Please remind me (who I really am)

Chapter 1

Lisa Manoban sat at the counter of the bookstore she worked at and watched her lone customer circulate. The woman had been here for an hour, picking up books at random, carrying them around, and then depositing them on the wrong shelves. Already on the hunt for her next victim, the irritating woman turned a corner out of Lisa's sight. Her colleague Hanbin Kim sent Lisa an exasperated look and followed her into the rest of the shop. At this point, they would both dearly love to throw the customer out on her ass, but a possible sale is a possible sale. Instead, Lisa resigned herself to going through the stock on the computer to find which books had been good sellers and which hadn't shifted a copy in longer than a few months, a task she reserved for Monday mornings, since they were already bad enough what with the sudden lack of sleep.

Lisa had been working at the Candlelight Bookstore for eleven years, ever since she had moved to New York on a whim and never left. Lured to the Big Apple by the promise of anonymity and freedom, she had stumbled into a bar her first night at the age of 16 with a false ID and flirted with the bartender until they'd poured her a quadruple Maker's Mark. It hadn't occurred to her until after she'd drunk it that she should've eaten something first. Rookie error. The liquor had hit her fast and hard, and it was only the kindness of a stranger that saved her from ending up in an unknown person's bed, or worse. Grasping her by the arm, the stranger, a young woman, had led her outside, held her hair while she threw up most of the bourbon into a handy bush, and walked her to the nearest 7/11 to buy a sandwich. At that point, Lisa hadn't remembered the address of the hostel she was staying at, so Rosé had taken her home, made up a bed on her own sofa, and plopped her onto it with a bucket by her head and a pint glass of water on the nearby table.

When Lisa woke up the following morning, she hadn't had the faintest idea where she was. Rosé had waltzed in wearing a fitted black t-shirt and a pair of black cargo pants, with another glass of water and some painkillers for Lisa's throbbing head, and they had become instant friends. Roseanne "Rosé" Park was busy, always rushing around, and a terrible influence on Lisa's waistline, but she was also kind, loyal, and had a heart of gold. Lisa had moved out of the hostel and into Rosé's flat in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, within a week, and started working at the Candlelight Bookstore a few weeks after that.

Candlelight Bookstore was owned by Rosé's mother, Hyori. She herself had inherited many small businesses from her parents, mostly small diners which she had strung together into a chain. There were now eight of them across New York, and one in Rochester, where Hyori had been born. Hyori's Diners were very successful and the income from them allowed the bookshop free reign to sell whatever it wanted. It had been run by Rosé's grandparents until they both passed away of old age. It was a little bolthole across the street from her flat, which Rosé had also inherited. Rosé's grandmother had been rather a free-spirited hippy and hadn't spent much time around her, but the affection had been there when it was needed, and that was enough. Hyori had eventually taken Lisa under her wing as well, and they had made the adoption legal just before Lisa turned 18, giving Lisa a beloved new family.

Lisa had started working at the bookstore a month after meeting Rosé; she had immediately fallen in love with the place. The bookstore was an open space, full of old leather armchairs of various colors, and tall bookshelves that Hyori's husband Heegun had made himself out of walnut. The previous owners of the building had knocked out most of the floor between the first and second floors, but left the full window there, which threw a lot of natural light into the store. Thankfully, the buildings opposite blocked any direct sunlight into the store and thus saved the spines of the books from premature fading, and the result was a relaxing, light, and airy space that looked both clean and yet lived-in. None of the bookshelves were filled entirely with books, the rest of the space being taken up by cheerful succulent plants, adding color without making any mess.