"Cause I'm heartless,

And I'm back to my ways, 'cause I'm heartless,

All this money and this pain got me heartless,

Low life for life,

'Cause I'm heartless."

AUTHOR'S NOTE: I know I said 6 chapters but here's #7, one more to go :)  Enjoy!

P.S. In case you haven't realised yet you can click on the image above to take you to each chapter's theme song lol

When she walks through the door the next morning at ten past six Seungwan just looks at her. As if some form of ghost has walked through the door instead. The silence broken only by the hum of the refrigerators. The expression on her face says: Why are you here? And then in perfect deadpan unison she says, ‘Why are you here?’

‘Hi.’

‘Thought you were going on holiday.’

‘I am,’ Seulgi says shyly. ‘I mean, I still am.’

‘Then why are you here?’

‘I’m going tomorrow. I was always going tomorrow morning. I just wanted today off as well, to get stuff sorted. To clear my head before I, you know…clear my head. If that makes sense.’

‘It doesn’t.’

‘Well.’

Seulgi stands by the door and rubs her arm. It’s something she’s taken to doing a lot whenever she’s nervous, and if Joohyun were here the first thing she’d do is point that out, note her little idiosyncrasies, right down to the way Seulgi is so particular about time. Always checking her watch, counting the minutes, mentioning whenever Joohyun is late. But Seungwan, perhaps less perceptive or perhaps not as amused or simply not caring to the same degree, rests her elbows on the counter and says, ‘Can I get you anything?’

‘How about some advice?’

‘You gonna pay for that as well? Or are you expecting it free of charge?’

Seulgi shrugs.

‘Only kidding,’ Seungwan says. She motions for Seulgi to grab the stool and she does, dragging it slowly and unceremoniously out and to the front of the counter, and if there were anyone around to watch them there – therapist and patient in unlikely pairing – they’d give them the strangest of glances. But nobody has been in for hours, and Seungwan’s not long from locking down and going on break anyway.

‘Well,’ she says. ‘Advice on what? No. Don’t tell me. Is it Joohyun?’

‘No.’

‘Really? Then what?’

Seulgi is silent. The refrigerators hum on, playing to their own rigid tune. The light feels very brighter, much brighter than usual. ‘Okay,’ she says, ‘I lied. It is about Joohyun.’

‘Obviously.’

‘Have you had them changed?’

‘What?’

‘The bulbs. Since yesterday.’

‘No. Why?’

‘They just feel very bright.’

Seungwan shrugs. ‘You get used to them,’ she says.

‘Guess so.’

‘What can I help you with?’

Seulgi thinks about it for a long time. Jeju is supposed to be her time of quiet reflection, her calm and tranquil space away from the world where she can sort it all out, but if she’s truthful to herself the chance of that happening is spectacularly low. Her head is Joohyun Joohyun Joohyun and her head will only ever be Joohyun Joohyun Joohyun. The clarity of that is apparent, the solution not so much. She turns and scans the parkinglot for a moment. As if the Countach might be there. The white paint glinting in the low light as it always did. But there’s nothing and they’re alone and the raw red sun bleeds across the sky in the low east and is lost behind the clouds again.

‘I don’t know what to do,’ she says at last. ‘I just feel so stuck. Like there’s nothing in my life – no part of it at all – that doesn’t involve her in some way. I can’t do anything, think anything, without it going back to her. God, listen to me. I sound like I’m in high school or something. It’s useless. And kind of pathetic, really. Isn’t it? Tell me it is.’

‘It isn’t,’ Seungwan says, and Seulgi isn’t sure if it’s a lie or not. There’s nothing to give her away, so she continues. ‘The more I think about it, the more I realise everything she said was right. And I know I’ve told you that already, but I can’t stop thinking about it. And it hurts, because she was right. I don’t want her to be right. I want her to be completely wrong. I want her to have been lying to me, as bad as that sounds, because the alternative is this. It’s knowing she had a reason, and still does, and there’s nothing I can do about that. It’s all on her. It feels like taking away all the power I have left over the situation. I just feel helpless.’

