Jenlisa Oneshots

merlot on the tongue

Jennie Kim is an assassin, one with a unique method of assassination. Her mark: Hanbin Kim. And, by proxy, his wife Lisa Manoban-Kim.

-

The job is simple. There is a man who needs to die, and a woman who needs to kill him. Jennie is not that woman, but it is her job nonetheless. It's one that she's done many, many times before. It will be no different from the others.

Three flights, a rented car, and she's pulling in to a lovely little apartment she's rented for the next three months. It's out of the way, discrete. These jobs take time. Not three months, of course, but it makes for a good cover story, and gives her extra time if things go terribly. A well-off woman taking a vacation, the sort that lets her sit on a balcony and bask in Chicago's summer heat, but won't carry the same price tag as a hotel.

"Why not somewhere tropical?" her landlady asked. She's an older woman, bottle glasses with beaded string, hands soft with age. "Not that I'm complaining, mind."

"Oh, my mother grew up here," Jennie says with an easy smile. "I wanted to experience the city she loved. You know how it is."

She doesn't say that she knows this city, knows it like the back of her hand. Or rather, that she used to, before... before everything. That she met her first love here, oh so many years ago, when they were young and stupid. Before he died, and she changed, in ways she's not sure she can ever undo.

But she doesn't. So her landlady pats her hand, and tells her the best places to catch the sunrise. Jennie listens, and smiles at all the right moments. She's sure the city has changed, after all. And there's nothing that says she can't enjoy her time here, can't fall in love with the city all over again.

-

A few days of research finds her the opening she needs. Her mark is a rich man, and it doesn't take much to learn that he will attend a rich man's party, the week after next. A fundraiser, or so it's called, but they all know it for what it really is. An excuse to flash money, and to show their 'generosity', as the rich and powerful give away just enough of their wealth to look good, but not enough to diminish their funds in any meaningful way.

Jennie hates parties like this. But she has a job to do, so she manages to buy a ticket. She'll play the role of the mysterious heiress that no one knows, the one who just rolled into town. It's not her favourite, but it works well enough, and lines up with the story she's told her landlady, should anyone come asking after her.

She could do this the hard way - a shot to the head, a knife to the throat, poison slipped into a glass - but it's always so messy. She prefers to do it her way, even if it's longer, slower, more complicated.

That's part of the fun of it, after all. The game, the complexity. The risk, should she fail.

On the night of the party, she decks herself out in an expensive dress, all straps and cleavage and barely concealed line of her hips. Draws a line of dark lipstick across her mouth, puts glitter on her eyelids, pulls her hair into a complicated knot at the base of her neck. She walks into the fundraiser with a smile on her lips and a coy glance for the cameras, looking all too at ease with the flash of bulbs and murmurs of the crowd. She knows that she turns heads; she always has. She plays the part well, gracious and elegant.

It doesn't take her long to spot her mark and his wife. He is awkward, drunk, more pathetic than his all-too-legal crimes would suggest. His wife is tall, gorgeous, all pale skin and blonde hair, a smattering of freckles dusting her shoulders. She is lovely, and terribly distant from the man standing beside her.