"'How much to light up my star again?

And rewire my thoughts?

Oh, baby, won't you remind me who I am."

Remember.

Things are never quite as they seem.

Remember, and trust nothing.

She remembers the first night. Much later, she’ll forget it. But for now, she remembers.

It’s a Thursday in fall and it’s cold outside and raining and the rain falls slantwise against the thin prison of Seulgi’s apartment window and trails down the cloudy glass and disappears. She can hear it beat down its soft metronome – tap tap tap. It’s a sound she’s become much accustomed to in the colder months, the rainier days. Where the sun bleeds away earlier and there is no light and it rains and rains and rains. Sat there at her desk as always.

It’s an old desk of walnut, a deep shade of red that looks like rosewood or mahogany, the varnished lines imprinted into the smooth of the surface. It’s the only thing in her house that holds any real sentimental value, the only thing not bought offhandedly in a sale over the past year or so. Her computer is right by the window, the soft glare of the monitor cast over her face as she buries her nose in the canvas book in front of her. A handful of coloured pencils, two graphite ones snubbed and faded, pencil shavings and a pink eraser, a small embossed brass tin of pencils and pens and a set of watercolours underneath them that she hasn’t used in months. Beside it sits her Wacom graphic tablet and a pot of coffee gone lukewarm twenty minutes ago and her phone on silent.

It isn’t much of a sight and it isn’t much of a home. A small three-room apartment, just the main room with the kitchen tacked on and a bathroom and a small bedroom off to the side and the door at the far end. A cold cell of a place. Sat there wasting away the hours with her drawings. The ones that aren’t commissioned, that she makes no money from. She doodles them in her pad – men and women, young and old, a few children. None of them have faces. Vague outlines of people, like character seen through a warp in bad glass, a ripple on water. Hair and clothes, model figures without sentience even in her pictorial world.

She doesn’t know why she doesn’t put names or identities to her creations unless paid to do so. Part of her believes it’s a sort of superficial superstition – that perhaps to finish them so delicately would be to invoke some power in them, to give them proper corporeality. But the smarter and ruder part reminds her it’s because she isn’t quite creative enough to do that. Writing has never been her thing. Neither has creating. Only finishing what other people have already invented. Sad as it sounds. She sits there and the clock ticks away. After a while she pours herself another coffee and sits and draws and doodles.

Colours and greys. Outlines, sketches, unfinished products of her rather impressive talent. She’s an excellent artist – even Seulgi, as blindly humble as she can be, understands that. Most freelance artists aren’t as lucky. Many never get to pursue it at all.

By the time she’s finished another page of drawings it’s almost eight in the evening and obscenely dark. There are faint lights out there, distortions of streetlamp pooling in the rainfall, voided shapes of passing cars in the nightglow. Seulgi turns the page and puts down her pencil and leans back in her chair and sighs. For a while she just sits there with her palms pressed to her eyes. Her head swims. It’s only the hum of her phone on the table that rocks her out of her reverie.

She answers without looking at the caller ID. ‘Hello,’ she says.

‘Hey,’ says Seungwan on the other end of the line. ‘You busy?’

‘No. Not really.’

‘Well. You want to grab something to eat or something?’

‘Why? You hungry?’

‘A little,’ Seungwan says, in a voice that tells Seulgi she isn’t really that busy at all. She just wants to catch up with Seulgi. To see how she’s doing. Seulgi turns the page back on her book of illustrations. There’s an indistinct sketch of a couple with a babystroller and a woman with cropped blonde hair in a very stylish pink satin bomber jacket that hangs off one shoulder. On the chest of the jacket are two embroidered hummingbirds perched on a pair of overlooking branches. She’s wearing a pair of long black jeans and a Louis Vuitton belt and Louboutins and Seulgi takes one look at her and closes the book and says with a sigh, ‘Sure. Where are you thinking?’

‘I was thinking maybe get a takeout or something. I could come to yours. If you’re not too busy. Or do you want to get out of the house for a bit?’

Seulgi thinks about it. There’s a terrible isolation to her cold four walls but also a strange solace in it she can’t quite explain. The smallness of it. How enclosed it all is. Between her and the doorway is the black plush couch and the kitchen table and the TV hanging from the wall opposite the couch and not much else. Not even a wall clock. She shifts the phone to her other ear and says, ‘That’s fine by me. Do you want me to order it?’

