KILL THIS LOVE | JENLISA

Chapter 10

Jennie

With a small beep, my attention was brought to the newly unlocked door. Along with only a sympathetic smile to go along, So-yeon gave me the damn button, it's deep red colour resembling every alarm that was going off in my head at the moment. A nervous wreck, I took a baby step inside, knowing what awaited me.

The icy confinement filled with nothing but darkness; a maniacal laughter ricocheting off the thick walls. A possibility of being choked to death by pair of hands out of nowhere. I had quite the grisly picture painted in my mind.

But instead, my sight was met with beaming incandescent ceiling lights, paralleling stars, almost blinding my unprepared eyes. For a millisecond, I questioned if I was, perhaps, in the wrong room. The undisturbed atmosphere only added to my doubt.

Until my vision landed on a familiar figure. There she was, seated behind the desk, not on top of it, unlike our previous meeting. Not that it made her demeanour any less intimidating. She looked at me in a manner I had only seen people in the library look into an engrossing book, head tilted at a slight angle. She was, in a way, reading me.

"Won't you take a seat?" her voice, crafted with the sound of rhythmic tides and calloused grit, came for me in a mocking tone, making me still. But she had done nothing, merely spoken a few normal words and I was already disarmed.

"Ms. Manoban, I, well.." I gulped.

Her face while still expressionless, had an eyebrow raised in wicked play.

"So you're going to stand there the whole time?"

"No-I uh.." I awkwardly staggered to the chair across from her, sitting down apprehensively. Would that be it? Would a murderer sit a few hands away from me at free will? Fear ran through my arteries.

Leaving no time for any spoken words, I started going through the first file of paperwork with my head kept down and eyes forced on the text, trying my best to ignore the heat of the killer's prolonged gaze on me.

I mentally rebuffed myself for acting flustered and cleared my throat awkwardly. "Ms. Manoban, I..."

"Ms. Manoban sounds awfully professional."

I swore she could feel my heart pick up pace when the killer leaned forward on the table, never breaking the intense eye contact between both of them.

"Call me Lisa."

'Lisa', I muttered to myself under my breath, warily, as if it were an ancient chant meant only to be preserved for sacred rituals.

"Right, Lisa.." I spoke her name out loud, a foreign feeling washing over my stomach with the name rolling off of my tongue; gulping as I began, "We met a few days ago and I told you about this assignment I had, I'm not sure if you remember-"

"Of course I do Je-Jennie Kim, I don't have amnesia." The corner of her mouth curled upwards into a full blooming smirk.

"It's Je..."

"I must say," Lisa interjected smoothly, "Watching you run for the hills, scared shitless, was truly one of the most entertaining things I've ever seen during my time here Miss Kim."

I swallowed down hard, looking back at Lisa to only see her watching the ripple in my jaw, intently. I hated the way she looked at me, looked into me. Whatever guard I had up, was crumbling to the ground in dust.

"You're scared of me." Lisa stated out of nowhere, almost as if, to herself.

I chose not to reply. Her stare felt like, what could only be described as, soul piercing. As if she was looking right through me.

"I won't hurt you." Her words were spoken artless.

"I know." I replied in a small voice.

"You know?" Lisa snapped, drawing herself forward in her chair menacingly, "Do you now? Are you so fucking sure I'm not going to hurt you?"

I exhaled a shaky breath, positioning my finger on the panic button under the table, ready to press down on it any given moment.

For an unprecedented amount of time no words were exchanged as we sat still in our predicaments. I looked at Lisa's face, seemingly serene, yet I couldn't miss the hints of the malice brewing underneath the facade.

The golden silence was broken only when Lisa leaned back into her chair, mockingly holding up both of her hands for me to see, her face impassive. Maybe it was disbelief, maybe relief that washed over me, when I spotted the piece of metal cuffs binding Lisa's hands together.

The faint sound of metal clinking over the marble floors rang through my ears, louder than ever. I inched my chin further to my side of the desk, raking my eyes along the chain from the cuffs, which was bolted to the steel table.

That's when I fully understood Lisa's words. She couldn't hurt me.

Not that she won't.