Chapter 9

"Where exactly are we going?" Jennie asked Lisa for the third time. She'd been driving for the last twenty minutes and her patience was starting to wear thin.

That. And the fact that they haven't spoken a word for the last twenty minutes except Lisa telling her directions and Jennie asking Lisa about their destination. If there was any. Because Jennie was starting to believe that they're going nowhere.

"Please, just drive," Lisa answered patiently. It's the same answer that she had been telling Jennie for the third time.

"You do know I can drop you off anytime I want, right?" Jennie said irritably. "Where exactly are we going? Are you sure we're not lost? Yet?"

Lisa chuckled. Which annoyed Jennie a whole lot more. The blond was not someone who can be easily intimidated, Jennie realized. Maybe she had to work that one out some other time.

"Oh, we're here! We're here!" Lisa suddenly exclaimed as she pointed the landmark that clearly said Dongdaemun written in bold letters.

"Dongdaemun?? What are we supposed to be doing here?" Jennie asked, slowing her speed down because the street of Dongdaemun was still packed and crowded with busy people even on midnight.

"Eat. What else? If you're a midnight eater, Dongdaemun is the right place for you," Lisa answered matter-of-factly. "Can you please make a turn right there on the next block?" she asked Jennie, pointing the narrow alleyway a few meters ahead of them.

Dongdaemun is the shopping capital of Seoul. It's a 24-hour bustling hub of shoppers bargaining for deals and wholesalers running around, delivering clothes across the country. And it's also where the best pojangmachas are located. Midnight eaters and drinkers happened to gather in Dongdaemun because the pojangmacha in the district offer a wide variety of Korean street food and anju.

"Alrighty! Here we go," Lisa proclaimed after she asked Jennie to pull over in front of a tent.

Lisa opened the door excitedly beside her and was about to jumped off from her car seat when Jennie suddenly grabbed her arm and stopped her from going out of the car.

"Wait! Lisa!" It was the first time that Jennie said Lisa's name out loud. It wasn't dramatic. Nor romantic. If anything, it sounded nervous. Jennie looked nervous. "I...I don't think I can do this," Jennie said, clutching Lisa on the arm like a little child in a park.

"Why? What's the matter?" asked Lisa. Concern was on her voice. She felt Jennie's hand shaking against the bare skin of her forearm.

Jennie exhaled. She couldn't lie about it.

"I...I don't...I haven't e...eat..."

Lisa's round eyes became even rounder. She looked surprised and amused with Jennie's confession.

"You mean you don't eat in a pojangmacha?" she asked, which Jennie answered with a slow, shy nod.

First it was The Beatles. Now, it was her lack of experience in pojangmacha. Lisa must have think of her as ignorant. But in her defense, it wasn't her fault that she was born with a silver platter. Or that her parents never bothered taking her to her first ever pojangmacha experience. Or that she was surrounded with people who did not bother taking her or inviting her for a midnight gastronomic adventure in a pojangmacha. She should've asked Jisoo about it. Or anyone from the household staff.

"You mean you haven't been to a pojangmacha? Ever?" Lisa asked in total disbelief. "Whoa! I've never imagined meeting someone who haven't been in a pocha before. That's weird."

Jennie expected Lisa to laugh and make fun of her lack of experience. To mock her for being an ingenue and a coward. She expected Lisa to look at her with disgust or whatever for being a full-blooded Korean but haven't been in a pojangmacha. But instead, Lisa grabbed her hand gently and guided her inside the tent.

"Come here. I'll show you what you've been missing your whole life," said Lisa and pulled a plastic chair for her.

The tent that Lisa chose offered uncomfortable-looking plastic chairs and tables for costumers who would like to eat their food inside a tent and not as a take out. In fact, almost all the tables inside the tent were already occupied, mostly by people from the necktie army. Everyone was so engrossed with their drinks and smoke and the food on their table. Some came solo. Others were in a group. And to Jennie's surprise and relief, nobody was giving the slightest bit of attention to her and Lisa.  Except the middle aged woman who attentively approached them.

