"I said, ooh,

I'm blinded by the lights,

No, I can't sleep until I feel your touch."

It’s an unusual place she wakes up in, one that has her rubbing her eyes and wincing at the narrow invasion of sunlight from somewhere else in the room and turning to survey her surroundings properly. It isn’t her room. That much is for certain. It smells slightly of lavender and overwhelmingly of stale alcohol with an undercurrent of sweat. Seulgi’s head feels as if it might at any moment split in two. She’s on a carpeted floor beside an oakwood coffeetable with a pillow under her head that she doesn’t recognise either. It takes her a while to understand the reality of where she is. It takes a good deal longer for it to make itself comprehensible. All her clothes are still on. Her shoes are sat neatly against the far wall beside a kitchen table. To her right is the coffeetable and when she rolls to her left she comes face to face with the bottom of a long black couch and an arm dangling down out of the covers like something half uncovered from a sanctuary or graveyard, pale and cold to the couch.

For a while Seulgi just sits there. Neither she nor the cadaver on the couch move at all. Occasionally a motorbike rumbles past outside. The thin dagger of sunlight pours through the curtains like molten silver. Seulgi closes her eyes and counts to ten, twenty, down to zero. Back to ten again. The world refuses to stop spinning and aches and is dry and desperate for water. Sometime later the corpse begins to stir, a low groaning, a female voice. Seulgi shifts a slight and nudges the pillow up. The woman under the covers yawns and stretches and opens her eyes and glances down at Seulgi and gives a gentle little smile that Seulgi can’t help but reciprocate.

‘Morning,’ Irene mutters.

‘Morning.’

‘How are you feeling?’

‘Not great. What about you?’

‘Eh,’ Irene says. ‘Could be worse. But my head hurts.’

‘I’m dying for some water.’

Irene makes a halfhearted gesture through the doorway near to Seulgi’s shoes. ‘The kitchen’s through there,’ she says. ‘Help yourself. And get me a glass as well, please.’

Slowly Seulgi pulls herself to her feet. The world still dances in her periphery, some treacherous axis, things ever so slightly off balance and out of shape. Perhaps it’s the alcohol and perhaps it’s the nature of this world such as it pertains to her perception of what is real and what is not. Like some delicate encouragement toward waking from this dream. A cruel reminder of what exists and what does not, what cannot. She stumbles into the kitchen. It’s a wide room larger than the usual apartment. There’s another door at the far end leading to the bedroom and the en-suite bathroom Seulgi remembers from last night and a long black marble countertop on a raised platform against the wall beside the doorway. For a moment she just stands there.

‘The cupboard on the wall,’ Irene calls from the next room.

Seulgi takes two glasses from the cupboard and pours them full and drinks one and refills it. Irene is still lying there when she goes back through, half obscured by the bedsheets draped over her, hair fanned out in a mess over the armrest of the couch, grinning a slightly drunk and very happy grin when Seulgi walks into the room and hands her the glass. ‘Thanks,’ she says.

‘Welcome.’

‘God, I’m such an idiot.’

‘Do you have work today? Or anything?’

‘No,’ Irene says. ‘Do you?’

Seulgi shakes her head. Is it Saturday? Is it Wednesday? Does it even matter here? The truth, as with all things, is in a constant state of flux, shifting between the salient and the not so significant at all. The truth is whatever she wants it to be. She says, ‘No. I don’t. I’ve got nothing today.’

‘Oh, cool. Thought so. I think maybe you mentioned something about it last night. Not that I can remember much, to be honest.’

‘Nor can I. Think maybe I drank too much.’

‘Think maybe we both did,’ says Irene with a smile. She pushes herself up against the arm of the couch and sips at the water the way a prisoner of war might having been released from some horrific torture. Seulgi stands awkwardly watching her from the other end of the couch. When Irene is finished she looks at Seulgi and smiles and laughs a slight. ‘You look great,’ she says.

‘Thanks. Was that sarcasm?’

‘No, I mean it. Well, maybe a little bit of sarcasm. But who’s keeping score?’

‘You don’t look too great yourself.’

‘I’ll be fine in a couple hours. Like I said, been a while since I’ve been out drinking. Or doing stuff like this.’

‘Like this,’ Seulgi says. Irene just glances at her. The silence is telling in itself – since she’s brought anyone home. Since she’s had anyone to share the mornings with, drunken or otherwise, or not. And though it may subconsciously be hidden from her, Seulgi knows this without having to be told it. Irene’s life is no less a creation of Seulgi’s imagination than Irene herself is. But Seulgi indulges her all the same – what appears real must therefore be real. And Irene feels very real to her indeed.

