Lisa met Jennie online.

At least, that’s what she tells people and both her and Jennie usually makes a game out of it as people gush and make every kind of assumption with that simple detail.

Lisa bets no one will get it right. And so far, Jennie’s been treating her with fries every payday.

It’s simple: Lisa met Jennie online.

And that’s exactly how it happened.

No one just gets the details in between right.

Lisa meets Jennie like this:

It’s 3AM and while Lisa prepared herself for it for months, the cold feeling of dread comes creeping back up to her stomach and the bread she’s been munching on for the past hour feels like it’ll come flying out of anytime soon.

The cold chill of the airport seeps through her hoodie, goosebumps running along her skin as she wraps her arms around herself tightly.

Lisa vaguely thinks about tugging her suitcase outside and taking a cab back home, but she plants her feet firmly on the shiny floor, remembering how she worked her off to get a scholarship at Korea.

Korea.

Lisa’s never went to another country, let alone rode a plane and—oh god, what if my brain pops from the pressure?

She’s on her third video of what to expect in riding an airplane—a pack of gum was impulsively bought and Lisa pats her pocket every now and then to make sure it’s still there, reading something about chewing gum settles your ears or somewhere along the lines—when Lisa realized that she’s going to Korea.

And she doesn’t know a single Korean word apart from their hello.

It’s common logic that she won’t survive the next three years in a foreign country just knowing hello.

Lisa can’t remember when did watching how to learn Korean in 5 minutes took her to a Korean cooking channel.

A woman with a soft dimpled smile and crinkled eyes smiles at Lisa from the screen, bowing once and then started speaking in what Lisa assumes to be is Korean and she hurriedly pauses the video to look for English captions.

When she boards her plane at exactly 4:30AM and is on her eighth Kim Jennie—Lisa swoons every time the woman introduces herself in her intro—video binge, Lisa is sure of three things:

1.) The coldness seeping to her veins earlier was replaced with a warmth that makes her cheeks look flushed (she checked on a mirror earlier).

2.) She knows how to speak little Korean (especially in introducing herself and a handful of food and cooking ingredients, which she’s only mildly embarrassed about).

3.) Lisa’s fairly certain the two above is because of Kim Jennie.

Jennie meets Lisa like this:

It’s the start of her second term as a third year college student and she’s hanging outside her lecture hall, waiting for her friend Jisoo to arrive, when the other lecture hall’s door opens and a stream of sophomore students trickle out.

In the midst of Jennie plastering herself closer to the wall behind her to let everyone pass, she hears the familiar chime of her youtube channel intro ringing down the hallway where most of her classmates are at and they look at her when a loud hello, my name is Kim Jennie—echoes.

Jennie first sees the mop of light brown hair, the sophomore panicking as she simultaneously pauses the video and tries to plug in her earphones at the jack. She looks up, sheepish, and apologizes to some of Jennie’s classmates that are near her and the only thing Jennie notices is wow, her eyes are really pretty. 

Her said classmates laugh at the younger girl’s apologies, throwing a smirk and wink over their shoulders that Jennie catches as they point her to the sophomore.

Three things happened at that moment:

1.) Jennie thinks she scared the out of the other woman.

2.) Said woman sprinted away the moment she realized that it was the Kim Jennie in front of her.

3.) Jisoo laughed so hard that she spilled iced coffee all over Jennie’s shoes.

When Jennie came home to her apartment that night, she doesn’t know what to feel when the woman earlier could be one out of her 400,000 subscribers.

The thought stayed with her the whole night.

It was Jennie’s turn to be mesmerized by the other woman the next time she sees her.

Jisoo made her carry a bunch of stuff all the way to the art department building, saying something about a friend helping her with the animations in the game she’s making for her senior year thesis and apparently, the animation involves a green screen and Park Chaeyoung, a sophomore that Jennie’s seen in some parties in passing.

Her arm aches from hulking a heavy box all the way from the other side of campus but as soon as Jennie hears the bass of Beyoncé’s Partition, she turns her head to see a dance studio’s door opened halfway, the heavy bass leaking.

She chances a peak inside, curious as to what class is going on since she’s never seen a dance class up close before, just a bunch of student performances for campus activities, and Jennie feels her jaw drop in time with the woman dropping low to the ground.

Well then.

Okay, so, it wasn’t a class that Jennie walked in on.

But rather a solo practice.

And when heat prickles at her skin just as the routine ends, her eyes meeting a pair of wide ones in shock, she blurts out the first words that came into her mind:

“You watch my videos?”

