Sunset Over the Vineyards

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“We can do this every night,

You can be my ride or die.

And we can live this way,

Every day."

Things happen in the blink of an eye that never should. And things that need to happen often pass without so much as a second thought or glance. Seulgi didn’t know whether this was something that needed to happen or be ignored but she thought it was much closer to the former. Yet there was something in the truth of what had occurred that still disturbed her and it was that her life had not changed really at all. That night in Irene’s apartment had grown into a week and then a month and then a week more and still she was up at eight every morning to grab the bus to work. Sometimes she took the bus from Irene’s when she’d stay. Sometimes from her own. But the outcome remained the same. By half nine she was putting burgers into ovens and topping pizzas with prepackaged cheese and sauce out of tins and then come five in the evening she was clocking off and heading straight for Once Upon A Vine where she’d hang out in the storeroom with Irene. Occasionally Irene would head back into the shop and reappear minutes later having dealt with a customer or with stacking the shelves or some other menial task. But nothing had really been altered.

She thought that perhaps the idea of her life altering in any significant way had been silly to begin with. It was love. That much she was certain of. Whether it extended the other way was less a certainty but Irene had claimed as much and that claim was good enough to believe. But it was the same job and the same hollow social circle and nothing really beyond that. And the worst part of it all was that she knew this and had no idea how to fix it because she didn’t know what there was to fix. It was this fleeting and ephemeral cause of major discomfort in her life, the smudged fingerprints on bad glass, vague and opaque and forever changing when seen from alternate angles. What was there to change? Her job, but to what? Her group of friends, but to whom? What could possibly fulfil her, if anything? Irene had filled most of that void but not all of it. And the obvious truth of this was both alarming and frustrating.

It was a warm Tuesday evening in August when she looked up from the chair to find Irene leaning on the storeroom door with a tilt of the head and a frown. ‘What’s up?’ she said. Seulgi only watched her in silence. In the slender light she looked almost unreal. Like something fathomed from a dream. And only the tangibility of her proved to Seulgi otherwise, her tender embrace, the softness of her touches. She was wearing a white buttondown and had her hair loose down her back and smelling strongly of that perfume that Seulgi had become so accustomed to in the past month or so.

‘Seulgi.’

‘It's nothing. I’m fine. Just spacing out a little.’

Irene looked at her. The radio on the shelf to the left sat nestled between two crates of wine playing soft blues on loop. Seulgi shifted in her seat. ‘What’s wrong?’ Irene asked again. ‘You can tell me. Whatever it is.’

‘I’m fine.’

‘Seulgi, please. I know what that face means.’

‘What face?’

‘That one. It’s the same face you get when you’re thinking about something.’

‘How do you know that?’

Irene only smiled. It occurred to Seulgi just how little she knew about Irene and in comparison how much Irene knew about her. All her little movements, her twitches, the meaning of the lines of her face when creased or in thought or laughing or whenever else. She looked down at her hands in her lap and sighed.

‘Seulgi,’ said Irene. She closed the storeroom door and turned the radio down real low and then pulled a chair around to sit opposite so that Seulgi could reach out and take her hands if she so wanted. Seulgi thought about it for a second. Then she said very quietly, ‘I’ll tell you tonight. Over wine or a meal or something. I just don’t want to say it now. I’d rather say it somewhere more comfortable, because it’s pretty stupid.’

‘I’m sure it’s not.’

‘Yeah, well.’

Irene took Seulgi’s soft hands in her own. The smile on her face was absurdly gentle and warming and good. ‘Promise?’ she said.

‘Yeah,’ said Seulgi, breaking into a tired smile of her own. ‘I promise.’

‘Okay, good. I don’t want you being all sad on me.’

‘Sorry.’

‘Don’t apologise. Just talk it out with me, you know? That’s what I’m here for.’

‘Yeah,’ Seulgi said. ‘Of course.’

They were sat in the same restaurant watching the same quiet turning of the night as if no time had passed at all. Out there the liquid light of the pale moon ran like molten silver over the parked cars and the streetlamps looked almost menacing. They listened to the soft hum of music over the speakers. The steady jingle of cutlery. Seulgi looked down at the pizza on her plate. It had gone lukewarm already. ‘I like it here,’ she said. ‘It’s a nice place.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Reminds me that what I’ve got is real.’