‘Do you wanna hang out today?’ Irene asks. ‘Since neither of us is doing much.’

‘Sure. I mean, yeah. I do.’

‘Okay, cool.’

‘About what happened last night—’

‘Seulgi.’

‘What?’

‘It’s okay,’ Irene says with a smile, and it’s enough that Seulgi cannot muster a proper response. She just stands there and nods and smiles back. Irene rubs her head and sighs. ‘God,’ she says. ‘I need to stop doing this. I’m getting ing old.’

‘Do you want something to eat?’

‘Why? You offering to make breakfast?’

‘I could be persuaded,’ Seulgi says with a shrug.

‘Well then. Since you’re asking so nicely, I would. Pancakes, please.’

‘Do you have pancakes?’

‘No.’

‘Then why’d you say it?’

‘Thought maybe you’d offer to go to store too.’

‘No chance,’ Seulgi says.

‘Well then in that case I’ll just have toast or something. And a glass of orange juice. Apparently it’s good for you after drinking. Something to do with the electrolytes. And the Vitamin C.’

Seulgi just listens to her. ‘Okay,’ she says with a smile. ‘I’ll be right back.’

In the kitchen she sets two pieces of bread to toast and pours out two glasses of orange juice and waits. She takes a look around. Studies Irene’s apartment at slightly more than a surface level. As if it may all just be set decoration, elaborate staging that could fall apart if observed for too long or with too much diligence. But it all looks and feels as real as Irene herself. The marble of the worktop, the ticking of the clock, the soft and rich smell of bread as it toasts. So much so that standing there with her eyes closed Seulgi begins to believe it might be after all. Only the dice in her pocket remind her otherwise. But then what of probability and universal fate? Is this not also called into question? Why should dice not always land on double six? What part of logic dictates that? The order of things as they pertain to her life is called duly into question. Reality ceases to have its understood meaning. Seulgi exists outside of it, encapsulated in the wavering sanity between worlds, dangerously close to slipping altogether.

She goes back through into the livingroom to hand Irene her toast and her juice. Irene is still sat there, partially obscured by the bedsheets, looking at nothing in particular. ‘Thanks,’ she says with a smile.

‘Why did you sleep here?’

‘Don’t know. Can’t really remember. I guess I was too drunk to go to bed. Why did you sleep on the floor?’

‘Where else was I going to sleep?’

Irene is quiet. She takes a bite of the toast and says, ‘What do you wanna do today?’

‘I don’t mind. Anything. But not for a while yet.’

‘Duh.’

‘We could go for a walk or something.’

‘A walk.’

‘Well, what else do you suppose? And what’s wrong with going for a walk?’

‘Nothing. Never said anything was wrong with it.’

‘Right. A walk it is.’

Irene laughs amid bites. ‘Taking charge,’ she says. ‘I like it. Like the confidence.’

‘I’m not normally good at taking charge. Or being confident.’

‘Maybe you should get drunk more often.’

‘Maybe.’

‘Well,’ Irene says, reclining again, crumbs falling over the bedsheets as she eats.

‘Well.’

‘I’m not moving for a long time, so get comfy.’

‘How long is a long time?’

‘Dunno. Maybe not until, like, two in the afternoon.’

Seulgi only smiles. It’s almost three when Irene pulls herself up and goes to shower and it isn’t until she’s gone does Seulgi sit alone and dwell on the truth of her situation again. As if Irene is in some way a balm for what can never really be healed. Or a distraction from the wound. By the time they go walking it’s just after four and the sun has dipped a slight in the gunmetal sky and it smells of the cold yet to come, a bitter foretaste of some uncanny near-misery. They walk in quiet, not quite silence but resigning themselves to the occasional conversation about nothing much at all. A sacred line has been crossed and they both know it, a coda binding them as friends and nothing more that dictates that eventually it must be confronted. But not now. Seulgi savours the peace of it, Irene neglects to mention it.

They’re in Sincheon when Seulgi stops dead in her tracks, hands in the pockets of her jacket. All the colour is gone from her face. The suddenness of it has Irene stopping as well. There on the sidewalk Seulgi just studies the building across the street. All glass and concrete, the open lobby and vestibule. People coming and going in business slacks. Three floors up the windows are distant and hazy and more so in the wake of the sun and Seulgi can’t see much of anything inside at all.

‘Seulgi? Are you okay?’

It takes her a while to formulate a response that sounds normal, but does it matter? How will Irene react if she says something unusual? If she reveals all. And when Seulgi wakes up does it all revert? She turns to Irene and forces out a smile and says, ‘Sorry. Just forgot where we were for a minute.’

