Archive of Our Own ^beta

i.

The next one to move in is a man. Just a man, no one else.

He seems rather quiet and unassuming, until he gets in a bad mood and starts mumbling under his breath about various things: debt, his coworkers, the women that don’t love him… 

He’s gone for long hours in the early morning to work on the surrounding farmland, and soon enough he comes home with a hurt back and moans about it all night long.

He just won’t do.

Irene is grateful it’s not a family this time. She feels kind of bad doing this to kids. A lot of the kids that come here are cute, but they’re also loud.

Single men are her favourite. They like to act so fearless at the creaks they hear in the walls, but that mask slips away when Irene shows up. She learns time and time again that men are just weeping, scared children beneath their stoic faces.

Irene stands in front of the window where the moon silhouettes her form from behind. She waits until the man notices her, at which point he goes still and holds his breath. 

It is interesting how people express their fear. Irene remembers that she also used to go quiet when she was scared—back when she was alive—as if she could be so still that she’d turn invisible and the things that scared her would just go away.

This man seems to be doing the same, but he loses his grip at the first terrifying step that Irene takes toward him: her joints cracking, head tilting, hair dripping over her face so that he will only see the gleam of her eyes through the strands. The man gasps and crawls backward, slipping on his blankets and eventually bumping into the opposite wall, and Irene moves closer again.

It’s like a dance, and it’s kind of fun. She could never move her body like this when she was still alive, even when she tried to dance in strange ways that would make her uncle slap her for messing around. He should see her now, bending low to the floor, crawling with her elbows almost twisted around, and smiling maniacally.

The man sprints out of the hanok, screaming all the way down the road, and doesn’t even return for his things. 

-

People say the hanok at the end of the lane is haunted. Or, at least in more modern years, people admit that residents have a strange tendency to hallucinate a similar sleep paralysis demon. Irene just doesn’t like people bothering the space that she happens to haunt.

It’s a rather isolated property in the middle of hilled farmland just before a thick spattering of trees begins. The crops immediately surrounding it are dead since no one will tend to it, turning it into a bleak brown spot that makes it look like the hanok is spreading rot out from its centre. The building looks old enough to do so, as the only place in this countryside that hasn’t been updated to a more modern look since its original conception. No one ever stays long enough to renovate it. 

People keep moving in, though, because it’s cheap and because there’s work here that other people don’t like to do. After so many years, it’s becoming exhausting to keep the peace. Scaring people doesn’t even offer as much entertainment as it did before.

She watches from the corner as the landlord comes and tidies up what was left behind. The nice thing about being dead is that if Irene wishes to be invisible now, she is. 

The landlord looks cautiously around the room, making sure there are no monsters in the dark corners. She must know the most out of anyone about this house after witnessing dozens of people move out abruptly before their contracts have ended.

She never stays here for a second longer than she has to, jogging down the thin porch even when she grows old and stiff. 

The next resident shows up in three weeks.

-

She’s a woman. Just one woman.

This is rare. The kind of work around here typically begs a man's skill and labour, even if he has a wife to help. Have the times changed so drastically that a woman will live and work on her own now? Let alone a woman who is young, and pretty, and looks absolutely pleasant to be around. Irene waits for days, but no man, children, or other relatives follow.

Scribbled onto the front of one of her notebooks is a name: Kang Seulgi. No other letters or documents show up that might explain who she is, but Irene now has a name. Seulgi. She repeats it through her mind and suits it to this new resident and her kind eyes.

Irene watches from the shadows as Seulgi hauls in her things. She has more clothes than Irene has ever seen for one person before, and multiple sleek, shining slabs of metal of different sizes that light up. She has seen enough phones and a couple of computers from past residents to guess that Seulgi has pretty nice ones. Seulgi also has massive, colourful photographs that she tapes to the walls where she sleeps, and big fluffy toys like the ones kids often have. Irene thinks she even kind of resembles the soft teddy bear that she holds in her lap. Each time Irene checks in, there seems to be more clutter filling up each little room. 

Something is not right here. The typical residents that come here bring hardly any belongings of value. This is not a home that people with money move into.

Irene watches Seulgi more than most people, intrigued by these discrepancies. It takes a lot of energy to stay present enough in the physical space to observe her day after day. Irene usually lets herself fade away until she’s merely a glimmer lingering in the air, though she never goes away completely, destined to be just as integral to his hanok as the foundation beneath it. Now she is as present as she has ever been, noting each little change in the rooms as if it were a change to her own body. 

Seulgi eats bits of pineapple and puts sunflowers by each window and sings to herself. She sets up a nice guitar on a stand and then never picks it up again. She spends most of her time drawing in a little notebook and watching moving pictures on her sleek little devices. She eats with her hands and cracks her knuckles too much. The way she walks is strange, too, as if she is gliding through the rooms, a little bit like how Irene moves as a ghost. 

Seulgi never seems to leave the house for work or any other activities aside from the two times she leaves and returns with so many groceries she can barely carry it. Otherwise, the furthest she goes is to the garden outside where she pulls out weeds and smiles at the little worms.

At night, when humans are always more vulnerable, Seulgi sometimes takes a little plastic cylinder that buzzes and puts it between her legs. Her face scrunches up in concentration and she lets out sweet little noises that grow more frequent by the minute. Sometimes she watches things that sound rather obscene on her phone at the same time. Irene watches her, knowing very well that she shouldn’t, but morals tend to slip away when you’re already dead and there are no consequences for anything. The shame for kind of liking what she sees doesn’t go away entirely, though.

Seulgi doesn’t know she’s being haunted. Irene has not let her see her. Even as weeks start to go by, Irene continues to will herself invisible.

Irene is in no place to be getting attached to her little quirks. There is nothing more to learn of her, it seems. Just a lonely, pretty woman who was unfortunate enough to move into the haunted hanok. The place is a cluttered mess and Irene won’t find any peace with her here all the time. 

It is time to get rid of her.

-

Humans are most vulnerable at night. It’s when Irene sees them at their strangest. They pull off their clothes and sometimes touch themselves and sometimes they cry. Sometimes it’s both of those things at the same time. 

Seulgi pulls off her daytime clothes as she sits on her mattress, exposing pale skin lit by the moonlight through the window. She’s tiny, and her muscles are toned enough to suggest real strength. She pulls on long, plaid pants and a sweater, bundled up tight before pulling the duvet up to her ears. She must be cold, Irene thinks. Irene wonders if she makes this place colder. That’s what death does, doesn’t it?

Before Seulgi can fall asleep, Irene pulls herself into her form, becoming visible. It feels rather vulnerable after so long of watching and waiting. She almost forgets she’s real sometimes, until she witnesses the effect she has on people. It’s good for the soul, probably, to do this. Everyone needs to be seen sometime. 

Irene looks down at herself to confirm she still has a body. She’s dressed in a tight black dress.

Seulgi stirs almost instantly, sensing the presence before Irene can even make a noise.

Irene stays still, curious what she will do. Seulgi looks over her shoulder with an “Mm?” noise. 

When no reply comes, Seulgi twists around and sits up completely so that the blanket falls off of her torso. She stares right at Irene, and does nothing but stare.

A few long seconds pass by, so Irene takes a step forward. Irene has Seulgi’s full attention, eyes unblinking, but she’s frozen where she sits. Expressionless.

Irene takes another couple of steps, slowly and carefully lowering herself to the ground until she can crawl at the same eye level, holding eye contact the whole time with a hard expression.

Seulgi’s chest starts to rise and fall in rapid movements. Irene can almost hear her heart hammering away.

Irene pops out her shoulder with a sharp, cracking noise, earning a startled gasp from Seulgi.

Irene’s body is not really real, no matter how much it may look and feel like it did when she was alive. It is just an apparition, really, and Irene can make it form just about any way she wants. A tiny, unassuming woman might not be scary, but one with inhuman movements will rattle the entire sense of security that a grown man has.

Except, she is struggling more than that to rattle the young, lonely woman in front of her now. Usually, people get a hold of their senses and run away by now, but Seulgi almost looks like she’s holding herself back, fists tight around the sheets by her hips like an anchor.

Irene spurs on for the last metre or so until she is only inches away from Seulgi’s face, who sucks in her breath and holds it as if she is scared of blowing Irene away completely.

Irene isn’t typically able to get this close to people without them freaking out. She can’t ever get close enough to see their features so clearly: dark eyes, plump lips, messy hair…. With the effort to hold in her breath, Seulgi’s cheeks puff out and Irene feels an unfamiliar urge to laugh at the silly look.

If this woman sees her, all of her, in the most horrific form she can muster, and still doesn’t leave, what does that mean? Irene has never even considered the possibility that someone might not run away from her and she suddenly feels uprooted, uncomfortable where she balances herself, both wanting to hide away and wanting to see just what else Seulgi might watch her do.

Seulgi makes a noise deep in her throat and her eyes widen slightly, alarmed. She’s still holding her breath, and living humans can’t do that for long, Irene remembers. Her face twists in discomfort, and suddenly she lets out all of her air and the pressure that had built up blows Irene’s hair out of her face.

Seulgi runs.

The mattress below them shifts with the effort it takes Seulgi to scramble up on her feet and then she’s rushing to the door, throwing it open, and sprinting outside into the garden barefoot. She runs all the way to the road, looking back as if expecting a monster at her heel, and then she finally stops. Irene can see her chest heaving with exertion all the way from the room. Seulgi spins around on the spot, looking out for any threats. Seulgi doesn’t know that Irene can’t even go that far. 

Irene lets her form fade away with the breeze coming through the open door until she’s nothing again. She is the monster that she herself created. And no living human is really going to see anything more than that.

-

Irene lets herself fade away for a long time. She doesn’t even have thoughts when this happens, as if she is lingering on the very cusp of sleep when all worries disappear. She’s not quite sure if this is a being-dead thing or just something she does. Even when she was alive, she would often space out and the world around her would fade away until something—or someone—disrupted her peace. 

She doesn’t want to think. She lingers, because she can’t not linger, and has never figured out a way to make herself truly die and go to ‘the other side’ or whatever else there may be other than this purgatory. 

She is just barely aware of movement through the rooms that must signal Seulgi packing up her things and leaving. Irene doesn’t want to witness the sunflowers being thrown out or the pictures being torn down from the wall or the clothes shoved back into big suitcases. Once the hanok is empty again, then Irene can pretend that Seulgi never existed and go on with her meagre existence.

When enough time has passed that Seulgi should be long gone, Irene pulls back into awareness and finds nothing different. The sunflowers are even more in bloom and the number of pictures that line the wall seems ever-growing. Even the garden outside is starting to look healthy and lush again.

Irene is just about to search for Seulgi when she walks in lugging huge bags of groceries to the kitchen, where she immediately starts putting together a rice cake. Seulgi halts for one moment, and looks right in the direction of Irene, through her, before going right back to her activity.

It doesn’t make sense. Seulgi looked petrified the other night. Besides, she clearly has enough money to at least consider moving to a new place. Why is she still here?

No answers come from the cheery way she makes her food. Perhaps she assumed it had merely been a bad dream, and decided the few weeks of peace were telling enough. Irene might need to repeat the process. That happens sometimes with the stubborn ones.

Irene is just watching her, baffled, when another noise comes from the front door. Seulgi hurries to go open it and her face lights up into the first real smile that Irene has seen from her. Her eyes scrunch up and her cheeks puff out, and then she accepts a hug from the woman at the door.

In all of her time here, Seulgi has never invited any guests over. Irene would have felt the presence of another. She hears Seulgi exclaim the name of her guest excitedly. Seungwan. 

“Come, come in, I have food,” Seulgi says, breaking away.

“Ah, oh…” Seungwan continues smiling but it looks rather forced as she looks around the room with wide eyes that don’t hide her shock.

“Just say whatever it is you’re thinking.”

“It’s so old Seulgi! Oh, you live here all alone?”

“I like it here! It’s so peaceful. Look at my room, see, it’s like our dorms but I get all this space to myself.”

“Is it safe?”

“Yes, of course. I mean, no one’s found me.”

“But then isn’t it lonely here?”

Seulgi hesitates. “Well you’re here now, aren’t you?”

“I wish you would just come back.”

Seulgi shakes her head. “Don’t start on that! I needed something new. And I’d never hear the end of it if I was still in the city. But I promise I’m okay here.”

