Chapter 5: Bustin' Out... The Bells

Things were getting strange lately. Even for me.

One day, the national news channel just... shut off. If I had been too exhausted from my daily activities that particular day, I would have missed it. Despite being invested in politics, watching the national news program at 1 AM wasn't something I was totally diligent about. 

However, when that early morning I made the time to not be lazy, it was like the connection completely blinked off and it was radio silence. I adjusted the antenna, flipped through the channels, slapped the box a couple times, but there was nothing but a static screen staring back at me every time I clicked on cursed channel four.

Now, for Chaeyoung that wasn't very important. She just wanted to watch another rerun of some lovey-dovey drama and impatiently reached for the remote. But the next day, and the day after that, when it still didn't come back on? Despite the fact all the other channels were working perfectly? That's when even she started getting a little bit concerned.

"Geez," she had said, drawing her hair back into a lazy bun for bed. "This is getting pretty weird, dude."

"No doubt," I replied. "What could this mean? Do you think all the other trainees can't see it either?" 

This made Chaeyoung shrug her shoulders. "Beats me." With a sigh, she grabbed the remote and clicked the tv off. She stayed silent for a minute, then clapped her hands as she got up off the floor. "Well... let's go to bed."

"Seriously?" I asked in disbelief. "You don't want to find out more about this and get to the bottom of—"

"Absolutely not, Lisa," Chaeyoung nearly sang, busying her hands with fluffing up our pillows with her budding frustration. "Here you go... of course."

I raised my eyebrows, quickly turning myself around to face her. What in the blue hell was she getting at? "Here I go?" I repeated. "What is that supposed to mean?"

Chaeyoung's fluffing of the pillows escalated into full blown assault as she unnecessarily adjusted them. She still refused to meet my gaze. "Exactly what I said," she mumbled. 

"Again, what does that mean?"

Chaeyoung her teeth loudly, finally facing me head on with her hand propped on her pink silk pajama clad hip. "Lisa," she sternly said, "we're not in your hometown making up fake mysteries 'cause we have nothing better to do. We're not on a vacation in Seoul looking for frog eggs in the mountains by my house. You need to assimilate."

"Assimilate?!" I repeated, completely befuddled by now. Where was any of the correlation? "And you're saying all this to say what exactly..?"

"I'm saying you need to mind your business. That none of this should be your concern."

"I can't be curious?" 

"No!" She looked at me as if I grew a third head. "Absolutely not. This is not an opportunity to go sniffing around, I know how you get. You get nosey and annoying. We have three exams in less than five hours and a full day of training ahead of us. Yet, you want to stay up all night pondering about the friggin' government channel—"

"Whatever," I cut her off, scoffing. "I'm going to bed in my room." I scrambled off the floor, and stalk out her room. She had the absolute gall to look shook about it too! Did she really think I was going to spend the night with her, after she got through trashing me for no reason? As if! 

The next morning, we still hadn't talked to each other. By then, I honestly thought the argument was stupid, but I had to keep up appearances. I wasn't upset anymore, but that doesn't mean I didn't think she was being super abrasive for no reason. She deserved a little bit of a cold shoulder. She thought the same for me. 

We looked a bit foolish walking out our dorm five feet apart, and when we sat on opposite ends of the lunch table during break I bet we looked even more so. Nobody even sat in our vicinity, so it was outcasts outcasting each other. Right? Well, it was, until in the middle of the break, I heard a chair scraping against the floor. Figuring it was just someone stealing a chair for their table, I just continued to tear up my dry hummus wrap bitterly. I didn't even look up until I heard a loud plop of a plastic tray hitting the wooden table. 

In shock, Chaeyoung and I just watched as this newcomer calmly sat down at our table. She carefully pushed her Chanel shades back, until they were comfortably resting on top of her fresh press out. She turned her tray around, and she took a dainty French tip finger and pointed at me, then Chaeyoung.

Chaeyoung and I just looked at eachother, mirroring eachothers expressions of confusion. Temporary forgetting our beef, we looked back at this girl in unison. 

"Manoban Lalisa, Park Chaeyoung," she said, before pointing at herself. "Nice to meet you. I'm Kim Jennie. Feel free to call me Jennie Jane, Jennie Ruby, or just Jennie Ruby Jane. Hope you don't mind that I don't bother with honorifics."

"We don't mind, we're from abroad anyway," Chaeyoung said at the same time I said "I'm not calling you any of those."

Both of them looked at me in mild contentment. "If you're name is Jennie, what's the point of calling you all that other stuff?" I mumbled, stabbing my food with a fork. "Like, is Jennie short for something?"

"No, it's not," Jennie explained with an eyeroll. 

I leaned back in my seat. Suddenly I wished that I was alone again.

"Anyways," Jennie said with a clear of . "You two are the only other political science majors in the YG college. I figured you two would've noticed the national news channel being down."

Shooting Chaeyoung a smug look, I said, "matter of fact, yes we have."

"Why?" Chaeyoung asked with narrowed eyes.

"That same night, my dorm roommate disappeared." 

"Maybe she just went home?" Chaeyoung said. "It honestly balls here, and she probably didn't want to waste more time not debuting here. I don't blame her."

I nodded in agreement. She had a fair point. If I hadn't signed the contract upon arrival four years ago,  who knows if I would've been still here by now. Trainees would drop out of the program in the middle of class like flies sometimes. I wouldn't be surprised if that girl suddenly just fled this entire experience to focus on something more stable and reliable.

"I was forced to sign a NDA," Jennie whispered, looking at us evenly. She leaned in. "Her parents came  to our dorm looking for her and security just dragged them away. Kicking and screaming and all." She demonstrated a little bit dramatically, and all I have to say is—some people aren't meant to be a