IV
Irene was fixing up her hair in a mirror when her head turns to her front door from where a beige envelope slips through the letterbox and drops unceremoniously to the floor with a weak thwack when the paper wobbles and eventually slackens. Approaching it, she can tell it's an official letter, made clear by the seal made of marbled blue wax and imprinted with the heavenly crest which she breaks open by slipping her thumb beneath it. More poignantly, who else sends letters nowadays? She wonders why they waste time and materials with these sorts of 'traditional courtesies' that the high council is so eager to uphold. Does some poor angel sit and press wax seals all day every day? She can remember thinking that it looked pretty when she was still alive on earth and, whilst she certainly garnered some satisfaction from it, she wouldn't be able to do it as a job-- especially not for the rest of her eternal life.
Pulling away the envelope reveals sleek, premium-feeling paper and light ripples off of its surface as she unfolds it. The same crest dons the corner of the letter and it's clearly addressed to her, it's words baring a foreboding sense of formality despite it's curtness.
Meant for Bae Joohyun (Bae Irene),
the council has reviewed your re-entry to earth in the form of your recent loyalty test. Tomorrow please ensure that you come to collect your results as, depending on the judgement, you may have to act immediately. Any activities that are scheduled, whether it be social or professional must be postponed for this event.
Her loyalty test. It had utterly slipped her mind ever since she had a fateful brush with almost-treason in Hell and there's a feeling of guilt prodding at her too; she knows she'll pass her test, however, she doesn't know if she's entirely deserving of keeping her position. Every high-ranking member of both Heaven and Hell take these tests whenever their council deems it appropriate. They are reinstated on earth from the very beginning of a human life cycle with no memories (as they could possibly corrupt the morals that guide their actions) until they die and return to their respective supernatural homes. From there, they are re-judged on their newest human behaviour with the idea that, if they are loyal enough to heaven (or hell) it would be made clear on earth too. The test had always brushed Irene the wrong way; there were just too many variables on earth that could cause an angel-turned-human to act the wrong way. Despite this, she never complained. Why would she? She passed her last test with flying colours and was given the position of archangel and she's almost sure this one will go the same way. As an added bonus, it allows her to keep in touch with human society. Nonetheless, she can't help the feeling of shame from clutching her-- purposely becoming a guardian to gain information from a devil on an unauthorised mission is one thing, but essentially befriending them? Irene is sinking into the mire.
She'll have to tell Seulgi that she won't be able to guard the following day when she sees her later. Today will mark twenty days since they started guarding together. Briefly, she wonders if it's unusual that she's been counting the days but the countdown does little more than annoy her if anything; a reminder that, despite the time they've spent together, Irene has managed to extract very little information from her other than the fact that they're running low on guardians. It's worrying to think that perhaps their little meetups were becoming more than just professional considering that the angel almost looks forwards to seeing Satan's second in command each day. They'd certainly grown closer but, on second thought, maybe closer wasn't the correct word, more-so comfortable in one another's presence.
Their second day maintained the same level of tension as the first-- both guardians skirted about an invisible barrier with a flightiness that would suggest coming into contact with it would have them blown apart or some other gruesome ending that could match it. It was like the initial shock of seeing one another for the second time had dissipated into caution, like archaeologists slowly picking their way through an artifactual site as they as moved in a metaphorical dance, coming closer than any angel and devil ever should but never quite breaching the barrier that thwarted them.
It was only on the fifth day did they ever rupture the membrane. Irene mistakenly reached to take a coffee from the waiter who was giving it to Yeri and she was too slow to retract her hand before Seulgi noticed it. The devil had said something like 'old habits die hard' and Irene had lamely answered with a pun about how they had already died but Seulgi laughed and so did she and that was when Irene felt the spark. Like a single butterfly awakening from it's cocoon in her stomach and slowly beginning to flutter its papery wings, testing the air before it takes flight. And take flight it did when Seulgi's eyes curved upwards into crescents, which she's sure obscured her vision, with that same damned smile that she had noticed on that fated infiltration. Irene remembers thinking on that day that she would have found that adorable on anybody else, but she was beginning to come round to seeing it on the devil's advocate herself. It was all terrifying, tempting and she wanted more of the tantalising feeling of butterflies flittering in her stomach.
