and i understood why you can't control your heart // JENLISA

there was a big noise

Jennie Kim is the single most confusing person Lisa has ever met.

The last month has been, without question, both the best and worst of Lisa's life. She's spent it exhilarated and terrified in equal measure - full of the memory of Jennie's lips, and unsure how to handle the situation.

Their first kiss had been electric. It came out of nowhere, a moment of silliness morphing into Jennie with her hands on Lisa's skin and her thighs parted, and Lisa wishes she could know where things would have gone had they not been interrupted. And their second kiss was somehow even better - Jennie initiated it, and the little noises she made as her hips were moving into Lisa's before they were interrupted again has been seared into her brain for a week.

And now, even with two mind-numbing, life-changing kisses between them, not a word has been spoken about it.

It's partially her fault, she knows. There had been a moment, the day after their first kiss, where Lisa had considered asking Jennie to sit down and talk it through. But Jennie had looked so worried, so wide-eyed and uncharacteristically terrified, that Lisa taken in to the easier option. She stayed quiet, and tried to move on.

And then it happened again.

Normally, Lisa is all about healthy communication. But the smaller, more base part of her brain, the part that remembers tasting Jennie's perfume on her neck and the part that's hoping it might happen again, is resisting. Trying to talk about whatever strange, nebulous magnetism is between them will lead to the undeniable fact that Jennie doesn't want a relationship, that she's eventually going places that Lisa in her inferior intelligence can't follow, and as bad as it is, she wants to live in this little fantasy a while longer. One where Jennie looks at her with thinly-veiled desire, and they exist in a strange limbo between friend and something more.

Unfortunately, their second kiss happened the day before Winter Break, and now Lisa has another full week of wanting desperately to see Jennie, while being too nervous to reach out first. She misses her, with a sharp desire she's never really felt before. Her only distraction is Chaeyoung, but Chaeyoung wants to work on their spring curriculums, and working on anything school-related just makes the missing even worse.

"I can't decide on a final project for my journalism class."

Chaeyoung doesn't look up from her laptop, her fingers flying over the keys. "Just make them create a newspaper. Wasn't that what you were planning to do?"

"Well, yeah, but...I want it to be really good," Lisa counters, her own word document stubbornly blank.

"A newspaper is a good idea."

"No, like, really good," Lisa argues. "I'm lucky that Jiwon even let me offer this class - I need to prove that it's a good idea."

"Lisa, your students love you. They'll give you great feedback no matter what."

Chaeyoung is right, she knows. She closes the doc with a huff, trying to find something else for her brain to focus on besides the memory of how Jennie's red lipstick looked smudged all over her face.

"Fine, fine," she mutters, scrolling through her work folder. "I need to work on my semester 2 introductory chem lecture, too - I'm sure I can make it as good as Jennie's."