February 2036.

She stepped out into the bloodred dawn and parted from the dark shadow of the house made her way down the path to the end of the garden and there overlooking the sea she sat on the old bench just beyond the gate and watched the newborn horizon come up grey and quivering like some canvas of oils out there at the rim of the endless world. There she sat for a long time in the cool wind while the sun rose to its highest point and there like some great copper coin it stayed squat in the sky overhead. She sat with her legs straight and neat and her hands folded down in her lap and she closed her eyes and listened to the lilt of the waves break staccato against the mudwet cliffs below and nothing else. At one point she heard a seagull and opening her eyes she saw it right there ahead, small and insignificant and direct, as if in the infancy of its flight it had been birthed out of the sun itself. She sat there in silence until there were no more seagulls or doves and no more wind and only the infinite company of the waves rising and breaking and rising and crashing and breaking and rising again and then she stood and went back into the garden and closed the gate behind her and locked the latch.

It was almost ten o’clock. She made herself a bowl of cereal and ate it at the table alone and showered and brushed her teeth and washed the pots from yesterday and stacked them on the drainingboard and when she was finished she cleaned the kitchen and vacuumed the stairs and tidied everything away and went back up to bed. Irene was still asleep, there in the cold and pale and slender light from the sheer curtains, thin and oblique cast over her small face. She looked so very delicate and yet not at all and she was looking her age. The lines around her eyes and the soft creases of her forehead had become more pronounced, deeper and purer with age, and her nose too held those crinkles that come so often with the years. But it was her eyes most of all. There was something in her eyes that told a story nothing else ever could because what were the eyes if not the everlasting witness to one’s own condition, their own journal of mortality. They were a sobering reminder of the trials of that which can never be stemmed or controlled or held at bay and they spoke whenever Irene did not just as they had done for her sister, as they had done for her friends. And they said something Seulgi could only think of in passing because to imagine the truth behind them was unbearable.

She often wondered if her eyes were the same. If they were she couldn’t see it. She thought it made sense that her eyes would look no different because why would they age when no other part of her could, or did? Why would they change and nothing else? But Irene had said before that her eyes were different, that there held in that gaze of hers some wretched unspeakable sadness of a hundred years, a miserable and eternal pain, the documentation of so many lives and so many accounts of so many things, a tableau of time, by time, for time itself. Yet when Seulgi looked in the mirror she could see nothing of that in her eyes nor any window to the burden of her condition nor anything resembling that at all, just that same youth as always, unchanging, unfathomable. It didn’t make any sense, but then what did? What part of her was not an anomaly? What but Irene.

She sat there watching Irene sleep in quiet and in peace, watched the shape of her body shift about under the cover, watched her face contort and frown and shape and clench and unclench as she rolled about on the pillow. She was forty years old and she looked every minute of it and Seulgi didn’t know what to think of that and it scared her. Somewhere outside a seagull hollered as if in calling and Irene began to stir. Seulgi sat there in silence for a while longer. Soon she began to cry.

When Irene woke up Seulgi was gone. She showered and changed and downstairs found her in the livingroom, crosslegged on the couch with her laptop in front of her.

‘Morning,’ Irene said.

‘It’s one in the afternoon.’

‘Afternoon then.’

Seulgi smiled. ‘That’s better. Sorry if you wanted me to wake you up but you looked like you needed it.’

Irene stood there in the space beyond the glass table, coffecup in hand. She turned towards the sliding window doors overlooking the bright pastel day and the sea lapping against the bottom of the grand cliffs. It had formed into a bright day and very clear and blue and above the saltshimmer hue of the sea the spastic sun winked violently in the newly smoking heat. With a wince and a smile she turned back to Seulgi and drank her coffee. ‘It’s lazy day weather today,’ she said. ‘I figured I’d be lazy for a change. What are you up to?’

‘Not a lot.’

‘Working?’

‘Not really.’

‘Anything interesting then?’

Seulgi shook her head. In the silence Irene finished her coffee. There was a moment there where they both looked at one another and without saying anything they knew something was wrong. ‘What?’ Irene said.

‘Nothing.’

‘Something’s up. Something’s on your mind.’