‘What you’ve got.’

‘With you, I mean.’

‘I know,’ Irene said, beaming. ‘I like it too.’

‘I like that it reminds me of this. Of us. I just know it’s going to be one of those places that I end up finding sentimental years from now. Even if the pizza’s not that good.’

She imagined that drawing a laugh from Irene but it did not. She just watched Seulgi silently over the table, contemplative of her own accord. ‘Seulgi,’ she said softly.

‘Yeah.’

‘What is it? What’s bothering you.’

Seulgi stole a glance at her that was almost apologetic. She took her wineglass and shook it around and drank half of it down with a wince. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I don’t know what to say that doesn’t sound dumb or sappy or useless of me.’

‘Just say it. I’ll listen.’

‘Well. Okay. Don’t get offended by what I say, okay? I don’t mean it like that.’

‘Why would I get offended?’

Seulgi continued. ‘For the longest time,’ she said, ‘I felt like my life had no direction. I know I kinda touched on this the first time we had dinner here, but it’s something that was weighing on me for a long time before that. This thought that I had honestly no clue where I was or what I was doing or what I even wanted to do with me life. I felt directionless. It was weighing on me a lot more than I thought it would. I know how that sounds, it sounds stupid.’

‘No it doesn’t.’

‘But it’s true. It was getting to the point where I’d spend hours just wandering around after work or on the weekends and imagine all these different things I could have done back at uni, or even before then, no matter how dumb or outlandish they sounded in my head. I imagined loads of stuff. I imagined myself being a doctor or a surgeon or a teacher. Hell, I even imagined myself being an idol a couple times. I don’t know. I just wanted to think of something else for a while, even if it wasn’t real. I wanted it to be. And yeah, I cried a lot. I’ve never admitted that to anybody, but I did. I would sit and listen to music that made me think of the world all the time. There’s a term for it in German. It’s wanderlust. That’s what it made me feel, but it was this awful sadness inside me that was eating away at me. It wasn’t the desire to explore it should have been. It was just this terrible self-hating idea that somehow I’d already ed my whole life. And I know what you’re going to say. I do.’

‘You don’t.’

‘You’re going to say that I’m only twenty-five and I’ve got my whole life ahead of me and I can always decide what I want to do later. But that’s not the point. The point is I’ve already wasted so much already. There’s already so much that I could have done and never did and I think I’ll forever regret that. I thought being with you would fix all of that, and it did for a little bit. Or at least, it fixed most of it. But it's still there gnawing away at me. It won't leave.’

She looked at Irene and immediately dropped her gaze. She was not crying but she thought perhaps in a while she might. ‘Sorry,’ she muttered.

‘It’s okay.’

‘I got a bit carried away there. That was dumb of me.’

‘It’s fine.’

‘No, it’s not. I go all this time without saying anything serious and then bam, I just drop that on you out of the blue like an idiot.’

‘Really, it’s fine.’ Irene drank her wine and set the glass down and said, ‘Do you want to know what I think?’

‘Yeah.’

‘I think you’ve got your viewpoints all wrong. And that’s not something I’m just saying offhandedly. That’s the absolute hardest thing to ever fix. It’s something that’s almost impossible once you get yourself in a rut.’

She looked at Seulgi for a minute. As if trying to gauge something there or come to terms with what she wanted to admit. Then she finished her wine and poured another glass and said, ‘Can I tell you something? Admit something to you? I figured now would be as good a time as ever.’

‘Yeah,’ Seulgi said. ‘Of course.’

