These Sainted Seouls | ongoing

section seven: Chae Yi & her cats

She woke up in a pounding sweat, the black city in her head fading as she sat up and rubbed her hands back through her hair. The air was blue and light, the dawn coming in a hazy grey fog through her windows. She stood up and pulled on slippers, and made her way into the tiny apartment kitchen. It was felt one of her typical hangover mornings, and also something infinitely worse, but she did not want to think things over, not just yet. Right now, she could almost pretend she was normal:  the chipped plaster coffee mug hot in her hands as she leaned against the cabinets and watched the morning rise, the neighbor's gauzy flowers spilling into her screened windows, IU's Ending Scene whispering through the radio. Her cats padded into the room and wove themselves around her legs.

"Annyeong, Hyun-ki, Yoon shi Yoon--annyeong, Kookie," she said, leaning down to rub her fingers into the three balls of purring fluff. A thick black cat stalked into the room; Chae Yi picked it up and draped it over her shoulders, giving it little nose kisses. "And my baby Sung-jin. Do you know your noona had a terrible night? I went to a horrible city. I was really inside the head of some psychopath--"

She wandered into her living room, the cats following her. She slumped across her one good couch, and looked around her, at the white brick walls and the afghans draped over the furniture and the dead wildflowers that she'd hung up last winter when she'd had a vague idea that her house needed better karma. Her university books stacked dustily in the corner, abandoned for her uncle's nightclub. It did not help that she could never study properly: that she was always distracted by things in her reality softly splitting themselves and sparking over her eyes. Right now, it was one of the cats: Kookie sat transfixed as the sunlight pulled his paws away from his legs and his ears away from his head--like something from Wonderland, she thought, though the cat did not feel anything. When she blinked it was gone, but the other things-- the memories of the man and Na-kyu and the odd anime girl--were still terribly strong. It felt like heavy alcohol in her head.

"It's too pathetic to start spiking my coffee this early," she mumbled to Hyun-ki, who was sitting on her legs and cleaning his face. "I'll just go out tonight. I'll go out tonight and have a marvelous time. I have a new dress I can wear--all this dieting has finally paid off, hasn't it?" She closed her eyes and leaned her head back against the couch. "There are plenty of places I can go for fast rich men, isn't that right, kitty?"

A wind picked up; the branches of the crab tree outside scraping against her window. It would rain tonight, she was sure, but the air now was perfectly fresh. A hose turned on outside, accompanied by gravelly shuffling and scraping; the cats started, but Chae Yi knew it was only the man who lived above them; he had some agreement with the building owner where he paid a cheaper rent in turn for doing the yard-work. She stood up and brushed the cats off and went over to the window to peak out at him. She did not know his name, but he was attractive. His shoulders moved comfortably beneath the bulky white sweater he wore, and he did not seem to mind that his sneakers were slicked with grass and mud.

Chae Yi tapped her fingers absently against the window, watching him, thinking now despite herself. She had come up with the term Second Seoul herself: this idea that there was another city layered into what most people took as normality; for her, it was mainly the splitting of things that came like odd optical illusions. Of course, there were other things that had happened over the years, things far more dangerous that had also been looped into her Second Seoul. But somehow that man knew what she meant--he had created a city that seemed the magnetic point of her Second Seoul.

It couldn't be all bad, she told herself, that city. Saint Servera. She had seen it as a horrible nightmare, but Morana had seen a different version. The fear in Chae Yi's body had died away by now, and she was sure there something in Saint Servera beyond the dripping darkness and the shadow-voice that had stuck along her neck. After all, if the man went there to be with Na-kyu, there had to be parts of the city that were nice. Long, white avenues, maybe, with blossoming peach trees--or endless blue horizons draped around highrises--oceans in ponds with herons perched on stoplights--it could be anything.

"Maybe it was a dark trick," she said to the cats. "Maybe he did some weird magic and forced me to see a horrible version of the city so I wouldn't want to come back. I'm sure there's more."

The man outside was slightly turned toward her window now, his face mostly obscured by a navy baseball cap. His hair must be short: all she could see was the white nape of his neck. Her hands rose up to touch the skin of her own neck; she bit her lip and thought about the possibilities of the man's mind palace.

Chae Yi decided then that she would go back to the city. It made sense, really: she had seen a nightmare, but she had been seeing nightmares her entire life. Maybe the man's Saint Servera held some sort of answer for her--an explanation for why she saw what she did. She would have to avoid that shadow-man who had grabbed her wrist and whispered for her to come back to the city. Was it wrong, to be listening to him? But she was not really following his advice--this was her own idea. Wasn't it?

There was a sharp screech at the curb; her neighbor had suddenly disappeared, and a shiny black car was parking along the edge of the street. The vehicle's door opened, and a slim man in a black bomber jacket stepped out, shading his eyes from the sun.

She did not recognize him, but that didn't mean--

"Shit," Chae Yi whispered furiously, skidding back into the kitchen to wrap a sweater around her pajama shirt and to pull back her hair. He was rich--probably one of her angry ex-lovers--but how did he find her? She did not invite men back here. She did not want them around her inherited furniture and the cheap pock-marked walls and her mewling cats.

There was a knock on the door. "Shitshitshit," she mumbled and ran out to answer it.

The man had his back to her; he was looking over the crumbling neighborhood that surrounded them, and his arrogance irritated her.

"Excuse me?" she said.

He turned and smirked at her. He was not someone she knew--but he was someone she'd seen--

There was a scuffling behind her, and then one of her cats darted out from between her legs and ran into the streets.

"Omo!--not again," she said. 

"Will he come back?" the man said, clearly startled.

"Of course, but still--" Just for good measure, she put her hands to her mouth and yelled, "Hyun-ki! Get back here, you little rat!"

"Hyun-ki?" he said.

"Um, yes," Chae Yi said, blushing. "I,uh--I named my cat after you."

---

a/n: A random update, b/c why not? I wanted to give the story a slower moment to bring it back down to equilibrium and to keep things from turning into a total dark drama. It's nice writing softer, slower, more aesthetic-ish things sometimes.

Songs for this chapter: Through the Night, Ending Scene & Palette by IU // 11:11 by Taeyeon

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Keeping up with the trend of ending with a pretty boy gif: