The Tiger King (Chaelisa)

50| Fallout

It was a few days later when Jennie lifted the trapdoor of the attic after she came back from grocery shopping and found Lisa engrossed in her comic, her dictionary open next to her ready to assist in finding some word she didn't know.

"Do you know what an enhanced quantum nanohelix-alphabeam spritzer is?" Lisa asked without preamble, sounding puzzled.

"Well hello to you too dear sister, no nothing happened I'm quite fine. Oh please do not bother, there's no need to help with my bags, they're not that heavy," Jennie snorted as she lifted herself in.

"Yeah hi, but do you know the word?" Lisa said distractedly as she flipped through the dictionary pages with a crease in her brow. "I can't find anything here."

"Sounds pretty made up if you ask me." Jennie closed the trapdoor. She laid her plastic bags from her trip to seven-eleven aside and picked up Hwangssabu's incense tin. "Is it in the story?"

"Yeah. It says it shoots nanohalogenic beams which I still don't get what it is. I'm finding separate words in the dictionary but I guess they strung them together to sound fancy?"

"Yeah, that's usually how language works."

But Lisa had already sank back on her mattress, her nose buried between the pages of the comic book.

Jennie shook her head with a little smile. The comics and dictionary were a thoughtful gift on Rosé's part, partly because it quenched Lisa's thirst for knowledge and partly because at least it got her to shut up for a while and let Jennie think.

Jennie placed new incense sticks in the pot, lit them up. The window was already open, letting in a cool breeze to counter the afternoon heat. 

She wasn't particularly religious, but it was the least she could do to keep the memory of their mentor alive and honour him with their poor excuse for a shrine. She knelt in front of Hwangssabu's photo and put her hands together, eyes trained intently on his bespectacled smiling face.

I wish you were here.

She always started the ritual with that greeting in her head, a concession of her inability to shoulder the burden she was handed.

It also translated for I miss you so much.

Jennie didn't dwell long in front of their late mentor's photo-it would only have her sink into nostalgia and all the shortcomings that led up to the moment wrestling with current problems so she would then solemnly close her eyes, say goodbye and carry on with the day.

She didn't know if Lisa ever talked to Hwangssabu like she did, but Jennie certainly didn't want her sister to join her. She just wanted to have one little thing of Hwangssabu to herself. The ritual was all she had left of him and she didn't want to share her grieving with Lisa.

It was almost like an unspoken agreement between them when Jennie had started out burning incense for him after his death: Lisa would turn away or give a stiff nod, waiting until Jennie was done. Then they would either settle for their afternoon nap or open the Vault, depending what time of day Jennie burned the incense sticks.

"How's your hand today?" asked Jennie as she put away the new purchases and opened a Greek yogurt pot, swooping up a heaped spoonful. She had taken a liking to it since she had one at Rosé's place.

"It's good," Lisa shrugged.

"No pain whatsoever?"

"A little throbbing, but it's not much, like a tooth."

"Good, we can throw out those painkillers then, they'd only mess with you if you took them now," Jennie decided.

"Wouldn't it be better to hang on to them, for emergencies? Maybe you'd need them yourself one day, if you got hurt," Lisa pointed out.