To Our Pure Little Beauty

Their first meeting

Lisa thought that she most likely had known Jungkook ever since she was born, perhaps her mother had even carried her while she was still wearing open pants and walked past him also wearing open pants. 

But actually, she was thinking too much, Lisa’s infant days were mostly spent at her maternal grandmother’s place, she only officially began to stay with her parents after she was three years old. Plus Lisa’s family originally did not stay opposite Jungkook’s family, she was five years old when her father had been allocated a place by his work unit – the two-room, one-living-room units collectively built as welfare for the workers was right opposite the mayor’s luxurious little bungalow. People from small towns had a simple outlook that was resigned to their fates, they never felt that there was anything worth resenting or reporting about the mayor’s house being so beautifully and naturally placed in the middle of the ordinary common folk, like a crane amid a group chickens.  On the day they were allocated their houses, even Lisa who was not yet well versed in the affairs of the world could sense the joy brimming over in their family, so she took the opportunity to drop and break a bowl to celebrate. Then, Papa Manoban rode a bicycle to celebrate, and her father took the opportunity to smack her as well, five-year-old Jungkook watched from his house doorway as he brought his wife and Lisa on his bike to watch those who newly moved in play with firecrackers. From afar, he saw a little girl with two rivulets of mucus streaming down stuffed on the horizontal frame of a bicycle, he felt that little children with runny noses were the most dirty. 

Lisa had actually been maligned, she wasn’t considered to be an especially dirty child. At least, she wasn’t that sort of children who would pick up things from the floor and deliver them right to their mouths, she would pretend to blow away the dust before delivering them to her mouth, and she normally didn’t have a runny nose, the mucus had only appeared when she started crying after her father had smacked her, and mucus always accompanies tears and shows up together, just like how lightning always accompanies thunder, it’s classified as a natural phenomenon, and you can’t look down on a natural phenomenon.

But it didn’t matter if she was maligned. In life, being maligned is nothing but a normal state.

After that, they both grew up separately. They occasionally would meet, but because each other’s parents weren’t friends, they wouldn’t play together. The only time they had a more profound interaction was probably a summer holiday when they were in a lower grade, Lisa was rolling marbles in the alleyway, when Jungkook came back after finishing his piano lesson, Lisa asked him, “Class monitor, do you know how to play with marbles? Do you have marbles?”

Jungkook looked at this classmate-cum-neighbour that he normally had very little interaction with and said, “I don’t know, I don’t have.” Little kid Lisa thought in her heart, “He’s so pitiful,” and said, “So pitiful, then let us play together, I’ll teach you.”

Pity is a very intriguing emotion, everyone loves to pity other people, but nobody likes being pitied by others.

Hence little Jungkook was resentful, and pointed at Lisa’s nose as he said, “You’re the pitiful one, you got 28 marks for your math exam.”

Speaking of these 28 marks, they actually didn’t reflect Lisa’s actual proficiency, it was just that the night before the examination, she had hid in her blanket and read an entire night’s worth of Doraemon, the next day, she had only answered a few questions of the examination before she had fallen asleep. But Lisa was a magnanimous person, she felt that since she had scored that 28 marks, there was nothing worth justifying. 

Though they didn’t really hit it off, they had still squatted together to roll marbles, that day, as a newbie in the marble world, Jungkook had won all of Lisa’s marbles.

When Jungkook returned home, Jungkook let the marbles soak in soapy water for an entire night, the next day, he in high spirits planned and thought of how to go to the alleyway to have a “chance encounter” with Lisa, when he went, he discovered Lisa playing hopscotch with a brat that had popped out of who-knows-where.

He was just planning to turn around and go back home, when Lisa spotted him and waved frantically, “Class monitor, class monitor, let’s play together.”

In Lisa’s heart, Jungkook had played marbles with her, so now they were good friends, she was really happy, this was her first good friend who was a class official.

“I have no free time.” Jungkook could only hasten his footsteps as he walked away.

“Wait for me!” Lisa hopped out of the square on one foot, and said to her little companion, “This doesn’t count, later on I’ll still jump from here.”

She ran the entire way to catch up to Jungkook who had already walked out of the alley.

“Where are you going?”

“To practice playing the piano.”

“Practising playing the piano is so boring, let’s play together!”

“How do you know it is boring? It’s not like you have practised before.”

Little Lisa shrugged her shoulders, and tried to imitate the adults’ tone of voice as she said, “You have never seen pork, I still…” She forgot how it ought to be said, and corrected herself, “I learn drawing, sometimes it’s also really boring!” 

Jungkook couldn’t be bothered to argue with her, and walked directly ahead.

Lisa shouted from behind his back, “Then I’ll wait for you to finish practising playing the piano and come back to play together!

Jungkook angrily walked to the doorway of his piano teacher’s house before recalling that he didn’t need to practise playing the piano today; he wanted to go back home but also didn’t want to meet Lisa, he circled the road a few times, it was so hot till he couldn’t stand it, so he hid inside the bookshop to flip through books. The moment Jungkook entered, he felt that he was out of luck, the employee looking after the shop was the one who ordinarily loved to chase away children who were flipping through books the most, the person was playing Tetris, and lazily glanced at Jungkook as he entered.

Compared to the air outside that was so hot till it had morphed, the coolness that came from the ceiling fan turning slowly on the ceiling made Jungkook decide to stay on here till he had to go home to eat dinner.

There weren’t many people in the store, this was a good thing, if he found an inconspicuous corner to stay at, he reckoned that the employee would be too lazy to go over and chase him away. After walking a few steps, Jungkook realized only then that it also wasn’t a good thing that there weren’t many people in the shop, the marbles in his pocket made crisp noises as they collided with every step he took. The electronic sounds of the Tetris blocks landing on top of each other travelled towards him, Jungkook kept his hand on his pocket, and slowly walked towards the corner.

When he returned home, the sun was already inclined towards the west, when he turned into the entrance of the alleyway, he stopped for a few seconds.

The two of them were long gone, the squares drawn with chalk on the ground had also been smudged by footsteps and marks of bicycle wheels. He turned out his pocket, the marbles jumped out one by one, producing blunt sounds as they dropped onto the yellow mud.

He lowered his head as he walked towards the entrance of his house.

“Class monitor!”

He turned his head back, Lisa was carrying a bowl as she sat on the staircase, digging up rice from the bowl.

She skipped over to him, “Why did you only just return? We even said to play together, we waited till our families all had to eat dinner.”

She waved her chopsticks in front of him, “We can’t play already, I’m just waiting here to inform you.”

There was even some unknown black sauce sticking to her face.

“I got it.” Jungkook nodded his head, and opened his door to go back home.

This was the first time Jungkook came to know the feeling of being waited for, little Lisa still didn’t know, in the future, there were many more times that she would have to wait for this person.