Seungwan leans in and hugs her again, clinging tight. Seulgi doesn’t seem to be particularly affectionate herself, but she still leans into it. Irene can’t stop staring, stalking around the room to observe Seulgi’s expression over the other woman’s shoulder.

It makes sense that Seulgi came here because she was running away from something. She must have decided that she could put up with a ghost to hide from whatever it is she doesn’t want to be a part of.

“Seulgi?” Seungwan asks hesitantly.

“Yes?”

“This place is definitely haunted.”

Seulgi laughs loudly and pushes Seungwan away playfully.

“It gives me the creeps! What is this! It looks like it hasn’t been touched in 200 years.”

“I think it’s endearing! But, you know… Well, I don’t want to scare you away right away. You just got here! Come eat first, please.”

“What do you mean by that? If I get possessed by a ghost, I won’t forgive you.” Seungwan follows Seulgi and sits with her anyway. Her dramatics seem to make Seulgi laugh. It annoys Irene. Besides, Irene doesn’t even possess people, she’s not a demon.

“Shut up. Come eat, tell me how things are with you,” Seulgi says, starting to eat some of her own cakes.

Irene listens to them speak, putting in the effort to stay present. It’s more difficult after having let herself go for so long. Sometimes she wonders if she’ll lose the ability to stay conscious and fade away completely, unable to think or see. In the end, she manages to catch most of their conversations.

It takes a while to piece together the strange contexts they discuss, but Irene eventually realizes that they were performers in the music industry. Seulgi’s riches make more sense now, as well as her mindless singing and dancing day to day, though Irene isn’t sure why her guitar is still untouched in the corner.

Apparently, there were two other performers with them, both women, and also close friends, but Seulgi left them all behind to come here. Irene wishes they would speak more clearly about what they want to say, but it seems the two women are hesitant to say anything too directly. The atmosphere turns a little sad and wistful. The sky outside darkens with the evening and the silence rings through the room for an uncomfortably long moment.

Irene feels sad, too. She doesn’t like these emotions. She shouldn’t even be projecting onto strange humans, though. 

Thankfully, Seulgi perks up and says, “Hey, let’s talk about something else now.”

Seungwan meets her energy easily. “Tell me about your haunted house then.”

Seulgi puts her hands on either side of her cheeks and curls up a bit, but her playful smile stays. This girl has the strangest reactions, Irene thinks.

“It was the craziest thing,” Seulgi says. “If it scares you, though, promise me you won’t leave.”

“I won’t, as long as you protect me,” Seungwan says, leaning in.

If Irene really tried, Seulgi wouldn’t be able to protect Seungwan. Not from Irene. As soon as the thought comes, she melts back. She’s never actually hurt anyone. 

“I will, always. Now… Hold on a second.”

Seulgi pushes herself up and goes to find a candle. She lights it and then waves out the match, bringing the candle back to where they were sitting together. She holds the candle under her chin so the light shines on the lower dips of her face. At Seungwan’s laughter, Seulgi cracks up into laughter, too. She doesn’t look scary at all. Instead, her smile seems to light up the entire room. She clears her throat and tries to act serious again.

“It was just a few weeks after I moved in that it happened. I got in bed and was just laying there when all of the hair on my body stood up straight and I felt like something was in the room. It was as if I was back in the dorms and you had walked in the room while I slept, but there was no noise. ”

Seungwan curls up her arms around her knees. It’s done jokingly, but Irene hopes she is scared in earnest.

“So I sat up, looked at the foot of my bed and there was a woman. And listen: I knew right away that she wasn’t a sasaeng, but she was something else entirely. She had long, smooth hair that fell in front of her face and she was wearing this pretty costume, all black and red, and she was staring right at me like she was waiting for a reaction.”

Seungwan’s expression drops until there is no humour left in her eyes.

“The woman started coming toward me and her joints were cracking with each step. She looked inhuman, but it almost felt like a dance or something. For me.”

“Uh, Seulgi..?”

“I know, I know, but that’s just how it felt. She got so close to me and I was so scared and holding my breath. I felt like if I didn’t touch her, I would be safe and could pretend there was nothing really there. But I ran out of air and breathed out and it touched her. My breath pushed her hair out of her face and she had such a normal face and it terrified me that someone was actually here. So I got up and ran to the road in a panic, but after that, she was gone and I haven’t seen her since. I haven’t even felt anything, not really… today I thought I might have sensed something but it was probably just my excitement over you coming.”

“That sounds so scary,” Seungwan whispers, looking genuinely concerned.

“It was, but it was also kind of cool. Like, who is she? What is she doing here? What did she want from me? I suppose it could have been a dream, but I don’t think so. It felt so real.”

“Uh-huh…”

“I know I sound crazy,” Seulgi says, a bit bashful as she realizes that Seungwan isn’t in agreement. 

It’s strange to hear someone else’s perspective of Irene. She never thought she’d be described as something more interesting than monstrous. She feels almost defensive of Seulgi that Seungwan doesn’t understand.

“You should come back, Seulgi,” Seungwan says. “Come back and we’ll figure something out. We’ll make it better for you.”

Seulgi shakes her head a little sadly. “Is it so weird that I like it out here? Of course I miss you guys, but I’d rather see you just as friends. Bring them to visit.”

“It will be hard to get away, and not have sasaeng find us. I’m not even sure if I got here safely. And I don’t like you being here alone all the time, not with… all of that happening.”

“You don’t understand,” Seulgi says, sadly.

Seungwan looks away. “I’m gonna go to the washroom. I’ll be back.”

Irene doesn’t know what she’s doing when she follows Seungwan through the house. She just wants to see.

Seungwan doesn’t even use the toilet, she just stands in front of the mirror, takes a deep breath, and then pulls out her phone. Irene looks over her shoulder to read the words that light up on the front as she taps her fingers. Hi guys, I’m really worried about her, maybe we should…

Take her away? Get her out of here? Just as Irene was finding her even more interesting, too. Irene needs to figure out why Seulgi is really here and why she isn’t scared of Irene.

Before she can consider the consequences, Irene pulls herself into form. She sees herself in the mirror over Seungwan’s shoulder. It isn’t often that Irene sees herself, looking so alive and like herself from her past life, though her expression is so blank and lifeless.

Seungwan looks up and immediately lets out the most blood-curdling scream that Irene has ever heard. If she had physical eardrums, she thinks they would have burst.

Seulgi rips open the door just as Irene hides away again. Seungwan rushes into her arms and pulls them both away from the bathroom. She keeps going until she’s cowering in the kitchen, picking up a pair of scissors and pointing them at the empty air in front of her. 

“What, what!” Seulgi shrieks, nearly as panicked.

“I saw her! The girl you said!”

“Where?!”

“Behind me, in the bathroom!”

Seulgi runs across the room, right through where Irene lingers, and looks in the bathroom. “I don’t see anything.”

“She—I promise she was there!”

“No, no, I believe you. But she’s not there now. And I don’t think she wants to hurt us.”

Seungwan keeps looking around the room, terrified. “I don’t think I can stay here tonight. I think I should leave, right now. I’m so sorry.”

“Will you come back?”

Seungwan doesn’t reply to her question. “Please consider coming back to us, Seulgi. We all want you home.” Seungwan scoops up all of her things and hurries to the front door.

“I’ll think about it some more, okay?”

Seungwan hesitates at the door, looking desperately at Seulgi.

“ Leave, ” Irene whispers. She can’t remember the last time she spoke. She didn’t even really know that she could speak, but her voice carries through the room, quiet enough to think it was the wind if the two women didn’t know about her presence. Seungwan cowers by the door.

“Come with me, please,” Seungwan says.

Seulgi hesitates, but her head slowly moves back and forth.

Seungwan looks defeated. “I love you, and I’ll call you when I’m home,” she says, and leaves as quickly as she can.

When the room is empty again, Seulgi turns and looks right at Irene. Irene feels nervous that she might be visible after all, until Seulgi says, “Hello? Are you there?”

Irene stays quiet, watching.

“Are you here? Will you say something to me if you are? I just want to know…”

Seulgi trails off and Irene waits, wanting to know what Seulgi wants of her. Seulgi never says, though.

-

The next time that Seulgi leaves the house, Irene starts going through her stuff.

She flips through her books and brushes some of the makeup powders onto her skin. Then, she digs through Seulgi’s closet and pulls an oversized pink sweater over her form. When the door opens, Irene disappears and the sweater falls in a heap on the floor where she was standing, and some leftover, glittery makeup drifts down on top of it.

Seulgi doesn’t notice it right away. She closes the door quickly and then peaks out the windows carefully. She pulls out her phone and holds it to her ear.

“Seungwan, please call me back when you get this. Did anyone follow you here, do you think? I’m worried someone may have found me. I really don’t want to move… I’m going to stay low for a while and hope they leave.”

Seulgi backs up from the window and notices the sweater on the floor. She picks it up, turning it in her hands for a moment, and then she pulls it on and hugs it close. She keeps it on as she goes and lays down on her bed and scrolls through her phone with her eyebrows knit together in worry.

Irene steps outside to look around for what she might have been talking about. She circles the hanok as far as she can comfortably go, curious. 

The further away she goes from the hanok, the less tethered she feels, as if she would dissipate into the air if she really stepped past the property. She pushes herself further this time, though.

At first, she doesn’t see anyone, but then there is rustling in the trees nearby. Irene finds a girl, probably no older than a teenager, typing on her phone. Is this the sasaeng that Seugli was scared of finding her? Is she dangerous? It is a strange term that doesn’t sound like anything menacing, but Seulgi’s fear was real.

If she is dangerous and Irene has the opportunity to protect an innocent woman, just as innocent as Irene once was, then she should. 

Irene drifts back to the house and gets a knife from the kitchen. When she returns to the yard, the girl is close to the house and holding her phone up to the windows. 

“Hey,” Irene says out loud. The girl gasps and turns toward her. 

“Who are you ?” The girl’s eyes flicker down to the knife in Irene’s hand.

“You’re trying to hurt her? Take her away?”

“What? No, no…”

Irene moves forward, and the girl runs. Soon she will make it too far that Irene won’t be able to sustain herself, so she picks up speed, flying through the yard and she plunges the knife into the girl’s back before it’s too late. 

The girl falls to her stomach, whimpering and starting to crawl even as blood starts to spurt out where the knife still sits between her ribcage. Irene can’t really tell the difference between her coughs and sobs as her noises grow increasingly distressed.

Irene didn’t die right away when she was killed, either. She was surprised at how long she kept going, too. Her body tried its hardest to stay alive, even when it was pointless.

Irene just watches as the girl crawls further and further into the wooded area. Good. She’ll be more hidden there. With any luck, she’ll rot away or be eaten by animals before anyone can find her. Irene watches until she finally stops pulling herself along, and her face settles right in the dirt. 

Irene’s entire body tingles with energy.

Irene returns to the hanok, tempted to tell Seulgi that she’s safe now and the threat is gone, except when she finds her, Seulgi is fast asleep.

Irene pulls the blankets up to Seulgi’s ears. She gets too cold otherwise. Irene sits back and watches her breathe. So human. So fragile and unpredictable. Seulgi might leave at any time, but for now, she has chosen to stay. And right now, there’s nothing to pull her away.

-

The next time that Irene goes through Seulgi’s things, she decides it’s time to show herself to Seulgi completely.

She flips through Seulgi’s notebook this time. The first pages are filled with faces that Irene doesn’t recognize, a range of different people and styles, as well as a couple of cats, until the last dozen pages or so that are just Irene after Irene after Irene. It takes her a long moment to even recognize that it’s really her.

There are full-body sketches of Irene at the end of her bed and close-ups that show every twinkle in Irene’s eyes. There are pictures of Irene’s hair sweeping across her face, and one of her and Seungwan together in the mirror. Seulgi’s style is disordered but tastefully so, and Irene can’t stop staring at the messy lines.

Irene actually goes to the mirror to look at herself again because of it, just to make sure it’s really her. She watches herself pull into form, glimmering just slightly translucent, and then she holds up the notebook next to her face.

She looks just like the drawings in the notebook. She never expected to resemble something that looked so pretty.

If this is how Seulgi sees her, then she doesn’t look like a monster at all.

She waits for Seulgi to return and cook dinner so that she doesn’t burn her food. Seulgi retires to her room afterwards and looks at the open notebook with suspicion before closing it and returning it to its pile.

