Chapter 18

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Remember: When you look at someone through rose-coloured glasses, all the red flags just look like flags.


Limit your conquests to outside of your home. They leave memories that make it harder to remind you it should always be a clean slate.







It started with heartbeats.


Lisa will one day look back and convince herself to believe that everything started downhill from there.


--


For someone who supposedly likes taking control of the women she slept with, Lisa Manoban enjoyed a little too much being what she fondly called herself to be... a Professional Whore for Jennie Kim™️.


It meant pretty much everything anyone would like it to mean: fogging up the windows in a random parking lot inside Lisa's car. Eating each other at Jennie Kim's table for "lunch." Sometimes in a booked hotel on the other side of Seoul because Kim needed to attend a conference the next day and Lisa didn't mind going to work with only 2 hours of sleep and powered by Red Bull.


The past few weeks left Lisa hazy trying to even fight against what they're building and have let herself immerse in Jennie's needs. Sometimes pre-planned, sometimes on call, sometimes rather late at night.


But each one never less exciting than the other.


Each one more addictive than the other.


Each one left with more cravings Lisa has deliberately turned a blind eye to.



-



The quick shifts in her eyes were impatient. She has been rushing this last requirement; her typing rabid; loud angry cracks of plastic echoing against the near-empty office.


Her sharp deep browns shifted into annoyed slits as they flicked fleetingly on the right of her laptop monitor where a small floating widget showed her itemised calendar, then at the time on the taskbar that just added a number a second later: 6:14 pm.


Her fingers paused a little as her gaze flitted to her phone which has remained quiet for the most part today.


Lisa pursed her lips, a quick mental calculation running in her head: if she can leave the office at around 6:40 at the latest, she can make it to the Deloitte offices maybe 15 minutes after 7 at the latest. She would then have about an hour and a half or so after.


Her 15-minute calendar reminder popped up promptly as soon as the time hit 6:15 pm:


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