june 2011

jennie wipes the sweat off her forehead and sits on the bench, her catlike eyes staring in half-awe, half-envy at the young trainees in front of her. Her lungs were on fire, her legs were aching with fatigue and yet she could never dance like them, could never be as graceful as them. she doesn't understand it, she was working just as hard as they were, maybe even more, why does she still feel like the weakest link? 

"is the seat beside you taken unnie?" 

she looks up, sees a short haired girl smiling at her shyly. 

oh, its the foreigner.

She had known about her existance,  knew the girl was a great dancer. one of those "i-used-to-dance-before-entering-yg" type of kids, but jennie figures she wasn't really competition. She could sense that the girl would get tired of the whole kpop idol dream thing and quit during the first 2 years, foreigners rarely last longer than koreans in this industry, and she knew that the girl in front of her was heading for the same fate. 

"no, its fine go ahead."

the other girl finds her place beside jennie, bowing her head quickly before taking a seat. 

"im jennie by the way, jennie kim." 

"lisa manoban, well, it used to be pranpriya but  lisa's better don't you think?" jennie really didnt expect this girl to be a chatterbox but hey, first impressions are almost always wrong.

"yeah, i like lisa better..." she drones on. lisa grabs a sandwich from her bag, jennie notices it a bit too big to be carrying around all the time but she keeps quiet. 

"so.. you're not from here obviously, where are you from?" jennie asks, trying to distract herself from the group of skilled dancers who were getting evalutated in front of her, tries to stop herself from wishing she had park seo-yeon's ability to do body rolls without looking awkward. 

"thailand. im thai." she replies and there's some sort of hidden excitement behind her voice that jennie immediately picks up on. 

"thailand is cool, i've been there once." 

"really unnie?" the other girl says unnie in an accent that was clearly more thai sounding than korean and jennie couldnt help but laugh, the other girl looks at her in confusion but she smiles regardless. 

"was there something i said?" lisa's forehead crinkles and her eyebrows start to knit together and jennie finds it cute. 

"im sorry its just that your korean is a little-"

"bad? im sorry im still learning."

"not bad, just, off i guess? it alright i can help you, i know how hard it is to study in another country."

lisa's eyes light up and she digs grips onto the bench a little tighter, the topic interesting her. "really? where did you study?" 

jennie finds it amusing how interested this girl was with her life especially since they literally had only met 5 minutes ago but its the closest she's gotten to someone genuinely being interested in what she had to say since she started as a trainee so the foreigner would have to do for now. 

"new zealand. I lived there for like five years so im a little bit fluent in english. You can talk to me in english if you want, i know they don't allow it but  i'm here to help."

Lisa starts clapping her hands like a seal, grabbing the attention of a bunch of girls standing near them. jennie clasps her hands together to stop her, feeling a grin start to form on her lips at how funny lisa was, they would get along just fine. 

***

Lisa keeps telling her about her family, her cats back home, the dance crew she joined when she was younger, her different string of nicknames growing up, and jennie thinks that maybe there's more to lisa than what meets the eye. 

***

august 2011

it's a warm summer day and jennie is given the day off. she spends it like she spends all her other rest days, sitting under a tree on a park and reading a book, the sunlight warm against her face as she closes her eyes and feels it against her skin. 

only this time, lisa was with her. 

lisa had also been a bit of a book nerd as jennie had learned, and once the thai woman found out that jennie was planning to spend her day off reading, the younger girl quickly grabbed a pocketbook and that was that. 

they had been reading for a while, the sound of nothing but occasional page turning the only thing breaking the silence. jennie had expected the girl to be as loud as she was in the dorm, but lisa had been tame the whole time, jennie was shocked to say the least. 

jennie's watching her now, eyes glued on the page, slowly mouthing the words she was reading. lisa senses her watching and looks up from her book, an eyebrow arched,  half smile developing as she tries to figure out what jennie was doing. 

"what? something on my face? just take a picture it'll last longer." 

jennie slightly slaps her shoulder with a copy of "the fiery cross." it was some book jisoo decided to loan to her, it was good except for the part where it was the fifth book in the series and jennie had never read the other four.

“When the day shall come that we do part,” he said softly, and turned to look at me, “if my last words are not ‘I love you’—you’ll know it was because I didn’t have time.”  she reads aloud, hoping it would shup lisa up and distract her from the fact that she had no idea why she was staring in the first place.

the maknae crinkles her nose. 

"The exhilarating ripple of her voice was a wild tonic in the rain." lisa recites from her own book, wiggling her eyebrows at jennie who by now had grown amused. 

"gatsby?"

"yup." she yawns, leaning her head against jennie's shoulder. "i'm just gonna close my eyes for a bit."

" a bit. " went on for an hour. lisa was all snores and drool and jennie's shoulder was starting to hurt and her neck was growing stiff but she couldnt bring herself to move an inch, lisa's book lay on her lap, opened from where she was last reading. jennie adjusts herself, scootches a little bit closer to lisa's side so the younger one wouldnt wake up with an aching neck, and reads on. 

****

september 2014

jennie first hears about the hanahaki disease rumor from jisoo. of course it had to be from jisoo. 

apparently, petals had started appearing in the bathroom stalls. at first nobody thought anything of it, but as the months went on, the petals appeared more and more frequently. jennie herself had seen it person when she was washing her hands and noticed a bunch of red petals hidden behind the trashcan. whoever was carrying the disease didnt know how to hide it properly. 

she finds the idea of a trainee with hanahaki weird, in a twisted way she almost envies the girl for having the time to balance training and feeling things romantically, but she pitied her just as much, catching it was already a pain in the , curing it was worse. 

she's never been afraid