"Time hasn't been kind to me, I pray,

When I look inside the mirror and see someone I love,

Oh, someone I loved."

‘Do you wanna come out with me tonight?’

It’s a question Irene asks when she’s sat across the table, coffeecup in hand, face catching the light in a way that almost has Seulgi blushing. She shifts a slight, as if unsure of how she really wants Seulgi to answer. Or as if the answer she’s already anticipating is not one she really wants to hear. The wait, for her, feels like a lifetime. Seulgi barely has to think about it at all. She asks, ‘Where?’

‘I just thought maybe I’d go to a bar or something. Haven’t been in a long time. And the last time I went I was by myself. Yeah, I know how that sounds. Sad.’

‘Not really.’

‘It does. It’s okay to admit it.’

‘Well. I still don’t think it is. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with going to a bar on your own. Or clubbing. I think it’s just the same as going to a concert on your own. Or a museum. Or a theatre. Or cinema. For some reason there’s a stigma against it that just feels weird to me. What’s wrong with enjoying things on your own? I think it’s especially dumb when people judge you or give you a weird look for going to the cinema on your own. Like, what are you even there to do? Watch a movie, right? And you do that in silence. Or you should, at least. That’s the whole point of watching a movie. So why is it weird to go alone, if you’re not going to talk to anyone until the movie’s finished? Dumb to me. What? What.’

‘Nothing,’ Irene says, grin painted on her face as if it had been there all along.

‘What are you smiling at?’

‘You’re very talkative when you wanna be, you know that?’

‘Rambly, you mean.’

‘I guess a little. Nothing wrong with it, though.’

‘Yeah,’ Seulgi says. What comes to her next is a thought she dismisses just as quickly after: I’m never this talkative in the real world. Not even with Seungwan.

‘Okay,’ says Irene. ‘Well, I was just wondering if you wanted to. I don’t mind if you don’t.’

‘I do.’

‘Okay, cool. I thought maybe we could go to this place near me. Grab a couple drinks or something. It’ll be fun.’

‘Sounds it.’

‘How’s work?’

‘Can’t complain,’ Seulgi says, and pauses. Nothing around her ceases to move – the world still has its motion. But there, in the café seat with the coffee burning hot in her hands, her own little world comes to an instant standstill. She doesn’t know why she’s said it – what does it even mean? Does it hold any meaning in this place? When she thinks on it all that comes to her are recollections of her life in the other world, the real one, the one she would rather forget. Sat there with Yeri, twiddling her thumbs, answering phones, cold calling. Nothing much of note at all. Is it the same here? Does she work in the same place? Something informs Seulgi that she does, but she can’t quite comprehend what. So she smiles and nods and ignores it. The mantra she repeats to herself for safety never changes – what is out of sight cannot harm her.

Irene shifts in her seat again. The sun dapples her face, the warm fall daylight. Her hair is so dark it looks like ink running over her shoulders. She’s dressed in the same mustardcoloured sweater she was the first time Seulgi met her and she has that same smile on her face Seulgi wants to bottle up and keep for herself and maybe that’s selfish but it doesn’t really matter.

‘How was your show last night?’ Seulgi says.

‘It was good. Not the best of the bunch, but it was good. Good to finally get it over and done with and move onto something else. We’re still in the planning stage of what we’re gonna do next. Maybe Titus Andronicus again. Maybe something else entirely. Helps to get out of your comfort zones sometimes. But we’ll have to see. I think we were all still riding the high a little last night, you know?’

‘Yeah.’

‘It’s always the same after a big show.’

Seulgi just sits there and nods along. On a surface level it doesn’t matter what Irene is talking about, just as long as she’s talking, but on a closer, more intimate level every time she talks about theatre or the performing arts it has Seulgi entranced. The passion is almost infectious. Intoxicating. And maybe it’s just because it’s Irene and again maybe not. Seulgi thinks perhaps it’s a little of both.

‘How’s work?’ Irene asks.

Seulgi sits quietly only for a moment. She says, completely without thinking, ‘It’s alright. Could be better, but for working at a call centre it’s about as good as it can get, I suppose. Some good people there. It’s good to be out of my apartment sometimes.’

‘You spend a lot of time there, yeah?’

‘Yeah. Kinda. Too much, actually. But hey, what can you do.’

Irene doesn’t laugh. She smiles and it’s a smile of infatuation, a glimmer of adoration when she leans forward a slight and says, ‘Well, if you ever need an excuse to get out of the house, you know where I am. Just give me a ring. Or a text, even. I don’t discriminate.’