‘No, I can grab something on the way over. Unless you want to.’

‘I’m fine.’

‘Okay,’ Seungwan says, voice full of her usual optimism. It’s something Seulgi’s always been quite envious of. Almost jealous, in a way that feels vaguely traitorous to their friendship. ‘See you soon,’ Seungwan says.

‘Yeah.’

When Seungwan’s voice is gone and she’s alone she takes a moment to just think about things. It’s something she does often, trapped in the confinement of the truth of who she is and where and what she has to look forward to. And the truth of that is very little. She doesn’t quite know what is wrong – only that something is. Often she goes walking late at night when there’s nobody around to see her and she searches there in the quietude for answers to the emptiness she feels but none ever come. She’s alone and it hurts and it isn’t for lack of trying to connect with others and that’s the worst part. Years the same. Upon returning from those same walks she looks not unlike a somnambulant, achingly tired, endlessly worn out, roused from some terrible dream only by the indecent truth that each sleep in all likelihood holds within it some destiny yet more wretched still.

It’s almost nine when Seungwan shows up. Seulgi’s sat on the couch with her legs folded watching the news on mute. She answers the door to Seungwan’s usually cheeriness – the smile on her small and kind face, the way she waves the bag of food around so Seulgi can smell it better. ‘Hey,’ she says. ‘Sorry I’m late.’

‘You’re not.’

Seulgi lets her in and she busies herself behind the little kitchen counter emptying the contents of the bag. Boxes of chicken and chips too salty and too greasy and small packets of ketchup and barbeque sauce and a small pot of mayonnaise dip to go with it all. She doesn’t even bother asking Seulgi, accustomed as she is to Seulgi’s apartment, Seulgi’s way of living. She just brings over the food and hands Seulgi hers and sits on the far end of the couch with her legs crossed and tucks into the chicken.

‘So,’ she says.

‘So.’

‘How’s your day been?’

‘Okay, I suppose.’

‘Did you get much done?’

‘I finished the last of the character portraits earlier,’ Seulgi says between mouthfuls of food. Seungwan perks up. ‘Yeah?’ she says with a tilt of the head, her blonde hair falling to one side.

‘Yeah.’

‘Like, finished finished? Or just colouring the outlines? If that’s what you do with digital stuff. I don’t even know.’

‘Finished finished. And sent back to the client.’

‘They say thank you yet or anything?’

Seulgi shakes her head. ‘I’m just glad to be done with it,’ she says. ‘Finally.’

‘So what now?’

‘I don’t know. I’ll find something. That’s the downside of being freelance sometimes. Lack of a consistent work schedule.’

‘Yeah. But I bet it beats a nine to five.’

‘Well. Only if it pays the bills.’

‘You know what they say – love what you do and you’ll never have to work a day.’

‘Whoever said that probably never had rent to pay every month.’

Seungwan giggles and her fingers. ‘Well,’ she says. ‘I guess so.’

‘What about you?’

‘What about me.’

‘Done anything interesting?’

‘Not really,’ Seungwan says. ‘Just work, you know.’

‘How’s it going?’

‘About as well as always. We’ve got a big project coming up at the end of the month and we’re all stressing in the office trying to finish up the deadlines before we get the rest of the details through. It’s supposed to be a huge sale. But we’ll see. Doesn’t always go to plan in real estate. I’d say it rarely does.’

‘Wish I’d picked real estate.’

‘Really?’

‘No,’ Seulgi says. ‘Not at all.’

Seungwan gives a tilt of the head and a pout and looks about. ‘What’s that?’ she says, nodding to the table. ‘What you reading?’

‘Just some book.’

‘Well, yeah. What book?’

‘It’s called Cities of the Plain.’

‘Never heard of it.’

‘By Cormac McCarthy?’

‘Never heard of him.’

‘Really?’

‘Yeah. Why? What’s wrong with that?’

‘Well, you know. I just thought with you being really smart and all.’

‘I’ve got to know every author in the world because I did well at university?’

‘I don’t mean that. You’re just smart in general. Like, life smart.’

‘Thanks.’

Seulgi shrugs.

