Come Home

Seven

Jennie's taking a nap in the bedroom after their impromptu swimming so Lisa decides to go visit her cousin.

She knocks on the door but it's weird because she hears someone else's voice inside. She knocks again, louder this time. "I'll just get the door." Chaeyoung say to someone.

Upon seeing Lisa standing in front of her door, Chaeyoung turns even more concern. "Lisa."

"What?" Lisa tries craning her neck to look behind and see who's inside, or what could be causing her cousin's discomfort. "Who's in there?"

Chaeyoung looks behind her before discretely stepping out of her house and gently pushing Lisa outside the door. "Okay, trust me, I didn't know she was going to be here, okay? If I did, I would've told you and even tell you to stay away from my house. She's being really nice and she even asked about you but I think it's better you return home and come back later."

Now Lisa's all confused. Chaeyoung's going a mile per second with her words and she's not getting any of it. "Wait, wait. Slow down. Who's 'she' and why are you telling me to go home? Why are you being so weird? Just tell me who it is."

Lisa steps around Chaeng to look inside the house but as soon as she sees who's inside, she instantly regrets it and wishes she just followed what her cousin had told her.

"Lisa!" It's Irene.

Too late, Irene already saw her.

Taking the cousins by surprise, Irene goes for a hug with Lisa. She wraps her hands around the taller lady's neck and makes sure to put her head on the crook of her neck too. "I missed you."

Lisa heard the slight longing from Irene's voice but chooses to ignore it, in fact Irene's whole statement is her expressing her longing for the grey haired lady but Lisa's not about to fuel that little hope in her tone by saying the same thing. Lisa just wraps her arms loosely in return. "Why are you here?" Is the only question running in her head.

"Woah," the way Irene said it, the disbelief in her tone that Lisa chose that as her first words to her after not seeing each other for half a year instead of a greeting or a declaration of yearning upsets her. "It's spring break so I'll be staying home for two weeks."

"Oh, yeah. Welcome back. How's university?" Lisa settles on the couch and before Irene can sit beside Lisa, Chaeyoung beats her to it, forcing the dark haired girl to sit across them and sparing her cousin any more awkwardness. Lisa slightly bumps her cousin's shoulder as a silent expression of gratitude.

The frown that marred Irene's face when Chaeyoung sat next to Lisa when she was very obviously trying to sit there is very evident but she wipes it off to answer Lisa's question. "Interesting, fun. I made lots of new friends and I can't wait to go on my internship."

"What course did you take again?" Chaeyoung asks.

"Business Management."

"Where do you plan on doing your internship?" It's Chaeng again.

Irene looks at Lisa who is looking very detached on their conversation but she faces Chaeng to answer her question. "Hopefully Busan. Lots of hotels are offering internship there so I applied to most of them but I also applied at hotels from other places just in case." Next, she specifically directs her attention to Lisa. "How have you been, Lisa?"

Lisa doesn't hear her so Chaeng have to elbow her lightly to get her attention. "Lisa!" The older cousin says sharply. "Is something bothering you?" But of course Chaeng knows there is something bothering Lisa. For starters there's Jennie who Chaeng believes is still causing her cousin slight distress mostly because somewhere out there, there's a family looking for the brunette who is loosing sleep in concern for her. Secondly, this is the first time Irene and Lisa are talking after their messy break up before Irene went to university half a year ago. Not to mention Irene's acting as if they had a very peaceful breakup, of course it's gonna mess up Lisa to see how her ex is acting right now.