‘I wouldn’t want to bother you like that.’

‘Wouldn’t be bothering me. I think sometimes I’m on my own too much as well, which might sound stupid because, well…I’m around people a lot of the time. I dunno how to explain it properly.’

‘You feel like you’re alone even when you’re with others.’

‘Sometimes, yeah. A lot of the time, actually. Even when I’m performing and stuff. They’re all great people, but sometimes it’s exhausting, you know? And then I turn around and slum on my own and it’s equally exhausting because I just wanna talk to someone. To just reach out. And then if I do, I just wanna be away from them again. Rinse and repeat. The circle, endless. But hey. Guess I just needed to find the right person to talk to, right?’

‘Is that me?’

Irene thinks about it. The smile on her face never falters. ‘You know what?’ she says. ‘It just might be.’

She’s in love and she knows it.

It was obvious to her the very first time she saw Irene, there in that sweater of hers, a stranger in a sea of strangers. When she’s asleep and dreaming she never reminds herself that none of it is real. When she’s awake she refuses to think about it entirely. What matters isn’t the detail behind it but the concept at its core: She’s in love. For the first time in as long as she can remember, she is in love.

She’s dressed down in a casual jacket and jeans when she meets Irene in the bar, already stood leaning against the counter, small and ephemeral under the hazy glow of the lights, dim as they are. She seems to be entirely unaware Seulgi has stepped in at all, glancing about and playing with the stem of her cocktail glass. She’s tied her hair back in a neat ponytail and she’s wearing a white dress shirt with the top two buttons undone and her right earring glints like starlight and even from across the room Seulgi has to stop and catch her breath. For a while she just stands there. It’s only when Irene turns her way and smiles and waves her over does she move at all.

The bar isn’t that big. It’s a confined place with understated house music murmuring through the speakers and a small dance floor off to the back of the room and a long line of stools by the far side under the glare of the lights. ‘Hey,’ Irene says with a smile. The music is still quiet enough that she doesn’t have to resort to shouting to be heard.

‘Hey. Sorry I’m late.’

‘It’s cool. I didn’t know if you wanted to meet beforehand or something.’

‘I should’ve text.’

Irene only smiles.

‘I didn’t know what to wear,’ Seulgi says. ‘I didn’t know what sort of place this was. I didn’t know if it was one of those upscale bars or something, you know?’

‘You like fine. You look really great.’

‘Thanks. You too. You look…really good. Really good.’

‘Thanks,’ says Irene with a giggle. Maybe she’s had a drink already. Seulgi has certainly had a few on her own, loathe as she is to admit it. Even here in her cocoon of dreams the anxiety worms its way into her head like a parasite. Her head is spinning and she’s warm and maybe it’s with the heat of the people pushed together and the bar itself or maybe it’s the half-bottle of soju gone to her a little too soon, with too much force. She leans against the bar and takes a deep breath. ‘Okay,’ she says.

‘What?’

‘Oh, nothing.’

‘What do you want?’

‘What?’

‘To drink,’ Irene says.

‘Oh, but—’

‘No, no. It’s on me.’

‘Are you sure?’

At that Irene giggles again. It’s a laugh that suggests Seulgi’s said something silly and it’s both embarrassing and endearing to hear. ‘It’s just a drink,’ she says. ‘What do you want?’

‘I’ll have whatever you’re having. I don’t mind.’

‘Sure.’

She buys two more and pays with a smile and pushes her glass to Seulgi. It’s a tall and wide cocktail glass with a twisted rind of orange hanging over one side and a soft liquid bubbling like liquid gold in the glass itself. She holds it up and sniffs it with a wince and says, ‘What is it?’

‘Sidecar.’

‘What?’

‘You’ve never had a sidecar?’

Seulgi shakes her head.

‘Well. Cognac, lemon juice, orange liqueur. Occasionally a dab of lemonade if you need something to ease it off. And a bit of orange. Sugar and a like squeezed around the rim if they know what they're doing.’

Seulgi looks at it again. The decision to drink or not isn’t much of a decision at all. She drinks half of it in two mouthfuls with a grimace and sets it back down on the counter again. Irene is laughing. ‘You look like you enjoyed that,’ she says.

‘Well. It’s certainly something.’

‘Steady on. You’ll be on the floor in no time.’

‘I’m good with cocktails.’

‘But you’ve never heard of a sidecar?’

