Hardest To Love

After Hours

 

 

"I don't feel it anymore,

This house I bought is not a home,

Together we are so alone."


 

The next day is the same as the one before it. And before that, and before that. She sits at the window and watches the world turning and in her heart of hearts exists a cold numbness to which she has no real solution nor ever has. Hobbies, people, come and go into her life like passing thoughts. The briefest of emotions to balm her. Romance even rarer still. She sits there and opens up her canvas book and takes out the coloured pencils and begins to draw.

At first it’s small things – scenery, lampposts, cars passing, caught in the vague sketch she makes with her pencils, a handful of shops and stores, a pretty house on the next page in the middle of nowhere. She doubles back to the previous page and makes a note of the best of each piece and begins again with a new cityscape, modelling these best bits into something entirely new. The cars are smaller, less distinct, the buildings taller and colder and more imposing, a concrete isolation much like her own. The lights here as she draws them aren’t as bright as in her dreams. It’s here, thinking about it again, that the frustration begins all over. The woman that remains nameless and faceless in her head coming back to her, and the worse part is how everything else remains so clear and so fondly imagined. The momentary happiness of distraction has yet to fade. Only the warp of the woman who doesn’t exist is still a firm mystery.

When she’s finished with this makeshift city she takes a minute to just admire the beauty of it. If nothing else Seulgi is an excellent artist and even she is aware of that. Then she turns the page and begins to draw out a handful of people, same as she always does, fashionable outlines of humans without faces or proper proportions, void mannequins wearing suits and nice jackets and costumes conjured only in the fever of her mind. She goes back and looks at the others. There are hundreds in these books of hers and no two are alike. She goes back to the blonde woman with the pink jacket hanging off one shoulder and colours in the detail on her jacket and on the buckle of her belt and admires her anew. For some reason it compels Seulgi to give her a name – to put an identity to one of her creations, if only for a moment, for once.

This is something else she won’t ever tell Seungwan. Perhaps can’t. That in her loneliest and emptiest moments she’s thought often about what it would be like to know some of these people on the paper, the images formulated only at the itching of her pencil. That on more occasions than she would ever like to admit she’s wondered if they would be like her. Would they be her friends? Would anyone want that? To be friends with her. Would they be attracted to her? Want to date her? Would it be possible for one of them to fall in love with her? The absurdity of it is what often reminds Seulgi how foolish it is. Or perhaps how pathetic.

She looks at the woman in the pink jacket again. There’s no face there but it doesn’t matter. Seulgi grabs one of her fountain pens and pulls off the cap with her teeth and writes Jung Wheein beside it in three flowing and sets the pen down again. Then as if ashamed of herself she folds away the book and sets the pencils aside and stuffs it all back under her desk in the boxes. Half an hour later her phone buzzes. She knows who it is already.

‘Seungwan?’

‘Hey,’ says Seungwan on the other end, the only person it could be. The only person that cares enough anymore. She adds, ‘Are you busy?’

‘What do you think?’

‘No?’

‘No.’

‘Well,’ Seungwan says with a laugh. ‘Do you want to do something?’

‘Like what?’

‘I don’t know. We could meet for a drink or something. It’s been a while.’

Seulgi thinks about it for a minute. A minute is all she needs. ‘Okay,’ she says. ‘Sounds good to me. Where do you want to meet?’

‘I don’t know. Wherever.’

‘Well. Okay.’

It’s almost nine in the evening when Seulgi shows up at the jazz bar in Daesin and steps in out of the cold. The claustral heat of the bar is so immediate and so overwhelming she has to take a minute to adjust herself to the sudden change. It’s a dimly lit room, a smokiness to it, the soft amber glare of the lights along the ceiling and behind the bar on the left of the room. Hanging in the dead centre is a white chandelier that looks like falling frost caught in suspended motion and the tables are of a polished redwood and the couch seats are a plush sort of red leather. They’re playing a playlist of understated house music over the speakers and it all feels a little too familiar to Seulgi and too close to her and it makes her head spin.

Seungwan’s sat with an orange concoction in a tall cocktail glass at one of the tables at the back of the room when she sees Seulgi coming over. She waves and motions to the bar and Seulgi gives a thumbs up and orders a martini and goes back and sits across from her with her drink in a shining glass. ‘Sorry I’m late,’ she says.

‘You’re not late.’

Seulgi only nods. Another look around to read the room has her thinking only one thing: The lights aren’t as bright here. They’re not as bright as in my dream.

With one idle hand she stirs her martini. Part of her wants to admit it to Seungwan and a much larger and more dominant part tells her to never speak of it to anyone.

‘What’s up?’ Seungwan asks, a slight tilt of the head.

