KILL THIS LOVE | JENLISA

Chapter 18

Jennie

"I-I don't know..These are all standard psychological interview questions, Ms. Manoban." My tongue cleaved to the roof of my mouth in indecision.

Lisa's shoulders sloped, drawing her closer to my seated form, "Do you always follow standards, Miss Kim?" She took my silence as a yes.

"What do you, Ruby Jane, really want to ask me?"

My reply could only be described as an awkward mix between shrugging and shaking my head. Lisa looked at me, in what seemed an awful lot like, amusement. It's as if a five year old child was watching a circus clown juggle for the first time. I hated it.

And then I spoke. "Are you always this vexatious, Ms. Manoban?" The words flew out of my mouth before I had the time to weigh them. Any professional psychologist would surely have gone into a cardiac arrest at my unethical words. I mentally screamed at myself.

Lisa Manoban watched me with the same glint in her marine eyes, a faint grin tugging at her lips now. "I hope you'll find out for yourself, Miss Kim."

"No, I didn't mean to- I-I'm very sorry..."

"My turn."

"What?"

Lisa tilted her head to the side,"Remember? You ask me a question, I ask you one." Her smirk only seemed to go wider. Of course, she was ridiculing me for being such a coward.

The night had not even begun, and I already regretted coming. My silence spoke sentences to Lisa, who placed her hands on the table, intertwined.

"Are you from Seoul, Ruby Jane?"

While I wasn't entirely sure if giving out personal details like this to a serial killer was the most sane gesture ever, I nodded my head in response anyway. I turned to look into my file for the next question, when I heard a loud clicking of the tongue, coming from Lisa who sat across from me.

I realized she was disapproving whatever question I was going to ask her from my list. Well, if I was going to be incessant about asking Lisa distinctive questions, there was one which had been doing rounds in my brain since the very first moment I saw her.

"How old are you?"

The disposition that surrounded the question, was perhaps, the reason why I have not had a sound night of sleep in a week.Going in, I had expected an old, deranged person who might have been locked in the asylum for some crime she'd committed thirty years ago or so.

Now, Lisa Manoban was deranged, there was no room for doubt in that. But never in my wildest dreams had I anticipated for my subject, the Seoul Ripper to turn out to possibly only be a few years older than myself.

While my theoretical studies had not left me a stranger to young, cold blooded killers, coming across one in the flesh was a whole different story.

Lisa looked at her palms, "I don't know."

"What do you mean?" I furrowed my eyebrows.

She shrugged, meeting my eye again, "I don't know. I don't remember."

Just when I thought Lisa couldn't get any more perplexing.

"You look like you could be 23-26." I mused, but gained no reply from her. "So you.. you don't know when your birthday is?" my voice came out low.

"No."