She nods to the building across the street. ‘Sincheon BI Insurance,’ she says.

‘Yeah. What about it?’

‘That’s where I work.’

‘What? Really? You said you worked in a call centre.’

‘It is a call centre. For insurance. Cold calling.’

‘Oh. Right. That makes sense.’

‘That’s it there.’

‘Well,’ Irene says, ‘you wanna go in or something? Or go to work?’

It’s a joke that Seulgi misses. She just stands looking at it, transfixed. Something in the fevered wiring of her head tells her she still works there even in this world but she can’t quite explain what. She says, in a quieter voice than normal, ‘No, I’m good.’

‘Well. Okay then.’

‘Do you want to come to mine?’

‘What?’

Seulgi repeats it. It’s a question come out of nowhere and it makes Irene laugh and Seulgi blush. ‘I just thought maybe I could show you where I live,’ she says. ‘Not that it’s anything special. But I’ve seen your place.’

‘Oh. Sure, I guess.’

The walk isn’t that far. Seulgi knows it off by heart. Her building is tall and grim even in this world. It’s the finer things that take on an air of modest beauty – the brass of the door handles, the way the sunlight catches her table by the window, the warmth of it all. It occurs to her only when she’s already turned the key and pushed her door in that she doesn’t know what her apartment looks like here. Perhaps it isn’t her apartment at all.

But the interior is exactly the same. Nothing is out of place. Her drawings are still in their boxes under the desk at the far end of the room and her table is still there and the kitchen countertop and her bathroom is still the same. The only discernible difference is one she has noticed before – her bedsheets are red. She shows Irene around like a visitor at a zoo. Irene takes it all in with a sort of curious amusement playing on her face, as if she wants to say something more, something a slight off topic.

‘What time is it?’ she asks.

‘What?’

‘What’s the time.’

‘Just gone seven.’

‘Already?’

Seulgi nods.

‘Well.’

‘What?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Do you want a drink?’

‘Sure.’

Seulgi pours them both a coffee. They sit at the table, two ghosts in a pale and receding square of daylight. The talks turn quiet, cosy, comfortable. There’s more laughter and less space to allow the bitter truth to settle in and Seulgi prefers it that way. Occasionally Irene turns away to look around the room or glance at her phone and Seulgi watches her like a child infatuated with something they don’t quite understand. It’s maddening how good she is – not quite perfect, and strangely all the more perfect for it. She turns back to Seulgi and there’s no light left to catch her face and she smiles teeth and all and says, ‘I just realised you’ve been wearing those clothes for two days straight.’

‘Do I stink?’

‘Not really. I can’t smell anything, to be fair. I think that might be the alcohol.’

Seulgi laughs. The third round of coffee on the table went cold a long time ago. The silence that falls between them is awkward for the first time the whole day. Irene shifts a slight and her own smile fades and it’s noticeable enough that Seulgi picks up on it immediately. This is the real Irene. No façade, no false confidence. And they’re more alike than Seulgi ever realised. ‘Thanks,’ Irene says softly.

‘For what?’

‘I dunno.’

‘Well. You’re welcome. Thank you, too.’

‘For what?’

‘For giving me someone to talk to,’ Seulgi says. ‘Okay, maybe that didn’t come out right. But you know what I mean. For letting me just forget about things for a while.’

‘Work?’

Seulgi shrugs. No, she wants to say.

‘Did you kiss me on purpose last night?’

‘What?’

‘Or were you just drunk?’

‘I—’

‘Be honest.’

She glances at Irene over the table. There’s a smirk on her face that has no malice to it at all. ‘Yeah,’ Seulgi says.

‘Yeah what?’

‘Yeah I kissed you on purpose.’

‘Thought so.’

‘Sorry.’

‘Don’t be sorry. How did you know?’

‘Know what?’

‘That I liked girls.’

‘I didn’t.’

‘Just a good guess?’

‘Something like that,’ Seulgi says. The answer is obvious – Irene likes girls because Seulgi has decided that she should like girls, because Seulgi likes girls too. But Irene doesn’t need to hear that and neither does Seulgi. ‘Well,’ Irene says, ‘it was a very good guess. You’re a good kisser.’

‘You too,’ says Seulgi, blushing a slight.

‘You know, it’s been a while.’

Seulgi is quiet.

‘I’m thinking maybe we should do it again sometime.’

‘The kissing?’

‘The drinking.’

‘Oh. Sorry. I just thought you meant—’

‘That too,’ Irene says with a smirk.