Seulgi gets changed and Irene feels like she should look away, now that she’s really going to reveal herself. She can’t quite bring herself to look away, though. She likes these moments. She likes seeing what other people don’t see of Seulgi, like the curve of her small waist beneath her clothes and her otherwise hairless body that descends into soft, curly hair between her legs. 

Irene is more nervous to show herself than ever before. There is little she has to lose when her goal is to freak people out and act as weird as she can. For the first time ever since becoming a ghost she is faced with the possibility of someone who might accept her, and she hasn’t felt this terrified since the time she got murdered.

Just as Seulgi is crawling under her covers, clad in her pajamas and seconds from hiding away in her cocoon of blankets, Irene pops into view, standing over her bed.

Seulgi shrieks and lifts up the blankets as if to shield herself, which Irene finds rather endearing. A spark of recognition crosses her face, and she looks like she’s almost about to relax, but she probably remembers that Irene is still a ghost and backs away a couple of feet.

Irene puts up her hands to try and express that she’s harmless. Then, she remembers that she can talk.

“Uh… hello.”

Seulgi’s mouth drops open, and then she quickly gathers her composure again and says, “Hello?”

Irene waves, feeling unbearably awkward even as she can’t bring herself to stop.

“I… wow, you’re talking to me?” Seulgi asks.

“Yes?”

“When you popped up, I thought you were going to scare me away again.”

“Oh, no, I’m not trying to scare you this time.”

“I heard you say ‘leave’ the other day. I didn’t know if you were talking to just Seungwan or both of us, but I felt like it was just Seungwan for some reason.”

Irene can hardly believe she’s having a conversation with someone right now. It’s been so many years since she’s had to think of replying to someone like a normal human.

“You were right, it was just Seungwan.”

Seulgi nods, a bit hesitant, never taking her eyes off Irene. “Then you don’t want me to leave? You don’t want me to move out or anything? Because I can, if… if…”

No, please don’t. “You can stay, it’s okay.”

Seulgi nods. “Okay… good.”

Irene clasps her hands together in front of her, not quite sure where to put them. She almost wishes she could turn back invisible to be able to handle this conversation. The silence drags on and Seulgi just watches Irene, waiting.

“I liked your art,” Irene blurts out. “That’s what I wanted to say. I saw what you drew of me.”

“Oh! So it was you that opened my notebook. See, I was questioning what I had actually seen that other day when you had appeared, but all of the things moving around when I could have sworn I put them back has been strange, and I even lost some kitchen utensils? It seemed to confirm that I wasn’t just crazy. You can touch things, then? I mean, I don’t know if it’s okay if I ask things… I’m just so curious, I’ve been wondering for so long.”

“Oh… of me?”

“I’m acting so awkward, sorry, I don’t know how to handle this meeting with… whatever you are!”

“ You’re awkward? I’m the one that hasn’t had a conversation in decades!”

“ Decades? ”

Irene winces. “I would rather not think about how long it’s been.”

“Right, okay, we don’t have to talk about that.” Seulgi nods for an excessively long time.

Irene sways on the spot for a moment. If she had a beating heart, it would have beat right out of her chest, she thinks.

“What are you curious about?” Irene asks.

“I mean, well, just if… just what even are you?”

“I guess I’m a ghost?”

“You guess?” 

“Well I remember dying, and now I’m here. Some people think I’m a demon, but I think I would know if I was a demon.”

“I suppose that makes sense. There’s no manual on these things.”

“No, I didn’t get any training on the afterlife, unfortunately.”

Seulgi laughs softly. “Funny. Is it super insensitive to ask how you died?”

Irene freezes. She can’t imagine trying to explain that gruesome story, at least not in a way that wouldn’t make Seulgi run for her life.

“Oh, it is. Ignore me, sorry,” Seulgi says.

“It’s okay. No manual to being dead, right?”

“Or talking to the dead,” Seulgi says, and then gulps, looking scared all of a sudden.

“You are so strange,” Irene blurts out, making Seulgi look even more alarmed. “I can’t tell if you are scared of me. Are you scared of me?”

“It’s like, I constantly just remember that I should be scared of you.”

“Oh?”

“It’s the potential of it. If ghosts are real, which is something I never expected to get real evidence of, then what else could be possible? It is scary that there is no manual for this! I don’t know what you’re capable of, if ghosts might be violent or if you might be lying about not being a demon. I don’t know if this won’t make me go crazy. It’s just all a big unknown and that’s the scariest thing—but it’s also the most exciting thing I’ve ever experienced.”

“You think it is exciting?”

“Of course it is! That’s the question of the ages, where we go when we die. If there’s something more than this. And you’re not just a dark shadow in the corner of the room, you’re a whole, speaking person. ”

“People don’t have evidence of ghosts?”

“I guess you wouldn’t know, huh? No, I mean, I have seen a bunch of horror movies and ghost hunting videos and there’s some compelling stuff, but I feel like I have mostly believed in ghosts and the supernatural out of wish fulfillment rather than any real belief. Until you showed up and nearly gave me a heart attack. No offence.”

“None taken. I mean, I was trying to be scary.”

“Ah, congratulations then.”

“I suppose it doesn’t seem that interesting to me after this long, but I’ve never had anyone to talk to about it. You can ask me things, if you’d like.”

Irene sits cross-legged in front of Seulgi and Seulgi scoots even closer, leaning forward excitedly.

“So, you’ve never met another ghost?”

Irene shakes her head. She had feared before that the ghost of her uncle might show up and she’d be trapped with him for all of eternity, but he left the home as a human and never returned, dead or alive. Irene has no idea what happened to him.

Seulgi asks her more questions about what it’s like to be a ghost. Irene finds it difficult to explain; it just feels how it feels. Everything is a little fuzzy and distant. She can interact with the world but it’s only as vivid as she makes herself, and it takes energy to do that. Her natural state is to linger at the state of consciousness. It must be some kind of purgatory, where she definitely doesn’t feel alive in any manner, but she’s not able to just stop either. She tries to explain it as best as she can, and Seulgi stares at her with rapt attention, clearly wanting more.

“You may as well try to explain to me how it is to be alive,” Irene says.

“But you were alive once, right? You can compare how it feels.”

“I don’t remember that well,” Irene says. She tries not to think of her years being alive either.

Seulgi stares at her in pity. The attention is a bit overwhelming.

“Well, I can try to remind you,” Seulgi says, surprising Irene. She hadn’t been serious. Seulgi continues on, anyway. “Things can feel a little fuzzy being alive, too, sometimes. I don’t have the best memory, so things slip away. It can be hard to focus on what’s in front of me, and it seems like there’s always so much to look at, but it’s better since I’ve moved here. Quieter. It takes energy to be alive and conscious, too, so maybe we really aren’t that different after all?”

Irene listens quietly, trying to remember how it felt until Seulgi continues on.

“Except, I suppose there are differences. If someone touched me, it would always be just as vivid. If my food comes out of the oven, it smells just as strong. And if someone were to attack me, it would always hurt the same. If I’m sad, then sensations might seem a little dull, but they are still happening. I suppose being alive means I can’t quite escape the things going on around me even if I lose my energy to live.”

Irene reaches out and touches Seulgi’s hand, meaning for it to be comforting, but Seulgi gasps and pulls away. 

They apologize at the same time, speaking over each other, and Irene leans away, holding her hands to her chest.

“No, it’s okay, you just surprised me, that’s all. I didn’t expect…” Seulgi trails off.

“I shouldn’t have. I’m probably cold.”

“Not exactly… but you feel not quite there. Like a brush of air rather than a solid hand.”

“I might be getting too tired. I might be fading away.” As Irene says it, she realizes the effort that it is taking to stay visible and speak aloud. She feels overwhelmed and it’s hard to hold on, but she so badly wants to keep talking to Seulgi. It has gone so well, and she’s scared she will never get this again.

“I didn’t even ask you why you showed yourself to me! Was it really just to say you liked my art?”

“I just wanted to talk to you,” Irene whispers.

“Do you talk to a lot of humans?”

It may scare Seulgi away if she realizes that she’s the only person Irene has taken an interest in. It seems obsessive, strange, and even Seulgi admitted that Irene could be scary. Irene stays quiet and takes the opportunity to fade away.

“I can see through you,” Seulgi whispers in realization, then raises her voice louder than before. “Hey, will you come back?”

Before Irene can disappear completely, she nods her head.

ii.

The next time that Irene shows herself, it’s morning and Seulgi says it’s strange that Irene would be in the light and that it seems like ghosts should only be seen at night. Irene doesn’t know what to say in response to that so she just shrugs.

Seulgi looks happy to see her, though. “After our conversation, I could barely believe it. I thought maybe it was a dream, and I kept pinching myself—look at this bruise! I kept pinching myself, so happy that it was real.”

“Oh?”

“I was a bit worried you wouldn’t come back. Did you need to rest?”

“Yes,” Irene says shortly. The long answer is that she was a bit terrified to return and find anything different. It’s exhausting to talk to Seulgi, but in a good way. Seulgi overwhelms all of her senses just by being around her.

“Hey, can you eat?” Seulgi asks.

“Uh. I’m not hungry?”

“Want to try?” Seulgi passes over her own teacup.

Irene takes it, not able to think of any reason she shouldn’t. It’s hard to say no to Seulgi. She just might do anything to indulge her at this point, as long as Seulgi keeps giving her this attention.

Irene sips at the tea and feels the warm liquid sliding down her throat. Strange. Not particularly nice as she no longer has any urge for it, but it’s not horrible, either. It’s kind of appealing in a familiar way she has nearly forgotten. For a few seconds, she looks like a normal friend visiting Seulgi. Kind of like Seungwan.

Seulgi seems preoccupied with showing Irene her things today, and doing little experiments. Irene uses her touch screen phone, and she keeps on swiping around the home screens, surprised by the technology. She also brushes her hand across a candle flame, then blows it out. She opens the fridge and makes Irene hold her warm teacup to see if she can feel the different temperatures. She even makes Irene come close and smell Seulgi’s perfume. It’s almost like Seulgi is looking for evidence that Irene isn’t really here but she keeps smiling as Irene proves herself to be, for all intents and purposes, right here.

“You have a reflection, too? Wait, no, that’s vampires that don’t have a reflection,” Seulgi says.

“Vampires are real?” Irene gasps.

“I mean, those are fictional, as far as we know. But after finding you, I’m like, who knows?”

“Oh.”

Seulgi looks at Irene in the mirror. “You are so pretty. I can’t believe how pretty you are.”

Irene stares at her, speechless, until Seulgi walks past her. Irene looks at herself in the mirror one last time to try and see what Seulgi does.

“What about your clothes? Did you… die in this?”

Irene looks down, remembering the black dress she has been wearing for quite a few years now. 

“No, I didn’t die in this. That’s a harder question, because I don’t really know how to explain it. I’m not… real, and I don’t feel like I used to. When I pull into my physical form I imagine myself and how I felt because it would be too hard to imagine any other way, but then I can move my body in completely different ways than I used to just by thinking about it. I previously was wearing my old work clothes, but it wasn’t how I wanted to look. I saw this costume in a book one day, a magazine I think you call it? and I thought it would be—” Irene pauses. Scarier? That makes her sound insane. “—better. Prettier, for this age, and a bit interesting.”

“So you just…?”

“I imagined myself in it. Got used to the look and feel, and now it’s more natural, like it’s a part of my skin.”

“Wow. So you could look any way you want really?”

“I guess technically, but it takes so much energy to even show myself that I can’t imagine trying to form myself in a drastically different way.”

“I see, have you tried?”

Irene can sense Seulgi wanting to ask her to try and Irene looks at her with an amused expression.

“Okay, okay, I won’t make you try.” Seulgi turns and looks out the window. “And you really can’t go further than here?” Seulgi asks.

Irene shakes her head. “I think because I died here, I’m tethered. And since I don’t see other ghosts walking by, I feel like any others would be tethered to their spots, too.”

“Maybe it’s rare to be a ghost, and it’s only the people that are unsettled in some way. I wonder if you will ‘pass on’ one day. Would you want that?”

“I don’t know. It’s hard to imagine truly disappearing into nothing. I wouldn’t even be happy about being able to rest.”

“I suppose so,” Seulgi says. “All the goodness we feel is only because there are bad things to compare it to.”

“That seems to matter less for me. No matter what, I’m just here.”

Seulgi looks at her with sympathy. That makes Irene feel a bit more alive, too.