Seungwan listens to every word. When Seulgi is finished she sits up and shifts on her chair and looks at Seulgi properly. ‘Is that what you think?’ she says.’

‘Yeah. Why?’

‘Well.’

‘Well what?’

‘Do you want the truth?’

Seulgi nods reluctantly.

‘I think you’re right,’ Seungwan says. ‘What you just said, I think you’re all right about it. It’s in her hands. You seem like you understand why she pushed you away. Or at least you told me you do.’

‘I do,’ Seulgi says, voice a little hoarse. ‘I think she still loves me. She said she did, but at the time I was just…I don’t know.’

‘Couldn’t process it?’

‘Yeah. Something like that. But now, thinking back to it—’

‘You can.’

‘Yeah. But—’

‘It doesn’t change what happened.’

‘Are you going to finish all my sentences for me?’

Seungwan only shrugs.

‘When she said it,’ Seulgi continues, ‘when she said it’s because I’m a girl, it hit me immediately. It was just this awful, aching feeling, and I didn’t know how to confront it properly. I tried piling it back on her. It’s funny, really. I called her selfish when it was me who was being selfish, wasn’t it?’

‘I don’t know. Was it?’

‘Yeah, it was. Completely. And I wish I had the guts to just tell her that, to just apologise, but what good would that do? It’d do a whole lot worse, I think. It’d just complicate things. She might not even have that number anymore. You know what celebrities are like.’

‘I don’t, actually. Never had the pleasure of meeting one.’

‘You met Joohyun.’

‘Okay, well, yeah. But apart from that. And I never got to know her like you did.’

‘Well,’ Seulgi says, shrugging again. ‘She told me the number she gave me, she’d only ever given it out to about five people. And her other phone, she has the number changed, like, once a month, just in case.’

‘In case people get a hold of it?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Does that happen?’

Seulgi nods grimly. ‘It’s for the best like this,’ she says. ‘Better to leave it all in the past. And who knows, when I come back from Jeju in a couple weeks I’ll be a totally different person. I’ll look at this and realise how dumb this whole adventure was.’

Seungwan only laughs. It’s a careful exhale of air that Seulgi doesn’t much like the sound of, a laugh that’s hiding something under it. ‘What?’ she says. ‘What is it?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Seungwan. Tell me, please.’

‘That’s probably the least convinced I’ve ever heard anyone sound about anything, ever.’

‘Really?’

‘Yeah,’ Seungwan says. ‘Were you trying to convince me, or yourself?’

‘Bit of both. Mostly myself, honestly. God, I’m a mess.’

‘You should just ring her.’

‘No.’

‘Or text her.’

‘Not going to happen.’

‘Why not? What’s the worst that could happen?’

Seulgi thinks about it for a moment. The truth is she doesn’t know. The concept of it becoming worse than this isn’t something she’s approached for any amount of time at all. No part of it is. No possible outcome seems to show itself to her beyond a surface glance in the back of her thoughts, a distant ripple on a water face. ‘She won’t reply anyway,’ Seulgi says quietly.

‘What if she does? Or worse, what if she’s waiting for you to text, or call, and then you never do, and it just passes you by, just like that?’

‘Stop it.’

‘Stop what?’

‘That. Entertaining hypotheticals. Leave it alone.’

‘You were the one that came to me for help,’ Seungwan says. ‘Or advice. Whatever.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Well, here’s your advice. Go for it.’

‘Don’t say that.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because,’ Seulgi says, pausing, formulating the right response. The morning comes up somewhere behind her. Everything rolls on. Twenty-four hours and she’ll be in an airport waiting for a flight out somewhere she can escape all of this. If such a thing is possible. The refrigerators hum and the neon blinds and she thinks and thinks. She says, ‘It’s only going to hurt me when she says no.’

‘What if she doesn’t? What if she says yes? What then?’ Seungwan sits forward, arms on the counter again, wiser and calmer and full of convincing advice. ‘Seulgi,’ she says. ‘Seulgi, look at me.’

‘What?’

‘She said you couldn’t be together.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Because of who you are.’

‘What I am,’ Seulgi points out. ‘A girl.’