‘What? Oh, nothing. I’m just tired, is all.’

‘Busy?’

‘A little.’

‘What’ve you been up to?’

‘I’ve got a new illustration project I’ve taken on,’ Seulgi says, and it isn’t quite a lie, but it isn’t really the truth either. Nobody’s paying her for it. Commissioned by herself, for herself. Seungwan takes a long sip of her drink and puts it back down and sighs. The faint rosetint blush of her cheeks is indication enough that it’s not her first. Maybe not even her second. She says after a moment’s calm, ‘I miss this.’

‘Miss what?’

‘Just this. Me and you like this. Like we used to do back in the day.’

‘Well,’ Seulgi says, hand on her glass. ‘There’s no reason we can’t do it more often in the future, is there?’

‘Suppose not. I just feel so busy all the time, and that’s the problem. I’m not really that busy at all. I just…feel like I am, you know?’

‘Yeah.’

‘I don’t know how to explain it any better than that.’

‘I know what you mean.’

‘Really?’

Seulgi nods absently. ‘Like you’ve no time to anything, even though time’s all you’ve got.’

‘Yeah. Exactly like that.’

‘Things are moving too quickly. Sometimes I feel like if I could do anything differently it’d just be to slow down and wait, you know? And I don’t even know what for. Maybe nothing. But to just…wait.’

Seungwan nods with a small smile. Seulgi glances at her long enough only to think quite intrusively that she looks quite similar to the outline of the person in her sketchbook in her apartment. Minus a face and a body and with a different name. Same hair, similar fashion sense. And perhaps there’s something to that. She takes a long drink of her martini with a wince and sets it back down and refuses to think on it anymore.

‘Can I ask you a question?’ she says.

‘Sure.’

‘Am I losing my mind?’

At that Seungwan only laughs. ‘What?’ she says. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘Well. I don’t really know how to describe it.’

‘Why would you think you’re losing your mind? Has something this brought this on, or what?’

‘Kinda. Like I said, hard to describe.’

‘Try me.’

Seulgi thinks about it. She turns and looks around again. The thin bars of ceiling light, an orange haze. Nothing here is as vivid as she wants it to be and everything makes her feel that much more on edge. ‘I’ve been having these dreams recently,’ she admits.

‘Well. Go on.’

‘I don’t know how to describe it. They’re sort of almost real, if that makes sense. Like, I can remember them when I wake up in the morning, and it’s almost as if I was actually there in the dreams – it wasn’t any sort of vague thing. I don’t know how to describe it better than that.’

‘Like lucid dreaming?’

‘Yeah, I guess so. Something like that. It felt as if I were actually inside them. I was moving about, interacting with things, touching things, you know? Stuff like that.’

‘Inside your dreams.’

‘Yeah. Sorry.’

Seungwan smiles at her. ‘Sounds like lucid dreaming to me,’ she says. ‘Not that I know much about it. Or, like, anything. So I don’t know why I said that. Why? What’s up?’

‘Nothing. It’s just I’ve never really been able to remember my dreams before, you know? And now, it’s as if they’re more real than real life.’

‘Maybe you’re a magician.’

‘What?’

‘Like, you can conjure up actual worlds in your sleep or something. Kind of like parallel universes. I think. Not too sure.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘You don’t know?’

‘Too many comic books.’

‘Well,’ Seungwan says, ‘probably. But the point still stands. In a sort of roundabout way. Sounds cool, though. I’ve always wanted to have one of those outer-body experiences.’

‘It wasn’t an outer-body experience. I was still me, still in my body. I was just in a different sort of world, if that makes sense. That’s how I knew it was a dream.’

‘How?’

‘Everything was brighter and more, how do I put it…there? Immediate? I don’t know. It’s so hard.’

Seungwan stirs her drink and sips and leans back in her seat far enough that her head touches the wall behind her. ‘Maybe you’re hallucinating,’ she says. ‘Maybe you’re not actually sleeping at all. How long can the human body go without sleep?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘I think it’s, like, four days.’

‘You think I haven’t been to sleep in four days and I’m hallucinating things?’

‘I don’t know. Are you?’

‘No,’ Seulgi says, and then pauses. Then she says again, ‘No. I’m not hallucinating.’

‘It was just a suggestion.’

‘Sorry. For mentioning it, I mean.’

‘Why would you be sorry?’

‘It sounds like such a dumb thing – talking about my dreams.’

‘Well. Kind of.’

‘Thanks.’

Seungwan smiles again. It’s a smile that instantly defuses any and all unbearable tension. ‘It’s cool,’ she says. ‘Anytime, anyplace.’

