jungkook fell in love with lalisa over the course of one summer

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Her laugh was effortless, or at least it seemed that way to him. He was never quite sure whether she was laughing at something he’d said or whether she was merely caught up in her own thoughts.

What was the word?

     Whimsical.

He’d found her sitting on the edge twice more before he decided that Lalisa Manoban was most definitely whimsical.

     "What’s your favorite candy, Jungkook?  Mine are candy apples.”

She turned to glance at him before bursting into laughter accompanied by a crinkle of her doe brown eyes and an upturn of her strawberry lips.

He’d always found candy apples difficult to bite into without breaking the wooden stick. Yet he decided right then and there that he liked candy apples more than any other candy in the entire world.

ღ

Lalisa never felt the need to start conversation. Even when Jungkook knew for certain that she could feel his gaze on her, she didn’t feel the need to disrupt the silence that enveloped them everytime he sat down next to her. He’d found it awkward at first, desperately trying to fill the void with unsuccessful attempts at mindless small talk.

    “I haven’t seen you around before. Did you just move here?”
    “Mm-hmm.”

She’d answered him with her eyes still closed and her face turned towards the sun.

    “My name’s Jungkook. What’s yours?”
    “Lalisa.”

Anxiously mulling it over in his head for a good minute before blurting it out, he spoke quickly.

    “It’s pretty.”

He’d wondered whether he’d been too forward when she began to laugh but she responded with a friendly lilt in her voice and he found himself no longer unsure of the silence that followed.

    “Thanks.”

ღ

Jungkook spent the early days of summer vacation sitting in silence with Lalisa and listening to the lapping of the waves beneath them, legs dangling off the edge of the bridge.

So it took him off-guard when she stood up and reached out her hand before the sun had begun to dip behind the clouds. He’d shifted his gaze between her hand and her smile before taking it and pulling himself up.

    “Let’s go get ice cream. I know this place that has really good soft vanilla.”

He didn’t question how she could possibly know of an ice cream place in town that he didn’t when she had just moved here and he’d lived here all his life. He was too caught up in the fact that they’d been walking along the street for at least five minutes and she was still holding his hand.

(Not that he was keeping track, but it had been five minutes and twenty-one, two, three… But he wasn’t. Keeping track, that is.)

Lalisa stopped in front of a house that seemed no different than the others that lined the narrow stretch of road: a single curtained window sat adjacent to the chestnut door.

    “This isn’t the ice cream place, Lalisa.“

She pushed through the open door that swung shut behind them.

    “I know. Just wait.”

Jungkook stood hesitantly near the doorway until Lalisa pulled him along with her to the kitchen.

    “Do you live here?”

She deadpanned, “Nope, just snuck in.”

He coughed, hoping she wouldn’t see the sudden flush spreading through his cheeks. (Although the afternoon sunlight streaming through the windows wasn’t doing him any favors.)

She pulled out a small carton of ice cream from the freezer and set it on the counter. “Here it is, in all its glory. The best soft vanilla ice cream you’ll ever have.”

Jungkook couldn’t help but chuckle at the proud grin plastered across her face as she pointed at the carton. “Did you make it yourself?”

She nodded. “My aunt and I made it together yesterday.”

So they spent the rest of the afternoon sitting in Lalisa’s kitchen, taking turns eating spoonfuls of ice cream.

It really was the best vanilla ice cream he’d ever tried.

ღ

“It’s too hot, Lalisa.”

“Well, if you don’t mind me rehashing up the past… I told you there’d be too many people in line at the amusement park and we’d be stuck under the sun for hours!”

Lalisa glared at Jungkook while adjusting the brim of her straw hat, though he pretended not to notice and shifted his gaze to the front.

He squinted against the harsh sunlight in an attempt to see past the crowded throng of people ahead of them but couldn’t make out more than a hazy outline of the rollercoaster. “Yeah, but I wanted to do something other than just sit at the bridge.”

She gasped jokingly. “I thought you liked the bridge! Why else would you always be sitting there?”

“Because you’re always sitting there.”

He looked back at her when he realized what he’d said and suddenly found himself even warmer than he was earlier.

“I didn’t mean… I just… You know, the bridge isn’t all that bad, come to think of it. Let’s just go ba-”

She interrupted him with an amused smile. “Come on. I think I know where we should go. And no, don’t fret, it’s not the bridge.”

“I do not fret.”

Fifteen minutes later, they stood in front of a movie poster advertising a most “chilling-ly true story.”

“No.”

“What do you mean, no? Horror movies are the best when it’s hot outside.”

“Isn’t there something else we could watch?”  He pointed at another listing. “Look, here’s a family-fun comedy. And there’s a dog in it, too!”

“You couldn’t possibly be… “ She lifted an eyebrow. 