“Can I try something else?” Seulgi asks. 

“What?”

“Can I try to touch you? I want to see how it feels.”

Irene nods and then goes still in anticipation. Seulgi is hesitant as she moves closer. She lifts her hand and touches Irene’s cheek gently. 

It’s almost like she’s scared to put her hand right through Irene, but Irene has never felt so solid and real.

It tingles where Seulgi touches her. She feels uncharacteristically sensitive, which she didn’t expect, but Irene stays still with the hope that Seulgi will keep brushing her fingers back and forth.

“You’re so soft,” Seulgi says in wonder. She pulls her hand back and says, “Thanks.”

“For what?” Irene asks. She feels like she should be thanking Seulgi.

“For letting me test these strange things. It might get tiring, especially if other people ask you a lot of the same things.”

Irene stays quiet.

“You were alive, so it’s not like I can show you anything cool,” Seulgi says.

Irene hesitates with her mouth open.

“What is it? You can ask me anything.”

“Will you show me the things you watch on your computer?”

“My movies?”

“Yes.”

Seulgi smiles. “Of course! What do you want to see?”

“Anything. I’m just curious.” She has only come to know what electronics are in recent years with a couple of recent residents that had them, usually with much clunkier devices than Seulgi has.

Seulgi sets up her computer where they can sit in the front room, with some snacks that Seulgi keeps in arms reach of Irene as if they were sharing.

“You’ll need to read the subtitles. It’s a Hollywood movie, from America,” Seulgi says.

“You can see that all the way over here?”

“Of course. I’ll tell you about it all another day. You really have been here for a long time, huh?”

Seulgi clicks through her computer with seamless movements and clicks that somehow pull up a whole new world on the screen.

“It’s called Before Sunrise,” Seulgi says. “It’s an old movie, and it’s just about these two people conversing the whole day. I thought it was so beautiful. It made me wonder if I’ll ever meet someone that I can talk with the whole day without stopping, and have it be so natural even though we just met. It was so beautiful and wonderful that I wanted to be in that kind of romantic relationship.”

Irene watches carefully, imagining what Seulgi sees in the movie. She tries to stay present as long as she can.

When Irene fades away, the tea that she had drunk falls from midair and splashes where she sat.

-

Seulgi seems far past the point of being surprised or scared at Irene’s sudden presence. She just slurps back her noodles with a surprised noise.

“Oh! Do you know what I realized? I never even asked your name! In my mind, you are just my ghost. Do you know my name?”

“Kang Seulgi. It’s on your mail and notebooks.”

“What’s your name?”

“I’m Irene.”

“Irene? That’s pretty. Did you choose it? That doesn’t sound like a birth name.”

“No, I chose it. Is that strange?”

“No. I know tons of people that have done that. Will you tell me why you chose it?”

“Someone brought a book of Greek Mythology here. It said that Irene means ‘goddess of peace’ and I thought that sounded nice. It would be nice to be a goddess, to be worshipped. But mostly I just want peace and quiet here. When I considered that I could have a new name, I was relieved to leave behind the old one. It was like a rebirth.”

“That is beautiful. Will you tell me your birth name, too?”

“You can use my birth name, if you’d like. No one I ever liked used that name. It might make me like it again if you use it. I was called Bae Joohyun.”

“Bae Joohyun,” Seulgi smiles. “I like that.”

“I like the way you say it,” Irene says.

“You seem to like everything I say.”

“I just like you. A lot.”

Seulgi’s cheeks turn red. All that blood running through her veins, the blush right below her skin, more evidence of how alive she is. Irene can’t look away. 

“Then keep coming to see me. I like your company.”

Irene beams at her.

“You smiled!” 

Irene looks at her in surprise.

“I haven’t seen you smile yet. It’s a beautiful smile.”

Irene instinctively looks at Seulgi’s mouth. “You too.” Then she flashes another smile, realizing that she really is out of the habit of expressing her emotions. 

“Pretty, see? Now come, unnie, we have a movie to finish. But first…”

Irene follows Seulgi to her room where she starts going through her things. She pulls out a lavender-coloured sweater and holds it out to Irene.

“I don’t get cold, you know,” Irene says.

“You look like you could be cozier. Try it.”

Irene pulls it on, touched by that thought. Seulgi pinches the soft fabric near her waist. It has never felt so intense to stand face-to-face with someone, Irene thinks. She doesn’t know if she’s just out of the habit of having connections, or if it really is something more between them.

“Very nice,” Seulgi says quietly. 

Seulgi sets up the movie and Irene sits closer than usual, linking their arms, which Seulgi allows.

The purple sweater hangs off Irene’s frame loosely until she fades away at the end and it collapses in a heap on the floor.

-

Through pure will, Irene pulls herself back to her physical form that same night. She’s getting better at it, and she has more energy now, or maybe she just has Seulgi’s presence to motivate her. 

The truth is, even when she’s only away for a day or so, and even when she’s faded away enough that she has no thoughts, she can’t get away from missing Seulgi. It’s a stronger pull than resting is anymore. There’s constant drumming in her mind, just Seulgi, Seulgi, Seulgi. And if she so much as thinks about the time that Seulgi touched her cheek, she starts to crave her hands brushing over the rest of her body. Even sitting next to her for the movie felt dizzying. The space between them seemed to mock her.

More than that, she starts to think of the times that Irene used to observe Seulgi at night. The things she was doing. Irene has never felt such an obsessive pull like this.

Irene comes back into the present when Seulgi is sleeping, curled up in her blankets. Irene comes close and it’s not close enough. She pulls back the blanket and finds Seulgi wearing the same lavender sweater that Irene was earlier.

It’s too much. Spurred on by the surreality of the dark, when Irene is used to being the monster, Irene pulls back the blanket enough to crawl in.

Seulgi reaches for the sheets and Irene, startled, instinctively hides away and Seulgi’s hand goes right through her body.

Seulgi freezes and stares wide-eyed up at her. She still feels Irene there.

Irene shifts to the side until there is no physical barrier going through her. Seulgi’s eyebrows furrow, confused. Probably wondering if she had imagined it, but she touches the blanket which is still being held up by an unseen presence.

Irene shows herself again and Seulgi jerks in fear, thrashing her arms and legs and Irene holds her down.

“It’s me, it’s me,” Irene says.

“Unnie?”

There is no hiding how much Irene has invaded Seulgi’s space. Even if she fades away, Seulgi will always see her somehow. 

Irene thinks about the movie that Seulgi showed her. She was admittedly distracted and low on energy, but she saw the connection, and she saw the kiss. She remembers Seulgi saying that’s what she wanted.

Irene leans down and kisses her. She’s never kissed anyone before. She’s barely left this house her entire life. Already, Seulgi has shown her the world in comparison.

Seulgi feels frozen as Irene presses their lips together, but slowly, she starts to relax. As her lips part, Irene feels the moistness of her spit and presses close, slotting her own lips between Seulgi’s.

It’s so soft where she’s settled, but the clothes and blankets aren’t as soft as Seulgi’s skin had been the other day. She feels around Seulgi’s hips and pushes the fabric up until she can uncover a few inches of space above her waistband and smooth out her fingers there, where it’s unbelievably warm.

Suddenly, Seulgi’s hands go to Irene’s face and pull her down hard so they’re pressed together, lips crushed against each other. Seulgi sucks on her lip gently. Reciprocating.

Irene pushes her clothes even further out of the way. Part of her doesn’t want to get rid of the sweater that she had given to Irene earlier, so she just pushes it most of the way off her torso, revealing more warm skin, soft flesh between sharp hips and ribs and collarbones.

Irene has seen what couples do here in these beds. It’s usually a bit obscene and uncomfortable to witness, but there’s something appealing in the act. Here in this moment, nothing is obscene or uncomfortable, but a lot is suddenly very appealing.

Irene pushes Seulgi’s pyjama pants down her thighs and feels her squirm and close her legs modestly, but Seulgi doesn’t tell her to stop and keeps kissing her just as hard. Irene makes herself more weightless above Seulgi and their skin brushes together in the strangest way, dipping below the skin where Irene is mostly but not entirely there. The sensation tingles all the way beneath her skin, just inside of her body. 

Seulgi opens her mouth and their tongues flick together. Irene brings up a hand and puts two fingers inside of Seulgi’s mouth, which elicits a noise in surprise, but still, no refusal.

It’s warm inside of Seulgi’s mouth, wet and soft where she presses down on her tongue, and sharp along her teeth. Irene explores more, surprised by the sensation, and Seulgi chokes slightly on the fingers travelling closer to her throat.

Irene pulls her fingers back and then puts them between Seulgi’s legs. She tenses up and Irene kisses her to try and distract her.

Her hand travels below the hair there and to a place that is just as warm and wet and soft as her mouth had been, but still worlds different. She pushes her way inside, determined to feel every part of her.

“ Ah, unnie, what are you—”

“It’s okay. Relax for me.”

“Are you, ah, I’ve never been with—I mean, I wasn’t allowed to… but I just didn’t with a w—” Seulgi tenses up and then sighs out and her whole body relaxes. “That feels nice,” she whispers like it’s a secret.

Irene nods. Nice, nice, Seulgi feels nice. This is something Irene can give her. This is how Irene can try to show just how much she likes Seulgi, how close she wants to get, which is buried inside of her skin.

Seulgi’s body reacts to her, pulsing and clenching. Irene pushes in and out, rubbing as she has seen others do, just as she imagines she might like it, phantom sensations between her legs. Seulgi’s legs curl up and squeeze in on Irene’s legs, brushing feet against Irene’s calves.

Seulgi sighs so much against her mouth that it’s hard to kiss. Irene turns her face and rubs their cheeks together, remembering just how nice it had felt when Seulgi had first touched her, just a brush of fingers. It’s still so sensitive now, if not more than before. Seulgi is pulling her close with more force and Irene has never been this close to anyone before.

“Joohyun, Joohyun,” Seulgi says. Irene had been right. Seulgi saying her name did make it beautiful again.

Irene moves faster, pulsing in and out of reality slightly, both because it’s overwhelming to concentrate on being here, and because it’s kind of addictive to feel their bodies sink together where Irene is somewhere between real and not.

Seulgi shakes and clenches beneath her, and Irene can feel it coming. That thing that everyone always seeks when they do this. She hadn’t expected to feel it coming so deep within Seulgi.

Seulgi moans out loud and Irene lines up their mouth to capture it.

She holds their position until Seulgi’s body relaxes. She’s even warmer than before and covered in a line of sweat. 

Exhausted with her exertion and a bit self-conscious now that Irene is staring up at her with glassy eyes, Irene lets herself disappear, and the blanket falls down on Seulgi as If Irene was never even there.

-

More than a little terrified of what Seulgi will say to her, Irene doesn’t show up during the day. Sometimes she lingers, invisible, but Seulgi always seems to sense her and go looking for her, so there’s really no staying here without Seulgi finding her again and again.

She knows that women don’t do this. It’s always a man and a woman she sees together in this nature. Except, she can’t imagine how it could be true that all women wouldn’t want that together. 

She mourns her hours away from Seulgi.

Now she feels cold, cold as death since being so close to Seulgi’s warmth.

Irene finally returns at night. It’s too hard to stay away. The lights are off and she’s just a ghost in the dark and she can be a monster if she wants to. She’s dead, so it doesn’t matter, anyway.

Seulgi accepts her. “Oh, you came back, finally. Have you been tired? Are you—oh…”

She crawls under Seulgi’s sheets, and under Seulgi’s layers of clothes. She is already obsessed with demanding Seulgi’s attention in this way, and with drawing little noises out of her. She likes how Seulgi reaches down and grabs her wrist as if in distress, but never moves Irene’s hand away. She likes how much Seulgi tries to kiss her. She likes how she smells and tastes. Seulgi accepts her. Seulgi wants her.

And Irene returns every night after realizing that.

After a few nights, Seulgi starts to accept her silently. Once it is solidified as a habit, Seulgi’s clothes seem to get thinner and sparser each time Irene finds her. It feels wonderful to think that Seulgi prepares for her. Irene worries that she might get cold, but she doesn’t complain one bit.

When Irene crawls under her blankets one day and finds Seulgi with no clothes on at all, Irene puts her mouth between her legs, determined to taste every bit of her. 

