In the morning, Rosé and Jisoo is no longer beside Jennie.
Jennie lie on her side, watching the sunlight push through the blinds, listening to the noise of traffic humming through the walls. The clock is behind her on the bedside table. She can't see the time, but it feels late. They have slept in.
She sits up, throw back the covers, looks around the room.
It's empty.
"Jisoo?"
"Rosé"
Jennie starts quickly toward the bathroom to see if someone's in there, but what she sees on top of the dresser makes her stop.
Some cash.
A few coins.
Eight ampoules.
And a piece of paper ripped out of a notebook, covered in someone's handwriting;
Jennie. After last night, it was clear to me that you've made a decision to go down a path I can't follow. I struggled with this all night. As your friend, as a therapist, I want to help you. I want to fix you. But I can't. And I can't keep watching you fall down.
Especially if I'm part of the reason you keep falling down. To what extent is our collective subconscious driving our connections to these worlds? It's not that I don't want you to get back to your wife. I want nothing more. But we've been together now for weeks. It's hard not to get attached, especially under these circumstances, when you and Rosé is all I have.
I read your notebooks yesterday, when I was wondering if you'd left us, and honey, you're missing the point. You're writing down all these things about your Chicago, but not what you feel. We left you the backpack, eight ampoules, and half the money (a whopping ₩181430 and change). I don't know where I'll end up. I'm curious and scared, but excited too.
There's a part of me that really wants to stay, but you need to choose your own next door to open.
So do I.
Jennie, I wish you nothing but happiness.
Be safe.
Jisoo.
There's another piece of paper and by Jennie's guess, it belonged to Rosé;
I'm sorry for leaving you like this Jennie but Jisoo and I discussed things and we decided that it is the best if you'll go alone on this.
I don't know what to write in this paper anymore. Jisoo insisted for me to left you some farewell note and all I can think of is that we both loved Lisa to some extent. And I knew, that you love her more than I ever will. However, seeing you and the other versions of you with Lisa still hurts me and maybe running away with Jisoo like this is for the best isn't it? For me to move on and for you to move forward?
We left you more ampoules because we know you needed it more. Jisoo and I will be going together until we used the last of ampoules that we have, and when it happens, we're going to settle into that world.
I hope you find your world too Jennie. I hope you find your Lisa and I hope that the four of us will find each other again, but more happiness and less on haunting times.
Jennie, I know I told you to find your Lisa, but I hope you don't lose yourself in the process.
My prayers.
Rosé.
___________________________________
AMPOULES REMAINING: 7
By herself, the full horror of the corridor sinks in.
Jennie have never felt so alone.
___________________________________
There's no Lisa in this world.
Seoul feels wrong without her.
Jennie hates everything about it.
The color of the sky seems off.
The familiar buildings mocks her.
Even the air tastes like a lie.
Because it isn't her city.
It's theirs.
___________________________________
AMPOULES REMAINING: 6
Jennie is striking out.
All night, she walks the streets alone.
Dazed.
Afraid.
Letting her system purge the drug.
Jennie eats at an all-night diner and ride the train back to the South Side at dawn.
On her way to the abandoned power plant, three teenagers saw her.
They're on the other side of the road, but at this hour, the streets are empty.
They call out to Jennie.
Taunts and slurs.
Jennie ignores them.
Walks faster.
But she knows she's in trouble when they start across the street, purposefully moving in her direction.
For a moment, Jennie considers running, but they're young and no doubt faster.
Besides, it occurs to Jennie as her mouth runs dry and the fight-or-flight response kicks an initial dump of adrenaline into hersystem that she may need her strength.
On the outskirts of a neighborhood, where the row houses end and a train yard begins, they catch up to Jennie.
There's no one else out at this hour.
No help in sight.
They're even younger than Jennie first thought, and the smell of malt liquor wafts off them like malicious cologne. The ragged energy they carry in their eyes suggests they've been out all night, perhaps searching for this exact opportunity.
The beating begins in earnest.
They don't even bother talking shit.
Jennie is too tired, too broken to fight back.
Before she even know what's happening, she's down on the pavement getting kicked in the stomach, the back, the face.
Jennie blacks out for a moment, and when she come to, she can feel their hands running up and down her body, searching-Jennie assumes-for a wallet that isn't there.
They finally rip her backpack away, and as Jennie bleeds on the pavement, they take off laughing and running down the street.
___________________________________
Jennie lies there for a long time, listening to the volume of traffic steadily increase.
The day grows brighter.
People walk past her on the sidewalk without stopping.
Each breath drives a wedge of pain between her bruised ribs, and her left eye is swollen shut.
After a while, she manages to sit up.
Shit.
The ampoules.