‘Guess not,’ Seulgi says with a shrug. She drinks and she watches Irene drink, and when she’s finished she washes the sidecar down with a mojito. Time here moves within a dimension Seulgi is entirely unaware of. Minutes have no meaning. Hours cease to exist. All that matters is the here and the now. The lights warp and distort in obscene patterns along the dancefloor. She watches, one arm leaning on the bar, entranced. It isn’t until a while later she realises she hasn’t been talking to Irene at all.

‘You okay?’ Irene says with a grin.

‘Yeah. Just a bit, you know…’

‘Drunk?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Me too.’

‘Yeah?’

Irene nods, glass still in hand. ‘A little,’ she says. ‘Well, a lot more than a little. Probably a bit more than a lot, too. The only reason I’m not over there dancing is because I feel like I’d fall over if I moved away from the bar at all.’

‘We can dance,’ Seulgi says, almost too quickly. ‘We should go dance.’

‘You want to?’

Seulgi nods vigorously. It isn’t the dancing – it’s Irene. Everything about her. The response is a long time coming. Slowly Irene looks about the bar. In all her insobriety the room to Seulgi seems to have become even smaller. There’s the door, the bar, the dancefloor at the back. And the music is much louder. Irene looks at her again, eyes hooded a slight, smile teasing its way to her lips. She opens as if ready to say something and then without a word takes Seulgi by the hand and leads her the distance through the crowd to the centre of the dancefloor.

It isn’t a large place. Seulgi doesn’t need it to be. Here she realises the extent of her drinking. The room dances on some witless axis and it hurts a little and her feet are far more uncoordinated than usual but she’s smiling. She doesn’t even know she’s smiling but she is, and so is Irene. The songs have no lyrics to them. Seulgi notices this almost immediately. Soon she begins to find a rhythm, swaying in time to the clap of the drums, the muted shuffling bass under her feet. She watches Irene do the same with her eyes closed. There’s almost a hypnosis to it. The way she looks so effortlessly good in that white shirt, black jeans. There’s a bead of sweat on her forehead that for some reason Seulgi feels the urge to wipe off and it takes a lot of self control not to lean forward and do just that.

Irene opens her eyes again. She looks at Seulgi, looks right through her. Something there in that gaze of hers awakens in Seulgi something she hasn’t felt in years. The lights are just that bit too bright. The music a little out of sync. Everything has taken on that oddly familiar strangeness to it, the paradox of illusion that inhabits her night paradise. Everything but Irene. She sways a slight and her flushed face catches the rosy light with such grace it’s almost alarming. ‘You okay?’ she says.

‘Fine,’ Seulgi mutters. ‘I’m just going to go use the bathroom.’

‘Okay.’

‘I’ll be right back.’

‘Sure.’

She nudges through the crowd. By now the bar is full. It isn’t quite a nightclub but the different is minimal and Seulgi finds herself politely squeezing through two rows of shoulders en route to the bathroom just off by the front entrance. She pushes the door to and is greeted by a clinical white light that has her wincing and trying to orientate herself properly again. There are four stalls and a single long mirror just behind the sinks on her right.

She stands there looking in at that selfsame reflection. The creature staring back at her looks no more human than something from a lake, warped and cruelly distorted, embalmed in alcohol, redfaced and all too flushed and out of breath and drenched in sweat. She tries to smile, a task usually difficult to her, and finds it startlingly easy. Is this the phantom happiness that has been so elusive for so long? Is this what it feels like? Seulgi stands there with her hands leaning against the countertop of the sinks and poses for herself in the quaking square of dimly lit glass a philosophical complex for which she has no real answer.

Suppose this was the real me? What then?

But it isn’t, is it? No. It isn’t.

What does the real me even mean?

Look at me. Look at what I’ve become. Look, Seulgi.

The happiness of your life depends on the quality of your thoughts. That’s a quote from Marcus Aurelius. And you know what? I’m starting to think I don’t think it’s true at all. What makes my dreams any less real than real life? What makes this any more false than the smile I use to encourage the world? I am a pretender to the throne of human happiness. And so where do I belong? When I’m asleep I’m happy. That right there is my real. That is true. My happiness is real. And if my happiness is real, who am I to pretend the rest of it isn’t? And if it isn’t, does it even matter? Who is anyone to tell me to live in misery when I have a choice not to? Extreme or otherwise. Who has the authority to do that? I think that lies outside any sort of logical or moral jurisdiction. Surely the rational thus becomes irrational.