She starts to get more used to Seulgi’s body and the ways she moves in reaction to her, chasing pleasure. Irene knows how to get her off fast now, which she does a few times when she doesn’t think she has the energy to stay for too long, and she feels pride over how well she can make Seulgi feel good. Other nights, she wants to enjoy it for longer, and touches her too gently or disappears when Seulgi tries to press against her or push her hand down.

“Unnie! You monster. Please—please come back.”

Sometimes Seulgi tries to reach for Irene, too, groping around her legs, and Irene disappears then, too. It’s not that she doesn’t want it. She feels like she might explode with want sometimes, but it feels like Seulgi touching her would kill her for the second time. She can still stay slightly invisible this way, back to being a monster in the dark.

She saves most of her energy for the nights, but when she looks around when Seulgi is out during the day, she finds that the hanok is well-lived in, with even more flowers in the window sills. Even the garden outside is thriving, green land stretching out from the house.

Irene doesn’t think she’s ever been this happy. She has never had something to look forward to like this. Her life is suddenly brighter than it ever has seemed before, even when she spends so much of her conscious time in the dark of night.

One night when Irene crawls under the blankets and scoots up so her front is pressed to Seulgi’s back, Seulgi says, “I miss you.”

“I’m here,” Irene says, pressing her face into Seulgi’s hair and reaching a hand down to touch Seulgi between her legs. Seulgi almost immediately starts breathing heavily.

“It’s not enough,” Seulgi says.

Irene slows for a second, but Seulgi moves in a way that insists she keeps going.

“What do you want?” Irene asks. “I can do it differently?”

“No, not like that. I want you to stay. I want you to sleep next to me. I want you to be there during the day and talking to me and watching movies with me, and then to come and do this every night still. I want to touch you, too, but you haven’t even so much as told me if you can do that. ”

Irene stays quiet, touching her and hoping to distract Seulgi from this train of thought. It does for a few seconds as Seulgi buries her face halfway in her pillow and circles her hips, whimpering slightly.

“Considering everything else,” Seulgi continues, breathlessly, “how you can touch everything else and do everything we’ve done, I bet I can touch you normally. I can touch you like this, too.”

“I’m not normal. I’m not alive, Seulgi. I come to you as much as I can.”

“That’s what I’m saying is not enough,” Seulgi says sadly.

Irene starts to fade away against her own will. She wants to hide and stop thinking so she doesn’t have to consider that she isn’t enough for Seulgi.

“No, no, don’t go!” Seulgi says, suddenly panicked. She turns quickly and sends a hand through Irene. “Please, stay. Quick, kiss me.”

Irene does and she blooms back solid again, and suddenly Seulgi is kissing her forcefully and starting to touch Irene.

“Off, off,” Seulgi says, tugging at her clothes. Irene hasn’t been naked for a long time, and isn’t even sure if her clothes act like real clothes, but Seulgi peels it back like nothing. 

She slips a hand between Irene’s legs and Irene instinctively presses against her.

And it turns out Irene does work this way, very well. She is so sensitive and once Seulgi starts touching her, she doesn’t want it to stop. Her hips jerk on her own, chasing the pleasure she has never really experienced on her own but has been thinking about for endless days now.

Seulgi starts biting her, too, and that’s an interesting sensation. Pain. Seulgi can hurt her. It mostly feels like she’s trying to dig right into her, and Irene takes it happily. Seulgi’s fingers curl and rub inside of her and Irene wraps her limbs around Seulgi to keep her close.

“Seulgi, oh, I never think of anything but you anymore.”

Seulgi just nods against her, and Irene moves her hand down her back to grab her ass and try to pin their bodies closer together.

Irene pulses in and out of her body as she comes, certain her eyes must be rolling into the back of her head with pleasure, and then she collapses down, solid, in Seulgi’s arms.

“Stay. Stay with me. Just a little while longer. Focus on staying,” Seulgi says.

Irene nods.

“I want more, too,” Irene whispers. “I miss you always.”

Seulgi holds her tighter.

“Now go to sleep. It’ll be like we’re falling asleep together,” Irene says.

It isn’t really, because they can’t not notice falling out of each other’s arms, but Irene’s gotten better at pretending.

-

Irene greets Seulgi during the day. 

She feels shy standing in the light where Seulgi can see her. Seulgi looks a little shy, too. It’s easier to hide in the dark. A few long seconds pass by with them holding their hands behind their back.

“I don’t need to talk about it if you don’t,” Seulgi blurts out, then smiles playfully.

Irene bursts out laughing, too relieved by the break in tension and still shocked at the absurdity of the situation.

“Oh, your laugh! I want to make you laugh more like that,” Seulgi says, coming close to wrap Irene up in a hug.

“I’m sorry,” Irene says. “I’ll come to you at all different hours so we can experience them all together. I’ll keep trying to stay longer, too.”

“Good. I really did miss you.”

Irene pulls back slightly to look Seulgi in the eyes and then she pauses to consider how to ask what she wants to.

“But… do you still like me coming like I do at night?”

Seulgi smiles shyly. “I really do.”

Irene laughs in relief. “Good. Me too.”

“It was… unexpected. But it’s something that has crossed my mind before.”

“Oh?”

“With women, you know? Even though I never thought I would, because it wasn’t quite that easy, where I was before…”

Irene nods in understanding. “I never really thought I could think like that, until I couldn’t help it with you. So… you’ve never been with others too, right?”

Seulgi shakes her head. “Not with women. Some people thought I had been with Seungwan, which was funny,” she says jokingly.

Irene’s smile instantly drops, and Seulgi looks nervous seeing her expression change so suddenly.

“Oh, you don’t like that. Hey, we’re only friends.”

Irene continues to glare. “And men?”

“Stuff happened, yes, but I don’t care about any of them. And then there’s you…”

“Me?” Irene prompts with wide eyes.

“I can’t stop thinking about you.”

“Good. Think only of me.”

Irene lifts up on her toes slightly to reach Seulgi’s lips. She kisses her softly. It feels different here in the daylight than it does at night. It’s not a dirty little secret anymore, and it feels sweeter. 

Seulgi puts her hands on Irene’s waist and pulls her in. They fit together nicely. When they finally pull back, they share a look of such recognition that Irene feels like it replaces any conversation they could have about this.

-

Irene shows up during the day more often. They get through some movies and talk about how the world has changed. People can fly across the ocean now, and even more shockingly, they can talk to each other from across the seas as if they were standing right next to each other. Seulgi points out that it’d be pretty shocking to other people to learn that Irene and Seulgi can communicate across barriers of life and death.

Seulgi seems to be putting together just how old Irene is from her fascination with modern technology and globalization, but she doesn’t push Irene to talk about it.

It’s easy to ignore those worries when they can cuddle up with Seulgi’s laptop and lose themselves in other things.

One day, Seulgi looks a little giddy, almost nervous. “I want to show you something.”

She navigates to the browser and types in Red Velvet. Irene watches blank-faced as another movie plays, set to music this time.

When Irene finally recognizes Seulgi, she gasps and yanks the computer closer to look at the screen. After a moment, she finds Seungwan. The other two members must be the other friends Irene has heard of.

Everyone looks incredible, but Irene’s eyes won’t seem to leave Seulgi. She wants the video to slow down so she can take it all in. Her dancing has Irene stunned. She mindlessly slides a hand over Seulgi’s thighs.

Irene fumbles over her words for a few moments as she runs through all the questions and comments she has, but she just blurts out, “Tell me! What was it like!”

“I’ve been wondering how to even bring it up for so long, I don’t even know what to say now! Like all the movies I’ve shown you, this is also huge now.”

Seulgi describes the industry and her training and the company she worked for, how she was put together with this group and did everything with them for a few years. She describes their brand and their songs and their live tours and some of the more memorable events they were invited to. It sounds like a whole new world to Irene. Seulgi explains the fanbase, too, and what sasaengs are, during which Irene stays quiet as Seulgi explains how scared she had been when she thought one found her, but how it must have been a false alarm because nothing ever spread online.

“This sounds like a dream, why would you come here?” Irene asks.

Seulgi looks away.

“Sorry,” Irene mutters.

“No, I mean, that’s what everyone thinks.”

“Why did you want to leave?”

Seulgi looks serious all of a sudden. Solemn.

“I wanted that world before, and I worked so hard for it. We made it all the way to the top, we did amazing. I saw so much of the world. People loved my optimism, ironically. But even after accomplishing all of my dreams, it just didn’t feel like enough. That’s crazy, right? All of that, and it just wasn’t enough of what I wanted to see. I felt like, the longer I did this, the less I understood. I faked it for a long while, and then I decided to just leave it all. I know it was a selfish decision, and so many would have done anything to be in my position, but maybe I’m too much of a romantic to stop searching for true happiness.”

“So you came here?” Irene asks, raising her eyebrows in disbelief.

Seulgi tilts her head in question.

“You wanted more, but then you traveled here where there’s nothing, ” Irene says.

“You’re here,” Seulgi says.

“You didn’t know that I’m…” Irene trails off.

“This house is also relatively notable online if you know where to look. I knew it was haunted when I moved in. That’s why I moved in.”

“I don’t understand.” Irene shakes her head.

“It was something more. Something interesting. I wanted to feel something, even if that something is getting scared shitless, apparently. I told you this the first time we talked. If ghosts are real, then imagine what else is real? What kind of secrets are still waiting to be discovered? Since meeting you, the possibilities feel more endless. It doesn’t feel like my life has to peak on a stage performing to thousands of people where I’m not supposed to wish for anything greater, but where I still felt almost nothing at all. 

“You know what I thought when I won my first award?” Seulgi continues. “I thought, this is it? Years of training and I got to hold a hunk of metal and smile on a stage, and it still felt so insignificant. Even worse, it felt like it would never get any better than that. Maybe it was something wrong with me, the balance of chemicals in my brain or misplaced expectations, but I couldn’t escape that fear. 

“And I was so alone. I love my friends, and I had many people to talk to… but there was this barrier between me and them. People would congratulate and tell me how happy they were for me, and I couldn’t help but wonder how they could miss the mark so badly. A lot of them weren’t that happy after all, I learned that throughout my years, but it seemed that no one resented the life quite as much as me, or for the same, backward reasons as I did.”

“Seeking out a ghost might have been stupid, or a little self-destructive, but it felt so good to uproot my life even if nothing had happened. And then you did show up. My Irene, my Joohyun, my ghost. You looked beautiful even when you were terrifying and you opened up the door to everything for me. Everything that once felt dark looks light now. I realized that I did not reach any peak, and there’s always more for me in the world.”

A tear slides down Seulgi’s cheek, but she keeps smiling, right at Irene like she’s the best person in the world. “I am so grateful I met you, Joohyun.”

Irene flings her arms around Seulgi’s shoulders, knocking her back onto the floor with it. Seulgi laughs into her neck and Irene doesn’t know how she got so lucky to have someone, after so many years, come looking for her. Someone actually found her.

And she’s never met anyone who could explain how she felt so clearly, despite their paths being so different.

“You make my life so light, too, Seulgi. I understand, I really do.”

“Oh, that is so much more than I could have asked for.”

“Ah, you deserve everything.”

It takes a while for them to pull back and look each other in the eyes again, Seulgi’s wet with tears, more signs of life that don’t arise out of Irene. Irene wipes them away and the moisture stays on her fingertips.

“Seulgi?”

“Mm?”

“Play me more of your music,” she says.

Seulgi gets up excitedly and finds a speaker that’s louder than her laptop. The music blasts through the room, and she has to raise her voice over it. 

“I haven’t been listening to any music, let alone making any since it was so sad to think about all of it. But I see it clearer now. It was beautiful for all that it was. I missed this.”

Seulgi hops up to her feet and starts dancing, her moves crisp and purposeful so that Irene can assume it’s choreography. Irene follows her, going to grab Seulgi’s wrists.

“Show me,” Irene says excitedly.

They dance, goofy and spineless, and Irene can keep up to Seulgi’s moves surprisingly well, even though she fumbles and gets confused a lot. She quickly comes to learn that Seulgi claps her hands when she laughs hard, and that alone distracts Irene from focusing. Sometimes Seulgi covers her mouth with her hands as she laughs, too, and Irene pulls her hands down by her wrists to see her smile.

Seulgi grabs some soju, pouring some for Irene to make her feel included even when she won’t feel it, and slowly Irene becomes the better dancer. Seulgi gets too distracted laughing and singing and drinking. Seulgi even picks up her guitar and starts to play, slightly off-tune.

