The Girl Next Door - Jenlisa

Chapter 7

Minimize contact with the person. The more they could find ways to reach you, the harder it is to cut ties and get rid of emotions.

In that vein, do not ever latch on to emotions. They never come with anything good.

She played distractedly with the 2-inch smooth cardboard square on her fingers. The texture of the printed part was smooth, and the edges were cut with precision. Either it was printed as it was, or it was cut using a board cutter, or something similar.

It wasn't a deal breaker how it was done, to be honest. But Lisa was running multiple things in her head and how the card in between her thumb and forefinger was so professionally made just happened to be the tamest thought among them.

"Are you listening at all?" Rosé bitingly asked her. Lisa just took a deep breath and nodded. Ryujin, her new senior associate, looked at her a little worriedly. She didn't know how to deal with Rosé yet as she joined only 2 months ago, and her eyes darted warily between Lisa and her pink-haired project manager. It was a Saturday and she didn't want any arguments.

To be fair to the two, Lisa WAS distracted. Just a smidge.

"Look, I'm meeting my contact for KT Telecom this afternoon. We were supposed to finalise on Monday but she wanted to meet over coffee today." Lisa responded, knowing Rosé was likely to get annoyed being out of the loop. "I'll be fine--" Lisa cut her off immediately before Rosé had to even retort. "--and like I said, I only need the sign off and we're good with this. She'll be giving me the lowdown on what we need to do, but I'm pretty confident we can pull this off."

"Lis, I just don't want you distracted for this."

Lisa's hold on the card tightened a little.

"I WILL deliver. Whatever happens. You know that, Rosé." She looked at Ryujin next. "You can just clean up the code and then I think we're going to be okay. Rosé and I will have to iron things out but feel free to leave any time."

"You guys sure?" Ryujin asked, her strawberry blonde hair moving around as she bent to close her laptop. " I can have lunch here with you guys if you need anything."

Lisa just sighed and stared at Rosé. Her friend can be a bitch sometimes, but she loved her nevertheless. She made sure Lisa's always on track, but a printed 2x2 card was hardly something to derail her.

But of course she would be lying to herself if she wouldn't admit that other things in her mind were derailing her.

Particularly the very raunchy events of last night.

She licked her lips as her mouth ran dry from imagining those cat eyes boring unto hers from across the room.

"It's alright, Shin," Lisa responded after she cleared her throat, referring to Ryujin's last name fondly. They've all called each other by their last names at some point. "You enjoy the weekend for us."

Ryujin shrugged and smiled before leaving the boardroom. Rosé closed her laptop but was looking at her phone as she faced Lisa. "You still good with Greek? I got us a table at Niko Kitchen in 30 minutes."

"Yeah, I'll see you there," Lisa muttered, her eyes still staring at the printout in between her fingers.

Rosé just shook her head, no longer bothering to ask about the print out. She knew when to just leave Lisa to her devices.

It's about close to noon and Lisa's mind had been plagued by the what ifs of the card on her fingers. Since the time she found it this morning just before she headed to work up till now, about 3 hours later, she still hasn't done anything about it except stare.