"Well, the short story is -"
Jennie interrupts, "I don't want to hear the short story. I've been watching you sit in that bar, alone, since March. If I wanted a short story I wouldn't have let you drive me to a secluded area and handed over my wall...
Lisa meets BamBam at the airport, eyes already wet with tears when he emerges through sliding, glass doors. Lisa cries too, but she thinks that it's more so because of the fact that an strong, adult, crying man has his arms wrapped around her. She feels guilty for even thinking it. When he suggest that he will stay with Lisa for a few nights in her new place, she politely declines – arguing that she needs some time alone to think.
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The disappointment that flashes through his eyes doesn't go unnoticed by Lisa, but she doesn't change her mind. She knows that she wouldn't be good company to him and the thought of prolonged intimate, human interaction at all after being virtually alone for a year terrifies her.
Lisa slides into the back seat of a private car and watches him fade away into a sea of tourists' faces.
And, well, Seoul is different. Or, it's not different, really, but it feels different to Lisa. She's driven down these streets hundreds of times, blaring whatever was on the radio and hanging her hand out the window. She knows all of the restaurants and department stores that go flying by, remembers where sub-par street art is sprayed onto the sides of buildings.
When Lisa catches her reflection in the backseat window of the black SUV that's speeding through a tunnel, she realizes that it's not Seoul that feels different. It's her. She feels out of place and unwanted here – like the loud, bright city moved on from her a while ago and she's somehow stumbled back in without invitation.
She continues to look at the girl that stares back at her in the window – wonders how even after cutting her hair back to its old length and taking out her god-awful colored contacts, she still doesn't feel like herself. After spending nearly a year dressed up and disguised as someone else, becoming Lalisa Manoban again feels like just another charade – another character in her story.
Lisa really, wasn't the same person that she was when she left Seoul all those months ago – there was no reason to bother pretending like everything would fall back into place perfectly.
"This is it," Lisa's driver says, clearing his throat, "Looks like a nice place."
Lisa stares out her window at the beige house. It's only a couple of blocks down from her old place, but it still feels entirely new. Though Gabriel had offered to pull some strings to get Lisa her old appartment back, she had told him not to bother. There were too many memories there – too many reminders.
Boxes of Lisa's things are already stacked in the living room of her new home, lazy handwriting scribbled across worn cardboard. She exhales, and drops her backpack to the floor, immediately making her way to the lonely couch and collapsing onto it.
"Well then," Lisa says to herself, looking at unfamiliar walls covered in god-awful yellow paint that she needs to cover up, "Welcome home."
Lisa knows that she needs to let people know that she's back, but the thought of it makes her stomach turn. Instead, she decides to turn in early – putting clean sheets on the king-sized mattress in her bedroom and crawling under the covers.
