"'I'm falling in too deep,

Without you, I can't sleep."

If you wish hard enough. If you just wish hard enough.

Her mother had told her that when she’d asked for a bike for Christmas at the age of nine. Seulgi understands that this is much greater than a bike and there are things far more important at stake. And it remains to be seen whether the mantra holds true or not. Can she – by force of will alone – simply will her realities together? Time is only fastened down by an abundance of logic. Remove that and see what unfolds. Unrestrained, Seulgi stands at the cornerstone between worlds, hand outstretched to the void, stitching up the ruptured seams.

It is that night, shortly before stumbling into her apartment building and blacking out, that she makes up her mind. She says, noncompliant in the face of the universe: It is real. She is real. All of it is real, because I choose it to be. I believe it so.

She staggers into the bathroom. The creature standing there looks no more human than something envisaged in a nightmare. Seulgi stands there for a long time. Minutes begin to lose meaning. Here things have begun to work in reverse again – the forward march of the universe, of this universe, now waits on Seulgi. She stands at a crossroads – the pendulum swings back and forth and she, on a tightrope, must avoid it. Must navigate this wasteland herself. The dead carcasses of past dreams, of lives once lived. The choice comes to her suddenly, and with finality. There remains, as Seulgi sees it, only two possibilities, two outcomes:

One, that this is real. Irene’s past and Seulgi’s present have fallen upon one another. Now is the point of choosing. To pull Irene out of her timeline and into Seulgi’s requires only the will to do so. Just wish hard enough.

And two, that this might still be a dream. That the bond of delusion is so strong Seulgi can never escape it. How likely is this? How strong can the mind be to concoct such scatterbrained plans for Seulgi to convince herself there is someway for her to be happier. And if she chooses the other option – chooses Irene – and it is truly a dream, what becomes of her then? Does her real world cease to be? What of Seungwan? Will people check on her? Does it matter at all?

Seulgi stands there for what becomes the rest of time. Both options must lead to an outcome. Irene or not. She glances at herself again. The choice is obvious – Irene must be real. Fate or consequence of reality has brought them crashing together. Thinking: How can it be fiction? How can my love ever be unreal?

Things may not be as they seem. The deception is too deep to ever fully uncover.

Seulgi understands this. She understands it, and she does not care.

She remembers very little upon waking up and what she does remember is not right at all. Seulgi remembers getting drunk and ignoring Irene’s texts asking where she was and how she was doing and remembers stumbling home and throwing herself down on her bed and the sheets were red and if so why are they now blue?

She wakes in a haze, a fugue state from which there is no recompense save the passage of time. Waiting out her headache, and if such a day will ever come where her head will cease to throb she thinks it won’t be for a long while. A narrow passage of pale light through the curtains, warped and slightly off, makes her wince. She rolls around and stretches out and grimaces at the pain and curls back up again, like something left out to rot in the heat of the sun. Something unbefitting human animation entirely. Her head may crack in two. This is something Seulgi believes in very seriously. The entirety of feels sewn shut and it hurts to open it and her lips taste of whiskey and salt and tequila and there’s a dryness to it that will require more water than exists at her disposal.

Something outside makes a noise. It may be a car or a bird and it may not matter at all. Seulgi glances down at herself, fully dressed, splayed out on the blue of her bed like a cadaver ready for embalming, or cremation. Her phone sits having spilled out of her pocket just beside her. She holds it up and thumbs the screen and it remains black. She tries the power button a couple times to no response. After a while she works up the effort to lean over the side of the bed to fetch her charger and immediately wishes she had not done so at all. It hurts to move. Hurts to sway about even more. The blood rushing to her head feels too thick, a primeval sort of ooze worming inside her. She sets her phone on charge and lies back down. Time seems to be passing as time should. She studies the room again, as if something might have changed. Silence. And what follows it.

Last night comes to her in only fragments. She remembers spending the day with Irene. It was Friday in one world and Thursday in the other, the world with Seungwan and Yeri and Sooyoung, because she'd asked Sooyoung for the Friday off work – she knows this because she'd asked Irene, too, specifically to conclude whether or not her two timelines have been running in parallel, down to the day. The answer is, predictably: I don’t know. I do not know. If today here is Saturday, what did I do yesterday? Apart from not go into work. Was I drunk here? Why does it feel like it?