"Can I get you anything, ladies?" the middle aged lady, an ajumna with a permed hair and in an oversized working clothes, who smelled of garlic, onions and grilled pork asked after both Jennie and Lisa have settled down.

"What do you want to eat?" Lisa asked Jennie. "You can order anything. My treat!" she added, smiling.

"Samgyeopsal-gui?" Jennie told the ajumna hesitantly. She was looking slightly offended at the middle aged woman and her choice of fashion. "I love meat," she added with a shrug after she saw the look on Lisa's face.

"One samgyeopsal-gui, ajumna. And one tteokbokki, mandu, dakkochi and a bottle of soju, please," Lisa told the ajumna.

"What? No! No, no, no! No soju. I already had a drink from that bar. I'm not having another one," Jennie protested. She was already half-standing, looking as though she was ready to leave the tent and Lisa when the opportunity strikes.

She was shaking her head and waving her hands furiously in front of Lisa when she said so. Convincing to stop Lisa from getting a soju and the ajumna, who was quick to grab a bottle of soju and a couple of drinking glasses and laid it on their table.

"Look. I know that Chahee's daiquiri was fancy and everything. But nothing beats soju and a variety of delicious Korean food on a night like this, in a pocha," said Lisa knowingly, smiling. "Besides, the cosmopolitan that Chahee gave me was vodka-free. It was a scam," she added bitterly.

"Fine. But I'm not drinking," Jennie said defiantly and returned to her seat, her arms crossed across her chest.

"You can't say no to soju. No one says no to soju," said Lisa.

"Are you sure you can finish all the food that you just ordered?" Jennie asked while looking at the ajumna and her assistant who was now busy cooking the foods that Lisa ordered.

The food in pojangmacha are cooked inside the tent itself, Jennie noticed. Maybe it was the reason why the whole place smelled of spices, along with the strong smell of nicotine, because the people from the necktie army were mostly chain smokers who breathed their cigarettes like human chimneys, and among many other things.

The walls were covered with just plastic tarps with no windows for ventilations; trapping the unnecessary odors inside the confinement of the plastic tarp-walled tent. And the floor was slightly damp and besmeared with dirts and muds. Jennie have never been to a place where people was okay with all the unsanitations she's noticed.

Overall, Jennie's first impression of a pocha was below average, based on her high standard lifestyle. Maybe it's the reason why her parents or anyone around her never bothered to take her to a pojangmacha before. Because the place looked like something where she might acquire a disease or worse, food poisoning.

But Lisa looked excited about it, Jennie noticed. And Lisa's excitement was somehow contagious.

"We will finish all of them. I can't let you miss the fun," Lisa corrected her. "Besides, aren't you hungry?" she asked Jennie.

"I am. But not starving," Jennie answered in a very dignified way. As if the word starvation was something that should never be associated with her.

She was now under the impression that not only had she invited a crackhead for a ride, but also a glutton. And a drunkard, most probably. The way Lisa was salivating while looking at the empty bottles of soju lying on the table next to them the moment they entered the tent a while ago and the way Lisa was pouring the contents of the green bottle on their drinking glasses.

"You will be. Once you tasted a little of everything here," Lisa said, waving her hands in the air and pushed one glass full of clear liquid to Jennie. "I still don't know your name, though," she said casually.

"It's Jennie," said Jennie and accepted the glass although reluctantly.

Lisa raised her glass of soju in front of them and looked at Jennie with her big, round eyes.

"I think we should make a toast, it's Jennie," she said.

"For what?" asked Jennie. But she, too, raised her glass just an inch away from Lisa's in mid-air.

"For your first time in a pocha, maybe?" Lisa suggested.

"How about for a night of adventure?" said Jennie and brought her glass closer to Lisa's.

"Sounds better," Lisa said.

"Cheers?"

