You Had Me at Goodbye

Stay

If heaven could speak, that gentle words falling from the lips of a stranger was probably how it would have sounded. Lisa slowly turns her head to where that heaven-like voice comes from, to her loss of words, all her reasons should ever be, Jennie Kim, standing with her dearly been missed gummy smile, gently caresses Lisa's whole being, trembling her knees, with radiating warmth brighter than the slowly rising sun.

"Jennie."

Jennie smiles and gracefully walks towards her smoothly; as if she is floating, as if she walks in a dream. Lisa subtly pinches her left arm. That hurts. So she is not dreaming after all. Jennie is there. Finally before her eyes.

"Flesh and bones. How are you, Lisa?"

Flesh and bones.

"You found me," Lisa lets her words fall slightly above a whisper and unintentionally ignores Jennie's question. She is too occupied by the presence of Jennie that she can hardly function.

"I found you," a giggle from Jennie. How Lisa swears she can listen to it on repeat.

"H—How are you, Jennie?"

Lisa seems to be fidgeting with a little shovel in her right hand. There it is, her cute ticks, where she scratches an imaginary itch on her cheek, making Jennie's smile bloom looking at the ever-so-adorable Lisa.

"I've been good. How are you?"

She pauses to see the bed of roses at the side of the garden in front of Lisa's house. Lisa is The Little Prince herself now with all those roses. Jennie chuckles at that thought.

"The roses are beautiful, Lisa."

Lisa looks at her bed of roses and smiles at it.

"They are, aren't they?" Then she stops seemingly just realising something important, "Ah! How rude of me. Please, come in, Jen."

Lisa gestures for Jennie to follow her inside the house. It is not grand but not shabby either. It is made of solid bricks, painted in light grey—very Lisa. The front door is made of ply black wood. It is simple and rather cold, almost similar to the exterior of the owner. Getting into the house she sees a well-lit living room with three sofas circling a coffee table. She follows Lisa a bit further into the house and sits on one of two armchairs in that room that is facing a shelf full of photos, but what catches her very attention is the very familiar teddy bear sitting among the photos, the very one she tried so hard to get at a claw machine somewhere in London. So it is where it has been all those years, sitting silently, on Lisa's shelf.

"Tea?" Lisa snaps her from her trance and loudly speaks from the kitchen.

"Please."

Jennie stands up and reaches for the teddy bear. It smells like Lisa, as it should be. Jennie smiles at the memory the teddy bear holds. She does not recall how but apparently it is there with Lisa all along.

"So you've reunited with Nini again."

Lisa comes back holding two mugs of tea and places them on a little table between the two armchairs. Jennie turns around to see the woman who she constantly visited when she was unconscious. She remembers the day Chaeyoung came to her store asking for a favour that turned out to be for Lisa. The clinical trial and the first bone marrow transplantation went south and they needed a new donor fast. Jennie was the only thinkable option; her results came back as a match, so without thinking twice, Chaeyoung dragged Jennie to Zürich a month later. Jennie had always been there with Lisa, the former surgeon was just oblivious to that fact. It turned out the life she could save was Lisa's.

"Is this a pleasant surprise?" Jennie shows her gummy smile as she stands still holding Nini tightly.

"The best so far."