A/N: Apologies for no updates but I'm back now! Comments/Discussions always welcome. Enjoy <3

May 2027.

Sometimes when she looked at Irene she was reminded of the unfortunate circumstances of human mortality and it hurt very much to think about what was coming sometime in the far future and so she didn’t. In February they moved to a small place on Jeju Island and there they lived alone and detached from the outside world save two roads that led into the market and a small lighthouse about a mile north of their house overlooking the saltwet sea as it glimmered like burning ice in the white heat of each new sun. They spoke very little to people at all and they had no pets or anything of the sort and they were quiet there, they fell into a sort of rhythm, a change in their relationship that was at once natural and strange to both of them. Irene mellowed with age. In her thirties she became aware of the fact she was no longer a teen or in university and she was now properly into her adult years, closer to middle age than away from it and yet still no less beautiful than she had ever been. In her soft and gentle times of reflection she thought about things much longer and with much greater clarity and depth. Seulgi’s own malleable silence was fashioned out of the longlasting reminder of what she and Irene were, what they would become, how far away from normal they had to be. With each day passing she grew slightly more into her own small world but when she was with Irene all seemed instantly altered again, as if she had never changed at all. Like she and Irene shared some alternate reality in which they could be themselves, always themselves. As they had once been.

They both worked from home. Seulgi worked for a beauty and fashion website and Irene as a freelance journalist, writing articles whenever she had the time. The money was okay but they were not bothered about money nor would they ever be, what with Seulgi’s accumulation over the past century or so. They spoke little about that. About Seulgi. But nor did they hide it and both knew it was right there and it wasn’t going anywhere. It was as much a part of them as anything else. Maybe, in some way, more. She thought of it sometimes like a mark from a cigarette or stove burn. It hurts for a long time, it persists, and then it disappears. It’s gone. There is no more pain. But in its place remains still that same mark, faded and indistinct and yet there, and they say that such marks will never fade entirely. That they are in some way a reminder of some momentary stupidity. And they don’t hurt and they never again will but they never leave you. It was like that, her condition. Her immortality. It was that burn mark on her soul that on occasion she would look in upon and inspect and try and form some sort of reasoning for herself but it was impossible and always would be.

*  *  *

Irene was sat in the garden reading from a book when she came back from the shops carrying bread and milk and a bottle of red wine and she smiled when she saw Seulgi approaching up the driveway, kicking up in the white heat of that day a very fine dust from the dirt of the grass. ‘Took you long enough,’ she said.

‘Yeah. Sorry. Was a bit busy.’

‘It’s never busy.’

‘I know. It was busy compared to what it normally is, I mean. I’m going to put this stuff away and then I’ll be out. Nice day today.’

‘Real nice.’

She went in and set the loaf in the breadbin and the milk in the fridge and came out and sat opposite Irene watching her read in silence for a while and then she went back in and boiled the kettle and brought out two cups of coffee for them to drink. ‘Thanks,’ Irene said. She dogeared her page and set the book down and drank and sat back and closed her eyes. When she opened them again she just sat there looking at Seulgi and she did not speak. A cool wind kicked up from the beach kept as their only company and they drank their coffee in peace. ‘What?’ Seulgi said.

‘What do you mean, what?’

‘You’re thinking of something, I know it.’

‘I’m always thinking of something.’

‘You know what I mean. You’ve got something you want to say. Or ask.’

‘Do I?’

‘Irene.’

Irene pushed her cup across the table. She turned out towards the front of the house. Where the green of the land yellowed in the wilting sun it rolled out and down towards the beach at a decline. In the vivid heat of the day the sea looked almost translucent and the sun itself like a great blue egg quivering in the sky. ‘It’s nothing,’ she said.

‘It is. Don’t be coy.’

‘Coy?’ She laughed. ‘That’s a new one.’

‘C’mon. What are you thinking about?’

‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘Irene. It does.’

Only after a while did Irene respond and she spoke in a quiet voice that was not much like her own. ‘It’s something I’ve been wondering about for a long time,’ she said.

‘What is?’

‘I don’t know how to go about saying it. Asking it. I don’t know how I can without sounding insensitive.’

