Repeat After Me

After Hours

 

 

"You don't have to cry, girl,

Let me wipe your eyes,

I promise you will always be mine."


 

She lives her life happiness by happiness, posted up in the void between realities, staunchly defiant in the face of what might become of her should she ever confront it. What it holds in its finality. The alternative is this. The power of delusion is in its uncanny ability to warp that delusion itself into something that appears, on the surface, so immediately real and so believable that there cannot possibly be any other outcome. And if Seulgi is deluded then so be it. The night before it all begins to break down is one where she lies on her bed listening to the beating of the rain on her windowpane and posing questions for herself that might never resolve themselves. Or be resolved by her. After a while she gets up and goes into the kitchen and pulls out a small unopened box of scented candles from under her kitchen sink and takes one of them back into her bedroom.

It’s a small and roundshaped little thing that Seungwan bought her for her birthday last year. And an oldfashioned lighter to match. She sets the candle on her bedside table and lights it and sits there, back against the headboard, silently and intimately conversing with herself against the quivering spheroid of warm light like a woman gone mad.

Suppose I chose to stay with Irene. In a world other than this one. Why not?

You can’t.

Why can I not?

It doesn’t exist. She doesn’t exist.

You don’t know that.

You went yourself, Seulgi. You went to her apartment and you saw.

That wasn’t here. That was another world. The curtains were different.

Curtains. Listen to yourself. You sound manic.

They were different. They were purple.

You changed them.

Did I?

I don’t know.

I don’t know.

You must have changed them.

Suppose I wanted to stay.

You can’t. There are things for you here.

There’s nothing for me here.

She shifts against the headboard again. The candle flickers and the flame wobbles, the light shifts with her. Receding, exploding across the ceiling, across the bright wash blue of the curtains and her bedsheets and everywhere else in her room. The rain patters down in metronome. Seulgi picks up her phone and thinks about ringing Seungwan. Then she does it anyway. She waits twenty seconds before it hums against her ear and Seungwan says, in a quiet voice, ‘Hey.’

‘Hey. Are you busy?’

‘Not really,’ Seungwan says. ‘It’s eleven PM.’

‘I know. Sorry.’

‘What’s up?’

Seulgi is quiet for a long time. Listening to the rain. What is the truth of this? What of it can be revealed without even Seungwan abandoning her? Eventually she settles on, ‘Nothing. Nothing’s up. I just wanted to call you. Feel like it’s been ages since we’ve hung out. Or I’ve heard your voice.’

‘You missing me or something?’ Seungwan jokes, and though she doesn’t know it Seulgi is almost crying and she can’t quite explain why. There is no Seungwan anywhere else. Not with Irene, not in her world of purple – her one-time limbo – not anywhere. Not as far as Seulgi is concerned. And if she must decide between a life that is not quite a life with Irene and this, the answer becomes mired, the lines blurred. One is a love formed in the recesses of defeat and the other is a lifelong friendship forged in sisterhood. Which exists? Which holds to it the tangibility that Seulgi so urgently craves? The boundary between ambition and insanity is very thin indeed. She sits there and closes her eyes and listens to the rain. Seungwan waits. It might be ten seconds and it might be ten minutes. Time – as it has been for longer than Seulgi can remember now – has no real meaning. It is utterly inconsequential.

‘Seulgi? You there?’

‘Sorry,’ Seulgi mutters. ‘Sorry. Got distracted for a minute.’

‘How’s work been?’

‘Okay, I guess. Nothing really to say about it. What about you?’

‘About the same. You know how it goes.’

‘Yeah.’

‘But I was thinking maybe we should go for a meal or something. Been quite a while.’

‘Sure. Sounds good to me. When?’

‘Whenever you’re free.’

Seulgi thinks about it for a moment. She thinks about something that unnerves her very suddenly. Everything has a superficial sheen to it. Nothing feels any more real than it does with Irene. If anything, it is less so. Seungwan seems to exist  nowadays – as far as Seulgi is aware – solely as an instrument of her loneliness, to check up on her every now and again, to offer her shoulder to cry, a passing form of support. She may as well be a cut out. A paper figure devised to fill a single need for Seulgi. Yeri is no different. A work associate, because Seulgi requires work associates – Sooyoung, too. Who else? Who is there to think about? Seulgi understands there is nobody else she has regular contact with. Another thought comes to her. It’s asive and dangerous and insane and she can’t shake it for even a minute. Is asks: Are they real? Is Seungwan real? My best friend. Is she real?

‘How long have I known you?’

‘What?’ Seungwan asks, almost laughing.

‘How many years have I known you?’

‘I don’t know. Quite a few. Why? What’s brought this about?’

‘Nothing. I don’t know. I’m just, you know…feeling distracted a lot lately.’

‘I know. You’ve said. And you sound it. I can hear it in your voice.’

‘You can hear me being distracted?’

‘I know what you sound like when you’re not really paying attention to anything, yeah. It’s kinda obvious.’

‘Well,’ Seulgi replies, and says no more. She thinks about it again. As if trying to convince herself of it. This world being a world of false dreams would ensure Irene was real, would it not? Seulgi thinks with a severity that turns her stomach cold  there is nothing that dictates this has to be true at all. The illusory has no limits. If there exists a dream in which she has full control and she can exhibit this control while convincing herself it is real then it stands to reason there could be others, too. They could all be as fleeting as Irene, or Seungwan, or whomever. Or none could. Seulgi rubs her head. ‘I’m losing my mind,’ she says.

‘What?’

‘I’m slowly losing it. Actually, not even slowly. I’m going insane.’

‘What’s brought this on?’ Seungwan asks.

The answer is a long time coming. She says, softly, ‘I’m having these dreams again. They never really stopped, to be honest. And every time I have them, they become more and more convincing to me. They feel more real than, well…real life. I know that doesn’t make sense.’

‘Like, lucid dreaming?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t even know anymore. I don’t know anything.’

‘You sound really torn up.’

‘What do I do?’

‘I don’t know. About what? Is it really affecting you that badly?’

‘Yeah,’ Seulgi says.

‘Maybe you should see someone about it. Like a therapist or something. Or a psychologist. I don’t know which one would be better.’

‘I can’t afford a therapist.’

‘I know that feeling. I don’t know what to suggest. But you know I’m here. If you ever want to talk to me, I’m here. God, I sound like a broken record.’

A strange and quite unfair thought hits Seulgi. It urges her to say: Yeah, you do.

‘I mean it.’

‘I know,’ Seulgi says. ‘Thanks. I should probably let you get to bed.’

‘I’m not that busy. Honest.’

‘Still.’

‘I’ll call you tomorrow, okay? We’ll go for dinner or something after you’ve finished work.’

‘Okay. Thanks.’

‘Anytime.’

Just before Seungwan is about to hang up Seulgi stops her again.

‘What?’

Seulgi is quiet. She wants to say a lot more than what comes to her. Eventually, she says, ‘Thank you. See you tomorrow.’

‘Yeah, will do. Bye.’

She sits, alone and cold, the phone line gone dead. It seems Seungwan has time only when it suits Seulgi, strange as that sounds. Time whenever Seulgi needs it. Empathy explains it as a true and honest friend – there whenever Seulgi is down, as close as sisters. But there is no empathy remaining. Nothing but the thin and bare wire that holds taut her grip on comprehensibility. It tells her that Seungwan’s time is Seulgi’s time, that they are one and the same. That Seungwan is there whenever Seulgi needs her because Seulgi has designed her that way. Yeri is no different, engineered to offer a partial dose of normality to this feverland. Work is what normal people do, so Seulgi has made Yeri, a normal person who works, to fill in this necessity for her.