Using a chain-link fence, Jennie drags herself onto her feet.
Please.
Jennie snakes her hand up the inside of her shirt, her fingers grazing the piece of duct tape that's affixed to her side.
It hurts like hell to peel it slowly back, but everything hurts like hell.
The ampoules are still there.
Three crushed.
Three intact.
___________________________________
Jennie stumble back into the box and shut herself inside.
Her money is gone.
Her notebooks are gone.
Her syringes and needles.
Jennie have nothing but her broken body and three more chances to get it right.
___________________________________
AMPOULES REMAINING: 2
Jennie spends the first half of the day begging on a street corner for enough money to catch a train into the city.
She spends the rest of it four blocks from her house, sitting on the pavement behind a cardboard sign that reads:
HOMELESS. DESPERATE. ANYTHING HELPS.
The condition of her battered face must go a long way toward garnering sympathy, because Jennie collecedt ₩33976.04 by the time the sun goes down.
She's hungry, thirsty, and sore.
She chose a diner that looks shitty enough to have her, and as she pays for her meal, the exhaustion hits.
She has nowhere to go.
No money for a motel room.
Outside, the night has turned cold and rainy.
Jennie walks to her house and head around the block to the alley, thinking of a place where she might sleep undisturbed, undetected.
There's a space between her garage and the neighbor's that's hidden behind the trash can and recycling bin. Jennie crawls between them, taking with her a flattened box, which she leans against the wall of her garage.
Underneath it, Jennie listens to the rain pattering on the cardboard above her head, hoping her makeshift shelter will last the night.
From her vantage point, Jennie can see over the high fence that encircles her backyard, through a window, into the second floor of her house.
It's the master bedroom.
Jennie walks past.
It isn't Jennie2. Jennie knows for a fact this isn't her world. The stores and restaurants down the block from her house are wrong. These Manobans own different cars than her family.
Lisa appears for a moment in the window, reaches up, pulls the blinds closed.
Good night, my love.
The rain intensifies.
The box sags.
Jennie begins to shiver.
___________________________________
Jennie's eighth day on the streets of Seoul, Jennie Kim herself drops a ₩500 bill into her collection box.
There's no danger.
Jennie's unrecognizable.
Sunburned and reeking of abject poverty.
The people in her neighborhood are generous. Every day, she makes enough to eat a cheap meal each evening and pocket a few dollars.
Every night, Jennie sleeps in the alley.
It becomes a kind of game. When the lights in the master bedroom cut out, Jennie closes her eyes and imagine she's her.
With her.
With Lisa.
Some days, Jennie feels her sanity slipping.
Jisoo once said that her old world had begun to feel like a ghost, and Jennie thinks she knows what she means.
We associate reality with the tangible-everything we can experience with our senses. And though Jennie keeps telling herself there's a box on the south side of Seoul that can take her to a world where she have everything she wants and needs, Jennie no longer believe that place exists.
Her reality-more and more every day-is this world. Where she have nothing.
Where she's a homeless, filthy creature whose existence evokes only compassion, pity, and disgust.
Nearby, another homeless man is standing in the middle of the sidewalk, having a full-volume conversation with nobody.
Jennie thinks, Am I so different? Aren't we both lost in worlds that, for reasons beyond our control, no longer align with our identity?
The most frightening moments are those that seem to be arriving with increasing frequency. Moments where the idea of a magic box, even to her, sounds like the ravings of a crazy person.
___________________________________
One night, Jennie pass a liquor store and realize she have enough money for a bottle of something.
She drinks an entire bottle of soju.
Find herself standing in the master bedroom of her house, staring down at Jennie and Lisa, asleep in their bed under a tangle of blankets.
The bedside-table clock shows 3:38 a.m., and though the house is dead silent, Jennie is so drunk that she can feel her pulse beating against her eardrum.
Jennie can't piece together the thought process that brought her there.
All she can think is that she had this.
Once upon a time.
This beautiful dream of a life.
And in that moment, with the room spinning and tears streaking down her face, Jennie actually don't know if that life of hers was real or imagined.
She takes a step toward the other Jennie's side of the bed, her eyes beginning to adjust in the darkness.
She sleeps peacefully.
Jennie want what's hers so badly she can taste it.
I'd do anything to have her life. To step into her shoes.
Jennie imagines killing her. Choking the life out of her or shooting a bullet into her brain.
Jennie sees herself trying to be her.
Trying to accept this version of Lisa as her wife.
Would this house ever feel like mine?
Could I sleep at night?
Could I ever look Lisa in the eyes and not think about the fear in her real wife's face two seconds before Jennie took her life?
No.
No.
Clarity comes crashing-painful, shameful, but in the exact moment when it's so desperately needed.
