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They drove for a long time, or perhaps for no time at all. Still, they had to stop in the end.
“Here.”
When En Storm finally spoke again, it was on a random Seoul back road. Ernst Mo must have been there before – she had crossed paths with every route in the city at some time or another. But this particular place wasn’t familiar to her. Either way, she hit the brakes, and the bike ground to a halt in the middle of the road.
She blinked. Time, as it always did around En Storm, had slowed like treacle dripping through a sieve. The motorbike was steady and still under her weight, heat pouring into the palms of her gloves. En Storm’s arms squeezed around her waist for a brief instant, before letting go as she dismounted the bike.
“Come with me,” she said.
Where else would Ernst Mo go?
Like a world from a dream, the evening skies of Seoul swirled in shimmering green and red lights around her. Far above the city was an empty darkness that frightened and enticed her at the same time. She swung a leg over the bike and stepped onto the street, turning to face En Storm.
For a while – she couldn’t say how long – they just stared at each other through their visors, unable to see one another’s eyes. For all that Ernst Mo knew, En Storm could have her eyes closed. But somehow, she could tell that she didn’t. There were cut from the same cloth, after all. Which one of them was the original? Whose memories and thoughts were the real ones?
En Storm’s hand brushed against Ernst Mo’s knuckles. She startled: when had they moved so close to each other? She let En Storm step closer still, let her lift the helmet from Ernst Mo’s head and set it down beside her own on the seat of the bike.
En Storm smiled. “Come with me,” she said again.
Ernst Mo nodded. En Storm took her by the hand and pulled her down a narrow alley. A wave of heat washed over them both as they ducked into the entrance hall to a restaurant. A bell rang above the door, and a hostess wearing dark glasses smiled in their direction like she was expecting them.
“Welcome! Please, follow me.”
She navigated her way around the desk, fingers trailing along the wall to guide her way. En Storm fell into step behind her, tugging Ernst Mo along by the wrist.
“What is this place?” Ernst Mo murmured. En Storm glanced over her shoulder and smiled.
“Somewhere no one will disturb us,” she said. “Somewhere you can ask all the questions you want.”
A couple of steps ahead of them, the hostess paused at a door.
“When you take your seat, please don’t get up again. You need to ask a member of staff if you want to go somewhere. It’s for safety, you understand.”
Ernst Mo threw a sideways glance at En Storm. “What…”
The door opened on a dark, windowless room. There was a hushed murmur of conversation, dark shadows in darker corners. Not so much as a single candle graced the tables. Ernst Mo blinked, eyes struggling to adjust as the door closed behind them and the shadows receded into the deep, unsettling blackness of the room.
The hostess led them to their table. Ernst Mo’s knee knocked against the chair as she took her seat. Dimly, she heard En Storm order drinks for them.
“It’s a blackout café,” said En Storm when the hostess left them. “No one can see us here.”
Ernst Mo wasn’t sure about that. As a delivery dancer, she had been watched constantly, surveilled at every turn as her bike flew through the backstreets of Seoul. Could it really be possible that no one knew where they were? Were they really alone?
Alone together. A strange state of being.
“Are you even real?” said Ernst Mo, before she could think better of it. “Did I just imagine you into existence?”
“Perhaps I’m the one who imagined you,” said En Storm. “Did you think of that?”
Before Ernst Mo could answer, the hostess returned with their drinks. Ernst Mo startled at the sudden motion at her side. A little of the wine En Storm ordered for them splashed onto the back of Ernst Mo’s hand as the waitress placed the glass down. At least, Ernst Mo assumed it was wine. The darkness in the restaurant was so all-consuming that even after minutes to adjust, not even a hint of light emerged to help her make sense of her surroundings.
When the hostess retreated, En Storm’s hand found hers across the table. Ernst Mo clung to it like it would keep her afloat on this overwhelming sea of darkness.
“Am I dead?” Ernst Mo asked.
She felt, rather than saw, En Storm shrug. Perhaps it was because they were the same person that she could feel the motion so clearly. But, then again, could you be the same person if you splintered consciousness at different points on a timeline? Could you be the same person if one of you died gasping for breath on hard asphalt and the other lived on in a parallel pocket space and time?
“Can you taste the wine?” En Storm asked.
Ernst Mo’s free hand fumbled for the glass. Her knuckles bumped it, almost sending it tumbling over. She grabbed it and took a quick sip that burned her throat.
“Yes,” she said. “It’s strong.”
“Can dead people drink wine?” En Storm’s amusement was evident in her tone.
A flare of frustration made Ernst Mo drop the glass back onto the table with a heavier thud than strictly necessary.
“Can you talk in anything but riddles?”
“What makes you think I know any more than you do?”
Ernst Mo dragged her hand free of En Storm’s and took another gulp of the wine. “You found me,” she said. “You’re the one who told me… you told me everything.”
“I only know that you’re better off free from that job,” En Storm told her.
“I’m hardly free if it killed me.”
“You’re here, aren’t you? We’re both here.” En Storm took her hand again, tugging her closer across the table until Ernst Mo could feel her breath tickling her cheek.
“Where is here?”
“Where is anywhere?” En Storm’s lips were on her ear, her voice a low rumble against her skin. “We’re everywhere. We’re nowhere. We’re dancers with nothing left to deliver.”
Ernst Mo couldn’t take anymore of this. She pulled back, standing from her chair with a screech of metal against the wooden floor. In an instant, the hostess was at her elbow.
“Follow me,” she said. En Storm stood, too, but Ernst Mo couldn’t see her. She didn’t look back even after they both emerged back into the dimming light of Seoul’s early evening. She heard the hostess thank them as she strode back up the narrow alley.
“Wait!”
She ignored En Storm, marching along with her fists clenched – until something hard and sharp collided with her back, shoving her sideways against the wall.
En Storm’s weight pressed her hard against the wall of the alleyway. Ernst Mo blinked back at her own face, her own body pinning her in place. En Storm was usually inscrutable to her, even though they were as much of one another as it was possible to be. But now, there was a kind of desperation kindling in her eyes, a need for something Ernst Mo could only recognise as her own need mirrored back at her.
They both wanted so badly to be real.
“I think either I created you, or you created me,” said Ernst Mo.
En Storm leaned in, close enough to touch. "Which would you prefer?"
Ernst Mo lifted a hand, trailing it along the line of En Storm’s jaw, drawing the pad of a finger over her parted lips. She didn't know the answer to that question.
Could both be true at the same time? Did it matter? All Ernst Mo knew was that she wanted to be En Storm - but, in most of the ways that mattered, she already was her. So maybe what she actually wanted was to be inside her, folded back into her body as they were before the crossroad in time that tore them apart.
En Storm's body was the same height as Ernst Mo's. Her fingers, as they wove between Ernst Mo's, were the same size and shape. The grooved whorls on the pads of their fingers were mirror images, carved from the same knife at precisely the same time. Her other hand, sliding between Ernst Mo's waistband and the prickling skin of her stomach, felt like Ernst Mo's own. She gasped out a shocked breath at the sudden, intimate pressure of En Storm's fingers as they drew a rough, shivering path to the spot between her legs. It was familiar and utterly alien all at once.
Ernst Mo's head fell back against the alley wall, but even the sharp thud of stone against her skull wasn't enough to stop her from tilting her hips up to seek more from En Storm. En Storm gave it to her: the confident stroke of her thumb and the curl of her fingers inside Ernst Mo was the product of more than just similarity. En Storm's hand moved like she felt the same shivering shocks of pleasure that had Ernst Mo biting her lip to hide her groans. She stared up at the spinning stars in the Seoul skies falling over them like a blanket or a shroud.
"I - En Storm -"
En Storm buried her face in the crook of Ernst Mo's neck and nipped at the sliver of bare skin above the neckline of the motorcycle jacket. Ernst Mo choked on a gasp as the tangled knot of her pleasure unfurled beneath En Storm's fingers. She came with a sharp cry, too loud and yet unheard by the world. Maybe there was no world, just them alone in an empty dream. She found herself blinking back hot tears as her body shook and clenched around En Storm's familiar fingers.
When En Storm drew back, their eyes met. Ernst Mo felt time shudder to a stop around them. Perhaps - if they were always together this way, locked in a web of limbs and lips and lust - they could bind time to their will as well. Perhaps they could finally get what they wanted.
The thought sent a thrill through her, though whether it was excitement or terror, she didn't fully know.
Ernst Mo leaned in and pressed their lips together, the kiss an act of pure selfishness – a desperate attempt to become whole, to push her body and spirit back into En Storm and make them one again. For a moment, a silent stretch of time that could have been milliseconds or millennia, Ernst Mo really thought it was possible.
Then, they broke apart.
En Storm closed her eyes. Ernst Mo saw just the barest hint of a rueful quirk of her lips: not quite a smile, but near enough.
“I think you're the one who imagined me," she said.
Ernst Mo watched her. She was so impossible, this time travelling dimension hopper wearing their shared face. How could she be anything but a wild figment of a dying dancer’s imagination? And yet… the wine still tasted hot and dark on her tongue. En Storm’s lips were bruised and pink by their kiss. The proof of Ernst Mo's pleasure was stained on En Storm's fingers and reflected in her eyes.
It felt real enough to be something.
Ernst Mo tangled their fingers together and squeezed them until En Storm's brow furrowed. She felt a wince of sympathy pain - that was something, too. How could a dead girl and a spectre feel anything at all? And yet, here they were, together.
I think you're the one who imagined me.
Ernst Mo smiled, even as tears pricked at the corners of her eyes.
“I don’t think I could.”