The quiet again. Seulgi thinking about what to say. Eventually: ‘Do you want to, you know…’

‘Stay the night?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Yeah,’ Irene says with no hesitation at all. ‘I do.’

The bedsheets are red, the curtains too.

She notices this before anything else when she stirs in the morning and winces at the light. Before she even realises Irene is still in her embrace, wrapped warm and neat in her arms, her back pressed almost up against Seulgi. She’s still asleep. Seulgi places a gentle kiss on the nape of her neck and nudges herself away and rolls over and Irene never moves at all. For a while Seulgi just lies there. Then before Irene has a chance to wake she throws back the covers and takes the dice from her jeans on the floor and goes on out to the kitchen to make breakfast.

It’s here she understands how unnerving it all truly is. The knives are still in the knifeblock on the worktop by the microwave. The plates are in the cupboard under the sink. She takes two porcelain mugs from the cupboard behind her and sets them next to the kettle while it boils. Everything is where it should be. And yet Seulgi finds herself looking around idly and monitoring it as if something else might have moved, changed. Altered. First the curtains and the bedsheets. What else? She takes an apple from the fruitbowl and slices it clean in half. Apples are the same. Has anything else changed? Does she have the power – the capacity – to have it maintain as it is? The thought of this is almost as overwhelming as the truth itself.

‘Morning.’

Seulgi jolts a slight. The interruption is so sudden and so loud she accidentally slices through the apple again with her knife and cuts the end of her finger enough to make it bleed.

‘,’ she hisses through the pain.

Irene takes another step forward, concern lining her face. ‘Are you okay?’ she asks.

‘I cut my finger.’

‘Oh, .’

‘Yeah. I’ve got no plasters either.’

‘Run it under the tap.’

Seulgi just nods. The water runs a muddy red with her blood. She in a great breath with the pain. The cut is about a centimetre across and not very deep at all but it still hurts a great deal. ‘Did I do that?’ Irene says.

‘No. I just got distracted.’

‘Sorry.’

‘It’s okay.’

‘What are you making? Why are you slicing apples at nine in the morning?’

‘I don’t know,’ Seulgi says. She turns to look at Irene, standing there by the doorway in Seulgi’s black cotton shirt and her underwear and nothing else.

‘Do you want something to eat?’

‘No,’ Irene says, pouting.

‘What’s wrong?’

‘Nothing’s wrong. I just want you to come back to bed. I’m tired.’

‘I was making food for us.’

‘I’m not hungry.’

‘But—’

‘Please?’

Seulgi almost breaks into a smile. The urge to resist is non-existent. She glances about her apartment again.

‘Stephen King once said the worst type of terror is when you come home and realise everything you own has been replaced by an exact copy.’

‘What?’ Irene says.

‘Oh, nothing. Mumbling to myself.’

‘Well. I think you should come back to bed.’

‘Okay,’ Seulgi says, smiling this time. ‘I’ll be a minute.’

Irene disappears into the bedroom again. Seulgi watches her go, the slenderness of her, the shape of her frame. Without another thought she puts the knife in the sink and drops the chopped and mutilated apple into the bin and climbs back into bed beside Irene. She smells of jasmine and of Seulgi and slightly of sweat and she smiles and Seulgi lies there and cups her striking face and places a soft kiss on her lips and says, so very quietly, ‘I love you.’

‘I love you too. God, I can’t imagine myself saying that a couple days ago. But I’m glad I’ve said it now. Thanks.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Seulgi.’

‘What?’

‘I love you.’

Seulgi breaks into another smile. ‘I love you too,’ she says, and it isn’t a lie at all.

The morning brings with it a coldness like none before. She wakes in the dark and mute predawn light and lies there alone and hollow thinking about nothing at all. Nothing comes to her. The woman whose face and name she cannot remember is gone and Seulgi is alone. She pushes herself up against the headboard of the bed and looks about the room. The solace of darkness. Or lack thereof. Dice on the bedside table, blue sheets, blue curtains, blue morning outside. She grabs the dice and rolls them on the table and they land on five and three. She rolls them again to one and four. Picking them up a third time Seulgi realises something and stops and puts them back down.

On the tip of her left ring finger is a small cut, slightly red, about a centimetre across. She knows she got it from cutting herself while making breakfast. She knows it was an apple. And she knows it was because somebody stepped into the room and distracted her. She knows also that it never happened because she dreamt it while asleep and it cannot possibly be real. Then she looks at her finger again. The cut is still there. So too is the memory.

Seulgi lies back down and tries to sleep. And as if the strings of the universe have been pulled unceremoniously shut, no sleep comes to her at all.