‘Right. For your sake.’

‘That’s what she said.’

‘Not hers.’

‘She said both of our sakes.’

‘But she meant yours.’

At that Seulgi only laughs dryly. ‘No,’ she says. ‘She didn’t. She meant both of us.’

‘That’s what she said, but it’s not what she means. She only said that to get you to go away easier. To make you think she was being a bit selfish, thinking about her career and all that. Irene, Joohyun. You know? You get what I’m trying to say?’

‘How do you know?’

‘I know these things,’ Seungwan says. ‘Trust me. I might not be good at much, but I’m killer when it comes to relationship advice. Don’t know why, don’t know how. A lot of history, maybe. That sort of thing. But I know what I’m talking about. I know what people are like, playing hard to get, trying to push you away for your own sake, looking out for you. Being selfless by pretending to be outwardly selfish. It’s classic drama cliché, you know? TV soap . That’s probably why she did it so well, because she’s an actress.’

‘I think you’re talking crazy.’

‘Maybe I am. Maybe I’m not.’ Seungwan offers a curt shrug. ‘The truth is, you won’t really know unless you go for it. Just text her, that’s it. You don’t have to do anything else. And make it quick, before you go. That’s literally all you have to do.’

‘And then what?’

‘Then you just wing it.’

‘God,’ Seulgi says, ‘I’m beginning to think everyone around me is infatuated with the idea of winging things. Or of being ignorant of how the real world actually works. Being naïve.’

‘Hey, you know what they say. You keep the company you are.’

‘I think it’s the other way around.’

‘What?’

‘You are the company you keep, no?’

‘Whatever,’ Seungwan says. ‘You know what I meant.’

‘I can’t do it.’

‘Well, okay.’

‘What?’

‘Okay then.’

‘Is that it?’ Seulgi says.

‘What else do you want me to say? I’ve tried to help. I can’t say anymore.’

‘I expected—’

‘Expected me to be your shoulder to cry on while you try and move on? No. Sorry, that’s not me. Actually, it is. That came out really aggressive. But hey, I’m just being honest. I know you respect that sort of thing. I think you had something cute there. Something good for you. Something you very much needed in your life, and still might. I think she was right for you, I really do. And I stick by that.’

Seulgi says nothing. Only sits there, deep in thought, lip quivering. The truth as she sees it is locked somewhere in between and cannot be shifted and the pain of this fact is almost overwhelming. What remains when all is said and done is the hanging weight of the decision she must make, small as it sounds and yet insurmountable as it truly is – to text or not to text. The significance of insignificance. ‘What do I do?’ she says, almost a cry. ‘Seungwan. What do I do?’

‘Honestly?’ Seungwan says.

‘Yeah. Please.’

‘I can’t tell you that.’

‘Then what do you suggest I do?’

‘Can’t tell you that either. This is for you to decide, and you alone. I’ve said my piece. I stick by what I’ve said. But in the end, it’s on you. But I’ll say this.’

Seulgi looks at her and she offers a warm and comforting smile.

‘Sometimes when stuck between what the heart wants and what the head believes, it’s best to follow the heart. And sometimes it isn’t. But sometimes, you know. Sometimes.’

‘What does that even mean?’

Seungwan shrugs again, eyes elsewhere.

‘You’re very vague, you know that?’

‘It is what it is,’ Seungwan says.

‘Thanks.’

‘Enjoy your trip.’

‘I will,’ Seulgi lies. ‘Thanks for the advice.’

‘Anytime. You know where I am. Right here.’

‘Right here,’ Seulgi says, looking about. The silence again. A question lingering, urging her to speak. So she does. ‘Hey,’ she mumbles.

‘What?’

‘Can I have some ice cream on the house?’

‘You serious?’

‘For my crying. Helps keep my emotions in check. Well, mint chocolate does. And only the big tubs, too. The biggest ones. Yeah. Please?’

Her prediction was almost disturbingly accurate.