‘When I was thirteen, I was diagnosed with a condition called maladaptive daydreaming. You know those times you catch me in bed or in the store and you say I look like I’m zoning out or something? Like that time when we had our first date and I told you I get distracted sometimes?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Well, there you go. It’s a condition where you spend a significant portion of your day, daydreaming. I’m talking four, five hours a day, just lost in my own head. Just thinking of things like you said, different lives for myself. There’s no specific trigger for it. Sometimes I’ll smell something on the street and it’ll take me to somewhere else or something. Sometimes it’ll be a song I hear on the radio or a sentence a customer says or a sentence or piece of text I’ve read during the day. Whatever it is, it’s so easy for me to get into my own head. I’ve tried everything and I don’t think there’s a cure for it. There’s no fixing it. I’ve tried therapy, CBT, meditation. I’ve tried everything short of pills, and what pills are there for that? I don’t think they make any for daydreamers, because most of the time it's just seen as something that everyone does. I never even realised I was unique in that aspect until a doctor told me that dedicating a quarter of every day daydreaming was not at all normal.’

She glanced at Seulgi again. The comforting smile on her face that always made Seulgi feel loved and safe never faltered, not even for a moment. ‘The reason I’m telling you this,’ she said, ‘is because it’s affected me real bad in the past. It’s not anywhere near that now, but it’s still far from great. But there was a time at my lowest where I would spend entire days locked away in bed dreaming, and that was it. When my depression was its worst. It was after I was kicked out of my house.’

‘What?’ Seulgi said. ‘You were kicked out of your house?’

‘Not exactly. That’s actually quite disingenuous to say, sorry. It was at a time when I had my own place anyway, but it’s narrowly along those lines.’

‘What happened?’

‘I told my parents I was gay.’

Seulgi nodded in sincere understanding .‘I’m so sorry.’

Irene gave a dismissive shrug. ‘It is what it is,’ she said. ‘I never expected any different. It’s okay now. They’ve both come around on it completely. I mean, they’re still a bit awkward about it, as if they don’t really know how to approach it or something, but they accept it at least. But it was different back then. They’re the sort of strict conservative family you’d expect from a bunch of different stereotypes, and I don’t think they really understood what I was telling them. They had this image of me all planned out of meeting some handsome engineer or med school graduate and getting married by twenty-eight and having a cushy little life. Maybe a couple grandkids down the line. I mean, that might still happen, but yeah. Not the sunshine and rainbows they wanted from me. So I wasn’t exactly kicked out of the house, but they made it very clear in the way they talked to me and the way they’d ignore my calls and shrug off my offers to come round for dinner that they needed some time to process it all.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Like I said, it’s okay now. Mostly. There's still a stigma and I know that, and not just from my parents, but it's better at least. But that was when I was at my worst. I’d just turned twenty-three and it was my first time moving into my own place, moving away. I had only a couple friends and none within fifty miles of me, and I’d been partially and temporarily abandoned by my parents, and I had no real aspirations or anything. That was when it got real bad. Weeks on end. And the dreaming got worse. And with the dreaming came the crying, and more dreaming and wishing, and then a lot more crying. You want to know what helped me out of it?’

Seulgi nodded.

‘Nothing, really.’

‘What?’

‘I never really got over it. I tried that at first and it didn’t work. I tried forcing myself to believe everything was going to be okay and all it did was drive me further away from being okay at all. That relentless optimism was the last thing I needed. It was the truth of it all that brought me around in the end. The world isn’t made of only good or only bad. It’s a combination of both that makes the healthiest dose. It was only when I stopped saying, “I’m going to do this and it’s going to work and it’s going to be good,” and shortened it to, “I’m going to do this,” that I managed to pull myself out of that hole.

‘And it took a long time. It took an awful long time. I want to say maybe a year or two before I got back on my feet. It was when I started this place, which I suppose quite ironically was all done because I kept telling myself I needed to get out there and do something outlandish that was destined to fail and hey, I guess I'm still waiting for that failure. But that’s the mindset I took. The Just Do It mindset. Sounds stupid, I know. Sounds like an empty platitude, and believe me I understand better than most how ing infuriating empty platitudes can be. "It's all going to be fine," "You'll get through it, you're strong," "It all gets better, just wait." Sometimes that's the last thing you want to hear. I’m pretty at advice, but that’s as good as I can give it, because it’s what helped me. And I’m still not perfect, even with you here. I don’t think I ever will be, and I’m sorry for that. There are still days where I spend hours and hours daydreaming even when it's the last thing I want to do, and I can’t fix that, but it’s better now. It’s an awful lot better.’

