Seoyeon was minding her own business when she heard it. At first she couldn’t tell if it was in front of her or behind; she stopped in the middle of a crowd to look around. But it wasn’t coming from anywhere at all…
“If you build it, he will come,” whispered the voice of Morgan Freeman in her ear. She was so young, she had to spend several minutes on Google figuring out both of those references.
***
Sohyun stood on the roof, basking in the free air. Then several birds died of bird flu right in front of her.
“Whoa. I hope I don’t get sick. Wait a minute…”
She remembered an old movie she’d seen, called The Birds. In it, the female lead briefly had a certain vibe with another female character. Then in their next scene together, it was gone. Sohyun wished the movie had been about that instead of actual killer birds.
“Oh, too soon?”
***
Jiwoo stood over a dead bird. Curious, she knelt down to examine it more closely.
“I want to know what it’s like to kill,” she murmured unholily.
***
Soomin was in one of her gamer girl moods. She was online, racking up kills in Cruelty Squad. Then she reached the true ending and her mind was blown. She hallucinated ants crawling on her skin. “Bad trip, bro! Bad trip!”
***
The gang was all there, in their assiduously neat homeless encampment on the thirteenth floor of whatever office building they had broken into. And it was time for the group dance! Kotone led them on, until suddenly she stopped.
“This has got to be at least the third music video with this ‘girl-friends dancing’ concept, right?”
They all looked at her.
“You’re right!” cried out Nien. “We’re being typecast!”
***
Jiwoo was still crouched down, staring at the dead bird. Ants had found it.
“I want to eat that thing,” she muttered. “Just to prove I can.”
***
Sohyun and Xinyu led their party down into the subway. And they were drunk.
“Whoa, is the room spinning, or am I dancing?” crooned Sohyun. Xinyu giggled like an idiot, and the others fell down onto the unclean ground.
“Hey,” said Joobin, in a hazy drawl, “what if, like, we miss the train, and like, we get stuck here all night?”
“Then we’re gonna have a party,” whined Chaewon cheerily. Then she threw up in a trash can.
Nakyoung sighed. “I should have stayed home.”
***
Yooyeon bolted upright in the tub, sputtering and coughing, and being generally disoriented. She had no idea why she was fully clothed in bathwater, or how she got there. She only had a fast fading memory of a dream in which their lady Hayeon used her lesbian princess superpowers to force-crush a Tesla Cybertruck with her mind (she was both the hero they wanted and the hero they needed, in that fated hour).
“This is just like the beginning of Dark City,” muttered Yooyeon. Then, panicking, she looked around for a dead body, but there wasn’t one. Just a bird, darkly.
“Nevermore,” said Yooyeon, rolling her eyes.
***
Jiwoo twisted off the ant’s head, and put its body in her mouth.
“Mmm. Kind of tangy,” she said.
***
Yubin stepped into the room. “You know, the other movie this references is Constantine.”
She sat down in the tub with Yooyeon, but not in a lovingly sapphic sort of way. More of an adversarial kind of vibe.
“Wait,” said Yooyeon, “you’re already soaking wet!”
“At least take me to dinner first,” said Yubin, smiling that smile of hers.
Yooyeon rolled her eyes. “No, I mean, your clothes are already wet.”
“Duh,” said Yubin, “you keep falling asleep, this is like our fourth take already!”
Yooyeon turned and looked towards the door. But there was no one there…
“Um,” she began, timidly, “if you think about it, another movie this reminds me of is the first Saw movie…sort of.”
Yubin hugged her. “I can’t quit you, babe!”
***
Jiwoo picked up the dead bird, but it was only a cloth dummy.
“Oh, I can’t eat that.”
She dropped it on the ground, and, looking around, ran off. After all, she was missing some awesome dance routines.
***
They weren’t in the bathtub anymore. Instead, they were in a pond, or a lake.
“It’s not a lake,” said Yooyeon, “it’s an ocean.”
“And it’s not a loop…it’s a spiral,” said Yubin.
Somewhere, someone reading this just had their mind blown.
***
The survivors of that tragic night gathered around an open grave.
“So, like, I get that all of us dancing down there is symbolic of something,” began Mayu.
“Uh-huh,” said Lynn, lollipop still in her mouth.
“But, what exactly is it symbolic of?” continued Mayu.
They all stared into the hole. Finally, Yooyeon spoke up.
“It’s symbolic of the hell our careers are going to end up in, if we don’t make Modhaus money. Now, hawk those non-fungible tokens, damn it!”
And they all sauntered off, to put their noses back to the grindstone.
***
But wait, there’s an epilogue!
Seoyeon and Jiyeon stood there on the thematic rooftop, playing pattycake, when all of a sudden a mysterious figure appeared. It was Heejin!
“Hey, that’s our concept!” she protested. Seoyeon put her middle finger in Heejin’s face.
“Fuck you, it’s our multiverse now!”
“Yeah, good luck with Jaden’s scraps!” added Jiyeon, gleefully.
And Olivia Hye was nowhere to be found.