‘It’s come to this,’ she mumbles to herself, and it is almost morose in how revealing it is. How it almost feels liberating to sit back and think on the limits of her delusion, or lack thereof, such that she has time to convince herself even her best friend is the fiction of a dream. Seungwan has become no more than an item of Seulgi’s abhorrent selfishness. Sequestered away in this realm of ipseity Seulgi has patience only for herself and for Irene. Soon she lies down and sleeps. The rain beats on late into the night. It is raining here as in Busan, Japan, across the world. It sounds as if it will never stop raining.

 

 

She has the dice with her every time she falls asleep. She thinks perhaps the superstition associated with them is what has them appearing in her dreams so often, but she doesn’t think much on it at all. To do so would be in Seulgi’s view to invoke something in the conscience of it. Much like Irene, better to leave it alone. So she keeps them in her pocket, there but out of sight, like a charm to remind her that things are not ever as they seem. And Irene never asks about them.

She hides the misery very well. So well that on occasion even she forgets about it, such is the power that Irene holds over her. The first time Irene asks about it again is when they’re sitting on the couch in Irene’s livingroom watching a movie. It’s a nothing of a movie, something Irene put on to pass the time while Seulgi lies there with her head resting gently on Irene’s shoulder. She’s close enough to smell Irene’s perfume, to almost smell the mint of her breath. The movie plays on. Irene asks very gently, ‘Are you okay?’

‘What?’

‘You’ve been acting really different lately. Well, not different, really. I don’t know how to describe it. But yeah.’

‘What do you mean?’ Seulgi asks, eyes on the TV, fingers threading through Irene’s idly.

‘You know,’ Irene says. ‘You’ve been really…clingy.’

‘Clingy?’

‘I guess, yeah.’

‘Is there anything wrong with that?’

‘No. I didn’t say that. I kinda like it. I like it a lot, actually. I just thought it was a bit weird for you.’

‘Sorry for being weird. I just wanted to cuddle.’

‘Oh,’ Irene says. Seulgi thinks she might be smiling. ‘Okay.’

‘Sorry.’

‘Don’t be. I don’t mind.’

As if to assure Seulgi of this she squeezes her fingers a slight and places a tender kiss on her hair. Seulgi just lies there. Her heart races as if it were the first time. Part of her believes she might never get over it. The movie ends and another begins and the day grows dark and soon that movie ends too and they just lie there, soft and warm and domestic and right, hand in hand without a word. Seulgi smiles. She smiles for a long time.

 

 

A week later, or four. Time in an hourglass that she cannot see. The urge grows and Seulgi ignores it.

‘Seulgi?’

‘Sorry,’ Seulgi says, and smiles.

‘Distracted?’

‘A little.’

‘What about?’

‘Just work things,’ Seulgi says, and it isn’t quite a lie, but Irene cannot know the proper truth. It would not make sense to her. Not that anything does.

‘You wanna talk about it?’

Seulgi offers another smile. She leans half across Irene’s kitchen table and places a kiss on her lips and sits back and says, ‘Sometimes I just feel like doing something different, you know?’

‘Yeah. I get that all the time.’

‘Really?’

Irene nods. ‘There are times where I think maybe I’d have been better off not going into OpSec,’ she says. ‘Gets a little too by-the-numbers.’

‘What about the people you work with?’

‘They’re cool. I wouldn’t consider them close friends or anything, and I don’t really hang out with them outside of work, but they’re cool. What about you?’

‘What about me?’

‘Your work colleagues. You don’t tell me about them much.’

‘Well,’ Seulgi says. She plays with her food. Her fork circles the edge of her plate with a harsh metallic scrape. Idle shapes in the gravy.

‘Seulgi?’

‘They’re nice. But the same. I don’t see them outside of work hours.’

‘Why not?’

‘I don’t know. I really don’t.’

‘Maybe you should. Maybe it’d do you some good. I know there’ve been times at other jobs I’ve had where the job was alright but the people weren’t. Or occasionally where I found I enjoyed my job a lot better once I got to know the people I was working with. It might be the same for you. And if not, hey, at least you tried, right?’