She smiled a soft and tender smile that had Seulgi’s heart on edge. ‘What you said just then,’ Seulgi said, ‘about the world not all being good.’

‘Yeah,' said Irene. 'That’s what helped me. I spent so long telling myself it was all going to be okay no matter what I did that I eventually forced myself to try and believe that, even when it wasn’t true. It was only the opposite that got me through it, and I’m always careful to admit that because I know it sounds self-defeating and a little cynical and I know how dangerous that cynicism can be when you're buried away from the world, but it’s true. At least I think it is. I think the sooner you admit some things are just bound to go wrong, the sooner you also realise that there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. There’s a hell of lot right with it, I think.

‘The best thing you could ever do is to just put yourself into something and do it. What’s the worst that could happen? You could fail. There’s a good chance that for a lot of things, you will. But at least then you’ll know. You’ll have that peace of mind that you got up and you tried. And what could ever be better than that? And I know it’s not as easy as I'm making it sound. I'm making it out like an empty platitude again. "Just do it." It's not easy at all. It might just be the hardest damn thing in the whole world. I know that. I’ve been through it. I’m still going through it every day, and I've come to terms with the truth that I'll probably never be free of it. But you do something and you mess it up and then you stick by it and ninety-nine times out of a hundred, it’s insignificant. It means nothing at all. And you’ll feel like an idiot and you’ll cry and you’ll clam up and tell yourself you’re never doing anything again and you’re useless and you’ve wasted your life and you were better just doing nothing and then two weeks down the line you’ve forgotten all about it. It’s a triviality. It’s not even a footnote in your life.

‘But you know what is? That regret. That deep longing that you get whenever you do the opposite. Whenever, instead of putting yourself forward and making a fool of yourself, instead of stepping up and falling down and failing, you do nothing. You live within your safety and your safety is good until it isn’t. Until it all slowly unravels, and then it falls apart, and you’re left with nothing but that longing again. That feeling of “What if I had just done it?” That, “I could have, I should have.” You spend every day chasing the next and nothing ever comes. That’s the pit right there.

‘You know, there were days when I’d force myself to do the simplest of things and I’d hate myself for it because of how bad I’d it up. There were times when I forced myself to use the ATM when I was too scared to because I was nervous I’d put my card in the wrong way round and maybe there’d be people there laughing at me. Or go and ask for something in a shop because I’d look like a fool for not knowing. And maybe those people did laugh and point and talk about me behind my back. But two weeks and it’s over. You forget, they forget. Most of the time it’s even shorter. Hell, most of the time it’s not even there at all. It’s just in your head. So, yeah. There were days on end when all I would do is up the simplest of things. Where I would lie in bed at night and say to myself, “All I did was fail today.” And there was absolutely nothing wrong with that at all. If all you do is stick to what’s under your feet you’ll never be able to reach anything. You'll never find paradise on the ground.’

She turned toward the window and smiled a solemn smile. It looked as if she might be caught again in some lucid vision. When she turned back to Seulgi the glimmer in her eyes was warm and lovely. ‘I heard someone say once that we hate ourselves because we know deep down how small we are in the grand scheme of things and how little we truly know. How incapable we are. But I don’t think that’s true at all. We’re not scared of the impossible. We’re scared of the opposite. We’re scared by what we can be. What we can do if we just decide we want it enough. We know how powerful we are when we’re passionate and determined and motivated and it frightens us. That’s what I think.’

Seulgi only looked at her across the table.

‘Sorry,’ Irene said. ‘I shouldn’t have gotten carried away like that.’

‘I love you.’

‘I love you too.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me you knew how to give motivational speeches like that?’

‘You never asked for one.’

‘I think I might ask for a few more, if that’s alright.’

That earned her another soft smile. She held her hands out and Seulgi held out her own. ‘You know I’m here for you,’ Irene said. ‘Whatever it is, whenever it is, I’m here for you.’

‘Yeah,’ Seulgi said. ‘Thank you for that. I mean it. It means a lot to me.’

