Imperfectly Perfect [Chaelisa]

twenty one

"I will meet you here." Chaeyoung promises as she leaves her in front of the library. "At four. I'm going to go to art and wait for you, and then we can walk to my house together."

"Okay, honey," Lisa leans forward and kisses her girlfriend goodbye. "I'll see you at four. Have fun in art."

"I will," Chaeyoung calls behind her, "have fun tutoring."

Lisa doesn't reply to that, because extra Thai isn't something she really needs, but whatever. Helping someone else makes her feel good. Once Chaeyoung is out of sight, Lisa heads into the library and takes a seat where she's visible to anyone who walks in - she doesn't want Dylan to think she'd decided not to show up at the last moment - and pulls out her phone, deciding to check her social medias as she waits.

She scrolls through Instagram, naturally ending up on Chaeyoung's page, and she's in the middle of liking all of her girlfriend's adorable selfies when she hears someone clear their throat in front of her.

"Hey," Dylan announces his presence and sits down across from her. "Thanks again for doing this. I really need the help. You'll see in a minute."

Lisa laughs. "I'm sure you're not that bad. You wouldn't have made it into the advanced class if you really sucked."

"That's the thing, I was good at the regular class," Dylan defends himself; apparently he's set on proving how bad he is. "It's just that the advanced class is ten times harder."

"That's a good thing though, it's a challenge," Lisa replies, although she doesn't find their advanced Thai class hard at all. Mostly because she's fluent in it, but she keeps that little detail to herself. "You can't really get worse if that makes you feel any better."

He laughs and opens up his notebook. "Thanks for the vote of confidence."

After she walks him through some grammar she considers to be quite easy and realising that he really isn't very good, Lisa decides to slow it down and go over what he already knows before starting on the new stuff. When she returns to some more complicated things, he has a little bit of an outburst. Thankfully the library nearly empty so there's not many people to witness it.

"I don't get this. How the hell do you get this?" Dylan groans and throws his pencil down against the notepad. "Maybe I'll just drop Thai. It'd be easier."

Lisa laughs, aware of the weird look he received from the librarian. "It's not so bad. You've just got to go over the grammar as much as you can and eventually it'll click in your head."

Dylan sighs. "It doesn't seem like it's going to click. And my brain feels like it's about to explode."

"That's exactly how I feel about math, and I have to deal with my best friend Jisoo telling me how easy it all is." Lisa replies. Out of all of her friends, Jisoo is the last one she suspected to be a secret math genius. Even Chaeyoung admits Jisoo's better at math than her. "Do you want to call it a day then?"

"Yeah," Dylan nods and closes his notepad and Thai book. "You're really good at Thai, though. How do you make sense of it all?"

"It's my first language,"  Lisa shrugs, "I was born in Buriram, Thailand and lived there until I was six."

"Damn," Dylan comments, "I wish it was my first language. Then I wouldn't have to go through all of this stress. Anyway, same time next week?"

"Yeah, sure," Lisa nods and packs her things away. "You weren't as bad as you think, though."

Not waiting for Dylan's reply, Lisa looks up at the clock and realises that it's nearly four, and Chaeyoung will be arriving to meet her.

"I was still pretty bad, though," Dylan pulls his backpack over his shoulder and nods to the door. "How are you getting home? Do you need a ride?"