‘It’s nothing.’

‘Seulgi.’

‘Honestly. I’m fine.’

‘I didn’t say you weren’t. But there’s something you want to say, I know it.’

To that Seulgi said nothing. Irene stood there partially obscured in the light with her cup in front of her as if searching in that space for something to say, for the right words to make everything okay. Eventually she said, ‘Do you want to go for a walk?’

‘Where?’

‘Anywhere you want. It’s a nice day. We should get outside.’

‘Sure,’ Seulgi said.

‘Come on then.’

*  *  *

They walked hand in hand along the road to town with the twilight of the falling evening warm against their backs and they spoke very little and saw few people. In the bitter snows of the winter such a day was a rarity. In town they stopped at a café and had coffee with sandwiches and by the window they watched the passing of the day like the clockwork dials of some ancient brand of time beset with the changing colour of the sun and they savoured the potent stink of coffeebeans freshly ground and pressed and the small tinpot clamour of cups and machines and people talking in the kitchens in accents they still found funny so many years on. It was empty save three or four couples and they all spoke as if in miming of some gesticulation or action of speech and against the dim rattle of plates and pans they could only hear themselves in straining but it didn’t matter. They preferred the silence. Always had.

‘This is good coffee,’ Seulgi said. Irene agreed. They ordered more and drank and finished and thanked the waitress and went out into the white cooling of the day as it wore away the light at the western edge of the world. ‘What do you want to do now?’ Irene said, turning back to Seulgi. Seulgi shrugged her shoulders.

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Why? Is there something you wanted to do?’

‘No. I was just asking.’

‘I’m fine with anything.’

‘You mind just walking for a bit?’

Seulgi said no with a smile. It was that smile Irene cherished above almost anything. That same smile every time, no matter what. Her round face would curve upwards and her cheeks would puff and her eyes thin and she would smile so childlike and innocent and brilliant, so unlike herself, and for a moment each and every time Irene would forget about how old she was or what pain such a thing carried with it and in those moments there was only this other Seulgi, this pure and radiant girl she had met fifteen years ago at university, with her laughter and her delicate care and her stupid jokes and her tender touch. Not the wise and timeless Seulgi. This one had seen none of the world and knew nothing of its truths and its consequences and its awful realities or so she liked to think, so she liked to tell herself for as long as those tiny smiles ever lasted. Because so often the delusion of a lie is better than the clarity of the truth.

Through town they observed each thing like a collection of tandem scenes they had never seen before. As each in its own way were new and exciting. As if they were but tourists in a distant venue. They stopped by an old woman selling skewers of meat off of a stand and bought four and ate them in the park while they watched children dance over the steppingstones in the duck pond. All the while the last of the sun in its luminescent meridian posted there some fate or fortune yet unknown and in the cusp of its violet rigor they watched the crimson shapes of seabirds formed out of the widowed dark and flying overheard like papercranes strung across the dark and starless night. ‘I thought it’d be snowing,’ Irene said.

‘Why?’

‘I don’t know. I just figured a day as beautiful as today has been would have to be ruined.’

‘Why would it have to be ruined?’ Seulgi said. She turned to Irene. There she looked so very pale, so cold and leptosomic in her winter coat.

‘I don’t know that either,’ said Irene. ‘It’s just one of those things. Inevitably they always get ruined, days like today. By rain or wind or snow. Or something else. You don’t just get them on their own. Not at this time of year.’

‘I think that’s just coincidence.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Could be. Probably is. But it just seems like it happens every time. Like the world is out to ruin it for everyone. Or something like that.’

Seulgi just looked at her. If there was something she wasn’t saying it was impossible to even begin to fathom. ‘Hey,’ she said.

‘What?’

‘Let’s go home.’

*  *  *

‘Irene.’

She was sat there watching TV when Seulgi came in and it was almost midnight. Seulgi was wearing a small pair of shorts and a thin shirt and every time she wore anything like that it reminded Irene of just how unbelievable she was, just what precisely was wrong with her. Because she looked the same every day, every year. It was like the image of Seulgi in those shorts, that shirt, had been transposed from the first time Irene had seen it and played back ever since, unchanging, unable to be altered in any shape or form. Just a single constant, forever. Seulgi stood there as if unsure whether the room was safe to enter.