‘I guess so,’ Seulgi smiles with a smile. ‘You always know the right things to say.’

‘I’m good like that.’

‘Yeah. Yeah, you are.’

 

 

She saw it from outside once.

As the urge builds it’s a memory that comes to Seulgi time and time again. They walked past the SBI Insurance building. Seulgi pointed it out. She stood there on the kerb and said: That’s where I work.

And Irene nodded and said Cool and they walked on.

She saw it. But only from outside.

It’s a minor distraction again, only for a second and then gone, not quite enough to bug Irene, or to even get her to notice – that only comes when Seulgi is sat over dinner staring into space, or playing with her food, or in bed with that glassy look in her eyes that Irene hates. This is a much smaller infraction. It’s the sort of temporal ponderance that Seulgi tells herself she can get away with, but the truth could be this or could be entirely the opposite. Does Irene understand everything that Seulgi thinks? The paradox of creator-created comes into play again. Master and subject. What bonds bind Irene to Seulgi’s subconscious whims? Seulgi thinks perhaps they were never there in the first place.

She unscrews the cap on her water bottle and drinks and wipes and holds it out for Irene but Irene is bent over heaving and coughing with her hands on her knees, like some spelaean creature having newly learnt the concept of walking upright. At that Seulgi has to laugh. It’s a sight that dissolves everything else in a momentary wash of love and comfort.

‘You good?’ she asks.

Slowly, Irene comes around. She stands up and wipes the sweat from her forehead and her face is flushed red and her hair matted with sweat and even her shirt, too. The sweat pools around her collarbones. Seulgi thinks it looks far too y on her. The thin white cotton of her shirt and her running shorts and that sweat and her hair tied back and all messy. Irene out of breath. She takes a long while to reply, snatching the bottle and finishing it off and handing it back to Seulgi. She looks as if she wants to say: No, I’m not. Then she says, ‘No. I’m not.’

‘It’s just a bit of running.’

‘I told you before – I don’t do manual labour.’

‘It’s not manual labour. It’s exercise.’

‘Exercise is a form of manual labour.’

‘Don’t be such a baby.’

‘Oh, I’m the baby now?’

‘It’s literally just running.’

‘For— how long was it again?’

‘About twelve kilometres.’

‘.’

‘C’mon. Get over it.’

‘I’m gonna die.’

‘Irene.’

‘I’m gonna keel over and die.’

Seulgi can only laugh. For a while she just stands there, laughing with Irene in the cool heat of the afternoon sun, with no other care in the world. She looks at Irene again. She thinks, briefly: This is good. This is what normal people do. Normal couples. Things together. This is good.

‘Are you hungry?’ she asks.

‘I could eat a whole restaurant of pigs right now.’

‘That’s all I needed to here.’

‘Seulgi.’

‘What?’

‘Never again,’ Irene gasps, and it has Seulgi laughing once more.

 

 

They settle into a routine. Things become so normal that Seulgi begins to forget everything else. The merger is so close to being successful and Seulgi in all her practiced ignorance smiles and laughs and sleepwalks through it. She is a pilgrim in her own mind, her own wavering sanity. Disillusionment is almost a luxury now.

Has it been four months? Eight? A year? At no point has this made itself clear. Seulgi thinks it doesn’t quite matter. Love to this degree is the same regardless of the passing of time. Irene is Irene, is Irene. And always will be. They stand outside the door a moment while Seulgi fumbles with her key. Her heart beats like electric in her chest and she’s cold to the touch and she can’t let Irene know why and with her key in the lock she stops and part of her wants to turn around and run away or perhaps even to wake up but she doesn’t, and she can’t.

‘Seulgi?’

‘Yeah,’ Seulgi says. ‘Lock was stuck.’

