earning it back // chaelisa

chapter 4: hushed tones and feverish skin part one

Watching people talk and laugh in her tiny apartment that has definitely not been planned to host any gathering larger than three people, Chaeyoung can almost convince herself she's happy.

Almost .

Because she lives in a beautiful city with beautiful places to see, she has a job where she can see herself making a difference on a day to day basis, she has her art being showcased in an exhibition that will last for months to come - which had been her lifelong dream, something she craved since the moment she picked up a brush. She has good people in her life now, kind and caring people she's happy to call friends , people who make her life better, richer, fuller.

And most of the time, that's enough.

Most of the time, she's genuinely content with her life.

It's a far cry from her days as an escort, days she spent avoiding every glimpse of friendship, boycotting anyone who dared to come close to her. When she found herself in art school or teaching kindergarten, she'd spend her days either painting in her apartment or painting with excitable three year olds.

Her tiny students, who are probably well into second grade by now, taught her a lot about life - in that pure and brutal way only small children can managed to. They taught her it's okay to cry when you're hurt, it's okay to laugh when you feel like it, even if there's no reason. They gave her Valentine's Day cards that came with sloppy kisses and tight hugs, they made her drawings that filled her heart with pure joy, they fell asleep in her arms when they woke up from a nightmare during nap time.

It was one of the craziest, most incredible year of her life and she'd be lying if she said those little people, who barely reached her knees in their best days, didn't teach her more about opening up and letting people in than anyone else in her life.

Anyone else besides Lisa.

It still amazes her to this day how Lisa managed to sneak past all of her defenses without trying, without even meaning to. Because Lisa had been so worried about keeping her tumbling walls still standing up that she didn't realize she knocked down any and every one of Chaeyoung's defense, showed her what love could taste like when Chaeyoung had swore off of it for life, invited her to a world that had seemed forbidden for her.

There's a lull in the conversation - that, truthfully, she'd been only half paying attention - when Jungkook turns to scan the room, looking for his fiancée. His eyes skip past everyone else in the room, glancing around until he finds the woman who's been his reason to wake up in the morning for almost a decade now - and he's looking for her for no reason at all other than look at her. Chaeyoung sees the love in his eyes, see it reflected in the woman across the room that smiles coyly at him and when Chaeyoung excuses herself to go grab a beer, she isn't even sure Jungkook hears her.

She wants that - she wants the kind of love that erases everything around her, that blurries the edges of the world until only one person is in focus.

Chaeyoung drags her feet to the corner she dares to call a kitchen, trying to keep her chin up and a smile frozen in her lips. She wants to feel like that and she doesn't know if she'll ever get another chance to.

It's been almost two months since Chaeyoung saw Lisa last - at Jisoo's, with a busted lip and a pounding heart that was too lost to know how to react to having her so close again. For a moment there, between cleaning the cuts and trying to keep the conversation flowing, Chaeyoung saw a soft light at the end of the tunnel, something she was more than willing to cling to. For a moment, she thought she and Lisa could try to be friends before anything else.

But then they had decided to avoid each other like the plague instead.

Lisa needs distance from her, from the memories she stirred up, from everything she brought back to the surface. Chaeyoung doesn't blame her for it and she has been keeping her end of their agreement - it's not all that hard to avoid running into Lisa, she had done that for over two months before finding the courage to knock on her door and threw the shit right at the fan.