‘Hard to believe it’s only been a month. I feel like I’ve known you for years.’

‘I wish I’d known you for years.’

‘Me too,’ Irene said. ‘Want some more wine?’

‘Sure.’

Irene poured them out another glass each. It was a rich and delicate red with a heady aroma of dark fruit. They toasted and drank.

‘Turn your face to the sun, and the shadows fall behind you,’ Seulgi said.

‘What?’

‘Oh, nothing.’

‘Did you make that up?’

‘No. It’s a proverb. A Maori proverb. And a Rihanna lyric, but we’ll go with proverb.’

‘If you turned your face to the sun, you’d go blind.’

‘No, it’s— never mind.’

‘What?’

‘It’s a metaphor.’

‘I knew that.’

‘You don’t actually turn your face to the sun.’

‘I know what a metaphor is.’

‘Then why’d you say anything?’

‘Alright. Well. If you metaphorically turned your face to the sun-’

‘Really now.’

‘Sorry,’ Irene giggled. ‘Just teasing you. Where did you hear it anyway?’

Seulgi gave a curt shrug. ‘On a bookmark,’ she said.

‘What?’

‘I read it on a bookmark.’

She thought Irene would laugh at her but she did not. She made only an amused half smile and held her wineglass up as if to inspect it in the low light and then put it down again. Her fingers never left the stem. ‘I like it,’ she said. ‘Good saying.’

‘Thank you.’

‘For what?’

‘For what you said. For everything. For just being there for me, even when I never said anything. For just being someone I can be myself around again.’

‘It’s okay.’

‘I love you.’

‘I know,’ Irene said. ‘I love you too.’

She thought about it for a long time. She made a couple little doodles every day in her notebook and thought about it at great length and thought about it some more. Sometimes she even had a smile on her face. The notebook was leatherbound and lined and not at all acceptable for doodles and drawing and the pencil was a little nub of a thing with the eraser worn down but it didn’t matter. You make do with what you have. She would draw on the bus and during her break at work and doodle while waiting for Irene and sometimes at Irene’s place as well. Sometimes it was as simple as a potted plant or a sketch of the room. Occasionally it was something more demanding. Irene sat at the kitchen table or posing in the storeroom or in some other place. Never quite her likeness but it didn’t matter. Bit by bit, that piece of her returned.

She found that it helped her somewhat. Healed her. So much so that she began to bring the paintings out of the old box in the cupboard and hang them around her apartment. There were wide green vistas painted in watercolour and detailed ornaments and oakwood tables and a couple portraits of members of her family and those of her university friends painted years ago and left there to grow a cover of dust in her later solitary years. She hung them above the TV and in the kitchen and hung two in her bedroom to remind her every night before bed that she was absolutely worth something and always would be.

There were three words Irene had first said to her that night after confessing how lost she felt in that restaurant. She had said them when they were lying in bed side by side just looking at each other. Unlike in Seulgi’s apartment that was no analogue clock to make noise, nothing at all. Just the silence they shared. And then Irene brushed Seulgi’s hair out of her face and cupped her cheer soft and warm and raw and said, ‘You are loved.’

It was six weeks later when she took the pictures to the art museum twenty minutes from her house. She was still doodling on the bus there. It was a cool evening and the museum was closing soon. She went on up to the counter and said she’d like to see somebody about her paintings and they told her to make an appointment online and so she did. Three days later she received a letter saying they were sorry but her paintings had not been selected and to wait three months to try again. That night as she lay in bed beside Irene she hummed to herself loud enough to make Irene giggle.

‘Why are you doing that?’ Irene asked.

‘I failed today.’

‘What?’

‘You know I said I applied the other day to have my paintings put up? For the exhibition next month?’

‘Yeah.’

‘I got an email back saying they weren’t good enough. Or saying something along those lines in a much nicer tone.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ Irene said, as genuine as Seulgi had ever heard.

‘That’s okay. I’m okay. I failed and I feel good.’

‘Now it’ s about getting back up and failing again.’

‘And then again and again. Right?’

‘Until you succeed.’

‘When and not If,’ Seulgi said with a smile.

