October 2021.

She had not thought about her own lack of mortality for almost six months. It was only when she sat down with Yeri and Joy and Wendy across the table from her and Irene that she saw how clearly they had aged since their university days and how it was already beginning to show that they were maturing into their twenties and even Irene, almost thirty, had aged beyond her youth, and yet Seulgi remained the same, the exact same. Day after day. It was like looking in on some alternate reality, some cruel enigma of a thing whereby she was subject to different universal laws from even those close to her, from everyone, except it was no alternate existence at all but her own and no matter how much she wished for it to go away it never would. Never could. She smiled through tears and if they saw anything none said a word and they ate their food there in the café they had once sat in almost five years earlier, the first time they had ever gone for a meal together as a group.

They had aged and that was plain to see. The more she watched them the more she became aware of that fact. Yeri had dyed her hair a strawberry blonde and she wore it short and the soft hints of baby fat had gone from her cheeks and the same with Joy and Wendy had lost a lot of weight and it showed. And Irene had barely changed at all. For that she was glad. It was harder to see how little Seulgi herself had changed when sat there next to Irene. As if they had both stopped again. But only she knew the truth and only she knew how unfair it was and how little she wanted it to be so.

‘Anyone for more coffee?’ Yeri said. She set her cup down and pushed it across the table and they ordered more coffee and sat and talked for a while. It was warm in the afternoon and a bright day in that October and a cold heat had come up white in the street like a dusty chalk they could almost touch, almost see. Almost tangible. Yeri sipped at her coffee again. ‘What are you guys up to now?’ she said.

‘Straight in there with the catch-up questions, huh?’ Irene said.

‘Yeah. Why not?’

‘Well.’

‘Well what.’

‘How about a “How are you guys”’?

‘How are you guys?’

‘We’re good, thanks.’

Yeri laughed. ‘You’re such an idiot,’ she said.

‘Likewise. What about you guys? How’ve you been?’

‘Good.’

‘Me too,’ said Joy. Wendy agreed. They spoke for a while on what they had been doing and learned in that time that Yeri had spent her years after university working for her uncle at a psychologist and was still working there and Joy had gone into teaching and Wendy had just finished her master’s and was looking to do the same. They asked about Irene and Seulgi and what they were doing and as they did they drank their coffee and listened with great interest, like attendants at a roadshow.

‘We’re good,’ Irene said.

‘Still going strong?’ said Seulgi.

‘Yeah. Still going strong. As always.’

‘What’ve you been up to?’

‘Not a whole lot, honestly. We moved in together straight after uni.’

‘Right. I remember you saying.’

‘Yeah. And since then we’ve not done a whole lot.’

‘Not going to get a master’s?’

Irene shook her head. ‘I don’t think I am. I don’t think I need it. I’ve lucked out in that department so far. But if later on I really need one or I decide I fancy it then I probably will.’

‘Me too,’ Seulgi said. She ran a finger idly around the rim of her cup. ‘I don’t think I need one right now.’

‘Where are you guys working then?’ Yeri said.

‘I’m a translator.’

‘No ? Really?’

Seulgi nodded.

‘That’s so cool. So like, Korean to English or what?’

‘Other way around.’

‘Freelance? Or are you working for a company or something?’

‘I’m contracted part-time and I work freelance wherever I can find it. It suits me better like that, really, since I get to plan my own schedule most of the time, and I’m not working off of someone else’s idea of ideal time management. And the money’s okay.’

Yeri smiled. ‘That’s so cool,’ she said again. ‘I never expected that of you. What about you, Irene?’

‘I’m Head Curator at the Museum of History,’ Irene said.

‘Really?’

‘Yeah.’

‘What does that mean, then? Like, overseeing the exhibits?’

‘Pretty much. That’s what I do most days. And I help organise stuff, move stuff around, lead people on tours, give guided visits. Stuff like that.’

‘Now that sounds like something I can imagine you doing.’