The guilt and all the tiny differences would transform her life here into hell.
Into a reminder not just of what she had done, but of what she still didn't have.
This would never feel like my world.
I'm not capable of this.
I don't want this.
I am not this person.
I shouldn't be here.
As Jennie stumbles out of the bedroom and down the hall, she realizes that to have even considered this was to give up on finding her Lisa.
To say that Jennie is letting her go.
That she isn't attainable.
And maybe that's true. Maybe Jennie doesn't have a prayer of ever finding her way back to her wife and her perfect world. To that single grain of sand on an infinite beach.
But Jennie still have two ampoules left, and she won't stop fighting until they're gone.
___________________________________
Jennie gos to a thrift store and buy new clothes-jeans, flannel shirt, a black peacoat.
Then toiletries at a drugstore, along with a notebook, pack of pens, and a flashlight.
She checks into a motel, throw her old clothes away, and take the longest shower of her life.
The water running off her body is gray.
Standing in front of the mirror, Jennie look almost like herself again, though her cheekbones stand out with more prominence from malnutrition.
___________________________________
She sleeps into the afternoon and then took a bus to the old building she knew too well.
The abandoned establishment is quiet, sunlight slanting through the windows of the generator room.
Sitting in the doorway of the box, Jennie opens the notebook.
She been thinking ever since she woke up about what Jisoo said in her goodbye note, how Jennie haven't really written about what she feels.
Here goes...
I'm twenty-seven years old. I've worked all morning at the lab, and things are going so well I almost shrug off the party. I've been doing that a lot lately-neglecting friends and social engagements to steal just a few more hours in the cleanroom.
I first notice you in the far corner of the small backyard as I stand on the deck, sipping a soda, my thoughts still back at the lab. I think it's the way you're standing that catches my attention-boxed in by a tall, lanky guy in tight black jeans who I recognize from this circle of friends.
He's an artist or something. I don't even know his name, only that my friend Kyle has said to me recently, Oh, that guy fucks everyone. I can't explain it, even to this day, but as I watch him chatting up this blonde-haired, brown-eyed woman in a cobalt-blue dress- you-a flash of jealousy consumes me.
Inexplicably, insanely, I want to hit him. Something in your body language suggests discomfort. You aren't smiling, your arms are crossed, and it occurs to me that you're trapped in a bad conversation, and that for some reason, I care. You hold an empty cup. Part of me urges, Go talk to her, save her.
The other half screams, You know nothing about this woman, not even her name. You are not that kind of girl, Jennie Kim.
I find myself moving toward you through the grass, carrying a new glass of wine, and when your eyes avert to mine, it feels like some piece of machinery has just seized in my chest. Like worlds colliding.
As I draw near, you take the glass out of my hand as if you had previously sent me off to get it and smile with an easy familiarity, like we've known each other forever. You try to introduce me to Dillon, but the skinny-jeaned artist, now effectively cockblocked, makes his excuses and bails.
Then it's just the two of us standing in the shade of the hedgerow, and my heart is going like mad.
I say, "I'm sorry to interrupt, but it looked like you might need rescuing," and you say, "Good instincts. He's pretty, but insufferable."
I introduce myself. You tell me your name. Lisa Manoban. Lisa.
I only remember pieces of what was said in our first moments together. Mainly how you laugh when I tell you I'm an atomic physicist, but not derisively. As if the revelation truly delights you. I remember how the wine I brought, had stained your lips. I've always known, on a purely intellectual level, that our separateness and isolation are an illusion. We're all made of the same thing-the blown-out pieces of matter formed in the fires of dead stars. I've just never felt that knowledge in my bones until that moment, there, with you. And it's because of you.
Yes, maybe I just want to get laid, but I also wonder if this sense of entanglement might be evidence of something deeper.
This line of thinking I wisely keep to myself. I remember the pleasant buzz from the beer and the warmth of the sun, and then, as it begins to drop, realizing how badly I want to leave this party with you but not having the balls to ask. And then you say, "I have a friend whose gallery opening is tonight. Want to come?"
And I think: I will go anywhere with you.
___________________________________
AMPOULES REMAINING: 1
Jennie walks the infinite corridor, the beam of her flashlight glancing off the walls.
After a while, she stops in front of a door like all the rest.
One in a trillion, trillion, trillion.
Her heart is racing, her palms sweating.
There is nothing else she wants.
Just her Lisa.
Jennie wants her in a way she can't explain.
That she don't ever want to be able to explain, because the mystery of it is a perfect thing.
She wants the woman she saw at that backyard party all those years ago.
The one she chose to make a life with, even though it meant giving up some other things she loved.
Jennie wants Lisa.
Nothing more.
She draw in a breath.
She let it out.
And she opens the door.