Second Overtime | JENSOO & CHAELISA

Chapter XLV

For a few seconds after Ms. Jung ended the call, no one in Lisa's living room moved. That was how everyone knew it was serious.

Jisoo sat on the edge of the couch with the phone still in her hand, her fingers curled around it so tightly her knuckles had gone white. The screen had gone dark. Jennie's voice was gone, but somehow, she could still hear her. I love you. Three words that had survived a panic attack, a mother's cruelty, and a decade of being told they were wrong.

Jisoo bowed her head. Her knee throbbed beneath the brace, a deep, mean pulse that climbed up her thigh every time she breathed too hard. She barely felt it. Her whole body had narrowed to the last thing Jennie had said, the exhausted tremor in her voice, the way she had sounded both closer and farther away than anyone Jisoo had ever loved.

Across from her, Nayeon cried without trying to hide it anymore. The tears slipped between her fingers and dripped onto her lap, and for once she didn't seem to care that everyone could see. Jeongyeon sat beside her, one arm wrapped around Nayeon's shoulders, her own face drawn and tired but steady. 

Moonbyul had stopped typing. Tzuyu stared at the carpet with wet eyes, her fingers twisted around the hem of her sweater like she was holding herself together by the threads. Seulgi clutched a crumpled tissue in one hand and a half-open snack bag in the other, apparently trapped between grief and wanting to eat something, unable to commit fully to either.

Lisa broke first. "She said she loves you," she whispered, her voice cracking on the last word.

Rosé turned her head slowly. "Yeah, she did."

Lisa's breath shuddered out, heavy with frustration. "I wish we could do more for her right now. But I guess this is all we've got."

Jisoo rubbed her face with both hands, hard, as if she could press herself back into one piece through sheer force. "I want to go to her."

Coach Minzy looked up from the whiteboard, her marker pausing mid-stroke. "Jisoo, you can't."

"I know." Jisoo's voice came out scraped and rough, like it had been dragged over gravel. "I know I can't. Don't worry, I'm not going."

That was the worst part, knowing exactly what you wanted and holding back. She wanted to limp through every hospital corridor in the city, tear open every door until she found Jennie and held her so tightly nothing could get between them again. But remembering Jennie's voice on the phone gave her pause. She'd promised. She'd promised she wouldn't let Chaerin make her the villain.

She swallowed hard, her throat aching with the effort of keeping that promise. "She asked me to stay. So I'm staying."

Nayeon looked at her through swollen, red-rimmed eyes. "Me too."

Jisoo turned. Nayeon's mouth trembled, her composure fracturing along a dozen invisible fault lines. "I want to be there," she said. "I want to sit beside her and hold her hand and tell every nurse in that hospital exactly how she likes her water and how she lies when she says she's not cold."

"We'll get through this," Jeongyeon murmured, her voice uncharacteristically gentle.

Nayeon leaned into her, shoulder pressing against shoulder. "Thank you."

"So you're staying," Coach Minzy said. 

Nayeon nodded, fresh tears sliding down her cheeks. "I'm staying. Because if I go, Chaerin will use it. She'll say I'm enabling something unhealthy. She'll say I'm part of the problem. She'll twist it, and Jennie will pay for it." Her voice cracked on Jennie's name. "So I'm staying. Even though it's killing me."

Marco emerged from the kitchen carrying a large pot with oven mitts, the smell of garlic rice and chicken broth rolling ahead of him like a small act of culinary defiance. The scent filled the room, cutting through the bitter coffee, the cold ginger tea, the metallic fear that had been hanging in the air for hours.