It’s minutes before she realises she’s been talking to herself like this. Nobody else is there to see her. Perhaps, she thinks, this is another power she holds in this world of her own creation. That she might hold the will to push back others, willingly or otherwise. She glances at herself again, eyes wincing in the light, the shape of herself wobbling and animating and disappearing and maybe it’s the alcohol talking but then again maybe not. What does it even matter? She thinks about where she is, where she is not. Then she thinks about Irene outside and that’s all it takes to wash her hands and wipe the sweat from her forehead and stumble back out to the dancefloor.

Irene is where she was. She hasn’t moved an inch. When she sees Seulgi pushing back through the crowd with a fresh drink in hand for the pair of them she smiles again. It’s the same smile that Seulgi both adores and despises in equal measures because it reminds her that something so perfect and so reassuring can only exist in a dream.

‘There you are,’ she says. ‘Thought maybe you’d gotten lost.’

Seulgi hands her the drink. ‘Sorry,’ she mumbles. Irene studies her. If she’s noticed any change in Seulgi she makes no show of it. She holds up her glass and toasts and slurs out, ‘Cheers.’

‘Cheers to you too.’

‘Thanks for tonight. For coming along.’

‘Any time.’

‘I mean it. Sometimes I just need to…you know.’

‘Yeah.’

‘And thank you for—’

The taste of Seulgi’s lips against her is so sudden she almost falls backward. It’s a kiss of the rawest passion, searching and desperate and so very needed, years of misuse and disrepair and heartache in one long, lone, painfully sober exchange. The music is gone and the bass has ceased and it’s much warmer and Seulgi’s head hurts and it might be real because it feels so real that how could it ever be anything else? She pulls back and opens her eyes and looks at Irene as if waiting for an answer but it never comes. Five seconds. Ten.

‘,’ Seulgi says.

‘Yeah. Jesus. Maybe warn me next time? You almost knocked my drink out of my hand.’

‘What?’

‘, I’m so drunk,’ Irene mutters. ‘So drunk.’

‘I didn’t—’

‘What am I doing?’

‘Irene.’

‘Was I that obvious?’

‘What?’

Irene only laughs, slightly mischievous and massively drunk and so absurdly perfect. ‘Guess not,’ she says. ‘Seulgi.’

‘What?’

‘Kiss me again, please. Properly this time.’

She’s fully aware of how drunk they both are. How wrong it would be.

‘I don’t think I can unlock my door on my own,’ Irene mumbles, and maybe it’s an excuse but Seulgi doesn’t really care. Her hands are all over Irene, pulling her closer, keeping her there, savouring the feeling of her so close. She snakes an arm around Irene’s waist from behind and Irene giggles and nudges her away and fumbles about for her door key.

‘,’ she says. ‘Gimme a second.’

Seulgi takes that second to look about. It’s an apartment building much like her own. The cab ride was half an hour and she spent every minute of it with her hands all over Irene and Irene’s lips against her as the world passed outside like it had never existed at all. It takes a good two or three minutes to get inside. Irene kicks her shoes off in the hallway and throws her things down on the table and wanders blind drunk into the little livingroom and throws herself down on the couch with a sigh. ‘God,’ she says. ‘God, I’m so drunk.’

‘Me too.’

‘How much did I drink tonight?’

‘A lot, I guess. Too much to think straight.’

‘Maybe. What about you?’

‘I don’t know,’ Seulgi says. ‘Can I use the bathroom?’

Irene leans back and closes her eyes and makes a gesture that says: Be my guest.

Seulgi flicks the lightswitch and closes the door behind her. Irene is out there laughing to herself on the couch. The bathroom smells of Irene and the hallway smells of Irene and Seulgi’s neck smells of Irene too. Irene is everywhere. The room is spinning such that the grotesquely drunken thing in the mirror is not quite Seulgi at all. She looks as though the only reason she is not in a morgue is because there is no room to store her.

‘,’ she mutters to no one. She feels around in the pocket of her jeans for the dice and pulls them out and sets them there on the sink. The urge to put them away is strong indeed. Or to flush them down the toilet. Instead she takes a step back and with great difficulty crouches down and rolls them both across the grey linoleum tiles. They go skittering down in a clatter and land on double six. She rolls them again to double six. Irene outside is still giggling over nothing at all. Seulgi can still taste her on her lips.

‘Of course,’ she says, leaning down to scoop up the dice again. A glance in the mirror is almost sobering. Does it matter? Any of it? She holds up the dice in the ovoid of shuddering light and begins to think perhaps it does not at all.