‘Just say it.’

‘I just want to know more about you. About how you are. About what you are, if that makes any sense. It’s just a mystery to me.’

‘It’s a mystery to me too.’

‘I know. I know. But you know more than me and I want you to share that with me. If you can, I mean. If you’re comfortable with it. If not I completely understand.’

‘What do you want me to tell you?’

‘I don’t know. Anything. Anything at all.’

‘About myself?’

‘About your immortality, or whatever. About what you’ve never told me.’

‘I don’t know what there is to tell you.’

Irene just looked at her. ‘What’?’ Seulgi said.

‘I don’t know. I just want to know about you, is all. About it. It’s the only part of your life I couldn’t recite from memory, pretty much. And if it’s true, if it’s all real, I want to know.’

‘You want me to be candid with you?’

Irene nodded. ‘That’s what we said, right? That we’d be honest with each other. Properly. Forever.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Then yeah.’

‘I don’t know where to start.’

‘Well,’ Irene said.

‘Well what?’

‘When did you first figure it out? That you were immortal.’

‘When I thought I was in my thirties. I guess more specifically, when I thought I was thirty-four. I can’t remember the exact day but I sat down and sort of realised right then and there that something was wrong with me. I didn’t know what it was, obviously. I had no idea. But I felt like I wasn’t aging. Like I was just me. Like I hadn’t changed in a decade. My hairstyles changed, and my makeup, and whatever else, but not me. Not my skin. Nothing else about me. I just remained the same, never changing, never altering.’

Irene tilted her head to the side. Right there she seemed so very unsure of herself, unsure whether to continue or not. Only when Seulgi nodded did she speak. ‘Did anyone else ever know?’ she said.

‘A few people. My family. They didn’t know what it was either. How could they? They denied it at first. Well, not really. They just didn’t say anything about it. But there came a point where they couldn’t really ignore something so clear and so I sat them down and talked to them about it and after I was finished they just sat there for a long time and then they began to cry. It was my dad and my sister. My mum was already long dead by this point. It was in the late seventies, I think. Must’ve been. My dad wasn’t far from dying either. And they just sat there and cried for a long time and in the end I got up and walked out and didn’t come back for a few days. It was like their entire world had been turned upside down. Their beliefs, their truths of the world, of the universe. Like something had come along and told them everything they knew fundamentally to be true was wrong, all because of me, because of what I was. Or what I was not. I can’t blame them. How could I?’

‘What happened after that?’

‘Not a lot. I know that sounds reductive but it’s true. I barely spoke to my dad until he died. I never got to sit there and listen to his last words and he never wrote anything for me or my sister either. I think, in some way, I’m glad he didn’t. Because I don’t know what he’d say but I have this strange and terrible feeling it wouldn’t be good. That it’d be directed at me, that he still even in death wouldn’t be able to reconcile with the fact that I was different on a level not quite explainable by anyone or anything. He was a tough old bastard, my dad. And very stubborn, too. He survived cancer back before people thought it was ever possible to do so. Died in his sleep, on his own terms. I don’t think he ever had it in him to confront something like that and try and understand it. And I couldn’t ever blame him for that, either. I know I’d be the same way. It’s just one of the very few things you can never really come to grips with, because it doesn’t make any sense. It’s impossible by every definition of the word. I’m impossible. And yet here I am.’

‘What about your sister?’

Seulgi smiled softly. ‘I kept in contact with her after my dad died,’ she said, ‘but after a while we fell out of touch again. By the time she died I hadn’t spoken to her in nearly two years. She never had any kids and so that was that. The end of our family bloodline. Except I guess not.’

She laughed a painful, cynical laugh. ‘I guess not.’

‘How do you know, though?’ Irene said.

‘Know what?’

Seulgi looked up at her again and she turned away and set her hands in her lap, fiddling at the material of her jeans with her fingers. ‘Sorry,’ she said softly.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Never mind. It comes across as insensitive if I ask.’

‘Go on. I don’t mind.’

‘How do you know that you can’t die? I mean, you don’t age. That much is clear to anyone who’s known you for a long time. But that doesn’t mean you can’t die. Unless you know, of course. Do you?’

