Chapter 40

Ring! Ring!

"Ugh..."

Lisa rolled over groggily; her brain half awakened by the noise of her alarm while the other half remained asleep. The conscious part of her reached out, pawing on the nightstand for her phone, only to knock it off and on to the floor in a clumsy struggle.

She groaned again as she heard the thump on her carpet and resigned to force herself to wake up.

It was 6:00am and she finally got to sleep around 3:00am after tossing and turning. Guess she'd be working on 3 hours of rest for the first day of school.

It wasn't just that she'd made a habit of staying awake so late and waking up mid-morning - her poor sleep quality was also the result of thinking about running into Jennie on her first day of the second semester. Even though she'd been away from her former girlfriend for three weeks, she hadn't exactly been able to keep her off her mind.

It wasn't like she was wanting to see the other girl or anything, she'd just suddenly remember how angry she was about the whole situation and what it'd be like if they saw each other in the hallways again.

And, of course, there was the consideration that they might not run into each other at all. It wasn't like they had much of a connection to each other anymore...

Before they dated, the tutoring sessions were all that allowed the two to remain in contact. After all, Jennie took advanced classes and Lisa took normal ones, they didn't have the same friends, etc.

Probably the only connections they had now were their shared past and Jisoo.

Whatever, I should be happy that I won't have to see her.

Lisa rolled out of bed, already in a bad mood from having to think about Jennie first thing in the morning. All she wanted to do was curl back up in her comforter and catch up on the sleep she hardly got to experience the previous night.

She debated just telling her mom that she was sick, but she knew she'd never hear the end of it if she did.

Plus, she'd have to go back one of these days anyway.

She showered and brushed her teeth before dressing rather lazily in some black tights and an oversized hoodie. Her mother was nowhere to be seen, already headed to her law firm. Lisa opted to skip breakfast since she couldn't work up an appetite in the current mood, she was in.

The drive to school was rather miserable, being that it was still dark out. Winter really sucked.

Nonetheless, Lisa did her best to stay awake as she pulled up to the back parking lot and headed to the front doors of the school.

Despite having such a reluctance to return to school, she arrived early enough to have some time before the first bell, so she texted Chaeyoung and Jungkook to see if they'd arrived yet. However, before she could even hit "send", a body tackled her side, pulling her into a hug.

"Lisa! It's been forever!"

Lisa laughed, almost getting knocked over by the force of her smaller friend. "Relax, Chaeyoung, we even saw each other over break."

"Once!" Chaeyoung objected, releasing Lisa from her death grip to put her hands on her waist. "And that was only the first week!"

"Hey, you were the one who was busy with her boyfriend," Lisa teased.

"You could've hung out with us!"

"I'll pass on being a third wheel." Lisa looked around for Jungkook 's tall, lanky form, but he was nowhere to be seen. "Where's your sidekick?"

"Oh, Jungkook 's always late on the first day of school," Chaeyoung replied dismissively. "Usually even late to first period. But who cares about him, how was your break? Do anything fun? Or illegal?"

"Can't say I did," Lisa admitted, amused by Chaeyoung's excitement. How did she have this much energy so early in the morning?

"How about Christmas?"

Ah, the dreaded "how was your holidays?" question.

It's not that anyone meant ill of asking something like that - most people had a normal answer, after all. Hanging out with grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins, eating delicious food, decorating, exchanging presents.

"Ah, well...Christmas isn't super big in my family," Lisa answered.

"Oh, are you Jewish?"

"No, no. It's just mostly me and my mom and my sister. My grandparents are long passed away and my mom was an only child, so I don't have much of an extended family."

As far as her father's side, Lisa's dad, and by extension her, was estranged after going off the deep end and abandoning his former life. She snuck calls to him on Christmas Eve since he'd already left the country once more, leaving her a souvenir in the mail before he split.

Even him, in his physical absence, was more pleasant to deal with than Lisa's mom and sister, who only went through the motions of Christmas for the sake of tradition.

At least she got to eat Jieun's cooking again.

"Oh...sorry," Chaeyoung said, seeming a bit guilty for asking.

"It's fine, it's fine," Lisa patted her on the back, trying to lighten the mood. "Tell me about your Christmas! Did your man get you something nice?"

That was enough to distract Chaeyoung into going on a long gushing tirade about how romantic her boyfriend was. Lisa was really only half listening, but she was just grateful for the attention to be off of her.

---

Most of Lisa's classes were the same, just jumbled around. She got seventh period off, so when fifth period was about to end, she relished in the fact that she only had one more class before the day was over.

Still, as she walked out of her now afternoon-scheduled Spanish class (no longer shared with Jisoo), she'd forgotten what her sixth period even was. All of her core classes were out of the way today, so it must've been an elective.

Lisa couldn't even remember what she'd requested for an extra class the previous semester had been such a flurry of drama, spilling into winter break and preventing her from really paying attention to her Spring schedule.

Lisa pulled up the screenshot of the schedule on her phone. Intro to Sociology, East Classroom #237. Yeah. Lisa didn't remember requesting that. Still, it seemed interesting, as social studies was Lisa's favourite subject.

Heading to up the east wing's stairway, she had trouble recalling exactly where room 237 was. The second floor of this section of the school was older than the rest, so classrooms were tucked away in strange locations.

Getting closer to the correct number, she turned onto a smaller hallway with a window, leading to especially old-looking classrooms.

Ah, here it is. 237.

She pulled the door open, seeing a young-looking male teacher already writing stuff on the board.

There were several empty seats, indicating a rather small class size - but that wasn't what caught Lisa's attention.

She locked gazes with a pair of brown cat-eyes from the centre of the room, and she stopped in her tracks in front of the door.

"Oh, Lisa! You're in this class too?"

Lisa's attention was snapped away to a pretty blonde sitting in the seat next to the owner of the pair of familiar cat-eyes. Jisoo waved her hand in the air as if she was trying to call out to Lisa from some large crowd.

Lisa had difficulty registering what was going on but made her way over to the pair in a sort of automatic inclination.

"What are the odds, right?" Jisoo exclaimed in her usual overly peppy tone. "You, me and Jennie, all in the same class!"

Jennie and Lisa just stared at each other in stunned silence.