He scratched the nape of his neck. “Be what? Scared? No way. I just really wanted to see this one.”

“Your words, not mine.” Even though he wasn’t looking directly at her, he could imagine the almost imperceptible smirk playing on her lips.

She began walking towards the ticket booth. “So, Jeon Jungkook doesn’t like scary movies, huh?”

He followed quickly behind her. “I never said that.”

She slid a ten-thousand won bill across the counter. “Two tickets to see The Shining, please.”

Jungkook found it nearly impossible to believe that Lalisa could manage to fall asleep in the midst of a movie peppered with screaming women being attacked by murderous men.

During one of the rare times in which he felt brave enough to open his eyes, he noticed her big eyes drooping shut. She’d shaken herself awake once or twice before succumbing to sleep, one hand still in the bucket of popcorn. He watched as her head lulled from side to side before reaching out and gingerly placing it onto his shoulder.

Despite the loud screams emanating from the movie screen, from which he’d been shivering in fear just a minute ago, Jungkook’s mind was elsewhere.

He’d known she was pretty. In fact, it was one of the first things he noticed about her. But up close, she nearly took his breath away. Her eyelashes were long and feathery and he could almost trace the defined slope of her nose and cheekbones. The movie had ended and he was still caught up in the shape of her lips when she shifted and lifted her head up.

Looking around the now-empty theater, she stifled a yawn. “Is it over already?”

He quickly sat up straight as if he hadn’t just spent the past half hour staring much too deeply at Lalisa and tried to nonchalantly stretch his limbs.

She turned and looked at him with a smile. “See, I told you it wouldn’t be that bad.”

When he didn’t respond, she cocked her head to the side. “Are you still warm, Jungkook? Why are your cheeks so pink?”

He’d have to start working on not doing that so often.

ღ

It took Jungkook all of three minutes to understand that (1) what they were doing was probably not completely legal, (2) he’d promised his mother he’d be home by eight and it was very much past eight, and (3) he was following Lalisa anyway.

    “Can you at least tell me where it is that we’re going?”

She ignored him and instead tightened her grasp on his hand. He’d tried to hide his surprise when she’d grabbed his hand at the end of the bridge and started running towards the trees but it didn’t seem to matter anyway since Lalisa didn’t look back.

After what felt like twenty minutes of running through the woods, she stopped suddenly and Jungkook nearly toppled over. Trying not to let on that he was breathing heavier than he should’ve been, he glanced around the wide expanse. They stood at the edge of a clearing, empty except for a small cabin nestled in the foliage of the trees.

             “Where are we?”
  
Catching on to the fact that she wasn’t planning on answering any of his questions, Jungkook wordlessly followed as she led the way to the entrance. The doorbell chimed as they entered what he could only describe as a quaint little cottage. The walls were lined with shelves upon shelves of books, making way for the kitchen snuggled in the center. A single bed lay on the other side of the kitchen, with a knitted blanket draped haphazardly over it. But what caught Jungkook’s eye was the array of photographs lining the wooden dresser next to the bed. Photographs, he realized, of a family. Lalisa’s family.

She didn’t stop him when he made his way over to the dresser. Encased in the picture frames were people who resembled her with large brown eyes and a crinkle when they smiled. She was only in one of the photos, in the embrace of what he presumed were her parents, smiling the toothy smile of a toddler. The rest were pictures of her mother and father. Graduating together, smiling proudly in front of a new car, gathered around a campfire.

He chanced a glance in her direction and for the first time in his two weeks of knowing her, she looked sad. Her feathery eyelashes drooped over her downcast eyes as she leaned on the only section of the wall that wasn’t covered in books.

He asked even though he already knew the answer.

           “Are they…”
           “My parents. Yeah. We used to come down to this place sometimes during the summer. I still do.”

She moved from the wall to sit on the bed, playing with the frayed ends of the blanket. Hesitant to ask anything else, he sat down next to her. In the silence, he noticed the ticking of the clock perched on the kitchen counter. Minutes passed by with Jungkook listening for the persistent ticks of the clock and Lalisa pulling at the threads of the blanket but he didn’t mind. His most comfortable silences were when he was with her.

When she finally spoke again, it was barely more than a whisper but he didn’t mind because he’d gotten a lot better at hearing her since the first time they met at the edge of the bridge.

           “They died in a boating accident when I was four. I was with them, you know. The only difference is, I lived and they…”

Her breath hitched and Jungkook instinctively grabbed her hand.

          “You don’t have to tell me anything.”

She nodded and clasped her hand with his.

He didn’t remember exactly when she laid her head on his shoulder but by the time he turned to look at her, she’d drifted off to sleep, her hand still desperately clung to his.

His mother yelled at him when he arrived home the next morning, even more so when he wouldn’t stop smiling, but he didn’t care all that much.

He’d just been over at a friend’s house, more or less.