She opens the door and steps inside her apartment. She’s been here before – the curtains red, her room otherwise the same – but Irene could change all that. Her presence is the outlier, the unknown in the equation. The balance may be shifted. Should she be incompatible with this version of events then what would happen? Would she cease to exist? Would Seulgi’s apartment? Would the thin barrier of reality come crumbling down? Seulgi stands in the middle of the room and looks about and nothing happens. Irene walks around, as if inspecting a crime scene. The window at the far end welcomes in a bar of pale light from the cold afternoon.

‘It’s…nice,’ Irene says.

‘Nice?’

‘Well, what else did you expect me to say? It’s not really any different from, like, my apartment or anything. Not really. It’s homely, though.’

Seulgi nods. Thinking: Is it? Really?

‘Are those your drawing books?’ Irene asks, pointing under the desk.

‘What?’

‘The illustration work you told me about. Is that them?’

‘Oh,’ says Seulgi. ‘Yeah.’

She braces for Irene to ask to look at them but she never does. She just keeps on walking around. There’s something quite unnerving in the mention of her drawing. There they lie, untouched for months, gathering dust. A career in illustration, digital drawing, whatever else, was a fantasy. Life has taken over. There is no time anymore for dreams.

‘Glad you like it,’ Seulgi says.

‘Why’d it take you so long to show me?’

‘I don’t know. You never asked. I figured you didn’t mind, since I slummed it at your place so much.’

‘Slummed, yeah?’

‘You know what I mean.’

Irene giggles. She stops pacing around and tugs Seulgi close to her by the thin fabric of her shirt and murmurs against her lips, ‘Sure. You gonna show me your bedroom now?’

‘Already?’

‘Not like that. Get your mind out of the gutter.’

‘It’s through there.’

She shows Irene around like an estate agent. Irene leans down and touches the bed for some reason. She looks back at Seulgi in the doorway and says, rather amused, ‘It’s very red.’

‘What is?’

‘This room.’

‘It used to be blue.’

‘Why’d you change it?’

‘I don’t know,’ Seulgi says.

 

 

They’re walking by to grab lunch on the way to Irene’s drama practice when she asks a question that has Seulgi reeling:

‘Have you ever thought about marriage?’

‘What?’

Irene walks slower. She gives a dismissive sort of shrug. ‘I just meant in general,’ she says. ‘Not anything specific.’

‘What? Like…you know?’

‘Maybe. I was just wondering.’

‘No,’ says Seulgi. ‘I hadn’t. Have you?’

‘Here and there, yeah. Just, you know…in general. I’ve always wanted to get married. One day, I mean. One day.’

‘Yeah.’

‘I just meant at some point in my life. Not anything specific.’

‘I think I want to get married too,’ Seulgi says. ‘At some point in my life.’

‘Well.’

‘Yeah.’

Irene is quiet. The wind blows through her hair in a treacherous sort of storm and the cold carbide sky looks fit to rain. There’s a sandwich shop on the corner where they stop for midmorning lunch and coffees and sit by the window on the high stools savouring the receding dryness of the day ahead of them. ‘I should be done by six or so,’ Irene says.

‘Okay, cool.’

‘You didn’t have to come with me, you know.’

‘I wanted to,’ Seulgi says. ‘It’s not like I have anything better to do today. Figured it’d do me some good to get out of the apartment.’

‘Out of my apartment, you mean.’

‘Sure.’

‘Well, I’m glad you did.’

‘Me too,’ Seulgi says, and pauses. Irene is still eating. It takes her a while to notice Seulgi sat there staring across the street.

‘What?’

‘I’ll be back in a minute or two.’

‘What?’ Irene asks again.

‘I won’t be long,’ Seulgi says. She’s already standing.

‘Where are you going?’

She forces out a smile. ‘I just remembered I forgot to do something at work on Friday. I forgot to give something back and I didn’t tell my boss about it.’

‘Is it even open today? It’s Sunday.’

‘Yeah. Sooyoung’s in every day.’

‘Who is Soo— oh, your boss?’

