May 2022.

In the twilight of the day she set out walking not knowing where she would end up or when she would be back and she didn’t tell Irene. It was a warm and humid evening and she could smell the heat in the air. Like walking through a porous fog. She crossed over the end of the avenue and walked through the park and doubled back and came around and passed near the university grounds again and as she walked she remembered each and every memory she ever had with Irene and weighed them against each other and came very soon to the conclusion that each had its own worth and none was quantifiable next to the others, for in their own way they all held some special and untouchable sentiment because they were all with her, they all held Irene in them, and in that cooling visage decocted out of the lobes of her troubled mind she stitched together a sort of textual fabric, real enough almost to reach out and feel, like a seam woven into the bed of her memories. It formed there a timeline she could recall very easily and to play back each one served almost as a theriac for her.

She remembered it all and always would. Each walk they took hand in hand through the campus grounds or by the river late at night or up on Yanghwa Bridge as they watched the night falling away like oil paintings in front of them and the cool breeze on her face and at Irene’s nape, and each time they had gone for a meal together and what precisely they had eaten, or when they had gone to the cinema and she would sit always right beside Irene with her hand on the thin fabric of Irene’s dress and the soft skin of her leg just underneath and that delicate scent of lemon from the flush at and the look so calm and so placid on her face, or when she would tell a stupid joke and Irene would laugh and smile and that smile, right there, the smile she would remember for all of time, like an imprint in wet concrete, an impression cast upon the world as to be never be touched or forgotten again. As she walked she thought on each of these and soon she began to cry. Please, she said to nobody. Please help me. Let me forget. If you can’t do anything for me then let me forget. Let me not deal with this. Wash it all away and I will be hard like stone. I will turn the rain and my heart will be hard.

In the end she sat by the water’s edge watching the sun’s last living terminus low to the west like some cataclysm drawn screaming out of the world in fire and light and she slowly she lay her head down on the bench and curled up and began to cry again and she would not stop for anything. People passed her with looks approaching mild curiosity or perhaps disgust, as if looking upon something that should not be there, like an exhibit loosed from a zoo. Others showed naught but indifference. One man stopped to ask her if she was alright and she told him that she was not homeless and her problems were of another variety and he asked if he could help and at that she had to smile. No I don’t you think can, she said. I really don’t think anyone can help. Not even me.

Late in the evening it began to rain. She lay there and her phone hummed in her pocket and she ignored it. She refused to move and in that state she was not at all loveable, this wiry and leptosomic victim of the lachrymose and the unfortunate, crying softly to herself in the dark and the cold and the rain. But it hurt to move, hurt to do much of anything. Hurt to think of Irene and hurt not to think of her, some awful paradox from which there was no escape or no answer so what could she do? What but sit there and cry. She remembered a time she and Irene had sat down and talked about what they would ever do if they had problems, if they ever had something they didn’t know how to overcome. It was sometime in the second year of university. She remembered that clearly as well, perfect and yet not quite the same, as all memories were. Like shapes seen through cracked glass, vaguely distended.

‘What would you do?’ Irene said.

‘What do you mean?’

‘If you had a problem and you didn’t know how to get around it. You didn’t know what to do.’

‘Why? What’s wrong?’

Irene smiled. ‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘I’m fine. I was just curious, is all.’

‘You sure?’

‘Yeah. I just wanted to know. Because I don’t know what I’d do. It’s one of those things you think about sometimes, or at least I do, and I realise if I ever got into a situation where I felt completely stuck I’d have no idea what to do. I’d just sort of be there, just kind of existing. How would I get out? Would I have to look for a way out? Would I just wait for something good to come to me? I don’t even know. And I know how vague this sounds and that’s because it is, but it’s just one of those things, you know? Something that I can’t help but think about now and again.’

Seulgi looked at her. Those eyes were so warm, so full of kindness. The same kindness she had fallen in love with before anything else. Eyes to open up the soul, the heart. ‘What about you?’ she said.

‘What about me?’

‘What would you do?’

Seulgi thought about that for a while. Then she said, ‘I’d just go at it. I think that’s the best thing to do, always, no matter what. Just face the problem head on and don’t ever back down or ignore it or push it to one side. It doesn’t matter what it is. The longer you leave something, the more it grows. It takes on a shape of its own. It morphs into something you can’t control as easily, and soon it becomes too big to handle. It becomes parasitic. Your problems become a part of you, and soon you forget that you ever had an identity without them. You start carrying them around like baggage. And then you’ll never be free of them. You’ll never overcome them.’

‘What if you can’t?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘What if you can’t just go at your problems? If you can’t just face them.’

‘Well. I don’t think that’s an option. I think you’ve got to try. I think it’s second nature for us to try to fight against things we dislike. That’s just who we are as a species. I think no matter the size of the problem, the one thing we’ve still got in us is that. It’s the capacity to fight back against something. It’s the ability to face our fears.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Yeah.’

‘You’re telling me you’d just face your problems, every single time?’

Seulgi nodded. ‘That’s just me,’ she said. ‘That’s what I’d do. I think the longer you wait the worse things get. So that’s what I’d do.’

Irene looked at her with a wan smile. ‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘Thanks for always having something good to say.’

‘Not always.’

‘Whenever I need you. And I need you a lot.’

‘I need you, too.’ Seulgi smiled. ‘More than you know,’ she said. ‘More than you know.’