Despite their friendship, which was pleasantly blossoming in its early days, there were still diminutive details surrounding Seulgi that Irene had yet to find anything out about. Firstly, there was a woman, most likely a devil, that she saw almost every day passing her. She was tall, slim, elegant and most of all, brazen with an artificial look of calmness on her face when she struts past, hair flowing behind her, but that wasn't the problem Irene had with this proud woman; it was the look on Seulgi's face. She looked uneasy, Irene would even go as far to say even a little vulnerable-- apprehensive, although perhaps she was being presumptuous. Seeing the woman who is usually so hubristic, seem so belittled was startlingly harrying to her. What could this woman possibly be doing, saying or holding over her horned head that elicited such a reaction?
Another thing she had noticed, possibly even queerer than this bizarre relationship with the haughty stranger (which could just be down to old grudges) was how Seulgi yielded her efforts to make Yeri sin every single time she had the chance. Not once has she tried to stop Irene or compete with her in any way despite it being her job, that's not just unusual-- it's teetering on the edge of being illegal, and she's not even adding that she's the second most powerful devil in Hell into the equation. Irene wonders if their unusual friendship is making her hesitant to 'beat' her at her own game but, as she ponders more, it just doesn't seem plausible. Every reason she has in her head feels like the last puzzle piece which just doesn't fit the picture, except, there are so many holes in the final jigsaw and not enough pieces to fill any of them and so it lies there-- incomplete and unsolvable.
Irene casts away the shimmering letter that has been wavering in her hands on the spot for well over ten minutes. She has more important things to attend to for now.
* * *
She spots Seulgi from down the street, her lean figure resting against the brick wall beside the reflective glass panes. It had become an unspoken rule for the punctual devil to stand in wait for Irene so that they can walk inside together. Irene's not sure why, it's another one of the many little idiosyncrasies surrounding the woman that pique her interest. She is unaware of Irene, as to be expected. Today their shift is at night, Yeri being in the mood for a midnight drink under the stars, the dark sky starkly contrasting the lights trailing up and down the lit up buildings which line the streets, growing further away until, to her eyes, they meet in the middle of the horizon line. The yellowish incandescence sweeping through the windows shrouds the devil's figure, darkening her silhouette in a ghostly manner which eccentuates the pointed horns on her head. She looks almost fictional, a figure of her imagination with her dark hair cascading over her shoulders to avoid the wall on which her broad shoulders rest on and Irene is pithily reminded of how far apart they really are no matter what delusions of their relationship she conjures up in her head.
When she finally notices Irene and her effulgent halo approaching her down the pavement, she prostrates fully, pushing her shoulders back to launch herself off of the wall with that same impeccable posture that the angel has so duly noticed and she smiles, her cheeks rounding and eyes shaping into half-moons much like the ones Irene is pressing into her skin with her nails-- it's not cold yet. Why does she suddenly feel so nervous? She thinks it's the night sky reminding her of the time they spent together on that hilltop in Hell. She doesn't think she's scared of Seulgi, at least not any more than she was when they came fist-to-fist in a compact bathroom.
As soon as she's in relative earshot, Seulgi greets her. "Hi, it's a late one today, hm?"
"It is, but I'm okay with that," Irene admits, returning the smile from the devil that glows even in the darkened street with her own. "How are you?"
"I'm good, a little bored at that." And the angel believes her; it doesn't seem like Seulgi's had a brush with the mysterious woman she so often sees.
"I'm sorry for keeping you waiting."
Seulgi lets out a small laugh at that, stepping diagonally towards the door in a manner that ushers Irene through it and into the secluded ambience of the coffee shop. "You didn't, I just like to arrive early."