‘Yeah.’ Irene smiled. They spoke for a long time, the five of them. Seulgi spoke little. She studied each of them in turn. How they looked at her, how they looked at Irene, at one another. Each in their own way had changed slightly and not only had they simply grown but they were different, not quite strange but different nonetheless. In a sense that was profoundly sad. It was something she knew very well. It was time, the passage of all things, the changing of each raw entity in the face of the one absolute that cannot be turned, cannot be altered or shifted or bargained with in any shape or possible form. Time. With time they had taken on other characteristics and personas and they had been shaped differently in the years since university and they would never be of that same variety again, never quite what they once were. And neither would Seulgi or Irene. She could sense it even when the others couldn’t. They would remain friends but for how long? And then what? The same as any other, she reckoned, and that was enough to break her heart. They would fall out of touch and lose contact and that would be that and maybe if she was lucky they would meet fifteen or twenty years from now for a day or two but that would be all. That would be the end of it. The end of them.

As they spoke about themselves and what they had been up to in the past two years she watched them soon she was almost crying. They drank their coffee and ordered more and ate and talked and talked at length about a great many number of things, about their lives, their love lives, about relationships past and present and where they were living and how busy they had all been in the past few years and why they barely kept in touch and how they should talk more often, how they should meet up. ‘Seriously,’ Yeri said, sipping at her coffee. ‘I mean it. Like, once a week or something.’

‘That’d be so good,’ Irene said with a smile. ‘I’ve missed you guys.’

‘Missed you too.’

‘Yeah,’ Seulgi said. ‘Missed you guys.’

Yeri looked at her with a grin. She shook her head. ‘What?’ Seulgi said.

‘You seriously haven’t changed a bit since uni and I can’t get over it. It’s crazy. You still look twenty-five.’

‘Good skincare routine.’

‘Well you need to give it to me then because you look amazing.’

‘She does, doesn’t she?’ Irene said. She looked at Seulgi with that same warm and proud smile she always wore, like a badge of honour. But of that look there was nothing in Seulgi’s visage, nothing of the same happiness, the same content with her life. Just that same question, same thought. That one day she would live to see this all fade away and then she would be there, alone, at the end of their timelines and yet nowhere along her own, and what then? It was like being caught in a maze. Like going around and around in circles, forever.

They talked through most of the afternoon and by the time they had finished the light in the world was dying and the evening in its cool mist looked like something painted in pastels. Like a watercolour canvas draped over the sky. When they parted they each promised to meet all the others but Seulgi had seen such a situation before and had been a part of it many a time and never had she followed through on that spoke promise nor had those she had conversed with and if she was being honest she was not sure this would be any different. But that was life. That was how people lived. Things pull you from others, sometimes without your consent or care, and that is that. That’s just how it is.

*  *  *

In the soft amber light of the evening they walked hand in hand through the campus, retracing paths they had once walked upon so many times like blind women in the dark. They passed along the cobble roads in the park and beside the duck pond and through the trees where like in the slender bald moonlight they looked like angels. Then they doubled back and passed each step remembering in times gone the memories of those places and they sat finally by the duck pond and watched wires of light race overhead like diamonds in the sky of the ailing world and they spoke very little save for an acknowledgement here or there of the beauty of nature and its supreme power. After a while it was Irene to speak first and when she did it was with severity in her voice, like what she would speak into the world would remain there forever, would be in some way sacred or hallowed.

‘Seulgi,’ she said.

‘Yeah?’

‘Are you happy?’

‘What?’ She turned to look at Irene and Irene was looking back at her with tears in her glistening eyes. She saw herself twinned there in some painful image and she tried to smile back but it was impossible. ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘I am. Why?’

‘Just asking.’

‘Why? Are you?’

‘Am I happy?’

‘Yeah.’

Irene was quiet a moment. She looked out upon the face of the water. The ducks there scuttled like paper cranes. ‘Yeah,’ she said at last. ‘Yeah, I am. I was just asking. Sometimes it feels like when you look at me there’s something wrong and I hate that feeling. Maybe it’s just me though. Maybe I’m imagining something that’s not there, you know?’

‘I think you are.’

