Out of My League | JENLISA

Chapter II: Who's Lalisa Manoban?

Chapter II

Lalisa Manoban — that's her full name — might have been the most intriguing type of target Jennie had to pursue.

In ways, she was as ordinary as any twenty year old woman in South Korea. She studied Arts at Korea University. She had a housemate named Minnie. She worked at a coffee shop. She had awful eating habits. She had too many cats. She had some college friends with whom she went out to drink soju on the weekends. She had an old — and Jennie meant old — motorcycle that was working by sheer miracle. She knew everyone in her area and made a point to talk to as many people as possible everywhere she went.

That may seem normal and expected, however it was so different from Jennie's usual targets that she was a little bit too invested in her research — and by researching, she meant plain old stalking. She couldn't help her curiosity. By rule, Jennie's targets were older and powerful males surrounded by fake people who feared them and made a point to never address them if they could help. They usually didn't have pets, had personal chefs to make delicious nutritious meals everyday and they worked in impersonal huge offices in skyscrapers in Seoul. They had chauffeur and a collection of expensive cars, and sometimes they took helicopters to what would be a forty minutes drive.

But that wasn't all.

Her old targets all had a habit of flaunting online. Their cars, their international trips, their design clothes and their famous acquaintances. She didn't even need to be a hacker to know their favorite brands, their favorite spots in the city or even their type of women. It was always online, carefully curated by a professional, but it was still obnoxious to Jennie's attentive eyes.

But not Lalisa.

Lisa had two Instagram accounts that Jisoo showed her. One was focused on her dancing. Some dance challengers, choreographies and moves during her classes with her classmates all cheering at the back because it's obvious Lisa danced well. Very well. She usually had baggy clothes and a cap, very tomboyish, but her movements were smoother than butter. She was powerful when the dance needed, softer when the song asked for it and groovy in ways Jennie didn't know was even possible. She had binge-watched all her videos many times — all research, of course.

The other account Lisa created when she started traveling the world after High School. She wasn't as rich as Kim Jisoo; their friendship was a mystery to Jennie, if she was being honest. Lisa had obviously put her belongings in a backpack and went from one country to another on the cheapest airline tickets she could find. She photographed anything, but rarely herself. The very few pictures of her were her with her camera in front of a mirror or a window or from her back. She compensated her lack of selfies with gorgeous pictures of locals in the most mundane and yet unexpected activities. She had an eye for people. It's like she could see a part of them they weren't even aware they exuded. It was fucking gorgeous and it didn't seem like Lalisa Manoban had any idea how much rare that talent was.

Jennie had to give it to her: she was mysterious enough to make Jennie curious. There wasn't much about her online except for her pictures and her dancing. So Jennie — not proudly — had hacked her accounts. Oh, sue her. It's her job and Jennie prided herself to be thorough. She wasn't surprised to find many unanswered direct messages from men and women flirting. Lisa, however, was like Jisoo had described her: she seemed focused on her soulmate and ignored mostly everyone else. Jennie found many of her likes on strangers' viral stories about how they had found their soulmates and no other feeling compared to finding your one and only. More recently, though, Lisa seemed to be reading more of others' personal experiences with soulmates who were disappointments, who they couldn't form a bond with at all.