Irene feels invigorated like she’s never been, easily staying present just for the sake of seeing Seulgi so happy. She has never felt so warm, or like she has a place that she truly belongs, where it isn’t a prison.

Seulgi is sad for a while, when she realizes there’s new music from Red Velvet, not as popular as when she had been there, but still, going on without her. 

“It’s understandable that they would move on, I know that. And I’ve been ignoring their calls, you know? It just kept becoming the same thing over and over again, asking me to come home. Maybe one day it will feel better to talk to them, but right now, that part is too painful. And they’re too scared to come here.”

“I’m sorry, Seulgi-ah,” Irene says sweetly. “It’ll be okay. I have you here.”

“I know. They were such good friends, though.”

“They don’t understand you right now. It’s better not to talk to them about it.”

“You think so?” Seulgi asks.

Seulgi looks like she might cry again, so Irene hops up. 

“Let’s not think about that right now. Drink more soju, and I’ll show you how I dance now.”

Seulgi perks up instantly.

“When you try to scare people?”

Irene nods. “And it’s worked to scare everyone away except for you, you stupid, reckless girl.”

“Hey! I would run away from a monster… usually. You’re the exception. You’re the best nightmare I could have.”

“Let’s see if I can make you run now.”

Seulgi laughs. “Give me your best.”

Irene backs up and then starts crawling toward Seulgi. They both struggle to stay serious as Irene tries to act scary.

She dances for Seulgi and shows her the tricks where she can disjoint her bones without pain. The parts that put her together are just that: parts. Nothing holds her together but the distant memory of herself. Seulgi squirms and cringes exaggeratedly but mostly laughs at her. Irene tries to be her scariest self crawling toward her, but Seulgi just watches her fondly.

Irene crawls up her legs and right onto her lap, pushing her back roughly and holding her down by her shoulders. 

“You’re the scariest monster I’ve ever met, baby,” Seulgi says, leaning up to kiss her.

Irene moves a hand to Seulgi’s throat and presses down. Seulgi’s eyes widen.

“You didn’t know what I would do to you. I might have been a murderer,” Irene says, thinking about the girl she killed. Seulgi never even found her body, even though Irene always wondered if one day she would show up to a distraught Seulgi after finding the decomposing remains. Seulgi would probably be blamed for the murder if she called it in, and then they would have bigger problems.

“Go ahead. I’ll be a ghost with you and haunt people in their sleep,” Seulgi jokes, her voice slightly strained by the hand on her neck. 

Irene leans down, tightening her grip until Seulgi has to fight her off to breathe. Irene kisses her as Seulgi gasps in air and starts grinding her hips, energized by the thought of Seulgi being a ghost with her.

After more hours pass and the lights dim and they’re still alternating between kissing and dancing and laughing and talking about Seulgi’s career, Seulgi finally passes out. Irene covers her in all the blankets she can find and drifts away happy and sated.

-

Many days go by in that bliss. They watch countless movies and spend countless time talking about them. Seulgi plays music day in and day out and they dance and sing together, learning routines and making more routines of their own. They play a bunch of games, too, which Irene is pleased to find she is very good at and basically wins every time, even if it’s with a bit of cheating. It’s too fun to cheat when it makes Seulgi react so strongly.

Seulgi has some strange habits, like giving Irene food and drinks even though it is mostly just inconvenient for Irene to consume anything. Seulgi also asks her to bathe together, and even though Irene’s body doesn’t really get dirty in that way, she lets Seulgi wash her.

She can pretend to be alive for Seulgi, even if it makes her feel a little guilty that she can’t really fulfill those dreams. Seulgi describes the places she’d like to show Irene, and talks about how nice it would be to have Irene come to town to pick up food, and Irene wishes she could fake those things, too.

All in all, though, it’s wonderful. They annoy each other and then they make each other laugh and then they make each other orgasm. They teach each other things, especially Seulgi with Internet browsers at her fingertips to answer any questions Irene has.

“You know, I googled you one time,” Seulgi says one day.

“Oh?” 

They’re laying in the dark, hands tracing each other’s skin, already settled down from getting each other off.

“I’m sure I would have felt bad if I found something you didn’t want to tell me, but I didn’t find anything. Nothing about a young woman dying here.”

“There wouldn’t be from that time, no.”

“Oh wise one, tell me about the time before the Internet.”

“It wasn’t fun. No movies.”

“You’re like a grandma, for real.”

Irene makes a face.

Seulgi laughs. “No, you are! The way you speak and how mature you are, and how you can’t do anything with technology. It’s so endearing.”

“Shut up!”

“Aw grandma.”

“Seulgi-ah,” Irene whines, pushing her away.

“Okay, sexy older woman then. How about you at least tell me how old you are technically, not counting the dead years.”

“30.”

“Oh! You are older than me anyway. I’m 27.”

“We’re basically the same. And you have experienced way more than me. You grow mature that way.”

Seulgi sighs. “Sometimes I wish you would just tell me. About your life before. About your death. You trust me, right?”

“It’s a sad story. Another time. Put on a movie and rest, I’ll wait for you to sleep.”

Seulgi can’t seem to refuse that, and quickly sets up another Hollywood movie, curling up against Irene’s chest. Irene waits for her to sleep, just like she promised. She knows how to tell that Seulgi is asleep now, as her expression relaxes and her breathing steadies. She can pretend to be normal for Seulgi that way, too.

The movie continues, and Irene should pause it, but she can’t quite bring herself to. Seulgi said it was called The Notebook. It starts out beautiful and happy and everything that Irene loves in romance, but it soon descends into such horrible sadness, the lovers suddenly separate from each other. The lovers’ lives are too different and they receive no support from others and they find new lovers. That’s when it grows too much for Irene. Irene hates thinking about that happening to her and Seulgi, and she closes the laptop quickly before she can see anymore.

-

Another thing that astounds Irene about the modern world is that items don’t always need to be bought in stores, they can somehow show up right at your house. Someone else will deliver it, for a modest fee.

“Well, it’s not so cheap out here in the middle of nowhere, but yes, it’s quite convenient.”

Irene sits cross-legged on a pillow, excitedly waiting for Seulgi to open the package.

“It looks bigger in person,” Seulgi says with one side of her mouth quirked up. “This one does too.”

“Give me,” Irene says, reaching out her hands to grab the box and see for herself.

“Who’s going to use it first?” Seulgi asks, leaning down.

“Me,” Irene says confidently. “I want to use them on you.”

Irene has been imagining this for a while now. She sets up some pillows and starts quickly taking off her clothes

“We can have sex like a man and woman now,” Irene says. This is what she sees far more often from past residents in this hanok, and she’s grown quite excited for it. She runs her hand along the silky dildo.

“No, not that.”

“Hm?”

“Fuck me like a woman,” Seulgi says playfully.

Irene laughs and pulls Seulgi down. “Go like this,” Irene commands, pushing Seulgi on her front with a pillow under her hips. She steps back to admire the view.

“You spoil me,” Seulgi says. “You always want to touch me.”

“I feel like I can get lost in your pleasure just as much as I can in mine. I’ve never been able to make someone feel good like this. I just love how you look and feel.”

“I’m not complaining, believe me,” Seulgi says.

“Then shush,” Irene says, slapping her ass. She does it playfully, but Seulgi sucks in air in a very questionable way that makes Irene pause and observe her.

Irene doesn’t admit her suspicions that Seulgi might like it, though, and uncaps the lube that also came in the full package. She eyes the toys they bought. It would just be more efficient to buy everything at once, Seulgi had said of the growing online shopping cart.

Irene sees no reason not to use all of them now.

She rubs around Seulgi’s clitoris for a couple of minutes, teasing and also waiting to see her grow more wet and aroused. Then, she trickles some extra lube on her fingers and trails further and further up, and presses one finger into her ass where it’s much tighter.

Seulgi tenses up, but doesn’t say anything. She has never refused Irene.

It takes a while for her to relax enough to have it be pleasurable as Irene rubs against her rim, and Irene adds another finger. When she seems loose enough, Irene grabs the shiny butt plug they bought, slicks it up, and presses it in. Seulgi takes it in surprisingly easy and Irene admires how it spreads her open. 

Irene grasps the outside and rubs it in and out and Seulgi grabs the sheets around her in her fists. Irene observes her reactions for one more moment and then, before she can get too nervous, slaps Seulgi’s ass again, much harder than before.

She gasps again and hides her face, which Irene coaxes back to her view with a finger. The pale skin on her ass turns pink.

“I’m going to give you more now,” Irene says, reaching into the box again. She pulls the messy straps up her legs after twisting it around, confused, for a few seconds. It feels right once it’s on and she applies lube to the dildo, even though she, smugly, thinks it’s probably not that needed.

Just as she lines up, Seulgi says, “Do you like hurting me?”

Irene thinks about it as she pushes in, feeling Seulgi squirm beneath her, finding the right angle to have something so much bigger fit inside of her. When Irene is fully pressed in, she leans over Seulgi and looks her up and down.

There is something very appealing about it. About inflicting pain. 

Irene starts moving her hips, getting a feel for the best position that she can grind inside of her. Seulgi starts breathing heavily.

“Do you like it?” Irene asks instead.

“Maybe a little,” Seulgi says, and Irene, without waiting for another second, slaps her in the spot, much harder than before. Her whole body jerks. Irene does it again, watching the harsh colour rise on her skin, before she quickly starts moving inside of her so she doesn’t have time to prepare.

Irene never hurt people until she came to defend Seulgi from the sasaeng, but she thought about it a lot. She imagined her uncle coming back just so that she could hurt him, though she was scared she would curse herself to be stuck here with his ghost. She often wondered if hurting other old men would feel just as good, but she held herself back. 

Killing the sasaeng felt terrifyingly natural. She fits easily into the role of monster. She has crafted that role over many years now. There is something powerful in being able to protect her hanok and protect her girl. There is something powerful in being able to control life and death.

She doesn’t want to hurt Seulgi like that. But she would be lying to say she doesn’t find it appealing to eke out more vulnerable noises or expressions from her, or to demonstrate her power by dominating Seulgi for a while.

There is also something appealing about taking what she wants, and rendering Seulgi such a mess that she could not refuse Irene if she tried. Irene wants to bury her way inside and never let Seulgi go. She slaps her again, enamoured by being able to inflict such a thing and have Seulgi only be pleasured.

“You really don’t get physically tired, do you? Oh God…” Seulgi pants into her pillow as Irene continues to fuck into her without stopping, going harder instinctively as she starts to imagine all that she can do to Seulgi. She runs her nails down the pink slap mark on her ass. 

“No biological mechanisms,” Irene says. She thinks feeling power-hungry also makes her more solid. She wants to do this everyday.

“I feel so filled,” Seulgi blabbers.

“All with me,” Irene says, and then reaches for Seulgi’s vibrator. She clicks the button and then slides it under Seulgi’s leg so it presses against her clitoris. 

“Oh my God,” Seulgi whines. Her legs start to shake and she squirms, trying to get purchase. Irene pushes her down with a hand between her shoulder blade and balances her weight that way while she fucks as hard as she can. Seulgi shakes as she comes and Irene keeps on moving until Seulgi says, "Too sensitive, unnie, enough, enough."

Irene considers, just for a moment, to keep going and show Seulgi that she can never refuse Irene, but she pulls out gently instead and holds her close and tells her how good she did.

-

Everything feels so good and peaceful all of the time that Irene can feel it when it changes. 

Irene senses voices and is careful to hide away when she pulls herself back into the present.

“—I do miss you guys. A lot,” Seulgi is saying. She paces around with her phone pressed to her ear.

“Has it been that long? Wow, that’s really… No, I know, I just forgot.”

The silence stretches on and Irene wonders if she’s crying. She creeps closer and Seulgi walks further away from her, probably sensing her presence already. Irene begrudgingly gives her space.

“...Maybe,” Seulgi finally says. “I promise I’ll think about it.”

She hangs up and Irene moves closer.

Without turning back, Seulgi says, “Hey, if you’re listening… which I think you are, I’m going for a walk. I just need to think about things. But I’ll be back soon, okay?”

Irene follows her into the garden as far as she can go and watches Seulgi go much further than that, out of her grasp. She wants Seulgi to turn back and look at her at least, but Seulgi doesn't.