Yeri's sitting at her usual table, half-drank hot chocolate sits stilly in front of her and cocoa powder settles viscously at the bottom of the glass. Her attention has been on a book she has flattened the spine of for a long time it seems and Irene wonders if her hot chocolate is still as hot as its name would suggest. Due to the time, the usually bustling nature of the shop is much more relaxed and with it comes a feeling of unanimous comfort; it feels as though the two women are simply enjoying a visit out together rather than attending a job. Only one member of staff is behind the counter, the foot traffic falling low enough that they sit on a stool, ensnared by their phone with very little worry. There's at most five other people sitting individually on their own tables, all engrossed in their own little worlds but Irene's attention is solely on Seulgi who has drifted away from Yeri's table and is preying on an empty booth two sets down from her.
She notices the quirk in Irene's eyebrow and offers her a re-assuring nod. Everything seems so mellow under the etiolated light, like they're in slow motion or wading through water. "I thought maybe we could sit down?" Seulgi says, her tone suggestive. "There's no need for us to stand." Irene agrees and follows after her and they simultaneously sink into opposite sides of the booth and, like everyone else in the shop, it feels like they have immediately entered their own, private world which is unassailable to anybody but them. They're unbeknownst to those beyond, both in their minds and literally for, in reality, Irene knows that nobody is aware of their presence no matter where they are and what they do but this booth, this haven, is their own.
For a while, they sit comfortably in this silence which has enveloped them, the only noise being the clunking of ceramics hitting wooden tables and the scrape of Yeri's book pages turning and Irene feels like a child shielding beneath the untouchable blanket that defends them from the monsters of the night and the dark and she wonders whether Seulgi is experiencing the same feeling. Maybe they're sharing this together. She should see Seulgi herself as the midnightly monster but instead, she is her companion and the only threat lurking beyond the blanket is simply the gap between them; the unbridgeable gap between Heaven and Hell. Irene doesn't know if it's the night, the lights or just Seulgi herself making her feel so connected to her surroundings.
"You're very away with the fairies today." Seulgi comments good-naturedly, breaking the tranquility.
Proving her point, Irene's attention is yanked back into the palm of the devil opposite her and she half-smiles like she's been caught red-handed. "Is that really any surprise?" She answers, eyes flitting to the sky outside. "I have quite the reputation for that."
"You do."
"I think it's the night time."
"I assumed so," Seulgi adjusts herself in her seat, breathing deeply. "I think the last time we spent together at night was the day after we met."
"Ah! You were thinking that too?" Irene answers almost too enthusiastically, her eyes lighting up at the prospect that her and Seulgi's thoughts were alike. "I feel almost nostalgic."
"What? About the busted lip I gave you and the scratched face you gave me?" Seulgi asks, eyebrow cocking and tone dripping with playful sarcasm.
"Well, I healed quite nicely-- plus I'm still not entirely sure how I scratched you," Irene retorts blithely. "I think I pulled the short straw with my blood-stained shirt."
At this Seulgi audibly scoffs, leaning forwards in her seat. "Ahh, much like the wine-stained top you ruined?" It's not a question. "My favourite, most expensive top?"
Irene bites back her words, her defeated lips forming a pout. She does still feel guilt over that slip-up but, perhaps, without it she wouldn't be sitting opposite the woman. "At least it's a funny memory?" She says tentatively through gritted teeth to which Seulgi just rolls her eyes and blows air out through her grimace, signalling the end of that conversation and Irene follows her alarm to a certain degree, instead leaning forwards and initiating another one. "You know, you never did tell me why that woman choked hearing your name." She's careful with her words, ensuring that she doesn't give away that she knows 'that woman' as an angel called Wendy. She thinks she's already given this woman too much information for free.
"Yes I did."
"Mh? What did you say?"
"I said that I didn't have a clue what you were talking about."
"Exactly!"
"It's an answer though."
"I don't want just an answer," Irene huffs, growing slightly irritated at the way the devil always effortlessly seems to dance around her words like she might as well just be throwing cotton balls at her. Two of her fingers tap on the peeling wood with mock impatience.
"I want doesn't get."
"Can't you just tell me something straight for once?"
"I've told you I'm not sure what you're on about."
Irene scoffs. "You literally glared at her!"