‘Is it good?’

‘Is what?’

‘The book. Is it good?’

‘Yeah it’s good. I read it a while ago but I picked it back up again because it’s got some really good stuff in it. Some good quotes.’

‘Like what?’

‘Well,’ Seulgi says. ‘There’s one I really like – “A dream inside a dream might not be a dream.” I don’t know why I like it. It just resonates with me.’

Seungwan only nods. It’s a nod Seulgi knows quite well, an understanding of Seulgi’s idiosyncrasies, of the things she can’t quite explain properly and would prefer not to explain at all, the comfortability between them. An easing of tensions. She shifts a slight and finishes the last of her chips and her fingers again and says, ‘You fancy doing something this week?’

‘Maybe. Depends what you have in mind.’

‘I don’t know. I didn’t really think that far ahead. Why? You got work to do or something?’

‘No,’ Seulgi says, and says no more. Seungwan just looks at her. There’s a certain sadness in her eyes that is almost solemn and very nearly heartbreaking in how accepting it is. So much so that Seulgi almost has to look away. ‘Can I ask you a question?’ she says.

‘Of course.’

‘Do you ever think about where you went wrong?’

‘What?’ Seungwan says.

‘I don’t know. I just figured I’d ask.’

Seungwan takes a long time to respond. Then she sits up a slight and says, ‘Yeah, I do. I wish I could say I don’t, but I do. It weighs on me a lot – the failures of the past. Things I could’ve done better, done differently. Not done at all. Things I should’ve done. I suppose that’s one of my biggest weaknesses, among quite the handful, I’ll admit. It’s hard to let go of the past. Even harder to be comfortable with letting it go. If such a thing is possible. I’m not quite sure it is.’

‘Yeah,’ Seulgi says with a wistful smile. ‘Me neither.’

It takes her a long while to sleep. She lies there and takes it all in for no reason at all. As if she hasn’t done it hundreds of times before. The blue of her bedsheets, the blue of the curtains drawn tight over the lone window. The smell of the cold. There’s a strange damp creaking from somewhere down the hallway of her apartment building and a soft echo from further away and she can hear the hum of cars outside and it’s almost maddening. She lies there for more than an hour. She thinks: This house is not a home for me. Not at all.

The streets of Itaewon are alive. The sound of a thousand people, the steady shuffling. Everything is much too bright and much too immediate and it hurts her eyes. The lights flicker in the night like neon beams of gold and pink and she’s never seen it so bright before. Everything has a strange sentience to it. A soft hue, a faint glow to the outlines of shapes. There’s a liveliness to it that has her heart racing and it’s strange because she knows it isn’t real.

None of it is. Standing there on the street corner with her hands in her pockets she knows she’s selling herself a lie and it hurts and it terrifies her because it feels so real. Dreams aren’t half as good – there’s no tangibility to them, nothing to hold onto and feel. Sleepwalking through the nights is just that. Vague and indistinct shapes of people and places, ideas thrown into the mad hat of her own mind. And this is not that. The ground under her feet is right there. The air smells of the cold and faintly of alcohol from downwind and gasoline from a handful of cars. She can hear the car horns blaring and people laughing. The lights are brighter and there’s a gleam even to the mundane but otherwise it’s all right there – all as real as it can be.

For a while Seulgi just stands there. Is it real? Is anything? There’s the vividness of lucid dreaming but this isn’t quite that. It almost feels like it’s more. Standing on the edge of insecurity she’d rather close her eyes and shake her head and wake up in the cold dark solace of her own room with her own blue sheets and her blue curtains and the echo down the hall but it isn’t possible. She closes them and takes a deep breath and even the darkness is spiralling out of control, shapes on the backs of her eyelids.

