Chapter Text
The camera flash happens before Jennie even processes the movement.
Her hand is still wrapped around Lisa's wrist—a thoughtless gesture, really, just pulling her toward the café entrance because it's cold and Lisa's been standing there telling some ridiculous story about the dev work behind their new game. But now that casual touch feels like a neon sign.
"Shit," Lisa breathes beside her, and Jennie's stomach drops because Lisa never sounds worried like that.
The photographer is already across the street, camera raised again. Click. Click. All around, Jennie can see others starting to look, phones coming out. Someone's probably already typing her name into a message, a tweet, a goddamn group chat.
"Inside. Now." Jennie's voice comes out sharper than she intends. She drops Lisa's wrist and moves for the door, but Lisa doesn't follow.
"Jennie—"
"Lisa." She doesn't turn around. Can't. Her face is probably already doing that thing where her anxiety shows in her eyes, the thing her media training was supposed to fix. "Please."
Lisa moves then, finally, her longer strides catching up easily as they push through the café door. The warm air inside does nothing for the cold spreading through Jennie's chest. Already waiting for the worst scenario to come to life.
They end up at a corner table, partially hidden by a decorative screen that won't do shit if someone really wants a photo. Lisa sits across from her, and Jennie can feel her staring. Those light brown eyes that usually make her feel settled now just remind her of every complication she's been trying not to think about.
"We were barely touching," Lisa says quietly. "Maybe he didn't even—"
"He did." Jennie's fingers are tight around her phone.
"So what do we do?"
We. Like it's that simple. Like Lisa's life is about to be dissected online, like she's the one whose every relationship becomes public property. Jennie feels the familiar tightness in her throat and forces herself to breathe through it.
"I don't know," she admits. "I need to call Alison. The label will want—they'll have questions."
"Questions like 'who is she' or questions like 'how do we make it go away'?"
Lisa says it like a joke, trying for that light tone that usually makes Jennie smile. But Jennie can hear the hurt underneath, sees it in the way Lisa's fingers tap against the table—restless, uncertain. It doesn't land.
She can't. They can't.
"Both, probably," Jennie says.
Lisa nods slowly, then reaches across the table. Stops halfway, hand hovering between them. Then pulls back, the decision made before Jennie has to say anything. She sits back in her chair and looks away, toward the window where Seoul spreads out in afternoon gray.
She should already be in damage control mode, already spinning this into something manageable. Instead, she's sitting here watching Lisa pretend to be interested in the menu, watching the careful way she's keeping her face neutral, and thinking about how this moment was inevitable from the start.
Maybe even from that first elevator ride in Thailand, when Lisa was fearless and didn't know who she was.
Back when this still felt like something that could stay simple.