 

 

She’s standing on the sidewalk with her hands in her pockets and it’s all so immediately different that it’s almost nauseating. It takes her a while to acclimate. Across the street is a line of shops that look just a slight off – the signs too large, the font too strange, the shopwindows glinting in the white of the sun, like a row of shops from an old movie. When the cars pass the taillights blink in their red casings like flickering lightbulbs and there’s a hum to the engines that doesn't quite sound like any engine she's ever heard before.

Behind her is a bowling alley. The name hanging above in green neon is in English and it takes her a moment to understand it. She knows why she’s there already. And not a moment later she turns around to find Irene standing there, a mustardcoloured sweater and a pair of oversized glasses and black jeans smiling at her and smelling incredible. All Seulgi can do is stand and smile. ‘Hey,’ she says.

‘Hey. Sorry, the bus was late. How long have you been waiting?’

‘Ten minutes,’ Seulgi says, as if compelled to say it. Is it true? Was it longer? The truth clear or not is that things become when she wishes them. So ten minutes is ten minutes. Irene runs a hand through her hair and brushes a stray strand out of her face and smiles and says, ‘You wanna go in? Or stand out here in the freezing cold a bit longer?’

‘We can go in,’ says Seulgi. Inside the bowling alley is more like a complex. On the left behind a long fence of wooden beams hanging oddnumbered from the ceiling is a traditional restaurant and at the far end is a seating area and it smells of bowling shoes and rubber and faintly of pork and of Irene most of all. She goes on up to the counter and Seulgi can only follow her. Only once does she turn around to ask, ‘What size are you?’

‘Oh, five.’

‘Cool.’

She hands Seulgi a pair of size five bowling shoes and Seulgi sits and puts them on and fastens the laces and stops and says, ‘How much do I owe you?’

‘Nothing.’

‘What?’

‘I paid, don’t worry about it. Consider it my treat.’

‘Well. If you’re sure.’

‘I am,’ Irene says with a grin. It’s a smile Seulgi looks at for a moment and thinks: Stop. Hold it right here and capture this smile and never let it go. And remember, Seulgi. Remember her when you wake up.

‘What’s up?’

‘What?’

‘You’re looking spacey,’ Irene says, fingers finding purchase in the holes of a particularly small bowling ball.

‘Oh, sorry.’

‘Don’t apologise. Is everything alright?’

‘Yeah.’

‘You sure? You looked a little lost the other day as well.’

‘The other day?’ Seulgi asks, and before Irene can reply it comes back to her so suddenly it’s as if she’s got roomspin. ‘Oh, when we were at the café?’

‘Yeah. You looked like you were gazing off into space or something.’

‘I’m fine. I’ve just been feeling a little under the weather lately.’

Irene nods in understanding and hefts up one of the bowling balls. It takes her a while to get used to the feel of it. As she stumbles out and lines up Seulgi just watches her with a solemn sadness that feels alien and supremely painful. The swelling of her heart. Thinking: There must be more. I wish there was so much more. Why can’t it be real?

She sits there and runs through her canvas books in her head. There are countless of them, some running all the way back to university. Thousands of figures. Was Irene ever one of them? The answer is instant and conclusive and never in doubt: No. No she was not.

‘It’s your go,’ Irene says, standing in front of her and smiling. Always smiling. She points to the board hanging overhead and says, ‘I got a spare.’

‘A spare?’

‘Yeah.’

‘What’s a spare?’

‘You don’t know?’

Seulgi shakes her head and Irene can only giggle. ‘It was your idea to go bowling,’ she says.

‘Yeah,’ says Seulgi instinctively. ‘But that’s only because I couldn’t think of anything else to suggest. I don’t know anything about it. Well, apart from you pick up the ball and throw it.’

‘A spare is when you get all ten pins on your second ball.’

‘Oh. Right.’

‘Well, go on.’

Seulgi spends a minute filing through the different sizes and shapes. She picks up one very similar to Irene’s and stands just behind the white line and watches a handful of others throw first. The thud as the balls go welting against the wooden floor is just that bit louder than it should be, the ringing sound of a strike a slight more intense, the cheering more extreme, the glare of the lights like a carnival show. She stands there and closes her eyes and Irene can’t see her from behind and she’s glad for that because her hands are shaking and all she can think is: Why did it all come so easily? Why could I talk like that? Ten minutes. Meeting the other day. You and I. Why does it feel so real to me?

‘C’mon,’ Irene shouts from the bench behind her, and laughs. Seulgi takes a step back and lines up with a deep breath and throws the ball straight into the gutter. It takes a second to process it. Irene is already laughing behind her.

‘Stop it,’ Seulgi mumbles.

‘Maybe you weren’t lying.’

‘I wasn’t.’

‘That was impressive.’

‘I can get it. I know I can.’

‘Well. Go on.’