Irene had told her about her desire to move. How that desire had been quashed – or subdued, at least – by Seulgi. Seulgi the cornerstone of her life, the defining flagpole around which all other decisions pivot willingly or otherwise. Seulgi rubs her head. What part of this can be parsed as dream and which as reality? Surely there is some fiction to it. The alternative is to believe in the theory of universal impermanence – that there might exist some other world, some other time, and that Seulgi might be living through it.

But this – for all its appeal – paints Seulgi as something too arrogant. A victor. What or who determines it is her, and not anyone else, that should have the luxury of living someone else’s life? Of rewiring things. What gives her the right? Seulgi understands this. She knows that she is no more special than any other person and the universe such as she perceives it is no place for people as uniformly normal as she is to be tampering with things, to manipulate what is and what was, and what could be. What perhaps should be. To suggest otherwise would surely by a yet-unmatched level of exceptionalism. Why should it be Seulgi that decides these things? Where is Irene’s say? Is her life that much better for having Seulgi in it? And is this past existence someone else’s life? Should there be someone in Seulgi’s place – someone living where Seulgi lives, working as Seulgi does, loving Irene as she loves Irene? Has she stolen that from someone? Who is to say? Seulgi understands this also. She understands it and, likewise, she ignores it. There are things she cannot hope to comprehend and this is one of them. All that remains is the emptiness of being absent knowledge. Stare at the void and the void, inevitably, shall stare back. And what you find might not be what you want at all.

The time ticks on. Nine AM, nine thirty, ten fifteen. Her phone slowly charges and her memory slowly returns. She cannot remember where she was – only that she was drinking and she should not have been. She lies there watching the paint flecks on the ceiling. The obvious escapes her. What comes instead is a asive thought that makes her stomach turn. It says: I am a thief. I am living someone else’s life in my sleep. I should not be. I have stolen Irene from them.

She doesn’t know if it’s true. It need not matter. The power of self-belief, ultimately, is in its resilience. It lingers. Thoughts are hard to fully rid yourself of. Other questions arise. She poses for herself some way to answer them and such a search for answers proves just as fruitless as always.

If I am living someone else’s life, why does it feel like my own? Or nobody’s life at all. Nothing tailor-made.

Why me?

Why then?

Why Irene? I love her. But why Irene? Is she significant, too? Is any of it?

What happens now? Do I wait? And wait for what?

The answer: I don’t know.

It isn’t until almost midday that the obvious rears its head again. The curtains are blue. If she drank until blackout in a world of red, why are the curtains blue? She rolls over and grabs her phone from the table and swipes the passcode. Three missed calls from Irene. Six texts, each of them a slight more concerned than the last. The most recent reads:

Text me when you get this please x I love you

Seulgi holds it up in the narrow windowlight. She goes searching – first it’s her message history with Irene, then Seungwan. Both seem to match up. The date on her phone reads Saturday, April 11th, 2020.

Things don’t add up.

Wheein, the girl from her sketches. The car numberplates. The milkshake machine being out of order and then not. Purple, yellow. Nothing is ever as it seems. And Seulgi chooses to ignore it all.

She rings and waits. The phone hums a couple times against her ear and then the line crackles a slight and she hears a voice saying, ‘Hello?’

‘Hey. Are you free today at all?’

‘What?’ Yeri asks.

‘Are you free.’

‘Uh, yeah. Why?’

‘I was wondering if you wanted to go for something to drink. Or a meal or something. I don’t know.’

‘Are you serious?’

‘Yeah,’ Seulgi says. ‘Why not?’

‘I mean, I’d love to. But, like, you never call me outside of work hours. Never.’

‘I know. I just figured, why not?’

‘Well,’ Yeri says. She takes a while to continue. Then she says, ‘Sure. What do you have in mind?’

‘I don’t know. Anything.’

‘How are you feeling?’

‘What?’

‘You said you had a headache on Thursday. How are you feeling? Did you do anything yesterday?’

‘Went out drinking.’

‘What?’ Yeri says, and laughs. ‘Why?’

‘I don’t know. I’ve got quite the hangover, though.’

