. Am I right?’

Seulgi just shrugged.

‘Go on,’ Irene said. ‘Spill it.’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Seulgi. Look at me. Come on. We’ve moved past this.’

‘I was just thinking last night. Before we went to bed.’

‘About what?’

When Seulgi didn’t respond Irene pushed her for an answer. She set her plate aside and leant across and smiled that soft smile Seulgi had become so accustomed to. Like an imprint in the pages of her life. ‘Come on,’ she said quietly. ‘Speak up.’

‘I was just thinking about your parents.’

‘About my parents?’

‘They don’t even know you’re married.’

‘Neither do yours.’

‘My parents are dead.’

Irene shifted back. She looked so genuinely ashamed of herself it was almost worrying. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘. I didn’t mean it like that. I forgot. I’m sorry.’

Seulgi nodded. ‘They won’t even know,’ she said.

‘My parents?’

‘Yeah.’

‘I think they will. One day.’

‘But you won’t tell them.’

‘No.’

‘You can’t tell them.’

‘Not really, no. They don’t really approve of the whole gay thing, you know. Being old-fashioned and all. I mean, I don’t really think they disapprove or anything. It’s just they’re a bit behind the times, is all. A lot behind the times. They wouldn’t disown me or anything. They’d just think it was a bit strange.’

‘But that’s not why you won’t tell them.’

Irene looked across the table. They shared a moment of mutual understanding in that silence though neither would admit it for its truth held such devastating severity to acknowledge it would be dangerous in such a microcosm of peace again. ‘Seulgi,’ Irene said.

‘You won’t tell them because you can’t.’

‘Seulgi.’

‘Because how do you go about telling someone you’ve gotten married, in secret, to an immortal woman?’

‘Come on.’

‘Kind of a bit absurd, don’t you think? You can’t tell them because one day they’ll realise like you realise that I’m telling the truth, and what then? What happens then? When they find out their daughter’s wife can’t age, that she can’t die. That nothing can ever happen to her. What do they do then? What would anyone do? If they ever found out, I mean.’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Neither do I. I don’t tell anyone. I haven’t told anyone for longer than you’ve been alive.’

‘Seulgi,’ Irene said. She looked at Seulgi there across the table. She looked for a while so unbearably old, so very tired. What miseries of truth she held could not be fathomed by Irene nor would she try. Instead she smiled that same loving smile, the smile Seulgi had fallen for a decade earlier, the smile that had kept her ever since. ‘It’s okay,’ she said. ‘Really, it’s fine. One day we’ll deal with it properly.’

‘Yeah.’

‘But not right now. We don’t need to. We just have to take it one step at a time, you know?’

‘Right.’

‘One day at a time. Starting today. The rest of our lives. Wife and wife. Or whatever it technically is. Does one of us become the husband? I don’t think so. I don’t actually know.’

‘Nor do I.’

‘Then wife and wife it is.’

Seulgi broke a soft smile. ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘Wife and wife it is.’