Short Story Title: See You On The Next Trip

Chapter Title: Test, Stars, and Distance

For the third time, I want to give a shout out to these peeps, because I’m a cool friend. It turns out, it wasn’t Cee’s birthday (bad guess), so I have to make it up to her. We mith you.

Next is, Pei, please read this… I’m sorry for tricking you.

As always, please enjoy.

“Here you go, mi casa es su casa,” Lisa says as the door of their house opens wide for Jennie to enter.

Jennie chuckles as she enters the cozy place. She scans the whole area and can’t help but feel a little bit at home with the atmosphere that the place gives her. The walls were painted with cadet blue that gave Jennie a bit of familiarity. She looks to her right and sees an empty room, which she assumes to be a hangout place for their guests and to her left side was the living room with a huge couch, facing the TV screen. She looks around and saw a couple of picture frames displayed on the hallway towards the kitchen and some were hanging by the wall of the stairway. She immediately walks towards the pictures displayed on the hallway. She picks up a brown painted picture frame, containing Lisa’s picture from years ago.

Lisa can no longer protest when Jennie took the picture to her hands. She watched the girl inspect the dustless frame, waiting for the names Jennie would call her because of the picture. But instead, Jennie smiled gently as she put the frame back to its original position.

Jennie continued looking at the pictures that were neatly organized on top of the cabinet. “You got some nice family pictures...” she whispers, turning around to face Lisa once she was done looking at the pictures.

“Yeah...” Lisa says, trailing off as her eyes lands on the last family picture they have with Leslie. “It sure was nice.” She flashes a flat smile at Jennie.

“You okay?” Jennie asks, taking a few steps towards Lisa.

Lisa chuckles as she scratches the back of her head. “Yeah...” she says, walking towards the kitchen while Jennie followed behind. “Want anything? Water? Soda? Juice?” Lisa asks as she turns around to face Jennie, who was admiring the cleanliness of the kitchen. However, Jennie noticed how sudden Lisa asked her for something. It was as if the questions were used to dodge an answer, Lisa, is afraid to give.

Lisa tugs on the latter’s hem, successfully grabbing her attention. “Drink?” Lisa asks once again, placing her hand on the handle of their refrigerator’s door, waiting for Jennie to finish scrutinizing every inch of the kitchen as if it was a piece of art in a museum.

“Just water...” she says as her eyes fall on the fridge’s door that was full of papers and magnets from different countries. As her head draws closer and closer to the fridge, the cold hard metal greeted it with a painful bump. “— “she mumbles as she holds on to her forehead, stumbling a little bit.

Lisa, on the other hand, instantly lets go of the handle as soon as she heard the thud and Jennie’s cry of pain. She walks closer, placing her hands on each side of Jennie’s shoulders. “I am so sorry Jennie...” she says, trying to hold her laughter. The latter didn’t react, instead, Jennie continued hissing from the pain and Lisa felt bad for not being careful. She places her hand on top of Jennie’s hand, giving it a soft rub, with the hopes of lessening the pain.

“You ...” Jennie hissed, and Lisa couldn’t help but let out her pending laugh. She pouts and crosses her arms on her chest, causing the taller girl to laugh at her even more.

Lisa opens her arms then pulls the pouting girl in her arms, holding her head with care as she rests her chin on top of the latter’s head. “Don’t pout now,” she says, letting out a few more laughs as she caresses the girl’s hair.

Jennie stands there, pouting, with her side profile pressed against Lisa’s chest. “You still ,”

“I know, kid, I know...” Lisa mumbles, her lips formed into a wide smile.

The hug lasted for a few more seconds before Lisa lets go of Jennie. She gives the girl a few light pats on the spot that got hit, then flashing a soft smile at Jennie before going back to the fridge.

“What do you want to do?” Lisa asks, as she hands a glass of water to Jennie.

Jennie shrugs, drinking the water all the way. “Got some good movies?”

Lisa puckers her lips, trying to remember the movies she had rented on Netflix. “I’m not sure. But we can check Netflix.”

“Horror movies? Yeah?” Jennie suggests, as they walk out of the kitchen.

“How about no? I don’t want you waking the neighbors up.” Lisa teases, earning a soft push from Jennie.

“That wasn’t me! That was Jisoo.” Jennie protests, bringing up the incident that took place in the theater. Where Jisoo murdered innocent ears from within her parameter.

Lisa scoffs as she takes the remote, turning the TV on, while Jennie takes a seat on the couch. “Sure, like you didn’t pull my shirt a couple of times and then scream when the sound gets a little louder than you expected.”

Feeling so attacked, Jennie did what most people would do when they’re surrounded by pillows; she takes a pillow and with a great amount of force, she hits Lisa in the face, causing the girl to fall on the couch and the remote to be thrown onto the carpet.

“What the—” Lisa glares at Jennie and in return, the girl makes a run for her life. Lisa takes a pillow then runs after the squealing girl upstairs. “Yah Jennie!” Lisa yells, fuming.

In such a short period of time, the two begin chasing each other around the house, with faint and muffled screams from each other. It amazes Lisa, how Jennie can easily run away from her, even though it’s her first time being there. After a few minutes of running around, Lisa finds herself standing right in front of the staircase. She takes a couple of seconds to think of what to do and when she finally came up with a plan, she smirks to herself.

She places the pillow back to the couch, stomping her feet on the floor for Jennie to hear. Once she was done, she goes to the door, opening it a little bit then closes it loud enough for Jennie to think that she left the house. She hides in the guest area and waits, feeling a little giddy and excited to catch the girl off guard. It took about three minutes before Lisa finally heard soft steps coming down from the stairs. She prepares herself, waiting for the girl to further walk into the living room. Seeing the latter walking sneakily to the living room, made Lisa smile. Slowly and carefully, she sneaks behind the girl, and when she had enough distant— she grabs Jennie by the waist, shaking her a little bit as the girl squeal and laugh at the same time.

“Let me go you cinnamon!” Jennie protests as she hit Lisa’s arm lightly.

Lisa tightens the hug. “Say you’re sorry!”

“No!”

Lisa slowly lifts Jennie up and instantly regrets it when Jennie kicked the arm of the couch, causing them to fall on the carpet. Thanks to her fast reflexes, Lisa was able to hold down Jennie, preventing the latter to escape. She holds on to Jennie’s arm and immediately brings her body in a kneeling position to grab the latter’s left hand.

Still squirming, Jennie tried her best to escape from Lisa, but the taller girl’s strength was no joke. Jennie swears Lisa could stop a raging bull from running if she wants to. But she still tried to get away. However, it became harder when Lisa locked her body between her legs. She has nowhere to go now.

“You’re not gonna say sorry?” Lisa says, an evil smirk forming on her lips. “How about now?” She adds then starts tickling the brunette.

Jennie starts laughing uncontrollably, swatting Lisa’s hands away whenever her energy permits her. But Lisa’s energy was too high for Jennie to meet. Eventually, she surrendered, with heavy breathing and sweat forming on her forehead.

“Alright, alright, I’m sorry for hitting you...” she breathes out, wiping the sweat dry.

Worn out, Lisa breaks down on the carpet next to Jennie. She smiles from ear to ear then chuckles at what just happened. She glances to her left and sees Jennie with her eyes closed and a smile plastered on her face.

This is the kind of moment that Lisa would want to savor for the rest of her life. It was serene and beautiful. The dim lights in the living room became stars and the bigger light became the moon. She glances back at Jennie, and the girl was staring at the ceiling as well. Was she thinking of the same thing? Could she possibly see the lights in the living room made a perfect moon and stars?

“You’re staring at me...” Jennie whispers and looks at Lisa, who quickly tore her eyes away from the brunette. Jennie smiles softly at the latter then goes back to where she was staring at.

“Should we go ahead and watch a movie?” Lisa asks.

Jennie responds with a soft hum. Lisa gets up with a grunt, offering her hand for Jennie who was about to stand up. The brunette starts dusting off her clothes and Lisa did the same. Once Lisa was done, she glances at Jennie, she takes a step forward and slowly— she lifts her hand, moving it closer and closer towards Jennie’s face. The latter stopped for a second as Lisa removes the strands of hair on her face.

Realizing what she had just done, Lisa instantly retracts her hand away as well as her eyes. She scratches the back of her head, thinking of what to do next. “I-I’ll prepare us some snacks, you go and pick a movie for us...”

Jennie nods her head and watches Lisa storm out of the living room while she tries to grasp what just happened. She shakes her head then turns the TV on; she switches it to Netflix then starts looking for a good movie to watch. But to her dismay, after a good five minutes of looking, nothing seemed exciting to her eyes.

“Lisa!” She screams.

No response. She tries again and yells louder, but she heard nothing from the latter. Begrudgingly, she stands up then walks towards the kitchen. She sees the latter engrossed in preparing their snacks. There’s a bowl of freshly microwaved popcorns, some nachos, and a litter of iced-tea.

“Oh— you’re here...” Lisa says, as she returns the bag of nachos back to the cabinet. “Found us some movie already?”

“Nothing interesting to watch...” Jennie replies, grabbing a few popcorn then shoving it in .

“I’ll get my laptop, let me check if I got something saved in there...” Lisa says, taking the bowls with her hands and the bottle of juice was in between of her arm. Jennie offers a hand, but the latter politely declines, telling her to just get the glasses.

Once their snacks were in place, Lisa makes a run for her laptop. She comes back with it already open then plops down beside Jennie, who was already eating the snacks. “What do we have?” Jennie asks, full of popcorns.

“I have...” Lisa says, dragging the sound of the last word as she scrolls down on her saved movies. She clicks on the folder named ‘Sinister’ and sees two movies she hasn’t watched. “Oh here, haven’t seen these. Chaeyoung gave me these.”

“Alright, let’s watch it.” Jennie says bravely, thinking that it was not that scary.

But she was wrong.

She was so wrong.

Only 20 minutes in and Jennie couldn’t handle it already. The sound was the creepiest and the Bughuul’s appearance every now and then made it worse for Jennie.

The movie was only almost two hours long, but Jennie felt it took them forever to finish. Well, they literally took longer than 2 hours to finish the movie. If it wasn’t for Jennie pausing it every now and then to prepare herself for the scary part.

They even had a mini quarrel about stopping the movie when Jennie got scared at the Bughuul showing up in the attic. She almost cried and begged Lisa to stop the film, but the latter was already into it and it would be a bummer if she stops. Eventually, she sat closer to Jennie, so the girl can hide behind her whenever she feels scared.

Lisa didn’t mind though. For what it’s worth, she loved it. She got to tease Jennie and scare the girl whenever she gets the chance.

It was a hell of a movie but somehow, Lisa made Jennie feel light by joking around after the movie. Now the two settled in the middle of Lisa’s room, legs crossed and pillows around them.

“You love reading, don’t you?” Lisa asks, as she grabs a handful of the popcorn in the middle of them.

Jennie chuckles, “Why? Have you diagnosed me already?”

“I haven’t,” Lisa smirks causing Jennie to gasp.

“You haven’t? So you’re planning to?”

Lisa shrugs, “Who knows.”

The copper-haired girl stretches her legs out to prevent of getting numb. She shots her head up, indicating that she has some good idea for them to do. She scans her mini bookshelf to look for the psychology book she bought few months back. When she found it, she celebrated with yelling ‘Aha’ to herself then goes back to her previous position, while Jennie stare at her— dumbfounded.

“Let’s have a short relational psychology personality test, ar