Seulgi watched her a moment. The pensiveness in her eyes was evident and so very alarming. As if she were walking on eggshells every time she spoke with Seulgi. ‘What you mean is,’ she said, ‘have I figured out if I can actually die in other ways?’

Irene nodded slowly.

‘Yes. I have. In 1993, the year after my sister died, I tried to drown myself in the bath. I left the water running and I went into the kitchen and came back with a whole bottle of sleeping pills and I swallowed them all down and waited. I thought I’d never wake up. I don’t know why I did it, in retrospect. I wasn’t particularly suicidal. I didn’t particularly want to know if I could die or not. I honestly don’t even know what came over me. It was like I saw red or something and that was that. And then I woke up. It was about five or six hours later, I don’t really remember much. I just remember panicking because I opened my eyes and I was still underwater and I couldn’t breathe properly. So I just got up and got my breath back and sat there for a while. I didn’t quite know what to do. Had no idea. I felt fine, honestly. Bit of a headache, bit cold, but I guess that was the water, being there six hours and all. And that was the end of that.’

‘You just woke up?’

Seulgi nodded. As she spoke Irene listened intently. She spoke as if with great care and yet with none at all. As if she were speaking about no more than some trivial occurrence in her past. ‘That was the first time,’ she said. ‘The second time was about a year later. That was probably the lowest point in my life, that entire year. I don’t really feel comfortable talking about it so I won’t. But I tried three more times after that, all in the same year. Nothing ever happened. I’d die, then I’d wake up. Once it was only an hour later. Then, four hours. One time it was two days. But I was always okay. Always fine. Any wounds I had were just gone, just like that. No scars, no holes, no cuts. Nothing. And I just got up and walked away. I never tried again after that. Never wanted to.  What was the point? How far would I have to go to test the theory? How far could I possibly go without losing my mind? And was it even worth it? Could it ever be? I still don’t know. But nothing I tried ever worked and I tried a different method every time. And I just woke up. So that’s how I know. Know that I can’t die. It’s not just the aging. It’s everything.’

‘Jesus Christ. I’m so sorry.’

Seulgi tried to smile. ‘You’ve got nothing to be sorry for. Things like this can’t be fixed, can’t be sorrowed over. There’s no point. Sometimes in the act of trying to explain something we become more lost, and the more lost we become the more we then try to understand that same thing that made us that way to begin with. It’s a very addictive cycle, and it breeds only confusion and fear and desperation. And desperate is the worst thing I could possibly ever imagine.’

‘Why?’

‘Why?’

Irene nodded.

‘Because,’ Seulgi said. ‘Because desperation drives you to every conceivable length until one of two things happens: you’ve exhausted all your possible options, or you’ve exhausted yourself. Until there’s nothing left of you, or what you once were. And when you’re immortal, that’s something that will never happen. I will always be me, for the rest of the time. And I’ll always be searching, always looking for that answer, always going one step further. And I don’t ever want to see where that would take me. What it would do to me. I can’t ever know. There’s nothing in the universe I can think of worse than that. Than the pursuit of the unknowable. And it’s unfair. It’s entirely unfair.’

‘What is?’

‘We spend our whole lives evading death. Running from its pursuit. But we can’t escape it. It always finds us, no matter where we hide, or for how long. It always gets to us. Except me. And now I’m running after it, now I’m in pursuit, and I’ll never get to it. I’ll never be able to find it like it would find me. Why? Why can’t I? Why am I not allowed to do that? Why am I not allowed to die?’

‘Do you want to die?’

She looked up and across at Irene again with tears in her eyes though her voice was steady when she spoke. Irene there looked so different for a moment, so unsure of herself, of Seulgi.

‘There’s a difference between wanting to die, and not wanting to live,’ said Seulgi.

‘Do you not want to live?’

‘I want to know.’

‘Know what?’

‘I want to know I have that choice. That it’s right there for me.’

‘And then what? When you find it, then what?’

Seulgi looked at Irene for a long time in silence. Whatever she dared say would affect them both so very much and she was aware of it there like nothing else.

‘What then?’ Irene said.

‘Then I’ll know.’