It’s a feeling that makes her want to cry and she isn’t sure if it’s ecstasy or sheer terror. Maybe it’s the freedom of it. How loosed from the shackles of yet another day she feels. So she walks. The streets glitter in the lost lonely dark and people laugh and she smiles at them and walks on by. Time is inconsequential, immemorial. The neon runs on into the night, a dazzling beauty to it. She walks through Itaewon alone and smiling. Even the cold doesn’t feel cold. There’s a strange sentience to it – she knows it’s cold, but she doesn’t quite know why. As if the neural part of her brain works on some unseen level she has no answer for. What else is real? Is up, up? She gazes at the sky. Is left, right? Who knows. She walks on. Nothing is open at this time save the bars and the nightclubs and she can hear the hum of them everywhere, a claustral void of sound beckoning her on. And the lights. It smells of vodka and marzipan and honey. On the next street there are white cherryblossoms falling from no cherryblossom trees at all. She holds out a hand and catches two in her palm, small as snowflakes on a winter’s day. Seulgi closes her palm around them. When she opens her hand out again one of the cherryblossoms is gone, the other is pink.

‘Okay,’ she mutters. Three streets southbound the cherryblossoms stop falling. All she can see are the lights and they’re so bright and so immediate that it’s almost blinding but the last thing she wants to do is look away. Walking on. The people she passes are as vague as the drawings in her canvas book – caricatures of people, stereotypes, and if they indeed were just as physically faceless Seulgi would be none the wiser. She walks and walks, infatuated by everything. A street down there’s a group of guys smoking on the way to some club and the smoke from their cigarettes paints the sky a pale blue light like signal fire and soft orange cinders turn and right in the waves of smoke and appear and vanish and reappear again like ghost cinders. She watches, entranced. Maybe it isn’t real, maybe it is. Does it matter? She can smell the smoke at least. And watching it she begins to feel like perhaps this is what it’s like to be on drugs. The faint spinning of it, the lucid patterns. Like designs of burning madness.

The next street is a long line of nightclubs and dive bars all playing similar music. There’s the steady hum of it under her feet, the rumbling even there on the sidewalk. More smoke. Three places down on the right side is another club. The people outside are queuing halfway down the street in two separate queues. The name hanging in pink pastel neon is so bright she can’t even read it. When she moves it moves with her, the soft lines dancing, the hazing like floral patterns. There are people lined almost around the corner and standing right at the back is a short woman with dark and a pale face that looks like porcelain in the shimmer of the light. The way it catches her face is almost angelic. So much so that Seulgi has to stop and wipe her eyes and look again.

She’s still there. A figure in the anonymity of it all. There’s a certain glow to her, too, and Seulgi notices it almost immediately. A sort of softbody thrum that encapsulates her, isolates her. Her face falls about her shoulders like ink and her face is so beautiful it’s almost startling, the sharp line of her jaw, the prettiness of her dark eyes, and if Seulgi could draw right now she knows she’d never be able to draw anything or anyone half as attractive, as enrapturing.

For some reason the first thing she does is walk up to her and smile and say, ‘Have you got a cigarette?’

The woman looks at her. There’s a moment very briefly where Seulgi realises what she’s done. Approaching a stranger is something entirely out of bounds to her – she exists in this state of perpetual anxiety at the world and all things contained therein. But standing in the freezing cold with her hands in her jacket pockets and this woman in front of her and the lights glimmering there’s none of that at all. There’s just the woman’s soft smile, the paleness of her face, the rouge of her lips, the contrast of it in her black jacket. She shakes her head and says, ‘Sorry, I don’t smoke.’

‘Oh. Sorry for asking.’

The woman just smiles at her. ‘Are you queuing?’ she asks.

Seulgi thinks about it only for a moment. The answer is startlingly clear. She says, ‘Yeah.’

‘Are you on your own?’

‘Yeah. Are you?’

The woman nods. She looks at Seulgi for a moment but it feels like forever. And perhaps, locked away in a world of her own design, it is. ‘I’m Irene,’ she says.

‘Irene?’

‘Yeah.’

‘That’s a really nice name.’

‘Thanks.’

Seulgi doesn’t bother asking if it’s her real name or not. She isn’t real anyway. None of it is. The night burns to its rawest core and the night shines on and none of it is real at all. She holds out her hand and Irene shakes it, soft and gentle, a touch that has her hairs on end. ‘I’m Seulgi,’ she says. ‘Kang Seulgi.’

‘Seulgi.’ Irene smiles. ‘Nice to meet you, Kang Seulgi.’

‘Nice to meet you too.’

‘Are you—’

It’s four AM when she wakes. Still cold, still dark. There are no cars now. No hall echo, no dripping tap, no lights, no Irene. Just the dark.