Lisa grinned. She didn't know what it was about Jennie and the night and how the universe have brought Jennie to the Orange tonight, but she sure was enjoying every bit of it. It had been a while since the last time she felt light and excited about something new and not even knowing why. It felt like the first time she held her first camera. She felt giddy and jumpy.

"Cheers!" Lisa said and brought the glass to her mouth.

Jennie did so, too. And Lisa could not stop herself from laughing softly when she saw how Jennie's beautiful face contorted into a grimace after she emptied the content of her glass to her mouth in one gulp.

"Argh!" Jennie screamed and slammed the soju glass on the table. "That was nasty!" she said while wiping some of the liquid that trickled down to her chin from her mouth with her hand.

Lisa laughed out loud and pour another set of soju on their drinking glasses.

"I'm seriously wondering what kind of drinks you've been drinking all your life for calling soju nasty," she said and pushed Jennie's glass towards the latter.

"Are you trying to get me drunk?" Jennie asked, suspiciously looking at the glass but still accepted it anyway.

"No, Jennie. I'm trying to make you feel normal," Lisa answered half-jokingly.

"What makes you think that I'm not normal?" Jennie challenged Lisa.

She was trying to prod Lisa's mind. To know what Lisa's impression of her. To understand why the blond could make her feel loose and comfortable over a bottle of soju and a promise of gastronomic adventure of street food and samgyeopsal-gui, even though they just met each other an hour ago.

"What makes you think that you are?" Lisa retorted. But she was smiling. She, too, was daring Jennie to bare her mind and lay it on the table.

"I--," Jennie started but fell silent.

What was she supposed to say? That she's normal, contrary to what Lisa thinks of her? Contrary to what she really was?

Was she? Because the last time she checked herself in the mirror, she was Jennie Kim. The sole heiress of the Kim Group of Company, who doesn't drink cheap wine in a cheap tent and wait for a platter of cheap food to arrive. She was Jennie Kim who does not randomly invite someone inside her personalized luxury car for late-night drives and late-night adventures and allowed to be bossed around by someone she barely knew.

Her life have always been black and white, with a set of rules and straight lines to follow. She was born and raised that way. A pukka.

She was Jennie Kim who the press loved to scrutinize especially about her most private life, even when she was still living abroad, away from her elite family name.

She was Jennie Ruby Jane Kim. Nothing in her life was ever normal and ordinary.

"Yes?" Lisa prodded her.

But tonight...

"I..." Jennie started again, hoping that the right words will just spill out from her mouth to impress Lisa, without imposing and exposing her social status.

And by looking at Lisa and her happy and carefree demeanor, Jennie realized she envied her. She suddenly envied how much Lisa could just look at her in the eyes and smiled at her without inhibition. She suddenly envied how Lisa was swirling the tiny glass of soju on her hand without even worrying that she might spill the contents on the table.

Tonight, she didn't want to be THE Jennie Kim. She just wanted to be Jennie. Just Jennie.

"No. You don't have to answer that," Lisa finally said, looking apologetic. "It was rude of me. I'm sorry."

But Jennie shook her head and gulped the content of the glass that she was gripping, trying not to grimace from the taste of it.

"I'm having a drink with you right now, aren't I?" Jennie said. "I think this kind of makes me normal."

Lisa grinned widely and gulped down the contents of the glass she was swirling with her fingers on the table.

"Amen to that!" she said and they both laughed for reasons they did not even know what. It was the first time that Jennie laughed out loud after the demise of her father.

And from that moment on, they probably already realized that their soul was in sync for the night.

(At 3 AM...)

"I really want to go to Switzerland," Jennie said. "I want to see the alps. I bet they're beautiful!"

"They are! They're breathtaking!" Lisa said in a dreamy voice. Lisa had been to Switzerland countless times because her father was part Swiss.