‘You pulled a sickie so you could go and get wasted.’

‘No, I—’

‘I can respect that.’

‘I didn’t—’

‘Sometimes you’ve gotta let loose, y’know?’

‘Yeri—’

‘That’s hardcore, Seulgi. Real hardcore.’

Seulgi sighs.

‘Tell you what – why don’t I come over?’

‘Really?’

‘Sure. Beats having to haul you out of your apartment, right? Unless you wanna go out and grab a meal or something. I don’t mind.’

Seulgi thinks about it. She glances about her apartment. Something feels very off. It is so unnerving she has to take a moment to close her eyes and adjust herself to it. It’s the feeling that things are not quite as they should be. Everything is the same – nothing has really been altered – but it feels like somebody else’s house. As if there lingers something in the corner of her eye that she should not ever see. She says, in a hoarse voice, ‘Sure. You can come round if you want.’

‘Okay, cool. But you’re gonna have to text me your address, y’know?’

‘Will do.’

‘Want me to bring anything?’

‘Bring whatever.’

‘Tequila.’

A pause. Then Seulgi says, ‘No.’

‘Spoilsport.’

‘Just bring anything. I don’t mind.’

‘Just wanna hang out?’

‘Something like that, yeah.’

‘Alright. See you soon.’

‘Yeah,’ Seulgi says. She texts Yeri the address and showers and dresses and waits. She pulls back the curtains in her bedroom, then in the livingroom. The day looks curiously untouched. A cold and lifeless glare to it. It’s two in the afternoon when Yeri turns up outside. She’s wearing a green jacket and she’s got a bag of instant noodles and Seulgi opens the door and lets her in without ever stepping foot outside.

‘Thought you might be hungry,’ Yeri says.

‘Really? You brought me instant noodles?’

‘What’s wrong with instant noodles? The food of champions. And students.’

‘Guess so.’

‘You okay?’ Yeri asks, a hint of concern tinged in her voice. She takes a while to look around Seulgi’s apartment idly.

‘No,’ Seulgi answers, and it’s the truth.

‘Headache?’

‘Something like that.’

‘How much did you drink?’

‘A lot.’

‘Alone?’

Seulgi shrugs.

‘Damn,’ Yeri says with a laugh. ‘You want some noodles?’

‘Maybe in a bit.’

‘I’m not used to seeing you like this. Normally you’re very, y’know, reserved or whatever.’

‘Yeah, well.’

Yeri sits and chows down on her noodles. They talk for a while. It’s enough to distract Seulgi from the impossibility of everything around her. The talk turns to work, to hobbies, to Yeri. She finishes the last of her noodles and peels the lid from a second pot and slurps them down while talking about nothing of real importance and it’s good because it feels real enough that Seulgi doesn’t question it at all. Not until she asks, as nonchalant as ever, ‘Did you speak to that girl, by the way?’

‘What? What girl?’

‘Guess not.’

‘What girl?’

Yeri shrugs through a mouthful of noodles. ‘There was some girl who dropped by the office yesterday looking for you,’ she says.

‘What?’

‘She came up asking about you. Said she didn’t know where you were. I told her you weren’t here because you had a headache. Well, kinda.’

‘What girl?’

‘I dunno. She didn’t give a name.’

‘What did she look like?’

‘Uh, about my height, maybe a little shorter. Long black hair. Real pretty face. I mean, real pretty. Sort of like one of those old-school movie-cool faces, y’know?’

‘What colour sweater was she wearing?’

‘What?’ Yeri asks. Then she glances at Seulgi and swallows her noodles and shrugs and says, ‘Yellow, I think.’

‘Mustard?’

‘Uh, what?’

‘Was it mustard coloured?’

‘I mean, I guess. I dunno. Why? Does it really matter?’

‘What did she want?’

‘Damn. Are you still drunk or something? I just said – she asked where you were and if we knew.’

Seulgi is quiet. She glances at her phone again. The texts from Irene are still there. Everything is. She says, after a while, ‘Sorry.’

‘Who is she, anyway? Someone you know?’

There’s a long pause. What is the answer? Things remains in flux. The answer Seulgi settles on, correct or not, is, ‘She’s my girlfriend.’

‘Really?’ Yeri asks, sly grin on her face.