*  *  *

She tried the door and was thankful to find it unlocked. Already she could hear footsteps. Irene came in from the kitchen and when she saw Seulgi there all wet and haggard as if lashed in some eternal storm her face seemed to alter in some way immediately. ‘Jesus,’ she said, hand to her chest. ‘You gave me the fright of my life. Why weren’t you answering your phone?’

‘I didn’t hear it ring. Why?’

‘You could’ve told me where you were. I got scared.’

‘Scared?’

‘I didn’t know if something had happened to you.’

‘I’m fine.’

‘You’re soaked.’

Seulgi smiled. ‘Irene,’ she said, ‘I’m fine. I just went for a walk. Why are you so worried?’

‘I don’t know. I just am. I don’t like it when you go out like that. Not in a creepy way or anything. I just like to know you’re safe.’

‘It’s Seoul, Irene. Nothing’s going to happen to me.’

‘You don’t know that.’

‘Irene.’

Irene looked at her. If she was appeased by this answer at all she didn’t show it and Seulgi tried again to smile but it was no use. Irene noticed that. She was sure Irene noticed that strained grin, that poor attempt at some form of strangled reassurance, that everything was truly okay, that she hadn’t spent the better part of an evening and most of the night curled up on a park bench crying to herself in the pouring rain. That she was good and normal. Irene studied her. As if looking for something there in that rainsodden visage. Some form of honesty from Seulgi but of that there was none and she wouldn’t get any. ‘Seulgi,’ she said.

‘What?’

‘Are you okay?’

‘What?’

‘Are you doing okay?’

‘Why wouldn’t I be?’

‘That’s not what I asked.’

Seulgi didn’t respond. She stood there in the hallway as if existing in some limbo, obscured in the darkness, hands messing with her tousled hair, beads of rainwater running over her face like wax. ‘Seulgi,’ Irene said, and when Seulgi looked at her the solemn concern on her face almost made her double over with guilt, made her cry right there.

‘I’m okay,’ she said.

‘You can tell me. Please. If there’s something wrong, just tell me.’

‘I can’t.’

‘Yes you can. You can tell me anything.’

‘You wouldn’t understand.’

‘Seulgi. Seulgi, look at me.’

When she turned her face up to see that stare she saw the same warmth she had fallen in love with those years past at university. She was so beautiful it hurt, so very Irene, always Irene. And in some cruel irony it looked almost as if she had not aged a day either, as if she were not thirty years old at all. Irene nodded towards the kitchen. ‘Can we sit down and talk?’ she said.

‘Talk about what?’

‘Please, Seulgi. You know you can tell me anything. Please.’

And Seulgi took one more look at that worry on Irene’s face and soon she was crying again.

*  *  *
 

They sat down beside one another and it took a long time for Seulgi to stop crying. It was almost three in the morning and they both had work but Irene refused to move. In silence they watched a while the turning of the cold intestate earth. Out there in the universe stars suffused like bolls of ice in the purple sky and the barren shell of a dark city sat quaking in the wind and all was lightless and destitute and it was still raining. It was raining over all the world and over all who lived within it. Irene sat with her legs crossed facing Seulgi and Seulgi would not look at her, could not bear it. Because to look at her there would be to acknowledge the truth of what they had become and what they must yet become, what she must finally admit. And the thought of that was unbearable. They sat there without speaking for a long time. It was Irene who spoke first. ‘Come on,’ she said. She took Seulgi’s hand in her own, soft and firm and loving. ‘What’s up?’

Seulgi shook her head. When she tried to speak all she could manage was a whimper. ‘It’s nothing,’ she muttered. ‘Honestly.’

‘Seulgi.’

‘Seriously.’

‘Please. It’s okay. Just, please.’

Seulgi looked at her for a long time. She searched in those eyes for some escape but there was none and she was alone there and she was almost crying again. ‘It’s me,’ she said. ‘It’s me.’

‘What? What is?’

‘It’s me, Irene.’

‘What is?’

Seulgi just sat there. She tried to compose herself but it was impossible and she knew it. ‘There was something I said to you in uni,’ she said. ‘A long time ago.’

‘What?’

‘I doubt you’ll remember it.’

‘I told you I was immortal.’

Irene almost laughed. ‘I don’t remember that,’ she said. ‘When did you say that?’

‘It was one night when we were both drunk. That’s probably why you don’t remember it, but I knew if I said it when you were sober you’d think I was crazy.’

‘Well.’

‘See?’

‘Seulgi. Go on. Just talk. I’ll listen.’

‘What do I even say? How do I tell you that I was telling the truth?’

‘What?’

‘See? This is what I mean.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘How do you go about telling someone that you’re immortal? That you can’t die. How do you tell someone that without them thinking you’re crazy?’

Irene just looked at her.

‘That’s what I’m saying, Irene. I’m immortal.’

‘Seulgi. If this a way of trying to say something to me, it’s alright. Please just tell me.’

‘I am. I’m being serious.’

‘Seulgi.’

‘I don’t know how else to say it. Never have known. I can’t remember ever admitting it like this to anyone. So here it is. Me, just saying it. Just admitting it. What else can I do. What else do you want me to do?’

‘Seulgi, I don’t understand.’

‘I’m immortal, Irene. That’s what I mean. That’s it.’

Irene smiled nervously. ‘Have I missed out on a joke or something?’ she said.

‘What else do you want me to say?’

‘If you need someone to talk to, I can help with that. There are people out there that – ‘

‘Forget it.’

‘No, Seulgi. Seulgi, wait.’

But she had already stood to leave and by the time Irene had turned out the lights and locked the front door and climbed the stairs Seulgi was already asleep.