Imperfectly Perfect [Chaelisa]

two

Park Chaeyoung hates change. Even the slightest change can make her upset, because it ruins her routines and she hates it when things mess with her routines. She needs structure, and change ruins all of that.

Chaeyoung wants to dislike Lisa, because Lisa's presence meant change. Change was bad. Therefore, Lisa should be bad too, except she's not. In Chaeyoung's opinion, Lisa is wonderful.

She's been around for a total of two days, and while Chaeyoung hasn't exactly gotten the courage to speak to her properly, Lisa always smiles at her when she comes into the room, and it's comforting. If Lisa is smiling at her, it means she likes her. Sometimes Lisa asks her questions, and while Chaeyoung's a little too frightened to answer them properly, she still likes that she's asked, because it means that Lisa wants to be friends.

On Lisa's third day of school, Chaeyoung decides that yes, they're friends. She walks into her music class ten minutes early, because she likes to be punctual, and informs her teacher that she wants Lisa to sit next to her, because they're friends, and friends are supposed to sit next to each other. Chaeyoung bounces in her seat when Lisa walks into the classroom and sits down next to her, because she's excited to have a new friend, but when Lisa greets her, she blushes and falls silent. She doesn't want to do anything Lisa might consider to be strange, so she keeps her mouth shut.

That's when Lisa gives her the look.

She stares at her like she's done something wrong, her eyebrows dipping into a frown, and Chaeyoung decides that she really doesn't like it when Lisa frowns, because when she's smiling, Lisa is very pretty. Chaeyoung likes to look at her sometimes. The look puts Chaeyoung off, and she shrinks down in her seat in an effort to make herself smaller, tapping her fingers against the table and trying to ignore how she can feel Lisa's brown eyes piercing holes into the back of her head.

Chaeyoung stays silent for most of their music class, but answers Lisa's questions and tries to be as polite as she can. Sometimes she sees Lisa frowning, and she knows that it's a bad thing, but she doesn't know why she's frowning, because as far as she knows, she hasn't said anything to upset her. That's why she wasn't speaking as much, because sometimes she said things that upset people and she didn't want to frighten Lisa off by doing that.

Because Chaeyoung likes Lisa, and they're friends. She doesn't want to upset her new friend.

When class is over and it's time for their lunch break, Chaeyoung walks behind Lisa towards the art classroom, keeping a good amount of distance between them. She doesn't like being too close to someone she doesn't know very well, and until she gets to know Lisa, she can't get too close. It upsets her.

Lisa holds the door for the art classroom open for her, and Chaeyoung silently thanks her with a shy smile as she heads for her usual seat. She opens up her sketchbook and searches in her backpack for her pencils, taking her time to pick up the perfect one. She pulls her phone out and opens up Lisa's Instagram page - Jisoo had linked it in the group chat the night before and told them all to follow her - picking a recent selfie Lisa had posted.

Chaeyoung really thinks that Lisa is beautiful, and she believes that beauty should be captured in the form of art. Because she's too frightened to ask Lisa to pose for her, she has to use the other girl's Instagram as a source for her portrait. She doesn't think she'll show her drawing to Lisa, because she's not sure if that's okay and she doesn't know what Lisa's reaction will be. Maybe she'll ask Jisoo, because Lisa seems to be closest to her.

"Hey, Chaeng?"

Chaeyoung blinks in surprise when her name is called, because she'd tuned out the conversation to focus on her drawing. "Yes?"