‘Really?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Seulgi.’

She looked at Irene. There appeared some form of desperation in her eyes, as if pleading for some brutal honesty. But Seulgi would allow her none because the truth was worse than whatever front she always chose to put up, and always would be. Because the alternative was what, exactly? She didn’t know. But she knew that each day she would have to look at Irene knowing ultimately that Irene would be aware of how different they were and how she would never be able to spend those tender moments of age and wisdom and experience with Seulgi because she never could. She never could. ‘What?’ she said.

‘Are you okay? Really. If there’s something bothering you, you know you can tell me of all people, right? You know I’ll listen. Doesn’t matter how dumb or small it is. I’ll listen. I’ll always listen.’

‘I’m fine, honestly.’ She smiled a tired smile.

‘Yeah?’

‘Yeah.’

With that Irene seemed satisfied or if not then was good enough to fool Seulgi at least momentarily. They fell quiet watching the night. Like a pair of gorgons carved part and parcel with the bench they sat on. Seulgi sat with her hands folded in her lap, very straight and upright and alert. ‘Can I ask you something?’ she said.

‘Yeah. Of course.’

‘Are you scared of getting old?’

‘Scared?’

‘Yeah. Does it scare you? The concept, I mean. Growing old and grey and all that.’

Irene laughed. ‘What brought this on?’ she said.

‘I don’t know.’

‘Seems a bit out of the blue.’

‘I was just curious.’

Irene fell silent. For a while Seulgi thought she wouldn’t answer and that would be the end of it but she did. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I think I am scared. I think deep down I’m terrified. Properly terrified. It’s not the prospect of being old. It’s the prospect of getting old. Having other people see me slowly deteriorate over twenty or thirty years. It’s something you have to kind of do, you know? It’s not something you can avoid. I see it even now, with my mum. She’s only sixty-six but I can see it slowly. It’s like, sometimes I can see it takes her a little longer to get up off the couch, or a little longer to get out of bed in the morning, or she’s always tired earlier in the day after working out in the garden. She’s got to do everything a bit slower, you know? I can see it. And I hate it. I hate seeing that gradual decline. I know it happens to everyone, and I know it might sound cruel, but I hate it. I really do. And I don’t want anyone I love ever seeing me like that. My family and friends. People I know, people I love. People who love me. I don’t want people watching me decline because I know it hurts and I don’t ever want other people to go through that sort of pain. I can’t bear it.’

When she finished she was almost crying and all Seulgi could think to do was to reach out and pull her in for a hug and tell her it was alright and what she was feeling was normal and she understood. And she did, that much was true. She held Irene close and when they parted they looked at one another for a long time. Irene smiled softly. ‘Thank you,’ she said.

‘For what?’

‘For that. For always being there for me whenever I’m being soppy or overly sentimental. Whenever I start rambling about stuff like this and I just want someone to listen. You’re always just there. Just within reach. Thanks for that.’

Seulgi tried to smile. ‘It’s okay,’ she said. She looked at Irene again. There in the pale and sallow light she looked absurdly beautiful. Like something carved out of marble. She tried for a second time to smile and soon she was almost weeping. I don’t deserve you, Irene. I don’t at all. But then Irene smiled and all the world seemed to fall away and all her troubles with it. Al but here and Irene. Always her and Irene. ‘It’s our five years,’ Irene said.

‘What?’

‘Our five-year anniversary.’

‘I don’t think it is.’

‘Well, I mean, not officially. But kind of.’

‘How is it kind of?’

‘The first time I realised I had feelings for you was the first time we ever met, I think. Or a couple times after. I know it was the first month, though. So I guess it’s five years on a technicality.’

‘That’s definitely a technicality.’

‘Still counts though, right?’

Seulgi laughed. ‘I guess so, yeah,’ she said. ‘I’ll let you have it.’

‘Let us have it.’

‘Right. Let us have it.’

Irene smiled again. A smile to set all of time at peace. A smile to calm the purest of emotions. ‘Well,’ she said at last. ‘Here’s to five years.’