Arcade Lover

Chapter 5

It's been three dreadful days. Jennie has a hard time falling asleep.

Maybe she didn't want to, but she felt restless nonetheless. Everything has been a blur since the last time she last saw Lisa at the arcade.

The blonde was causing her to feel anguished and suffering from all frames, physically and mentally. Especially mentally. She hated it. Lisa only did that as nothing but a joke, Jennie convinces herself.

The brunette avoided the arcade.

She didn't think Lisa would go back anytime soon to find or pester her considering how the blonde doesn't like it there and how Jennie seemed so passionately raged the way she was meaning to tell the latter to stay away from her. She didn't mean that.

She wished she could turn back time. Go back to the time she didn't know who Lisa was. It was an exaggerating and impulsive thought. Regardless, ever since meeting the blonde, Jennie has been burdened with nothing but butterflies. Life was all about balance. Now, she too had to bear the consequences of pain and grief. It was self-taunting.

This wasn't even a break up? She wasn't even being dumped? But she was already overthinking and overreacting the entire situation?

She returns to the arcade the next day, hopeful she would have a chance to patch up with Lisa.

She doesn't find Lisa.

Jennie was dismayed.

Jisoo rather, signals her towards the counter after spotting her. When the brunette arrives, she was unaware the full-timer knew how to work magic. There was a tiny bouquet of flower rested on the table, with strips of tickets aesthetically twisted through the stems. A hand-held bouquet of bright red tulips. She didn't know how it got there— must be Jisoo's tactics.

"You mean this is for me?"

"Does it look like I'm talking to anyone else other than you? It's 1am, woman, the arcade is closed. There's literally no one other than you and me in here." The chestnut hair girl gives her a hollow stare, then faced away to restock a fresh bag of tickets before the arcade was reopened tomorrow.

Jennie was left to inspect the gift.

There was a note.

- most girls like flowers. i don't know if you do, but i hope you do. and don't get me wrong, i don't buy flowers for just anyone. neither do i buy tickets for just anyone. maybe when your anger has subsided, i'll come back to the arcade? just relay a message to jisoo.
- L.

Jennie feels bad. She feels the way Lisa's letter was so damn cautiously written, as if the girl was deliberate and obliged not to make Jennie feel insecure or doubt the fact that the things she did to her were things she didn't do to everyone else.

But she can't help that Lisa seemed too much of a player. If she was a flirt to her, she could be a flirt to anyone else.

Maybe because the brunette was unable to avoid the fact that her dad left her and her mom when she was just ten. Maybe because she never understood why, growing up with the mindset that everyone would leave her like that scumbag. Rascal. Without a reason especially. Maybe because that emotional trauma was now coped with teasing others in such a way so psychologically frail and scheming to the head, making whoever she was talking to think she was always obscure about the things they do for her, or say to her in general. Yet it seemed more of a tease because she was always questioning.

Jennie had trust issues. She didn't trust anyone easily, but she felt like she could've dealt with her speech sounding less dubious of everything, of everyone. It would hurt someone's feelings someday when they only intended to be nice, and that someone happened to be Lisa.

Frankly, she knew she took Lisa's words quite harshly the other day. Lisa was clearly just pranking around, there was nothing to get mad about. But to Jennie, the blonde's joke about 'pretending to leave' was something she'd never ever want to hear from anyone who meant something to her. If it was play pretend, it could be real any other day.

The note crumples in her palms slightly, and Jennie stares aimlessly towards the tulips.

Red.

Love.

Romance.

Passion.

Lust.

She was overthinking things again.

Lisa was merely just a girl she met at the arcade barely three weeks ago. Good things wouldn't all come true this quickly and effortlessly however. Especially love. True love was always hard to find.

But love was weird.

It might just happen one fine day and you'd never know how, or why it did. Love can advance as quickly as it wants to and no one will ever have a say in it.

She sighs, collecting her tulips and heading home for hopefully, a better night's sleep. She was just as confused with her own emotions as everyone else when a building would experience a blackout unexpectedly.

The first thing Jennie did when she woke up the next day was drop by the arcade to beg Jisoo to make Lisa come back. She had a dream about a unicorn that could talk, said something to her like "if you're overthinking, best know you care about it" before it skated away on a straight ass rainbow across the ocean. Yeah, odd dream. But it did snap some sense into the brunette. After all, she believed unicorns were real.

Jisoo reassured that she would do just that, and the brunette was more than grateful.

It was easy trusting Jisoo, because she wasn't falling for the latter, or wasn't very much close to her in a way that urged the risk of ever taking a hurtful fall. Jisoo was just too good an acquaintance.

Jennie waited. For days she went back to the arcade at the same time close to midnight just to see if the blonde would drop by.

Yet another week has gone by and Lisa was nowhere to be seen.

Jennie started to speculate things about herself again. Because, why was she even so disappointed when the latter didn't arrive? Just like others, Lisa could just be a passing figure. She'd meet tons of people in her life, so just because she's met Lisa one few times doesn't mean the girl was going to be anything significant.

Right?

She wanted to drop the idea of the blonde. About their encounters.

Sadly, she couldn't.

The brunette didn't even feel like playing arcade games anymore either.

She's used to coming to the arcade alone in the past, without anyone's presence bothering her. But now, every time she was back at the place, all she could think about was Lisa.

And then the girl really did appear one day.