Irene frets the entire time she’s gone, growing increasingly paranoid. She has a bad feeling. She wasn’t making up the sudden sadness in the air, she’s pretty certain about that.

When Seulgi returns, it’s nearly dark out. Irene meets her at the door with a sweater.

“Oh, you—you are too sweet.”

Seulgi pulls it on and then burrows into Irene’s arms.

“I’m sorry to worry you.”

“What’s happening?” Irene asks.

“Nothing, nothing.”

Irene follows Seulgi to her room though and under the blankets. 

Seulgi sighs. “It might be nothing. Just thinking.”

“Tell me.”

“I just need to figure out what I’m going to do. Like, will I live here forever?”

Irene stays quiet, but the panic starts raging behind her eyes.

“Don’t get me wrong, I would always come to see you. I couldn’t not. I just might have a chance to go back on my contract still. I see the world in a different light now, maybe it would be good.”

“I’m not enough for you here?” Irene whispers.

“You’re always enough for me. When you’re here. I get a few hours of your time each day and otherwise, I’m just here, sitting on my computer, making food, missing you constantly. Did you know I’ve been here for a year now?”

“I’m getting better at staying, I’m here longer and longer each day.”

“I know, and it’s really great, but there is still a barrier. You’re still not… alive. I can’t ever bring you anywhere. We’ll just be here, you crawling into my bed at night. You feel more like a dream. A really good dream, but… is this really all I want? I came here for an adventure, and I spend most of it waiting for you. My friends think it’s crazy that I’m spending my twenties here.”

“It was them on the phone. I thought you weren’t talking to them anymore? They just want to take you away,” Irene says.

Seulgi looks offended. “That’s so unfair. You know I love them. They just want the best for me.”

Irene rolls away.

“Hey, hey, I’m sorry. You know I like it here. I lo… I like you so much. I wouldn’t leave you for good. I can afford rent so no one else moves in, I could travel back and forth! Just something to think about, it’s not set in stone.”

Irene doesn’t feel like she can speak, even though she should. She should try to convince Seulgi to stay. It would be selfish, but Irene wants nothing more.

She can imagine what will happen. She thinks of the bright lights and the excitement and the crowds from the Red Velvet videos she saw. Seulgi will enter back into the light and finally see how beautiful and exciting it is. 

Seulgi has spent a year here, which probably feels long for someone who has only been alive for 27 years. A year is nothing compared to how long Irene has existed, just a tiny slice of happiness amidst so much nothingness that Seulgi wouldn’t even believe it. For Seulgi, she has experienced a long year of the uneventfulness of the isolated hanok at the end of the lane, and as soon as she leaves, she will probably realize just how exciting the rest of the world is. She will come back to Irene at the start, Irene is sure, but as she grows and matures she will find a new family and settle down elsewhere and forget all about Irene. She will grow into an old woman like Irene never got the chance to, and she will die and haunt someplace far away from Irene.

Irene will be alone, chasing away infuriatingly uninteresting residents and fading away more and more each year until she finally doesn’t have the capacity for thoughts, or until she finally finds peace and dies for real, which might never happen. Her memories of Seulgi, just like the memories of her life, will someday be too hard and painful to recall.

Irene turns back around and Seulgi looks nervous, waiting for her reaction.

“Okay,” Irene finally says so she stops worrying Seulgi. “Let’s just spend tonight together. I want to be close.”

Seulgi breathes out a sigh of relief and hugs her. “Thank you for understanding. Me too. Oh, what would I do without you?”

They curl up and watch Hollywood movies that Irene barely pays attention to. When Seulgi falls asleep, Irene tucks her in and puts her laptop away.

Irene drifts up seamlessly and leaves her. She goes right through the front door, something that at one point made Seulgi so excited to find out she could do. Seulgi used to be so intrigued by everything that Irene did.

She makes her way down the road and toward the woods near her house. She steps through the trees, as uncomfortable and tiring as it is to be stretched so far from the hanok she belongs to. She steps through, searching.

This is where the sasaeng crawled to die almost a year ago now. Irene was already so attached to Seulgi, even if she wouldn’t quite admit it. She didn’t know what she was doing, but killing a stranger almost seemed like nothing to keep her Seulgi around.

Perhaps being murdered herself and finding her life just as drab and lonely as before made the thought of murder not all that scary anymore.

Finally, she sees what she is looking for. Not bones or carcass remains or anything like that, but the same girl she stabbed all that time ago, in one piece and just the same as when Irene first saw her, except… faded. She’s little more than a pale outline. Irene can see right through her, to the point that she almost looks like a trick of the light, but she is there.

She sits cross-legged on the ground, her back hunched over like she is trying to collapse in on herself.

The girl doesn’t even seem to notice Irene’s presence. She seems weak, much weaker than Irene has ever been, haunting this area of the woods with no life left in her soul. 

But still: she is a ghost. Irene murdered her here, and here she stayed.

Irene makes her way back to the kitchen and finds the sharpest knife she can.

iii.

Irene settles on top of Seulgi, knees on either side of her hips, and waits for Seulgi to wake up from her weight. She holds the knife behind her back.

Seulgi smiles up at her. “You’re still here. I must have fallen asleep.” Seulgi appraises how she’s sitting with a dark expression, clearly interpreting her intentions as seducing her. 

“I want to tell you how I died,” Irene whispers.

Seulgi stills. “Really?”

Irene nods. She hasn't even thought of her old life in years; she's almost surprised that she can still remember it. She tells the story as if she were describing the life of someone else.

“I was born in 1843 here. I never knew my mother because she died giving birth to me. My father took me to come live with my uncle when I was old enough to walk so that my father could go find better work. He never returned, though, so I don’t know if he had an accident and was never able to get back to me, or if he just left me and found a new family where he could have a wife. I didn’t really know him, either. It was just here me with my uncle in this hanok.

“He was a rice farmer and he was a greedy, lazy man who made me do all the work as soon as I was strong enough. He didn’t seem to care if I was close to passing out, I just had to keep working or else he’d start to hit me. Sometimes he even left me outside and told me that I couldn’t return until I had harvested enough, and then he would fall asleep and forget about me and I’d be stuck out there all night long. I woke up covered in bug bites some days and nearly scratched my skin right off. He seemed to enjoy being cruel to me. If he ever saw me laughing or having fun, he would make sure to beat me down again.

“Eventually, I did start to act a bit deviant. I grew stronger and faster so I would get the work done and then go wander. I met some friends at the neighbouring farms, too, and it wasn’t all that bad. It made me realize I could leave one day, and maybe even marry. But you have to understand, my uncle taught me that I would never be able to leave this place. It didn’t really feel like there was anything else for me. So it wasn’t until 1873 that I tried to leave.

“He only ever left the house to go drinking with a friend, so I waited until he left and packed up my things. Except, that night, his friend passed out sick too fast and my uncle came back early, just as I was going out the door. He was drunk and he was angry. He started to beat me, telling me that this is what I deserved for trying to leave my own family, and he hit me too hard. I felt so dizzy and I remember blood being everywhere, and he kept shaking me to wake up, making it worse. I was sick for a long time, with the worst headache I’ve ever had. I was so dizzy and I kept vomiting, and the blood wouldn’t stop no matter how hard I tried to press on it.

“When I came back again, I felt okay, though. My uncle was drinking again and I was scared he would hurt me again, so I decided my best chance would be to ask for forgiveness, so I went to him, and he lost his mind. He started screaming and he dropped his drink, breaking glass everywhere, and he fell in it and started bleeding. He didn’t stop, though, he ran out of the house. Afterward, I found a spot in the garden where the soil was loose and I dug up my own body.

“He actually came back. He probably thought he was only tired and grieving. By this point, though, I knew what he had done. He had killed me trying to keep me around. And I was angry.”

Seulgi rubs her legs reassuringly, listening intensely to the story. She looks sad and Irene has to look away.

“I started haunting him. I was pretty weak, but the angrier I got, the more I could do. So I tried to remember everything that he had done to me: telling me my parents wouldn’t have loved me anyway, not allowing me to see other people, making me do everything without thanks, hitting me and yelling at me, taking the credit for the work I did… And most of all, how he killed me and took away my chance to ever be free. 

“At first I could move objects, like smash glasses and tip over his belongings. He grew paranoid. And then I eventually began to make myself visible. I practiced, getting ready to show myself. See, I was scared I would lose my bravery since I’d been so submissive when it came to him. I couldn’t hold back. I thought about how I could scare him, because if he realized I was harmless, he would stay and I’d be stuck with him forever. I thought about what he really hated, and there was one thing.

“He hated me dancing. It was something I did for fun, seeing how I could move my body. I looked silly and it made me laugh, and there wasn’t much else I could do to entertain myself as a kid. He didn’t like to see me happy, so he always stopped me. So this time, I went into his room at night and I danced and danced, and my limbs came apart and nothing hurt anymore and I growled at him and went as crazy as I possibly could. I began throwing things and screaming at the top of my lungs. I was maniacal, and he started crying, asking for forgiveness, but in the end, he ran outside without any of his belongings and he never came back. I never had to see my uncle again.”

“I was alone for a long time, but people did move in again. At times it seemed kind of lucky to be able to be invisible and free. It was boring, too, though. I taught myself to read using children’s books. I looked through people’s belongings. I walked as far as I could. But I was still stuck here, and I was still angry! I couldn’t stand men being around me. It wouldn’t go away. So I haunted everyone else and scared them far away. Nobody has ever stayed here after I haunted them. Nobody, except for you.”

“Oh, unnie, I am so sorry. I am so sorry that happened,” Seulgi says. 

Irene looks down, and Seulgi is crying. She really cares. Irene wipes her tears away. She hopes she cares enough to forgive Irene.

“It’s not so bad being dead. Things don’t hurt so much. I like that I can change my body, hide away or drift around. I have seen the world outside shift and change, people coming and going, different clothes and items from this modern world that I never would have seen otherwise. It is strange that death is somehow the thing that offered me immortality, but it is. We never really leave. And I wish I had died anywhere else but alone in this hanok. The worst part is the loneliness. I don’t want to be alone anymore.”

“I’m here with you now, okay?” Seulgi reassures.

“You are. Please stay.”

“Of course. I love you, Joohyun.”

Irene pauses in the bliss of hearing those words and seeing the honesty on Seulgi’s face.

“Oh, me too, Seulgi. You don’t even know how much I love you.”

“We love the same, I know it. I won’t leave you. I love you too much”

A lie, Irene thinks. She will leave, just a little bit at a time.

“I hope you love me enough to forgive me.”

Seulgi opens her mouth but doesn’t speak. Irene pulls the knife around and presses it to Seulgi’s chest.

Seulgi reaches up to push her away by her wrists, but Irene leans down with more strength, then shuffles forward to kneel on Seulgi’s arms. They scuffle briefly, but Seulgi is too hesitant to really fight back. She doesn’t understand.

“Wait, unnie, whatever you’re thinking…”

“I met another ghost. It happens to all of us. You will still be here, but you will be young and beautiful and you will be with me.”

“Unnie, Irene, wait, just one moment and we’ll—”

Irene presses the knife down with all of her weight and Seulgi gasps, a high-pitch, slightly strangled sound. Her mouth hangs open and she stares up at Irene with wide eyes.

“You—” Seulgi starts, and then starts coughing. The knife must have punctured her lungs. She coughs up blood that smears her chin and the tears start running through, mixing with it.

“I didn't think you would... you’re killing me?” she gasps out. “No, stop, that hurts…”

“Oh, love, it won’t hurt for much longer. I promise. I’ll make it stop hurting.”

Irene pulls out the knife, which takes more effort than she was expecting, and then she plunges it in again where she’s felt Seulgi’s heart beating against her hand many times before.

Seulgi lets out a pained groan, and her eyes start to shut. Irene strokes her cheek, comforting her as she goes completely under, and then she is still. 

There’s blood everywhere, Irene is kneeling in a puddle that just keeps growing and growing, and she finally pulls away. She looks down, horrified, seeing the woman she loves so suddenly destroyed. If Seulgi doesn’t come back, she doesn’t know what she’ll do. 

She can’t just sit and wait so she gets to work, dragging the lifeless body outside and digging up the dirt with her hands so she can push Seulgi inside. This is what happened to Irene’s body, so it has to work and keep Seulgi here. Besides, it would be disturbing for Seulgi to come back and see her own corpse.

