The Red Bow [Chaelisa]

1. Prologue

September 5, 2014. - New York, NY.

Columbia University dormitory.

She tapped her fingers on the wall watching the Johnny Cash poster taped to the bunk bed she shared with Somi at Columbia University. Johnny was a person she admired, his passion for June Carter and music was her air. The most beautiful couple that humanity can witness in stories; they were imperfectly perfect.

Lisa closed her eyes and took off her headphones, turning her mind off the world while the loudspeakers in the hallway of the bedrooms reproduced FleetWood Mac's Go your own way as a mantra for freshmen like her. She let herself reflect on her life in recent years. Unfortunately she used to do that more than she allowed herself to admit. You know what they say, life is a series of choices, you make who you are. Sincerely? She preferred to believe in destiny and fate. One of her favorite phrases says, "Living is the rarest thing in the world. Most people just exist." Now, here she was, Lalisa Manoban, nineteen and a law student at Columbia University, one of the best universities in New York, and all her teenage dreams had come true thanks to the Manoban family's money. Everything was on track according to her plans; there was the internship in Juilliard, but whenever she could she went back to visit her parents and everyone she had left behind.

She sighed heavily and shifted on the bed. At that moment the girl with the soft brown eyes found herself alone in her bunk bed immersed in the obviousness in which she lived.

A little fact about Lisa

She had never been in love.

♪♪♪♪♪♪

Chaeyoung was between her younger sister and her mother on the sofa in the living room while her father tried very hard to fix the dusty record player he had found in the basement. Little Alice slept soundly with her head on her mother's lap and her legs on her older sister's lap; TV was playing the movie Frozen for the fiftieth time that month, as it was Wednesday night, the day of spending time with the family according to her father Mason. The fact is that it was after ten at night, and only Rosalie paid attention to the drawing taking into account that Chaeyoung did not take her eyes off her newest reading: Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice.

"Here it is!" Exclaimed the older man with the stubble, gray hair and a huge smile on his face. He pointed to the Romanian model record player next to the syrup piano. "I knew this old thing was still good for something."

Rosalie, the woman with short brown hair, round glasses and an Aussie accent, asked her husband for silence, pointing at the sleeping little girl and Chaeyoung smiled, turning off the TV, making sure that the mother would pick Alice up and carry her up the stairs.

"Do you think we can include Billie Holiday songs on our Wednesdays, Dad?" the blonde girl asked, resting her head on the back of the sofa as she watched the man take a pile of records out of a bag.

Mason murmured something inaudible as he combed disc by disc with a crease formed on his forehead.

"Now I'm sure my little girl was born in the wrong century." The comment came from Rosalie, who came down the stairs with a blanket in hand. "I'll prepare hot milk."

A few seconds later, a soft song that Chaeyoung recognized as Billie Holiday's "Who Loves You" echoed around the room. She smiled static, the voice of one of her favorite singers filled the house and Mason extended his hand in awe to the daughter who jumped off the couch in her white socks and joined her father in an awkward dance across the living room's wooden floor.

Park Chaeyoung, aged nineteen, was a first-year music student at Juillard. Like every teenager at her age, she had dreams and plans for the future, but she knew somehow that it was different since she was seven, when she first heard her father play the piano at her maternal grandfather's birthday party. That was when she first felt her heartbeat being guided by the melody of the song. After that, she soon learned that she would be a great musician when she won her first piano at the age of nine and a violin from her cousin Tracey. Chaeyoung's music teachers were impressed with the ability, attention and passion with which the girl played her instruments. And while most thirteen-year-old girls were in love with Boybands and teen serials, her favorite composer was Mozart and her inspiration came from Billie Holiday.