They're huddled under an old, flimsy umbrella, rain hammering the sidewalk all around them.
"Don't stand so far out," Lisa sighs, tugging Jennie inward with some difficulty. "You'll get wet."
How did they get here?
Let's backtrack a little.
----
"So Jisoo and I were thinking," Chaeyoung explains to her as they enter the changing room, "that after school we'd head over to my house- since it's closest- to study, hang out, eat, whatever. And you can come too, if you want."
"Sure, I'm in," says Lisa, about to ask for details when suddenly-
"I'm so sorry you had to go through that." It's a girl in their P.E. class whose name Lisa can't recall, walking over to them and patting Chaeyoung's arm sympathetically. "It must have been very hard."
Chaeyoung scowls at her back until she disappears behind a row of lockers.
"Yikes," says Lisa. "That's, what, the eleventh one this week?"
"Thirteenth if you count teachers," grumbles her friend. "I'm not an invalid, okay? If one more person advises me to visit the counselor or tries to tell me how pitiful I am, I'm going to lose my mind."
"I know, I know." She squeezes Chaeyoung's shoulder consolingly, but it must be too reminiscent of several similar experiences the other girl's had during the day, as a deadly glare soon intimidates Lisa into dropping her hand. "My bad, sorry."
"I have had enough," Chaeyoung says, slamming her locker door shut with a piercing crash, "of the 'sorry's! Nothing happened! Nothing! It didn't even get that far, as they should know if they watched the entire video and, oh, I don't know, used their brains for once?! But no, that's too much to ask."
Lisa ushers her towards the exit as she continues to rant, nodding along absentmindedly. Only two days have passed since Jennie posted that video, and already things have changed drastically. Scott's been suspended- likely on his way to being expelled- for assaulting both her and Chaeyoung, but an unfortunate side effect is that now several students apparently feel obligated to express their pity.
"Even the teachers! Shouldn't adults have more common sense than a bunch of dim-witted high school-"
Someone taps her arm from behind. "Chaeyoung, I wanted to say sorry."
Lisa cringes as her friend spins around with murderous intent and all the force of a hurricane, ready to tear this new pitying presence open. "For the last goddamn time, I-"
The words die in her throat as Jennie shrinks away.
She, of course, has also been fawned over endlessly in the past few days, perhaps even more so than Chaeyoung. The student body hadn't even had the chance to recover from the shockwaves of the whole magazine episode before the subsequent video and scandal with Scott sent them reeling once again. Lisa overheard a couple of ninth-graders gossiping about it earlier, eyes wide with awe: "Did you see it?Jennie Kim's so cool, isn't she? She's basically a hero! I'd talk to her, but she's too intimidating..."
(Hey, she was there too, Lisa thinks. Where are her fangirls? Not to sound petty or anything.)
Well, she can't fault the freshmen for being starstruck. Jennie's wearing that cleverly modified P.E. uniform as usual; the bruises from Monday were shallow enough to have already faded from her arms. Lisa swallows and says, "Hey."
"Hi, Lisa." Jennie straightens up minutely, barely looking at her. Her attention is focused more on an abashed Chaeyoung. "I couldn't help but overhear-"
"Me raging like a lunatic over here?" Chaeyoung suggests, considerably less harsh than before.
"Yeah..." she trails off somewhat uncertainly. "Um, it wasn't my intention to publicize the whole thing like this. The whole... affair with Scott should have stayed private. I guess I didn't think about how people would react towards you, so, sorry."
YOU ARE READING
because the world can't hold us down
Fanfiction"Jennie's objectively attractive," Lisa acknowledges. "At least, until she opens her mouth and reveals all that ugly inside." "Nobody at this school cares about what's inside, Lisa," says Jisoo. "Jennie's got it all: good looks, brains, and the perf...