‘Yes really.’

‘No ?’

‘No .’

‘I didn't know you—’

‘Liked girls? Yeah, I get that quite a bit.’

‘I mean—’

‘Not got a problem with that, do you?’

‘What?’ Yeri says. ‘No. Of course not. I was gonna say - good for you. She was…well.’

‘I know.’

‘Not that you're punching above your weight or anything. I mean, you're…y'know. But yeah. She's gorgeous.’

‘I know.’

‘Damn. Some people get all the luck.’

‘What?’

Yeri only shrugs. Soon she changes the subject. They talk about work again. Yeri jokes about Seulgi’s day off and Seulgi laughs with her and the smile never falters because Seulgi has always been excellent at maintaining her composure – at least outwardly facing – and this is no different, and Yeri wouldn't understand anyway. There is a line between despair and madness that was blurred a long time ago. By the time Yeri leaves it’s almost six PM.

‘I’ll see you on Monday,’ she says, smiling at Seulgi.

‘Yeah,’ says Seulgi, and closes the door. Then she just stands there. The world outside seems off. She checks her phone again. Something compels her to test the limits of this universe – to ensure the walls are firmly in place. If this is real life then things must be wholly normal. Anything out of sync indicates a shift in reality that Seulgi isn’t sure she’s in a state to confront. So as if to put this theory to the test she thumbs through her contacts and holds the phone to her ear and waits.

A handful of hums. Then Seungwan saying, ‘Hey? What’s up?’

‘Nothing. Just wondering if you wanted to hang out today or something.’

‘Sure. Can do. What are you planning?’

‘Nothing,’ Seulgi says again. ‘I was just bored, is all.’

‘Are you okay?’

‘What?’

‘You seemed off the last time I talked to you.’

‘I went on a two-day bender and out.’

‘Oh my god,’ Seungwan says. Then she breaks into a fit of laughter.

‘I’m serious.’

‘I bet you are. Are you okay now?’

‘Well, kinda. Got a hangover at least.’

‘Why the did you do that?’

‘I don’t know. Just felt like doing something different for a change.’

‘Well. Can’t argue with that. You want me to come round, or what?’

‘Can do,’ Seulgi says. She allows the silence to hang for a second. Her grip of the doorknob feels like a warning of sorts. Then she says, ‘I’m free all evening.’

‘Me too. I can come over now if you want?’

‘Sounds good to me.’

‘Alright,’ Seungwan says. She says goodbye and hangs up. It’s a testament to either Seungwan’s loyalty and love for Seulgi or her role in Seulgi’s warped world of dreams that she is so willing to come over at any time, for any reason. Or for no reason at all. A great part of Seulgi wishes now she were different – that there may exist some reason, some family problem or personal inconvenience, to stop her from coming over. Seungwan exists recently – as Seulgi perceives her – only here, only for Seulgi. And maybe there is something to that but maybe not.

Seulgi glances at her phone again. Nothing new from Irene since last night. She kettle to boil and throws herself down on the couch and closes her eyes. Nothing comes to her. It’s strange but oddly reassuring. That amid this maelstrom she can eke out just a moment more peace. Her minor tranquillity is disturbed sometime later by a knock at the door. Seulgi answers to Seungwan, wrapped tight in a thick winter coat, bag in hand. The first thing Yeri had said was: I thought you might be hungry. The first thing Seungwan says, with a laugh, is, ‘Jesus, you look like .’

‘Thanks.’

‘Did you get hit by a train or something?’

‘You’re very kind, did anyone ever tell you that?’

‘Here and there. But not you.’

‘No? I wonder why.’

‘I brought you goodies,’ Seungwan says. And as if to confirm this she shows the contents of her shoppingbag to Seulgi – four energy drink cans, a roll of toffees, a packet of salted crisps, a jar of peanut butter. ‘What?’ Seulgi says.

‘What, what?’

‘Why did you get toffees?’

‘What’s wrong with toffees?’

‘Am I an old woman?’

‘Young people eat toffees as well.’

‘And the peanut butter?’

Seungwan shrugs as Seulgi lets her in. ‘All I could get,’ she says.

‘Really now.’

‘Well, no. But I like peanut butter.’