All she remembers are small and indistinct pieces, like ripples on a lake, slowly coming back to her, fading again, receding, lost. Whatever happened last night is a blur. Joohyun remembers the bar. She remembers a couple drinks. Yeri was there. Or Yeri was somewhere. Or she was somewhere with Yeri. What follows is jigsaw fragments of a conversation, ghostly advice in a softshell whisper in her ear.

Sitting on the edge of the bed she tries in vain to recollect the entirety of it. Each attempt grows harder than the last. Slowly it begins to fall away. Her head hurts and her hands are numb for some strange reason – perhaps she was lying on them in her sleep – and feels awful and fuzzy and stinks of rum and Coke, teeth much the same. That dreadful post-drink hangover, only this time it’s much worse, it’s compounded by the swinging pendulum of fate that is her life with or without Seulgi, whatever that means, the ball and chain she drags around her ankle wherever she goes, carrying it with her like a prison.

It’s almost midday when she decides to get dressed and have breakfast. Even the cereal tastes wrong. She looks down at the milk in her bowl and thinks: Seulgi didn’t like Froot Loops. She thought they were for kids.

Standing by her window she thinks: Seulgi liked the way the glass gleamed as the sun was setting. Said it had a nice tranquillity to it.

When packing herself a small bag and getting ready to head to her two-PM photoshoot, she thinks: Seulgi liked this jacket. She said it had an iconography to it. Said it should be part of my brand.

Her days consist of much of this and little of anything else. Greetings are kept short and curt and smiles are forced and equally hurried. Her mind clouds. Minutes turn into hours daydreaming, and daydreams turn into regrets, endless replays of that single fateful confrontation that changed it all, manipulations of the truth such that these alternate realities dreamt up may serve better for the both of them. In some she kisses Seulgi and assures her it’s all going to be okay. In others it never happens at all. In one or two the whole word finds out about them together, pictures leaked by the wholly anonymous, and the outcome remains similarly mired. Perhaps a general acceptance. Perhaps nothing at all. Or perhaps the end of her career and the ruination of Seulgi’s life and what then? What but the unbearable burden she carries at merely the thought of this impossible slice of the past.

‘Irene.’

She looks up, acutely aware she’s been staring into space.

‘Could you shift a bit to the left, please?’

She apologises to the director. He snaps a couple more pictures from the opposite side and throws up a hand sign that tells her she’s doing great, but she isn’t, not really. Thinking only: Seulgi liked to watch me when I was posing like this. She said I looked cool in this jacket. Said I looked good wearing anything.

It’s in the evening she decides what to do. The torment has gone on long enough. No longer can it be endured in such a way. So her solution is to ring half a dozen people in her contacts list – faceless associates, friends only in passing – and ask them of the nearest party. It’s a stopgap solution, but what else is there? Only to confront the truth that she is not over Seulgi and won’t even be, not without resolution of the lingering problem. That she still cares. That perhaps the truth is as simple as allowing herself that small and momentary glimmer of satisfaction, world be damned. Instead she shows up at the party in Gangnam half a bottle of gin down and stumbling a slight already, a figment of her own past, best forgotten.

The hall has been rented especially for this. It looks like any other party and smells like it too, parties she's attended before in dozens, pale imitations of a Las Vegas heaven. Joohyun mumbles her way through a series of half-hearted welcomes and hellos and nice to meet yous, smiling and grinning and hugging each of them, and each time fabricating scenarios in her head whereby she’s with Seulgi and she turns and says: This is Seulgi. She’s my girlfriend. I love her. And introduces her. But the hall is cold and empty without her there and will remain as such.

The drinks tumble. She hates drinking and has for years. Sometimes she thinks back to those days, parties long into the nights and longer into the mornings, back when she was still new to the industry and rather impressionable, trying her hardest to make herself liked. And equally as distant as now. Everything with that fake sheen to it, the emptiness of it all beyond the outward façade, away from the hollow smiles and the glasses of champagne and the vodka Pepsis. The difference is that before it was numbed by the alcohol, and when the drinking stopped and the cigarettes started Joohyun began to see it all for what it was, the prompt for her Lamborghini and her late-night drives. To get away from it all. To retreat from that which had so unceremoniously pulled her in, almost unwillingly at first. And as she stands near the minibar and runs a hand up and down the stem of her Martini glass she begins to think on that again, only this time her head hurts and she feels sick and the room dances and mocks her and slips away, and the lights are blinding, and she is without Seulgi, and it hurts almost too much to bear.