Seulgi nods. Her eyes are on the building across the street. ‘I’ll be back in a couple minutes,’ she says. Irene shrugs and goes back to eating. When Seulgi is outside she crosses the street and stands gazing up at it for a minute. Not long enough to be considered too strange, or for Irene to notice something is off. Cold grey concrete and glass. It looks the same as when she passed it with Irene before – was that two weeks ago, or four months? The lobby is open. A slender woman in her thirties sits behind a desk on the right side and punches something into a computer. Seulgi puts a hand on the countertop and works up her best professional smile.

The woman looks at her and smiles back. ‘How can I help you today?’ she says.

Seulgi bites her tongue. It takes a lot of effort to say, ‘Can I talk to Sooyoung, please?’

‘Sooyoung who? Do you have a name?’

‘She works at Sincheon BI Insurance.’

‘I’m sorry, but I think you have the wrong building.’

‘Oh. What’s on the third floor?’

A short pause. The woman says: ‘Nothing. It’s been under renovation for the past eight months.’

‘Nothing?’

‘No. Sorry. Can I take a name or number for you?’

Seulgi smiles. ‘That won't be necessary,’ she says.

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TEZMiSo
One more chapter to go! :)

Comments

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ChouLights
#1
I just started listening to The Weeknd religiously and this whole series makes me so happy thank you
Kaz012_ei #2
Chapter 16: Uhmm... I guess I'm speechless? I really haven't grasped what happened or maybe my mind isn't attuned to understanding this deeper. There's that gap that got me confused but I guess it happens... There are events that would lead to believing a false reality, and we end up trying to reconnect the severed lines. Not sure what went on to trigger that or it's just really deep thinking of existentialism.. Anyway, glad that I finished this. As usual, thank you for sharing this!
JaeKnight
#3
Chapter 8: .... I-uhmmm,,,, I must have skipped a chapter lol.
JaeKnight
#4
Chapter 6: Yikes idk who Wheein is lol. But hmmmmm why do i think Irene is the person Seulgi wants to be? I mean the call, it shows on the chapter that she's a bit timid (on calls). And then Irene works at a call centre. And all those details. Theyre very similar, at least in terms of interests, but Irene is a step ahead than Seulgi. HmmmMmmMm
I'm a fan of subtly so this is very nice
peachyseulgi
#5
Chapter 16: i dont know if i understood it well but what i have grasped so far is that seulgi was looking for answers all this time not knowing that looking for them would only break her. and knowing that ignorance is a choice and a blessing, would support that maybe all seulgi needed was to stop asking questions and live life as it is, may it be between two different time lines or two different universes. she just needed that little push inside her to let her finally feel happiness.

nonetheless, this was a great read. happy that i was kept updated by aff on this fic. thank you for this, author.
jenlisasbiatch
#6
Chapter 15: I'm not smart enough to understand what happened but gods this story is so good. Thank gods I let this story be finished first instead of waiting for the chapters because I would've lost my mind while waiting and asking and pondering what really is the truth and how would the story turn out! Another great read. Thank you
Reveluv4vr
#7
Chapter 12: I'm confused the way Seulgi is now more confused!! When did Irene favorite color change all of a sudden!! ?? And the change in color of those mysterious curtains..
Yultislay89
#8
Finished reading this masterpiece at 2 in the morning :”
Omg I was fascinated by the concept of this story, and the ending!! Ughh I’m happy for Seulrene but I’m still curious about the truth, I’m thinking that maybe Irene is real in the first place, and maybe in the present year they broke up, leaving Seulgi with trauma or wht so she can’t remember Irene in her real life and that’s why she dreamed of Irene, But then when Irene appears in the present year.. I don’t know what to think anymore lol, important thing is I love this story, mind blown! Thankyou for making this storyy aaaa ><
Reveluv4vr
#9
Chapter 2: This story is unique and cool.. lovin' it.. Reminds me of W.
ilovebaejoohyun
#10
Chapter 16: ok so I am really confused and I dont think I'm intelligent enough to really understand the story, but this was a great read