They've been talking nonstop. They talked about their wildest dreams, their likes and dislikes. They talked and debated about whether pineapples belong in a pizza. They discussed about the proximity of the celestial bodies from one another, and swearing at Dimitri Mendelev after they discussed passionately whether soju would taste better with ice or not and whether the amount of smoke trapped inside the plastic tarp-walled tent was enough to suffocate a person who's trapped in a suffocating relationship.

Lisa told Jennie about her passion in photography and her search for her magnum opus--her ultimate masterpiece that will cement her being a photographer in a competitive world where anyone with a camera can call themselves a photographer.

Jennie, in return, told Lisa about New York. And what it was like to live in a city so diverse and liberated that anyone can be anyone without worrying about other people and their perceptions about anyone.

"I miss New York. I miss my freedom," Jennie said after gulping down yet another glass of soju. She promised herself it would be her last. "I hate Dad for leaving too early and taking away my freedom with him," she added bitterly.

"Freedom is a choice, though," Lisa said. "It's not about unsetting the boundaries and not confining yourself within those boundaries. It's about your choice, with or without boundaries. It's about being happy."

Jennie's drunken, half-shut eyes towards Lisa. She already knew that Lisa was a beautiful person with a pretty face. With those big, round eyes of hers that could make her heart act funny and that bright smile of hers that could light up the entire city. But Jennie realized that Lisa was, indeed, a beautiful person because she has a beautiful mind.

She liked the way Lisa would counter her and lay another set of perspectives that differed from hers but would not try to force those perspectives on her. Lisa, Jennie realized in her half-drunken state of mind, was not a set of straight lines and rules. She wasn't black and white, either. Jennie realized that Lisa, with her carefree and happy demeanor was a deep, profound person guised in a jagged lines of randomness, fun and spontaneity. And she liked that. A lot.

"Lisa?" she muttered.

The blond smiled at her with her alcohol-induced mouth and sleepy eyes.

"Hmm?" hummed Lisa.

"I think we should go home already," Jennie said gently.

"Oh, yes. Yes, we should," Lisa said, nodding. "You go on and wait for me outside. I'll just have to settle our bill," she said, which Jennie replied with a nod and left Lisa inside the tent.

"Hey, Jennie. Let's do this again, shall we?" Lisa said as soon as she settled herself comfortably on the passenger's seat.

"When would that be?" Jennie asked as she she revved the engine of her car.

"I honestly don't know. But you do realize that I was searching for you, right?" Lisa said, looking half-asleep.

"No. Why were you seaching for me?" asked Jennie as she maneuvered their way outside the confines of Dongdaemun.

"I don't know. Maybe because you made me feel weird and funny that day," Lisa answered with her eyes shut. Alcohol have started to kick in on her system, pulling her towards the slumber world. "And I like feeling weird and funny," she added and then fell silent.

Jennie dropped her in front of the bar called Orange. Where she saw a silhoutte of a woman inside, sitting by the piano. She could hear the sad melody of the song that the woman was playing amid the unbelievably still bustling street of Hongdae.

"Hey, Lisa? We're here. I don't know your address so I thought I'd just drop you here," Jennie whispered, tugging Lisa's sleeve repeatedly.

The blond stirred and finally woke up. She looked at Jennie with a wide eyes and smiled lazily. Jennie wildly thought that it was how Lisa would probably look like when she wakes up every morning. Messy, beautiful, with a smile that could light up the day.

"Thank you, Jennie" Lisa said and planted a kiss on Jennie's cheek, to Jennie's surprise.

Lisa then went out of the car, bid Jennie goodbye and went inside the empty bar. The Orange closed at 2 AM.

Lisa saw Chaeyoung, alone, sitting by the piano in the dark, playing the saddest melody she's ever heard in her entire life. Chaeyoung's profile was outlined by the neon lights of the neighboring establishments around the Hongdae Walking Street.

"Chaeyoung-a?" Lisa called.

But Chaeyoung did not stir. She was still playing the sad melody on her piano. The sound of it was reverbating throughout the confined walls of the Orange.