"I glare at a lot of people, Irene." Seulgi gives her one of her infamous stares and Irene almost physically recoils; she isn't away with the fairies enough to stop her from detecting that the daggered gaze is being projected with half-seriousness, a warning if you will. The silent that falls over them is borderline unbearable, Irene fidgeting with the need to both ask more questions and maintain this relationship of theirs. Their little back and forths like this are always perplexing on where they both stand. Are they friends or are they just working and tolerating one another's presence? Irene thinks the line between those two outcomes is very thin and she's pushing on it with her weight a maybe too hard because everything is starting to merge together into one, weird, unorthodox concoction.
Seulgi's eyes aren't on Irene anymore, staring at somebody behind her who she can only assume is Yeri and they both relinquish into the quiet. Irene finds herself occassionally sending the young girl a glance too. She knows that their guarding of her isn't quite normal, but she's almost grateful for her. Yeri is the only thing that Irene and Seulgi share which unites them in some kind of twisted way. Besides, with the devil's unusual habit of surrendering to good, she likes to think that she's doing a nice job with her. Seulgi and Yeri will handle one day without her just fine, she's sure of it. When she looks back to verbalise this, Seulgi's eyes are already upon her and there's something flickering behind her irises that makes whatever words she was planning on saying hitch in her throat.
"Irene," She says, one of her hands forming a tent-like shape on the table as if she's proposing a business deal, her eyes following it when she slides it a few inches fowards before they return to the angel opposite her. "Come back with me."
"What?"
"To Hell."
Irene's expression slackens and she sits frozen. She can feel something shooting up through her torso and down her arms which makes her fingers twitch and it's certainly not caffeine. Hell? Seulgi's out of her mind. Who in their right mind would ask that? Angels who abscond from Heaven have always been the lowest of the low in her mind but now as she sits here staring straight-faced at a devil, whom, she can't deny that she's grown to like, she can't help but wonder where this misconstructed propaganda against them has spawned from. Seulgi looks so sincere, eyes soft and honest, eyebrows raised by a fraction of millimetre like she's genuinely awaiting a serious response-- if she hadn't any horns, Irene thinks she'd mistake her for an angel but, not even moments after that, her back stiffens. Was she considering her offer? She really is a disgusting excuse for an angel. And, though it wasn't her intent, clearly her thoughts are being translated through her expressions because Seulgi's look of candidness is fading.
"You're serious?"
"I am."
"I don't want to go to Hell, Seulgi," Irene says as if she's exasperated, crestfallen that the woman would ask such an unmentionable thing after she had thought everything was going so well. "Why would I ever want that?"
"I think we're similar." She replies simply.
"You've said that before and I'll say it again: we're not."
Seulgi seems unfazed. "You will suit it."
"I 'will'?" Irene repeats incredulously, looking about and adjusting herself in her seat as if she had just been caught in a comprimising position, as if they were actually arguing in a place where the people around them would acknowledge them-- could acknowledge them. Her voice is growing louder, peaking over the hum of the lights, the thrumming of the machines behind the counter and the clunking of cups on wood. "What's gotten you into the idea that I 'will'?"
"We enjoy one another's presence," Seulgi says almost as if Irene's behaviour is making her think twice about her words. "At least, I thought we did."
"Not enough for me to go to Hell for God's sake." Irene snaps curtly.
"You're making things so much more difficult." Seulgi spits back, leaning back in her seat, her skin is heating up and she cools it against the cold leather of the chair, breathing in deeply and briefly resting her eyes.
Irene just pauses and stares in disbelief. What was that supposed to mean? She feels like she's running back and forth, trying to collect pieces of this puzzle which are plummeting down to the ground and smashing into unsalvageable sizes. Everything had felt relatively normal, save the unusual levels of cortisol in her system, until now. What does Seulgi know that she doesn't? With a thick stab of guilt, she is hit with the realisation that perhaps she isn't the only person with an ulterior motive in this 'alliance' and yet she can't even be angry; she's simply at a loss.
"If you were to accept," Seulgi continues, steering the one-sided conversation in an even more perplexing direction, eyes narrowing with both curiosity and what Irene interprets as malice, although she's most likely mistaken with this proposal buzzing in her head misaligning her thoughts. "What would happen to your position? Being an archangel and all. Would it just be vacant?"
"What?" Irene sticks her head forwards accusingly, eyebrows knitting together. "Why are you so interested in different positions in Heaven, Seulgi?"