Turns out that Jisoo and Chaeyoung are friends and Jennie can’t help the nagging feeling at the back of her head that they planned it.

Lisa can’t quite remember when Jennie’s status in her life changed from that Korean youtuber I watch to Chaeyoung’s friend’s friend to someone I share lunch with and I think we’re friends.

But now, their table silent with a comfortable silence as Jennie turns another page in her book, opening in a way that makes Lisa roll her eyes but delivering a french fry into an awaiting mouth, she thinks about how easy everything with Jennie is that she doesn’t question any further.

Jennie watches as Kuma plays with the chew toy she tossed to him a few minutes ago, startling when Lisa sets down two mugs of hot chocolate on the coffee table, an amused smile settled on her lips.

“You okay there?” Lisa asks, sitting next to Jennie and pulling the older girl’s feet on her lap, gently massaging her calves as she coos at Kuma.

Jennie hums an affirmative, closing her eyes as warm hands travel to her ankles and massages an ache she didn’t even know existed until Lisa made it feel better.

She opens her eyes at that realization, looking at her friend’s side profile and at the way Lisa looks so soft wearing her sweater. Jennie thinks a lot about how Lisa made a whole lot of things better in her life, it fills her with warmth that she blames on the hot chocolate.

They don’t know how long they sit there, Lisa’s hands idly traveling up and down Jennie’s legs, a Christmas movie playing on the TV, Jennie feeling Lisa’s laugh through her entire being when the younger girl squished herself between Jennie and the back of the couch, laying sideways and effectively cuddling Jennie against her chest.

A phone chimes and it’s Jisoo asking their group chat about everyone’s plans for the holidays.

“We never talked about it,” Lisa’s voice drifts to her ears as Jennie shift so she’s also laying on the couch sideways, face pressed against the warm material of her sweater on Lisa’s chest. When she makes an inquisitive hum, Lisa continues. “Holiday plans, do you have any?”

“My family’s in New Zealand,” Jennie says around a yawn, a bunch of fabric against her hands as she feels Lisa’s arm snake around her waist and pull her closer.

“And mine’s in Thailand,” Lisa murmurs against Jennie’s hairline. “Wanna spend Christmas together?”

Images fill Jennie’s head in an instant. They’ll spend it in Jennie’s apartment for sure (Lisa’s staying in the dorms since she never knew anyone from when she transferred), she thinks of a present for Lisa, and wonders if her friend will let guest in her next video since people have been asking about her when Jennie mentioned her one too many times in her past ones.

When Jennie tells Lisa yes, she feels a kiss pressed against her forehead and can’t explain the rush at seeing Lisa unlock her phone and type in a message from them both that they’ll be spending Christmas together using Jennie’s account.

(Jisoo teases her for it the next day when the older woman made sure to ask Jennie thrice if Lisa’s using her phone before telling Jennie how domestic you both are and it’s gross for us single people.)

She hears the doorknob rattle slightly, the sound of a key being used, and then Jennie gets a front row seat of her best friend fumbling around a large bag of presents which she dumped unceremoniously under the plastic Christmas tree they set up the weekend before.

Lisa plops her head down on Jennie’s lap, bangs sticking against her forehead with sweat, hands snaking under Jennie’s sweater and she jumps as she feels Lisa’s ice cold hands against the skin of her stomach.

“Hey!” She wriggles her best friend’s hands from under her shirt, holding up against instead and blows warm air against Lisa’s long fingers until she finds brown eyes staring up at her. “What?” she asks, flustered at the sudden silence.

“You’re just too pretty sometimes,” Lisa says nonchalantly, pulling her hands back from Jennie’s grasp so she can tuck a stray hair to Jennie’s ear.

The older woman stands up suddenly, running to her room to fetch the camera she uses for filming and tripod, setting up in front of her kitchen counter as she throws a flustered: “Let’s film that video everyone’s been requesting, let’s go.”

Lisa just laughs, helps Jennie set up silently, but teases the Korean for not being able to take a compliment and Lisa whispers but really, you’re so beautiful it’s hard to take my eyes off of you sometimes against Jennie’s ear and can you really blame her?

(When Jennie edits the video a few hours later, she spends a longer time looking at how she and Lisa looks so naturally good together.

Somehow, it doesn’t surprise her when her subscribers freak out when they see Lisa.)

“Holy ,” Jisoo says, watching a real-time subscriber count as Jenni’s youtube channel reaches 700,000. “, that’s a hell lot of people watching