Once the body is buried, Irene starts pacing back and forth, rapidly, gliding through walls, flashing in and out of existence as her emotions peak. She wants Seulgi back. She needs to know.

And what if Seulgi hates her forever? Then Irene really would have lost the best thing in her life. This was her best chance, though. She has to try, no matter if it’s the most selfish thing she could have chosen.

By the time the sun rises, Irene is distraught with all the worst scenarios running through her head. She wants Seulgi back right now. Maybe it would have been better to have her alive, and take all of the moments that she could get until she would inevitably lose her love. Maybe that would have been enough.

And then she feels something. She is attuned with this hanok, and there is something here.

Irene hurries to Seulgi’s room and there she is, perched right on top of the bloodstains that wouldn’t come out, and looking around confusedly.

“Seulgi-ah! Oh Seulgi-ah,” Irene yells, running over to her. Instinctively, she checks her chest, but Seulgi is perfectly in one piece.

“Unnie! I had the strangest dream, I—”

Suddenly, Seulgi looks down and places her hands over the bloodstains, swiping against the dried blood. 

“Oh, what did you do, ” Seulgi whispers, looking terrified.

“I’m sorry,” Irene blurts out. She feels suddenly horribly guilty realizing what she has done. She wants to be with Seulgi, but she also wants Seulgi to be happy, and the look on her face is devastating, especially to realize it’s all Irene’s fault. She’s never seen Seulgi look so serious.

“I can’t believe this. I’m… I’m…. I need—I need to get out of here. I can’t be next to you. I can’t look at you.”

Seulgi stands up and runs past Irene.

“Wait, you won’t be able to—”

Seulgi is already gone, though walking toward the road. Irene waits for her to feel the same block from leaving the hanok as Irene does, but Seulgi keeps walking, further and further away from Irene, past where Irene can go without looking back.

Irene has a horrible realization then: Seulgi is not confined to the hanok like Irene is. 

-

The days pass longer than they ever have before. The decades that Irene has existed for is nothing compared to each second spent wondering if Seulgi will come back. 

Rationality points to no. Who would stay with their murderer? Irene hated hers.

Now, Seulgi might not want to come back ever again. She might have just lost her forever.

But Seulgi had cared for her.

Irene wants her back so bad. She can’t even turn off her thoughts. Even when she tries to fade away, the heartache beats in her mind. Seulgi, Seulgi, Seulgi all night and day. She drives herself half-insane trying to think about what else she could have done.

She also worries about Seulgi all alone in the world, too. Where did she go? Is she lost in the woods somewhere? Did she ever get stopped, or is she travelling further and further away from Irene? Did she fade away completely into nothingness?

Things only get worse when the landlord shows up. She throws out the dead sunflowers and then starts putting Seulgi’s things in large garbage bags. All of her soft, pretty clothes, her electronics that contain all of her beautiful movies, the colourful snacks in the cupboards, all being taken away from Irene.

“Don’t take them,” Irene says. She’s never shown herself to the landlord before, and never saw the point, but she stands dauntingly at her back now.

The landlord screams, falls down on the floor, and then crawls to the front door where she can run away crying. She begs and pleads for her life, even as Irene does nothing but stand there.

Irene wonders if she’s become even more terrifying since becoming a murderer. Perhaps if she looked in the mirror, she’d find devil horns on her head.

Nonetheless, Seulgi’s things are here to stay. Irene will make sure no one can come and take her things. They’re all that Irene has left of her. 

She pulls on the lavender sweater that Seulgi once offered to her and lays down, pretending that she is sleeping next to Seulgi when it’s dark and she misses her more.

-

Irene is pretty sure she might be going genuinely crazy. She starts misplacing things and thinking people are showing up when there’s no one there. She searches the property for a sign of Seulgi or anyone else, but there’s no one there.

She used to feel so attuned to the house that any bit of movement was as if it was inside her own body. She’s losing that sensation now, and she feels all lost and isolated in her own home. Sometimes it feels like she’s untethered, like how she usually feels when she knows she’s gone too far, but she’s still in the heart of the hanok.

Irene can’t get rid of the thoughts of missing Seulgi, so she stays present more often just so she can sit and touch Seulgi’s things. She wraps Seulgi’s sweaters around her, feeling too cold no matter how many she has on.

She’s curled up with her things when Irene starts to feel strange. She senses something. It feels like she isn’t alone anymore, but she can’t actually see or hear anything different.

She stays where she is and waits. It’s probably nothing. She’s too emotional, probably, and it could be making her paranoid.

Then she does see a figure across the room, barely visible in the light. When she blinks again she can’t see anything. 

Could someone have come inside? Could it be the girl in the woods, who finally discovered her ability to move and came to get revenge? Irene doesn’t even want to consider that it could be the only person she wants it to be.

“Hello?” Irene says.

The figure returns, lingering in the doorway.

“Seulgi?” Irene asks in a hushed voice. The figure doesn’t reply. That doesn’t seem like Seulgi. 

Irene tenses, wondering what to do. There’s nothing that poses a real threat to her in this world, is there? She’s already dead! Her body doesn’t seem to want to listen to that rationality, though.

She remembers what Seulgi said. If ghosts exist, then what else is possible in this world? The potential of something new and unknown chills Irene. Perhaps she’s going to be punished for interfering with the world too much and spreading her death around.

The figure steps closer and Irene scoots away. She remembers that Seulgi was able to hurt her when she was in her physical form.

Irene remembers to turn non-corporeal just as the figure rushes toward her. Irene’s scream gets cut off as she disappears into thin air and the thing runs right through where she was. She hides away, and then distantly hears the sound of laughter.

Irene reappears standing in the middle of the room and looks at the figure.

“Seulgi? ”

Seulgi—and it has to be her, that’s her laugh—is standing with her back to Irene, just slightly translucent in this light.

Any relief that Irene could feel is overshadowed by her confusion. Did something go wrong? Did Seulgi go crazy? Did Irene break her?

Then Seulgi turns around. “You should have seen your face. I didn’t think I’d be able to even sneak up on you!”

“What? What do you mean?”

“Aren’t you the seasoned ghost? I didn’t think I’d be able to scare you, ” Seulgi says playfully.

Irene gawks at her. “Are… are you…”

“Forgive me. I have been fretting about how to return to you for too long. I thought I might as well take this chance and let you know what it’s like to be haunted by a ghost.”

“You’re returning to me,” Irene whimpers, and then grabs Seulgi’s arm to cling to her.

Seulgi’s smile drops slightly. “I tried to stop loving you. I really tried my best, but it seems I only loved you more the longer I was gone.”

“I thought you might hate me forever.”

“I feel like I should hate you, and it’s frustrating that I don’t. ”

“I’m sorry. I really am. It was a desperate decision I made, and it was selfish and cruel, but I also can’t see how I would have chosen any different at that moment. It wasn’t to hurt you; it was to keep you.”

Seulgi raises her hand and sets it on Irene’s cheek. She feels less solid than before, but still somehow warm.

“I always dreamed of a romance where someone would kill for me, you know? I knew it was a fairytale fantasy, but I—I can’t seem to help but want you more. To know that you wanted me so badly, because I want you that badly, too. Somehow I understand. You decided to give me a new life. You brought me to your world.”

“I want you that badly and more,” Irene says, grabbing Seulgi’s face, too, just to feel her skin and remind herself that she’s here.

“You still took me away from all of my friends and family, all that life I could have had. I don’t really know how to go about mourning that. I can’t stop thinking about how much they must be worrying.”

Irene looks down, ashamed, and Seulgi tilts her chin up again.

“I can’t punish you without punishing myself, though. This is all strange and I—I still don't want to do it alone. I have no one else anymore, even if I wanted to. No one that would understand. Stay with me, I don’t want to be alone,” she whines.

“I’ll be here, of course, always. I’ll try to earn your full forgiveness, whatever it takes.”

Seulgi nods and then sets her head against Irene’s. “I wished for something new and interesting, before. You sure gave me that, huh? You took my whole life away. You murdered me, and somehow I feel like it’s still okay, or even beautiful. Death almost doesn’t seem so extreme when I’m still here with you.”

“It’s not. Maybe it’s like life just continues without the pressure of other things. I’ve never felt so alive since this past year, anyway. It’s you that gave me life.”

“Is it crazy that I don’t hate this madness? That I want more?”

Irene shakes her head. “I like it too,” she whispers.

Seulgi kisses her. It’s different, they’re different, but they also feel the same now, both just as real and just as nonexistent.

“Perhaps I should have just let you go in the start,” Irene says. “But I’ll let you go now. You can still travel the world since you’re not bound to this house. Go do whatever you want to do, just come back to me in the end.”

Seulgi pauses. “Maybe you should try to leave again.”

“I’ve never been able to.”

“But I could. I walked through the woods so far, and I felt drawn back to you, but I could go.”

“You went that far?”

“Yes, well, I wasn’t visible. I was just moving, I guess. You’re right, it’s hard to stay present. I could only do it, can only do it, when I think of you. I think it’s passion that keeps us here, it has to be our passion, or else the world would be filled with ghosts.”

“You might be right. And after that, you still found me?”

“I could sense you, somehow. Maybe it’s you I’m truly bound to.”

Irene smiles fondly at her.

“But I don’t think there is a place that I’m truly bound to, not even when I was alive. Even moving here was never about the place, just you. You, on the other hand, have always been a prisoner to this place. Maybe you can let that go.”

Seulgi pulls her and Irene follows, toward the door and out into the night where a full moon lights their path.

“Instead of being bound to the hanok, be bound to me. I can be your new home.”

“It already feels like that,” Irene says. “The further you went from me, the less tethered I felt.”

“That’s how I felt, too.”

Before Irene can even realize it, she’s been pulled all the way to the road and on and on they keep walking without any discomfort. Irene keeps walking, and she can.

“Don’t you see?” Seulgi says. “We are free.”

-

Irene and Seulgi make it to Seoul. They move like they’re nothing because they are nothing. Nothing but vague clouds of energy until they make themselves visible for each other's benefit, or for the benefit of scaring someone away if they so desire.

They are still somehow attuned to each other, able to communicate through feelings when no one else can see them. 

Seulgi is almost too fast to keep up with as she travels into the Olympic Stadium. Irene wonders if she should tell her not to make herself visible to her band members. It would only be harder for them to see Seulgi after her fraught disappearance and the discovery of her body buried in the garden, above Irene’s bones from centuries ago.

In the end, Irene doesn’t have to. Seulgi keeps her distance. There are new girls that have been recruited into Red Velvet, but they’re not the stars of this show tonight. This show is in memory of Seulgi, her face plastered on the screen as Wendy, Joy, and Yeri sing her parts and wipe away tears. Irene can see people in the audience crying, and it’s here in real life that she realizes just how loved and admired Seulgi was. 

But Seulgi wasn’t made for this world. Or so they have to tell themselves, because she can never return here anyway. Life wasn’t ever enough for Seulgi, so now she gets the opposite. Now she gets her tumultuous romance with Irene. Who maybe has some problems to work through, too, Irene now admits.

It’s too much when Seulgi realizes her family is backstage. She drifts out of the stadium and into the night immediately and Irene keeps up with her by following the energy that binds them. In an empty park nearby, she becomes fully formed again and Irene does too, right in time for Seulgi to wrap her arms around her.

They cling to each other and Irene doesn’t try to offer any words of comfort. It wouldn’t feel right coming from her.

She gets Seulgi to herself now. She can wait for her grief to subside. She can handle the days that Seulgi hates her and misses her old life. She can follow Seulgi around the world to all of the places and people she feels she needs to see for herself. It’s no bother at all, as long as Irene gets to be next to Seulgi. It’s the happiest she’s been all her life.

And, amazingly, Seulgi loves her too. Seulgi stays with her and takes her everywhere and touches her, still, the two of them against the world.

There will be time to see the rest of the world and watch all of the movies that they can find. 

“I want to forget about it,” Seulgi blurts out. “Help me to forget about it now.”

Seulgi pushes Irene against the building nearby, pinning her. They blur together more than ever before, their bodies sinking right into each other’s so that it seems like they have consumed each other, or melded into one being. They can be weightless when they want and they can pin each other down solidly when they want. It’s a dance in the darkness that they learn to do more seamlessly every day.

Irene gets Seulgi, now. Irene gets Seulgi, hopefully, forever.

And now they both know that she’ll do anything to keep Seulgi hers.