"Oh, so you're turning this on me now?" It's like she can almost see something inside of Seulgi switch on like her body was a circuit and electricity was shooting through her. Her eyes are suddenly more feline, her lips parting with what looks like shock and disgust. "But yeah, let's forget why we're here in the first place."
"What is that supposed to mean?"
"What do you, want from me?" One of Seulgi's hands is clenched into a fist, the other pointing at the both of them respectively. Her voice is wavering, like she's struggling to maintain her volume despite the fact that she could scream at the top of her lungs and nobody would hear them. "I think we both know that you're not here to have a cutesy, 'exotic' friendship which you can brag about to all of your angelic, little friends." Her voice is laced with venom. Laced with pain.
"I'm not trying to extract anything from you!" Irene responds as if she had just been accused of federal crime and, despite the defensiveness she adopts, Seulgi isn't entirely wrong. She had initially continued their meets because she noticed she could boost her own status in Heaven but within days, her agenda shifted and she had failed to complete the only job she set herself: get information, don't be friendly. "Why can't you accept that I just. Don't. Want. To go to Hell."
"That's not what this is about anymore," Seulgi's upper lip curls slightly, the distain on her face couldn't be more clear and Irene feels something cracking inside of her. "and you know it."
If Seulgi is aware of her 'scheme', why does she welcome her everyday with open arms? "Then why do you keep coming?" She forces out. "Waiting at the door for me everyday? And perpetuating this—" She waves her hands about to lavish her words, "thing?"
"I'm giving you fair game over Yeri," Seulgi responds, her voice is low and heavy like Irene's struck a nerve. "I've told you something like this before."
"Yeah, fair game." Irene rises in her seat. She's an the attack now and there's no going back. It's as if she's turning the volume slowly up on a set of speakers, every decibel having a different effect on those captured in the sound. "Because it's fair when you let me win the poor girl over every time!"
Seulgi stands abruptly and Irene is shunned into silence, her head tipping upwards to stare at her, their eyes meeting in a stare so intense that she's convinced the woman's irises will be burnt into her retina when they part. She can see her own apprehensive image twinned in them. "You have no idea what you're talking about." And with that, Seulgi is walking away. Exiting their little world, their private booth and she's out of the coffee shop and Irene's standing too, sending one glance to Yeri and then back to Seulgi, then Yeri and then she's moving like she's in a trance.
Yeri's alone in the shop when Irene catches onto Seulgi's wrist and she twists around and there is a silence over them that neither much likes and the world beyond them won't stop moving and cars are rushing past and Irene doesn't even have time to wonder about why there are so many of them so late at night before Seulgi's lips are against her own and it's only then do the cars slow down, and the heated electricity, conducted by their arguement, which pulsates through the both of them curb into a throbbing heartbeat and the sparks meet in the middle of them. Yeri isn't their only exchangeable trait anymore because now they're physically connected, their lips moving in tangent with one another. Seulgi's head is tilted down and she's sure she can feel her hands on her waist and regret ebbs in the back of her mind but it's something she'll deal with after because now it's just Seulgi and nothing else.
But then Seulgi's gone, only inches away and Irene is left star-struck, catching her breath from it all as nothing moves but the wind which nips at her cheeks and her uneven breathing coming out as a pale vapour, illuminated in the same tawny light of the coffee shop. Even the cars have stopped moving. Now their 'exchangeable trait' is just the light flush of red that's coating their cheeks and it's certainly not from the cold wind because Irene can see the evidence in the form of Seulgi's lipstick which isn't quite the same shape as her lips.
"Fuck- I'm sorry, no-"
"What?"
"I'll have another guardian put in tomorrow; you won't see me again."
"Wait- Seulgi, we can talk-"
"No, no, we can't. Don't follow me, okay? I'm going back to Hell."
"But, you wanted me there."
"Not now," She's turning away already, facing the frost which whips her hair back and forces her eyes into a squint. "Clearly you're too good for that." And Irene can't tell whether it's malice or hurt or affection in her voice but even worse, Seulgi's back is to her and she doesn't know if it'll be the last time she ever sees the devil's advocate.