She slips her phone across the counter to the barman, an act born of the need to get away from this, the heartlessness of it, the cold and daunting world she wishes every day she were no longer a part of, the darker side of showbizness she has spent years trying to forget. He passes her phone back a minute later, screen unlocked and contact name already flashing on the screen. Joohyun sits a minute staring at it. She doesn’t even remember asking him to do it but she did. She rings and waits. The first time it goes to answerphone. On the second try she gets an answer and mutters something in a voice barely her own and hangs up a minute later.

‘Are you okay?’ the bartender asks.

She offers him an insober smile. ‘Fine,’ she says. ‘I’m not fine at all.’

‘Do you want me to get someone to help you?’

‘Could you get someone for this?’ she asks, pointing dumbly to her chest.

‘What? I don’t understand.’

‘This. My heart. Can you get someone to fix a broken heart?’

He just looks at her.

‘My heart’s broken,’ she mumbles. ‘Broken. I miss her. I love her.’

There is no reply. Joohyun pulls herself up and staggers through the crowd. The lights cast her out alone and it hurts to gaze at them. People are looking at her. She looks worse than she thinks, hair mattered and tangled and eyes glazed. The cab is already outside on the kerb when she stumbles out. She climbs in and out of the cold and hands him a couple bills before he even pulls away, lucky that these parties she so often enjoyed in the past are as secluded as secluded can be in the heart of Seoul. The thought crosses her mind again, and the agony becomes anger: They don't care if I'm drunk. But they'd care if I was with Seulgi.

‘Namsan,’ she says. ‘Take me up to Namsan. Right up to the top.’

‘Are you okay?’

‘Please.’

On the way she watches the world through the window. The shapes of things become distorted and enormous in her swollen periphery. It hurts to look at the streetlamps for any amount of time at all and she's thankful that they dim and die away when they pass the winding back roads. She thinks of Seulgi again. Always thinking of Seulgi. The cab pulls up half an hour later and she thanks him and hauls herself out and staggers over to the bench at the end of the parkinglot, the same one she’s sat many a time before, usually in more sober conditions, observing the slow turning of the night by her lonesome. Yeri’s already sat there waiting for her. She turns and finds Joohyun with a look and stands and motions her closer.

‘You look like ,’ she says.

‘I feel like it too.’

‘Got you this.’ She hands Joohyun a polystyrene cup of coffee. ‘Figured you might need it.’

‘I never said I was drunk.’

‘Didn’t need to. I know when you’re drunk.’

‘Thanks.’

She drinks in silence. Just sitting there. After a while Yeri says, ‘So, are you gonna tell me why you called me drunk again? Or do I need to say it myself?’

‘You know what it’s about.’

‘Are you gonna keep doing this?’

‘Sorry.’

‘That’s not an answer.’

‘I don’t know,’ Joohyun says, and it’s the truth. ‘I don’t know anything anymore.’

‘You need to get it together.’

‘I know. Thanks for the coffee.’

Yeri looks at her and laughs. ‘Did you think about what I said?’ she asks.

‘Not really. But I think you were right.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I can’t remember what you said, but I can totally remember everything you said. You know?’

‘No.’

‘Well, what you said about it subconsciously going in. I think it worked. It’s all there in my head, but I just can’t recollect it or anything. Weird.’

‘So.’

‘So,’ Joohyun says, drinking. The coffee is still rather hot but she’s in no state to stop or think about the potential damage it might do to the roof of .

‘Do you want my advice again?’ Yeri says.

‘A little. A lot, actually. Yeah.’

‘What do you want me to say? I don’t think I can give you an answer.’

‘I know,’ Joohyun says. It hurts to admit as much. ‘I get it. It’s all on me. On us.’

‘Yeah. It is.’

‘I just don’t know what to do.’

‘Talk to her. Tell how much you love her and how much you want it to work.’