‘Yeah. When and not If.’

‘I love you.’

Irene closed her eyes and drew closer and pulled Seulgi in for a tender kiss.

‘Thank you,’ Seulgi said.

‘Don’t mention it.’

‘I mean it.’

‘I know,’ said Irene. ‘I’m always here for you.’

It was her habit to think of things a lot. Not as much of a habit as it was for Irene but a habit all the same. She found her mind wandering, but where before it had been a sign of a hole in her life now it was places she could go with Irene, things she could see. They could go see Shakespeare on Ice. Could go see that new Spiderman movie at the cinema. Maybe go hiking up Namsan and camp under a starlit moonsky the colour of burnished metal. There were so many things and so much time and love for the both of them forever.

She walked with a spring in her step from the restaurant after clocking off and she did not stop until she was outside Once Upon A Vine. She had been smiling the whole way. The day held to it a cool blue hue and the sky ran rose in burning streaks that contained a greater, purer universe. It smelt of daisies and rosemary again. She entered to a tring and went straight past the counter and into the storeroom and pulled Irene into a kiss before Irene could even say hello. When she drew back she just held Irene for a moment.

‘What was that for?’ Irene said.

‘Let’s go.’

‘What?’

‘Let’s go. To Tuscany.’

Irene just looked at her.

‘I mean it,’ Seulgi said, smile playing on her lips. ‘Let’s go to Tuscany, just me and you, for as long as you like.’

‘Think you’re getting a bit ahead of yourself there.’

‘I’m serious. What was it you said to me about trying and failing?’

‘What are we going to fail? Getting on the plane?’

‘That’s not the point. It kinda came out wrong. But I know what I mean in my head.’

‘Where’s this come from?’

‘You said it’s a dream of yours to visit the vineyards of Italy and France and America, so why not? We could do it all for real. Just visit one of the vineyards and sit out and drink wine together and watch the sun set. We could do all that. There’s nothing stopping us.’

‘What about your work?’

‘I’ll book it off. I’ve got days saved up.’

Irene looked at her for a long time. She brushed the hair out of Seulgi’s face and ran a thumb along her round cheek and kissed her gently and said, ‘Let’s go for a walk.’

They walked hand in hand along cooling streets under a pinchbeck dusk and it was good and lovely and everything felt right. Someone somewhere was playing dance music from their car stereo. In the park the cherryblossoms turned and righted and fell through the shafts of pale pink light like tumbling marshmallows. They could hear the distant bark of a dog. It was a long time before either of them spoke at all. Then Irene stopped and tilted her head and said with a beaming smile, ‘Yeah. Alright.’

‘Alright what?’

‘I need some time away. Let’s go.’

‘To Tuscany?’

‘Sure. Maybe Venice, too. Maybe we can go to Rome.’

‘When can we go?’

‘What day is it today? Thursday? I’m losing track.’

‘Yeah.’

‘How about Saturday?’

‘Saturday’s good. I can book next week off. What about flights?’

‘I’m sure we can find something cheap. I’m not exactly desperate for money right now.’

Seulgi looked at her. She was so good and right and it made her so very happy. ‘Thank you,’ Seulgi said.

‘For saying yes.’

‘For just being. That’s all. Just being.’

‘That’s silly.’

‘Yeah, well.’

‘Thank you too.’

‘I love you.’

Irene didn’t say anything. She drew Seulgi in for a kiss and cupped her face and hummed against Seulgi’s lips. Maybe people saw them. It didn’t matter. Nothing much did. ‘Tuscany on Saturday,’ Seulgi said when she pulled away. ‘And I’m thinking Venice on Thursday, so we get a good bit of time in both.’

‘Sure. Oh, and you know what?’

‘What?’

‘How about France, too?’

‘And America?’

‘Sure. We could try Morocco as well. They’ve got some good vineyards in northern Morocco. That sounds like a dream to me. Wine on four continents.’

‘Alright,’ Seulgi giggled. ‘One step at a time.’

‘We can take it slower, I suppose.’

‘We’ve got time.’

‘The rest of our lives.’

Seulgi smiled at the world. ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘The rest of our lives.’