‘You like eating it from the jar.’

‘Sure.’

‘Like an animal.’

‘Nothing wrong with that. How are you feeling?’

Seulgi slumps down on the couch. It’s a question that feels like it carries with it an enormous weight of consequence. She replies: ‘I don’t know. Okay, I suppose. Something feels a little…off.’

‘Off in what way?’

‘I don’t know. I can’t describe it.’

Seungwan sits there and nods and shrugs. It’s an invite for Seulgi to speak only when she’s ready to speak, but it’s a long time coming. The words to say don’t seem to sit right. Eventually it’s Seungwan that speaks. She asks, in a concerned voice, ‘Is it work related?’

‘No. Not really.’

‘Family?’

Seulgi shakes her head.

A pause. Then: ‘Relationship troubles?’

‘What? I’m not— No.’

‘Right.’

‘Sorry. It’s just hard to talk about.’

‘You don’t have to if you don’t want to.’

‘Maybe another time,’ Seulgi says, and forces a smile.

Seungwan smiles back. ‘How’s Irene?’ she asks.

‘What?’

‘Just in general, I mean. Feels like ages since I’ve seen her. I should probably text her more often.’

‘What are you—’ Seulgi glances at her. Silence fills the room – it becomes everything. There is an absence of sound even to the cars passing by along the avenue outside, to the wind just beyond the window. Even the clock has ceased to make a noise. Seungwan just looks at her. She seems oblivious to the fact she has asked something impossible – something she should not have ever asked. As if stepping over some sacred boundary without ever knowing it had existed. Seulgi tries to formulate anything that will make sense. She settles eventually on, ‘What do you mean?’

‘Just, like, is she doing okay? I thought maybe you’d, y’know…had troubles or something. But you haven’t, right?’

Seulgi is silent again. Only a knock at the door wrestles her away from the feeling of descent, of slowly falling into something from which there is no escape. Further and further.

‘You gonna answer that or should I?’ Seungwan asks. Seulgi cannot respond. She sits there long enough that Seungwan shrugs and hauls herself off the couch and goes to answer the door. The tapping of her sneakers sounds like cannon fire. Seulgi’s hands are shaking. The room has gone suddenly very cold. It is here – at the crossroads between illusion and reality – that things finally break apart, and for good. When she hears the voice at the door. It says: ‘Seungwan?’

‘Hey.’

‘Sorry. I didn’t expect to see you here.’

‘It’s cool. I only came over to hang out for a bit. Am I, you know…interrupting something?’

‘No,’ Irene says. She sounds out of breath. ‘No, it’s nothing like that. Is she in?’

‘Uh, yeah.’

Seulgi hears the door open. Two pairs of footsteps. The effort it takes to put on a smile and turn her head and welcome them back into the claustrophobia of her apartment is almost too much to bear. But she does it anyway.

Irene is there. She’s wearing a grey jumper and her hair is tied back and her cheeks tinged rose pink and she’s breathing a slight heavier with the cold and she looks angrier than Seulgi remembers ever seeing her before. Either that or concern. ‘Seulgi?’ she says.

Seulgi is silent.

‘Are you okay?’

‘I—’

‘Jesus, what did you do last night? Why weren’t you answering your phone? I thought you’d lost it or something. I was worried about you. You haven't lost it, have you?’

‘I…’

Irene just stands there. Seungwan too, looking between them, an awkward third party to a companionship that shouldn’t even exist. That has never existed before. Seulgi knows this. A glance at her phone reads 7:42 PM. It’s still April, still 2020. Her wallpaper is a selfie of her on a beach somewhere, Irene kissing her on the cheek as she smiles into the camera, the wind loose through her perpetually drifting hair. She knows the beach is Haeundae Beach in Busan because they went there for a three-day getaway last year and it was oddly warm for an October escape and the sun was out that day and they’d bought caramel ice cream in chocolate cones and eaten them while walking along in the failing daylight and there was a hotel not far from the beach where they’d stayed and there Irene had brought up the idea of marriage one day again and maybe between them and maybe not, maybe just in general, and she’d given a shy and dismissive shrug of the shoulders and said Well maybe, I was just asking, I was just curious, just as she’d done that time before, on the way to grab lunch before Irene’s drama practice. Seulgi remembers all of this as vividly as a painting on canvas, the colours so immediate, a real tangibility to it. She remembers it even though none of it ever happened, because that would be impossible. And yet, there it is. And on the shoerack in the hallway, right beside Seulgi's sneakers, sits a pair of fluffy yellow slippers that don't belong to Seulgi. And on her desk next to her computer, just behind her graphics tablet and her coloured pencils, is a framed polaroid of her and Irene dated February 2019. And pinned to the cork noticeboard hanging from the wall are photos of her and Irene - some recent, some not. And on the coffeetable in front of her is a book that is not her own - a paperback copy of Ursula K. Le Guin's The Lathe of Heaven - that she has never read before. She is not alone. This apartment - unloved, unwanted - is a sanctuary, occupied by someone who has never existed and who cannot exist and who continues to very much exist.