‘It’s not that simple.’

‘It is,’ Yeri says. When she speaks it’s with a certainty that Joohyun finds comforting, sober or otherwise. ‘What I said about the world not caring was wrong. I was trying to make you feel better, to cheer you up, but you know that as well as I do.’

‘Yeah.’

‘The world will care if they ever find out. Or at least, the people that matter could care. Could not, but they could. The people that could make it hard for you, or her, or whatever. That’s the cold hard truth of it.’

‘I know that, too. It’s partly the reason I’m here at all. Mostly the reason.’

‘Because you’re scared of the unknown.’

‘Yeah.’

‘You’re scared of what could lie ahead, so scared of it that you’ve thrown away what lies in front of you right now. You don’t know what the future holds and it terrifies you. And in thinking you’re protecting her, you’ve pushed her away. Made it harder for both of you.’

‘It’s not—’

‘Not that simple,’ Yeri says. ‘I know. Believe me, I get it. I feel for you. But this is on you, Joohyun. I’m telling you that as a friend. I can’t tell you anything else. Only you can do that, I think. You and her.’

‘What do I do?’

‘You have to decide.’

‘Decide what?’ Joohyun says, voice quiet and lost in the enormity of the world, searching desperately for an answer.

Yeri takes her cold and raw hand and smiles softly. ‘You have to decide whether she’s worth it,’ she says. ‘Whether the value of what you could gain outweighs the fear of what you could lose. Whether it’s all worth it in the end. Maybe it could go badly. I expect there are a couple ways it go, and some of them not very good at all. But I can’t advise you on that. It’s one of those things that only you can decide for yourself. In the end, it’s your future, and it’s hers, and only you two hold the keys to that. So, there you have it.’

‘I love her too much to let her go.’

‘Well then.’

‘But—’

‘No,’ Yeri says. ‘There is no but. That’s the truth. You wanted it, so I’m giving it to you, drunk or not. No amount of reasoning or bargaining or convincing yourself will change that. The outcome is one or the other – you go for her, or you don’t. There’s no middle ground.’

‘It’s more complex than that. A lot more complex.’

‘It isn’t. That’s the beauty of it. And funnily enough, that’s why it’s so hard to make a choice. Because when you pare it down, when you really think about it, with all the outside variables stripped away, there’s nowhere else you can go. It’s this or that.’

‘What about—’

‘What about what?’

And to this Joohyun cannot answer. Yeri is right. Drunk or otherwise. She turns out and watches the roaring heart of Seoul. A million lights aflame. So much time spent thinking and not enough spent deciding. The mind’s greatest pitfall is in how it tends to make the simple so needlessly complicated, obscures the answer behind walls of apprehension and fear and self-doubt. What if this? What if that? But this could. But nothing. Now is now.

‘I like it like this,’ she says, suddenly very sober. She wipes her eyes with the back of one red and freezing hand.

‘So do I.’

‘It’s peaceful.’

‘It’s melancholic,’ Yeri says wistfully. ‘I like that.’

‘Melancholy.’

‘It’s a good feeling, I think. It can be, if you let it. That longing. Yearning.’

‘Maybe,’ Joohyun says. She knows the silence following is final. That Yeri has no more words for the night. All proper and helpful dialogue has been expended. She must decide for herself now. ‘Sage of the Diners,’ she mumbles, to laughter.

‘Just a friend looking out for you.’

‘Oh Wise and Mighty Sage of the Diners.’

‘Funny.’

‘And now Sage of Namsan.’

Yeri only smiles softly. Joohyun smiles back, quiet and unassuming. Below and beneath them does Seoul soundly sleep. The lights go out one by one. A thousand stars wring out the night in silver and the thin moon sits lodged into the clouds like a cat’s eye watching over them. Somewhere out there lies her destiny, or what has become of it.

‘Thank you,’ she says. ‘For being there for me.’

‘Always.’

‘I think I’ve made up my mind now.’

‘Yeah?’

Another smile. The coffee has gone cold at last. ‘Yeah,’ she says. ‘I think I know what I’ve got to do.’