‘What’s up?’ Irene said.

‘You know what you said earlier, before we went out? About there being something on my mind.’

Irene nodded.

‘It’s something I’ve been thinking about for a while now. For a long time, honestly.’

She waited for Irene to respond but instead she just made a patting motion on the couch and so she sat with her legs crossed playing with her fingers until Irene told her to continue and she did.

‘I watched you while you were sleeping this morning,’ she said. ‘Not in a creepy way or anything. Nothing strange. It’s just I don’t know how to feel about it. I really don’t. And it’s not something I want to bring up in case it’s harmful, or in case it gets to you too, or maybe it’ll get in the way of us or something, I don’t know. I just hesitate to ever mention it. I don’t think I’ve talked about it properly in years.’

‘About what?’

‘About you. About you getting older.’

‘Well.’

‘Well what?’

‘Well go on.’

Seulgi was quiet for a long time. Then she said, ‘I don’t know if it’s a good thing or not because I can’t ever experience it. Not really. Aging, I mean. I can’t get old in the same way every single other person on the planet can. I get older, but I don’t grow old. I’m just me, except my brain’s changing, I remember things from the past, I forget other things, that part of me feels like it is aging where nothing else is, but that doesn’t make any sense, does it? Does any part of me make sense? I don’t understand it anymore. I really don’t. And the more I look at you the more I realise I have no idea whether aging is a good thing or a bad thing. It’s natural, I know that. In all creatures, all people. Except me. It’s just progression. Time is the ultimate equalizer. Time gets straight with everything in the end. Things we can barely conceive, abstracts and the invisible. Time is there for all the universe. Except me. And you know what? I don’t know how to feel about that. I don’t think I’ll ever come to terms with it. With the fact that I’m the big cosmic outlier. And there’ll always be this question hanging over my head and coming up with an answer for it is almost impossible. Is it worth it? Is it, really? I can never die, Irene. Not ever.

‘I first realised something was wrong when I was in my thirties or early forties. So that’s, what? About sixty years. Yeah. I’ve had almost sixty years to come to grips with that and I still can’t. It’s unfathomable. It’s too enormous to ever confront. I’ll be alive for everything that will ever happen to everything, and what then? What at the end of it all? What will be left of me? When every star’s dried out and the universe has frozen up and there’s nothing left of the atoms and the particles, when all that remains on a molecular level is a skeleton of all that once was. That, and me. What happens then? What’s my end point? My destination. Do I have one? Will I ever? I try not to think about it, you know. Because the more I do, and the more I dwell on it, the more I think it’s a curse. The more I think I’d be fine with aging normally, I’d be okay with it. Because everything I’ve seen, everything I’ve done – all the amazing things, things people can only dream of – I’d trade it all for that feeling, just once. To see a grey hair on my head. I’ve give it all away a thousand times.

‘So, yeah. It’s something I’ve been thinking about and it’s hit me recently that I don’t think aging’s a bad thing at all. It’s not the concept of growing old that scares people. It’s the thought of doing it alone. Of having nobody to go through it with you. Your kids aren’t the same. Never will be. They don’t age like you do. They don’t get old with you. That’s not their job. And having someone there, someone with you all the way to the end – that’s something special, really. Something genuinely special. And I can’t ever feel that with you. With anyone. And I feel like I’m robbing you of something, Irene. I feel like I’m stealing away that thing from you and soon you might not be able to ever get it back.’

‘Don’t be silly,’ Irene said.

‘I’m serious. That’s what I feel, and I don’t know how I’m going to get around it. I look at you now and I don’t know what to think of it. Because I love you so much, and I can’t ever see you lose something that precious.’

‘I’m only forty.’

‘But one day you won’t be. And then what? Then I’ll still be here. Still like this.’

‘Are you scared of me getting old?’

‘I’m scared of you getting old alone.’

‘I won’t be alone.’

‘You will.’

‘I have you, Seulgi.’

And at that all Seulgi could do was force a smile and say nothing and try to hide how close she was to crying, how close she was to losing it all.