‘What? Do I get another?’

‘Have you seriously – seriously – never been bowling before?’

Seulgi thinks about it. Perhaps here in this world she has. Perhaps this Seulgi - her, the same Seulgi from a different angle - is an expert bowler. But not in the other. She says tentatively, ‘No.’

‘Well, you get a second shot. Go on. Don’t miss.’

She grabs another ball a slight smaller and lines up her shot and bowls. It goes down so loud she flinches and it rolls halfway down and to the left and drops into the gutter with a soft thunk and rolls all the way down and is gone. Irene’s giggling again like a kid, all teeth and rosy cheeks. ‘Bravo,’ she says.

‘Thanks.’

‘This is gonna be quite one-sided, you know that, right?’

‘What are you, some bowling prodigy or something?’

‘I dabble, here and there.’

‘In bowling prodigy?’

‘Just bowling, actually.’

‘Go on then.’

‘Watch and learn,’ Irene says with a wink. Five minutes later and she’s twenty-eight points in the lead already and it’s Seulgi’s turn and all she can do is stand there and watch that smug smirk on Irene’s face and try not to laugh herself at the stupidity of it all. When Irene is there it’s all real. The lights are brighter and the world has taken on a stronger aural texture and the illusion is a very thin veil indeed - a carnival show world, a stage seen only from the front, and when the lights go down and the curtain is drawn the moving pieces are all done away with and the stage is swept and cleared and the deception is revealed - but none of it matters because Irene is surely real, and if Irene is real, all of it is real. Irene’s world has to be. Nothing else makes sense. She leans back on the bench and the fabric of her mustard sweater stretched taut and she smiles at Seulgi and says, ‘I’m gonna get some milkshakes. You okay with banana?’

‘Sure,’ Seulgi says. ‘It’s my favourite flavour, actually.’

‘Really?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Huh.’

‘What?’

‘Mine too.’

Seulgi says nothing. Irene smiles at her softly and disappears off down to the little restaurant tucked away near the entrance. While she’s gone Seulgi just sits there. The questions she wants to ask must not be asked and so she ignores them. When Irene comes back a minute later it’s with two large pale yellow milkshakes in tall plastic cups with straws hanging out of them like strange synthetic candycanes. She hands one to Seulgi and smiles again, that same brilliant smile, and says, ‘That good enough?’

‘Thanks.’

Irene puts the straw to her lips and takes a sip and nods to the scoreboard hanging behind them. ‘So,’ she says. ‘Ready to admit defeat yet?’

‘I think I’m getting the hang of it. Slowly but surely.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Well, I got zero, and then I got five, and then six. And then six again. I think I’m doing pretty well for a beginner.’

‘Oh, sure. Maybe by, like, midnight, you’ll have gotten a strike.’

‘Nice. Thanks.’

Irene giggles through a mouthful of milkshake. ‘Hey,’ she says, ‘what can I say? I’ve always been a pretty good cheerleader.’

Seulgi just looks at her. It lasts so long it becomes almost uncomfortable. She is so beautiful. So pale and so immediate and so real. She has to be. Seulgi takes a mouthful of the banana milkshake and it’s cold and immediately pleasing on her tongue and it melts in the way milkshake shouldn’t quite do, like something simmered over a raw fire and not drained from a milk machine. Irene sits and adjust the lace on one of her shoes and puts her milkshake down.

‘Hey,’ Seulgi says softly.

‘What?’

‘Can I ask you something a bit silly?’

‘Sure. I like silly. Sometimes, at least.’

‘Are you real?’

Irene looks at her again, a tilt of the head, a curiosity locked behind those oversized glasses. ‘You asked me that the other day,’ she says in amusement.

‘I know. Sorry. I just…’

‘Are you serious?’

Seulgi is silent.

Irene takes a long time to study her. Then with that same amusement playing in her voice she stands up and sips her milkshake and says, ‘Yes I’m real. See?’

She pokes Seulgi’s cheek with her finger and giggles to herself like a kid. ‘Real,’ she mutters. ‘What about you? Are you real?’

Seulgi looks at her. I don’t know, she wants to say. Am I?

But before she has the chance she blinks and the room explodes into that same darkness on the back of her eyelids and her surroundings are suddenly much colder, much closer, much more intimate. A bed and four walls. Unlit ceiling light. Her phone reads 4:56 on her bedside table. Outside the last of the moonlight makes a pale knife against the blue of her curtains.

She remembers a bowling alley. A diner of sorts. Two banana milkshakes. And a woman – no name, no face. But she was beautiful. And she was real. She said so, whomever she was.

Seulgi lies there in the dark for a long time. Soon she rolls over and begins to cry for the first time in a long while.

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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