The answer she settles on instead is the truth, or some variation of it that feels acceptable. She mutters, ‘I got drunk.’

‘Yeah, I figured.’

‘Like, really really drunk.’

‘Drunk enough to completely ignore me for a whole day?’

‘What? I wasn’t—’

‘You weren’t answering any of my calls yesterday. Or my texts. I went to your work and—’

‘Talked to Yeri. I know.’

‘What?’

‘She came by earlier and told me.’

Irene sighs. It’s a sound Seulgi has heard many a time before, but never like this. Her voice drops, softer and full of care. ‘I was worried,’ she says. ‘Please don’t do that again. Not to sound clingy or anything.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Are you okay now, though?’

‘Yeah. Bit hungover still.’

‘Seriously? And why have you got peanut butter lying around?’

‘Oh,’ Seungwan says, ‘that’s mine.’

‘Why have you got peanut butter lying around?’

‘Dunno. Was hungry.’

Seulgi looks at the pair of them. Interacting like real people. Like they know each other.

‘Are you sure I’m not interrupting something?’ Seungwan asks.

‘You’re not. I just came to see how she was.’

‘I can leave, if you want.’

‘No,’ Irene says, ‘stay. It feels like ages since I’ve seen you.’

‘I know. I was saying the same to Seulgi. It’s been, what? Three months?’

‘Must be, yeah.’

Irene stops dead in the middle of the room, partway between the kitchen worktop and the couch. ‘Is that my book?’ she asks, pointing to the table. She grabs the copy of The Lathe of Heaven and holds it up and puts it back down again and says, ‘I was looking it for it the other day. I don't remember leaving it here. Must've brought it over. Seulgi, you want something to drink?’

Seulgi glances at her. It’s such an innocent question, but it holds so much weight to it. It takes control of the situation. Assumes things that should not be. Irene moves around the room as if it is hers. First to the kettle and then to the sink to fill it with water and set it to boil. She takes the cups from the cupboard behind her head – where they’ve always been – and leans down and takes the container of sugar from the cupboard by her left leg and puts it on the countertop. As if she’s done it hundreds of times before, a sort of casual domesticity to her as she goes through Seulgi's things. She’s talking to Seungwan – asking how she’s been, how work is. Seungwan answers, and asks back: ‘How’s the IT stuff?’

‘Still the same as ever, really. It’s a pretty static job.’

‘Yeah, I remember you telling me.’

‘I still enjoy it, though.’

‘What about the drama stuff?’

‘Going well,’ Irene says, seeing to the kettle and the coffee. ‘Got a rehearsal tomorrow, actually.’

‘Oh, cool. Wait. The last time we talked about it, you were doing…’

‘The Tempest.’

‘The Tempest, right. Still doing it?’

‘Yeah. We’re not far from finishing it now. You’d be surprised at how much effort it takes. Crazy. Spent about three months on this. I think it’s our longest yet. You should come along, you know. I think you’d enjoy it.’

‘I’d love to. When’s the performance?’

‘May the third is the first one. Three nights in a row. Then two weeks later we do the final shows. Space it out a bit. Two sugars, yeah?’

‘Yeah, please.’

‘Babe, you want a coffee? Babe. Seulgi.’

‘Yeah,’ Seulgi says, voice barely there at all.

‘Are you sure you’re okay? You’re looking a little, you know.’

‘Fine. Just fine.’